Transgender Hysteria (not what the title makes it sound like!)

Ok, the whole 'transgender rights' thing has shown up in front of the Supreme Court, so I'm going to start seeing articles and discussions and accusations and justifications on the subject, left, right, and center. I've spent some time thinking about it, and would like to present an alternate view. It starts with a question that is going to seem odd, and will probably need a small history lesson and slightly larger science lesson. I'll try to avoid being pedantic about it. So strap yourselves in...

What rights should society give to hysterical women?

I don't mean women who are laughing hysterically, or acting hysterically in grief. The term "Hysteria" used to be a genuine medical term with a genuine medical definition. Technically speaking, Hysteria was a psychoneurosis marked by emotional excitability and disturbances of the psychogenic, sensory, vasomotor, and visceral functions. (The term 'visceral' means 'involving the inner organs'.)

In practice, this became something to diagnose women with if they seemed to show emotional 'excess' (or too much restraint), sleeplessness and irritability, 'excessive' interest in sex, or even such vague and dangerous symptoms as "arguing/causing trouble with others". In short, there was this view of what women should be within society and, if they didn't meet the expectations, they had Hysteria.

So what rights should we give women who have been diagnosed with this condition? I am sure that the early Women's Rights groups would have had several ideas to offer. How about the right to not be involuntarily committed to a mental institution for the diagnosis? How about retaining the right of ownership to your own property, whether that be a house or simply a bag of trinkets? How about the right to talk about politics, read about religion, and other such activities that suggested, in that time period, a disturbance in a woman's brain?

Well, actually, Hysteria was often treated by masturbation, or by high-pressure cold water showers. So should they be asking for the right to masturbate in public?

Imagine that. Imagine a group of women before the Supreme Court, demanding the right to masturbate in public, as a necessary accommodation to their medical condition of Hysteria. Since they're actually arguing for their rights in front of a court, you know they all have to have it by the old historic definition. Ridiculous, right? Well, let's take a moment and divert from history into science.

What is the difference between a man and a woman. The transgender argument must start here. If we can't define the boundaries they want to cross, how can we discuss their efforts to cross them and society's proper reaction? So let's talk biology. I suspect that many people these days believe that the only difference between the male body and the female body is the reproductive system. Let's dispel that myth. Did you know that archaeologists can unearth a single part of the skeleton and know whether it belonged to a man or a woman? The pelvic bones are noticeably different, but there are other differences throughout the entire skeleton. The male skull has a taller and narrower brow and a more pronounced jawbone; the man's arms and legs are longer, and the bones tend to have more pronounced corners.

So let's put the skeleton aside for a moment. Did you know that every single internal organ has a different size and efficiency in a man than in a woman? Some are larger, and some are smaller. One of the complaints of feminists is that most medication dosage and effectiveness has been derived from studies on males. The female, in the pharmaceutical world, is often treated like a smaller man. I have sat in on several discussions among women with ADHD, for instance, and they all agree that all ADHD medication becomes ineffective during the few days before the onset of menstruation.

That doesn't mean that the reproductive system isn't part of the picture, of course. The body is fully interconnected, with each system supporting and affecting the others, and that's the point. A woman's heart beats at a faster resting rate on average than a man's. Her heart is smaller. That's okay, though, because her blood has less hemoglobin and more water in it by volume. It moves more easily through her circulatory system. Now here's where it gets interesting: a sex hormone is responsible for this difference. Testosterone prompts higher production of hemoglobin, making the blood thicker. In a woman, higher testosterone makes the blood more like a man's.

See, the entire body is affected by the sex hormones in various ways, and the entire body is optimized for the changes made to the body by the sex hormones. The heart, lungs, liver, spleen, kidneys, stomach and intestines - all of these changes by gender, larger or smaller, more slow-twitch or fast-twitch muscles, blood volume and ideal heart rate/blood pressure - it's all geared towards the health of the male body or the female body as a whole. Once you change part of it, like the sex hormones, you are giving your body all sorts of conflicting instructions to produce certain muscles, deposit fat in certain areas, change your blood composition, change the chemical content being processed by your liver etc. in a way that puts a great deal more wear and tear on your body. Transgender/transsexual transition surgery is done only on the reproductive organs; the transgender person is not given the heart, liver, kidneys, adrenal glands, or skeletal structure of the other sex.

Back to Hysteria, just for a second.

We now know that Hysteria isn't a thing, not really. It's a catch-all for a variety of medical conditions, many of which actually do affect the female reproductive system (such as endometriosis or fibroids) or brain differences (such as ADHD or autism, both of which present differently in women than in men). It would seem bizarre to us to diagnose a woman with autism and then explain that this meant she had to try to masturbate regularly and thus seek accommodations through the Supreme Court to pleasure herself in the workplace. In fact, to divert from that a little, autistic people are now speaking strongly against the application of ABA therapy in the 70's, 80's, and 90's, causing trauma and, sometimes, lasting physical damage, in order to force autistic people to mimic 'normal people' instead of the newer, gentler, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which focuses more on coping techniques and self-advocacy.

But instead of asking ourselves if there is treatment for the differences in the brain that seem to set apart many transgender people, whether it be chemical or cognitive behavioral therapy, we seem caught in the Dark Ages of trying to treat thoughts in the mind by throwing every single other system in the body out of whack. The activists and their insistence on 'transgender rights' are advocating a type of ABA for these people, with the only 'natural' endgame being a chemical and surgical process that belongs back in the annals of Medieval and Victorian medicine along with Hysteria.

Transgenderism starts with the belief that your thoughts and emotions and patterns of behavior do not fit into that of your birth sex. Hysteria starts with the belief that your thoughts and emotions and patterns of behavior do not fit into that of your birth sex. Can't we do better than fighting over whether the government should be able to order a business to allow a 'transitioning male-to-female' person to wear dresses to work in a formal-attire environment?

Republican Wolves

Election Season is upon us, and everywhere are the markers of the two major political parties in the U.S. Everywhere, you will see the blue and the red. Everywhere, you will see the donkey and the elephant.

The elephant.

I would like to propose a change to the Republican Party visuals. I would like to replace the elephant with the wolf.

Now that sounds like a strange decision and not one that would immediately play well. After all, aren't wolves evil creatures who prey on the sick and weak? Well... that's the view of them from a herd mentality, and that's what I want to talk about today - herds and packs.

This morning, I mentioned something about a political group with a Cause and various Arguments, and my husband said, "Yeah, this reminds me of my Social Problems class in college. The professor kept saying that a Social Problem arises because the society as a whole comes to the conclusion that there is a problem. I kept saying that a Social Problem arises because a few leaders decide that it is a problem and go about convincing enough of the other people that it is a problem, whether it is or not."

I came fully awake. "You're right and your teacher was wrong, and I know why," I said.

A while ago, I came to the startling realization that human beings are pack animals by nature. I'd been following the research of one of my friends into wolves and wolf behavior, and doing some of my own research into the similarity of genetics in social behavior between humans and prairie voles. Our interests intersected, and I found a whole world of fascinating information. Humans and wolves have very similar social-behavior genetics, and naturally tend to form very similar social structures. After a while of saturating my brain with information about alphas, family packs (the naturally-formed wolf pack resembles a family tribe of an alpha, his daughters, and his daughters' mates, who include formerly-lone wolves from other packs), roles, and tactics, I made the inescapable conclusion: Humans are also pack animals, endurance hunters, and family units, just like wolves.

(And, as the part of the research that led me in this direction, humans are by nature sexually monogamous in bonded pairs. But that, and the liberal Democrat view on it, is another discussion entirely!)

Why was this such a startling conclusion? Just like my husband's Social Problems teacher, the education system is saturated with teachers and administrators teaching and reinforcing the idea that humans are herd animals. Children in school are treated like herd animals, and expected to act like herd animals. Examples of human behavior are often likened to herd behavior, even when the full story of any given incident indicates differently. We even use terms like "sheeple" to refer to "The Masses"... Wait, I've heard that term before. Yes, I have, and so have you. It came out of early socialist philosophy. The very idea of a Communist Paradise requires a type of herd mentality and, since humans do not naturally work together in herds the way that herd animals do, all actual implementations of Communism have required a "shepherd", a member treated as if he is of a different species (some animals are more equal than others), who is determined to be qualified to shove the herd when it isn't 'naturally congregating' in the right direction.

This goes all the way down to government-run healthcare, in which Former President Obama's famous line to Jane Strum about her elderly mother, vital and strong-hearted, would be better off with the pill than the pacemaker. "Devil take the hindmost". Well, to be more accurate, in my part of the country, the hindmost is generally taken by the wolves. The exception is The Children, who are protected not because they are weak, but because they are the future of the herd.

Now herd mentality actually works for herd animals. They will stampede together when the decision is made. They will line up together to protect the young when that decision is made. If a herd did not actually come to a herd decision through their herd behavior, they would flee wildly in all directions, trampling even their young, or refuse to stand up against an enemy that the entire herd can drive off together... kind of like humans in cities, being pushed into herd behavior and not being able to synthesize it. For this reason people are trained, in an emergency, to point at someone and say, "You call 911" instead of hollering, "Someone call 911!" which, in a herd, may result in many people calling, but, in a group of bystanders, all too often leads to everyone leaving the job to someone else. When you tell a specific person to call 911, a specific other person to direct traffic, etc., you may not wind up with a fully elegant solution, as you don't know which of the strangers are better or worse at the roles you are giving them. You will, however, always wind up with a better situation by organizing them into an impromptu pack (that is what you are doing) than leaving them as a disorganized non-herd.

