On Thanksgiving people often voice thanks for the many benefits of life. But whom do they thank? God? Should we really thank God for the good things in life, or should we condemn him for the horrors and terrors of life?
The primary reason for the existence of religion is to relieve people of fear. Marx called religion the “Opiate of the Masses.” This was a perfect explanation of the religious impulse. We live in a world filled with pain, sorrow, depression, and horror, but the religions tell us that there is a God out there who loves us and loves the world. This God will take care of us and, after death, will provide us with a paradise of joy and happiness.
I was speaking to someone and I proposed that if there really was a God, we should not worship or love or adore him, but rather, we should hate him. The person responded that we should worship him because “life is beautiful.” I replied that although life has moments of beauty and happiness, there is far too much sorrow and unhappiness to say that life is beautiful.
Consider the following: The great majority of people in the world live in abject poverty. Most of those people suffer from hunger, disease, famine, tsunamis, cyclones, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, plagues, infestations, and war. When one looks at the continents of Africa, Asia, and South America, one wonders how there could be a loving God looking over those people. Hundreds of millions of the people on those continents are subjected to widespread diseases such as cholera, malaria, sleeping sickness, AIDS, Dengue Fever, and Yellow Fever. They have insufficient clothing, shelter ,and medical care. They are ruled-over by tyrants and dictators.
Millions of women throughout the world are treated as chattels without civil rights. They are beaten, raped, stoned, and subject to genital castration designed to eradicate their sexual pleasure. It is hard to imagine that such people are happy.
Hundreds of thousands of women, young girls, and boys are abducted each year by sex-crazed men who imprison and often torture them, using them as sexual toys for repeated rape. Many thousands of them are sold into sexual slavery, often to be bought by so-called upstanding members of the community.
What about the lucky people in America and the more affluent countries of Europe? One would think that they have many reasons to thank God. But we need to ask, are the lives of Americans so blessed and happy? Let’s start with health. Practically everybody in America has somebody in their family suffering from some serious illness. Millions of Americans have children with serious congenital diseases and infirmities such as autism, blindness, deafness, physical deformity, Down Syndrome, mental retardation, mental illnesses, muscular dystrophy, diabetes, epilepsy, cystic fibrosis, heart disease, cancer, and hundreds of other less common syndromes and disorders. The parents of such children often live lives of great sorrow.
Millions of adult Americans also suffer from terrible diseases. Heart disease, cancer, kidney disease, liver disease, Emphysema, Parkinson’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS), AIDS, Crohn’s Disease, chronic pain, and hundreds of other conditions beset the happiness of their lives. Millions of Americans suffer from mental problems, depression, anxiety, fatigue, lonliness, phobias, panic attacks, disabling shyness, and stress throughout their lives. Millions of Americans suffer from the effects of terrible automobile accidents and other injuries. They go through life as cripples with disabled or missing limbs, internal organs, and other essential parts of their bodies, or suffering from terrible pain.
As people get older, they greet a host of problems afflicting older Americans such as strokes, heart disease, arthritis, diabetes, hearing and seeing defects, prostate problems, osteoporosis, erectile dysfunction, sleep disorders, Alzheimer’s and memory loss, and hundreds of other medical and psychological problems that impair their happiness. As people age their bodies breaks-down, their skin wrinkles, their hair disappears or turns white, their energy fails, and they lose their sexual ability and attraction.
Millions of Americans are addicted to alcohol, pain medication, and illegal drugs. Almost all of them are living in terrible misery, unable to shake the imprisonment of their addictions. There are millions of homeless people living on the streets, in tents, under bridges, and in shelters. Millions of other Americans are addicted to behavior patterns such as gambling addiction, fetishism, sexual addiction, frigidity, obsessive-compulsive behavior, dependency, and other forms of addiction. There are millions of people with sexual deviations including the need to molest children or rape women. Millions of people engage in abusive behavior, physically beating or verbally berating their spouses, companions, and children. Millions of spouses, companions, and children are victims of such abuse. Such people cannot possibly be happy.
Millions of Americans live in poverty surrounded by a land of plenty. They eke-out a living in slums, tenements, housing projects, trailer parks, and rural shacks. They often go hungry in this land of plenty. Many go without decent clothing, shelter, ordinary medical care, and live in places without heat, cooling, electricity, telephone service, computers, sanitation, or even running water.
Millions of Americans are the victims of discrimination. People of all minorities suffer from bigotry. Millions of homosexuals, transvestites, transsexuals, and other trans-gender people are the objects of prejudice and condemnation by millions of other people.
Every day one reads in the paper about people who commit crimes. There are thousands of kinds of crimes committed every day by millions of people. It is difficult to guess what percent of the populace is dishonest, violent, dangerous, fraudulent, and deceitful, but judging from the constant news of crimes, schemes, scams, and corruptions, the number must run well into the tens of millions. There are millions of people engaged in serious and not-so-serious crime, including robbery, larceny, drug offenses, burglary, mugging, assault and battery, murder, and thousands of other kinds of crime. One constantly hears about violent massacres by crazed gunmen in schools, theaters, and public places. In addition to the victims of such killings, the families, friends, and communities of the victims are also victims. Millions of Americans are incarcerated in prisons and jails. There are millions of wives, children, parents, and other close relatives of prison inmates. These people must suffer having their loved ones in jail. There are millions of victims of crimes whose lives have been ruined by the crimes of others.
Throughout the world there are fanatic terrorists driven by religious hatred who make it their business to kill others who do not share their beliefs. I cannot imagine how many people are killed each year by these zealots but it must be in the thousands. It seems that every day one reads about a bomb going off in the Middle East or some other place, killing innocent people. If we consider the minds of the terrorists, they must be angry, tormented, unhappy people who have a lust for blood.
Millions of Americans are in unhappy marriages or relationships. Millions of Americans are suffering from the breakdown of their marriages or the breakup of relationships in which they were very much in love. Half of all marriages end in divorce. A majority of those who do not get divorced go on living in unhappy marriages. Millions of people are engaged in illicit sexual entanglements that cause them emotional pain and guilt. Millions of people are almost suicidal because of the infidelity of a spouse or loved one. Millions of people suffer from feelings of inferiority or lack of self-worth. Millions of people suffer from the feeling that they are too fat, too thin, or unattractive.
Millions of Americans hate their jobs or suffer under cruel, tyrannical, or sadistic bosses. There are millions of people with sour, nasty, cruel, vicious, malicious, and evil personalities who make it their business in life to damage, spoil, and injure the lives of other people. Millions of people live lives consumed with envy, jealousy, and hatred of others whom they perceive to be more fortunate than they.
Millions of families have children with serious behavior problems. Many of these children may grow up in middle class homes with respectable parents, yet such children are constantly in trouble with school, neighbors, the police, and others. Thousands of such children run away every year only to wind-up on the streets caught-up in drug addiction, prostitution, and crime.
For every Bernard Madoff carrying-out a giant stock swindle, there are thousands of businessmen, brokers, hedge fund managers, and others engaged in insider trading and other blatant violations of the rules of business law and ethics. Millions of Americans cheat others in smaller ways for smaller amounts of money. If one were able to calculate the amount of money embezzled from businesses, organizations, and charities each year it would probably be up in the billions if not trillions. I have known several embezzlers in my lifetime. I’m sure everybody has.
