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I know you must often wonder: what is polyamory? Well here's a (nonsensical) guide: "Polyamory - What it is and what it isn't." Aside from being awkwardly written (avoiding some common contractions, but using one in the title, for instance), the essay is dull and boring. Plus, it's not based the slightest bit in reality. Anyway, what is "polyamory"?

Polyamory has been defined as the philosophy and practice of loving more than one person at a time with honesty and integrity. Synonyms for polyamory are responsible, ethical, and intentional, non-monogamy. Because those descriptions are somewhat clumsy, the term Polyamory was coined in the late 80's by a pagan Priestess, Morning Glory Zell, and defines a range of different lifestyle alternatives. In most cases, but not all, this involves some sexual or at least intensely intimate sensual behavior.

Let me summarize: you have sex with lots of people, but there won't be any complications if you all love each other.

The authors purposefully confuse all sorts of different meanings for "love".

Polyamorists say that love is an infinite, not a finite commodity. An example of this is with children. When my oldest daughter was born, I loved her with every ounce of my being. When my son was born, I found that I didn't have to give them half a love each, I could love them both fully. My third child is loved as much, if not more, than the other two.

It's absurd to assert that people love their children in the same way they love their spouse/whatever. You may as well say "I love pizza and I love hamburgers; in the same way, I can love both Jill and Heather." There are all sorts of different kinds of love, as I think we're all well-aware.

The authors also appear to have no understanding of what love really involves.

This also applies to friends - when you meet someone new, you don't have to think about who you are going to drop off to make them fit. As a woman said when explaining why she chose polyamory - "I refuse to accept the myth that I have to stop loving one person before I start loving another."

There's only so much time in the day. I'm sure we've all lost contact with friends due to lack of time. It's absurd to think a person could invest the amount of time necessary for a truly intimate loving relationship with a large number of people. In fact, most humans can't even maintain one healthy relationship (judging from the divorce rate).

And then, "falling in love".

Polyamorists say that love should be unconditional, rather than the monogamous proposition that "I will love you on the condition that you will not love anyone else" - "forsaking all others" is how it usually is put. And as shown by history, monogamy and marriage are no safeguards against falling in love with someone else.

And there's no way we can possibly control our feelings, is there? We're doomed to fall in love with other people and destroy our marriages! Except, of course, that loving someone is far different from "falling in love" (as we say). Loving someone involves a conscious choice, whereas "falling in love" is merely an emotional phenomenon.

The authors blather on a bit and then try to refute the idea that polyamory might displease God by quoting two atheists.

It is sinful - God doesn't like it.

"Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others." Oscar Wilde Chameleon.

"Confusing monogamy with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other error." George Bernard Shaw

The sinfulness and wickedness of sex is based on the assumption that God doesn't like sex. This poison has its roots in Ancient Assyria, and the religions of Mythra and Zoroastrianism, which first put forth the idea of "the obscenity of the flesh." The sex drive, being one that cannot be denied, becomes a rich source of implanted guilt and shame, used to manipulate and degrade the individual. Therefore any sexual (natural) feelings need to be accompanied by shame, and therefore kept secret.

Of course, there's no real indication that God dislikes sex, so they're beating up a straw man. As they note, much of the Bible was written by polygamists. However, the authors aren't advocating polygamous marriage, they're advocating committment-free sexual liasons. The Bible makes it pretty clear that God wasn't thrilled with the idea of polygamy (see Solomon's downfall and Paul's instruction that church elders have at most one wife), even though he doesn't condemn it, but polygamous marriages laid responsibilities on all parties involved identical to the responsibilities in monogamous marriages. They weren't sexual free-for-alls.

Ok, there's a bunch more stuff I won't address directly. It's repetitive.

Their last point is the most absurd. After discussing jealousy at great length, they then ask an apparently rhetorical question that implies monogamy has no biological basis.

If monogamy is so natural and hardwired, why is there such a large relationship industry - the "How to make it right" of magazines, books, TV shows, marriage guidance, etc.?

Hm, could it be because we want successful monogamous relationships, but have trouble making them work? Maybe because we keep "falling in love" and never make a real decision to actually love someone in spite of our frequently fluctuating emotions? Could it be because nonsense like this polyamory paper twists and distorts people's understanding of love?

(HT: Random Walks.)

Speaking of movie scripts, Aaron Haspel has a nice disection of how Hollywood protrays the business world.

The anti-business movies deal overwhelmingly with schlock purveyors: yellow journalists (Citizen Kane), swampland peddlers (Glengarry Glen Ross), penny stock hustlers (Boiler Room), shady aluminum siding salesmen (Tin Men), and out-and-out gangsters (The Godfather). It's a Wonderful Life gestures half-heartedly toward the notion of quality as good business, as in the scene where Mr. Potter's rental agent lectures him on how all the nice houses in Bailey Park are killing his real estate business. But mostly it's more people vs. profits hoo-rah.

In a "pro-business" movie like Executive Suite, our hero, William Holden, is the research chief for the furniture company, and in his big speech, as he ascends to the chairmanship, he tells the board that the company will never sacrifice quality, profits be damned. That it might actually be more profitable to manufacture good furniture does not cross the screenwriter's mind.

Incidentally, if I ever hear an executive of a company I own stock in say "profits be damned", I'm going to immediately sell.

Most people don't understand capitalism, and think profits are evil. The root of the misunderstanding is that many people want companies to be "nice", but companies don't exist to benefit humanity any more than you as an individual do. Companies consist solely of the assets of people who have invested (shareholders), and those people expect their money to be used for their own benefit, just like you expect your money to be used for your benefit. As Neal Stephenson hammers home in his excellent
Cryptonomicon, people who invest in corporations are interested in one thing: increasing shareholder value. Every corporate executive should realize that increasing shareholder value is the only moral use of company assets.

Individuals should be charitable and generous with their own money, but no one has any business giving away money that belongs to other people.

Update:
Plus, the very existence of profit (absent monopolies and other market distortions (which are never entirely absent)) demonstrates that a company is providing a beneficial service to its customers as well as it's shareholders. As I explained here, trading in a free market is generally profitable for both parties -- otherwise one of the parties would refuse the trade. The economy isn't a zero-sum game; wealth is created through trading by redistributing resources to those who value them most.

Update:
Director Mitch notes that there just aren't any good bad guys left. But there's always someone richer than you to be jealous of!

Donald Sensing has a post denouncing the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction (in response to a post by Rosemary on Dean's World), specifically American use of nuclear weapons as a response to the detonation of a nuclear device in an American city by terrorists. The term "Mutually Assured Destruction" isn't really apt anymore (and Rev. Sensing doesn't use it), because there are no other nations (Russia included) with the power to annihilate the United States. What MAD has morphed into is a promise to respond to a nuclear attack with the maximum possible force, rather than "proportional force". We have no desire to trade cities one-for-one with terrorists; as soon as they show a willingness to nuke us, game over -- we will respond with enough force to end the war immediately.

Rev. Sensing claims such a response would be immoral, but this quote makes me wonder if he understands MAD:

I reject a nuclear response that seeks simply to lash out at presumed enemies and make Arabs suffer for suffering’s sake. Killing just to kill would not be warranted even under such grievous circumstances.

There are two parts to MAD: the threat, and the follow-through. The threat is intended to convince our enemies that using nuclear weapons against us simply isn't worth it. Terrorists can't get nukes without the aid of some rogue nation (as Rev. Sensing points out -- North Korea or Iran, most probably), and the threat of MAD should serve to deter those nations from helping the terrorists.

It sounds like what Rev. Sensing most objects to, then, is the possibility that we'd actually follow through on the MAD threat if we were nuked. We've never had to before, but there's no guarantee that the threat itself will deter everyone forever. The threat itself is brilliant and costs no lives, but if we're ever nuked we'll be put in a tough position. Do we retaliate with overwhelming (non-proportional) force, as we threatened to do, or do we back down? If we back down, our future threats will be powerless and we won't have any means to deter future nuclear attacks. If we don't back down, and we actually obliterate a city or two in the nation(s) we determine were involved, we'll be responsible for killing a great many people who were only peripherally involved in the attack against us.

However, contrary to what some of Rev. Sensing's commenters claim, such retaliation would not be "murder" or "revenge" -- such terms have no meaning in war. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed when we nuked Japan, but that action probably saved millions of lives (Japanese and American); it wasn't murder it was a strategic use of force calculated to end the war, and it did. Furthermore, since the utility of the threat wholly depends on our willingness to make good on it, it's not revenge to respond to an attack in the exact manner we guaranteed we would. If a thug pulls a knife on a cop, and the cop tells the thug to drop the knife or he'll shoot, it's not "revenge" for the cop to shoot the thug if instead of dropping the knife he charges to attack.

Far from being immoral, MAD is the only moral policy I've ever heard of that has a chance of deterring nuclear attacks against the United States. Rev. Sensing proposes some other possible methods in his post, but they'd all take years to implement, and would do nothing to prevent future nuclear attacks in the mean time. Rev. Sensing's proposals are all excellent long-term policies (most of which we should be doing now), but such possibilities will not be sufficient to deter our enemies from using nuclear weapons against us. You can't correct a child's behavior by threatening to send him to military school in ten years.

Update:
Rev. Sensing has updated his own post in response to mine. First, I'd like to say that I'm sure he's more familiar with MAD than I am -- it was his characterization of deterrence as mere "lashing out" that made me wonder.

By rejecting the use of nuclear weapons as a deterrent, Rev. Sensing seems to leave no real purpose for their existence at all. We certainly won't use them pre-emptively, and if we won't use them in retaliation either then there's no reason to have them. We can't even threaten to use them if our enemies know we will never follow through.

He describes many dire consequences that may follow from our retaliatory use of nuclear weapons, and he's probably right about many of them. But are those possible consequences worse than seeing another US city nuked by terrorists? I'm not sure that's the case.

We could continue to deter Russia and other nuclear nations with the rest of our arsenal, and withdraw our soldiers from around the world if need be. It would obviously be a Bad Thing all around, but would it be worse than losing another US city to another nuke?

Would our retaliation prevent another attack? No guarantees, but it could sure motivate some of our enemies to clamp down on the terrorists in their midsts right quick. If not -- if they're determined to fight a nuclear war -- then we have no alternatives anyway.

As for furthering the cause of Christ... I'll have to consider it. Off the top of my head I can't think of an effective nuclear deterrence policy that would also win people to Jesus if it had to be used. War in general doesn't tend to turn people to Christ, but does that mean we should never fight? Some pacifists say so, but their positions aren't convincing.

In Candace's comment on "Banishing the Ugly" she brings another metaphor to mind.

Humbly, Michael. It's nice to at least feel understood, even more so to feel that one's words resonate with another.

Words are the bait, and ideas are the hook. What does anyone want more than to know and be known? As Paul wrote, knowing is the essence of love.

1 Corinthians 13:11-13

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

I wish I could tell you everything I'm thinking (whoever you are). I wish you could know every stray thought that flitters through my mind. I've loved before, and felt the deeply painful need to know and be known, to lay myeslf utterly bare before some other miserably flawed human being and to be loved in return for exactly who I am. It's a longing that sex offers to fulfill, but cannot. God's perfect fellowship will complete it someday, but even when Adam walked in the Garden with his creator God knew it wasn't good for him to be alone.

I know a lot of beautiful women, but what catches my eye more quickly and surely than a pretty face is a knowing glance or tiny smile that tells me she gets it. Some off-hand remarks or inside jokes -- some strung-together words -- that show we're on the same page, that prove my thoughts aren't bouncing off the surface but penetrating the dark, secret place wherein she hides.

Wise counsel; subtle wit; easy laughter; sly, sparkling glances that scream I know! -- these are love to me.

Words are the bait, ideas are the hook. Take a look around, you might find something you like.

Will Baude says that premarital sex is virtuous:

I think it's generally unwise for people (particularly people who view monogamy as generally desirable and divorce as generally undesirable) to get married before they've begun having some sort of sexual relations.

Although he says "some sort of sexual relations", it's pretty clear from further text that he's referring to sexual intercourse itself.

The second part of Ms. Morse's view that I think is bad is her view that sex ought to be kept between spouses, or that sex's job is to bring spouses closer together. I think this is a cause-effect confusion.

Sex shouldn't be used to bring people close together-- it should be used to help us find people with whom we're compatible enough to be or grow close. (And marriage, as I said earlier, isn't always relevant to this closeness-- plenty of pairs unmarried people love each other as much or more than plenty of other pairs of married or ex-married people. Especially in a world where some of these unmarried people are legally forbidden marry the other unmarried the people they love.)

I've heard this argument before, and I'm not at all convinced. First of all, go read my dissection of a non-married love relationship which very clearly is not as intimate as a marriage; your mileage may vary, but I expect that the vast majority of "long-term relationships" are quite similar (maybe even many marriages?).

Secondly, I find it very easy to learn a great deal about women without having sex with them, or even "dating" them. I'm not particularly fond of the whole modern concept of "dating", for a whole host of reasons. To keep it short: I don't think it's possible to build a healthy relationship on romantic emotions. The foundation of dating is romance, and as most of us are probably aware it's quite easy to become attracted to someone we wouldn't particularly care to be friends with. Physical and emotional lust are powerful forces, and we're often eager to be tricked into thinking we actually love someone when it's all just emotional smoke and mirrors.

As I've written before, my strategy is pretty simple:

Mostly, I just live my life and try to make myself into a person that will be "A One" for the type of girl I hope to attract. I've probably got a long ways to go, but I'm working on it.

Dating and sex obscure and confuse the real issues involved with finding a mate in ways that "mere" friendship doesn't. Dating and sex lead to jealousy, lust, pride, selfishness, materialism, conflict, impatience, manipulation, cruelty, resentment, and uncountable other complications. Friendship has its pitfalls as well, but is generally much freer from such distractions.

Friendship allows me to see a woman for who she truly is, when she's not trying to impress anyone; friendship lets me be myself without needing to make an artificially-sculpted good impression. Dating, on the other hand, is all about creating a pretty show, complete with scripted dialogue and special effects. You tell me which is more conducive to really getting to know someone.

Mr. Baude writes further:

Marrying somebody without knowing whether they behave in a good or evil manner in bed is like marrying somebody without knowing what their favorite book is, or what their religion is, without knowing what they think constitutes moralvirtue [sic]. These things are too important, and too central to our very identies, to simply hope that they will work themselves out later like the question of whose parents get the first Christmas.

I agree it's an important issue, but there are a myriad of similarly important topics that are discussed before marriage, but deferred in action until afterwards. How will the children be raised? How will we spend our money? Who will work at what job, when? All of these are critically important issues to a marriage, and all of them (including sex) should be discussed frankly and openly beforehand. But I see no reason to doubt that the question of sex, just like the others, can be explored effectively and sufficiently without actual implementation.

Update:
I'd like to add that, although I've heard many married couples express regret over extra-/pre-marital sexual escapades, no couple who has waited has ever told me that they wish they hadn't.

Candace muses on why she writes, and she speaks for more people than just herself, whether she realizes it or not.

Writing jerks the hopes and dreams of our imaginations into the Real World and shoves them into people's faces. It's hard to say whether words or weapons have done more to set the course of history, but maybe the distinction isn't that important. "The pen is mightier than the sword" misses the point: words are weapons, and every strung-together collection is another battle waged to banish the Ugly and to conform the world to our peculiar vision.

In response to my "An Open Letter to Hawthorne Police Chief Stephen Port", Barry left a rather poetic comment about why he doesn't want anyone to carry concealed weapons. In part:

If I were to take a live, armed weapon and carry it on my person, in public, it would eat away at my sanity just as if it were emitting lethal radiation. To know that I carried an instrument of sure and certain death on my person, available and ready to be pulled out and used at a moment's notice to possibly kill...a child. A homeless person. An innocent.

Lots of other commenters jumped on him, probably for two reasons: they thought his fears were irrational, and they thought the language he used was a bit over the top. I also think Barry's fears are unfounded, but I'm sure that his beliefs are widely shared by a minority of the general population. Many people simpy don't like guns, and wish they'd all go away.

Barry defends himself later on, and has now responded at greater length on his blog, Inn of the Last Home. Apparently, lots of people on other blogs were attacking him, or at least disagreeing with him in a determined and forceful manner.

I would feel uncomfortable carrying a loaded weapon. Very uncomfortable that I would possibly have the means to end a person's life within arm's reach. That doesn't mean I'm going to do it, or would ever be tempted. Just that fact makes me uncomfortable.

I also would feel uncomfortable knowing that anyone on the street, in the theatre, at a restaurant, at the supermarket could be carrying a loaded gun on their person. And here's why - despite training, despite temperament, despite the best of intentions: I don't trust you. That's simply it, I don't trust you. I don't trust a person who is not a licensed law enforcement officer of some kind - someone who, by virtue of their job, I would assume they have proper gun training - to carry a weapon. You may be a great person, love your kids, go to church, would never pull a gun in anger at another person - you may be supremely confident of that fact in your own mind, but I'm not. To me, you would be just as likely to be the one sticking up the fast-food clerk as the one defending him, or - in your possibly untrained and excited state - could be the one who with the best of intentions attempts to intervene but misses and hits someone else. Or you could be the one who gets pissed off at me in traffic and, instead of the flipping me the finger you pop off a few rounds at my back window.

I understood Barry's fears before, and this later explanation reinforces my earlier comprehension. Barry doesn't trust anyone (except, apparently, for some reason, police officers) and doesn't want anyone to carry lethal force around with them.

The problem is that it's precisely because of this lack of trust that other people choose to carry weapons. I sure as heck don't trust the people around me either, which is why I want to have means available to defend myself from them. In particular, the very people most likely to hurt me (violent psychos) are the people least likely to be restrained by laws prohibiting concealed carry.

All you have to do is watch the news and you'll see stories every single day about nuts shooting up schools, churches, movie theaters, bus stops, hospitals, work places, &c. That scares the crap out of me when I think about it! The police don't show up to draw chalk outlines until it's all over, but if I were there and I had a gun there might be something I could do. Maybe not, depending on the circumstances, but maybe yes. At least I'd have the best possible chance.

Furthermore -- and more importantly -- my right to carry a weapon does not in any way depend on Barry's comfort level. As I wrote yesterday, the freedom to keep and bear arms is the foundation of liberty. Without the means to exercise physical force it's impossible to be free: you're a slave to anyone who can overpower you. Others can like it or not, but that's morally irrelevant. Those who think like Barry would prefer to live a perfectly safe, perfectly enslaved life than a life filled with both freedom and the risk that inescapably accompanies it.

Bertrand Russel writes about obsessive love (in relation to Fitzgerald and Nabokov), and it reminds me of a previous thought I'd had: that no man is complete without some unobtainable love.

Those two authors write mostly about obsessive romantic love (or lust), but their characters stand for far more than mere sexuality (or even humanity). All men and women need an object of desire -- moral, spiritual, philisophical, material? -- to yearn for and strive after, knowing it can never be obtained. This is the essence of tragedy, and the foundation of greatness.