Pack mentality among wolves incorporates a sense of what we would call 'natural rights', in which each member of the pack has a certain level of autonomy and a structure of authority to handle matters that cannot be handled individually. They put up with this because they can get more, more meat, better homes, more security than they can alone.

Now unlike Democrats, Republicans favor a governmental structure in which the top parts of the government are limited in power, because human beings work better in a series of packs, the leaders of those packs coming together to form structures that only handle what can't be done within the packs themselves, just as the individual only yields what authority he must to do in within the pack what he cannot do as a lone wolf. They tend to be willing to put up with a little more structure and authority than the Libertarians do. But they do not have the mentality that human beings are a very large herd which must be pushed about by a shepherd, as the Democrats do.

So when the Democrats like to say, "Wolves, eh? Wolves take the hindmost," what can we point out? In a wolf pack, the 'hindmost' is still a subordinate in the pack. Have you ever seen overindulgent people with their (often small-breed) dogs? The dogs are a holy terror and they give in to every little doggy whim, because they 'just want their darlings to be happy'. I am reminded of Democrats promising their "masses" every little bit of food, shelter, healthcare, bread, and circuses, delivered to them for free and to make them happy. A dog (by taxonomy merely a subordinate wolf in a human pack) who is treated this way will become fearful and aggressive. He develops anxiety issues and winds up a very unhappy, unhealthy pup. What a subordinate wolf needs desperately is to know that he has a place in the pack, to be given a role, a job, and to know that he has received a portion as large as it is because of the health of the pack. The "hindmost" in the pack needs what Republicans promise - workfare and an improved economy in which he can take up his place and feel secure in his pack.

Consider this in your own lives, taking it out of politics for a moment. Consider your place of employment, your gatherings for hobbies, your weekend activity groups, even your momentary inadvertent social structures, like the passengers of an airplane, the other people in a movie theater, the crowd at the scene of an accident. Are they acting as a pack or a herd? If they can be chivvied into an impromptu pack, will the experience be better for everyone?

And when you hear the grand speeches of the politicians, ask yourself: Are they treating us like herd animals or pack animals? What do their wordings and their programs imply?

Kneeling for the flag: A different perspective

Here we go again. Football season is nearly upon us. With it comes a batch of politics that the fans, in general, do not want. Attendance is lower. Ticket sales are cheaper. Pretty soon the players who are protesting their unfairly bad treatment at the hands of their customers are going to find that their customers aren't paying enough money to give them those multi-million dollar salaries.

Ok, that was a bit of a dig at the process, and perhaps an unfair one, considering the point I've come to present today. We seem to have two sides to this issue. One side says that these players are doing something utterly necessary and justifiable, because of the problems that those who share their ethnicity face every day in this country due merely to being of that ethnicity. The other side says that no amount of problems justify disrespect to the country itself and its national symbols, as if the players are protesting, not their problems, but the very fact that America exists. They also may downplay or deny any problems being faced by this ethnicity and point to the powerful and wealthy football players themselves as proof that these one-percenters have nothing to complain about.

But let's step to the side for a bit and look at this through a different lens.

There's no denying that there is still injustice for black people, particularly black men, in this country today. A very carefully-done bit of research shows that they are less likely than whites to be shot by police (the very thing that the football players mention the most) in equivalent situations. However, in equivalent situations, police use unnecessary force on blacks, especially black men, more than upon whites. They are more likely to be searched, more likely to be stopped, and more likely to be treated poorly when they are stopped. Now many whites have one, maybe two "this policeman was an idiot" stories to gripe about. Blacks have more, and I can see how a tipping point is reached in which "this policeman was an idiot" becomes "policemen themselves have it out for me".

I can understand this because one of my great-grandfathers lived the same life, only worse. Because of his ethnicity, he lived in the poorest parts of town. Because of his ethnicity, he faced violence as a daily possibility. In a world that was getting electricity into regular homes, he lived in a dwelling no more sophisticated than an African tribal hut. He and his family often lacked for the simplest necessities - food, clothing - and faced, at best, a level of threat from others that was similar to the worst threat faced by blacks from the KKK. Even more so, his was the first generation that, due to government reforms, was actually permitted to go into town and learn a trade so that he could actually have a job; his parents worked very hard to sell a few meager supplies here and there, but were not allowed to be actual legal employees, due to and only due to their ethnicity.

Now that's notable. The country was changing. The threats were beginning to wane. The opportunities were starting to come in. Things were improving. But he wanted more and better, and he started engaging in protests against the government. Instead of working within the system to secure further liberties, he chose to speak against the system and wish it to be changed to a new one. Like the football players' message - and if they want to convey a different message, they really need to find a different method - he wanted a change of government rather than for the government to use its existing powers to bring about the change he wanted.

Ok, granted, I don't know to which extent this specific man wanted this specific goal. But I can tell you that, whether he wanted it or not, he got it - and the same people who are pushing the black football players' protest got into control in his own country. The same ideology that leverage black racial struggles into fuel for the revolutionary fire leveraged his racial struggles into fuel for their own revolutionary fire, and he twigged on very quickly (a survival trait, in this case) as to the purpose and eventual fate of fuel.

He fled Eastern Europe, Russian territory, for the U.S. right 'round the neighborhood of 1905.

I'm not going to praise the Russian Imperial Government. I don't have a strong favorable or unfavorable opinion of Tsar Nicholas II, though I question whether his children really deserved to be hunted down and shot in the dirt like dogs. I'm not even sure if the rights my great-grandfather was looking for would have been attainable through the system, though I have to say that it looked like they were on the right track. But I can say this: the Bolshevik Communism that replaced it had no inherent human rights (even during periods when the government temporarily conceded privileges that we in America would call 'rights'), and had no love for Jews. My great-grandfather and his people were tools, and fools, for a political system that didn't care about them beyond what could be profited from their blood, sweat, and tears.

It is from that perspective that I see the football players kneel. I don't try to minimize the struggles of their people or claim that they have no grievance. (Though I include a few grievances that they seem uninterested in, like the government funding of an organization originally created to target their babies for death due to despising their ethnicity.) Neither do I believe that their particular form of protest is good and honest and totally justifiable. I believe they have the freedom in this great country to engage in their protest, just as they have the freedom, should they choose to leverage it, to use this system to correct the problems they face. My issue with their behavior is that they are targeting the system itself, and looking for changes that remind me strongly of my great-grandfather, the tool, the fool, for a political party that neither favors nor esteems them.

About ten years after my great-grandfather fled to New York City with little more than what he could carry, in hopes of avoiding the fire that would have burned him up, the young woman who would become my great-grandmother joined him. Her family had actually been, despite her shared ethnicity, as wealthy, powerful, and esteemed as those football players who are kneeling on the field. She had learned quickly what the football players will learn if they succeed in their protest; the new system is no kinder to them than to the people for whom they kneel.

The Other Path to a Living Wage

Living Wage.

This seems to be the new socialist bugaboo. I do call it socialist, even though its implementation may be more fascist in appearance. I have said this before: Fascism and Communism are two fingers on the same hand of Socialism, though one may be purer than the other. In the former, the government controls the people through the companies, while in the latter, the government forbids the companies and controls the people directly. There is very little difference; in Fascism, the government forbears the existence of the companies for the time being, while in a free market economy, the government is limited in the ways that it is allowed to control them.

Economics lesson aside, let's break into the actual thought. The usual suspects are now calling for a government-enforced "living wage", the ability of any job to support a spouse and family. They like to claim that this was quite possible and expected back "before all this deregulation", as if the 1950's may as well have been lived under the hammer and sickle or something. Frankly, I'm pretty sure they don't know what they're talking about. But let's take a moment and ask the question: Why are so many jobs no longer offering "a living wage"? There are a few reasons that we can note before stepping into this one. In the 1950's, a "living wage" supported a smaller home with fewer amenities, fewer electronic devices with monthly plans, fewer restaurant meals, and smaller wardrobes. If you were to study the time period and attempt to live only with the amount of stuff and amenities that they had, eating what they ate and owning the clothing that they owned, you might find that a minimum wage job would in fact provide your needs. But let's set that, also, aside for a moment and ask this question:

Are corporations not offering a "living wage" because they are already subsidizing it via government fiat?

A worker costs an employer a great deal. Government-required taxes and benefits alone may increase the cost of an employee a minimum of 25% and maximum (more common in larger businesses, which have additional mandates that small businesses do not) of 40% above the employee's base salary. Many of these 'benefits', like 'health insurance' (itself becoming increasingly expensive and useless), would have been paid by the worker back in the days of the Living Wage.