Although one would expect great probity from the wealthiest and most successful people, it is simply not there. Doctors routinely over-bill for services. Andy Rooney told a story about a doctor who came into his room while he was in the hospital for treatment. The doctor said hello and mentioned that he liked Rooney’s work. He then departed without examining or treating Rooney, and later billed Medicare for $240. I have heard many such stories. I have had personal experience with dishonest doctors. One doctor who came in and handed my wife a card while our son was being treated for a broken bone at the hospital, later billed for services even though he did not examine or treat my son at all. Doctors frequently bill for services never rendered. Medicare and Medicaid pay tens of billions for fraudulent claims by physicians who are wealthy by any standard.
Eventually, we die. Death is not a simple leaf dropping off a tree. Death is usually painful. Often, it is horrible. It is usually accompanied by the grief of loved ones.
Yes, life does have its moments of happiness and beauty. There are some wonderful things in life, and some people do live very happy, prosperous, safe, healthy lives. Those people can be thankful for all they have, but they probably represent a small fraction of the people on earth. If you stop and consider all of the unhappiness, pain, disease, grief, and guilt suffered by the vast majority of people in the world, it can hardly be said that life is beautiful.
While many people suffering from the terrible things listed here may not think life is bad, that is because of the human ability to cope with the things that make us unhappy. It is a wonderful thing that people going through the most extreme torments will often try to look on the bright side of life. But if we stop and look at all of the problems faced by humans and listed here, we can hardly say that life is beautiful. We can hardly find reason to thank that mythical being called God.
Surely, if there was a God, and he was a good and loving God like the one worshipped by most religions, life would not be filled with such misery. There would not be millions of starving, diseased, oppressed people in Africa and other parts of the world. There would not be so much tragedy, horror, injury, illness, poverty, hunger, anger, war, and death. We would not have to wait for some mythical afterlife to experience a better life. Life on earth would really be beautiful for everyone.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Friday, November 11, 2011
Republican War Against Healthcare for Seniors
I suspect that most senior citizens who call themselves Republicans are unaware of the plans that the Republican candidates for President and the Republicans in Congress have for Medicare and health care. I suggest that they find out now so that when the time comes to vote they will know who wants to abolish their right to health care in old age.
The Republicans in both houses of Congress are now on record as having voted for a budget prepared Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Chairman of the House Budget Committee, which would abolish Medicare as we know it. Ryan’s plan would save the government billions of dollars by shifting the burden of paying for medical care from the government to the senior citizens who would otherwise be covered by the current program.
The way Medicare works today, the government pays for all approved medical care of senior citizens. Let’s say that you need to have heart-bypass surgery. The surgeon will bill Medicare for the cost of the surgery, which might be in the tens of thousands. Medicare will approve a percentage of that bill and pay the surgeon. Most surgeons will accept as full payment the amount paid by Medicare, but if there is a deductable or amount in excess of the Medicare amount, most seniors are able to pay it by taking-out Medicare-Plus insurance.
Under the Republican plan put forth by Representative Ryan, the government would no longer make Medicare payments for people who are 55 years old and under at the time of the legislation. When those people become eligible for Medicare, there would be no Medicare for them. They would have to purchase private health insurance. Under the Ryan plan the government would assist people earning less than $80 thousand per year by giving them a voucher to help pay for health insurance. For people earning over $80 thousand, the voucher would be half the amount, and even less for people earning over $200 thousand per year. The voucher amount would be pegged to the cost of living.
The basic problem with the Ryan plan is that the cost of health insurance is rising at a rate far higher than the cost of living. The leading economists have asserted that in ten years, when the 55-year-old generation reaches eligibility for Medicare, the cost of health insurance will be more than double the amount provided for in the Ryan budget. That means that those seniors would have to pay an amount equal to, if not more than, the amount they would have to pay for health insurance today if there were no Medicare. Sure, this would save the government billions of dollars, but it would deprive millions of seniors of health care during that period of their lives when they are most in need.
Senior Citizens should also realize that the Republicans want to repeal the healthcare reform law, more properly known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA). The Republicans in the House of Representatives have already voted overwhelmingly to repeal PPACA (which they derisively call “Obamacare”). Fortunately, that effort could not succeed because of Democratic control of the Senate. But who knows? Perhaps at some later date Republicans will gain the strength to carry out their plan to totally repeal all of the provisions of the law. What would happen then?
Senior citizens who are beneficiaries of the Medicare Part D drug program should be aware that the PPACA provides for the eventual elimination of the “doughnut hole” and has already begun to close it. The “doughnut hole” is the period during which seniors have had to pay the full cost of their prescriptions after they amassed $2,700 in drug costs. After $2,700, Medicare did not resume paying for drug expenses until seniors reached $4,350 in out-of-pocket payments, a figure most seniors never reach in one year. The PPACA has already cut the doughnut hole by $500 and has instituted a 50 percent discount in brand-name drugs. For many seniors who simply cannot afford to buy their essential medications during the doughnut hole, that will be life saving. If the law is repealed, the doughnut hole will remain. Of course, many Republican leaders want also to repeal the whole Medicare Part D drug program and make seniors pay the full cost of all medications.
The PPACA also provides many provisions that will benefit seniors as well as everybody else. Included are provisions that forbid insurance companies from denying coverage on account of preexisting conditions, from placing lifetime or annual caps on coverage, and from rescinding coverage after a patient files a claim. The law creates a long-term-care insurance program, financed by voluntary payroll deductions, to provide benefits to adults who become functionally disable. It eliminates co-payments for preventative services and exempts preventative services from deductibles under the Medicare program. There are many other provisions, too numerous to set forth here, benefiting seniors.
Seniors should be aware of the position of the current Republican candidates on health care. All of the candidates have shown support for the Ryan budget plan that abolishes Medicare. All of the Republican candidates, including Mitt Romney, would repeal PPACA. For example, Michele Bachman, who has called for repealing PPACA, has also called for the phasing-out of Social Security and Medicare. Governor Rick Perry has plainly stated that he considers Medicare and Social Security to be unconstitutional. He calls Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.” Ron Paul has long held that Medicare and Social Security are unconstitutional. Herman Cain wants to totally eliminate Medicare and Social Security. Newt Gingrich has argued that Medicare, Social Security, and other entitlement programs are fiscally unsustainable. He would replace Medicare and Social Security with private accounts so that seniors could save their money and pay for private health insurance. For low income seniors, he would offer vouchers similar to those offered in the Ryan budget plan.
If you are a senior citizen, or somebody who is on the brink of qualifying for Medicare, you have to ask yourself: Do you want to have Medicare abolished as the Republicans have already tried to do? Do you want to go on paying the full cost of medications after reaching the doughnut hole? Do you want the Medicare Part D program abolished? Do you want to restore the practices by insurance companies of denying coverage on account of pre-existing conditions, lifetime or annual caps, and other factors?
I would think that regardless of whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, you would strongly oppose the Republican efforts to eliminate your health benefits. You should remember this when the time comes to vote for the next president and U.S. Congress.
The Republicans in both houses of Congress are now on record as having voted for a budget prepared Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Chairman of the House Budget Committee, which would abolish Medicare as we know it. Ryan’s plan would save the government billions of dollars by shifting the burden of paying for medical care from the government to the senior citizens who would otherwise be covered by the current program.
The way Medicare works today, the government pays for all approved medical care of senior citizens. Let’s say that you need to have heart-bypass surgery. The surgeon will bill Medicare for the cost of the surgery, which might be in the tens of thousands. Medicare will approve a percentage of that bill and pay the surgeon. Most surgeons will accept as full payment the amount paid by Medicare, but if there is a deductable or amount in excess of the Medicare amount, most seniors are able to pay it by taking-out Medicare-Plus insurance.