No one accomplishes anything great by aiming at the attainable. Greatness is achieved in incremental steps, to be sure, but the ultimate goal must stand forever out of reach or it's not even worth the effort. Greatness springs from tragedy; tragedy puts the accomplishments of life into scale, and reveals their greatness.

As a banal example, consider the SAT. If everyone received perfect scores, what significance would the test have? It would tell us nothing about anyone's abilities, intelligence, knowledge, or determination. Tragedy serves the same purpose; by highlighting the failures and disappointments of life, success can be elevated to the level of greatness. By striving for impossible goals, through obsession with the unattainable, a man is stretched to his fullest extent and his greatness can be rightly judged.

Donald Sensing mentions that web-hostile Bill O'Reilly thinks the internet needs to be made "safe for democracy", but that opinion belies a profound misunderstanding of democracy. As the Iraqis are discovering, democracy doesn't need to be safely provided for: democracy itself constructs a safe environment to exist within by making it hard for the elites to hold power, and by distributing power to the masses.

Democratic power is primarily established by the right to keep and bear arms, and secondarily by the rights to private property, freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of association, &c. These rights are the foundation of a liberal democratic society, and they don't need any external management to protect them. Naturally, the self-styled "elite" would like to administrate these rights -- for the benefit of all! -- but top-down interference actually ends up making democracy and freedom less secure, rather than more. The "elite" are well-aware of this fact, and they seek to make us all less free so as to accumulate power for themselves. It's fine that they try (that's the essence of competition), but it doesn't mean they're right or that we should let them succeed.

I have an acquaintence -- let's call him "T" -- who had been receiving diability payments from his "job" for over a year because he found a psychiatrist to write him a note claiming he had a psychological malady called "stress" that prevented him from working. I don't know the exact nature of T's "stress", but seeing as how it stemmed from managing a retail clothing store I find it hard to believe that it kept him from doing any sort of work for over a year. Nevertheless, due to California's absurd workers' compensation system, his employer had no choice but to continue paying T while he sat at home drinking and playing video games.

This type of forced coverage of nonsensical claims is part of what makes California so unattractive to employers, and refomring the workers' compensation system was one of Governor Arnold's top campaign priorities. Republican state Senator Ross Johnson is introducing a bill to implement some changes, and is particularly targeting intangible psychological claims.

Claiming a psychological injury is already the most-difficult kind of disability to prove. But Johnson says because the pain is literally all in the workers' mind, they should have to offer better proof that their employer caused it.

Psychiatrists don't like the sound of that. They say it smacks of discrimination against their field.

Uh, yeah. I'm not a psychologist, but I play one on TV and I've taken a good number of graduate-level psychology classes. The field is 50% BS and 50% "we don't know what it means, but when we do A we get B". Heck, maybe that makes it 100% BS. Anyway, the point is that I have no problem discriminating against a field that has just about as much legitimacy in my mind as palmistry. I'm exaggerating, but you get my point.

His bill would also restrict the reasons for which a worker might claim a stress disability. Pressures that are common to all fields of employment, for example, would not be allowed as cause for a psychological injury. A worker also could not be compensated for a psychological illness that arose from the stress of disciplinary action, job transfer or being fired.

"It is equally sensible to ensure that the everyday stresses we all experience in the workplace do not give rise to a claim for benefits," Johnson said.

Well, duh. It's an unfortunate sign of the decadence of our culture that this even has to be said and coded into law.

Strangely, the California Psychiatric Association doesn't approve of the bill, which would drastically reduce their prestige and clientele.

"We felt that it would create an incentive for an intrusive investigation of patients that would increase costs without benefiting the worker," Hagar [the director of government affairs for the California Psychiatric Association] said. "Psychiatric injury already has a higher burden of proof. And the bill seems predicated on the assumption that there is some sort of evidence of over-utilization of psychiatry, which is absolutely untrue.

"And, it is discriminatory against the field and against the patients who have legitimate injuries."

The problem is that workers are being unfairly benefitted at the moment; this bill tries to level the playing field, and reduce the cost to businesses of absurd claims. Hopefully, those with "legitimate injuries" will still be able to get treatment. However, people like T who get stressed out from folding clothes and adding up numbers should be prevented from leeching off the system.

The Hawthorne Chief of Police Stephen Port has denied my application for a permit to carry a concealed weapon, and I'm going to deliver a Public Records Act Request this afternoon to gather information for a possible lawsuit. According to the text of the law, it looks like the Hawthorne Police Department will have ten days to make the records available (or at least to make a determination as to their availability). Ten calendar days from now is Christmas, but as you can imagine I'm eager to see that my rights as protected under the national Constitution and the constitution of the State of California are enforced.

Update:
I submitted the PRAR without much fanfare, and had my brother go with me to witness it. Now we'll see what happens....

Chief Port:

My name is Michael Williams, and I live in the city of Hawthorne, California. You recently reviewed and denied my application for a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

I am 26 years old, and have no criminal record of any sort. I have never been a party in a lawsuit, I have never been arrested, and I have not been in a fight since age 10. I have never been in a courtroom or appeared in front of a judge. I do not drink, I do not use drugs, and I have no psychological or mental problems that could cause me to act dangerously or irrationally. I am gainfully employed as an engineering consultant at Boeing Satellite Systems, and I own my own home. I am a Ph.D. candidate at UCLA, and serve actively in my local church.

As you are aware, there are a great many people in the city of Hawthorne and the surrounding communities who carry concealed handguns and have never bothered to go to their police chief to ask permission. I have no doubt that you and your officers encounter such people on a daily basis, and that you can attest to the fact that withholding permits from law-abiding citizens does nothing to prevent criminals from carrying weapons themselves. As you are aware, men and women intent on committing felonies are not concerned with obeying state laws on concealed carry.

On the other hand, I have a great respect for the law. I followed every appropriate procedure in my application for a permit to carry a concealed weapon. I provided you with an exemplary "good cause" statement, which unfortunately I cannot make available here, as it would compromise my safety. I went to the police station twice to obtain and return the application, and I waited at the DMV for two hours in order to get you a copy of my most recent driving record. I studied for the required Handgun Safety Certification test and passed with a perfect score. I purchased my handgun legally from a federally licensed dealer, and provided you with the serial number. I disclosed to you my place of residence, my occupation, the details of my employment, and every other piece of information required by law.

And yet, after all that, you denied my application for a CCW without giving any reason or justification -- nothing but a verbal notification. None of the criminals who carry weapons illegally and have the power to directly threaten my life and the lives of my friends and family have followed any of these procedures, and nothing substantial prevents them from carrying.

Nothing you or your officers can do will protect me if I am faced with an armed assailant, because no assailant will assault me in your presence. It is little comfort to me that you may possibly catch him after the fact, because I'll already be kidnapped, injured, or dead. By your direct and individual action you have withheld from me the power to defend my own life, and have forced me to become a victim-in-waiting for anyone with criminal intentions. You have condemned me to be the prey of every miscreant, thug, gangster, drug dealer, robber, kidnapper, and outlaw our society produces. By the very fact that I respect the law, you have enslaved me to the worst of humanity. Does your wife carry a concealed weapon, or do you send her out to the wolves defenseless as well?

You had complete legal discretion over my application, and if any evil is perpetrated against me my blood will be on your hands. If I am attacked and wounded, be assured that you will receive a call from me as soon as I am able to hold a phone. If I am killed my family will notify you, and I hope you will remember this letter.

You have robbed me of my dignity, and consigned me walk the streets in perpetual weakness and fear.

Indignantly,
Michael Williams

Update:
I'm considering filing a Freedom of Information Act request for documentation of all the CCWs the Hawthorne Police Department has issued for the past five years. Here's the letter I have so far, which I built from a template at the excellent site: www.equalccw.com.

Update 2:
Further adventures.

I'm skeptical of Donald Sensing's description of Jesus' instruction to "turn the other cheek" as an admonishment to resist oppression. Here's the passage in context:

Matthew 5:38-42
"You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

It seems very clear to me that Jesus is not advocating resistance or even civil disobedience. This passage comes right after the Beatitudes, where Jesus says "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth."

Rev. Sensing writes:

In the culture of the day, backhanding someone was a gesture of contempt. It was how you treated someone who was beneath you in class and status. To give someone the back of your hand was to say by gesture, "Remember your place! I am superior to you!" It was how a father rebuked his son, a brother his sister, a husband his wife and a master his slave or servant.

That being so, Jesus’ advice to turn the other, or left, cheek to be struck is loaded with symbolic meaning. It is certainly not advice to be submissive to evil. It has at least two loaded meanings:

- I deny that I am inferior to you and I demand you acknowledge me as your equal by striking me a forehand blow, and

- as your equal, I have the right to strike you back.

Turning the other cheek actually could well have been Jesus’ admonishment to the people under oppression by the Romans and class structures to stop being passive and start resisting, but never to be the aggressor and to provide an opportunity for the oppressor to ponder the evil of his ways.

It's not that I disagree with Donald's conclusions, I just don't think this passage is implying what he says it does. Taken in context with Jesus' other teachings, I don't see any way to infer that he was advocating any resistance to Roman power. Jesus' main concern was spiritual warfare, and he never seemed to worry about physical oppression on this fallen earth.

The use of the word "also" seems significant to me as well, since it implies "in addition to" rather than "instead of".

Update:
Donald posts more, and comments on my post here as well.

My main disagreement with him isn't on whether the social order should change (it should) but rather on the method. Let's look at Ephesians 6 for more insight.

5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6 Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7 Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, 8 because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free.
9 And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.

10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.

19 Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, 20 for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.

First, consider the slaves Paul writes about. Does this passage imply that slavery is good? Of course not. But Paul also doesn't tell the slaves to flee -- rather he instructs them to serve their masters in a Godly way, so as to be examples of goodness. Liekwise, masters were reminded that they too had a Master in heaven who would hold them accountable. Paul's focus wasn't on changing the social order, but rather on changing the hearts of those involved.

Secondly, our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Our battle isn't against this world order -- the sinful world we live in is only a symptom of the greater spiritual illness that infects our species. Fighting to change the system isn't bad, but treating the symptoms directly is ultimately useless if the disease isn't cured. Only by fighting in this spiritual battle can hearts be turned to Christ, and the material world will follow. All the equipment Paul lists is spiritual in nature, and this is the front where the real battle for souls is fought.

Thirdly, Paul himself was a prisoner of the oppressive Roman Empire, and he never railed against it. On the contrary, he took every opportunity to work within the system and to subvert the hearts of those he came into contact with. In the book of Acts, he says that while he was held prisoner in Rome many of the emperor's personal guards listened to him and became Christians. Eventually, Paul was put to death for his beliefs, and he never resisted the fate God had in store for him (in fact, he counted it a joy). If he had fought, he might have brought about some change to the government system, but at what cost to the cause of Christ?

Finally, we know the end of our world and everything in it: destruction. The day will come when every man and woman will stand before God to be judged, and on that day our civilization will come to an end. There's no purpose in trying to save it, because it will eventually pass away. The only things of any value are people, because people last forever.

Injustice is bad, oppression is bad, and the Bible constantly warns those in authority to use their power for good, but if we Christians allow ourselves to be distracted from our spiritual war by the battles of this world, we're falling into a trap.

Update 2:
Some further thoughts:

1 Corinthians 7:20-24
Each one should remain in the situation which he was in when God called him. Were you a slave when you were called? Don't let it trouble you--although if you can gain your freedom, do so. For he who was a slave when he was called by the Lord is the Lord's freedman; similarly, he who was a free man when he was called is Christ's slave. You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men. Brothers, each man, as responsible to God, should remain in the situation God called him to.

Paul says it here pretty clearly: if you can relieve oppression, it's good to do so -- but don't be overly bothered by it. He recasts the physical situation in spiritual terms, and points out that no matter what our earthly circumstances are, they're of far less consequence than our spiritual standing before God.

Whatever R. Kelly may have done [he's accused of having sex with a minor and video-taping the act -- MW], his lawyers make some compelling arguments on the legal issues surrounding his defense.

By alleging that the illegal acts happened between November 1997 and February 2002, Kelly's attorneys argue, the girl could be anywhere from 13 to 17 years old. If she was 17 at the time, she would have been old enough to consent to sex.

It sounds as if there's quite a bit of reasonable doubt built right into the charges, if the police investigators themselves admit the act could have happened at a time when the girl could have legally consented.

Further, they argue, such a large window of time makes it impossible for Kelly to mount a fair defense.

"It's no secret that Mr. Kelly is a well-known musician, who frequently travels," the motion states. "By failing to narrow the date of the charged defense, Mr. Kelly is wholly deprived of the opportunity to bring an alibi defense."

Another good point. There's reasonable doubt that a crime was even committed, and the accusation is so vague that there's no way to defend against it.

The attorneys also raised questions about the law that allows for a man to have sex with girls 17 and older but illegal to videotape such acts with girls 17 and younger.

"It is illogical, irrational and disproportionate to subject one to a criminal conviction for taking pictures of conduct that does not otherwise violate the law," they said.

This is an issue I've raised before with regards to nudist camps, and it does seem like a logical flaw in our justice system. Furthermore, the criminal penalties for taking or possessing pornographic pictures of children are often more harsh than the penalties for statutory rape, which is absurd. (Each picture taken/possessed is generally treated as a separate offense.)

Our society obviously has the responsibility and desire to protect our children from exploitation (which is why we don't allow minors to "consent" to sexual activities, even if they want to), but the laws on these matters need to be reformed and unified to present a coherent and consistent framework for punishing criminals and discouraging criminal behavior.

James 1:17-18

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.

Heavenly Father,

Thank you for such a warm and beautiful day. It's been a long year, but we're almost to the end of it and you've shown yourself faithful every step of the way, in every detail of my life.

Thank you for my family, and that my brother can be home with us over Thanksgiving. Please take care of my dad and step-mom who are up in Reno now, and thanks for letting them buy a house and find a place they really like. Thanks for my mom and step-dad here in Los Angeles, all my brothers, even though they're frustrating sometimes. Thank you for our health and happiness, and all the good circumstances you've blessed my family with. Please comfort my grandmother in this holiday times for the first year she's facing them without my grandfather. Work in the lives of my family to bring them to a saving knowledge of your son.

Thank you for my job and my ability to go to school, help me to work hard and honestly in everything I do, and to make the most of every opportunity you give me. Thank you for all the success you've given me, none of which would have been possible if I was working under my own power. Thank you for giving me tenacity and determination, and a modicum of wisdom. Help me to be wise and generous, caring, compassionate, gentle, kind, and humble in spirit. I have nothing to boast about, because every good thing I have is a gift from you. Use it all to glorify yourself.

Thank you for my amazing church family, who have always been there for me even when my real family hasn't. Thank you for my friends, my small group, my pastor, and all the people I serve with. There's nothing more enjoyable than serving you with people I love, and it's a great blessing to be a member of Venice Baptist Church. Give our leadership wisdom and humility, and keep us from making any decisions or pursuing any course of action other than according to your will. Thank you for all the wonderful kids and college students I get to work with. Thank you for all the wise advisors you've given me to keep me on the right path. Help our church to be a blessing to our community, to those in every kind of need, spiritual and material. Show your love for the world through us.

Thank you for my country, and all the tremendous blessings that come from being an American. Thank you for all the people who make the country possible, from the soldiers to the politicians, all working as ministers of your common grace to the world. Thank you for our President Bush, all our Senators and Representatives, the Governor and Legislature of California, the Mayor and Councilmen of Hawthorne, and everyone who labors to make the country run smoothly. Give them all wisdom and self-control, show yourself to them and make your will clear; give them to courage to do what's right. Protect our soldiers all over the world, and give them peace of mind and comfort even when they're in danger. Comfort their families as well, and give them courage. Use all these people to preserve the peace, and restore it, and to punish evildoers and protect the weak and the innocent.

Lord, I know that my innermost desires are evil and destructive, thank you for lifting me out of the pit of my own sin and depravity. Thank you for sending your son Jesus Christ to live and die as a sacrifice, to pay the penalty for my sins. Thank you for reconciling this sinner to you, for adopting me and making me your son. Thank you for loving me even when I hated you, and for calling me to be your own. Thank you for your Holy Spirit who lives within me and seals me, who sanctifies me and empowers me to do your will. Thank you for your word the Bible that teaches me, guides me, and corrects me. Thank you for the glorious hope you've given me that surpasses all earthly troubles, the knowledge and security that even when this world passes away, your love for me will never pass away. Thank you that nothing I do can ever make you love me less, and thank you that I don't have to work to earn your love, and that nothing I do can make you love me more. Give me the strength and humility to serve you all my days. Forgive my rebellion, my pride, my impatience and selfishness. Give me the power to overcome my base desires and to be an example of Christ's love to the world. Protect me and preserve me, use me however you will but never leave me. I am yours, bought with a price and redeemed from slavery to eternal freedom; no words of thanks will ever be enough to profess my love for you.

Psalm 30

1 I will exalt you, O LORD ,
for you lifted me out of the depths
and did not let my enemies gloat over me.
2 O LORD my God, I called to you for help
and you healed me.
3 O LORD , you brought me up from the grave;
you spared me from going down into the pit.

4 Sing to the LORD , you saints of his;
praise his holy name.
5 For his anger lasts only a moment,
but his favor lasts a lifetime;
weeping may remain for a night,
but rejoicing comes in the morning.

6 When I felt secure, I said,
"I will never be shaken."
7 O LORD , when you favored me,
you made my mountain stand firm;
but when you hid your face,
I was dismayed.

8 To you, O LORD , I called;
to the Lord I cried for mercy:
9 "What gain is there in my destruction,
in my going down into the pit?
Will the dust praise you?
Will it proclaim your faithfulness?
10 Hear, O LORD , and be merciful to me;
O LORD , be my help."

11 You turned my wailing into dancing;
you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,
12 that my heart may sing to you and not be silent.
O LORD my God, I will give you thanks forever.

I've seen the question tossed around before, and James Taranto says the following, in the context of quoting President Bush:

Last week in Britain, a reporter asked President Bush if "Muslims worship the same Almighty" that he does. Bush replied: "I do say that freedom is the Almighty's gift to every person. I also condition it by saying freedom is not America's gift to the world. It's much greater than that, of course. And I believe we worship the same god." The Washington Post reports that the president's ecumenism prompted a kerfuffle among evangelical Christians. ...

Bush is right. Christianity, Islam and Judaism are all monotheistic religions, united in the belief in a single God. (Muslims often call God by the Arab name Allah, but then so do Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews.) The three religions conceive of God differently, and Muslims and Jews do not share the Christian belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ. A Christian may well believe that Islam's conception of God is wrong, but if you believe in only one God, it makes no logical sense to describe a fellow monotheist as worshipping a "different" God.

To an unbeliever, that may be a perfectly satisfactory answer -- since he wouldn't believe in any God, the details are inconsequential. It's true that as a monotheist I believe there is only one God, but it doesn't follow that anyone else who is also a monotheist worships the same God I do; the alternative is that they don't worship God at all, but rather a construct of their own imagination. For example, someone who woships a rock or a tree and claims it is the one and only "god" may also be a monotheist, but the characteristics of their "god" are entirely different from the characteristics of mine; we may both be monotheists, but at least one of us is wrong in believing that our god is the one and only.