On the other side, we have corporate and personal income taxes. Why did I say "corporate and personal"? Many companies nowadays are taking advantage of the S-Corp filing status, and filing as if they are persons. That lowers the bewildering complexity of the process and may lower the tax rate. On the other hand, someone who makes $35K/year may be paying taxes on his company's $120K/year profits instead. When we talk about government income from employers, we need to include them. All in all, the top 1% of income earners pay nearly half of personal income taxes, the top 20% pay 85% (the bottom 60% pay 2%), and many, perhaps even most, of those are S-Corps rather than individuals like Elon Musk or Bill Gates. The average S-Corp tax rate is 31%, with a range of 19-35%. (Note: That information is pre-Trump and so is at least slightly out-of-date. But hopefully it gets some thoughts stirring.)

Including all Federal spending, over half goes to social welfare programs, and state spending further adds to the bundle. A cursory look 'round state budget pie charts shows that welfare spending seems to run about the 20-40% range in general. Where am I going with this?

The average low-paying job is indeed already paying a Living Wage.

How can this be? Well, in the 1950's, he would do it by giving you a paycheck with which you could purchase all that you need. Nowadays, he does it the same way the government does for nonworking families. He pays for your health insurance, pays for a fair bit of your tax burden (did you know he pays half your Social Security tax? Try to work for yourself and you'll quickly find that out!), and pays the government to give you food stamps, heating assistance, rent assistance, free school lunches for your children, possibly free medical care for your children as well (CHIP/SCHIP), and, as your salary, a small cash allowance with which to obtain that which he and the government through his taxes have not provided.

Indeed, we see that this provision is sufficient, as there are workers in California under an increased minimum wage who have asked for fewer hours in order to preserve the same Living Wage.

Now's the part where everyone starts accusing me of saying that the poor have it easy, that they are freeloaders, that I don't care if babies starve, yadda yadda. Let's see who can continue to keep an open mind and listen to what I have to say about that. This is not by any means an ideal situation, and the poor do struggle. The reason they struggle, however, is not due to lack of funding. It is because the method of that funding is almost the least efficient and least effective manner possible. I say "almost" only because full-on Communism exists in the world, and it is by far the least useful way to handle wealth.

Raising children has helped me to remember and think about what it was like to be a child. People look back to that time period fondly, thinking of it as being idyllic, because "the world was less complicated and more safe". Indeed, when an adult controls your life, you have less responsibility and you don't have to worry as much about the dangers that still surround you. You still have a chance of being hungry, of being homeless, but in that event the adult will tell you what to do. What people forget is the loss of freedom. Sure, there's a measure of it if you live in a suburban area and own a bicycle. Other than that, though... You still have to ask if you can go to a friend's house. You have to ask if you want to visit a museum. You have to accept the food they give you; your parents determine your diet. You are severely restricted in how you can earn income and how much money you will have. And, of course, your school takes up much more of your life than you would have ever remembered; your precious memories of freedom and fun were most likely snipped out of a plethora of weekends and holidays (the parts that don't involve mandatory visits and customs) and stitched together out of a pair of decades.

Well, the current method of providing a Living Wage is much like being a child. Someone else controls how often/much your house receives to heat, how much you spend on food, which doctors you see, and what your child eats for lunch every school day. This is great, if you live the exact lifestyle that these social programs were optimized for. The problem is that it does narrow you down into a specific form of lifestyle; a purely cash form of a Living Wage allows you to spend more on your housing and less on your cell phone, or more on your clothing and less on your groceries. It can be very, very frustrating to need money for one budget category and be blocked by the Government from simply doing what the middle class takes for granted and transferring it from another category.

What is the answer?

The obvious answer to me is to reduce and reform the welfare system, and with it the tax system. Every reduction in welfare spending must be paired with an equal reduction in employer taxes. I was hesitant to suggest this before, because there must be a time period, I thought, in which wages were still low and people would be hurting. However, the quick responses of businesses in handing out bonuses as they began to raise wages after Trump's tax cut surprised and emboldened me in saying this: As they spend less on the employees through the government, they will spend more on the employees through regular wages.

On top of that, market competition will come into play, this time with a strong emphasis on employee demands rather than employer offers. When you can get a job as a cashier at Walmart and have the government spend tens of thousands of dollars on welfare to make up your Living Wage, you will not have to insist that your employer pays you that wage or you will fight for one of the jobs that pays it. The employment market is indeed a market with customers and 'sellers', and companies that do not offer that wage will have difficult finding people qualified to do the work.

If we do this, I think we will find that the effect of "wages not rising with national wealth", an argument that Liberals tend to use to try to justify actions that depress wages further, will correct itself, and workers will receive their Living Wage as cash instead of an unholy mixture of cash, government-mandated employer spending, and government-mandated welfare spending.

The real civil war in America

Democrats like to taunt Republicans by claiming that there are all these "racist old white men" in the party. Their claim is based in part in truth, in that there was an influx of old Southerners back in the 1960's who fled the Democrat Party over the civil rights movement. However, this is only the very surface of the story, and held at an angle that gives people a very misleading impression of what actually happened.

This is what actually happened.

McCarthy, previously vilified by history as having started the "Red Scare" and "being wrong", is increasingly being justified in retrospect. Though many of the people he targeted in his investigations were not specifically planning open treason against the government, they were card-carrying Communists who were bent on a much longer game plan. Communism did spread from its birthplace into America and lay dormant through the World Wars. In the 1960's, it finally did make itself visible.

History books talk about the "Civil Rights Era" and the "Civil Rights Laws". There were actually two Civil Rights Eras, each pushed by radically different people, for radically different purposes, with radically different results.

The first was the work of the Republicans. Old South Democrat racists, seeing their power slipping further and further as businesses saw no reason to refuse blacks (their money was as green as everyone else's, after all) and blacks themselves were rising quickly through the economic ranks, set out to make state laws prohibiting the free market from treating people of all races equally. This, like the American Civil War itself, was a desperate holding action against the natural, corrective power of our country the way it was created by our Founders. Blacks were on their way up. Within another generation, they would be indistinguishable from the rest of the country, from the Germans and Irish and all those other cultures which had started out on the bottom of the heap. The Republicans in the Federal Government correctly sought to strike down the artificial barriers being placed against blacks by the state governments.

The second was the work of the newly-infiltrated Democrat Party, and it was not actually about race at all. Like Modern Feminism, which came out of the same era and the same birthplace as Socialism (which is meant to be the transitional stage to Communism), this new Democrat Party was merely seizing upon the grievances of a minority in hopes of imposing government control on the majority. Their goal was not to remove artificial barriers that were oppressing a people, but to change the function of the government from one that keeps the playing field level to one that rewards 'winners' and 'losers' according to government policy. (If you want to know who sets the policy and how, I strongly recommend the entire Francis Schaeffer "How Should We Then Live?" series, made up of ten half-hour episodes.)

They sought, not to remove government barriers to one race, but to impose government barriers upon another race. The Voting Rights Act and Affirmative Action (once more correctly called Reverse Discrimination) came from two different sources; from two different sides of this new civil war.

What is this new civil war about? It isn't about gay wedding cakes and transgender bathrooms. It isn't about birth control and 'Equal Pay'. It's about what President Obama so neatly explained as "negative rights" versus "positive rights". Is it more important that the government be allowed to pick winners and losers according to government judgment? Or is it more important that the government be restrained by the people? Some mistakenly believe (I have addressed this before and may do so again) that the fight is Corporatism vs. Fascism. It doesn't have to be. A government focused on "negative rights" does not have the power to support either path. As I've said before:

Capitalism - the system in which the government is empowered to prevent companies from using lawlessness to stifle competition, and the government is constitutionally fettered to prevent companies from using laws to stifle competition.

The Republican Civil Rights provided a shining example of "negative rights": the government shall not be permitted to force one race below another. The Democrat Civil Rights provided a shining example of "positive rights": the government shall have the power to elevate one race above the other.

What prompted all of this? The North Carolina Bathroom Bill, actually. Talk about going far afield, right? The Charlotte ordinance that the bill is meant to strike down is an artificial barrier set up by the government in order to have the government choose 'winners' and 'losers'. It embodies the "positive rights" that Obama loves: the government has the right to tell you what it can/must do for/to you. What it states, in short, is that no private business or organization has the right to bar anybody of either gender from a gender-separated space. In short, by the law, a battered woman's shelter must permit a man to enter the ladies' shower room, sit down, and watch them shower naked, if that's what he wants to do. He cannot be told to leave just because he is fully and unapologetically male.

The much-derided "bathroom bill", on the other hand, embodies "negative rights". It says that the government does not have the right to force a private business to let somebody into a gender-separated changing/showering/bathroom/etc. space, unless said person can show, if challenged, documentation that he or she is of the declared gender. (Your gender is on your driver's license and your birth certificate, and post-op transgender/transsexual people can have it officially changed.) Now this is not a requirement upon the business; nobody has to ask, nobody has to check, and nobody has to try to bar anybody from entering a bathroom. The choice is theirs. If they choose to tell a given person, "You look like a man, so you can't go in there," the person who is challenged can display that document and must be permitted to enter.

Under the "bathroom bill", the battered woman's shelter can bar anyone with  functional male genitalia from entering the shower. However, the Walmart can set up a DADT policy in which people who are obviously transgender and "passing" are allowed in, and any liberal fruitcake hippie shop can choose to let men and women freely intermix in one big, 'happy' locker room. And people can choose to frequent the places of which they approve and avoid the places which make them uncomfortable.

