Get Off Our Ass

Okay, so anyone who has followed the drama that has developed since President Obama gave his multiple opinions on the mosque ‘at’ the World Trade Center knows that this has turned into a national debate and everyone under the sun has an opinion.

I even have an opinion… but I’m actually not writing to push my personal opinion, though I’ll happily tell you what it is, but rather I’m writing today to comment on what this debate really says about US, the people of these ‘United States’  and what the heck is wrong with us.

So, I’ll start by coming out with it and giving my take on it. Long story, short… a Right is quite different from being right. I believe that you ought to have the Right to do just about anything you like so long as you don’t take my blood or pick my pocket (to put it briefly). At the same time, I don’t think it’s right for anyone to do half the things they do, especially the things they do in places like San Francisco.

I think that the Klan as a Right to hate anyone they choose, but I don’t think it would be right for them to build a KKK Cultural Center across the street from MLK’s grave.

That’s my opinion.

But, what I find interesting isn’t so much which side of the debate everyone comes down on, as much as what the debate itself says about America and the state that we’re in. I’m actually surprised at how divisive this debate seems to be. Generally speaking, I’m all for raucous debate. I’m not one of these people that get offended by passionate people passionately debating their points of view. I welcome it. I don’t mind name calling. I don’t mind calling an idiot an idiot. I don’t mind calling a racist a racist. I don’t mind calling a socialist a socialist… that is sometimes just part of it and it’s been part of it since this country was founded. You want to see some vicious arguments… read American history. Read the founders. Read John Hamilton. Read Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Read what some even said about George Washington towards the end of his tenure as President of the United States.

Hell, I’m more offended by this totally non-offensive political correctness that seems to have been inserted into our discourse. Oh my… heaven forbid we offend a Muslim by saying that Islam is the enemy of liberty.

Let me say flatly… Islam is the enemy of Liberty…. Period.

Now, that said, does it mean that all Muslims are evil? No. I don’t believe that all Nazis were evil. I don’t believe that all communists were evil. I do believe that Nazism, Communism, and Islam… as ideologies and forms of government, are indeed evil. I believe that each, in their own ways are the enemy of liberty.

Now, I’m generally a pretty big fan of organizations like the Cato Institute. If you don’t know, Cato is a libertarian think tank. It’s not a partisan organization. Like me, they’re against the Democrats as much as they’re against Republicans.

Now, it seems that their take is that, as a Libertarian group, the entire mosque issue is a red-herring. Which, on one level it may be. I guarantee that there will be plenty of politicians that make the mosque the issue diseur. They will make it the biggest issue facing the future or the nation… it’s not.

So, to be clear, I don’t think that a mosque near ground zero is going to have anything to do with me living out here in Western Oklahoma, USA.

The debate that has erupted from it will.

You see, on one side you have a group of people (and I’ll give them credit, most are probably heart felt, kind, considerate people… most mind you) that call for tolerance and inclusiveness. Many of those people feel that to argue against the mosque is tantamount to arguing against the principles of freedom of religion that is at the core of the American ideal. I get it.

I see their point.

They’re wrong, but I see their point.

From John Locke’s ‘Letter Concerning Toleration’:

I say these have no right to be tolerated by the magistrate; as neither those that will not own and teach the duty of tolerating all men in matters of mere religion. For what do all these and the like doctrines signify, but that they may and are ready upon any occasion to seize the Government and possess themselves of the estates and fortunes of their fellow subjects; and that they only ask leave to be tolerated by the magistrate so long until they find themselves strong enough to effect it?

 Again: That Church can have no right to be tolerated by the magistrate which is constituted upon such a bottom that all those who enter into it do thereby ipso facto deliver themselves up to the protection and service of another prince. For by this means the magistrate would give way to the settling of a foreign jurisdiction in his own country and suffer his own people to be listed, as it were, for soldiers against his own Government. Nor does the frivolous and fallacious distinction between the Court and the Church afford any remedy to this inconvenience; especially when both the one and the other are equally subject to the absolute authority of the same person, who has not only power to persuade the members of his Church to whatsoever he lists, either as purely religious, or in order thereunto, but can also enjoin it them on pain of eternal fire. It is ridiculous for any one to profess himself to be a Mahometan only in his religion, but in everything else a faithful subject to a Christian magistrate, whilst at the same time he acknowledges himself bound to yield blind obedience to the Mufti of Constantinople, who himself is entirely obedient to the Ottoman Emperor and frames the feigned oracles of that religion according to his pleasure. But this Mahometan living amongst Christians would yet more apparently renounce their government if he acknowledged the same person to be head of his Church who is the supreme magistrate in the state.

So, 400 years ago, one of the men who birthed the idea of religious freedom that found its way into our First Amendment…

… made a specific exception for Islam.

