An Ultra-Short Story

(Written September 29, 2015)

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A little background is in order.  In recent months, a few scientists have speculated on whether we
might be living in a computer simulation.  How would we know?
Here is an ultra-short story related to that topic.
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The meeting began with the usual rustling of papers as the scientists took their places at the conference table.  Everyone was eagerly awaiting the announcement by cosmologist Dr. Frank Eidelman, who had promised a major discovery would be reported.

When he came into the room, all eyes were upon him, and everyone noted his somber appearance.

He took his place, glanced at each conferee in turn, and then began to speak.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “we have concluded our investigation into the simulation hypothesis.  The good news is that we have discovered that we are not, repeat not, living in a computer simulation.  The bad news, however, is very distressing.  For we have discerned that although we are not programmed entities in a computer, we are in fact, fictional characters in a short story.”

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What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

(Written December 25, 2014)

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

—by Robert Arvay
for The Bold Pursuit

On August 29 of 2007 the United States Air Force lost track of a number of nuclear bombs.  While the incident did not involve actual loss of the weapons, this lapse was so serious that it resulted in the resignations of two generals, and punishment of other commanding officers.  After all, these are weapons of mass destruction.  Knowing where they all are-- at every moment-- is critical.

More recently, live samples of the deadly Ebola virus were sent to the wrong laboratory, one which is not equipped to handle them.  A lab technician was possibly exposed to the disease which kills a high percentage of its victims.

In January of 2014, a number of junior Air Force officers were involved in a scandal involving their certification to serve in missile silos—the ones that can launch nuclear missiles worldwide.  The scandal was uncovered during an investigation into illegal drug use by some of the officers.

These three incidents made the news.  They make us wonder how many escape detection. 

We like to believe that everyday incompetence is confined to places like the post office and the department of motor vehicles, but the evidence shows that no place is exempt.  Operation Gun Runner, the Obama-care computer fiasco, the massacre of Americans in Benghazi, the failure to heed warnings about the Boston bombers, and the fact that people died because a few officials in the Veterans Administration falsified reports to get pay bonuses—all of these demonstrate a common theme. 

Modern technology is a wonderful thing, but it is no better than the people who come to work every day and press the buttons. 

No matter how good our technology becomes, it will be useless without personal honesty and integrity at all levels.  Without that, everything that can go wrong, as Murphy's Law tells us, will.

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Saving the Planet without Losing our Freedoms

(Written December 6, 2014)

Global warming is a controversial topic in which seemingly few people can apply reason.

Undoubtedly the earth has warmed and cooled repeatedly over the epochs.
The question now is threefold:

1.  Do humans cause global warming?

2.  Will it result in a runaway greenhouse effect?  Some other disaster?
3.  Can humans stop global warming or mitigate its effects (stop disaster)?

Here are the three answers.

1.  Humans cause global warming, but no one can demonstrate how much.  It might be a lot, or too little to consider.  Myriad factors influence the earth's climate.  No unbiased computer models have made clear and accurate predictions.  Every planet in the solar system has experienced global warming since measurements began, due to the increase in the sun's heat output.

2.  After four billion years of earth history, catastrophic climate changes have repeatedly occurred, the most famous of which brought about the extinction of dinosaurs.  A meteor, compounded by centuries of continuous volcanic eruption, caused enormous disruption of the climate, but did not result in the runaway greenhouse effect that incinerates the planet Venus to this day.  If a massive meteor and thousands of years of volcanic eruptions did not cause a runaway greenhouse effect, it is almost inconceivable that humans can cause that effect,

3.  If one proposes that humans can stop global warming, then logic would imply that exempting China and India from those efforts would be counterproductive.  Yet we are exempting them.  China and India account for two-thirds of the planet's population, and a huge portion of its pollution.  Every time a factory closes in the Americas and Europe, that production is moved to China or India, where the same industrial output occurs, but with much more pollution.  It would cause less pollution to close factories in Asia and move the production to the west, but that is not going to happen.  China and India refuse to reduce their pollution.

The best hope of reducing pollution is to increase innovation, which has already resulted in lowered pollution in the West.

The worst hope of reducing pollution is to empower the government while disempowering individuals.  Government is inherently wasteful, and its motives are not for a cleaner planet, but for more political power.

Few advocates of lowered greenhouse gases advocate limited government.  Advocates of bigger government have effectively used global warming as their pretext, which is why companies like Solyndra fail, and Westinghouse succeeds.

Disempowering the USA while empowering its enemies will not result in a better planet.

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Hurricanes and Free Markets

—by Robert Arvay
for The Bold Pursuit

(Written October 29, 2014) 

In 1992 I was outraged.  Hurricane Andrew had devastated large areas not far from my home, and price gougers had moved in to take advantage.  Flashlight batteries were selling for ten dollars each, and gasoline powered electric generators were selling for five or six times their normal retail value.

The government acted swiftly to prohibit people from profiteering on the tragedy that had befallen so many of my neighbors.  I was glad to see the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) doing its job and protecting the ordinary citizen.