Along with the freedom to choose comes the ability to react quickly and fluidly to unexpected situations. The most religiously gender-separated facility can choose to let a desperate pregnant woman into the men's room, or to let an elderly man assisting his disabled wife into the ladies' room. When the government makes the decision, however, the leering middle-aged man cannot be removed even if a sexual abuse survivor needs to use the facility... because such reasonable decisions made by private people in the course of day-to-day business are now against the law.

The real two sides of this civil war are no longer to be found between the Democrats and the Republicans, because there are people who are only Republican because they disagree with the decisions coming from up high, not with the notion of centralized power. If the Democrats decided to set government policy throwing homosexuals in jail for engaging privately in government-forbidden sex acts, or to mandate that all public meetings must start with a prayer led by a confirmed member of their favorite Christian sub-denomination, there are "Republicans" who would quite happily jump ship again. The real civil war is between them and those who say, simply, "The government cannot have this power," and hold to it even when people are not forbidden from doing things that they personally find abhorrent.

Lateral movement is not progress

If I've heard it once, I've heard it a thousand times. At some point in any abortion debate, someone is on the "pro-choice" side is going to retort with the question of how many babies the people on the pro-life side have adopted. Whether they realize it or not, this is their premise: "You are not allowed to desire that a person does not murder another person unless you are willing to take on full, cradle-to-grave responsibility for the would-be murderer's potential victim."

That's the surface premise, anyways. The deeper premise is even more ostentatious and cruel than they realize, because they lack the full picture.

Once upon a time, an unwed pregnancy resulted in either a shotgun wedding or a woman struggling to raise her bastard child alone. The lucky single mother raised hers among her own extended family. Famous men could usually get away with fathering children they had no intention of supporting; in other cases, the woman's family, the male members in particular, acted to make sure that he paid in one way or another.

At one point, society decided that the government needed to be involved in this situation. First unwed mothers were required to live in group homes. Then welfare was extended to their families. Then welfare (originally meant only for widows) was restructured so that unwed mothers received more goods and services than other family types. Finally, abortion was both legalized and encouraged, with highschools enabling it secretly, receptionists glancing the other way, and advisers of all sorts telling young women that, if they carried their pregnancies to term, their entire lives, hopes, and dreams would be over. The fact that society's willingness to glance the other way has enabled many predators and outright rapists to hide the evidence of their crimes is another sordid story entirely.

What happened was this: At first, the unwed pregnancy was the responsibility of the father and then, should he manage to escape it, the mother, with an expectation that her family would step in. Then, the unwed pregnancy became the responsibility of all of us. Now, "we" are trying to escape "our" unearned responsibility by coaxing, pressuring, or outright coercing the mother into an abortion.

"So how many have YOU adopted?" means, in a deeper context, "She shouldn't be allowed to keep her baby. If she won't kill it, it should be taken away from her for her own good." Oh, it isn't a matter of legality, not yet, but the clear majority of women in even the most "pro-choice"-friendly polls and studies say that they wanted to keep their babies, but that they felt pressured or forced into getting an abortion instead. "So how dare YOU vote to lower these social programs?" means, in a deeper context, "This baby is your responsibility. If you don't pressure her to kill it, it falls to you to support the child." Have you noticed yet what is missing from this equation?

My grandmother is strongly in favor of requiring an unwed mother to give the father's name before she is allowed to receive government services, so that the State can seek him out for recompense. She was born in the mid-'30's, and is appalled at the current state of affairs, where men are 'free' to have sex with as many women as they like, without consequences, and the men (and women) who buckle down, work hard, and wear themselves out providing for their own families must now return for several more hours of work to deal with the freeloaders. When she says "freeloaders", she is not speaking of the unwed mother and her children. She is speaking of their absent fathers.

What she sees, and what I see, is a new form of patriarchal oppression. Modern Feminism loves to talk about 'patriarchal oppression', and for the most part, they are blowing smoke. That doesn't mean that there were never forms of patriarchal oppression in society from time to time. This was one of them: Men of certain stature were allowed, during certain areas of society, to avoid responsibility for impregnating women. We saw it among royalty and nobility in the feudal systems. We also saw it among slaveowners in the Deep South. Everyone else would shuffle about and cover it up, and those few men 'at the top' would know that they could do as they liked without repercussions or responsibility. In modern times, aided and abetted by Modern Feminism, we have the same situation again: Men are allowed to avoid responsibility for impregnating women.

The 'adoption/welfare' argument assumes as a beginning premise that, when a man is a cad, we are the ones personally responsible for the result. The 'pro-choice' argument itself concludes that the only way for us to absolve ourselves of his responsibility is to encourage or urge her to have the abortion.

Trump and the Liberal Conspiracy Theory

I don't make decisions like this lightly, but I do hold them lightly. I will not pledge right here and now that I will unquestionably not vote for Donald Trump if he is the Republican nominee. I will, however, state that, as the election currently stands, my decision is that I will not vote for him, even against Hillary.

Nobody is going to guess the real reason.

Oh, there are plenty of reasons that liberals like to talk badly about Trump. They accuse him of being racist because he has an immigration policy that legally-residing Hispanics love. They send people to his rallies to violently attack his supporters and then call his supporters violent when they defend themselves. They take half of what he says so badly out of context that it doesn't even resemble what he actually says. They seem determined to attack him in all the ways that will make his supporters dig in their heels and promise to stay with him forever.

I'm not even all that concerned about many of the attacks on the Right. This whole kerfuffle about his wife... I can take that in a candidate. I can even take a certain level of moderate politics in a candidate. After all, I voted for McCain over Obama, and then I voted for Romney over Obama, and I encouraged my friends and family to do the same.

So what has changed?

I believe that the leadership in the Democrat Party has, for decades now, desired to establish full-out government control along socialist principles, whether by Fascism or straight-out Communism. They want command. They want to be in charge. This isn't really the condemnation that it may seem like. Throughout history, the majority of higher-ups have desired control over larger groups of people. Everyone wants to be the king, the general, the emperor, the supreme leader. The unusual thing in human society has been a free society, a system in which the people are, as individuals, in control of their own lives. It is no accident that these societies have invariably been Jewish or Christian. You have to feel as if someone is in control and, if that someone is God, then it is wrong for you to subjugate your fellow man. (Even in areas where they have failed in this, the precepts of Christianity have been a correcting action that have caused Christians, not outsiders, to correct it.)

But I digress.

Socialism doesn't just happen. It takes sacrifice. Even on the face of it, it takes sacrifice that the people believe will yield benefits down the line. In implementation, of course, the sacrifice continues to strengthen and the benefits do not appear. The important thing is, people don't just take to socialism "because". They start by believing that it is a better system than what they have. Either they lose faith in that "invisible hand" in a free market (whether you believe in God or in the laws of nature), or they live in a system that is not a free market, or both. Socialism took hold in Germany under a war-torn country forced to make heavy reparations from a destroyed economy. Socialism took hold in Russia as a replacement for the iron hand of Imperialism; early Party members were fighting, not for a command economy, but merely for the allowance of sick days for workers. When socialists started trying to find ways to implement their system in the U.S., they ran into a problem... they could not easily convince anybody that socialism was better than what they had, because what they had was freedom, prosperity, and even the poorest considered themselves to be "temporarily embarrassed millionaires".

To peddle their system, they would have to change the one we already had.

Do I have proof that this is a conspiracy theory led by the leadership of the party? No, not really. I know this; though the "Red Scare" and McCarthyism went too far and was misused for witch hunts, history has vindicated McCarthy himself. Though most of the people he investigated were not foreign agents seeking to betray America to her enemies, they were dedicated socialists seeking to transform America into a socialist country over time. We've seen their efforts in the school systems (where they've been pretty brazen about their goals and plans) and in other areas of society. There's one in particular that I want to focus on today, and that is the effort to spread corporatism (what in the 18th century would have been called 'mercantilism') while redefining capitalism such that people believe that capitalism is really corporatism, and socialism is the other choice in the false dichotomy that they are working to set up.

We've seen this whenever Democrats have derided Republicans for being "pro-big business" for wanting to lower taxes or regulations on all businesses (because, of course, a big business makes more profits from it than a small business, even if the small business benefits at a much higher percentage). Then those Democrats tighten regulation and taxes, but they define loopholes for big businesses that support them, and declare this to be "their willingness to enable capitalism". They present the worst parts of corporatism to us, call it 'capitalism', and say that 'capitalism doesn't work'. I have been confused when I've watched movies like Robocop after being told that it's about the evils of capitalism, because it isn't about capitalism at all. It's about corporatism. (I've given you a few sketches here. I could probably write a book on this process and the harm it's doing.) And now we come to the crux of the reason why I don't think I can vote for Trump.

Trump is a corporatist running as a capitalist.

If Hillary wins because I vote for a third party, it's going to be bad. It's going to be tough. Short-term, it's going to be awful. But if Trump wins because I vote for him, then I have colluded in the Democrat effort to rebrand corporatism as 'capitalism'. In the short term, he will not be as bad as Hillary in most respects. In the long term, however, if he provides that last big push, if his reign in office brings us to the point where we truly believe the false dichotomy, the long-term ramifications will be far, far worse.

We will be choosing between Corporatism and Socialism.

And whichever wins, we will lose.