Similarly with Muslims and Christians. Both are monotheists, but the two concepts of "god" are so completely divergent that they cannot both be true, and both "gods" cannot exist as conceived. At least one of the religions is wrong (and both think it's the other guys', whereas unbelievers think it's both).

Typically, only unbelievers (and functional unbelievers) are willing to make the claim that Jehovah and Allah are "the same". Why? Because they don't believe in either, and it's convenient and "enlightened" to lump everyone together. Why quibble about differences between two imaginary beings?

More:
In the next day's Best of the Web, Mr. Taranto continues:

A Bush supporter's conception of Bush's "constitutional makeup" is utterly at odds with that of a Bush hater. Not all conceptions about Bush are equally true; Paul Krugman, for example, is totally wrongheaded, while this column generally is the model of verity. But whether Krugman is writing about him or we are, George W. Bush is the same man.

By the same token, to say that all monotheistic religions worship the same God is not to say that they are all equally valid. Indeed, since Christianity and Islam make competing claims about the nature of God, it would be logically incoherent to argue that both are true. Yet to say that they worship the same God does not contradict either religion's claim to be the one true faith. As to which religion is true, that is beyond the scope of this column.

Mr. Taranto is still not seeing the big picture, because he isn't recognizing what Christians and Muslims see to be fundamental attributes of their gods.

To carry my rock-god and tree-god example further, if I believe that some specific rock is the only god, and you believe some specific tree is the only god, it's meaningless to say that we both believe in the same "god" just becuase we both believe there's only one. If you're right, then the rock I believe is god is really just a rock and my god doesn't exist; I'm so fundamentally wrong about tree-god's nature that I'm worshipping something entirely different, something that isn't real.

The belief that there is only one god is one fundamental characteristic of that god, but not the only fundamental characteristic.

Update:
The Muslim claim that they worship the "God of Abraham" is fallacious; the origin of the Muslim religion can be seen in its modern symbolism: Allah was originally the fertility-/moon-god of Muhammad's tribe, and Islam carries the crescent moon symbol even still. In my (limited) experience, most Muslims are not aware of this aspect of their history, but it is pretty well supported by official Islamic historical records.

Update 2:
Donald Sensing gives more details, with all of which I concur. ["with all of which I concur"? ick -- Ed.]

I have no idea whether or not this pseudononymous account is true, but GeekPress links to a story by a self-proclaimed mafia programmer who sets up and runs illegal book-making operations in New York City. The narrative is interesting, but what stood out most to me was near the end:

The fact remains that I could be pulling in $150,000 as a programmer on the open market. But I make a third of that. So why am I risking a prison sentence or the potential of a lifetime in witness protection for a job that doesn't make me all that rich? Simple: When you start making a lot of money, you get noticed by the biggest bullies on the block - the cops and the IRS - and I don't want that. I like living below the radar. I sublet a friend's apartment and pay his utility bills with money orders that I purchase at the post office or at one of those check-cashing storefronts. Because I get paid entirely in cash, I don't fork over any taxes. When you get right down to it, I'm an idealist. I don't condone the actions of the US government. By refusing to pay taxes, I withhold my financial support. And, truth be told, I like mobsters. They're more willing to accept you at face value. They aren't hung up on college degrees, or where you live, or how many criminal convictions you have.

The police and the IRS are, in a sense, the big dogs on the block, and this final paragraphs illustrates that they're performing their jobs adequately. Contrary to popular belief, the purpose of law enforcement isn't to completely eliminate crime -- it's to make crime unprofitable, in the aggregate. People such as "Simson Garfinkel" may still break laws due to "principle", but that's because their sense of profit is non-standard; the satisfaction they get from breaking the law is more "profitable" to them than the money they're sacrificing. Most people, however, are in it for the money, whatever it happens to be.

When society outlaws some behavior, it attempts to increase the transaction costs of that behavior and thus render it unprofitable. The purpose of law enforcement is to make the cost of breaking the law times the chance of getting caught and convicted higher than the benefit of breaking the law times the chance of getting away with it. That an illegal bookmaking operation is forced to give better odds than can be found in legitimate gambling (according to the story), and that the operator makes less money than his skills would otherwise earn, is a testament to the effectiveness of law enforcement.

Similarly, consider the War on [Some] Drugs, which props up street prices for chemicals that are relatively cheap and easy to manufacture, and thus arguably reduce their consumption. That's the theory anyway, and as long as prices are kept high enough it'll work. Obviously there are other factors involved in this form of prohibition, and as with any law society needs to weigh the costs and benefits of the law itself (but that's a different issue).

On the other hand, think about the enforcement of traffic laws. Because of the way they're enforced, it's obvious that most traffic laws are designed more as a source of revenue than for the protection of the public. For example, the vast majority of drivers decide that the benefits of speeding outweigh the costs of getting caught; almost everyone speeds. The explanation for this is pretty simple: everyone sees their time as valuable and not-to-be-wasted driving more slowly than necessary, and everyone knows there's only a miniscule chance of being caught in any particular instance. Thus, laws against speeding are ineffective and disrespected, and everyone knows it. The only reason they're kept around is to provide revenue for cities -- in a sense, they're an arbitrary, randomly collected tax. For this reason, I think speeding laws are unjust. If society really thinks it's important for people not to speed, we need to vote to increase the penalties enough so that the laws will be effective, even with sparse enforcement. For example, if the penalty for speeding was spending a year in jail, I expect speeding would be reduced dramatically.

Of course, this will never happen because no one thinks speeding is a big enough problem to punish effectively. We live in a democracy, where social right and wrong are defined (generally) by the will of the majority. If the majority doesn't believe speeding is worth discouraging effectively, and speeding laws are widely ignored and disrespected, there's no moral compulsion to obey them -- because the laws themselves are unjust. I believe we have a moral duty to drive safely, but the more restrictive legalistic details depend on the form of government any particular individual happens to live with.

In contrast, consider illegal book-making. According to the story, accepting 5 illegal bets in a single day is a felony, punishable by up to 3 years in prison. That level of punishment (times the level of enforcement) apparently leads to such ventures being unprofitable, which in turn indicates that society takes the crime seriously. Therefore, we have a obligation to obey the otherwise morally neutral restriction of our freedom (not that I think it's a great restriction).

Jacob Levy asks an interesting question which I'd like to involve myself in only tangentially.

Suppose that a state legislature forbade recognition of, or even (on the model of the polygamy statutes) criminalized, marriages between persons at least one of whom was known to be infertile. Suppose that it did so for the stated purpose of affirming the societal commitment to marriage's cerntral function as the primary site of childrearing.

Would such a statute be constitutional (under the federal or most state constitutions), according to the jurisprudential theories of those most strongly opposed to the Massachusetts case?

(All spelling/grammar mistakes are his.)

Rather than address the legal issue (or the gay-marriage issue), I'd like to disagree with anyone who believes that the primary purpose of marriage is to have children. That's a commonly-held conservative/Christian position (apparently), but I think it's absurd. For one thing, the first mention of marriage in the Bible says nothing about children whatsoever.

Genesis 2:18-25

18 The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."
19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.
But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
23 The man said,

"This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called 'woman,'
for she was taken out of man."

24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

I find it difficult for any Christian to argue that marriage is all about having kids.

What's a family? A family is a husband and wife. You don't need children to be a "family" -- a husband and wife are a family all on their own. Children are great, and get added into the family later, but the primary and most important familial relationship is that between the husband and wife. In all cases their first loyalty should be to each other, not to their parents, not to their children, not to their siblings.

Husbands and wives should always be in public agreement on every issue, all the time. That doesn't mean that there won't ever be internal disagreement and discussion, but a unified public front should always be presented to all outsiders, with no exceptions. "Outsiders" include children and other family members, as well as friends, and everyone else. Each partner should subordinate all their other earthly relationships to their marriage.

If the purpose of marriage isn't children, what is it? Well, the passage above makes it pretty clear: the purpose of marriage is provide helpers to assist each other in serving God.

This is obviously a very involved subject, so let me put a disclaimer at the front: I'm going to quote a lot from Dean Esmay to try to establish his position as best as I can in his own words. I apologize in advance if I inadvertantly miscast any of his beliefs. Plus, I'm writing this on the fly, without much time to edit... I hope it makes sense and doesn't ramble excessively.

So then, Dean Esmay writes that my earlier post on "born-again" non-Christians explains why he renounced Christianity.

Theism means "there is a God." Atheism means "there is no God." Agnosticism means "there is no way to know God." Maltheism means "there is a God, but he is fundamentally evil."

Michael Williams explains why I long ago rejected evangelical, Bible-literalist Christianity as a maltheistic movement. He does so clearly and succinctly. ...

Because, whatever may be said of the positive aspects of their epistemology, their view ultimately comes down to a view that paints God is fundamentally, breathtakingly evil. Quite honestly, if I truly believed what these folks believed, I would hate God with an unrelenting passion.

What does he mean, exactly? In his comments section, someone asks, and Dean responds:

Well, to be blunt Susanna: My assessment would be that if God intends to punish for all eternity everyone who fails to accept that Jesus is the Son of God and the savior of all mankind, then God is fundamentally evil.

That would be it in a nutshell, yes.

Mind you, I accept that it might well be true that Jesus was the one and only Son of God and that God has determined that all who do not affirm this belief are doomed to eternal torture. I merely assert that if that's how God really works, then God is evil and unworthy of my worship.

Yeah, I just said it: if that's how it works, then God is unworthy of me.

I fully accept whatever punishment God wishes to visit upon my head for saying so. Because this is how I feel, and I can take no other stand. Eternal torture? Okay. I await the crackling fires of Hell licking against my skin forever. Rather that than watch so many people I love in such torment while I enjoy eternal bliss. Thanks but no thanks.

From further comments from Dean, it appears that much of his difficulty relates to the issue of forgiveness (and his understanding of eternity).

Let's just be blunt: Let's give Hitler 100 years in torment for every one of his victims. After 2,000,000,000 years, mightn't he finally be freed from his torment? If I were to take the fundamenetalist Christian perspective seriously, he'd have only just begun his years of unending agony. Forgiveness would be forever denied him, even five million, or 20 billion, years hence.

Indeed, if we take the Christian concept of forgiveness seriously, shouldn't we let ol' Adolph off the hook after, say, five or six hundred thousand years of roasting over the barbecue pit? After he'd been made to understand the suffering of his victims, I mean?

To be blunt, the fundamentalist presents me with a ridiculous set of choices: "suffer for billions of years because you took the cookie without asking Jesus' forgiveness," but Pol Pot lives in eternal bliss because five seconds before his end he accepted Jesus Christ as his personal saviour.

This is not a concept of justice I can deal with.

There is something fundamentally perverse and evil about what evangelicals believe, Mark.

I think that Mr. Esmay's beliefs are fairily common, even among people with less understanding than Dean himself (who does appear to have a good grasp of Biblical theology, at least insofar as he discusses it in this post).

The esteemed Donald Sensing points to an essay he wrote last year titled "Can we really believe in Hell?" and gives a good explanation of what the true nature of Hell is (maybe). I recommend the whole thing, but here's the money quote.

Hell is not a place, but a state of being

I have come to understand hell not as a place, but as a state of ongoing rejection of God. C. S. Lewis described hell as the "skid row" of creation, where souls have become so intoxicated by sin that they no longer even try to break the chains that bind them there. Their dilemma is that they are captive there because they choose to be. They would rather have their freedom (as they define it) than salvation. Their delusion, wrote Lewis, is that if they glorified God, they would lose their personal identity, but their choice has really ruined their human greatness. Hell, Lewis said, is "the greatest monument to human freedom." ...

Hell is not a judgment, it is a result

Hell is thus not a sentence of God imposed on sinner, because God desires all to be saved. Hell is God's recognition that he has been rejected. Even though God's grace continues to be offered without ceasing, its acceptance becomes evermore unlikely as the addiction to godlessness becomes evermore concrete.

I don't agree with all of Rev. Sensing's terminology (since the Bible is clear that God does judge us, for instance), but I agree with his basic premise -- and this premise provides a suitable and satisfactory answer to Mr. Esmay's claim that God is evil and malevolent.

Others have presented me with the same position as Mr. Esmay does, and I'll respond as I did to them -- with a question of my own. Is it evil to use force to compel others to behave according to your desires, or is it evil to allow others to choose their own way? I expect that Mr. Esmay would answer as others have done, and admit that any God who would force anyone to be good against their will would, in fact, be evil. If God admitted unrepentant sinners into Heaven, this is exactly what he would be doing -- taking those who chose to disobey him and forcing them into compliance.

Mr. Esmay sees an eternity of horror as an unjust punishment for a mere lifetime of evil actions, but I think he misunderstands the nature of sin. We are not condemned to Hell because we violate some whimsical list of rules, we are condemned because we purposefully decide to reject God's way. God then -- graciously, in a sense -- allows us to make the choice to cast him aside, despite the agony is causes him to be seperated from us. God loves us incredibly and deeply, and he mourns for the lost; nevertheless, he gives us the choice to reject him and face the consequences. Furthermore, it's important not to underestimate God's holiness and his hatred for evil.

As for eternity, God exists outside of time, and once we die so will we. "Eternity" isn't millions and millions of years long, stretching out forever; eternity is an existence outside of time itself, such that time will have no meaning. From a cosmological perspective, it's pointless to compare a "lifetime of evil" to an "eternity of punishment", since eternity isn't measured in years (nor can it be measured with any unit, since it's not "time" per se). Once we die and enter eternity, there is no "length of time" for which we can be punished, since there is no time at all. This isn't an easy concept to grasp, and I doubt any human can understand it, considering how bound we all are to the universe we inhabit.

With regard to the eternal condition of humanity, I'd like to know what alternative Mr. Esmay would prefer, were he in God's position. I don't see many other options, to tell the truth. Either God gives us a choice, or he doesn't. If he doesn't, then nothing we do matters, so there's no use worrying. If he does give us a choice, then he can either decide to respect our decision or to ignore it and impose his will on us anyway. Which is more despotic?

Perhaps Mr. Esmay's contention then is that not everyone has the opportunity to make an informed decision since not everyone is presented with the gospel, and that such a situation is unfair. But is it? If you accept that the decisions we make have consequences, then it's reasonable to believe that the lost people around the world are doomed because of the decisions of other people who have not shared the reality of God with them. If my actions can lead to someone's salvation, then my actions can equally lead to someone's destruction; that's a rather difficult burden to bear, which is why so many "fundamentalists" (of which I'm not one) are heavily evangelical (which I am). It's not because we want everyone to agree with us, it's because we genuinely love the lost and can't stand the thought of people around the world never having the chance to hear about Jesus. God doesn't need to use people to do his work, but he has apparently chosen to do so, and that places a huge responsibility on us.

Finally, as Mr. Esmay recognizes, God can define "good" and "evil" however he wants, and if he's real we're not in any position to question him. Mr. Esmay says that if that's the case, then for himself he chooses to reject God's view of right and wrong, and to substitute his own which casts God as "evil". That's his prerogative, but I don't think he understands the enormity of the ultimate consequences he's going to face for his decision. Romans 1 gives a good summary of the choices mankind makes, and the things that man tends to label "good". Is that the reality that Mr. Esmay espouses?

Finally, as to the underlying theme of the original post, why bother about heretical beliefs? Well, there's no point in worrying, if it doesn't matter what anyone believes. If it's all just a farce, then all such beliefs are wrong, and there's no reason to argue the details. Similarly, if God will force everyone into salvation regardless of their own desires, who cares about the truth God has revealed? It's useless, since it won't have any effect.

However, if it really does matter what people believe, then some certain points may be of critical importance. God has laid out what they are, and there aren't many.
1. I must agree with God that I am evil, and that I have done many things contrary to what he says is good. I must acknowledge that he is the ultimate arbiter of good and evil, not me.
2. I must agree that I cannot conform to God's perfection on my own. No matter how hard I try, I will fall short; I need help. What's more, the evil that I've committed in the past (and will commit in the future) must be paid for, becase God is just.
3. I must accept that, despite my evil, God loves me, and sent Jesus Christ to pay the penalty for my evil acts. By accepting this substitution, I choose to align myself with God and to put his will above my own.

Step 3 requires humility, and is perhaps the hardest for many people to accept.

Update:
I'd like to reciprocate the sentiments at the bottom of Mr. Esmay's post: I love and respect him as well; he's a great blogger, and he helped me set up this site, for which I'm grateful. His position on this matter is gravely incorrect, and it's only because I care about him and others that I bother to write on the matter at all. If you think I get my jollies by telling people they're going to Hell, you're mistaken.

The Bible talks a lot about faith, and hundreds of books have been written on the subject. The results of this survey might prompt someone to ask: how can I be sure that my faith is genuine? That's a good question, and God gives us a good answer.

Faith is more than mere knowledge, and more than plain belief. For example, I may know that a chair is going to hold me up were I to sit in it, and I may say I believe that it will -- but if refuse to sit down I don't have faith. Faith is putting our belief and knowledge into action.

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

Faith is not built entirely on logic, reason, and facts. You can't prove it; on the contrary, once something is proven there's no need for faith. Logic, reason, and facts can be important for confirming our faith, and reinforcing what we believe, but in the end they alone will be insufficient if we want to know God. Our limited, human minds are incapable of comprehending God in his full glory, and to bridge the gap between partial knowledge and full certainty requires faith.

How do we know, then, if we've got genuine faith?

I John 5:1-5 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

This is love for God: to obey his commands. Obedience is hard, because in our sinful state we often don't agree with what God wants us to do. We may not understand the purposes behind his commands or what he's trying to accomplish in our lives and the lives of people around us.

When I think of faith, I always remember an incident with one of my little brothers. He was 4 years old at the time, and wanted to play with a set of shears I was using to cut cardboard. They were sharp and spring-loaded, and far too dangerous for a child to play with, so I told him no. He cried like you wouldn't believe, because he really wanted to play with those shears. I knew it wasn't a good idea, but he simply couldn't understand it. The analogy is obvious: we're the little children, and sometimes God's plan for us is quite different than our own. Do we throw a fit, like spiritual infants, or do we obey what God our father has commanded us?

It's easy to obey when someone tells us to do something we want to do; the real test of love is obeying God when he tells us to do something we don't want to do. Do we have faith that God's way is better than ours? Do we trust him to lead us in the right path? Or do we rebel and do our own thing? God gave us that option when he gave us free will, but when we disobey God we're basically saying that we know better than he does what's good for our lives, and we tell him to get lost.

James 2:14-18 What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”

Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.

Such faith isn't faith at all -- it's just words. Real faith is an action (just like real love, incidentally). Faith isn't something you feel, faith is something you do.

A startling number of "born-again Christians" apparently hold heretical beliefs.

All told, 81% of Americans firmly believe in some type of life after death, with 9% considering it a possibility and only 10% believing that death brings utter finality, the survey found. And while 43% of respondents said that Christianity is their passport to glory, 15% say that they will get to heaven because they "have tried to obey the 10 Commandments." Another 15% expect to gain admittance because "they are basically a good person." Among the others, 6% believe that God is letting everyone in, no matter what.