Except that there was one problem:  the government made matters worse.  It took a college professor to open my eyes to that fact.  He made what at the time I considered to be a cold hearted statement.  He said that there should be no laws against price gouging.  Indeed, he said, in counties where price gougers had been allowed to operate, the impact of the storm was far less than in counties where the law had been strictly enforced.

What had happened was this:  Immediately after the storm had left the area, price gougers were already moving in, some from over a thousand miles away.  They brought with them all manner of emergency supplies, from flashlight batteries to power generators, and almost everything in between.  Within 48 hours, the affected counties were so overloaded with emergency supplies that many items were being sold off for less than retail value.

And a mere two weeks afterward, FEMA was Johnny on the spot, trying to give away emergency supplies that no one needed any longer.  Two weeks.

This seems not to make sense, but it is an illustration of how the free market works, and how government programs do not.  It is also an illustration of how seductive is the theory that socialism provides goods and services more efficiently than the private sector which, after all, is interested only in making a profit.

Even before Hurricane Andrew hit, price gougers from far away were already licking their chops (so to speak).  They knew that in the aftermath of such a storm, there would be an intense need for relief supplies.  They purchased these in quantity, loaded up their trucks, and timed their arrival in the storm area so that they showed up just as the storm departed.

What they found was that thousands of people were willing to pay five to ten times retail value for items which were otherwise unavailable, but were badly needed.  Flashlight batteries sold for ten dollars each.  Men with chain saws could charge hundreds of dollars for a few hours work clearing out driveways blocked by fallen trees.  Carpenters could repair roofs for premium wages.  Hundreds of people were profiteering from the hurricane.

One thing that did not sell very well was bottled water.  Private charities, churches, and even ordinary citizens acting alone, brought it in by the truckload, and gave it away free of charge.  Blankets, too.

The government would not arrive with supplies for two weeks.  After all, you cannot force government workers to put in overtime. 

But in at least one county, the sheriff was busy protecting people from overpaying for power generators.  People who had medical needs for electric power were begging the sheriff to go away, so that they could get a generator to power their oxygen pumps and other medical devices.  No way, the sheriff said.  He would jail anyone who sold a generator for more than a ten percent markup.  The sellers protested to no avail.  They had paid full retail, driven hundreds of miles, and could not cover their costs at ten percent.  In the end, they went to nearby counties and sold their generators there.

The government had protected you.

To make a long story short, things are not always what they seem.  Economic principles are not obvious to the ordinary person.  It is far easier to say, “give a man a fish,” than to say, “teach a man how to fish, teach him how to create and preserve wealth, and to allocate it in the most productive way available.”  No.  Just give me a fish—every day—for the rest of my life.

Over the years, I have told this story, in detail, to several liberals.  They all agreed that price gouging can actually speed relief supplies to the people most in need, and do so more quickly than the government can. 

 

There is one other thing upon which they agreed:  Price gouging should be against the law.

Go figure.

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Correctly Breaking the Law

—by Robert Arvay
for The Bold Pursuit

(Written October 17, 2014, edited 9/26/15) 

When Edward Snowden leaked secrets from the National Security Agency, he exposed high level government wrongdoing, about which highly placed administration officials had knowingly lied to Congress, or at least, as Director of National Intelligence James Clapper claimed, made the “least untruthful” statement he could under the circumstances.  Snowden is accused of treachery, even of treason.  He is defended by his supporters on the grounds that he had no other way to protect the American people from a rogue agency.  Based on the facts available to me, I remain undecided, but I will presume Snowden innocent until proof beyond a reasonable doubt causes me to consider him guilty.

Lois Lerner, the now retired, former director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS), was accused of violating the rights of American people to dissent from their government.  She has been charged by some TEA Party groups of illegally sharing their private information with their left wing political opponents, and using other nefarious means, to prevent conservatives from enjoying equal protection of the tax laws to participate in the political process.  In other words, her detractors say, Lois Lerner illegally abused her official position.

I have little doubt that, in their minds, both Snowden and Lerner were doing the right thing.  Snowden believes he was protecting me from the government.  Lerner believes she was protecting the government from me.  Each of them can make at least a tenuous defense of their actions based on the time honored concept of civil disobedience.

Or can they?

Civil disobedience was famously practiced by both Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.  In both cases, the lawbreakers were opposing laws that many people considered unjust, deplorable, and devastatingly harmful.  The harm being done was not only damaging people, but indeed, even arguably undermining the government itself.

One of the central features of justifiable civil disobedience is that the person committing the crime does not seek to avoid the penalty for doing so.  Indeed, facing the penalties is a further way of publicizing the alleged official injustice, and of garnering support to overturn the unjust law.  Both Gandhi and King willingly submitted to imprisonment for their violations.

Lerner certainly does not fit into that category.  Her efforts were not to overturn an unjust law, but rather, to apply just laws unjustly.  Don’t get me wrong.  I am sure that Lerner regards me as an evil, bigoted, danger to the republic.  She felt that she had to do something to protect Barack Obama’s reelection campaign from people like me, people she regards as villainous.  Believing that as she did, Lerner was obliged to do all she could to stop me.