Why should this be a Christian nation?

Talk about a hot topic, especially today. What does it mean, to be a Christian nation? Is this a Christian nation? We can run the gamut, from those who believe that everyone in this nation should be taught Christianity and Christian morality in public school, and that laws should be made to enforce Christian morality, to those who believe that the Founding Fathers weren't really Christians at all, and that the most important thing is to never make any law that supports any other religion's morality at all. (Unless it happens to also support the morality held by the person who is arguing the point, of course.)

Forget all of that for a moment.

There are a few very important things that Christianity in particular, more than any other religion, brings to the philosophy that created this nation and this nation's government. They won't be found simply by attending the right kind of church for the right number of years, or swearing your oath on a Bible instead of a Koran, or even being able to quote Bible verses without sticking your foot so far down your throat that you can kick your own a-.........butt. These are principles that are simple and easily observable in the Real World, yet, in the U.S. political party which has basically repudiated God altogether, at least one of the most important is being forgotten.

Human beings are corruptible.
Government is made of human beings.
Thus, government is corruptible.

I'm going to pick on Bernie Sanders again, because he represents the epitome of this claim. Business owners, he argues, can be corruptible, because their mission is greed. (It isn't. But that's another topic.) The government, on the other hand, can be safely trusted with any amount of power.

Let me give you an invaluable little tip about socialism. When socialists, even purveyors of "democratic socialism", use the term "the people", what they really mean is the government. This makes sense, actually, doesn't it? If the government officials are elected by the people, that means that they speak for the people, right? Therefore, they practically *are* 'the people'. What's good for them is what's good for us, because they are us.

The reason why this mindset becomes a problem, the reason why socialism in all its forms has never yet worked, is because it assumes that government representatives are able to represent The People purely and perfectly. However, each representative is his or her own human being, and human beings are corruptible.

Our government was set up the way it was in hopes of reducing and decentralizing power, because it was set up by people who understand the Christian notion that man is corruptible. They practically counted on corruption in politics. The reason for separation of powers was the hope that corruption could be cornered and countered, and not given the power it needs to metastasize.

This is similar to the dual-hydraulic system in automotive brakes. You could just have one brake line with one cylinder, to make your brakes work when you press on the pedal. Instead, you have two. Why? If you lose one brake line (this happened to me a few months ago, actually), you will have weak braking power instead of no braking power. The hope is that both lines won't go at the same time, and generally, minus deliberate sabotage, they won't. The Founding Fathers never assumed, as the Democrats do, that they could create a government with no failure points. They simply tried to design a government which could have failure points without destroying the whole.

Bernie Sanders is advocating for simpler, more streamlined systems with higher government control, more centralized, to reduce the number of steps between us and our government. He believes that it will be less expensive and easier to run a country if all citizens must answer to the Federal Government in as many parts of their lives as possible. The Federal Government gives you your health care. The Federal Government handles your college education. His problem is that he really does believe - or at least preach - as if the government is the only human invention that is incorruptible.

He isn't the only one on my hotseat today, as you may have guessed from my allusion to Bible verses. Obama has been using executive orders in an unprecedented way, to circumvent a Congress which he complains is "too slow" and may not believe that his way is the right way. He is basically doing the equivalent of speeding up automobile production and making vehicles less expensive by outlawing the dual-hydraulic system instead of, say, loosening Federal restrictions on which types of extra peripherals a car might contain or, perhaps, ending Federal taxes on auto manufacturing employees.

I'm sure it sounds like a great idea.... until the inevitable corruption hits, and someone has to slam on the brakes.

What makes Christianity important in this nation? One of the most important theological guidelines is, increasingly, one of the most neglected - human beings do not become incorruptible just because they work for the government.

Don't we know that by now?

The Ying and the Yang

Does everyone know what a yinyang is? At this point, I would be surprised if you did not, especially among my usual body of readers, who tend to be well-educated. Let me lay out out, just to be sure. A yinyang is that funny symbol with a white swirl and a black swirl meeting each other, in identical sizes and shapes, making up a circle when placed together. The white swirl has a black dot in its largest area, and the black has a white dot in its largest area.

The yinyang is a Traditional Chinese symbol. European mythology has generally contrasted light and dark with good and evil, or with purity and sin. Buddhists don't do this. The yinyang represents, not enemies matching each other with equal power, but two differing and unopposing powers of equal strength, who need each other to survive. The white brings out the black; the black brings out the white. Remove one, and they both suffer. In the excellently-written "Avatar: The Last Airbender" series, the Moon and Ocean spirits are depicted as a black and white fish swimming around each other. The Moon and the Ocean, as mythical creatures as well as scientific entities, act upon each other, but are not considered adversaries.

The element "yin" is female, and the element "yang" is male.

So let's pretend for a moment that you are an old practitioner of Chinese Traditional beliefs. You have a little shop in town, where you sell yinyang pendants, other pendants like the multicolored, five-pointed star, herbs and spices, and about eight different flavors of Pocky. The adults like the spices, the teens like the pendants, which they wear carelessly (but that doesn't bother you), the kids love the Pocky.

One day, a young woman enters your shop, wearing a pendant that depicts a big black spot. Trying to make conversation, you admire her black spot pendant. To your surprise, she screams and curses at you and tells you that it is a yinyang. Puzzled and confused, trying to pull yourself together under her onslaught, you try to explain the concept of the yinyang and why it is not a black spot... why the yang is as important as the yin and the yin as important as the yang. She tells you that you're a racist bigot and an idiot, threatens to burn down your house, and storms out of the shop, leaving you shaken.

Over the next few months, you start seeing this more and more. People enter the shop with black pendants or white pendants and insist that they are yinyangs. You don't really care if they want to wear black or white pendants. You are a bit concerned that they think these are yinyangs, but any attempts to explain otherwise are met with open hostility and, at times, threats. You keep up your shop, you are happy to explain your traditions to those who ask, and you delight in explaining how yinyang equivalents can be found in almost any other culture out there, including their own... but you have learned to tense up and shut up when you see someone wearing a black pendant or a white pendant.

Then the government, one day, declares that since you sell yinyang pendants (to anybody who wants them, as always), you are required to manufacture and sell white dots and black dots to anybody who wants them (which you honestly wouldn't mind doing and have already done a few times), and you are specifically required to label them as "yinyang pendants" (which is the part that bothers you). On that very same day, people come into your shop, screaming insults at you when they realize you haven't decided whether to lie about Traditional Chinese symbols for the sake of your income or close your shop entirely. "Your rights aren't being affected," they insist, "because you are allowed to say that the black and white symbol is a yinyang as long as you do it very quietly in your house while you're engaging in acts of meditation." Then they start mocking you. "The government hasn't redefined yinyang at all, and I bet you can't prove otherwise!" they say, and when you try to explain the history of your people and the yinyang equivalents of other cultures, they tell you that you are stupid and uneducated, and, therefore, nothing you say matters.

But most of all, since you have never objected when they simply wore the black or white dots, and, though you may have been perturbed when they said it was yinyang, you would not have forbidden them through the government from making their claims, you are saddened and perplexed by their insistence that you not only follow their terminology, but sell those black and white dots specifically as yinyangs in your own shop.

And now, in the aftermath of the government's decision, what seems strangest to you is that the people who won, the people who decided to "redefine" your symbol and shut you up with threats of government punishment should you disagree, seem to be the angriest of all the parties once involved in the now-stifled debate of whether a yinyang can exist without the yin or without the yang.

Who keeps your brother?

So the news is buzzing about Obama's dealings with this organization called "My Brother's Keeper", which has something to do with tutoring black teenagers. The phrase was used by Obama himself in a call for the government to interfere in our lives as much as possible 'for our own good'.

Of course, his use of this phrase and his support of this group is horribly funny for several reasons.

1. The very phrase "my brother's keeper", as Obama pointed out as a misguided attempt to justify his point, was spoken by Cain to God when God asked Cain where his brother Abel was. Of course, Cain had ample reason to know where Abel was, having just killed him in anger. However, all that aside, assuming as Cain did that God did not know about the murder, it could have been a valid question.

"Am I my brother's keeper?"

What he meant by it was this: My brother is a grown man, an adult. He doesn't need someone to hold his hand. He doesn't need me to always know where he is and what he's doing. He doesn't need someone else making all his decisions for him as if he was a child. My brother doesn't need a 'keeper'. In short, "my brother's keeper" was a sarcastic barb meant to make the point that adults don't need other people living their lives for them - the exact opposite of the way Obama used the phrase.

Shorter version: Obama took seriously a sarcastic phrase spoken by a liar and murderer.

2. Obama hasn't been his own brother's keeper. Barack Obama still has a half-brother in Kenya who still lives in a hut made of garbage because it's the best he's got. Despite the fact that the average monthly salary in Kenya is 1% of Obama's presidential salary, Obama can't seem to spare a single dollar for his own family. Of course, that's just his half-brother. He also has an aunt living on government welfare funds in Massachusetts, despite being an illegal immigrant.

Even if we play the sarcastic phrase straight, as Obama did, isn't it telling that he cares more about making other people help strangers than about helping his own family with his own money?