Verily, this optimistic and expansive spirit is prevalent among born-again Christians. Earlier Barna surveys found that 26% of born-agains believe it doesn't matter what faith a person has because religions teach pretty much the same thing. Its recent survey found that 50% believe a life of "good works" will get you through the Pearly Gates. "Many committed born-again Christians believe that people have multiple options for gaining entry to Heaven," explains firm president George Barna. "They are saying, in essence, 'Personally, I am trusting Jesus Christ as my means of gaining God's permanent favor and a place in heaven--but someone else could get to heaven based upon living an exemplary life.'"

Besides rejecting the notion that Christianity is the only way to heaven, a large portion of born-agains (35%) do not believe that Jesus experienced a physical resurrection, according to Barna surveys. A majority (52%) reject the existence of the Holy Spirit as a living entity, and 45% deny Satan's existence. In the meantime, 33% accept the concept of same-sex unions, 10% believe in reincarnation and 29% think it's possible to communicate with the dead, a belief shared by a third of the population, which is very good news for the séance industry, if not for the keepers of the orthodox flame.

What does Jesus say on the matter?

John 14:6
  Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

Luke 13:22-30
  Then Jesus went through the towns and villages, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. Someone asked him, "Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?"
  He said to them, "Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, 'Sir, open the door for us.'
  "But he will answer, 'I don't know you or where you come from.'
  "Then you will say, 'We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.'
  "But he will reply, 'I don't know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!'
  "There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out. People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last."

Update:
Dean Esmay says this is why he renounced Christianity, and I respond here.

Mr. Anderson: Who is it?
Agent Smith: Federal Romantic Investigation Agency, open up!
Mr. Anderson: What?
Agent Smith: I'm Special Agent Smith, this is Special Agent Boyles. We're with the Federal Romantic Investigation Agency; may we come in?
Mr. Anderson: You don't look very romantic to me.
Agent Smith: You may not be quite so jolly once we've had a chance to talk, Mr. Anderson. Agent Boyles, make a note of that.
Agent Boyles: Yes sir. Don't try to obstruct our investigation, Mr. Anderson.
Mr. Anderson: Investigation of what? What do you want?
Agent Smith: We investigate date crimes, Mr. Anderson.
Mr. Anderson: What?! Like rape? I've never --
Agent Boyles: Not exactly.
Agent Smith: We've had numerous complaints filed against you over the past 7 years, Mr. Anderson.
Mr. Anderson: Complaints about what?
Agent Smith: Agent Boyles, make a note.
Agent Boyles: Yes sir. Dating irregularities, Mr. Anderson, that's what.
Mr. Anderson: "Irregularities"?
Agent Smith: Don't act so incredulous, Mr. Anderson. We've been watching you very closely.
Mr. Anderson: Watching me?
Agent Boyles: And we've received numerous complaints.
Agent Smith: As well as some serious allegations of reckless disregard for romantic regulations.
Mr. Anderson: What regulations?
Agent Smith: Make a note, Agent Boyles: ignorance of the law is no excuse.
Agent Boyles: Yes sir.
Mr. Anderson: Look, who said what about me?
Agent Smith: Nice try, Mr. Anderson. The identities of complaining victims are all confidential.
Agent Boyles: Don't try to obstruct our investigation, Mr. Anderson.
Agent Smith: Make a note.
Agent Boyles: Yes sir.
Mr. Anderson: Just tell me what I've done.
Agent Smith: Does "criminal failure to take a hint" ring a bell, Mr. Anderson?
Mr. Anderson: I, uh....
Agent Smith: How about "felonious oogling"?
Mr. Anderson: I don't understand....
Agent Smith: "Negligently insufficient pandering"?
Agent Boyles: "Excessive flattery"?
Mr. Anderson: I haven't done any of that.
Agent Smith: Make a note, Agent Boyles.
Agent Boyles: Yes sir.
Mr. Anderson: What are all those notes for?
Agent Boyles: Don't try to obstruct our investigation, Mr. Anderson.
Agent Smith: You're in deep enough already. How do 7 charges of "misdemeanor smothering" sound?
Agent Boyles: Along with several instances of "failure to initiate prompt telephonal oration"?
Mr. Anderson: I didn't call soon enough?
Agent Smith: Interesting admission. Agent Boyles, make a note.
Agent Boyles: Yes sir.
Agent Smith: How many African-American females have you dated in the past 7 years, Mr. Anderson?
Mr. Anderson: Uh, I don't --
Agent Boyles: Try "1".
Mr. Anderson: Oh right, N--
Agent Smith: Must I remind you that the victims' identities are confidential?
Mr. Anderson: Sorry, but she's not a victim!
Agent Smith: Are you aware that African-Americans make up 12% of the population, Mr. Anderson?
Mr. Anderson: I guess so.
Agent Smith: Maybe you can explain this discrepancy, then.
Mr. Anderson: What?
Agent Boyles: Don't play dumb, Mr. Anderson.
Agent Smith: On how many separate occasions did you take out an African-American?
Mr. Anderson: Just that once, I guess.
Agent Smith: Our records indicate that you took out non-Hispanic whites an average of 3.2 times before eliminating them, but your single African-American date was only taken out once. How do you explain that, Mr. Anderson?
Mr. Anderson: I just didn't like her....
Agent Smith: Are you aware that your actions may be in violation of the Equality in Dating Act?
Mr. Anderson: No.
Agent Boyles: Noted.
Agent Smith: Good man. Mr. Anderson, you took Hispanics on an average of 2.8 dates before elimination.
Mr. Anderson: Elimination?!
Agent Smith: That may not seem like a much of a difference to you, but a 0.4 Mean Affection Differential is very close to statutory limits.
Agent Boyles: Manipulating your MAD to evade federal prosecution is a felony.
Mr. Anderson: ....
Agent Smith: We also have a report indicating that you took a young lady to California Pizza Kitchen.
Mr. Anderson: That's not true!
Agent Smith: I'm glad to hear that, Mr. Anderson. Agent Boyles, make a note.
Agent Boyles: Yes sir.
Agent Smith: Tell us about last Friday night, Mr. Anderson.
Mr. Anderson: What about it?
Agent Smith: According to surveillance, you prejudicially spurned the advances of a homosexual-American.
Mr. Anderson: What?!
Agent Smith: How many homosexuals have you dated in the past 7 years, Mr. Anderson?
Mr. Anderson: None, but, I'm not --
Agent Boyles: You’re not a homophobic racist?
Mr. Anderson: Well, no, what? I'm not racist, or homophobic, but I'm not homosexual either. I've got lots of black friends.
Agent Boyles: That's what they all say, Mr. Anderson.
Agent Smith: How many homosexual-American friends do you have, Mr. Anderson?
Mr. Anderson: I don't even know.
Agent Smith: Are you aware that federal regulations prohibit discrimination based on age, race, gender, disability, religion, wealth, appearance, occupation, mental condition, nationality, and sexual orientation?
Mr. Anderson: I guess I am now.
Agent Smith: Agent Boyles, make a note.
Agent Boyles: Yes sir.
Agent Smith: The Attorney General says we don't have enough for an indictment -- yet -- but we'll be watching you.
Agent Boyles: Good day, Mr. Anderson. Keep it in your pants.
Agent Smith: Or don't, pursuant to all applicable regulations. Good day.

Lileks has a lengthy Matrix 3 review up (in which he blasts Harry Knowles, of AICN fame), and he describes something many people noted about the series: it tries very hard to build a secular spirituality, but falls amazingly flat without any concept of God.

I took away something else from the Matrix trilogy: it is a product of deeply confused people. They want it all. They want individualism and community; they want secularism and transcendence; they want the purity of committed love and the licentious fun of an S&M club; they want peace and the thrill of violence; they want God, but they want to design him on their own screens with their own programs by their own terms for their own needs, and having defined the divine on their own terms, they bristle when anyone suggests they have simply built a room with a mirror and flattering lighting. All three Matrix movies, seen in total, ache for a God. But they can’t quite go all the way. They’re like three movies about circular flat meat patties that can never quite bring themselves to say the word “hamburger.”

One of the best ways to view the Matrix trilogy is to deconstruct it (argh) and examine what it really says about our culture. As Lileks describes, every note it strikes is philisophically discordant, and every morale pontification is conflicted and contradictory.

I haven't seen number 3, but the orgy scene in number 2 stands out particularly. Zion is the philisophical culmination of secular culture, with free, crazy sex, but Neo and Trinity don't partake -- instead they go off on their own and ick up the screen for 5 minutes. It's as if the writers really wanted an orgy, but then decided that a bilateral love scene would be more fulfilling... for some reason. Why?

As Lileks asks, why did the humans bother fighting the robots, rather than submit to the Matrix? What could they hope to accomplish, other than to eventually, after hundreds of years, raise their civilization back up to the level they could instantly experience in the machines' simulated world? There's an innate understanding that humans shouldn't be the slaves of robots, but within the mythos of the movie, why not? If there's some fundamental human dignity at stake, what's the source? Why struggle, fight, and die, just so your kids can be more miserable? What's wrong with living in a pleasant illusion?

The movies don't answer that question other than with some hand-waving, because they simply can't -- and modern secularism don't have an answer either. Survival of the fittest and evolution are praised academically, but no one wants to carry them to their logical extremes. Why bother helping the Iraqis, rather than just nuking them and taking their oil? They're obviously less fit than we are, and eliminating them would be good for the species. Doubly true for Afghanistan, since they don't even have oil. Nukes are cleap, compared to soldiers.

Why worry about healthcare for the poor? If they can't compete, let 'em die. Instead of an expensive medical system, we could form a Corpse Patrol to keep the dead bodies off the street. Abortion? Who cares! If a fetus can't fend for itself, too bad. Same for the handicapped, the insane, and so forth. Why try rehabilitating criminals? Just shoot them. Sure, some might be innocent, but on average we'll improve the population by weeding out as many deviants as possible.

All of these ideas are ludicrous, of course, but try to explain why from a secular standpoint. Social contract? Do you think society would fall apart if we let all the poor die? Nonsense, that was the policy of civilization for thousands of years. Besides, as long as it would be economically valuable to have a supply of poor people, capitalism would work to preserve them without the need for government intervention. (If you comment, please make sure your secular argument isn't simply a variation on the "social contract" idea.)

The point is that without God -- without some supernatural imposition of value from the outside -- a human is instrinsically worth nothing beyond his usefulness. And useless humans are therefore worth nothing. Most people (except extreme environmentalists) reject these conclusions, but with little rational basis. As Lileks said, we want the benefits of God, but we want to create him ourselves, to suit our purposes. We want to "discover" what "'God' means to me" and such. But a human-created God cannot reciprocally give value to his creator, and any philosophy built on such a construct will ring entirely hollow.

I've put off writing about this for a long time, because I know it's an emotionally charged issue and I don't think what I'm going to say is going to be very popular. Nevertheless, the controversy surrounding the consecration of the Anglican church's first openly gay bishop provides a useful backdrop for the topic of homosexuality and Christianity in general. (I'm not Anglican, and don't have much to say about the specifics of that matter.)

Let me start by quoting the Bible, from the book of Romans, chapter 1.

Romans 1:18-32

18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised. Amen.

26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

This New Testament passage is the foundation for modern conservative condemnation of homosexuality, but you will notice that the passage itself is not primarily about homosexuality. The subject is mentioned, and condemned, but so are a great many other Godless activities that we all participate in.

From verse 29 and on we see that all mankind is filled with evil: envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossip, slander, hatred for God, insolence, arrogance, boastfulness -- who among us is innocent? None. We all stand condemned, before a holy and righteous God.

Why, then, do many Christians see homosexuality and homosexuals as particularly evil? Theologically, we shouldn't. The real difficulty, however, is that although most of us acknowledge the wrongfulness of our many lies, thefts, and boasts, many people deny the wrongness of homosexuality. Our culture glorifies many types of evil, but individually we mostly agree that greed, slander, gossip, and the rest are bad and that we should not participate in them. However, when it comes to homosexuality, many people argue that it's not wrong at all; and unless we are willing to confess the evil of our actions, God will not forgive us. We must be willing to submit ourselves to God's dictates on right and wrong, and we must be willing to agree with him when he condemns our actions.

Much of the justification for homosexuality is based on the idea that people are "born that way". There have been studies done to support that theory, and it seems plausible to me. But I don't think it matters. Some people are born with a propsensity to lie, some with a propensity to steal, others seem inclined to set fires, to murder, to rape, to molest children, and the list goes on. We all face a unique set of challenges in our lives, and we all struggle with powerful desires within us that drive us to do evil. Just because I really want to doesn't mean it's ok for me to do so -- even if that want is genetic or environmental in origin.

We are each individually responsible for our own actions. We cannot always control our inclinations and our temptations, but we must control how we act on them. There is a place for homosexuals in the church, and it's right next to me, a liar, a thief, a slanderer, a gossiper, and all the rest. I struggle constantly against every kind of evil, and by Christ's power I often prevail. That same power is available to everyone who is willing to ask for it, no matter what evil he or she battles against.

In response to this post about adults getting more involved in Halloween, my friend Craig passes on a Time Magazine article titled "Boo, Humbug! Call me a Scrooge, but why can't adults leave Halloween to the kids?" by Michael Elliott. Mr. Elliott writes a lot I disagree with (and some I don't), and I don't think he gets Halloween, any more than he gets the reasons behind the current wave of Francophobia sweeping the America. But anyway, let's take a look at what he says.

Still, if companies want to sell even more masks, lanterns, witch hats and the like, good luck to them. It's the gullible consumers who fall for the pitch whom I detest — the employees who insist on decorating sensible cubicles with orange and black streamers and littering the office with bowls of candy, the folk who dress up and throw pumpkin parties at country clubs, the hundreds of thousands who will come to work next week in costume. Chris Riddle is the Halloween trend spotter at card-and-decorations giant American Greetings, which estimates that 25% of the American work force will observe Halloween in some fashion this year. "It's a release," Riddle says of the way people deck out their suburban yards, "a way to say, 'I can still act like a kid.'"

That's my problem. Halloween, for me, is the gaudiest example of the infantilization of American culture. It's up there with other classics like McDonald's Happy Meals or Hollywood's post — Star Wars decision to concentrate on making kids' films for grownups. These aren't just the mutterings of an old curmudgeon. I like parties as much as the next guy (so would you if you'd grown up in a house where the Messiah was considered light entertainment), though I've never quite seen why you needed a specific date on the calendar as an excuse to let your hair down. There's a larger point. In time, infantile societies become degraded, unable to meet the realities that face them.

However, in the article I linked to in my previous post, York University history professor Nick Rogers points out that, "The notion that Halloween is simply for kids is a misconception based on the centrality of trick-or-treating in the 1950s, when there was an attempt to take the mischief out of Halloween and 'infantilize' it." So perhaps Mr. Elliott should be rejoicing that adults are de-infantilizing the holiday? After all, if his main objection is that the holiday is too childish, then one of the best things he can hope for is that Halloween will return to its more historical role as a community-wide harvest festival. Of course, most communities don't actually harvest anything anymore, so it's only reasonable that the holiday take on a different focus. I hate to break it to him, but adults have worn masks and dressed up in costumes for thousands of years, all around the world and in every culture, and such behavior is not generally seen as uniquely childish. That perception appears to be the product of late 20th-century America, more than anything else.

Further, I fail to see the connection between Happy Meals, "Star Wars", and the infantilization of culture. Happy Meals provide parents a cheap and easy way to feed their kids, and give the kids a fun toy; the food may not be healthy, but that has nothing to do with infantilization. Would he rather that kids be forced to eat gruel from a burlap sack with a shard of glass for a spoon?

"Star Wars" is a great movie, and nearly everyone in my generation loves it (even Europeans I talked to while traveling) -- so what's his point? Does he object to "Star Wars" and similar films because he thinks they cause his so-called infantilization, or because they cater to it by entertaining people without *gasp* literature?

How did cultural infantilization creep up on us? In The Disappearance of Childhood, a wonderful little book first published in 1982, Neil Postman, a New York University professor who died this month, identified a shift from a culture based on literature — on reading — to one based on the image. In a preliterate world, there's no distinction between children and adults. Look at a Bruegel painting, and you see adults eating, drinking, groping, necking, together with their children. Literacy changed all that. Reading has to be learned; it separates the world of the child from that of the adult. But children can absorb images — from TV, say — just as easily as their elders. Postman worried that a postliterate culture would be one in which barriers that protected children from the perils and temptations of the outside world would be torn down.

Oh brother. So, Halloween is connected to Happy Meals and "Star Wars", which in turn keep people from reading, which leads to illiteracy, and the infantilization of the culture. Ok, got it.

Halloween shows that the process works in reverse. We now have to be worried not just about children acting like adults but about adults behaving like children. That doesn't mean adults have to be serious all the time. It does mean that they should recognize when it's time — and what it means — to grow up and let the kids run their own holiday.

Sorry, in my world the kids don't get to run their own anything, because they're kids. I think it's important to separate the roles of children and adults, and I think that adults should be in charge of everything -- and I'm surprised that Mr. Elliott thinks otherwise. Even if adults don't dress up, who do you think is buying all the costumes and candy? Who's going to build the haunted houses for the kids to creep through? Who's going to walk the little ones door-to-door collecting treats?

Do I really need to expound on the bizarrely out-of-context Bible quote at the end of his article?

When it comes to the infantilization of culture and adults acting like children, I think there are far better targets than Halloween. Mr. Elliott briefly mentions TV, but doesn't mention the vast quantity of nonsense that inhabits most of our airwaves -- of course, New York intellectuals have railed against TV for years, so maybe he wanted to try something new. Or maybe that position is just wearing thin, considering that there are some truly great shows on TV these days. Similarly, there are a lot of terrible movies, but there are also some great ones. Oh yeah, there are some pretty awful books too, and some are even considered "classics".

If one wants to discuss the infantilization of culture, why not mention professional sports? Why not mention the sensationalism that runs rampant through our news organizations? Why not mention the grocery workers who are striking because they think putting boxes on shelves entitles them to $40,000 a year and free health care? Why not take the whiny, self-righteous Bush-haters aside and explain to them that there's more at stake right now than the next Presidential election? Why not condemn the welfare state that exists solely to create a childish constituency who will vote in favor of its own expansion?

Mr. Elliott may just not like Halloween -- and that's fine -- but he shouldn't try dress up his personal opinion as high moral virtue built on care and concern for our collapsing civilization.

SDB has a great essay up about the North Korea problem, and in it he gives a concise (!) explanation of America's Cold War nuclear deterrence policy (which I've commented on previously, slightly objecting to one of SDB's earlier positions; I either misunderstood what he was saying before, or he's rethought it and now agrees with me).

In that case, the Bush administration would have to publicly and formally renew a basic tenet of Cold War deterrence policy: any nuclear blackmail will be treated as if a nuke had actually been used, and the response to any such threat will be maximal.