She was also obliged to face the legal consequences, instead of hiding behind the exact Constitution which she violated.  She was courageous in the battle for liberalism until courage meant something.

Much the same has been said about Snowden.  If he wished to expose government wrongdoing, he could have done so through legal channels, or else gone public, and subjected himself to trial.

The difference between him and Lerner is that the government was sympathetic to Lerner.  She even collaborated with the Justice Department to both protect herself and to promote administration interests.

Snowden’s only hope of a fair trial under the Constitution, lay with the very government administration he was exposing as violating the Constitution.  Not only was the government not the least bit sympathetic to Snowden’s actions, it is very possible, and in my mind very probable, that had Snowden gone to any government official with his complaint, neither he nor his complaint would ever have seen the light of day again.  If Snowden feared for his very life, can we blame him?

I do not have enough facts concerning the Snowden case, and probably never will.   However, he has in a sort of way been held to account.  He has very likely been exiled for the remainder of his life.  He will never again sleep securely, knowing that at any instant, the Russian government might use him in a “trade” for a captured Russian spy, in which case, Snowden will meet a dark fate.

Lerner needs fear only a relatively comfortable jail cell, if even that.

 

Who's Your Daddy?

—by Robert Arvay
for The Bold Pursuit
 
(Written October 15, 2014)

 

There is a saying that says it’s a wise man who knows who his children are.  Unfortunately, no amount of wisdom can help a child know who his or her father is.  It gets even worse when the problem is the fault of reproductive technology gone awry.

Perhaps that is going too easy on the technology.  Perhaps even when the technology does not go awry, there might still be a problem.

Take the case of Jennifer Cramblett and her daughter.  Jennifer is white.  Her daughter is mixed race.  Okay, so far no problem, at least not with the daughter.  The problem is, according to news reports, a sperm bank, which artificially inseminated Ms Cramblett.  Jennifer had specifically requested a white donor.  The sperm bank gave her the sperm from a black donor.  That donor is now the anonymous and absent biological father of baby Cramblett, an innocent child.

This is not the problem.  Getting the wrong donor is not the problem.  Getting any donor at all is the problem, even the “right” donor.

Perhaps the story would not be so sensational were Jennifer Cramblett a single woman, or a married woman whose husband is infertile.  That is not the case.  Cramblett is a lesbian woman living with a lesbian partner.  Due to the cruelty of biology, two people of the same sex cannot conceive a child with each other.  So they chose a technological method.

You won't need no husband, won't need no wife

You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too

From the bottom of a long glass tube 

From Zager and Evans 1969 hit song,

In the Year 2525

Here we have a perfect storm of social controversies converging destructively, while attention is deflected to details that don’t matter.  Such details include liability.

On the question of liability, should the sperm bank pay damages?  The answer depends not on morals, but on contract law and civil rights.  Under contract law, the sperm bank most likely made a promise to deliver a specific service for a specific fee with explicit and implied guarantees.  It will take a court to untangle the complexities.  One of the complexities might well be this:  even if the sperm bank promised to deliver the sperm of a white man, is that promise racially discriminatory and therefore immune from liability?  I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know.

But I do know this:  conceiving and raising a child is not, and should not be, a decision based in fine points of law, nor in the capabilities of technology.  The child is a human being, with unalienable rights.  His or her conception should not be based on frivolous grounds.  Children should not be ordered from a catalog, neither to match the living room décor, nor to conform to the racial color scheme of a neighborhood.  Technology should not provide a convenient means of enabling a woman to not provide her child with a loving and involved father.

The myth that children, with absent fathers, do not suffer adverse consequences was debunked years ago.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1993/04/dan-quayle-was-right/307015/

In April 1993, the cover story on the mostly liberal journal, The Atlantic proclaimed this:

The social-science evidence is in: though it may benefit the adults involved, the dissolution of intact two-parent families is harmful to large numbers of children. Moreover, the author argues, family diversity in the form of increasing numbers of single-parent and stepparent families does not strengthen the social fabric but, rather, dramatically weakens and undermines society.   [end quote]

While the article did not address lesbian artificial insemination, it did address the ridicule leveled at Vice President Dan Quayle for his criticism of a television situation comedy in which the main character, a fictional woman named Murphy Brown, elected to get pregnant out of wedlock, eschewing for her child a loving and involved father.

Years later, the details have changed, but the morals remain the same.  The morals still trump ideology.  They trump gay rights.  They trump liberal doctrines of fairness and equality.  They override any and all fanciful models which pretend that a family without a father is just as functional as any other.

Let’s be clear that many families suffer tragic disruptions that make the ideal unachievable, through no fault of the mother.  That cannot be avoided.  What can be avoided is the intentional infliction of needless adversity on innocent children.

The fact of that adversity, where the father is absent, is not a conservative opinion.  It is a sociological and statistical fact.  For every case in which someone might claim that a child benefitted from not having a loving and involved father, there are many hundreds more that provide tragic confirmation that Dan Quayle was indeed right.