Under the Republican plan put forth by Representative Ryan, the government would no longer make Medicare payments for people who are 55 years old and under at the time of the legislation. When those people become eligible for Medicare, there would be no Medicare for them. They would have to purchase private health insurance. Under the Ryan plan the government would assist people earning less than $80 thousand per year by giving them a voucher to help pay for health insurance. For people earning over $80 thousand, the voucher would be half the amount, and even less for people earning over $200 thousand per year. The voucher amount would be pegged to the cost of living.
The basic problem with the Ryan plan is that the cost of health insurance is rising at a rate far higher than the cost of living. The leading economists have asserted that in ten years, when the 55-year-old generation reaches eligibility for Medicare, the cost of health insurance will be more than double the amount provided for in the Ryan budget. That means that those seniors would have to pay an amount equal to, if not more than, the amount they would have to pay for health insurance today if there were no Medicare. Sure, this would save the government billions of dollars, but it would deprive millions of seniors of health care during that period of their lives when they are most in need.
Senior Citizens should also realize that the Republicans want to repeal the healthcare reform law, more properly known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA). The Republicans in the House of Representatives have already voted overwhelmingly to repeal PPACA (which they derisively call “Obamacare”). Fortunately, that effort could not succeed because of Democratic control of the Senate. But who knows? Perhaps at some later date Republicans will gain the strength to carry out their plan to totally repeal all of the provisions of the law. What would happen then?
Senior citizens who are beneficiaries of the Medicare Part D drug program should be aware that the PPACA provides for the eventual elimination of the “doughnut hole” and has already begun to close it. The “doughnut hole” is the period during which seniors have had to pay the full cost of their prescriptions after they amassed $2,700 in drug costs. After $2,700, Medicare did not resume paying for drug expenses until seniors reached $4,350 in out-of-pocket payments, a figure most seniors never reach in one year. The PPACA has already cut the doughnut hole by $500 and has instituted a 50 percent discount in brand-name drugs. For many seniors who simply cannot afford to buy their essential medications during the doughnut hole, that will be life saving. If the law is repealed, the doughnut hole will remain. Of course, many Republican leaders want also to repeal the whole Medicare Part D drug program and make seniors pay the full cost of all medications.
The PPACA also provides many provisions that will benefit seniors as well as everybody else. Included are provisions that forbid insurance companies from denying coverage on account of preexisting conditions, from placing lifetime or annual caps on coverage, and from rescinding coverage after a patient files a claim. The law creates a long-term-care insurance program, financed by voluntary payroll deductions, to provide benefits to adults who become functionally disable. It eliminates co-payments for preventative services and exempts preventative services from deductibles under the Medicare program. There are many other provisions, too numerous to set forth here, benefiting seniors.
Seniors should be aware of the position of the current Republican candidates on health care. All of the candidates have shown support for the Ryan budget plan that abolishes Medicare. All of the Republican candidates, including Mitt Romney, would repeal PPACA. For example, Michele Bachman, who has called for repealing PPACA, has also called for the phasing-out of Social Security and Medicare. Governor Rick Perry has plainly stated that he considers Medicare and Social Security to be unconstitutional. He calls Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.” Ron Paul has long held that Medicare and Social Security are unconstitutional. Herman Cain wants to totally eliminate Medicare and Social Security. Newt Gingrich has argued that Medicare, Social Security, and other entitlement programs are fiscally unsustainable. He would replace Medicare and Social Security with private accounts so that seniors could save their money and pay for private health insurance. For low income seniors, he would offer vouchers similar to those offered in the Ryan budget plan.
If you are a senior citizen, or somebody who is on the brink of qualifying for Medicare, you have to ask yourself: Do you want to have Medicare abolished as the Republicans have already tried to do? Do you want to go on paying the full cost of medications after reaching the doughnut hole? Do you want the Medicare Part D program abolished? Do you want to restore the practices by insurance companies of denying coverage on account of pre-existing conditions, lifetime or annual caps, and other factors?
I would think that regardless of whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, you would strongly oppose the Republican efforts to eliminate your health benefits. You should remember this when the time comes to vote for the next president and U.S. Congress.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Harold Camping Again
Once again Harold Camping's prediction that the world would end on a given day has proved false. Anybody with half a brain could have told you that nothing would happen. Camping first predicted that the world would end and the "Rapture" would occur in 1994. Of course, it didn't. Nevertheless, undaunted, Camping then predicted that it would occur on May 21, 2011. He made it clear that he was quite certain of the date. The stupid people who believed him sold homes and businesses and moved to California to be with him when the Rapture occurred. Naturally, nothing happened. He then predicted that it would occur on October 21, 2011. That day passed like any other day.
Now I don't blame Camping. He makes millions off of this scam, even if he truly believes in his preposterous claims. But people who still believe in him have got to have brain damage. You've all heard the phrase, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." Well, now the morons have been fooled three times at least. Do they still believe in Camping? Do they still believe in any of the jokers who continue to say that the world is about to end? Do they still believe that the Bible is the word of God? Do they still believe in God?
In May I offered to bet Camping $10 million that there would be no end of the world or rapture or anything else on October 21. I said that I would be willing to bet Harold that October 21 will go by like any other Fall day, like May 21, like September 1994, and that there would be no Rapture, no end of the world, no apocalypse. He probably never heard of my offer, but if he had agreed to the bet I would be rich today.
There is only one reason why Harold Camping is a false prophet. The reason is that there is no such thing as God, and any prediction based on the Book of Revelations in the Bible is pure nonsense. There is a large number of phony prophets out there claiming that the world is about to come to an end. I have heard Hal Lindsey, Jack Van Impe, Tim LaHaye and others who claim to believe that we are approaching the apocalypse. They base their whole argument on the wording of the Book of Revelations. None of them seems able to pierce the veil of idiocy surrounding that book and the absurdity surrounding all predictions based on the Bible.
The Judeo-Christian Bible is not a book of history. It is not a book of fact. Virtually nothing in it is true. It is a fairy-tale, a book of myths, which, in many cases, is based on more ancient myths of other ancient religions. Millions of dimwitted people base their lives on this book of myths, just as millions of Moslems base their lives on the Quran. In the absence of a real god, or of any real evidence for the existence of God, these people latch onto the one thing that they believe gives them access to the teaching of God. It is pitiful.
I wish people would read my book: "The Case Against God: A Lawyer Examines the Evidence." It is available on Kindle and can be brought-up on any device that has Kindle applications. In it I demonstrate that the Bible is merely a kind of mythological sacred scripture. I show that Moses was nothing more than a mythical figure, that the Exodus never happened, and that Jesus of Nazareth was nothing more than a Jewish holy man who wanted to share certain ideas about Judaism based on the teachings of the Pharisees. In no way did he want to start a new religion naming himself as the Son of God. The poor misguided millions of sheep who went on to create and follow a church based on this misinterpretation of his teaching are always prey to the seduction of cults, sects, televangelists, rogues, and phonies of every kind.
The world is not about to end. We are not about to face the apocalypse or experience the Rapture. During the Cuban Missle Crisis I thought we might face a thermonuclear holocaust, but I no longer worry about that. Perhaps terrorists will get hold of a nuclear bomb and bomb a big city in America, or Israel and Iran will exchange nuclear bombs, but I doubt that these things will mean the end of the world. No, the world will carry on for a long time to come and there is no God to change that. Stupid, or dishonest, or clever men have always predicted the imminent end of the world. It is nothing new. I just hope that the obvious falsity of Harold Camping's predictions will make people use their heads a little more and stop believeing in these absurd myths.