During the Cold War, nuclear blackmail was one of the dangers. What would we do if the Hotline phone rang and the voice in the handset said, "Pull your forces out of Germany or we'll nuke Pittsburgh"? The strategists wrestled with that, and ultimately concluded that only deterrence could prevent such a thing. Thus it became American doctrine that if we received such a phone call, then the President would "push the button" (or at least consider doing so). Understand that I don't mean that it would happen ten seconds after hearing such a thing; there'd be time for diplomacy, and an attempt to deal with the situation via lesser means. But in the final resort, if we really faced such a demand, then it was publicly stated that American doctrine was to launch every nuke we had. No "proportional response", no city-trading-duel, no waiting to see if Pittsburgh really did get vaporized before launching. It was important that this be public because like any deterrent its real purpose was to make sure that the situation didn't arise at all. Since the Soviet leadership knew that was American doctrine, they couldn't be at all sure that we wouldn't really do it if they made that phone call, and it never happened. ...

We'd also have to establish a new doctrine, and this would be more controversial and politically risky. The doctrine would be that if anyone set off a nuke in our territory and no one claimed responsibility, or if a terrorist group claimed responsibility, in that case we'd also obliterate NK. No questions asked, no excuses listened to, no attempt to determine if the nuke had been sold by NK, no delays, no nothing. Under this doctrine put in place after an NK nuclear test, if any city of ours was destroyed, NK would be destroyed as soon thereafter as we could manage. That's the only way we can limit the danger that NK would surreptitiously sell one or more nukes to someone like al Qaeda.

That's the spirit of what I said before, although he says it more clearly and at greater length.

The only disagreement I have with what he's written is his characterization of evil.

Deterrence is a real moral problem. In some cases it's the only way to bring about the best possible case, but the only way you can have a deterrent is by being willing to commit tremendously evil acts. Is it immoral to be prepared to do evil things if through your willingness and preparation you avoid the need to do so and also prevent someone else from doing the same evil thing? Regardless of whether it's moral or not, that's what we'd have to do.

I don't think that nuclear deterrence is evil, even though we're threatening to obliterate the innocent people who live in a (presumably non-democratic) enemy country. In fact, even if we were put in a position such that we had to carry out the threat, our actions wouldn't be evil. Yes, millions of people who were not directly involved in the decision to threaten/attack us would be killed, but the morality of it seems very similar to the morality behind felony murder laws (which vary state-by-state, but are all pretty similar).

The felony murder rule is as old as this country. It's designed for instances where two people go to rob a bank. The getaway driver waits in the car-the robber goes in and shoots the teller-prosecutors can charge both with first-degree murder. ...

Under the state's felony murder rule, a person can be charged with murder if someone dies while the person is committing or attempting to commit a felony like arson-even if the death is accidental. Prosecutors don't have to prove intent, an element usually required for a first-degree murder conviction. ...

In Colorado, the felony murder law says the death of anyone during a serious crime or the "immediate flight" afterward makes everyone involved in the original crime guilty of murder -- no matter who did the actual killing or when.

Felony murder laws lay the responsibility for any deaths that occur during the commission of a felony at the feet of the criminal, even if he doesn't intend to kill anyone. An unarmed man tries to rob a bank, the security guard shoots at him, misses, and hits a customer, killing him -- the would-be bank robber is guilty of felony murder.

Similarly, if America is threatened or attacked with nuclear weapons, and we respond, the deaths that result are fully the responsibility of the people who provoked us to self-defense. Our policy of deterrence is not evil, any more than the bank guard in the above example was evil.

Samizdata gets the following email:

Dear Mr Micklethwait

I am writing a concise statement of ancient rights as part of a longer publication.

I want to include all the most important Common Law rights: life, liberty, property, family life, fair trial in open court, Habeas Corpus, trial by jury etc.

I cannot find a comprehensive list anywhere. Do you know of one please?

Regards,

Richard Marsden

I started writing a lengthy comment, but then realized that I've got my own blog! So, let me take a crack at it.

I think that most of our civil rights can be derived from the right to own property -- when you "own" something, you have the right to use it, and the right to exclude others from using it at will. Property rights (and the ownership of our own bodies) can cover almost everything we like as Americans:
- freedom of speech,
- freedom of thought,
- freedom of religion,
- freedom of self-defense,
- freedom to work,
- freedom to trade,
- freedom of association,
- and, in some ways, the right to privacy (though not as it is often believed).

Naturally, my exercise of my rights can interfere with your exercise of yours, and the details need to be worked out. How do we do that?

Criminal law is the system that society has at its disposal when it needs to curtail your civil rights because your exercise of freedom is impinging unacceptably on others. Under commonly recognized principles, the important aspects of criminal law revolve around the understanding that depriving someone of his civil rights is a serious matter, and should not be done lightly or easily. Taking away someone's rights should be be difficult, but civilization has recognized that such power is necessary in order for society to function.

So we've got:
- trial by jury (perhaps the most important),
- the right to be presented to the court (habeas corpus),
- the right to a speedy trial (and the duty to enjoy that right),
- the right to confront the accuser (even in rape cases),
- the right to the presumption of innocence,
- the right to commensurate punishment,
- the right to remain silent and not testify against yourself,
- &c.

Notice, there's no right to vote, although democracy is a good way to protect our rights. All that common law really comes down to is "leave me alone, and I'll return the favor."

Partial-birth abortions will be illegal, as soon as Bush signs the bill that the Senate passed 64-34 yesterday (the House passed it a month ago). In theory, this law will prevent up to 5,000 abortions of convenience each year (since, as Bill Hobbs notes, the AMA says the procedure is almost never medically necessary; Donald Sensing says that physicians have testified for years that the procedure is never medically necessary).

Considering that I view abortions of convenience as murder, I would have preferred if the federal government had stayed out of it and left it to the states (which generally prosecute murderers), but my affection for federalism is outweighed by the thousands of lives that will potentially be saved. Furthermore, many similar state laws have been struck down:

The measure is similar to, but somewhat more detailed than, a Nebraska state law that the Supreme Court struck down by a 5-4 vote three years ago. That ruling had the practical effect of nullifying 30 state laws. Up to that time, Congress had been trying unsuccessfully for five years to enact a similar proposal at the federal level.

My lamentable Senator, Barbara Boxer, has this to say:

California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, who helped lead opposition to the bill, called it "a very sad day for the women of America."

But, of course, she's only considering women who are already out of the womb, and has little concern for the women who will now not have their brains sucked out by vacuums and their bodies dismembered.

Along the same lines,

But an abortion rights supporter said the ban "will bring an end to providing the best and safest health care for women."

It will bring an end to the mass-murder of thousands of children. Physicians all seem to agree that this procedure was never medically necessary, so it certainly can't be required for the best and safest health care for anyone. Congress concurs:

In drafting the new national measure that has now passed, Congress wrote lengthy findings that contradict the Supreme Court's conclusion that abortions using the procedure banned by the bill are sometimes medically necessary to protect a woman's health. "Congress finds that partial-birth abortion is never medically indicated to preserve the health of the mother," the bill's preamble says.

The problem is that the abortion-rights people don't seem to understand that they're arguing a different point than most people are conerned with.

"This dangerous ban prevents women, in consultation with their families and trusted doctors, from making decisions about their own health," said Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Most Americans don't see abortion as a private issue that only affects the mother, no matter how much abortion-rights advocates want to spin it that way. They purposefully misstate the pro-life position, which is that an unborn baby is a human being, and that as such the medical privacy concerns of the mother are inconsequential compared to the right of that other human being to live. As I wrote in that earlier post:

2. Michelman states that the position of pro-life advocates is that the government should be involved in people's private medical decisions, when that isn't the crux of the matter at all. To an opponent of abortion, the critical issue is that a fetus is a human being, and as such should not be killed without a cause more substantial than mere convenience. It has nothing to do with a lack of respect for the privacy of the mother, or with a desire to interfere with her private medical decisions. To a pro-lifer, the decision to have an abortion isn't private, because it necessarily involves another person: the unborn baby.

For a really excellent scientific explanation of why unborn babies (from conception) are alive, and are "real" human beings (without any reference to religion), I highly recommend "Life: Defining the Beginning from the End".

And finally, "Who, after all, could consider a fetus as life unworthy of living, once they've held its hand?", asks Sydney Smith, a family physician, and author of MedPundit.

It took the FBI 5 weeks to find some box cutters that Nathaniel Heatwole hid aboard two Southwest Airlines jets, despite an email he sent to federal authorities alerting them to his actions. Aside from the obvious security concerns, this brings to my mind the really nifty concept of attractors and strange attractors, and is an excellent example of an attractor in real life. What's an attractor?

The basic idea behind an attractor is that a dynamic system will tend toward certain states as time goes on. The simplest form of an attractor is the point attractor. Consider a normal pendulum, it doesn't matter where you release it from, it will always come to rest in the same position, perpindicular to the ground. This state is the attractor for the system.

From another story, it appears that the box cutters were simply hidden in a compartment in the airplane bathrooms. We've all seen the compartments, I imagine; there are several panels in those bathrooms that all look removable. But we've never opened them, and have probably not even wondered what they're for. Heatwole told the authorities exactly which planes to search, but it still took them 5 weeks to find the knives because they were hidden outside the areas the searchers were attracted to, for whatever reason.

Strange attractors are like normal attractors, except that they're chaotic. Chaotic systems never revisit a point they've been to previously, so you may wonder how such a system could have an attractor at all -- well, it can't, but it can have a strange attractor. A chaotic system may never return to an exact previous position, but it can go to a position that's similar to a previous position (and much depends on how you define "similar", which in turn depends on the system in question).

Human behavior is (arguably) chaotic -- it's immensely dependent on initial conditions, and tiny changes in our inputs can yield drastically different outputs. If I happen to get a piece of dust in my eye, I may twitch, stub my toe, decide not to walk to lunch, and avoid getting hit by a car. Nevertheless, humans often behave in ways that are very similar to their past behavior, and we are often quite predictable. Our patterns, movements, thoughts, and life can be seen together as a giant strange attractor that represents the most likely state of our being and that describes our operational progression through time.

Consider your movement patterns through your house. There are probably several areas where you spend the vast majority of your time -- such as the bed, the couch, the bathroom, the computer -- and the rest of your house may be rather sparsely visited. How often do you peer into the crawlspace under the floor, or go up into the attic? How often does the crevice behind the fridge see the light of day? How often do you open that cabinet over the oven? Maybe once a year, or maybe less than that.

If you were to draw a map of your house and trace your movements over the course of a month, you'd probably see that 75% of the floorspace was completely untouched, and that 95% of the volume enclosed by your house did not ever contain a human being. We look at the corners of our rooms from time to time, but we never go up into them. You see the ceiling every day, but when was the last time you touched it? Even when we lose something and we say we've looked everywhere, we know that's just a turn of phrase. We haven't looked under the carpet, or behind the shelves, or inside the TV. But we shouldn't have to, because our car keys are not going to be inside the TV -- that location isn't a high-frequency part of the strange attractor that represents the movement of our keys.

Similarly, thousands of people rode the Southwest jets over the 5 weeks the box cutters were hidden in the bathrooms, but no one found them because no one ever opens those compartments. They're 6 inches from your head when you wash your hands, but a million miles away conceptually.

Similar strange attractors can be found in almost everything, if you want to search them out. Consider the various ideologies that divide humanity, and that 90% of people believe in one of maybe a half-dozen religious systems. There are all sorts of reasons, but the system is so complicated and chaotic that it's impossible to fully describe. In all likelihood, no two people hold exactly identical religious beliefs, but the vast majority are similar enough that they can be easily clustered into just a few buckets.

Strange attractors are everywhere, and by recognizing and studying the attractors that describe our own behavior we can get a better understanding of how we are, and why we are.

Bill Clinton has been raising funds and making campaign appearances for a lot of Democrats, but I'm not really sure why they're always so excited to have him come aboard. Here are a few pictures I collected off the web of Bill Clinton campaigning with various people who then went on to lose -- often spectacularly and surprisingly -- possibly due to the Clinton Kiss of Death.

Bill Clinton campaigns with doomed California Governor Grey Davis, 2003.

Bill Clinton campaigns with Vice President Al Gore, who lost the 2000 presidential election.

Here's Bill Clinton with Walter Mondale, who spectacularly lost Paul Wellstone's Senate seat in 2002.

Bill Clinton in Florida with Democrat gubernatorial cadidate Bill McBride, who beat out former Clinton Attorney General Janet Reno [corrected] for the nomination, but then lost the election to Jeb Bush in 2002.

Bill Clinton campaigns with Kathleen Kennedy Townsend as she runs for governor of Maryland, a heavily Democrat state, but she ends up losing the election to Republican Bob Ehrlich [corrected].

Bill Clinton and terrorist Yasser Arafat share a special moment. Ok, so Arafat hasn't lost any elections (you have to hold elections before you can lose them), but he sure has come down in the world over the past few years. He's now holed up in a mostly-destroyed office building, waiting to be exiled or assassinated. Update: Arafat has stomach cancer, so apparently Bill Clinton did have a positive effect on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after all.

I've written about women at war previously; as I've said before, I don't think there are any good reasons for allowing women to serve in combat positions, and there are plenty of very compelling reasons not to.

I came across a post on a site called Equity Feminism that notes that when women recruits are held to the same physical requirements as men are, their injury rate increases by more than 100%.

Great Britain used to train men and women separately, with different requirements, but many women soldiers finished basic training without the abilities needed to perform their jobs. In 1998, the army began holding women to the same standards as men, and this change in policy resulted in the discharge rate due to training injury for women to rise from 4.5% to 11%, a jump of almost 150%. [Update: medical discharges for men were below 1.5%, according to the source BBC article.]

Regardless of anyone's opinions on the matter, women simply cannot attain and maintain the same physical abilities than men can, and as such they make inferior combatants. As I've written, in some circumstances (such as in Israel) every fighter is necessary -- perhaps because the population is small, or the war is particularly large. America is not in such a situation, and we have the luxury of keeping women out of combat roles in our armed forces. This policy improves the quality of our military in numerous ways (as I've outlined in my previous postings), and also serves a valuable social function.

Forgive me if this is just plain too geeky, but I started playing Temple of Elemental Evil last night and it gave me the urge to apply the D&D alignment system to world politics.

In D&D, moral alignment is described along two axes: the first includes "lawful", "neutral", and "chaotic"; the second is "good", "neutral", "evil". So a person or organization has an alignment with two components, one from each set, and there are 9 possible combinations. For example, "lawful good" or "chaotic neutral". If someone is neutral along both axes, they are "true neutral". Please refer to this post for more specific information on D&D alignments (I wrote it for reference).

With regard to "international law" and the interests of the United States, America can be seen as a neutral good actor. We tend to give lip-service to organizations such as the UN, but we really don't seem to care that much whether they go along with us or not. And from my perspective, our country is generally trying to do good.

Our diplomatic enemies, such as France and Germany, are lawful evil. They don't have the military or economic power to challenge us directly, so they fall back on international legal institutions such as the UN to thwart America and to further their own goals. Since they're willing to leave vicious tyrants in place for the sake of stability, I have no problem categorizing them as evil.

Saddam Hussein was pretty clearly chaotic evil. Sure, he used the legal system in his own country to control his people, but from everything I've read that system was pretty arbitrary. Saddam's laws were designed to keep people terrified; the populace could never be certain who would be the next to be dragged off to jail and tortured. And of course, Saddam had no respect for "international law" either.

Kim Jong Il does seem pretty insane, but I think that's by calculation, so I wouldn't categorize North Korea as chaotic neutral; it's more like neutral evil. They tend to use the UN and treaties when it suits their purposes, but they abandon them just as quickly when it doesn't. The concentration camps and threats of nuclear blackmail put them pretty firmly in the Axis of Evil.

As for Britain, they're more lawful good than we are. Tony Blair has to be concerned with respecting the UN because so much of his population does (and dislikes America). The UK is trying to do good, and it is trying to do so within the legal framework of the world, such as it is. Blair was willing to bend a little to help in Iraq even without (yet another) UN resolution -- because it was a good cause -- but it made him uncomfortable.

The terrorists and al Qaeda are, of course, practically the epitome of chaotic evil. Their whole purpose is to destroy the existing social structure of the world, and to bring about the end of America and the dominance of the "infidels".

Update:
Yes, I'm being mean to people in the comments here who say innane things. I know, I know -- I'm normally such a polite fellow, but it's kinda fun to indulge just this once.

I don't know anything about Salman Sharif other than that he ran a violent resistance group that planned and executed a nearly-successful assassination of a prominent politician. Doesn't sound like a very nice guy, does he? Well his target in 1996 was Uday Hussein.

It was obviously against the law of his country for Sharif to attempt to kill Uday, but I have a rather hard time condemning his actions; Uday was responsible for thousands of deaths in the past, and would certainly be responsible for thousands more in the future. Uday hadn't broken any laws -- his word was the law -- nevertheless, I believe that an attempt to kill him was morally justified. It wasn't attempted murder, it was attempted justice.

Someone please help me make a distinction between Salman Sharif, and Paul Hill. I want to be able to, but I'm having trouble. Yes, it sounds like Paul Hill was a little crazy, but let's isolate his intent from his motive. He may have been motivated by "God telling him what to do", but his intent was to kill people responsible for murdering babies, so that they couldn't murder any more.

[Note: even if you're pro-choice, consider how you could draw a distinction without resting on your belief that an unborn baby is not a human.]

I like symmetry, and it pleases me aesthetically that much (most? all?) of the universe is conceptually symmetrical. For example, addition and multiplication are commutative and associative:

x + y == y + x
x * y == y * x
x + (y + z) == (x + y) + z
x * (y * z) == (x * y) * z

It always bothered me that division and subtraction weren't commutative and associative, until I realized that neither of those operations is truly a fundamental mathematical concept; both are combinations of two other operations. Subtraction is addition with negation, and division is multiplication with inversion. Thus, conceptual symmetry is maintained.

Please understand that the symmetry I'm talking about is very high level. Addition is symmetric, and so is capitalism -- you put work into the system, you get benefits out. Socialism is so awkward and absurd to me because it attempts to break this natural symmetry by disconnecting work from reward, and it fails for just that reason. I hope my meaning of conceptual symmetry is clear from these examples, because I'm not sure I can define it more rigidly at this juncture.

Conceptual symmetry depends a great deal on how we humans connect and relate concepts together. If a concept does not balance symmetrically, then it is generally the case that the concept is not well-formed, and does not represent reality. SDB gives a perfect example of a malformed concept when he writes that:

There's the old saw about the irresistible force and the immovable object and what happens when the irresistible force is applied to the immovable object. (The question turns out to be nonsense. It's logically impossible for both to exist in the same universe, so it's logically impossible for them to ever meet. Therefore it makes no sense to discuss what would happen if they did.) In our universe it turns out that every force is irresistible and no object is immovable. Any object, no matter how massive, will respond to any force, no matter how small. The response may be miniscule, but it isn't zero.

It's an interesting mental exercise to consider what would happen if an irresistible force met an immovable object, and the question may appear symmetrical on the surface. The fact that the question is actually nonsensical within our universe, however, demonstrates that the concept behind it is not actually symmetrical. Force and mass are entirely different concepts that cannot be symmetrically related by the "moves" operation.

(Here is an interesting mental exercise: what if there were immovable objects? It would require some sort of universal static friction. Such a universe would not have Newton's three laws of motion. Another, even more difficult exercise: imagine a world in which addition and multiplication were not commutative. (You can't do it.))