3. Obama doesn't treat black tutors very well when they don't fit into his political agenda. Now, my first two points may make it seem as if I object to people tutoring black teens. Far from it. I've done it myself (I am willing to tutor those in need and many of them have been black and teenaged), and I think it is a solidly good idea to do what we can, as a personal and Christian care for those in need rather than a government program or presidential guilt-trip, to alleviate some of the burdens caused by the rampant fatherlessness in the black communities.

However, one of the men well-known in his community for tutoring black teens in need as part of his many contributions to society was nearly killed by a criminal whom Obama identified as a metaphorical son. Protecting tutors of black teens seems to mean nothing to Obama when he can use an incident to inflame racial tensions and ensure that the only people able to safely tutor black teens are blacks who have not "gone white", "turned Oreo", or "become Uncle Toms" (I'll spare you the Uncle Tom pet peeve today), and therefore are likely even less qualified to aid these people than the people they are supposed to be aiding.

Then again, with Common Core coming into full swing especially in the big cities where underprivileged black teens tend to live, who will know how to tutor them anymore?

The Law that Must Not Be Named

I noticed an interesting trend today. I've been hearing it for several months now, without really thinking about it. Today, however, it happened twice in a row, within less than a half hour, from two different people, and I found it rather disturbing. Note: I live in a state full of Independents, but most of them vote Democrat most of the time. Technically I live in a "blue state", though that doesn't quite describe the situation.

In both cases, we were talking about health insurance, because the first person was trying to help me sort out my paperwork. He was neither family nor friend; he had come specifically to "help me sign up for Medicaid", only to discover that I had already received my children's confirmation letter, and was still waiting for their cards. He nodded as I told him how our employer's PPO had more than doubled in price.

"Yes," he said. "I know, the same thing happened to me. Ever since," he began, paused, and said delicately, "the thing a few years ago, you know..."
"Yes, I know," I replied, and the conversation continued on from there.

My sister's boyfriend's mother drove in as the first fellow was leaving, and we got to talking about why he was here and the bureaucracy we were dealing with. "Oh, I know!" she said. "We lost our insurance! Right around the time that, you know..."

What is this? The Law that Must Not Be Named? Are people afraid? I talked to my House Representative staff yesterday, calling to complain about the problems with the ACA/Obamacare and the way it was affecting us. The staff member proceeded to tell me that people mistakenly thought that the ACA was involved in these problems, when in fact it was not. "Oh," I could not help saying, though I was trying to be nice, "See, I was under the impression that a law mandating a significant expansion of Medicaid had something to do with delays caused by significantly expanding Medicaid."

She deferred.

Yes, my House Representative is a Democrat and one that has remained in favor of the ACA.

A lot of people are angry about the changes. A lot of people are suffering. There are tons of stories like mine. I'm actually very lucky, in that we have not yet been turned down for treatment of serious health problems. Don't we have the right to speak up, speak out, speak amongst ourselves, and discuss this clearly? Are people afraid to criticize the ACA openly? Why are we suddenly saying "You know" and "That thing"?

This is the United States!

What's going on here?

Elliot Rodger and the Willing Women

A few days ago, an angry, bitter, deranged young man who had been shuttled back and forth between two broken homes for much of his formative years enacted the ultimate act of revenge upon the people he had come to blame for his misfortunes. He killed both men and women by stabbing, shooting, and using a motor vehicle, thus making the usual blame-guns narrative a little more difficult to sustain than usual.

Various people have blamed various things. One article blamed his parents for divorcing (while making it clear that he is ultimately at fault for his own actions). Another blamed the video games into which he sought solace. Yet others have claimed that the girls who shunned him were at fault for refusing to have sex with him. They depict these girls, as he did, as bullies who tease certain types of young men by dressing sexily and then having sex with different young men instead.

I'm not going to blame the girls. That's silly. I'm not really 'blaming' anybody but him, in the end. He had a problem and he went off. It happens occasionally, even in the best society. If it hadn't been the girls, he would have found something else. However, I do want to discuss something that this whole situation has uncovered, a profound change in society that I see as a larger problem that daily causes its own griefs and tragedies, never covered on the news. The crux of the statement just happens to be the very point of Elliot Rodger's manifesto: He felt that it was the women's job to seek him out for sex, the way they had been seeking out other men for sex, thus their refusal was a personal slight.

When did our society change so profoundly?

Before Modern Feminism, the man's job was to pursue the woman, and the woman's job was to not make his task easy. I am not talking about flirting with him, making promises only to withdraw them, teasing him for amusement. Her job was to rebuff him unless he met a set of standards that were hardly arbitrary: keep himself clean, show respect for her, and ensure that he had the ability to provide for her should she make herself vulnerable through pregnancy. Then as now, she decided whether he was worthy. Then, unlike now, she required him to commit to her exclusively, first.

 "What is the position of women in SNCC? The position of women in SNCC is prone." That quip, made by 1960's activist  Stokely Carmichael, seems to describe the position of women in this new liberal feminist 'paradise'. Around the same time, liberal feminist groups worked out the slogan "Women Say Yes to Men Who Say No", which basically promised free sex to men who did not join the military to fight in the Vietnam War. More recently, "Rock the Vote" encouraged women to offer sex only to men who supported Obamacare. Imagine the irony of a bunch of "liberated" women trading sexual favors in return for having someone else buy their hormonally-based contraception.

Now as I said above, Elliot Rodger had problems, and he would have fixated on something. I do have to ask, however, if those women did not grow up in a society that expected them to seek out men and have sex with them while teasing the others with their partly-clothed bodies, would he have developed the belief that it was their job to have sex with him?

Fairness

When I was pretty young, maybe around that nebulous area from 3rd to 5th grade, my old church had a talent contest. No categories, no rules except, of course, for basic decency... any child who wanted to show up was welcome to come up on stage and do something for the crowd. Prizes were given out. They were pretty dinky prizes, of course, but I wanted one badly.

I was a piano player, and a good one, too. I selected a challenging piece that I loved, something beautiful, and I learned it by heart. I played it over and over. I worked through the rough spots over and over. I mastered that piece and learned to play it with emphasis.

There was another girl in my neighborhood who also played piano. She was a born genius. She was incredibly gifted. She taught herself how to play from a very young age. When she entered the competition, I knew one of the prizes would be hers. On the day of the competition, she played a song that she had written herself.

At my turn, I sat up there feeling nervous as anything, but I made a good start and carried it through brilliantly. I didn't miss a single note. I remembered my emphasis. I picked a darn good song and I played it well. I left the bench knowing that I had done as well as I could have hoped for. As I heard the others, mostly singers, do their piece one by one, I knew I had done well enough for a coveted prize. Most of the singers flubbed their parts. Few were on tune. Some simply got stage fright and refused to perform at all.

Then the prizes were given out. My neighbor got one, of course. The other five or six prizes were handed out among the singers, several of whom had made huge mistakes in their parts. After the show, I asked, politely and curiously, why my piece had not been good enough to merit a prize. I was not being rude or demanding. I was confounded, and I was seeking understanding.

"Oh, you were definitely good enough! But we got together and decided that since there were only two piano players, it wasn't fair to give both of them prizes. There were a lot more singers, so we gave the rest of the prizes among them. It was only fair."

This was my first experience with the term "fair" as it is now used in political discussion, and I learned a great deal. I learned that everything I was taught in inspirational movies and stories did not count. I learned that it didn't matter how much I dreamed, how long I practiced, how hard I tried, or how well I did. A society built on "fairness" could simply decide to deny me anything I earned for relatively arbitrary reasons.

Now I could look back at those cheap silly prizes - my neighbor got a simple curly drinking straw - and laugh that it ever meant so much to me. Truthfully, it didn't matter if the prize was a piece of paper, or simply a verbal "well done". From that day on, I never, ever regarded the argument "it's only fair" with anything but hostile suspicion. And to this day, the easiest way to turn me off to a proposed law or regulation is to use the phrase...

"It's only fair."

Extremism

Beware extremism in all its forms!

The extreme opposite opinion of "Outlaw guns in schools" is *not* "Permit teachers to be armed". The extreme opposite is "Force all teachers to be armed".

The extreme opposite of an alcoholic is a teetotaler, not someone who has half a glass in an entire week and puts a little sherry in the stew.

The extreme opposite of nationalism is anti-nationalism, as was seen by a teacher in South Carolina who stomped on the American flag and told his students that it meant nothing.

The extreme opposite of racism against blacks is affirmative action, not equal access for all.

Why should we beware the extreme opposite in all forms? Because the extreme opposites are, in their way, *identical* problems. The person who throws acid at women for wearing skirts above the ankle is just as consumed by lust as the one who gives women free drinks for exposing their bodies. The person who rages at his child for not being good at sports is not different from the person who rages at his child for not being good at music.

Why am I saying this? Well, it seems that, nowadays, the conservative viewpoint is being described as the "opposite extremist" from liberalism. This is most certainly not true. Increasingly, the conservative viewpoint is the one demonstrating moderation, and the exact opposite from liberalism is not being expressed at all.

Here's another example. The extremist on one side says that gays should have their relationships labeled and honored by the government and society as 'marriage', and woe to those who disagree however politely. However, they claim that the extremist on the other side is the one who simply allows the gays to live their lives in peace. The real extremist view is one that few, if any, Americans would tolerate... that of putting those who engage in homosexual behavior in prison or to death. And so people are called extremist because they do not think that a man and a man engage in the exact same kind of relationship as a man and a woman.