Unfortunately, the truth gets buried in convoluted dissembling from the social left.  The moment one mentions the facts, he is accused of being bigoted, homophobic, anti-woman and of horse thievery.

The fact is that it does not take a village to raise a child.

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Bureaucrats and Warriors

(Written October 2, 2014, edited 9/23/15)

—by Robert Arvay

for The Bold Pursuit

During my twenty years in military service, I learned to assess military personnel by placing them in one of two categories:  bureaucrats and warriors.  Whenever a bureaucrat was our commander, not a warrior, all the paperwork got done, but combat readiness deteriorated.  Unit cohesion began to fall apart.  Morale plummeted.  By contrast, commanders who were warriors learned to go around the paperwork and ensure combat readiness.  Equipment was issued and properly maintained, and the soldiers were well trained and highly disciplined.  Morale increased, as did confidence and esprit de corps.

I did my best to be a warrior.  This could be risky when the commander was a bureaucrat.  I remember that at one point we had an urgent need for equipment, without which our combat readiness would suffer.  The commander, too timid to make demands on the supply system, kept dragging his feet, continually demanding yet one more requisition be filled out.  I finally realized that we were never going to get approval through normal channels, so I obtained the equipment by “other means.”  My fellow warrior veterans know exactly what I mean by "other means."  I just hope that the bureaucrats in supply replaced the broken lock.  I speak metaphorically of course.  Of course.

Secret Service Director Julia Pierson resigned after a long sequence of failures at her post.  More is yet to come, not for Pierson, but for Obama.  The reasons that led to Pierson’s resignation parallel the failures of Obama.  Hers have ended.  His have not.

Julia Pierson was a bureaucrat.  Faced with what well could have been an imminent threat to the White House, when the clear and present danger of an armed intruder crashing through the door of, and penetrating deeply into, the building was absolutely— well, clear and present— after all that happened, Pierson praised the Secret Service for their “restraint.”  No machine guns opened fire from the roof, no snipers eliminated the threat, and if not for an OFF DUTY agent conducting a tour for visitors, there is no telling how far into the complex the intruder might have gotten.  Had he been carrying a bomb, the damage could have been devastating.

Contrast this with an anecdote that used to be told about Air Force General Curtis LeMay, the man who firebombed Tokyo during World War 2, and who famously advised President Kennedy to bomb Castro’s Cuba “back into the stone age” to eliminate the threat it posed.

LeMay was driving his son’s car, according to the story.  The civilian vehicle did not have military identification markers on it.  In his own car, those markers always allowed LeMay to cruise right past the armed security forces at the base’s main gate.  He neglected to stop when the guard signaled him to do so.  When LeMay sped through the gate, an Air Force enlisted man opened fire.  A bullet smashed the side view mirror of the car, inches from LeMay’s head.  Suddenly realizing his mistake, LeMay stopped, and was detained until positively identified.

The next day, the guard had orders transferring him to Viet Nam.  This quickly brought accusations that the general was unfairly retaliating against the man for doing his job.  LeMay, according to the story, responded that the guard had not done his job, because, as the general was quoted as saying, “He missed.”

General Curtis LeMay did not praise the armed guard for “admirable restraint.”

Julia Pierson, on the other hand, was a bureaucrat.  She had always performed well in the bureaucracy, and make no mistake about it, annoying as they can be, bureaucrats are a vital component of national security.  When bureaucrats do their jobs right, the troops get fed three square meals every day, they get paid on time, they get sent to the right places exactly on schedule.  Without those things happening, chaos would bring down the house, as it did the Iraqi army after the Americans left.

Pierson was not a warrior, and the position into which she was placed, by Obama himself, is a warrior position.  Any Marine Corps drill sergeant in charge of a boot camp squad could run the White House security corps with a degree of effectiveness and efficiency that would never have permitted the intruder to get past the top of the fence.  He would have bled to death on it from multiple bullet wounds.

The problem is that the sergeant would then have been court-martialed for violating the rights of the intruder, for excessive use of force, and for not properly filling out the paperwork before opening fire.

When called to testify, however, he would have answered every question directly and forthrightly, never dodging and weaving and whining about how he really had meant to lock the door but could not (as Pierson complained) find a housekeeper to do it.  No.  He would have boldly stated the facts, and let the chips fall where they may.

As he would be led away in chains, to the gleeful applause of liberals, he would have one regret:  that his replacement would practice admirable restraint and get the president killed.

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California’s Enlightened System of Rape

—by Robert Arvay

for The Bold Pursuit

(Written September 29, 2014)

When young women head off to college, no longer under the observation of parents, they find themselves in a world of higher learning, but also, in a world of experimentation. 

Let’s consider a composite incident which, in various versions, is spoken of by many of these women.

They get invited to parties, the liquor flows, drugs are available, and sometimes the naïve young lady awakens on a dormitory floor, minus much of her clothing, hung over with a headache, and pains lower down as well.  She may or may not have been raped, and may have to go to a doctor to find out.