As I start to write this, I'm not planning on making fat jokes, so if one creeps in, forgive me. I used to be overweight as a kid and a teenager, but I took control of my lifestyle when I was 18 and lost around 70 pounds over the course of a few years. I did it the old-fashioned way: by changing my diet, and by exercising. I don't have a lot of sympathy for fat people who act like they can't help being fat.

So then, "Overweight workers say they're often overlooked".

''This is one of the only groups where an employer could say, 'We don't want fat people,' and get away with it,'' said Massachusetts Representative Byron Rushing. ''Fat people are still targets. Professional comedians can still make fun of them, and fat jokes are still being passed around.'' ...

Protests by groups like the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance as well as a flurry of recent lawsuits have led to greater awareness of the problems the overweight face in the workplace. Some of the lawsuits seek to create new legal ground by arguing that obesity ought to be seen as an impairment under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

For the vast majority of fat people, their "disability" is not primarily physical: it's mental. The fat that hinders their activity is merely a symptom of their lack of self-discipline.

Yes, some people are biologically more inclined toward being fat than others -- so what? Some people are more likely to get addicted to alcohol than others, but when someone does become an alcoholic we still know it's their fault. Same with being fat. If your arm gets blown off by a terrorist, you're disabled. If you simply can't muster up the willpower to resist stuffing your face with creamy lard, you're just addicted to food. Also, comedians will make fun of you, because they're insensitive.

Unlike racial discrimination -- and even religious discrimination -- discrimination based on being fat is entirely within your control. It would be absurd to tell a black guy to lighten his skin (and it wouldn't gain him acceptance even if he did, *cough*Michael Jackson*cough*). But if people make fun of you for being fat, or for not knowing how to read, or for terrible body odor, or for having no sense of style... there's something you can do! Lose weight, get hooked on phonics, use deodorant, watch "Queer Eye".

Sixty-one percent of Americans are overweight, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Of those, the CDC says 35 percent are moderately overweight and 26 percent are obese. The findings, from a National Health and Nutrition Examination survey, sounded an alarm when they were released in 2000, but the hubbub did little to change poor perceptions of overweight people or spur the creation of new laws.

Maybe the problem here is that so many Americans are fat. Don't you all realize that the Europeans are making fun of you? There are only two options: bomb Europe, or lose some weight. I'm impartial.

Look, America, I understand that food is yummy. Sometimes I want to eat a whole truckload of cheesecake, and it's really hard to resist. But guess what? I don't eat it. Sometimes I feel like sitting around on the couch all day, eating Fritos and watching the Simpsons. But guess what? I marshal my mental faculties, throw off the lethargy that so easily besets me, and I go out for a walk, or a run, or I lift some big metal plates up over my head. It's takes about 30 minutes. Then I go back and lie on the couch, watch Simpsons, and eat fruit or something.

While there is little data available detailing the extent of size bias, Deidra Everett, secretary of the New England Chapter of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, believes there have been a few changes in society's view of the overweight. ''Society has changed its image a little when it comes to smaller large people [huh? maybe "small or large"],'' Everett said. ''It is more accepted now that a woman can be a size 12 through 18 and still be fit. Also, in the media, the whole extreme leanness [trend] is not as popular as it was six or seven years ago. So, the media is trying to show that curves can be OK.''

No one has a problem with luscious curves, the problem is when your whole body is just one single curve. This is commonly called a "sphere", and it doesn't count as an affirmative answer for when people ask you whether or not you're "in shape".

At most workplaces, she said, little has changed. Everett, who, at 36, weighs 460 pounds and is 5 feet 10 inches, knows firsthand. She said prospective employers have pursued her aggressively over the phone, and then suddenly changed their minds after meeting her. Stunned by her appearance, the recruiter will scan her body, pausing at the fattest part, and then look away.

''Eventually, they'll get back to your face and give you this nervous smile that says, 'Oh, dear!' They don't know where to look. They become flustered and there is not a lot of eye contact,'' she said. ''I can't understand how people can be so judgmental without knowing who I am. It makes you feel terrible.''

Yes, people are mean. Heck, I've been mean in this very essay. I'm an anti-fattite, I guess. Until the Museum of Tolerance adds that new fat wing they've been planning, I recommend that if you find yourself in situations where people can't even look at you without becoming flustered and uncomfortable, you're probably too fat.

You should consider that maybe the problem isn't the genetic predisposition of humans to use peer pressure to discourage harmful behavior -- maybe the problem is you. Give in to the peer pressure. The negative, "terrible", feelings you're experiencing may be for your own good.

I was never as fat as Deidra Everett, but I suffered social consequences when I was overweight. Which do you think helped more?

1. "Hey baby, yeah I'm fat, but you'd go out with me if you weren't so judgemental without knowing who I am. It makes me feel terrible. Help me advance fat acceptance."

2. Lose weight.

If you guessed #2, you're right. You can't control what other people think, but you can control how fat you are. Instead of wasting time making pro-fat organizations, go to the gym. Stop eating twinkies. As our corporate masters say, "Just Do It".

Most people pretty much take language for granted, and don't even think about it unless they're confronted with someone doesn't understand them, and can't be understood by them in turn. In such a case, we say that the other speaks "a different language" than we do, but what does that really mean?

Does the other have incomprehensible thoughts in their head that we can't understand? No; internally, all (normal) people think in pretty much the same manner, with the same general streams of consciousness, and the same general methodology. There are cultural differences, some of which relate to language, but the underlying structure of human thought it fairly universal. The difficulty that arises with someone who speaks a different language is merely that although we could understand the thoughts and ideas of the other person, we can't correlate the sounds they are using to the ideas they are trying to relate. (Incidentally, how do children correlate the language they hear with the reality that surrounds them when they initially learn to speak? That's a rather large open problem for neurologists, psychologists, and computer scientists.)

Attempts have been made to create language-independent representations for the foundational level of thought, and one of the most well-known is called CD: Conceptual Dependency. The purpose of conceptual dependency structures is to represent a concept at a fundamentally low level; this representation can then be processed by a computer, or can be translated into any human language.

It isn't as simple as it sounds! For example, here is a slide excerpted from the PowerPoint presentation I linked to above. It displays a (possible) representation for the sentence "Jan kicked the cat.".

Yes, sentence examples in artificial intelligence are always mildly violent or sexual. Draw your own conclusions. This graphical depiction of a conceptual dependency isn't simple to explain (view the presentation), but that should give you the flavor. CD is very versitile, and any concept that can be expressed in spoken or written language can be built into a dependency structure.

So what? Well, these structures can be encoded digitally and fed into a computer program that can analyze them and extract meaning from them. For example, many pieces of software have been written that use CD to read short stories, and then answer questions such as "Who was the main character?" "Why did the knight kill the dragon?" and that sort of thing. Some systems can even read stories, and then generate their own stories based on what they learn from their reading. "Generate a story about bravery." (The stories aren't usually very good.)

What's more, CD can serve as an intermediate step in language translation. Rather than building a X*X translation engines that can translate every X language into every other, 2X engines can be built: X to translate a language into CD, and X to translate CD into each language. The idea doesn't work perfectly yet, but the concept is sound.

Human language is a fantastic tool for sharing the information that's otherwise trapped inside our brains, but don't be fooled into thinking that language is the same as thought. Thought and language are closely related -- and most people actually do think in streams of language -- but by isolating them we can reach a greater understanding of their interaction and operation than we can if we are forced to consider them together.

A lot of people read and linked to my recent post about the statue of Lenin in Seattle, and some of them took issue with my disgust. I'm writing this post to clarify my position on communists: I don't like 'em.

People more knowledgable about Russia than I am claim that the millions of dead that can be attributed to communism in the 20th century weren't really Lenin's fault. Fine. I don't really buy it, but I don't want to argue about it because I don't care. Lenin may have been a "moderate" communist, but in my mind that's like being a "moderate" Nazi.

I don't think Lenin was well-intentioned; he and his fellow communist revolutionaries were acting to increase their own power, at the expense of millions. But you know what? Again, I don't care. Lenin may have been a poor, misguided Father Frost. There were certainly millions of Nazis who were well-intentioned, too. Intentions count for nothing, when your actions cause massive destitution, death, and destruction.

The whole concept of communism is against everything I stand for. God, liberty, personal dignity -- all these are anathema to a communist. Communism subsumes free will to the tyranny of the group, violating the very essence of what it means to be human.

Not only that, but communism is generally merely a front for fascism. Most communist leaders are more concerned with remaking society according to their pleasure than they are with helping the proletariat. Promoting "the good of the people" is a ruse, an incredible deception designed to garner support from the masses that the communist leaders hope to dominate.

Many leftists in America (and socialists around the world) really like the idea of communism. They seem to think that although it's been an unquestionable failure every time it's been tried, the idea itself is sound. It'll work, it just needs a little more tweaking. They're wrong, and either evil or self-delusional. Yes, evil. That's a good word to describe someone who believes that utopia can be built by oppressing freedom and eliminating dissent.

To me, communists are worse than Nazis. I won't eat with a communist, I won't let a communist into my home, and I won't converse with a communist about anything other than the evil of their beliefs. I certainly wouldn't display a statue of a communist revolutionary in my city.

Once upon a time there was mean, fat king who loved nothing more than vast, sumptuous feasts. Lamb, veal, duck, venison, pheasant, caribou, sloth, spotted owl... the premier kitchen of the realm prepared his meals to his precise specifications, and no appetite was left unsatisfied. No, not merely unsatisfied -- unsatiated.

However, the corpulent king began to grow distressed. The bountiful banquets that once brought him such pleasure began to taste bland and boring. His chefs redoubled their efforts to find the most succulent beasts, the freshest vegetables, and the most stimulating spices -- but all of their attempts fell on tasteless buds.

The king fell into a deep depression, and refused all sustenance. His chefs tried everything to stir him from his melancholy, but even the most scrumptious sweets would drive the king to gasps and coughs. "I am a man of refined tastes," he exclaimed. "I cannot eat such filth."

Losing his expansive luster and driven to desperation, the king marshaled his fading will to live and announced a competition. "My chefs have failed me," he told his people. "Their food was not fit for sloping swine, but perhaps they will be. Consequently, there is a vacancy in my court that needs to be filled, as do I. Any man who can prepare a meal that is truly fit for a king will be lavishly rewarded."

The king's command attracted would-be chefs and were-in-fact charlatans by the cup, quart, and bushel. Day and night the aspirants toiled in the king's extravagant kitchens, presenting him with course after course of comely cookery such as the world has never known. But the king's malaise would not be dispelled, and he wasted away, surrounded by mountains of decaying delicacies.

One by one the rejected, dejected connoisseurs drifted away. Conceding defeat, they fled, fearing that they too might end up feeding the king's zoo after snatching defeat from the jaws of misery. The king despaired, but he retained one final resort. "If my enormous wealth can not buy my satisfaction," he said, "I have but one thing left to offer. If any man can gratify my culinary lusts, I'll give to him my daughter!"

The king's daughter was a beautiful young lady, who fortunately did not take after her father's gluttonous ways. Word spread quickly though the land that anyone who could renew the king's taste for life would marry the princess, and be made heir to the kingdom. Who would answer the call?

Every chef who heard the new pronouncement scoffed. "The king has eaten all there is to eat," they said. "Every animal, every plant, and every fungus has passed his palate; nothing remains to entice him from his ennui."

Every chef -- but one. One man who could not be tempted by wanton wealth, but only by the love of a kind and generous princess. "All those who have come before me," the man told the wan king, "were mere pretenders to the gastronomic throne; I am the master. If you are willing, I will prepare a savory extravaganza that is certain to satisfy."

"By all means!" the king commanded. "But how will you accomplish such a feat of a feast? Look around! I am surrounded by the comestible corpses of your predecessors."

"Fear not, O king," the confident cook replied. "I, and I alone, possess the secret ingredient that will titillate your tongue and resurrect your vanquished vigor. No no! You must sample it for yourself when I am finished. And then we will discuss the princess."

The king waited in eager anticipation while the cook prepared secretly in the kitchen. He dismissed all offers of assistance and labored alone, but his job was quickly completed. Smiling triumphantly, the cook ascended to the king's banquet room and presented his masterpiece: a delicious pie, still steaming from the oven. Without a word the king devoured the dessert -- every last crumb of crust and fleck of filling.

His plate sparkling, the king proclaimed, "I feel new life in my bones! Quickly, bake me another!"

"And my reward?" the chef inquired. The king demanded that his daughter be brought forthwith.

But the princess could not be found! In her quarters was the meager message: "I will not be fed to your ravenous maw."

"I'll give you anything! Money, power; all that I have and more! Anything you want! Sustain me, and all that I have is yours," begged the king of the cook. "Or else, I die!"

But the cook replied, "You have nothing left that I desire."

This is the third in a series on rights, power, voting, and utility.
Part 1: The 19th Amendment -- Good Idea?
Part 2: The "Right" to Vote, and Utility

With all the discussion of the costs and benefits of allowing women to vote, it's natural to ask the next question: why do we need democracy at all? If society could be more prosperous had women not been allowed to vote, then perhaps they shouldn't have been allowed to do so. The problem then, however, becomes a question of who gets to set the goals, and who gets to define "prosperous" (since we're not merely talking about monetary prosperity, but utility, and utility is different for everyone).

Historically, the people who have gotten to define "prosperous" have been people with hard power. Hard power represents the ability to use physical force to compel others to conform to your desires, and is often manifested in the form of armies and weapons, real estate and capital, and the knowledge and desire required to apply these tools to disagreeable circumstances. America wasn't able to break free from England purely by the virtue of our natural rights to freedom and liberty; rather, these rights and our desire to possess them motivated our forefathers to use their hard power to overthrow English rule. It's often said that we "have" a right to this or that, but unless we have the hard power available to seize and defend that right, it's little more than a rhetorical construct.

God may grant us the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but unless we have the hardware to back it up we're likely to have those rights taken away in fact. Our natural rights are not rights that are enforced by God, but they define the extent to which it is permissible to use force against each other, and they define who is right and who is wrong in such conflicts. If you attack me without provocation, God is not likely to intervene to stop you -- but he will sanction my use of hard power in self-defense. (SDB writes a little about hard power as it applies to relations between countries.)

The power to vote is not hard power, but soft power; votes only have meaning as long as those with the hard power respect them. If you look around the world, internationalists want to replace the hard power of armies with the soft power of UN negotiations, international courts (ICC), environmental treaties (Kyoto); however, dictators and strongmen continue to subjugate their people through the use of hard power, and generally show no respect for soft power unless it happens to coincide with their wishes -- take Saddam's treatment of the myriad UN resolutions, for example. Soft power can only be used successfully when those who possess hard power restrain themselves.

As I wrote in part 2, above, voting is not a right; as such, if you are forbidden the power to vote you are not being inherently wronged, as long as your true rights are not being violated. Using force merely to gain the power to vote is not morally acceptable. However, it's uncommon for societies with a single voter (a king), or a small, select group of voters (feudalism, or an oligarchy) to respect the rights of those without hard power of their own.

This situation sets up a rather interesting conflict, assuming those with hard power want to respect the natural rights of those without. Those with hard power can set up social institutions (democracy, courts, &c.) to ensure that everyone's natural rights are protected, but if those soft power structures overstep their bounds they will become burdensome, and they may eventually be overthrown. This perspective views democracy and other forms of soft power as grants from those with hard power who have an interest in respecting the rights of the powerless.

Soft power structures show their true strength over time, as they manipulate the foundations of hard power. For example, the 2nd and 3rd Amendments attempt to permanently diffuse the concentration of hard power, on the basis of the natural rights to private property and self-defense. These words don't factually eliminate the hard power that could oppress you, but over time they work in the minds of men to change their thoughts, and to further ingrain the respect for you rights that led those with power to restrain themselves in the first place. Soft power must entice and coerce hard power, subtly influencing over time.

Democracy has proven to be quite adept at manipulating and controlling those with hard power. America's military is the most powerful force that has ever existed on the planet, and if its generals were able to wield that power at their own discretion they would rule the world. But America's military is under civilian control, and that control is passed on every few years without involving the use of hard power. This principle is not merely written in our Constitution, but is ingrained in the hearts and minds of every man and woman who carries a rifle or drives a tank. They possess hard power, but they restrain its use because of their committment to the powerless.

Was our initial government in 1788, after the ratification of the Constitution, democratic? Yes, although only a limited group of people was allowed to vote. Under our modern system, many more people are allowed to vote, but still not everyone: children, convicts, non-citizens, the insane, the unborn(?). Are we democratic? Certainly. There is clearly a range of suffrage that is allowable under democratic rule, and over time we have moved along that spectrum -- but I don't expect that we will ever move to total suffrage, because those with power (hard and soft) don't think that granting the power to vote to those without it would lead to a better government.

Do children, convicts, non-citizens, the insane, and the unborn have the rights to life, libery, and the pursuit of happiness? Each of those groups of people has their power limited for different reasons, and many would argue that some have rights and others do not, for whatever reason. At the root level, however, the question of granting soft power to these groups comes down to that of the interests of those who currently wield power. And we say no. We may or may not recognize and respect their rights (if they exist, which is a separate issue), but we don't grant them power because we don't think it would be in our best interests They do not possess hard power of their own to use in seizing soft power.

Our nation is free and prosperous as a direct result of our respect for each other's natural rights. Economic liberty and social freedom have given us a tremendous amount of hard and soft power, and we use that power to create wealth and raise our standard of living, as well as to (hopefully) spread the values that have led to our success. Our experience has shown that rights are more likely to be respected when power is diffused as widely as possible. In response to part 1, a commenter wrote that by recognizing the rights of women (and by granting them soft power?) we have attracted the best and brightest women from around the world, and that they add immeasurably to our prosperity. Our foundational ideas hold that when rights are respected, economic and cultural success follow behind.

Making fine cultural adjustments is difficult and error-prone, as in general we decide against it. It may be the case that granting women suffrage has been a net loss, but it's so difficult to calculate -- and the gross benefits are so obvious -- that the nation (and those with power at the time) decided to err on the side of further diffusion. We do restict the power of some groups based on what most believe are rather clear criteria, but those circumstances are limited and (except for the unborn) mostly non-controversial.

So why democracy? Because democracy tends to diffuse power more successfully than any other form of government, and diffuse soft power limits the interference of those with hard power by subtly manipulating their goals and desires, thereby increasing their respect for the rights of the powerless.

This is the second in a series on rights, power, voting, and utility.
Part 1: The 19th Amendment -- Good Idea?
Part 3: Why Do We Need Democracy?

There's no such thing as a "right to vote". There's the power to vote, but no-one has a natural, God-given right to vote. We have the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but none of those require or imply the right to vote. An absolute dictatorship could respect our God-given natural rights, and be entirely just. For instance, most families don't operate as democracies, and yet most families respect these basic rights.

One my my friends (I hope she's still my friend) responded to my earlier post about the 19th amendment and said that she doesn't want to apply economic principles to civil rights. However, economic principles apply to every human endeavor, whether we recognize it or not. No one needs to come put a price tag on your forehead for there to be a cost associated with the rights and powers you enjoy. That cost is there automatically, regardless of your approval, and economics is merely the study of the costs and benefits associated with everything humans do.