To make a long story short, Locke argued that we must be careful about being tolerant towards those who would use our toleration as a means to subvert us, which history will tell us that that is what Islam does as a matter of practice.

It’s not unlike Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”. One of his tactics was to use our own tolerance against us. Use our freedom of speech to allow speech that would preach tyranny.

So, while I don’t think that the mosque will harm America… the idea that we must be tolerant of Islam for the sake of toleration is. We can afford to be intolerant of ideologies that preach hatred. We can afford to be intolerant of ideologies that preach the subjugation of women. We can be intolerant of ideologies that, well produce states like Saudi Arabia and Iran that don’t give a flyin’ flip about civil rights, human rights or any rights.

Okay boys and girls… today’s piece was inspired by an article in the Boston Globe (boston.com). The article How facts backfire: Researchers discover a surprising threat to democracy: our brains, was entertaining… in much the same way as certain French appetizers are entertaining. They’re not toxic so they’re not completely wrong, but no matter how you wrap it in elitist language and/or with a French accent… it doesn’t change the fact that it’s a slug with a shell and as such… should only be eaten if stranded in remote lands for extended periods of time with nothing else to eat. While the article leads with the conclusion that our brains are actually a threat to democracy… because facts don’t change people’s minds or opinions, it then follows with a string of sketchy so called facts to bolster its position.

The fact is that in a really distorted way, the article it correct that facts don’t generally change anyone’s mind, and then it exemplifies why facts don’t change anyone’s mind… by throwing out several non-facts and inferring in the end that normal people just can’t handle the responsibility of democracy… because of the non-facts that the author throws out as facts.

             So, I’ll start with the few ‘facts’ that this article throws out as facts that so called conservatives take issue with;

1. “In 2005, amid the strident calls for better media fact-checking in the wake of the Iraq war, Michigan’s Nyhan and a colleague devised an experiment in which participants were given mock news stories, each of which contained a provably false, though nonetheless widespread, claim made by a political figure: that there were WMDs found in Iraq (there weren’t), “
   1. Well… the (there weren’t), part isn’t exactly true. There were MWD’s found in Iraq, there were MWD manufacturing and research facilities found in Iraq, and there was evidence that large quantities of WMD’s were transported out of Iraq, however… there were NOT the large quantities of WMD’s found that the entire world’s intelligence agencies thought were there. But to say flatly that “there weren’t” any WMD’s in Iraq… is wrong.
2. “that the Bush tax cuts increased government revenues (revenues actually fell)”
   1. That statement is patently false… Government revenues did rise. President Bush took office in 2001, in a year in which government revenues were steeply falling.

Year     GDP-US          Total Revenue-fed       

1999    9353.5             1827.64           a

2000    9951.5             2025.46           a

2001    10286.2           1991.43           a

2002    10642.3           1853.40           a

2003    11142.1           1782.53           a

2004    11867.8           1880.28           a

2005    12638.4           2153.86           a

2006    13398.9           2407.25           a

2007    14077.6           2568.00           a

2008    14441.4           2524.00           a

2009    14258.2           2105.00           a

2010    14623.9           2165.12           b

Legend:

 a – actual reported

 b – budgeted estimate in US fy11 budget

Now, as the actual numbers show… revenues peaked in 2000, a year before Bush took office, then dropped precipitously until… by God… until 2004, the fiscal year following the full implementation of Bush’s tax cuts. (Please do not take this as a defense of Bush at all… because while his tax cuts did raise revenues… his spending outpaced his revenue increases dramatically)

            So, two ‘facts’… that according to this article claims that so called ‘conservatives’ were so defensive about… weren’t even facts at all, but misrepresentations of facts.

            Is it any wonder why so many people disbelieve these so called ‘facts’??

            Then the article continues with this, ‘It’s unclear what is driving the behavior — it could range from simple defensiveness, to people working harder to defend their initial beliefs — but as Nyhan dryly put it, “It’s hard to be optimistic about the effectiveness of fact-checking.”’

            Well, to the trained eye it is simple what the driving behavior is. I divide it up into two areas, agenda and simple values.

1. Agenda… people have agendas to push. Everyone has agendas to push… from Katie Couric interviewing Sarah Palin to Sean Hannity interviewing Sarah Palin. The media, whether it’s CNN, Fox News, MSNBC to your evening news… they all have an agenda.

I have an agenda… only I freely admit that I have an agenda, and I’ll state my agenda openly an honestly. That is one of the few things that I think sets me apart from many others…

… other people cloak their agendas in the language of intellectual elitism and behavioral studies, etc.

Politicians wrap their agendas in GAO studies, CBO projections, economist speak, and greater good… and need and… my personal favorite, it’s for the children…

And of course, these ‘Fact Checkers’… themselves have agenda’s. Factcheck.org, MediaMatters.org and even to a slight degree… snopes.com all have agendas. Though snopes.com seems to have the least political agenda, factcheck.or mediamatters.org both have a steep political tilt and thus… their facts are about as reliable as the ones in this article.