Soon, cell phone video recordings emerge.  There she is, in the middle of the party, “twerking” with a young man, while someone pours alcohol into her open mouth.  The music is loud.  She is laughing and carrying on.  Later on, someone tells her that they saw her trying to push the man off of her, but he raped her.  When challenged, the man insists that “she wanted it.  What was I supposed to do?”

She goes to the police and files a complaint.  It gets nowhere.  There is not enough evidence.  She bitterly complains that she is being victimized again, being blamed instead of the rapist.  Other women tell her to let it go, just move on.  Take medications for any infections, get an abortion if she’s pregnant, and forget all about it.

Then along comes the California legislature, and they are going to fix all that.  Really?

http://preview.msn.com/en-us/news/us/california-approves-landmark-yes-means-yes-law/ar-BB6nEeh

Quoting from the site above, “Rather than using the refrain ‘no means no,’ the definition of [sexual] consent under the bill requires ‘an affirmative, conscious and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity.’"

In other words, the incidence of rape on college campuses is so epidemic that the legislature has now resorted to a convolution of semantics that boggles the imagination in order to protect women from rape. 

I agree, of course, that protecting women from male rapists (protecting women?  I’m so hopelessly chauvinistic, shame on me) is a praiseworthy goal.  Any man who forces himself on a woman should be prosecuted and punished to the fullest extent of the law, no excuses accepted.  If a woman is raped, she should be able swiftly and painlessly to get justice from the police and the courts.

But just read the article.  Read it.  Have we really come to this?  Have we sunk so low, that an entire news story omits the most important aspect of the entire rape epidemic?

Yes, we have.  The report makes no mention, none at all, about the immorality (and destructiveness) of having sex outside of marriage.  The implication is that if the young woman does indeed wish to have sex, there should be a legal procedure involved, a spoken contract in which she enjoys the full protection of the law.  There is no mention of her assuming any risk.

Oh, I am so pathetic, aren’t I?  Did I miss the sexual revolution?  You know, the one that liberated women from the unfairness of the consequences of sex out of wedlock?  The one that freed them to engage in libertine acts without consequences?   Did I miss the development of contraceptives which were supposed to decrease unwanted pregnancy (then why did they increase as contraceptives became ever more available without stigma)?  Did I miss the legal but safe and rare abortions which now kill millions of babies, some only a moment before taking their first breath?

Have I been living in a cave?  How ignorant can I be?

I was in high school during the mid 1960s.  I remember the injustice to women.  One of the girls in our class was credibly rumored not to be a virgin.  The next day the family moved out of state.  No graduation, no prom, no yearbook, just gone.  The other girls were shockingly reminded of how unjust social mores were.  They also became more motivated to be careful with their virginity.  The unfairness was dismal.  (I'm being sarcastic, of course.)

When I dated, I first had to meet the girl’s parents, well aware that I had no right to date her, and reminded that I had darn well better respect her, or else.  You see, not everybody jumped on the wagon of sexual abandon.

But that was half a century ago, seemingly on another planet.  Today, young people have become so saturated with the culture of sexual libertinism that sexual chastity is considered not only a rarity, but almost a disorder.

Today, to suggest to a young woman that perhaps she should not go to wild parties with strangers, that she should not get drunk while doing so, and that she should keep in mind her Biblical values, is considered condescending and an unfair restriction on women.  Men don’t have to put up with all this bother.  Why should women?  As Cyndi Lauper sings, “Girls just want to have fun.”

Today, to suggest to young men and women that they should avoid having sex out of wedlock is to bring on derision, scorn, and even accusations of not being a liberal.  It is not even to be mentioned.

Some years ago a comedian did a standup routine in which he talked about taking karate classes.  He became so proficient that he said, “I began walking down dark alleys with ten dollar bills hanging out of my pocket.”

The serious side of this is that women are now being taught that, by golly, they have as much right to attend wild parties and get passed out drunk, without consequences, as any man does to walk down dark alleys at night with hundred dollar bills hanging out of his pockets.

What could possibly go wrong?

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Making a Deal with the Devil

—by Robert Arvay
for The Bold Pursuit

(Written September 27, 2014, edited 9/21/15)

Siding with Bill Maher against liberal hypocrites is sort of like siding with Syrian dictator and criminal Bashar al-Assad against Islamic extremists.  Let me hasten to add that while I am thoroughly disgusted with Bill Maher’s vulgarity, I do not view him as outright evil, but I do consider him to be deceived.  Still, I would not behead Maher for that.

In this extremely vulgar video, Maher makes an important point. 

Here is the video which I urge you not to watch, but will not censor.  Its content is framed in disgusting terms. You have been warned.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/maher-tears-into-pc-liberals-wheres-your-outrage-on-violent-oppressive-islam/

Maher correctly points out that liberal Americans are outraged by the slightest perceived insult against gays, women and other minorities, while at the same time, defending Islamic extremism as just another culture, off limits to the same criticisms of religion which they hurl at Christians.  According to the left, Israelis defending their children are considered terrorists, while their opponents who willingly sacrifice their own children for propaganda are extolled as freedom fighters.  Debbie Wasserman Schultz, spokeswoman of the Democrat Party, characterizes Republican governor Scott Walker as pulling the hair of women, but those who support her say little or nothing about Islamic extremists who actually cut off the heads of little girls.  Yes, liberals are appalled at the grisly images, but they are careful to restrict their criticisms as tightly as possible, to avoid offending Islamists.