Costs and benefits often aren't monetary -- generally economists refer to "utility" to describe how valuable something is to a person. Love and affection, the power to vote, $1000, clean air -- all of these items have utility to people, and different people will value them differently. When it comes to the power to vote, I hypothesized that if you were to walk up to a random guy on the street and offer him a 20% permanent raise in exchange for his power to vote, he'd probably sell it to you. Most people don't vote, and many who do don't take it very seriously. If Joe Shmoe won't sell his vote for a 20% raise, maybe he will for 50%, or 100%, or 1000%. There's a price, you just have to find it and be willing to pay it. Some people may place infinite value on their power to vote, but I doubt there are many such people -- especially if you separate the power to vote from the natural rights we hold so dear.

With all that understanding, it's quite reasonable to wonder whether or not giving women the power to vote was a wise idea. I agree that it has moral value, and we gain some utility as a society from that good morality, but does that moral utility out-weigh the utility of every effect that has arisen because women can vote? It's possible that that moral utility is more valuable to you than anything else, but I doubt that's the case.

The question is whether or not our present circumstances are overall better or worse than they would be if women had never been given the power to vote. Yes, there is some degree of utility that arises from the moral good that was done in granting women that power, but that utility is not of infinite value.

For instance, the War on Drugs would probably not exist if women couldn't vote; the War on Drugs costs us billions of dollars a year and incarcerates millions of otherwise-innocent people. It also encourages a lot of violent crime associated with the black market. On the other hand, the War on Drugs probably reduces drug use, and reduces the societal costs associated with that. So, your opinion of the War on Drugs can influence your opinion of the total utility gained or lost when women were given the power to vote. There are many other issues that have been affected by the 19th Amendment, and all of them should affect the way you value the power of women to vote.

Courtney has some links to the conversation going on at Dean's World. In the comment section there she promised a post on the subject herself -- but so far, nothing!

Continued in part 3, "Why Do We Need Democracy?"

Update:
Dean Esmay explains some of the thinking during the early suffrage movements.

This is the first in a series on rights, power, voting, and utility.
Part 2: The "Right" to Vote, and Utility
Part 3: Why Do We Need Democracy?

Call me old fashioned, but women voters? What planet are we on? Beam me back up to the mothership.

As Dean Esmay notes, it's been 83 years, and what have women really done for us? Prohibition -- good move. That worked well. Oh sure, it was ratified before women could vote, but it was their idea. Let's see... that's pretty much it.

Let's be serious here though and really consider. Are we as a nation better off having given women the power to vote? I agree that from a moral perspective it was the right thing to do, but I don't think the issue is that black and white; there were substantial groups of women opposed to granting women suffrage.

If you told me, Michael, the country could have a 20% higher standard of living if we were to go back in time and start again as a monarchy, I'd say "sign me up!" I think most people would be willing to trade their vote away for a substantial salary increase. Any individual would sell their vote for the right price, so it's not unreasonable to speculate on the costs and benefits of women's suffrage.

Each individual woman has more freedom than she would otherwise have had, and each individual man has less power than he would otherwise have had -- at least as far as voting goes. But women tend to vote socially and economically liberal, so it's possible that men have more freedom now than they would have had if women had not been allowed to vote, simply because women may have voted for more civil liberties than men alone would have. However, it's also possible that women's liberal voting tendencies have reduced our freedoms, considering that modern "liberals" aren't really all that concerned with maintaining liberty. Similar hypotheticals can be set up with regard to the economy.

It seems likely that if women had not been given the power to vote, more conservative/libertarian laws would have been enacted than actually have been. Women are big supporters of the War on Drugs, for example, and big social spenders. Therefore, those who hold conservative/libertarian positions would probably have a government more to their liking if women had not been given suffrage.

I'm not a historian, but I play one on TV, and if you look through history you'll realize that the position of women in America is really an aberration. Through out every culture, through out all time, women have never been as free and powerful as they are in the United States right now. In an absolute sense, giving women equal social power was an act of indulgence for men; women are physically weaker than men, and in might-makes-right societies that weakness translates directly into social subjugation. It's quite reasonably arguable that the power of women in America is against the "natural order" of the world, and it would be difficult for any materialist to disagree.

I expect that most people who are reading this believe that women's suffrage is a Good Thing. I hope that none of my female readers have taken offense to this topic. Even though I agree that women have God-given equality with men, I'm not convinced that giving them equal social power has resulted in a net gain for society -- or either men or women separately.

Please leave your opinion. Your concept of "gain" may be purely monetary (what we might normally call "standard of living"); it may include freedoms and liberties aside from the power to vote itself; it may encompass foreign policy; it may involve deep philisophical or religious issues. In any event, please define what you consider to be "gain", and then tell us if we made the right decision.

Update:
Continued in "The 'Right' to Vote, and Utility".

GeekPress points to a rather long list that purports to summarize the many attempts to prove that God exists. Of course, the list is flippant and humorous, but the point is fair. Can it be proven that God exists?

Well sure, but as I've written before, not by us. If God exists and wanted to prove his existence he could certainly do it, but he hasn't done so. Therefore, either he doesn't exist, or he doesn't want to prove it. Which is it?

Hebrews 11:1-2,6 -- Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. ... And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

It might seem like a convenient out, but the fact of the matter is that God requires us to come to him by faith. There is quite a bit of evidence that God is real, but that same evidence can be interpreted in many ways, and it doesn't constitute "proof". It's very unscientific, I know.

Why would God do this? I can only speculate, but it might have something to do with free will. If God wanted to compel us to behave in certain ways (to believe in him or not, or anything else) then he could do so, but instead he has endowed us with the power of self-determination. Consider: if there were incontrovertible proof that God existed, wouldn't that be nearly the same as compulsion?

Most of the non-Christians I know (even atheists) agree that if it could proven to them that God exists and wants them to do such-and-such, they would do it. That may or may not be the case (consider those who met Jesus face-to-face and still rejected him), but they agree rationally that when confronted with proof, acceptance is the only reasonable action. However, God doesn't want to force us into choosing him, he wants us to love him as a response to his love for us.

This line of thinking is one possible component of the truth, and there are many others, but in the end it comes down to free will. God wants us to choose him out of our own free will, not because he makes the decision inescapable.

I've determined that I'm not a geek. You may think it's strange that I'm getting a PhD in artificial intelligence and still don't consider myself a geek, but let me explain.

I like technology, but I'm not enamored with it. I don't have a laptop, and I have no real desire to get one so I can blog from Starbucks. I have a PDA, but it's several years old and the batteries aren't even charged. My cell phone is a three-year-old Nokia that doesn't have a color display or digital camera, and can't download ringtones. I did build my own computer, but I hate fiddling with it. I know very little about Linux, and have no desire to install it on anything: not my PC, not my Xbox, not my PS2, not my microwave.

I liked Blade Runner and Snow Crash, but thought they were both overrated. I haven't read Fark in months (too long), and I haven't read Slashdot in over a year. Not since I started getting into blogs, anyway. Oh yeah, I do have a blog, but I don't think that qualifies me as a geek just by itself.

I do know that there are only 10 types of people in the world: those who know binary and those who don't. I don't play first-person shooters anymore (although I did write Quake Superheroes, and I'm using the Q2 engine for my PhD work), and I haven't liked a real-time strategy game since Age of Empires 2. And I hardly played that.

I don't download music. I don't use IRC. I don't have a network of any kind set up in my house. I've only been to a couple of LAN parties, and I got bored pretty quick. I did use an exclusive-or in the title of a recent post, however.

So what am I? I'm an engineer. Now, some engineers are geeks, and some geeks are engineers, but they aren't equivalent. The geeks I know revel in technology, but many of them have no real desire to understand it or create anything of their own. The engineers that create the technology the geeks adore are probably geeks themselves, but not all engineers fiddle with gadgets and gizmos.

I haven't quite pinned it down yet, but I think of myself as a philosopher-engineer. That's why I got into artificial intelligence; I want to understand the human mind, language, culture -- the building blocks of humanity. I considered going into psychology, but after taking several psych classes (undergraduate and graduate level) I realized that it's a very soft science, if it's science at all. I want to quantify intelligence, but psychologists just want to hypothesize endlessly.

I respect geeks, and I know a lot of them, but it's just not who I am. Sure, the toys are fun, but to me they're only a tool for studying the deeper issues of existence, and not an end unto themselves.

Bill Hobbs has a good piece on blogs becoming journalism rather than merely reforming journalism, and he makes some good points.

Now I believe that blogs will increasingly become journalism. Right now, most news-oriented blogs are punditry rather than reporting, though some of the better blogs do sometimes provide original reporting. I've done original reporting here, most often related to the state budget and tax debate over the last four years, digging out and reporting facts and data ahead of the mainstream media on many occasions. I suspect over time bloggers will increasingly add original reporting to their blogs to go with the large helping of punditry.

What's the big difference between punditry and reporting? Reporting on anything other than your own everyday activities takes time above and beyond what is required to merely type the first thousand words to pop into your head. Therefore, reporting takes money.

Before blogs can become journalism, someone is going to need to develop a profitable business model. Maybe Andrew Sullivan has done so, but I suspect people who want to read news are going to want to read a site with the quantity and diversity of information that can be found in major newspapers, and not simply what can be assembled by a single person, no matter how talented. Perhaps the Tech Central Station format paradigm offers more, but I don't think they have enough money to put reporters in the field, and they publish mostly punditry anyway.

So, while yes, I do agree that blogs have a great deal of potential, they face many of the same difficulties that all internet concepts face: how do you get the money to take the idea to the next level?

Update:
Check out the comments section of Bill's post to see his idea for a business model.

In the comments section of my "A Brief Defense of Suburbia" post, Jody writes several times and mentions his fear/certainty that a continuously expanding suburbia will lead to the "depletion" of natural resources and available land. However, his concept of depletion is an economic myth that's used by various dooms-dayers to manipulate the masses.

The following explanation can be applied to almost any non-renewable resource, such as land, oil, or diamonds. (Renewable resources, such as trees and animals, will obviously never be depleted. Yes, animals can become extinct, but that's not because they're "used up".) I am not an economist, but I play one on TV. If you'll note the title of this blog, I'm not a master of anything, but the following views on depletion are economic and logical fact.

The myth of depletion is simple to state: if we don't force people to reduce their consumption of resource X, eventually all the X will be gone. This is false. It is true that if there is a finite supply of X that it can eventually be consumed, but it is not true that it is necessary to force people to reduce consumption in order to prevent depletion.

Consider oil. As the readily available supply of oil dwindles, the price of oil will start to increase due to free-market principles of supply and demand. This increase in price will have many effects.

1) People will use less oil, because it's more expensive. Thus the mere increase in price will reduce consumption all by itself, without any need for government coercion.

2) Suppliers will start hoarding. As prices rise, suppliers will observe that their oil will be more valuable in the future than it is today, and so they will begin to hoard their supply for the future (with each supplier making the determination of when to hold and when to sell based on their own costs). If too many start withholding, then others will start to sell as the price gets even higher. There is no need for cooperation between suppliers (and in fact cooperation cartels are always bad in free markets). Suppliers will act to ensure that they are able to reap the benefits of future scarcity, and thus there will always be some supply remaining to be had at some price.

3) New sources will become economically viable. There's lots of oil everywhere, but most of it is too hard to get to and isn't worth pumping. For example, there's far more oil under the ocean than there is under the dry land -- unfortunately, except for the parts of the ocean right near shore it's very expensive to utilize. However, as prices rise, sources of oil that aren't worth drilling now will suddenly become profitable, thereby increasing the available supply.

These three factors together will ensure that humanity will never "run out" of oil, or any other non-renewable resource. What about land? Good question. Apparently, there's more than 70 sextillion stars out there, I'll bet some of them have some nice real estate. Maybe even oil!

We are a common law nation, ruled by a sovereign populace which decides for itself -- by millions of private actions and interactions -- where and how its liberty should be limited. Such common law is not, and cannot be, written down in full; rather, our legislators and judges seek to codify the commonly accepted principles of "just" and "unjust" that emerge spontaneously from our society.

No person or group sat down one day and decided that the best way to determine the facts when a person is accused of wrongdoing is to have the accused stand before a jury of their peers; instead, the concept of trial-by-jury came about over the course of hundreds of years, mutating, morphing, adjusting, until it was widely recognized as the fairest and most effective method for enforcing justice. Likewise with many of our society's critical building blocks: democratic elections; seperation of powers; judicial enforcement of contracts; judicial review of laws; private property rights; freedom of speech, religion, and assembly; freedom to keep and carry weapons; freedom of parents to raise their children without government interference. Many of these principles we take entirely for granted, but they are by no means universal. As Americans, the right for an individual to keep property and to have exclusive authority over its use is natural and ingrained, but where did the concept come from? Common law.

Our legislatures and courts are supposed to craft our laws with deference to the common law principles that are embodied first in our Constitution, and secondarily in the shifting opinions and actions of the population as a whole. That's why I believe many traffic regulations are unjust: if they are broken routinely by a majority of drivers, then that itself is an indication that the regulations are not in line with the will of the people. Laws that are held in contempt by the people are, under common law, unjust.

Sometimes the last two principles I mentioned are in conflict. Consider the difficulties facing the RIAA as it tries (ineffectually) to stem the tide of music sharing. They argue that when people trade music over the internet it costs them CD sales; on the other hand, music traders claim that they buy more music than they had previously, and that sharing on the net actually increases public awareness of many bands who would otherwise not be noticed. Either or both of these may be true, but neither touches on the crux of the matter. The music industry owns the copyrights of the music being traded, and as such they have sole authority to determine how that music is used and distributed. The public as a whole doesn't want to honor those copyrights, and the RIAA believes that these millions of people are criminals. Under current definitions, they are, but these millions of people form the foundation for the common law that governs our society.

Eventually, one side will lose. Society cannot tolerate the stress of such mass criminalization, especially if the RIAA begins enforcing its property rights through the judicial system. While the music industry is in the right as a matter of written law, society itself is the ultimate arbiter of how that law is written. Copyrights were instituted as a bargain between creators and society: society will enforce your exclusive rights to your intellectual property for a limited amount of time, and in return that property will enter the public domain after the copyright expires.

The system has served us well for quite a while, but technological changes may have generated such a shift that society no longer feels the bargain is fair and equitable. Copyright terms have been extended many times, and with the passage of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 works are protected for the life of the author plus 75 years, or plus 95 years if the work was created for a corporation. (Since the law was created shortly before Mickey Mouse was destined to enter the public domain, it's often called "The Mickey Mouse Protection Act".) That's an incredibly long time, and it's hard to argue that such a long period is necessary to encourage creators to invest the time, money, and energy to required to develop new and innovative ideas. Would artists suddenly stop creating if their works were only protected for, say, 20 years? I doubt it.

Likewise, the internet has made it easier than ever to distribute intellectual property. Society reasons that if copying a TV show onto a video cassette is acceptable, why should copying a song onto a hard drive be any different? It's a rhetorical question, and the massive use of online file-sharing services demonstrates that a great number of people have reached the same conclusion.

This conflict has been brewing for several years, and may finally be coming to a head. Its final resolution won't come from a judge or legislature, even though the opening acts may well be played out in a courtroom or capitol building. Society as a whole will decide that copyright in its present state is valuable and equitable enough to keep around -- and will reflect that in its actions -- or copyright as we know it is doomed.

Personally, I suspect that the our current concept of intellectual property will be torn down and rebuilt anew. The form of that future bargain between artists and society will be determined over time.

Update:
Mark Aveyard points out that file sharing systems are already adapting to the lawsuits.

The UC Regents have decided to prohibit faculty members from engaging in sexual or romantic relationships with their students. Naturally, every department has it's own take on the new policy.

The astronomy faculty says they may have trouble handling their telescopes without student assistance, possibly hindering the discovery and exploration of new black holes. The biologists shouldn't have any difficulty with their bacteria-ridden microscopes, however.

As always, the electrical engineers are worried about their short circuits. Computer scientists are worried that the pigeonhole principle will lead to crowding as the number of available holes declines, but they've always got tail-recursion to fall back on.

The paleontologists don't mind, since they tend to prefer old bones anyway. The physics department frets that it may have to stop assuming there's no friction when solving rigid body problems, but the chemists say they've got some fluid in their testtubes that might help.

The economists don't care, since they'll still end up paying. The historians say they've never noticed the issue, and the English department doesn't think it's very penetrating. The cunning linguists are still tongue-tied.

The Psychology department wants to put the students through more tightly controlled experiments before being bound by the new policy. Pediatrics obviously objects, as do the oral biologists.

Update:
Thanks for the link, Fred K. As I promised, you have exclusive linking rights to this post -- no one else is allowed to link to it. To you new visitors: most of what I write isn't humor, but check it out. And hey, leave a comment!

Best of the Web Today points to a Washington Times article which indicates that the Saudi royal family is starting to fire and ban jihad-loving, al Qaeda-sympathizing Wahhabi clerics in the wake of the al Qaeda suicide bombings in Riyadh two months ago.

I suppose this is good news, but wouldn't it be even better if there was some hint of actual religious freedom, rather than just a switch to state religious tyranny that's more to our liking? After all, American approval of friendly dictators is supposely one of the Arab street's prime grievances against us. Taranto looks at these moves as "halting steps toward joining the civilized world", but in the civilized world the government doesn't tell you what is and is not accepted religious doctrine.

So yes, I'm glad that our staunch allies in Saudi Arabia are firing the most anti-American clerics, but not as glad as I'd be if the Saudi government fired all the clerics and took their mitts out of the religion business entirely. Iraq, even under Saddam Hussein, has had one of the most religiously free governments in the region, and I hope now that a truly free nation is being established there will be some concrete moves away from state-sponsored/-mandated Islam.

Three months ago, Time Magazine ran an excellent interview with Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Although I'm sure that many non-Christians cringe when they read about Christian missionaries lining up by the hundreds to spread the gospel to Arab Muslims, this interview might give you a new perspective.

"No one is going to flip a switch and make Iraq a Christian nation. America is not a Christian nation; it's a mission field. Conversion can't come at the point of a gun. I think this is a true test, in a post-modern, post Cold War age, of how America is going to establish a model for the recovery of freedom. Religious freedom has to be at the center and foundation of that freedom. If Iraq were to be established in a way that religious freedom was honored, it would stand out from its neighbors in the area."

"It would be an appalling tragedy if America were to lead this coalition and send young American men and women into battle, to expend such military effort, to then leave in place a regime that would lack respect for religious liberty. I think one of the major Christian concerns, and one of my personal concerns, is to see religious liberty, religious freedom," take a prominent position in "the vision of freedom that America holds up to the world."

Bill Hobbs and Donald Sensing both link to this Charles Krauthammer piece which explains liberals' willingness to use force in Liberia but not in Iraq thusly:

What is it that makes liberals like Dean, preening their humanitarianism, so antiwar in Iraq and so pro-intervention in Liberia? ...