Now I don't blame Camping. He makes millions off of this scam, even if he truly believes in his preposterous claims. But people who still believe in him have got to have brain damage. You've all heard the phrase, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." Well, now the morons have been fooled three times at least. Do they still believe in Camping? Do they still believe in any of the jokers who continue to say that the world is about to end? Do they still believe that the Bible is the word of God? Do they still believe in God?
In May I offered to bet Camping $10 million that there would be no end of the world or rapture or anything else on October 21. I said that I would be willing to bet Harold that October 21 will go by like any other Fall day, like May 21, like September 1994, and that there would be no Rapture, no end of the world, no apocalypse. He probably never heard of my offer, but if he had agreed to the bet I would be rich today.
There is only one reason why Harold Camping is a false prophet. The reason is that there is no such thing as God, and any prediction based on the Book of Revelations in the Bible is pure nonsense. There is a large number of phony prophets out there claiming that the world is about to come to an end. I have heard Hal Lindsey, Jack Van Impe, Tim LaHaye and others who claim to believe that we are approaching the apocalypse. They base their whole argument on the wording of the Book of Revelations. None of them seems able to pierce the veil of idiocy surrounding that book and the absurdity surrounding all predictions based on the Bible.
The Judeo-Christian Bible is not a book of history. It is not a book of fact. Virtually nothing in it is true. It is a fairy-tale, a book of myths, which, in many cases, is based on more ancient myths of other ancient religions. Millions of dimwitted people base their lives on this book of myths, just as millions of Moslems base their lives on the Quran. In the absence of a real god, or of any real evidence for the existence of God, these people latch onto the one thing that they believe gives them access to the teaching of God. It is pitiful.
I wish people would read my book: "The Case Against God: A Lawyer Examines the Evidence." It is available on Kindle and can be brought-up on any device that has Kindle applications. In it I demonstrate that the Bible is merely a kind of mythological sacred scripture. I show that Moses was nothing more than a mythical figure, that the Exodus never happened, and that Jesus of Nazareth was nothing more than a Jewish holy man who wanted to share certain ideas about Judaism based on the teachings of the Pharisees. In no way did he want to start a new religion naming himself as the Son of God. The poor misguided millions of sheep who went on to create and follow a church based on this misinterpretation of his teaching are always prey to the seduction of cults, sects, televangelists, rogues, and phonies of every kind.
The world is not about to end. We are not about to face the apocalypse or experience the Rapture. During the Cuban Missle Crisis I thought we might face a thermonuclear holocaust, but I no longer worry about that. Perhaps terrorists will get hold of a nuclear bomb and bomb a big city in America, or Israel and Iran will exchange nuclear bombs, but I doubt that these things will mean the end of the world. No, the world will carry on for a long time to come and there is no God to change that. Stupid, or dishonest, or clever men have always predicted the imminent end of the world. It is nothing new. I just hope that the obvious falsity of Harold Camping's predictions will make people use their heads a little more and stop believeing in these absurd myths.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Defending President Obama
At this stage of the political game it is not surprising that Republicans exhibit scathing hatred for President Obama. They have dedicated themselves to opposing him on every front, even to the point of helping to ruin the economy so that he would not be reelected. Before he was elected, right-wingers like Rush Limbaugh asserted that they hoped he would fail. Since then Republicans have acted as if improvement in the economy was the last thing they want. A good economy with reasonable levels of employment might help the President get reelected. A lousy economy might help a Republican get into office.
But it seems incongruous that loud criticism of the President has also come from Democrats and those of the left who feel that he has not fulfilled his promises and has too easily capitulated to Republicans. Many African Americans, who somehow thought that a biracial president would be able to change their whole history overnight and bring about the kind of equality called for in “I have a dream,” are discouraged that life seems to go on as usual.
In an opinion piece in Newsweek Magazine, William Broyles compared President Obama to Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister who has gone down in history as the man who appeased Hitler and failed to take action to stop the aggression of Germany before World War II. Broyles accused President Obama of appeasing the right-wing factions in Congress when negotiating budgets and the debt limit. I believe that Broyles’ commentary is more than simply unfair. It is incorrect and terribly harmful. It reveals that Broyles and many others on the left are acting like spoiled children, whining because they have not been able to get everything they want in Washington. For some reason they thought that Obama was a miracle worker who would turn America into a Garden of Eden.
People like Broyles fail to face reality and fail to understand what President Obama has been up against. They ignore the fact that even when Democrats were in charge of both houses of Congress, Obama was faced with fanatic opposition from filibuster-minded Republicans and Blue-Dog Democrats. Like FDR, Jack Kennedy, and Bill Clinton before him, Obama has been a pragmatist who understands the need to compromise in a nation equally divided between Democrats and Republicans.
They also ignore the tremendous accomplishments of President Obama in the face of such fierce opposition. These include a historic reform of the health-care system; increased regulation of the financial services industry; a large stimulus package that saved millions of jobs, kept us out of a depression, and saved the auto industry from going down the drain; reversal of the Bush era regulations forbidding federal support for abortions; reversal of the Bush era regulations weakening environmental controls; elimination of the “Don’t ask don’t tell” policy on gays in the military; signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Bill on equal pay for women; reversal of the Bush ban on stem-cell research; ordering the reduction of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan; repeated extension of unemployment benefits for those out-of-work; signing of a nuclear limitation treaty with Russia; improvement in American prestige throughout the world (which won him a Nobel Prize); and the signing of laws to help veterans, school children, college students, minorities, immigrants and many others. It was on President Obama’s watch that the Navy Seals finally brought Osama bin Laden to his final justice. President Obama’s accomplishments in less than one term are far too many to list here. They can be found on a website called “The 244 accomplishments of President Obama.”
Left-wing critics of President Obama also seem to ignore the elements of character that infuse his presidency. He is a decent, compassionate, steady, and considerate man. Perhaps they would like a more aggressive person, but I feel that he is an ideal role model for young people today. When you look at the list of potential Republican candidates today, you realize that they are either right-wing fanatics like Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann who haven’t got the intelligence to believe in evolution or global warming, or slippery phonies like Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich who frame their ideas according to which way the political winds are blowing.
President Obama is going to be the Democratic candidate for president in 2012, and Democrats need to close ranks and support him now. The petty sniping by discontented liberals will do nothing to help him get reelected. Lets not aid the right-wing forces of reaction and bigotry.
But it seems incongruous that loud criticism of the President has also come from Democrats and those of the left who feel that he has not fulfilled his promises and has too easily capitulated to Republicans. Many African Americans, who somehow thought that a biracial president would be able to change their whole history overnight and bring about the kind of equality called for in “I have a dream,” are discouraged that life seems to go on as usual.
In an opinion piece in Newsweek Magazine, William Broyles compared President Obama to Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister who has gone down in history as the man who appeased Hitler and failed to take action to stop the aggression of Germany before World War II. Broyles accused President Obama of appeasing the right-wing factions in Congress when negotiating budgets and the debt limit. I believe that Broyles’ commentary is more than simply unfair. It is incorrect and terribly harmful. It reveals that Broyles and many others on the left are acting like spoiled children, whining because they have not been able to get everything they want in Washington. For some reason they thought that Obama was a miracle worker who would turn America into a Garden of Eden.
People like Broyles fail to face reality and fail to understand what President Obama has been up against. They ignore the fact that even when Democrats were in charge of both houses of Congress, Obama was faced with fanatic opposition from filibuster-minded Republicans and Blue-Dog Democrats. Like FDR, Jack Kennedy, and Bill Clinton before him, Obama has been a pragmatist who understands the need to compromise in a nation equally divided between Democrats and Republicans.