The budget is another matter. Those who want to streamline programs, cut spending, and run fewer services more efficiently are being labeled as extremists, with the exact opposing viewpoint being one of more power, larger programs, higher taxes, and more debt. No, the exact opposing viewpoint from Obama's is that of libertarianism, which believes that even the police department should be privatized.

Beware extremism in all its forms! Beware doubly, in this day and age, labeling the moderate and reasonable viewpoint as the extreme opposite of the only other viewpoint offered!

Are they better off?

So this election season is an interesting one. The two choices are very stark. There is a deeper contrast than there has been for some time. Someone looking at this election would have her pick of issues to address. Today, I want to address one that Romney has been pushing, a question that Obama has a hard time answering... but I want to address it from a different perspective than I have heard anybody address thus far.

Are you better off than you were four years ago?

See, Obama has been going about apologizing and being generally deferrent in his foreign policy. This hasn't worked very well, mostly because the people who hate us are going to hate us regardless, the people who love us don't want us to be weaker, and the few European heads of state who really hated the way Bush did things were replaced in their next election with leaders willing to be a little more kind. But that's really beside my point, so let's move along.

Democrats teach that no man may become rich without stealing his wealth from someone else. Their wealth redistribution policies are based on "fairness". When Republicans say "fairness", what they mean is that it is fair for you to be able to profit from your labor. Democrats mean that it is fair for the people who were disenfranchised by your wealth creation practices to gain from your profit. Thus far, we have mostly seen Democrats apply this on a national level... when they decry the horrible lives of the poor, they mean the American poor, the ones among whom 80% have air conditioning and nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite television. They are not talking about people who live in huts and subsist on a couple of dollars per month.

Obama, on the other hand, has been applying the concept a little more globally. America needs to be taken down a peg. Why? Because we are so rich, that makes us the reason why these other nations are poor. Because one of Mitt Romney's children is attending private school, a Sudanese child goes hungry tonight. We need to give back, he says, on a global level. We have a responsibility, not a Christian responsibility to be charitable to those in need as fellow creatures favored by God, but a guilt responsibility because we 'got rich from their poverty'. Let's set aside the obvious problems with that for a moment and move on.

So America has more people in poverty than ever before. The economy is running at a very low ebb and we are told it is the "new normal". Our debt has been downgraded. Romney and the other Republicans are running on this, asking you if you are better off, and saying that America is a great nation that deserves to be great. Obama is the abusive parent who says that you don't deserve what you have... Romney is the one trying to restore your self esteem and assuring you that you are not somehow sub-par simply for having what you own. This is all well and good, of course, but it is all on an American perspective. So let's look at this from a global perspective.

Is the world better off than it was before due to America's debasement?

We have lost wealth... the average family has lost 40% of its wealth in the recession. Who has gained it? Are Kenyans living any better than they were before? Are Sudanese widows and orphans suffering less for our efforts? Is America giving any more money than before to educate poor children in Africa, or to feed them? Obama told the Egyptian president to step down. (Kind of arrogant for a nation that's supposed to be wallowing in self-debasement.) Do Egyptian women have more power than before? More rights? Under Bush, Afghani women and girls could seek jobs and be educated. Are they as likely to be allowed those rights now?

Is anybody in the world better off for our loss of wealth? European countries have floundered, partly under their own weight, but partly due to the depth and length of our recession. China has managed a short-term surge by buying our debt, but as our dollar devalues, their position degrades as well. American manufacturing jobs pay better in much of China than their own jobs. When Americans have less money, they buy less, they call for less manufacturing... And have we been giving any more money to their poor than before, as a result? Have we been doing more for Indian dalits? Are we saving any Chinese rural women from having their unborn babies killed against their will? Have we been helping anybody with our loss?

Obama and Romney will ask us whether it is worth losing our wealth and prestige in order to aid foreigners. I hope Romney will have the insight to point out that it is our strength that not only we, but others in the world should want to see, because we benefit other nations the most when we have something to offer.

And just as our poor are not richer for the wealth loss of our rich, the world is not better for the wealth loss in America.

Women's Body-Altering Fashion

There was a time when women wore corsets so tightly that they actually had ribs surgically removed. They compressed their organs to the point where they did internal damage to themselves. That's because society desired for them to have smaller waists than a normal woman is naturally given.

There was a time when women practiced breast-binding. They put themselves at further risk of breast-related diseases and medical conditions. They did this because society desired them to have smaller breasts than a normal woman is naturally given. The same has been done in Asian countries with women's feet, for the same reason, with similar dangers and results.

There was a time when women were basically expected to wear four-inch high heels all over the place, to everything and everywhere. The heels pushed their leg muscles up to an unnatural extent, gave them the illusion of greater height, and eventually malformed both feet and legs... raising the risk for back injury, shortening important calf tendons, and causing permanent damage to the feet. Society desired them to have a differently shaped leg and butt than the average woman is given by nature.

More recently, I've heard of all sorts of incredible stuff that women end up doing to themselves for the sake of society's flouting of nature. Women have botox injections on their face. Increasingly, I'm hearing of women having botox injections in their butt to make it bigger and plumper. Then we have breast implants and all their associated dangers. There seems to be no end to the number of things that women treat as essential, things that have one purpose... to alter a woman's natural body in such a way as to make it more 'acceptable' to society.

Now Obama insists that hormonal contraception pills are a woman's right and so must be provided by her employer for free, even at the cost of violating the employer's and/or other employees' faith.

What is the hormonal contraception pill? To be fair, for some women, it is a needed medication. However, the majority of women taking it are/were normal, healthy women who found, yet again, that society needed them to be something different from what women naturally are. To support society's current penchant for rampant sexual promiscuity, women must render themselves artificially infertile. The pill comes with its dangers, including an increased risk of breast cancer and potentially fatal blood clots. Then again, women's attempts to alter themselves for the latest fashion have almost always resulted in painful consequences.

Obama and his group (I cannot in good conscience say 'all Democrats' as many Democrats oppose this latest move) are spinning this horrendous new directive as "women's health", and many of the discussions surrounding it have focused on pitting "women's health" or "sexual freedom" against "religious liberty". But I'd like to take a moment and put a new spin on it, asking those of you who read this post to answer this simple question:

When will society favor the real, natural woman in all of her real, natural glory?

Capitalism is not one-size-fits-all

"Well, we won't have any problems with the dead ones, sir."
"They'll have relatives. They always do."

The Robocop series of movies lampoons a city that is increasingly run by 'capitalism'. A far-reaching company with a pitiless CEO runs various public utilities and services, including the police department. As a result, poverty and crime reign supreme, and environmentalism has gone right out the window. It's a very funny set of movies. Unfortunately, socialists tend to take these movies as the solid truth and the danger against which they are fighting every time they ensure that the government, "not some corporation", tells you want to do.

Unfortunately, there is one basic thing that socialists seem to not understand about capitalism. Capitalism is an economic theory.

Now that sounds a bit silly, so let me explain further. Of course socialists know that capitalism is an economic theory. However, socialism is not. Or, more properly. socialism is not only an economic theory. Socialism is supposed to provide a framework for economic activity by replacing the market with a redistribution center. It is supposed to abolish property by giving it all to the government. In this way, it is much, much more than an economic theory. The socialist government is supposed to do so much more than to provide a framework within which free people can pursue happiness. Instead, full socialism must provide an economic framework, take personal responsibility for the personal welfare of all citizens, decide the proper lifestyle and employment for all citizens, and the moral framework by which the citizens act properly within the society.

It is important for socialists to understand that capitalism is not meant to fulfill all of these needs for a society. In the United States, for instance, capitalism provided the economic framework, Christianity provided the moral framework, the people took personal responsibility for their welfare, lifestyle, and employment, and a mixture of the people and Christianity provided for those who could not provide for themselves.

I have often heard liberals panic at the thought of not mandating all of these levels of society through the Federal Government, as if there was no other force in existence. They seem to believe that capitalism is meant to serve for everything, and if it doesn't, then capitalists simply believe that these other systems are unimportant.

Consider this for a moment. Suppose you have a guest visiting you, and he walks into the bathroom while you brushing your teeth. "What are you doing?" he gapes. "Moving the brush in those little circles?"
"Well, it works for me," you reply. "That's the best way to brush your teeth."
"Yes," he explains, "but it'll wreck your hair!"
This is how conservatives feel when they try to explain capitalism to liberals. The liberals seem to have no concept that (back to our analogy) you can brush your hair with different strokes than you use on your teeth, much less that you can do a far better job on both if you do not use the same method. Unfortunately, this gap in knowledge simply leads to the two talking past each other: the liberal demands to know how the poor will be cared for (this is usually the part they focus on), while the conservative is mystified as to how they got to be talking about charity instead of economic theory.

Spinning the situation

My congressman sent me a "poll/survey" through the email.

Right now, Congress and the president are negotiating a solution to resolve our default crisis. If Congress does NOT vote to raise the debt ceiling, do you believe that this would be a real and serious problem?*


Yes
No
Not Sure




As a member of the Congressional Seniors Task Force, I cosigned a letter to the President this month objecting to proposed benefit changes to Social Security and Medicare as part of any deal. Do you believe that changes to benefits and cuts to Medicare and Social Security should NOT be part of a debt agreement?