They all had a claim on the American conscience. What then was the real difference between, say, Haiti and Gulf War I, and between Liberia and Gulf War II? The Persian Gulf has deep strategic significance for the United States; Haiti and Liberia do not. In both Gulf wars, critical American national interests were being defended and advanced. Yet it is precisely these interventions that liberals opposed.

The only conclusion one can draw is that for liberal Democrats, America's strategic interests are not just an irrelevance, but a deterrent to intervention. This is a perversity born of moral vanity. For liberals, foreign policy is social work. National interest - i.e., national selfishness - is a taint. The only justified interventions, therefore, are those which are morally pristine, namely, those which are uncorrupted by any suggestion of national interest.

Hence the central axiom of left-liberal foreign policy: The use of American force is always wrong, unless deployed in a region of no strategic significance to the United States.

Bill and Donald both seem to imply that liberals' aversion to using force is based on a belief that America is bad. Maybe I'm putting words in Bill's mouth, but Donald says directly:

I think it is the Left's belief, no longer subject to empirical analysis, that America is bad for the world. Actions, whether military or not, that enhance America's national self interests are therefore anathema. If old "Engine Charlie" Wilson's motto was, "What is good for General Motors is good for America," the Left's motto runs perversely: "What is good for America is bad for the world." ...

In their mind, America is an imperialist nation, imperialist in many forms - economic, cultural, linguistic and especially militarily. If America's gross transgressions are to be corrected, then America's national power must be turned away from promoting America's national interests. Hence, America's armed forces can be used only for reasons that do not serve its interests.

I don't dispute that some liberals view America this way, but I don't think that most do. Hey, I'm as cynical as the next guy, but Charles Krauthammer has a better analogy when he compares foreign policy to social work. I don't think that most liberals want to hurt America; rather, they think that our nation should act more like a world judge or referee rather than a participant. We have the most power, and we should use it to enforce fairness, not to promote our own interests.

The backbone of liberal ideology is arrogance and elitism, and this perspective on foreign policy follows directly (and strikes me as very European). America should act as the third world's daddy, because we're smarter, richer, and just better in general. It's not fair for us to use our power to our own advantage, and as a judge would we should recuse ourselves from any situation that presents us with a "conflict of interest", such as Iraq. On the other hand, we're allowed to intervene in Liberia precisely because we have nothing to gain; we can be neutral and fair and calm the squabbling children.

My main toilet was 100% clogged for about 3 days. I tried plunging it, but to no avail. I let the water in the bowl sit for a whole day and it didn't drain a single inch. I went to the store to buy Drano, but the back of the bottle says that it's not for use in toilets. The problem with using Drano in toilets is that the Drano can't get to the clog due to the trap design; I knew that if I could find a way to deliver the Drano to the clog, I'd be home free.

Note the winding path that the water has to follow when the toilet is flushed.

What to do? I thought of 3 options:
1. Pour in lots of Drano. If I could fill the bowl with Drano it would overflow into the trap below. This would probably take quite a bit of Drano, and I only bought one bottle.
2. Use a length of rubber hose to get the Drano through the trap. By pushing the hose down into the drain of the toilet and through the trap, I would be able to then pour the Drano down directly into the pipes. I expect that this would have worked quite handily, but I didn't have a suitable hose.
3. Apply the one bottle of Drano that I already had, and then plunge it down to the clog. I knew this would be the easiest method, but also the most dangerous. Drano's active ingredient is sodium hydroxide and it has a pH of around 13; if you've got enough to fill a bathtub, you can dissolve a whole human body in a few hours and it'll go right down the drain.

I decided to go with option 3. Normally when you plunge a toilet you want to try to pull the clog towards you (i.e., you use more force pulling the plunger up than pushing it down), but since I wanted to move the Drano to the trap I did the opposite. Insert Drano; plunge plunge plunge. Within a few minutes, the drain was clear! Huzzah!

As an added bonus, my toilet was incredibly clean from all the Drano sloshing around inside. In the future, I may use Drano to clean all my hard surfaces.

I'm Michael, not Mike. Oh sure, some people call me Mike; most of the time I don't even notice, although I really don't like the sound of it. In my head, to myself, I'm always Michael.

Names have power. The power to name something is the power to define its very essence. Consider all the energy that goes into labelling different philosophies and ideas: it's not "discrimination", it's "affirmative action"; it's not "anti-life" vs. "anti-choice", it's "pro-choice" vs. "pro-life"; it's not "terrorist", it's "militant". When it comes to people, names in our American culture don't carry the same direct denotations that they have historically, but even still most people know what their name means at its root. Michael means "Who is like God?" Good question.

Knowing someone's name gives you a certain intimacy, and a certain sense of power. You know their name, and you know them. You aren't strangers anymore, you're acquaintances. You may pass by hundreds, even thousands of unknown faces on the street, but the next time the two of you meet there will be at least a nod or smile of recognition.

At times, this power makes me a bit uncomfortable. When I approach a girl and try to strike up a conversation, I never know if I should get her name at the beginning or at the end. Trying at the beginning seems awkward to me. Hi, I'm Michael, what's your name? It's much easier and more natural for me to start a conversation by talking about the place we're at, or whatever is going on around us. Plus, asking a girl's name at the outset is offensive to me: an overly intimate act, a forceful attempt to transform a stranger into an acquaintance without so much as a by-your-leave. Exchanging names isn't an incredibly significant event, but imposing that expectation on a stranger feels like a not-quite-benign form of emotional rape.

So my normal strategy is to engage the conversation using circumstantial observations and questions. Make a few wry remarks, share a laugh or two, and then once the conversation starts to drift I introduce myself and ask for a name in return. Once the Other lets you in a little through conversation, sharing names is part of the natural progression.

Most of my friends and acquaintances don't know my middle name. There's nothing embarrassing about it; it's a fine name. Sometimes people ask and I demur, I try to change the subject and avoid telling them. Why? I don't exactly know, but there's some inkling inside me that tells me to hold something back. Don't let anyone know too much about you, it says. The subject rarely comes up (because who really cares about middle names, anyway?), but even with life-long friends I get uncomfortable at the thought of revealing that corner of my identity. It's meaningless, useless, mere trivia -- but it's mine.

I've written before about the total depravity of mankind, and so the question naturally arises: if humans are inherently and thoroughly depraved, why is there good in the world? That's a good question, and the answer is the existence of what is called "common grace".

"Grace", in a theological sense, refers to a favor or blessing that God bestows on us and that we do not deserve and have not earned. Most often, Christians talk about "saving grace" -- that is, the grace that God shows us through Jesus Christ that allows us to be forgiven for our evil acts. We do not earn forgiveness by doing good things to "balance" out our evil; rather, God forgives us freely by his grace. Saving grace is available to all mankind, but some people do not accept it, and thus do not reap the benefits of God's benevolence.

However, there is another type of grace that God gives to all humanity called "common grace", and this grace is the root cause of the goodness that we can see in ourselves and in the world around us. Common grace is manifested in many ways; some are very simple and direct, while others are more subtle. The most obvious example of common grace is creation itself; if you acknowledge the existence of God, then no matter how you believe he brought the universe into being, the fact that he did so at all is a result of his common grace. Likewise, the physical laws of nature that govern our universe are both an effect of common grace (because of creation), and the proximate cause of many forms of common grace that we experience. The earth provides us all, believer and unbeliever alike, with food, clothing, shelter, and everything else that makes life possible. As with saving grace, some people may choose to reject common grace (e.g., by taking their own life). Most people, however, accept God's common grace without a conscious thought of its origin or an acknowledgement of its existence.

God created the church (and local churches individually) as his instrument for spreading saving grace to humanity. God uses churches to reach people with his saving grace. In a similar manner, God instituted governments to administer much of his common grace. Some governments are corrupt and ineffectual (as are some churches), but those that function properly bring the benefits of God's common grace to their people: peace, safety, prosperity, productivity, liberty.

Romans 13:1-7
1. Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. 4. For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. 5. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. 6. This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing. 7. Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.

A ruler or government fulfills God's purpose when it punishes those who do evil and commends those who do good. Although every government I can think of extends itself beyond this simple mandate, these dual responsibilities should form the foundation for a just and proper nation. Consider also that the first few verses give governments considerable discretion in administrative matters; Paul was writing to Christians living under a rather oppressive Roman empire, and we should step very carefully when we consider overthrowing an authority that God has set up. (Nevertheless, taken in context I believe it's clear that when a government ceases to implement God's common grace it loses its legitimacy, but that's a discussion for another day.)

On the 4th of July, the day we celebrate the founding of these United States of America, it's important to be thankful for the grace that God has shown us by allowing us to live in the freest and most prosperous nation that has ever existed on the face of the earth. Not one of us has earned this privilege, and most of us inherited it through the circumstances of our birth. It is by God's grace that we live freely, speak freely, worship (or not) freely, assemble together freely, hold property securely, and pursue happiness with fewer restaints and more opportunity than any people ever have before us.

In Luke 12:48 Jesus says, "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." We in America have been given a great deal; we have not earned it, but it was given to us freely by God because of his grace. God expects us to use our freedom and power wisely, justly, and generously as an instrument of his common grace.

I don't understand the concept of "civil unions". Supposedly they're meant as a compromise relationship that would allow gays to get the benefits of marriage without using the same name, right?

Well what's to prevent me from civilly unioning with my roommate to get free health coverage from his work and to save money on taxes? Or, for that matter, what's to keep me from unioning with a family member or a business partner for similar financial reasons? Once the financial transaction in question is completed, we could simply dissolve the union, thereby freeing ourselves to form other unions as it became advantageous.

Would civil unions convey legal spousal privilege? If so, then criminals could simply union to avoid testifying against each other. Likewise, such privilege could be used by parents unioning with their children to cover sexual abuse. The list of potential problems seems endless to me, and I don't see any clear criteria that could be used to draw a line.

It would certainly be absurd to require two people to somehow prove that they're gay before allowing them to enter a "civil union". Most states allow for minors to get married with their parents' permission, and so I see no reason to think that children would not be allowed to enter into civil unions, possibly even without parental consent. If a girl can get an abortion without parental notification, then why can't she get civilly unioned? Similarly, parents are not allowed to marry their children, but does a civil union necessarily require or expect there to be sexual activity between the two partners? If not, then there's no reason not to allow parents to union with their kids.

The complications go on and on, and any inclusions or exclusions will end up being entirely arbitrary. The well-defined structure of marriage has been the building block of civilization for all of known history; creating an institution of "civil union" would necessarily undermine that order. Proponents may or may not admit it, but I think that undermining the current social fabric is one of their main intentions.

People need to take responsibility for themselves. I find it particularly disgusting that our nation's supposedly most mature citizens are doffing the responsibility for their lives by lobbying and cheering for ludicrously expensive government entitlements, the burden of which must be borne by their children and grandchildren. You may be "the greatest generation" to some, but this selfish foolishness highlights a widespread moral and economic failure on your part. You're supposed to be wise, you're supposed to be an example to we who are following after, but instead you wield your political power not to help or guide us, but for your own comfort and enrichment. Shame on you all. Imagine how great a boon you could have been to your families and your country; instead you're becoming a resented burden.

In 1 Corinthians 12:14 Paul writes: "After all, children should not have to save up for their parents, but parents for their children." In some circumstances the situation will be reversed, and I realize that it's not always due to failure on the part of the parents. Nevertheless, the general principle stands. The new $400 billion health care entitlement that Congress just passed moves me to pity -- it is a stark example of how the greatest among us have fallen short of the prize they should have obtained.

Given that we are where we are, what is the proper solution? In 1 Timothy 5:4 Paul writes further: "But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God." First note that this verse is speaking specifically about women who have lost their husbands; it was expected that older men would be able to care for themselves. We are instructed to care for our family, particularly our parents and grandparents, and the primary responsibility for that care falls on the children and grandchildren.

A few verses later, in 1 Timothy 5:8 Paul continues: "If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." Once the parents themselves have failed, the responsibility does fall onto their immediate family. Only when the immediate family will not or cannot carry the load does the responsibility transfer to the community as a whole.

How does this translate into public policy? It's not a simple issue. Would it be proper (or constitutional) to force families to bear the financial burden for their older members? Probably not. But the current situation is economically and morally unsustainable. Perhaps this lack of clarity should serve as a general indication that the government should not be involved in the area at all.

As I've written before, President Bush uses Powell and Rumsfeld to good-cop/bad-cop the world into doing what he wants. Rumsfeld plays the bad cop hawk and gets everyone all in a tizzy, and then Powell comes in and makes nice. In the end, Bush takes a position somewhere between the two and everyone thinks it's a compromise, but in actuality they're all working together and Bush ends up with the exact result he wanted from the very beginning.

So, when the Palestinian Authority hears Powell call Hamas an 'Enemy of Peace' they'd better take notice.

Powell met Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Jerusalem and then pressed Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas not just to reach a cease-fire with Hamas and other militant groups but to eliminate their capacity to attack Israelis.

"The enemy of peace has been Hamas, especially over the last two weeks," Powell told a joint news conference with Sharon. "As long as they have ... a commitment to terror and violence and a desire to destroy the state of Israel, I think this is a problem we have to deal with in its entirety."

It's significant that Powell said this during a joint news conference with Ariel Sharon. Some conservatives in the US have recently begun to question Bush's committment to Israel, but this statement should remove their doubts.

The "roadmap to peace" is just a ruse, folks, aimed solely at revealing the fact that the Palestinians really have no desire for peace. Don't believe me? President Bush pulled the exact same trick with the UN earlier this year. All the posturing at the UN wasn't meant to get the French et al on board with us, it was meant to prove once and for all that they have positioned themselves as our enemies.

It's very fashionable to decry President Bush as a moron, but I think he's shown time and time again that he plays a very subtle game, and holds his cards close to his chest.

Update:
This post by Meryl Yourish illustrates my point. She recognizes the evil of the Palestinians, but she doesn't realize that the "road map" is a red herring and isn't meant to succeed in the way most people expect. It's not meant to lead the Palestinians and the Israelis into peaceful co-existance, it's meant to highlight who the real bad guys are.

Continuing from the two previous posts (one, two), Bill Hobbs sent me an article by Ed Weathers in which Weathers disparages marriage as an artificial social "institution" and really -- in my mind -- misses the entire point.

I live with a woman who is not my wife. Her name is Gail. We share the same bed, and occasionally we make love to each other. We have been doing this for 7 years. At least once a week, Gail and I look at each other, shake our heads, reach out to hold hands, smile and say how lucky we are to be living such a pleasant life. Honestly. We do. You can ask her. ...

Last week, for the five hundredth time, a friend asked me, good-naturedly, "When are you two finally going to get married?"

I gave him the answer I always give to that question: "Never."

Sometimes I'm asked the question differently: "So why don't you two get married?"

Again I always answer the same way: "Why should we? There's absolutely nothing marriage can add to our life together that would make it any better." ...

[snip lots of stuff about how marriage was "designed" to oppress women, "certain colors", and "certain castes", as well as to "suppress the fun of sex"...]

It's not just that marriage is unnecessary, I believe, it's that it's actually harmful. It replaces choice with compulsion. It makes that which should be voluntary, compulsory. ...

Things are clearer for Gail and me, and for others who live together. We know why we're there on Sunday afternoon, reading the paper on the sofa, looking at each other occasionally and smiling. It has nothing to do with covenants and courts. We're there because we like each other best. And we'll be there as long as we both shall love.

Whew, long quote, go read the article.

Ed's is not a new view, and I've heard it before. For all intents and purposes Ed and Gail are married. You don't need to have a big ceremony in a church or a piece of paper from the state to be married; by common law both church and state will recognize their marriage after 17 years, even if they might frown upon it.

What makes his view sound childish to me (aside from all the absurdities I snipped about oppression) is the end where he says "It has nothing to do with covenants and courts. We're there because we like each other best. And we'll be there as long as we both shall love." If that's all he wants, then fine, but you have to admit that an intimate relationship must -- by necessity -- be somewhat limited where there is no commitment.

How much of your life would you be willing to share with someone who may decide on a whim that they don't like you best anymore and that it's time to leave? I wonder if Ed and Gail have joint bank accounts. Do they jointly own property? Do they have children? These are the things that put strain on relationships and that require self-sacrifice and tenacity and commitment above and beyond mere emotion.

Only when we go through trials and tribulation with someone is a friendship really tested, and only then does real love show its worth. Ed seems to see no value in a relationship beyond the extent to which it fulfills his emotional lust, but commitment and partnership take a relationship beyond that. Consider other relationships with financial involvement, such as business partners. Only a fool would go into business with someone or invest money with someone who was unwilling to assume contractual obligations that extend beyond how fun the partnership is at any given moment. How much more so for people having children together? Entering a relationship is voluntary, and voluntarily assuming compulsory obligations is what adults do.

I have a great many acquaintances and surface relationships which exist out of convenience: people I go to class with, work with, see at conventions and conferences, you name it. But there's no real substance to those relationships because there is no shared living. Ed claims that he and Gail are "living together", but I wonder how "together" they really are? How together can it possibly be if there is no commitment beyond "I'll stick around as long as it's fun"?

I will certainly never plan my future on the shifting sands of human emotion.

Update:
Thanks Bill for linking to this post, and for rightfully acknowledging the shredification.

There's a movement afoot to legalize many types of currently illegal drugs (particularly marijuana) on civil liberty grounds, and I'm generally sympathetic, even though I have never used any illegal drugs and I rarely drink alcohol. The basic idea behind the movement is that if someone wants to use drugs, even dangerous ones, it's no business of government as long as no one else is hurt. It is also argued that if drugs are legalized then the black market and all the crime associated with it will evaporate because the premium prices will disappear when large, legal, corporations take over production and distribution.

Both of these justifications are plausible. I don't like the government involved in peoples' personal lives, and I do think legalization would quickly undermine the vast drug cartels that smuggle illicit substances into our country and wreak havoc all around the world. But. I don't think that anyone has a clear and complete understanding of how legalization would affect our society and economy.

Civil libertarians may argue that it's irrelevant, but consider what demographics would be most likely to increase consumption of currently illegal drugs. Who would these newly-formed drug companies target with their product? Alcohol has a rather high penetration rate and is often abused... what effect would wide-spread "moderate" LSD or cocaine use have on society? (Can such drugs even be used in "moderation"? Doubtful.)

It may be argued that even if drug use is legalized it will not become wide-spread, but economic theory does not support that belief. Right now illegal drugs are expensive and difficult to acquire, but if they are legalized the price will drop by a factor of 10 or more and they will be available at every corner store. It's absurd to think that this change in market conditions will have no effect on consumption. Will the productivity lost by increased hard drug use be offset by the money saved in law enforcement and gained through taxation? I'm skeptical. And do we really want our government raising money by taxing addictive substances, and thereby gaining an incentive to get more people hooked? (This is why I'm against tobacco taxes and why I think the tobacco industry scored a huge win with the structure of its lawsuit settlements with the states.)

As with all things, a balance needs to be found that maximizes liberty and minimizes the cost of that libery to society. Perhaps alcohol should be legal and LSD should not, perhaps marijuana should or should not be. I don't think the answer is as clear as the legalization-ists would have us believe, but I also think that the status quo needs some serious reconsideration.