Islamists mercilessly kill homosexuals, and indeed, subject anyone who disagrees with their extremist positions to cruel and barbaric punishments.  Yet American liberals, intolerant of even the slightest hint of Christianity in a classroom, make excuses for Islamist radicals.

As Maher points out, there is a practical side to offending Jesus, while walking on eggshells concerning Islam.  Christians will forgive you.  Islamists will kill you.

Despite that rational fear, liberal hypocrisy is so extreme in this matter as to be inexplicable.  On the one hand, they support women’s rights, and use the most extreme rhetoric to denounce what they perceive as even a minor affront to liberal women— except that they never perceive any affront as minor. 

On the other hand, outspoken liberals refuse to openly condemn the Islamic practice of keeping women tightly under the control of the men in their lives.  In countries ruled by Islamic leaders, women— and even small girls— are subject to the death penalty for the smallest infractions, including merely flirting with a man.  Simply giving the appearance of impropriety can result in death by stoning— in public to applauding crowds.  Sometimes the executions are willingly carried out by family members.

What kind of poison could infect a human soul to this degree of perversion?

Instead of condemning Islamist misogynists, American liberals refer to the Little Sisters of the poor as “dirty,” because they refuse to sign away their rights, refusing to fund certain types of contraception they consider to include abortion.  One would think, listening only to Liberals, that the Little Sisters were beheading babies, while they were silent when Kermit Gosnell was in effect doing exactly that to babies born alive in an abortion clinic.

One could rant all day about liberal hypocrisy and the enabling complicity of most news media.  There were Germans who in the 1930s railed against the Nazis, and were then exterminated for their courage.  Yet, the futility of it all did not stop them from speaking out.

None are so deaf as those who will not hear, and speaking to liberals about these matters rarely does any good.  Even so, despite the seeming futility of it all, we must speak out, if not to save the world from liberals, then at least to save perhaps one liberal from himself.  We must do that, because our duty is to save every soul we can.  The stakes are too high to ignore that duty.  The penalties for the liberals are even higher.

Isaiah 5:20

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil. . . .

Freedom (From and For)

(Written August 29, 2012)

Western culture has been about freedom since the exodus of Moses and the Israelites from Egypt. But it has never been about license -- freedom from slavery under Pharaoh did not evolve into freedom to worship the golden calf. To use a secular analogy, freedom of speech does not include the freedom to commit fraud.

For freedom is not merely a right; it is also a responsibility. With the freedom from tyranny comes the duty to do good. Were it otherwise, the Declaration of Independence might well eliminate the words "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights" and substitute instead "permitted by their government to exercise certain negotiable rights."

Without acknowledging that human rights come from the Supreme Being, one concedes that all human rights are conditional upon the current structure of power, the particular fad of the moment. Subjective rights are not rights at all, but merely temporary, revocable privileges.

To recognize that human rights come from God is to affirm that there is a God, and that His commandments are not subordinate to the whims of men, but instead are absolute and eternal.

In short, the written Constitution embodies the highest ideals of thousands of years of Western civilization and culture -- but, crucially, it does not replace them. This is why John Adams wrote that, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

If the Constitution could stand apart from the centuries of context which gave rise to it, then it could be imposed upon any nation, with exemplary results. But it is clear from history, and from current events as well, that no mere document can transform an unjust nation into a just one. No embodiment of ideals can save a people who do not share those ideals. Were it otherwise, the U.S. Constitution could have been forced upon the nations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and today they would be shining examples of religious freedom. Sadly, they remain dark examples of religious intolerance and sectarian brutality, where women are oppressed and free speech is stifled.

It is vital then, to understand and embrace not only the written words of the Constitution itself, but also its underlying values. Those indispensable words are but the edifice which rests upon an equally indispensable moral foundation.

To be sure, there is much room for debate as to which social conservative values should be enshrined into written law and which should not. It is wisely said that morality cannot be legislated; to this effect, for example, the religious foundations of the Constitution must never be twisted so as to institute a state religion. But neither must those foundations be undermined with imported values that contradict the Constitution.

For it is also true that immorality can indeed be legislated, and many laws do just that. Forcing landlords to rent to unmarried couples, forcing professional photographers to accommodate homosexual weddings, and requiring pharmacists to supply abortifacient drugs are just a few examples that come quickly to mind.

In the near future, licensing of brothels, clean injection centers for drug addicts, and a requirement that grade schools teach homosexual propaganda will likely be enacted. To varying degrees, they already have been.

Libertarian thought provides no reliable remedy to the social poisons that society is ingesting. Its values may be those of freedom, but they are also the values of the golden calf.