Medicare and Social Security should not be cut or changed.
Cuts to Social Security and Medicare should be considered.
Not Sure




Republicans in Congress have said they are unwilling to raise any taxes, including on oil companies, corporations and the wealthy. Do you believe that closing tax loopholes or increasing revenues on corporations or millionaires should be part of a balanced approach to ending our default crisis?


Yes
No
Not Sure

This was my emailed response:

I tried to take your survey on the debt limit crisis, but I couldn't. The answers to the questions were all horribly skewed, and I couldn't pick one that came even close to my thoughts.

If Congress does not raise the debt limit, it may be a serious problem, but not nearly as serious as if we raise it with no plan to balance the budget and start paying off the debt. It's a no-brainer that you don't open a new credit card for someone who has ten of them maxed out and no plan to pay them off, but that's exactly what President Obama is asking us to do.

I do disagree with cutting Medicare and Social Security as part of this deal. That is why I supported Cap/Cut/Balance so strongly. I also strongly support a repeal of Obamacare, which will cut Medicare spending as part of its function. I have the feeling, from your record over the years, that this is not what you had in mind when you signed the agreement.... especially as Obama has already sworn to veto plans that do not include cuts to either. I sincerely hope that you are not engaging in scare tactics through an implication that Obama is trying to stop the Conservative Opposition from cutting things that they have explicitly excluded from cuts again and again.

I believe that closing tax loopholes must be accompanied by lowering taxes. I cannot agree with equating the words "tax" and "revenue", as lowering taxes in the past decades has resulted in increased revenues. In fact, I believe firmly that raising taxes at this point on our job creators will only reduce revenues. What we need now is to remove the loopholes that big business prompted legislatures to create along with new taxes and regulations, and reduce overall tax rates, so that everybody pays their fair share. It is not lost on me that the companies that contribute to Democrat politicians end up paying less at tax time. This is wrong.

Please consider this to be my response to your survey.

We want a king!

I got onto a forum temporarily and found myself discussing Obamacare. I got the usual, nods of affirmation and extra explanations from some, while the detractors contented themselves with no better response than "you're an idiot". While I was thinking over Obamacare and what it does and doesn't do, however, I realized something startling and made a larger connection.

One of the worrying attributes of Obamacare is the incredibly large power shift from the private sector to the government. The nature of that attribute, however, deserves further study. Over and over again one man is mentioned: the head of the Department of Health and Human Services. This person, not Congress, will develop the three government-approved healthcare plans covered by the mandate, the ones I like to call "Regular, Premium, and Premium Plus". All Americans will have to have one of these three plans, purchased from one private company or another... does it matter anymore which company you use?

Consider the implications of that for a moment. Suppose the head of this department, unelected, appointed by the President, does not believe that people over a certain age should receive any care at all? Suppose he believes that we are ruining the world through overpopulation and each family should only have two children? He can decide that the mandatory health care plans do not, any of them, cover any procedures if the patient is over 80 years old. He can decide that only the first two pregnancies will be covered in any of these plans. In a way, he has a kingly power over us.

That's when it began to click for me. We were ruled by ourselves, and our economy was ruled by the natural force of Free-Market Capitalism. Now, increasingly, the vocal minority is clamoring for a "king". They are trying to give our powers and our rights, not to the Federal Government, not to Congress, but specifically to the President and his appointees. Why would they do something like that?

They distrust the free market. The free market is a force that they cannot control. If there is a bad year for tomatoes, they cannot force the price of tomatoes to fall. If they disapprove of people eating beef instead of goat meat, they cannot force the stores to sell goat meat and not beef. (I know I slip into agricultural idioms easily, bear with me please! This goes for other products and services as well.) We conservatives believe that the free market will always act in the best interests of the largest numbers of people. However, the liberals do not like it.

The Israelites felt the same way. Ruled directly by God Himself, they wanted a king. They wanted something more than a force they could not control, who might make decisions of which they disapprove. They wanted a man. God will never tell you that you are allowed to sin. A man may be coaxed to do so. Now I am not comparing God directly to the Free Market, with all the omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence that implies. However, God, like the Free Market and all laws of Nature which He created, is constant and will not reward behavior that violates His laws.

This started with the Free Market, but it can be applied to other things. The liberals who push hormonal birth control, abortion, and gay 'marriage' want sex to have no consequences. Natural law created by God says that it must, but they hope to take control and force what is wrong to become right. This requires them to reject God's laws and set up a king to rule over them instead, a man whom they hope to give the power... the power to decide what medical care we can afford to receive, the power to set the price of goods and services, the power to declare by government fiat that old borders to chastity and modesty no longer exist and anyone who supports them deserves to be hated.

This was God's warning when the Israelites demanded a king:

He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots.  Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers.  He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants.  He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants.  Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use.  He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves.  When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the LORD will not answer you in that day.”

We might want to keep this in mind as we see those who happily hand their medical privacy and insurance rights to a single unelected man, who seek greater power for human men, all hoping that this path will lead to their being permitted to do that which is against natural law... whether it be to receive without working or engage in acts of depravity with government approval.

So much for resolutions...

Of course I haven't posted in a while now. It seems that "real life" continues to intervene! For today, I have a piece that I wrote in response to a forum thread. The conversation shifted to various economic responses to various tax cuts and government spending.

The first gem was the reminder that the "Clinton Surplus" was created by a Republican Congress and finally passed after Clinton stonewalled it so hard that the entire government shut down for several weeks. In this post, I went into the reasons behind the recent economic problems and their results.

This is what happened in 2006:

Shortly after the Democrats swept Congress, there was a bursting of a gas bubble. Not a physical bubble, but an economic one. Refinery problems plus Middle East concerns plus an increased integration of ethanol worked together to bring gas prices up. Food prices followed quickly. Whenever gas prices go up, food prices go up, because grocery stores work on a shoestring budget. They make almost no profit. So when it costs more to transport food to the store, the items cost more.

Now in 1977, the Community Reinvestment Act was passed by a Democrat majority Congress and signed into law by President Jimmy Carter. The CRA had good intentions... to end the practice of redlining, or refusing to sell homes in certain areas to minorities. However, it basically involved sending the government into real estate to enact something very much like Affirmative Action. It didn't impact us much, though, for nearly 20 years, because it didn't have much teeth.

That changed under President Clinton, who empowered Reno to set things into motion that would punish banks that didn't make enough loans to minorities who wanted to buy homes. The only problem was that the reason why fewer minorities were buying homes was because fewer minorities had the financial means and acumen to hold down a mortgage. The banks were ordered to make it work somehow, and the bank response was the Subprime Mortgage.

The Subprime Mortgage, like the Saltbox and the SUV, was something created by private industry trying to keep what they wanted/needed while skirting Federal regulations. In all three cases, you ended up with something that didn't have all of the advantages of what the government wanted to force or what the private groups originally used. (The SUV is a replacement for the Station Wagon that not only fails to meet sedan fuel economy, but it fails to approach station wagon fuel economy as well. The Saltbox has a partial upper story with a roof that drops to the first story on one side, resulting in a loss of useable space.)

These subprime loans were snapped up by people for whom they were and were not originally intended, creating a heavy demand for new and expensive housing. People who would have been steered towards a starter home were using subprimes to afford twice the house they would have purchased otherwise. We had a housing bubble. W Bush sounded the alarm multiple times, but Frank and Dodd staunchly refused to look into it. All of these subprime home owners were barely managing to make their finances work, and the slightest rise in any of their other bills would lead to disaster.

Then, of course, as mentioned above, the oil price went up. That started a comprehensive collapse that ended in failing banks, foreclosures/abandonments, and rampant unemployment in the construction industry. Unfortunately, instead of isolating this disaster and allowing it to burn itself out, Obama decided to ramp up federal spending, and now it's affecting private sectors that had nothing to do whatsoever with construction or mortgages.

And now the fix, being basically the "You still have to provide mortgages for minorities whether they can afford them or not, but you can't do it this way", is making it nigh impossible for smaller businesses to operate through lack of liquidity. The government we-can't-allow-banks-to-fail mindset has brought to a full stop the natural process of stronger banks buying weaker ones and fixing the problems naturally. Did you know that, at the beginning of the recession, if you had been saving up a little money during the good times, you could have any home renovation done well on the cheap? Before Obama intervened in hopes of getting people to refinance their mortgages, refinancing was easy and very useful. We did it ourselves. Now it's all but impossible unless you fit the narrow and confusing government standards.

Gas prices also started to fall as demand fell, but now the weak dollar plus inflation (both the result of government spending) kept prices up and are now primarily responsible for the current spike. Of course, every part of this, from an end to free checking (next month, I believe, part of Obamacare) to the 50-100% rise in basic food prices, to the tightening of loans and resulting unemployment, is impacting primarily the poor and the middle class.

In short, the particular Democrats who swept Congress in 2006 (aside from Dodd/Frank and other members of the Old Guard) really were no more responsible for the beginning of the recession than W Bush was for the tech bubble burst and 9/11. It's what they've done with it since that has landed us in the Pit of Despair.