They also ignore the tremendous accomplishments of President Obama in the face of such fierce opposition. These include a historic reform of the health-care system; increased regulation of the financial services industry; a large stimulus package that saved millions of jobs, kept us out of a depression, and saved the auto industry from going down the drain; reversal of the Bush era regulations forbidding federal support for abortions; reversal of the Bush era regulations weakening environmental controls; elimination of the “Don’t ask don’t tell” policy on gays in the military; signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Bill on equal pay for women; reversal of the Bush ban on stem-cell research; ordering the reduction of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan; repeated extension of unemployment benefits for those out-of-work; signing of a nuclear limitation treaty with Russia; improvement in American prestige throughout the world (which won him a Nobel Prize); and the signing of laws to help veterans, school children, college students, minorities, immigrants and many others. It was on President Obama’s watch that the Navy Seals finally brought Osama bin Laden to his final justice. President Obama’s accomplishments in less than one term are far too many to list here. They can be found on a website called “The 244 accomplishments of President Obama.”
Left-wing critics of President Obama also seem to ignore the elements of character that infuse his presidency. He is a decent, compassionate, steady, and considerate man. Perhaps they would like a more aggressive person, but I feel that he is an ideal role model for young people today. When you look at the list of potential Republican candidates today, you realize that they are either right-wing fanatics like Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann who haven’t got the intelligence to believe in evolution or global warming, or slippery phonies like Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich who frame their ideas according to which way the political winds are blowing.
President Obama is going to be the Democratic candidate for president in 2012, and Democrats need to close ranks and support him now. The petty sniping by discontented liberals will do nothing to help him get reelected. Lets not aid the right-wing forces of reaction and bigotry.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Are Members of the Tea Party Intelligent?
Tea Party people are very conservative. They also claim to be very religious. The question I have is whether they are very intelligent. Several of the Republican candidates for president, including Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann, reject the Darwinian theory of evolution. They do this primarily on religious grounds. They tend toward the creationist theory that God created all living things just as they are. Also, despite the overwehlming weight of scientific evidence, they reject the current theory of global warming. It is kind of scary to think that one of these ignoramuses could become president of the United States.
The distinguished British biologist and author, Richard Dawkins, wrote about the ignorance of Rick Perry as follows:
"There is nothing unusual about Governor Rick Perry. Uneducated fools can be found in every country and every period of history, and they are not unknown
in high office. What is unusual about today’s Republican party (I disavow
the ridiculous ‘GOP’ nickname, because the party of Lincoln and Theodore
Roosevelt has lately forfeited all claim to be considered ‘grand’) is this:
In any other party and in any other country, an individual may occasionally
rise to the top in spite of being an uneducated ignoramus. In today’s
Republican Party ‘in spite of’ is not the phrase we need. Ignorance and lack
of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory.
Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican
voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like
themselves over someone actually qualified for the job."
The advent of "Uneducated fools" in the ranks of the Republican Party is explained by the general level of ignorance to be found in its Tea Party base. The people who make up the Tea Party fanatics are, for the most part, a highly uneducated group who resent the high education of President Obama and those around him. The fact is that Liberals and athiests are better educated and brighter than conservatives and religious believers.
It seems from all the studies done of the relative intelligence of conservatives and liberals, and of religious believers and atheists, that on the average liberals are more intelligent than conservatives, (George Will may or may not be an exception to the rule), and atheists are more intelligent than religious believers. Aside from the overwhelming weight of intelligence studies, the difference in intelligence between these groups is encountered on a daily basis. Have you ever noticed that the most educated people you know and meet are usually liberal and non-religious? The corollary of this is that the most conservative and religious people you know and meet are usually less well educated. One need only look at the high percentage of liberals and atheists among scientists, collage professors, and members of other educated professions.
I will not waste a lot of time defining the terms liberal, conservative, and atheist. But when I speak of somebody being “religious,” I am not talking about being spiritual, holy, or pious. By the term “religious” I mean the Tea Party type of people such as “Born-Again” Christians, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and outspoken bible-thumping members of the so-called Religious Right who claim to be religious.
There have been a number of studies looking at whether liberals and atheists are more intelligent than conservatives and religious types. One is the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (or Add Health). The other is the General Social Survey (GSS). Both studies demonstrated that liberals are more intelligent than conservatives. The Add Health study shows that the mean IQ of adolescents who identify themselves as "very liberal" is 106, compared with a mean IQ of 95 for those calling themselves "very conservative." The Add Health study also found that there was a correlation between religion and intelligence. Non-religious people tended to be more intelligent than religious believers. The Add Health study is statistically significant because more than 20,000 young people were surveyed.
Researcher, Satoshi Kanazawa, of the London School of Economics and Political Science, has written a paper in which he quotes from the Add Health Survey along with other sources. He finds that more-intelligent people are more likely to describe themselves as liberal and non-religious. In another study, a British team found that young people with higher intelligence scores were more likely to grow into adults who vote for Liberal Democrats.
In 2008, intelligence researcher Helmuth Nyborg examined whether IQ relates to religion, using representative data from the Add Health and other studies. His results, published in the scientific journal "Intelligence," demonstrated that on average, Atheists scored 5.89 IQ points higher than religious types. These findings are supported by many other studies including the study by Lazar Stankova of the National Institute of Education in Singapore, the 1975 study by Norman Poythress, using SAT scores as a measure of intelligence, and others.
You need only look at the levels of education for media conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity, and compare them with those for liberals like Anderson Cooper, Keith Olberman, Bill Maher, and Rachel Maddow. Whereas Limbaugh, Beck, and Hannity never graduated from college (Limbaugh flunked-out), Anderson Cooper graduated from Yale, Keith Olberman and Bill Maher both graduated from Cornell, and Rachel Maddow obtained a doctoral degree from Oxford University in England.
The question is: Does this make any difference? I say yes. We obviously want our political leaders to be highly intelligent and well-educated. We have a president who graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. He is surrounded by some of the most brilliant and highly educated people ever to work in the White House. Some of his Republican Tea Party opponents, however, seem to occupy the opposite end of the educational spectrum. Rick Perry of Texas, who graduated from Texas A&M with a 2.22 GPA in Animal Science, has been described as “intellectually challenged.” One Republican strategist says that Perry “benefits from an uncluttered mind.” Look at the educational credentials of Sarah Palin, the Right-Wing’s poster girl for dimwittedness. Michele Bachmann, who graduated from that distinguished center of learning, Winona State University, and got a Law degree at Oral Roberts University, displays her lack of knowledge with repeated and sometimes hilarious gaffs.
Liberals tend to be far more accepting of the findings of science than Tea Party types. Liberals accept the firmly established Darwinian theory of evolution, the science of global warming, and the burgeoning developments of stem cell research. Tea Party people embrace the pseudo-science of Creationism, deny the overwhelming evidence of global warming, and would stop stem-cell research in its tracks.
But even if liberals and atheists are smarter, are they any better people than Tea Party conservatives and religious believers? I say yes. Despite their claim for patriotism, piety, and purity, Tea Party types are often narrow, bigoted, hypocritical, and mean-spirited. They tend to despise minorities, poor people, gays, immigrants, non-Christians, and others. Liberals and Atheists tend to be more open-minded about the differences between people, and more accepting.
Theoretically, religion is supposed to make people better, kinder toward their fellow man, full of love and generosity. This is just not the case with Tea Party types. They tend to be small-minded, envious, and angry. While Christ spoke of charity toward the poor, Tea Party people deeply resent the aid that government gives poor and minority people. They are very judgmental toward poor people, asserting that such people are lazy parasites on the state. Instead of Christian charity, they seem to have a coldness if not repugnance toward the less fortunate.