The full original version of my commentary is at: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/a_conservatives_practical_guide_to_challenging_libertarianism.html#ixzz24xXTC732
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To Cheat, or Not to Cheat?

(Written September 1, 2012)

There is a not-so-old saying that, "Nice guys finish last." I first overheard this from two engineering executives who were dining near me in a small restaurant. While I don't remember much else about their conversation, the context was clear. In a competitive corporate environment, only the ruthless survive. It is reminiscent of another, older saying, "All is fair in love and war."

College may be associated with love and love-ins, but it is becoming more like war. The competition for graduating at or near the top is intense, and just at a time when religious values have been systematically excluded from the curriculum.

Cheating in class is probably as old as the first test ever given. It has become almost an accepted standard --- that if you don't get caught, it's okay to do whatever it takes to make the honor roll.

The justification for cheating is that, if others are doing it, and if they are getting away with it, then the "nice guys" who do not cheat are putting themselves at an unfair disadvantage. What good does it do to be honest, some will say, if your grades are only mediocre, while your academic inferiors are graduating cum laude and getting the really good jobs?

Of course in later years, the honest students seem to have better lives, even if they start out from the bottom, even if "better" may not be outwardly visible. But in the earlier years, young people do not have this perspective. Especially in a job-poor economy, losing that high-paying job to an under-qualified cheater is a painful penalty to pay for personal integrity.

Yes, the pain is worth it, but try telling that to your spouse as you stand in an unemployment line, while the burden of unpaid student loans depresses your family finances.

Even so, personal integrity has enormous benefits on both a personal scale and a societal scale. National integrity is a critical asset, both at home and abroad. When even our enemies know they can trust our word, it is far easier to get them to the peace table than it would be if they thought we would cheat them.

No government can ever be big enough to monitor everyone. Even if it could be, it would fail, if the people in government were themselves among the cheaters.

At some level, the values of honesty and personal integrity must be internalized. Yes, we will always need a certain amount of enforcement. But that can be effective only if the cheaters are limited to those few who have no conscience at all, and those who normally would not cheat but are confronted with a temptation to which they momentarily give in.

Proposing solutions at a personal level, when the problem is societal, when the consequence is national, may seem Pollyanish thinking. Secularists will insist that the answer is to contrive a set of ethics, and to enforce it. Religious teachings, they insist, would be offensive.

But teaching people to be honest simply because a rule says so, would be like making a law to force mothers to love their children.
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Government, Health Care, and Oil Changes

(Written September 30, 2012)

A young father was changing the oil in his car, while his five year old daughter looked on.

Being small, and with the car on a ramp, she could easily see underneath while her father had drained out the old oil and changed the oil filter.

As he prepared to put in the new oil, she said, "But Daddy . . ."

"Not now sweety, I'm busy."

"But Daddy . . . "

"Not now, I'm changing the oil."

"But Daddy, the new oil is leaking out the bottom."

Daddy had forgotten to put the plug back in the oil pan after he had drained the old oil.

Sometimes, the experts fail to see the obvious.

In order to understand why the health care systems of North America and Europe are so screwed up, we need to look under the hood.

The reason for failure is so simple that a (symbolically speaking) five year old could see it. The health care systems have been expelled from the free market.

Think about it. Which systems fail, and which succeed? The US Postal Service is exempt from market competition. It is a government monopoly. But UPS and Fed Ex are in competition, nobody is forced to use them, and yet they deliver better service at lower cost than the Post Office.

Oh, wait, you say, the Post Office charges less for a first class letter than do UPS and Fed Ex.

No. It charges more. But it disguises the cost by forcing low end customers to subsidize the high end customers. For example, it is illegal for a private company to deliver first class mail across town for ten cents. They could do so, but by law, only the Post Office is allowed to deliver such mail across town, and the PO charges as much for that service as it does for delivering mail across the country. So cross country mail only seems to cost less, because the people who would otherwise pay ten cents for cross town mail are instead paying far more.

Health care systems in western countries (including the US) are so clogged up with costs added by government, that healthy people who could otherwise get deep discounts, are instead charged far more, in order to pay for people who live unhealthy life styles.

So I can afford to get fat at your expense. Thank you. Not really, thank the government. I have a right to your hard earned money. At least according to the government.

Under a market system, people could put aside tax free money into their own, tailor-made health care plans. They would then have an incentive to live healthy lifestyles, and to carefully monitor their doctor and hospital bills for waste and fraud.

But what about people who cannot afford to do this?

Welfare, not healthcare laws, would be the proper role of government. Let the government allocate and budget money for poor people. But attach strings. If you smoke, do illegal drugs, or drink alcohol to excess, or engage in promiscuous behavior, or violent crime, then do so at your own risk and at your own expense.

Brutal? Yes.

But it would be far, far more humane than the present system of rewarding people to engage in behaviors that kill them.

The Most Important Things I Ever Learned

(Written August 29, 2012)

About thirty years ago, when I was in college, I had a job as a security guard.  What I learned from the janitors was far more important than anything I learned in class.