                     2. Values… simple values. I’ll tell you what I value. I value individual liberty, namely my individual liberty and that of my children. I value your individual liberty, but not necessarily as much as my own, meaning… I’m not willing to let you swing your fist into my face for the sake of your liberty. Nor would I expect you to be willing to let me swing my fist in your face… or would I expect to party all the time and expect for you to pay for my house, run my business into the ground and expect you to bail me out.

That is what I value. I won’t make any bones about it. I don’t value your health-care. I don’t value your house. I don’t value your job… at least not as much as I value our liberty.

So, when faced with what may very well be absolute facts (for the sake of argument)… like that a new sweeping health-care bill might lower overall health-care costs and it might provide for a new Utopian society… at the cost of letting some bureaucrat to decide what kind of health-care I have…

… I’m going to completely ignore and disregard it. I don’t care.

            It’s not some flaw in my brain. It’s not a threat to democracy… it’s a simply difference in VALUES.

            So, take into account a difference in values, with the FACT that I recognize that like opinions and… well opinions… everyone has agendas, it’s no wonder why so called facts don’t seem to change people’s minds.

            There has never been a pundit or politician yet that has let facts get in the way of their opinions… and it would seem that very few of these studies or articles let facts get in the way of their ‘facts’ or conclusions.

I know I’ve been asked a hundred times, “What can I DO?” I know, there are thousands of other pundits that will give you their opinion; speak up, go to Tea Parties, speak up at Town Halls…

And, all of that might be fine. I’m not saying that any of these ideas are bad, but I know that none of these things will protect you or insulate you. So… here is my list of things that I have done and that I do.

Only when enough people take care of themselves will we be able to get the politicians and bureaucrats OFF OUR ASS.

Take your life in YOUR hands… fix yourself and only then will they GET OFF OUR ASS. They will not GET OFF OUR ASS willingly… we’re going to have to fix ourselves to THROW THEM OFF.

Yes, I know… to some people its sacrilege to criticize Republicans, but not to this people.

My greatest fear, after seeing President Obama trash the union, is seeing millions making the leap from Democrats are BAD to Republicans are GOOD. I know, I know… many people grew tired of Clinton and his healthcare reform in the early 90’s, and that ushered in the Republican revolution of 94’…

… and that got us where?

In 2002 Republicans got the hat trick; White House, House of Representin’ and Senate.

… and that got us where? (Okay, we did get the Dept. of Homeland Security… thanks)

Republicans had control and we didn’t fix Social Security, expanded Medicare, ran up the budget from $1.9 TRILLION to $3.2 TRILLION (and that was before the bailouts for Freddie/Fannie, TARP, Stimulus, GM, Chrysler, AIG and the TRILLIONS AND TRILLIONS of dollars the Fed has written but which we can never see, but we are on the hook for)

Now, the Democrats are in control… and they’re not going to fix Social Security, probably going to expand healthcare and/or Medicare and they’re going to ramp up the budget to God only knows and continue the policy of bailing out the GM’s, the AIG’s and the Fed will continue write TRILLIONS of dollars worth of checks (your money) to rich and powerful people who are already millionaire/billionaires.

Remember, again, it was a Republican administration that gave us the Dept. of Homeland Security, and let’s not forget one of my favorites; The Transportation Safety Administration.

So, my point?? (Yes I have one.) Please, America, I beg you; Do not assume that just because the Democrats are bad (which I personally think they are), that Republicans are good (which I do not believe they are).

Now, we will all see a lot of name calling. We will see a lot of people stirring the pot… and the media will be right there in the middle of it… fermenting anger of both sides of the political divide.

THAT… I want to be perfectly clear… is NOT MY GOAL.

So you have the country getting angrier and angrier at other Americans to the point where one liberal protester just bit off the finger of another protester because they disagreed on the healthcare debate. WTF. And all the while both parties seem to be taking us to the same place.

And it doesn’t seem like it’s a place that any of us really want to go to if it weren’t for the fact that we’re all so damned pissed off at each other.

Then… you have someone who is supposed to be a prominent Republican running around the country with Al Sharpton… a man who epitomizes the kind of pot stirring political hack that I’m talking about. Al Sharpton is a man who has made a fortune stirring hatred and resentment between black people and white people for decades and who is better off for it??

Al Sharpton.

So what does it tell you when Newt Gingrich tools around the country with someone who has made his fortune, not helping a damn soul, but stirring the pot of hatred, making more money and expanding his own power base by making sure that more and more people are poor, needy and pissed off?

It tells me that the political class of this country doesn’t care about party affiliation. They only care about their own power and behind closed doors… they love to see you pissed off at other Americans…

… because that means that you’re less likely to be pissed off at them.