The following by Paul Krugman is also very pertinent to this issue:
"Within the G.O.P., willful ignorance has become a litmus test for candidates...So it’s now highly likely that the presidential candidate of one of our two major political parties will either be a man who believes what he wants to believe, even in the teeth of scientific evidence, or a man who pretends to believe whatever he thinks the party’s base wants him to believe. And the deepening anti-intellectualism of the political right, both within and beyond the G.O.P., extends far beyond the issue of climate change."
I believe that when all things are added up, liberals and atheists are not only smarter than Tea Party types, but also better, more decent people. In many ways, they follow the teachings of Jesus better than the Tea Partiers.
The distinguished British biologist and author, Richard Dawkins, wrote about the ignorance of Rick Perry as follows:
"There is nothing unusual about Governor Rick Perry. Uneducated fools can be found in every country and every period of history, and they are not unknown
in high office. What is unusual about today’s Republican party (I disavow
the ridiculous ‘GOP’ nickname, because the party of Lincoln and Theodore
Roosevelt has lately forfeited all claim to be considered ‘grand’) is this:
In any other party and in any other country, an individual may occasionally
rise to the top in spite of being an uneducated ignoramus. In today’s
Republican Party ‘in spite of’ is not the phrase we need. Ignorance and lack
of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory.
Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican
voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like
themselves over someone actually qualified for the job."
The advent of "Uneducated fools" in the ranks of the Republican Party is explained by the general level of ignorance to be found in its Tea Party base. The people who make up the Tea Party fanatics are, for the most part, a highly uneducated group who resent the high education of President Obama and those around him. The fact is that Liberals and athiests are better educated and brighter than conservatives and religious believers.
It seems from all the studies done of the relative intelligence of conservatives and liberals, and of religious believers and atheists, that on the average liberals are more intelligent than conservatives, (George Will may or may not be an exception to the rule), and atheists are more intelligent than religious believers. Aside from the overwhelming weight of intelligence studies, the difference in intelligence between these groups is encountered on a daily basis. Have you ever noticed that the most educated people you know and meet are usually liberal and non-religious? The corollary of this is that the most conservative and religious people you know and meet are usually less well educated. One need only look at the high percentage of liberals and atheists among scientists, collage professors, and members of other educated professions.
I will not waste a lot of time defining the terms liberal, conservative, and atheist. But when I speak of somebody being “religious,” I am not talking about being spiritual, holy, or pious. By the term “religious” I mean the Tea Party type of people such as “Born-Again” Christians, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and outspoken bible-thumping members of the so-called Religious Right who claim to be religious.
There have been a number of studies looking at whether liberals and atheists are more intelligent than conservatives and religious types. One is the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (or Add Health). The other is the General Social Survey (GSS). Both studies demonstrated that liberals are more intelligent than conservatives. The Add Health study shows that the mean IQ of adolescents who identify themselves as "very liberal" is 106, compared with a mean IQ of 95 for those calling themselves "very conservative." The Add Health study also found that there was a correlation between religion and intelligence. Non-religious people tended to be more intelligent than religious believers. The Add Health study is statistically significant because more than 20,000 young people were surveyed.
Researcher, Satoshi Kanazawa, of the London School of Economics and Political Science, has written a paper in which he quotes from the Add Health Survey along with other sources. He finds that more-intelligent people are more likely to describe themselves as liberal and non-religious. In another study, a British team found that young people with higher intelligence scores were more likely to grow into adults who vote for Liberal Democrats.
In 2008, intelligence researcher Helmuth Nyborg examined whether IQ relates to religion, using representative data from the Add Health and other studies. His results, published in the scientific journal "Intelligence," demonstrated that on average, Atheists scored 5.89 IQ points higher than religious types. These findings are supported by many other studies including the study by Lazar Stankova of the National Institute of Education in Singapore, the 1975 study by Norman Poythress, using SAT scores as a measure of intelligence, and others.
You need only look at the levels of education for media conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity, and compare them with those for liberals like Anderson Cooper, Keith Olberman, Bill Maher, and Rachel Maddow. Whereas Limbaugh, Beck, and Hannity never graduated from college (Limbaugh flunked-out), Anderson Cooper graduated from Yale, Keith Olberman and Bill Maher both graduated from Cornell, and Rachel Maddow obtained a doctoral degree from Oxford University in England.
The question is: Does this make any difference? I say yes. We obviously want our political leaders to be highly intelligent and well-educated. We have a president who graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. He is surrounded by some of the most brilliant and highly educated people ever to work in the White House. Some of his Republican Tea Party opponents, however, seem to occupy the opposite end of the educational spectrum. Rick Perry of Texas, who graduated from Texas A&M with a 2.22 GPA in Animal Science, has been described as “intellectually challenged.” One Republican strategist says that Perry “benefits from an uncluttered mind.” Look at the educational credentials of Sarah Palin, the Right-Wing’s poster girl for dimwittedness. Michele Bachmann, who graduated from that distinguished center of learning, Winona State University, and got a Law degree at Oral Roberts University, displays her lack of knowledge with repeated and sometimes hilarious gaffs.
Liberals tend to be far more accepting of the findings of science than Tea Party types. Liberals accept the firmly established Darwinian theory of evolution, the science of global warming, and the burgeoning developments of stem cell research. Tea Party people embrace the pseudo-science of Creationism, deny the overwhelming evidence of global warming, and would stop stem-cell research in its tracks.
But even if liberals and atheists are smarter, are they any better people than Tea Party conservatives and religious believers? I say yes. Despite their claim for patriotism, piety, and purity, Tea Party types are often narrow, bigoted, hypocritical, and mean-spirited. They tend to despise minorities, poor people, gays, immigrants, non-Christians, and others. Liberals and Atheists tend to be more open-minded about the differences between people, and more accepting.
Theoretically, religion is supposed to make people better, kinder toward their fellow man, full of love and generosity. This is just not the case with Tea Party types. They tend to be small-minded, envious, and angry. While Christ spoke of charity toward the poor, Tea Party people deeply resent the aid that government gives poor and minority people. They are very judgmental toward poor people, asserting that such people are lazy parasites on the state. Instead of Christian charity, they seem to have a coldness if not repugnance toward the less fortunate.
The following by Paul Krugman is also very pertinent to this issue:
"Within the G.O.P., willful ignorance has become a litmus test for candidates...So it’s now highly likely that the presidential candidate of one of our two major political parties will either be a man who believes what he wants to believe, even in the teeth of scientific evidence, or a man who pretends to believe whatever he thinks the party’s base wants him to believe. And the deepening anti-intellectualism of the political right, both within and beyond the G.O.P., extends far beyond the issue of climate change."
I believe that when all things are added up, liberals and atheists are not only smarter than Tea Party types, but also better, more decent people. In many ways, they follow the teachings of Jesus better than the Tea Partiers.
Friday, August 5, 2011
TEA PARTY PEOPLE ARE NOT TERRORISTS
Tea Party people are not terrorists, they are something else. The terrorist charge has been leveled at them because so many were willing to vote against raising the debt limit. While it is true that failure to raise the debt limit would have caused a default on our national obligations, the Tea Party people didn’t fully realize the catastrophe that would ensue. No, their motivation was not to bring-on another giant recession. It was simply to cut future spending.
In a recent poll, three-quarters of Tea Party supporters said that they opposed any rise in the debt limit because they were more concerned that raising the debt ceiling would “lead to higher government spending and make the national debt bigger.” It didn’t matter to them that in return for a rise in the debt limit the Republican leadership would be able to get trillions of dollars of spending cuts.