Night janitors and maids have a thankless job.  You never hear about them.  You rarely if ever see them.  But when you walk into a corporate office building, you expect it to be spotlessly clean, to reflect the high standards and professionalism of the corporation.  The carpets are vacuumed.  Floors are spotless.  Doorknobs are polished to a shiny luster.  And there is never a speck of dust in sight.

Who achieves that?

As I manned my post, I watched the night crew come in with mops and buckets, buffing machines and brooms, and various spray bottles of cleaning fluid.  They quickly set about their jobs with efficiency, since they had only a few hours to complete their many and varied tasks.

These people never shirked.  Every corner was meticulously cleaned.  Every detail was conscientiously attended.  If something did not seem quite right, these men and women made it right.  In short, they did far more than merely getting by.  They took pride in their work.

When their shift was nearing its end, the inspectors would come in and look things over.  Rarely did they find a discrepancy, and those they did find were so trifling that I was sure they were simply affirming their own existence.

Finally, the night crew would stow all their equipment, and leave the building, headed for their bus stops.  Some of them were going home to get their children off to school.  Some were going to second jobs.

Then, the office workers would arrive.  Within seconds, the devotedly polished door handles were smudged.  A few seconds after that, the carpet was stained by spilled coffee.  Day workers walked past the carefully dusted wall decorations without noticing them.  Executives put their lunches in the small refrigerators that had been defrosted and cleaned the night before.  Near the coffee dispenser was a sign, handwritten by a secretary saying, “Unless your mother works here, clean up your own mess.”

By the time the sun went down, and another busy day was at end, the office workers flowed out the door toward the parking garage, in a hurry to get to their SUVs before rush hour got going.

As darkness fell, the night crew arrived, to repeat their chores.

There is no super bowl for janitors.  There are no gala balls with red carpets for maids.  The night crew are never invited to the White House to receive medals.  Nobody sees them.  Nobody knows about them . . . .

. . . . except me and God, and now, you.

Resistance is not Futile

(Written August 15, 2012)

And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.

---The Book of the Revelation, Chapter 13, verse 7

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All Bible-believing Christians are (or should be) aware that there will come a period of time when evil will rule the earth, until Jesus returns to save it.

Some people find this too depressing to contemplate.

But if we fail to heed the prophecy, we will be less equipped to react as we should.

Be assured that evil will have its day, and during the Great Tribulation, the wrath of Satan will consume this world, even to the brink of destruction. The following passage makes that clear:

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Mark 13:20

King James Version (KJV)

²⁰ And except that the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh should be saved: but for the elect's sake, whom he hath chosen, he hath shortened the days.

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So, then, what should we do? Should we throw up our hands in despair, and yield to evil?

Never!

I find nowhere in the Bible, Old or New Testament, where believers in God are told to refrain from opposing evil.

Even at the height of the brutality of Hitler and Hirohito from the 1930-45 era, many people inside Germany and Japan courageously stood against evil. But the juggernaut of totalitarian rule crushed them. Courage seemed futile. Evil seemed unstoppable.

Millions upon millions of people were wantonly slaughtered by the Germans and Japanese. Their names are largely forgotten, their individual stories untold.

But God knows.

As Americans, we tend to be conditioned by the sports analogy to war. Two sides line up, there is a contest, and one side is victorious, while the other is defeated. Even in the most realistic of war movies, the action is played out in less than an afternoon, in the comfort of an air conditioned theater.

The war we are in now began in heaven, when a third of the angels rebelled. It continued into the Garden of Eden, where mankind fell from grace. The battles were fought in Egypt, in the Promised Land, and at Jericho. Sometimes it seemed that all was lost --- the entire nation of Israel was led into a slavery that lasted 70 years. The Temple of Jerusalem was twice destroyed. And then came the Holocaust.

We are in the midst of that war, and as Christians and Jews, were are footsoldiers in the struggle to defeat evil.

We cannot, of course, succeed without God. But fortunately, God has already gone ahead of us and won the victory.

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Numbers Ch 13

30 And Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said, Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it.

31 But the men that went up with him said, We be not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we.

32 And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel, saying, The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature.

33 And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.

Numbers Ch 14

1 And all the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night.

2 And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron: and the whole congregation said unto them, Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt! or would God we had died in this wilderness!

3 And wherefore hath the LORD brought us unto this land, to fall by the sword, that our wives and our children should be a prey? were it not better for us to return into Egypt?

4 And they said one to another, Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt.

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Let us not be like the Israelite exiles who feared to seize the Promised Land.

Yes, we have many trials and tribulations ahead of us.

But God has already gone ahead of us and won the victory for us.

God will walk with us THROUGH the valley of the shadow of death.

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As to what will happen in the following days and months, I do not, of course know.

But I am sure that my faith will be tested by fire.

I am sure that I will be commanded by evil people to renounce my faith, to betray God, and to join forces with evil.

I know that I will fear, that I will feel dread, and that the spectre of death will confront me.

Only through God will I find the courage to press on forward, to resist evil, and if necessary, to die in the cause of good.

But whatever I do, I will know this:

The Lord is my Shepherd.