What those Tea Party supporters didn’t seem to know was that a rise in the debt limit was needed not to pay for future spending, but to pay for obligations already incurred by the United States government. Those Tea Partiers were not worried about a default on our nation’s debt, or the economic catastrophe predicted by leading economists, because they thought that failure to raise the debt limit would simply make the President cut-back on future spending. They had no understanding how the economics of government works, and they didn’t want to hear the facts.
The problem with the Tea Party is not terrorism. It is ignorance. Those people in the Tea Party who opposed any rise in the debt limit, even if it was matched by spending cuts, were acting out of ignorance. They didn’t understand why it was necessary to raise the debt ceiling.
In addition, I believe that they were acting out of bigotry toward a president who presents a combination that they hate—he is biracial and highly educated. In an interview on Fox News, Bill O’Reilly asked the President why so many people hated him. Obama politely answered that people don’t know him, and that if they did they would not necessarily feel so much hostility. I think that we should face the real truth. Right-wing people hate President Obama because he is an educated black man and he makes them feel inferior. Most of the white Tea Party supporters have spent their lives holding strong feelings of bigotry toward African Americans and other people of color. Even though they may themselves have been poorly educated, they have always assumed that Blacks are mentally inferior to whites. While most of them would not admit to such bigotry, and would not only deny their racial hate but point to all the nice Black people who are their friends, underneath it all they are repelled by Blacks.
To Tea Party bigots, President Obama is the worst possible kind of president. He is not only a liberal, but he is black. He graduated from Harvard Law School magna cum laude. He taught constitutional law in Chicago. He speaks with the assurance of a highly intelligent and cultivated person. The Tea Party whites look at him on television and realize that this Black man is far more educated, far more sophisticated, far more articulate then they are. They assume that he will want not only to help poor people, but also that he will do everything he can to spend tax dollars helping Black people.
I believe that a major motivation of Tea Partiers is anger, resentment, and jealousy at liberals who are more educated than they are. One Tea Party congressman who had never been to collage made that clear when he complained that a rise in the debt limit would simply mean more money for Pell Grants so that people like the Barack Obama could go to college and get educated by liberals. Tea Party types hate white liberals because they believe that liberals want to spend governmental money to help improve the status of poor people, particularly African Americans. They look upon Blacks as inferior people who are lazy and dishonest. They resent the idea of spending their tax money to support African Americans. They hate paying taxes, and the use of tax money to support people they despise is intolerable.
When Tea Party people look at liberal spokesmen on television, they realize that those liberals are almost always better educated and better informed than they are. They also realize that those liberals are better educated and informed than the conservative spokesmen found on radio talk shows and Fox News. They call the liberal media the “elite” media because of the greater level of education of liberal media journalists. I once wrote a column for the newspaper in which I pointed out the difference in education between conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity, and liberals like Anderson Cooper, Keith Olberman, Bill Maher, and Rachel Maddow. Whereas Limbaugh, Beck, and Hannity never graduated from college, Anderson Cooper graduated from Yale, Keith Olberman and Bill Maher both graduated from Cornell, and Rachel Maddow obtained a doctoral degree from Oxford University in England. When one compares the educational accomplishments of Tea Party Congressmen with those of liberal Democrats in Congress, the difference is astounding. Liberals, on average, are far more educated than Tea Partiers.
I am convinced that much of the evil in American politics is due to the ignorance of far-right-wing Tea Party types. A good example was presented in a recent newspaper article in Dayton, Ohio, where a local school board member, who is also the head of the local Tea Party cell, called for the teaching of creationism in schools. It is frightening that someone in a position to influence the teaching of children is so fundamentally stupid. This woman demonstrated ignorance on several levels. First, she showed that she was unaware of the law in America. Creationism (and its ugly sister “Intelligent Design”) has been declared by the courts to be a religious and not scientific theory and has been banned in every case. In Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Louisiana law requiring that creationism be taught in public schools, along with evolution, was unconstitutional because the law was specifically intended to advance a particular religion.
In addition, the board member demonstrated the kind of ignorance about science common among Tea Party people. Evolution is an established scientific fact, not just a theory. It has been proven in thousands of scientific studies published in thousands of scientific papers in hundreds of prestigious scientific publications. Creationism is a wacky non-scientific theory that has religion as its base and no legitimate science to support it. The simple-minded people who believe in it are religious zealots who have no real understanding of science.
So the main characteristic of people in the Tea Party is not terrorism. They do not want to blow-up federal buildings. They want only to stop all social programs that give tax money to poor and minority people. Their main characteristic is not terror, it is ignorance combined with bigotry.
In a recent poll, three-quarters of Tea Party supporters said that they opposed any rise in the debt limit because they were more concerned that raising the debt ceiling would “lead to higher government spending and make the national debt bigger.” It didn’t matter to them that in return for a rise in the debt limit the Republican leadership would be able to get trillions of dollars of spending cuts.
What those Tea Party supporters didn’t seem to know was that a rise in the debt limit was needed not to pay for future spending, but to pay for obligations already incurred by the United States government. Those Tea Partiers were not worried about a default on our nation’s debt, or the economic catastrophe predicted by leading economists, because they thought that failure to raise the debt limit would simply make the President cut-back on future spending. They had no understanding how the economics of government works, and they didn’t want to hear the facts.
The problem with the Tea Party is not terrorism. It is ignorance. Those people in the Tea Party who opposed any rise in the debt limit, even if it was matched by spending cuts, were acting out of ignorance. They didn’t understand why it was necessary to raise the debt ceiling.
In addition, I believe that they were acting out of bigotry toward a president who presents a combination that they hate—he is biracial and highly educated. In an interview on Fox News, Bill O’Reilly asked the President why so many people hated him. Obama politely answered that people don’t know him, and that if they did they would not necessarily feel so much hostility. I think that we should face the real truth. Right-wing people hate President Obama because he is an educated black man and he makes them feel inferior. Most of the white Tea Party supporters have spent their lives holding strong feelings of bigotry toward African Americans and other people of color. Even though they may themselves have been poorly educated, they have always assumed that Blacks are mentally inferior to whites. While most of them would not admit to such bigotry, and would not only deny their racial hate but point to all the nice Black people who are their friends, underneath it all they are repelled by Blacks.
To Tea Party bigots, President Obama is the worst possible kind of president. He is not only a liberal, but he is black. He graduated from Harvard Law School magna cum laude. He taught constitutional law in Chicago. He speaks with the assurance of a highly intelligent and cultivated person. The Tea Party whites look at him on television and realize that this Black man is far more educated, far more sophisticated, far more articulate then they are. They assume that he will want not only to help poor people, but also that he will do everything he can to spend tax dollars helping Black people.
I believe that a major motivation of Tea Partiers is anger, resentment, and jealousy at liberals who are more educated than they are. One Tea Party congressman who had never been to collage made that clear when he complained that a rise in the debt limit would simply mean more money for Pell Grants so that people like the Barack Obama could go to college and get educated by liberals. Tea Party types hate white liberals because they believe that liberals want to spend governmental money to help improve the status of poor people, particularly African Americans. They look upon Blacks as inferior people who are lazy and dishonest. They resent the idea of spending their tax money to support African Americans. They hate paying taxes, and the use of tax money to support people they despise is intolerable.
When Tea Party people look at liberal spokesmen on television, they realize that those liberals are almost always better educated and better informed than they are. They also realize that those liberals are better educated and informed than the conservative spokesmen found on radio talk shows and Fox News. They call the liberal media the “elite” media because of the greater level of education of liberal media journalists. I once wrote a column for the newspaper in which I pointed out the difference in education between conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity, and liberals like Anderson Cooper, Keith Olberman, Bill Maher, and Rachel Maddow. Whereas Limbaugh, Beck, and Hannity never graduated from college, Anderson Cooper graduated from Yale, Keith Olberman and Bill Maher both graduated from Cornell, and Rachel Maddow obtained a doctoral degree from Oxford University in England. When one compares the educational accomplishments of Tea Party Congressmen with those of liberal Democrats in Congress, the difference is astounding. Liberals, on average, are far more educated than Tea Partiers.
I am convinced that much of the evil in American politics is due to the ignorance of far-right-wing Tea Party types. A good example was presented in a recent newspaper article in Dayton, Ohio, where a local school board member, who is also the head of the local Tea Party cell, called for the teaching of creationism in schools. It is frightening that someone in a position to influence the teaching of children is so fundamentally stupid. This woman demonstrated ignorance on several levels. First, she showed that she was unaware of the law in America. Creationism (and its ugly sister “Intelligent Design”) has been declared by the courts to be a religious and not scientific theory and has been banned in every case. In Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Louisiana law requiring that creationism be taught in public schools, along with evolution, was unconstitutional because the law was specifically intended to advance a particular religion.
In addition, the board member demonstrated the kind of ignorance about science common among Tea Party people. Evolution is an established scientific fact, not just a theory. It has been proven in thousands of scientific studies published in thousands of scientific papers in hundreds of prestigious scientific publications. Creationism is a wacky non-scientific theory that has religion as its base and no legitimate science to support it. The simple-minded people who believe in it are religious zealots who have no real understanding of science.
So the main characteristic of people in the Tea Party is not terrorism. They do not want to blow-up federal buildings. They want only to stop all social programs that give tax money to poor and minority people. Their main characteristic is not terror, it is ignorance combined with bigotry.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Warren Jeffs Rapist
A court in Texas has convicted Warren Jeffs of sexual molestation of two young girls. One was age 12 when she was married to Jeffs. The other was 14. Apparently the evidence against Jeffs included a tape recording of Jeffs talking to the young girl during the rape. I am told that the jury cried when it heard the slender tiny voice of this girl. When Jeffs asked during the sex act her how she was, she said she was okay. Jeffs said the pain would mean that she was going to heaven. The jury will now have the option of sending this miserable scoundrel to Hell. Now the law enforcement officials in Texas should prosecute every man and woman in that cult who had anything to do with the rape of young girls.
If the many witnesses who have spoken about the cult are to be believed, these child-brides become part of harems for church elders who eject young men from the sect so that they will not have any competition for the young girls’ attention. The wives and children of these men are raised and brainwashed to believe that it is God’s commandment that they surrender their virginity and freedom to older men in order to propagate the sect.
But it is not God’s commandment. It has nothing to do with God. It has nothing to do with religion. It is the raw exercise of power and lust by dirty old men who want to enjoy sex with young virgins. It is rape. History shows that people have always used religion to cloak their nefarious designs. Just as Moslem fanatics use religion to justify their insane attacks against innocent people, men have always used religion to justify the rape of young girls.
I have nothing against these rapists practicing polygamy with adult women if that is what they want to do. My problem is with elders and parents compelling their children to take part in such a sick culture. Most states in the union forbid sex between adults and children under the age of consent. In Texas the age of consent is 17. In most states it is 16. There is a good reason for treating children under 16 or 17 as being unable to consent. Most children under 16 or 17 do not have the fortitude to resist the impositions of adults and do not have sufficient understanding to assent to such impositions. The twisted individuals who prey upon young girls on the internet deserve to have the book simultaneously thrown at them and shoved down their throats.
It does not matter that this form of child-abuse is institutionalized as a religion. They can call it anything they want, but it is nothing more than child molestation. It has been going on for ages and has always been common in primitive societies. In parts of Africa and Asia it has proceeded hand-in-glove with the genital mutilation of young girls. The freedom of women from mistreatment and exploitation is an important part of the story of civilization. We in America may have a long way to go to be thoroughly civilized, but we do not have to tolerate this kind of beastly behavior.
You need only look at the women from this cult to see what damage can be done by brainwashing. They come on television in their grotesque hairdos and pioneer dresses and speak in robotic voices. You could say that they should not be punished because they have obviously been hammered by the abuses of the men of the cult, but they are adults, and however brain-damaged they may be, they are answerable to the law for their transgressions. Any adult that would let her 12-year-old daughter marry a 55-year-old man is a pimp and deserves no sympathy.
It seems apparent that despite denials, the practice of forcing underage girls into polygamous marriages is widespread in the cult. For this reason, the proper thing to do is not only to prosecute all of the men and women in the cult, but also to permanently take all of the children in the sect away from their biological parents. These people look upon the cult as one large “family.” They live communally. The children call all of the women their “mothers” and all of the men their “uncles.” As in any abusive family, when some of the children are being abused the government must take all of the children out of the household.
If the many witnesses who have spoken about the cult are to be believed, these child-brides become part of harems for church elders who eject young men from the sect so that they will not have any competition for the young girls’ attention. The wives and children of these men are raised and brainwashed to believe that it is God’s commandment that they surrender their virginity and freedom to older men in order to propagate the sect.
But it is not God’s commandment. It has nothing to do with God. It has nothing to do with religion. It is the raw exercise of power and lust by dirty old men who want to enjoy sex with young virgins. It is rape. History shows that people have always used religion to cloak their nefarious designs. Just as Moslem fanatics use religion to justify their insane attacks against innocent people, men have always used religion to justify the rape of young girls.
I have nothing against these rapists practicing polygamy with adult women if that is what they want to do. My problem is with elders and parents compelling their children to take part in such a sick culture. Most states in the union forbid sex between adults and children under the age of consent. In Texas the age of consent is 17. In most states it is 16. There is a good reason for treating children under 16 or 17 as being unable to consent. Most children under 16 or 17 do not have the fortitude to resist the impositions of adults and do not have sufficient understanding to assent to such impositions. The twisted individuals who prey upon young girls on the internet deserve to have the book simultaneously thrown at them and shoved down their throats.
It does not matter that this form of child-abuse is institutionalized as a religion. They can call it anything they want, but it is nothing more than child molestation. It has been going on for ages and has always been common in primitive societies. In parts of Africa and Asia it has proceeded hand-in-glove with the genital mutilation of young girls. The freedom of women from mistreatment and exploitation is an important part of the story of civilization. We in America may have a long way to go to be thoroughly civilized, but we do not have to tolerate this kind of beastly behavior.
You need only look at the women from this cult to see what damage can be done by brainwashing. They come on television in their grotesque hairdos and pioneer dresses and speak in robotic voices. You could say that they should not be punished because they have obviously been hammered by the abuses of the men of the cult, but they are adults, and however brain-damaged they may be, they are answerable to the law for their transgressions. Any adult that would let her 12-year-old daughter marry a 55-year-old man is a pimp and deserves no sympathy.
It seems apparent that despite denials, the practice of forcing underage girls into polygamous marriages is widespread in the cult. For this reason, the proper thing to do is not only to prosecute all of the men and women in the cult, but also to permanently take all of the children in the sect away from their biological parents. These people look upon the cult as one large “family.” They live communally. The children call all of the women their “mothers” and all of the men their “uncles.” As in any abusive family, when some of the children are being abused the government must take all of the children out of the household.
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