TDAWG's Perspective

Fantastic Article By Jon Meacham, Editor - Newsweek, Regarding Religion In America

2009-04-05T08:24:00.002-06:00

Meacham | Newsweek Article | April 4, 2009

While we remain a nation decisively shaped by religious faith, our politics and our culture are, in the main, less influenced by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character than they were even five years ago. I think this is a good thing—good for our political culture, which, as the American Founders saw, is complex and charged enough without attempting to compel or coerce religious belief or observance. It is good for Christianity, too, in that many Christians are rediscovering the virtues of a separation of church and state. At our best, we single religion out for neither particular help nor particular harm; we have historically treated faith-based arguments as one element among many in the republican sphere of debate and decision. The decline of the modern religious right's notion of a Christian America creates a calmer political environment and, for many believers, may help open the way for a more theologically serious religious life.

America is entering a new era in which "both Christianity and religion itself are unshackled from their previous historical grounds."

It was a small detail, a point of comparison buried in the fifth paragraph on the 17th page of a 24-page summary of the 2009 American Religious Identification Survey. But as R. Albert Mohler Jr.—president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, one of the largest on earth—read over the document after its release in March, he was struck by a single sentence. For a believer like Mohler—a starched, unflinchingly conservative Christian, steeped in the theology of his particular province of the faith, devoted to producing ministers who will preach the inerrancy of the Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the only means to eternal life—the central news of the survey was troubling enough: the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 1990, rising from 8 to 15 percent. Then came the point he could not get out of his mind: while the unaffiliated have historically been concentrated in the Pacific Northwest, the report said, "this pattern has now changed, and the Northeast emerged in 2008 as the new stronghold of the religiously unidentified." As Mohler saw it, the historic foundation of America's religious culture was cracking.
"That really hit me hard," he told me last week. "The Northwest was never as religious, never as congregationalized, as the Northeast, which was the foundation, the home base, of American religion. To lose New England struck me as momentous." Turning the report over in his mind, Mohler posted a despairing online column on the eve of Holy Week lamenting the decline—and, by implication, the imminent fall—of an America shaped and suffused by Christianity. "A remarkable culture-shift has taken place around us," Mohler wrote. "The most basic contours of American culture have been radically altered. The so-called Judeo-Christian consensus of the last millennium has given way to a post-modern, post-Christian, post-Western cultural crisis which threatens the very heart of our culture." When Mohler and I spoke in the days after he wrote this, he had grown even gloomier. "Clearly, there is a new narrative, a post-Christian narrative, that is animating large portions of this society," he said from his office on campus in Louisville, Ky.
There it was, an old term with new urgency: post-Christian. This is not to say that the Christian God is dead, but that he is less of a force in American politics and culture than at any other time in recent memory. To the surprise of liberals who fear the advent of an evangelical theocracy and to the dismay of religious conservatives who long to see their faith more fully expressed in public life, Christians are now making up a declining percentage of the American population.
According to the American Religious Identification Survey that got Mohler's attention, the percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 percentage points since 1990, from 86 to 76 percent. The Jewish population is 1.2 percent; the Muslim, 0.6 percent. A separate Pew Forum poll echoed the ARIS finding, reporting that the percentage of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith has doubled in recent years, to 16 percent; in terms of voting, this group grew from 5 percent in 1988 to 12 percent in 2008—roughly the same percentage of the electorate as African-Americans. (Seventy-five percent of unaffiliated voters chose Barack Obama, a Christian.) Meanwhile, the number of people willing to describe themselves as atheist or agnostic has increased about fourfold from 1990 to 2009, from 1 million to about 3.6 million. (That is about double the number of, say, Episcopalians in the United States.)
While we remain a nation decisively shaped by religious faith, our politics and our culture are, in the main, less influenced by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character than they were even five years ago. I think this is a good thing—good for our political culture, which, as the American Founders saw, is complex and charged enough without attempting to compel or coerce religious belief or observance. It is good for Christianity, too, in that many Christians are rediscovering the virtues of a separation of church and state that protects what Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island as a haven for religious dissenters, called "the garden of the church" from "the wilderness of the world." As crucial as religion has been and is to the life of the nation, America's unifying force has never been a specific faith, but a commitment to freedom—not least freedom of conscience. At our best, we single religion out for neither particular help nor particular harm; we have historically treated faith-based arguments as one element among many in the republican sphere of debate and decision. The decline and fall of the modern religious right's notion of a Christian America creates a calmer political environment and, for many believers, may help open the way for a more theologically serious religious life.
Let's be clear: while the percentage of Christians may be shrinking, rumors of the death of Christianity are greatly exaggerated. Being less Christian does not necessarily mean that America is post-Christian. A third of Americans say they are born again; this figure, along with the decline of politically moderate-to liberal mainline Protestants, led the ARIS authors to note that "these trends … suggest a movement towards more conservative beliefs and particularly to a more 'evangelical' outlook among Christians." With rising numbers of Hispanic immigrants bolstering the Roman Catholic Church in America, and given the popularity of Pentecostalism, a rapidly growing Christian milieu in the United States and globally, there is no doubt that the nation remains vibrantly religious—far more so, for instance, than Europe.
Still, in the new NEWSWEEK Poll, fewer people now think of the United States as a "Christian nation" than did so when George W. Bush was president (62 percent in 2009 versus 69 percent in 2008). Two thirds of the public (68 percent) now say religion is "losing influence" in American society, while just 19 percent say religion's influence is on the rise. The proportion of Americans who think religion "can answer all or most of today's problems" is now at a historic low of 48 percent. During the Bush 43 and Clinton years, that figure never dropped below 58 percent.
Many conservative Christians believe they have lost the battles over issues such as abortion, school prayer and even same-sex marriage, and that the country has now entered a post-Christian phase. Christopher Hitchens —a friend and possibly the most charming provocateur you will ever meet—wrote a hugely popular atheist tract a few years ago, "God Is Not Great." As an observant (if deeply flawed) Episcopalian, I disagree with many of Hitchens's arguments—I do not think it is productive to dismiss religious belief as superstitious and wrong—but he is a man of rigorous intellectual honesty who, on a recent journey to Texas, reported hearing evangelical mutterings about the advent of a "post-Christian" America.
To be post-Christian has meant different things at different times. In 1886, The Atlantic Monthly described George Eliot as "post-Christian," using the term as a synonym for atheist or agnostic. The broader—and, for our purposes, most relevant—definition is that "post-Christian" characterizes a period of time that follows the decline of the importance of Christianity in a region or society. This use of the phrase first appeared in the 1929 book "America Set Free" by the German philosopher Hermann Keyserling.
The term was popularized during what scholars call the "death of God" movement of the mid-1960s—a movement that is, in its way, still in motion. Drawing from Nietzsche's 19th-century declaration that "God is dead," a group of Protestant theologians held that, essentially, Christianity would have to survive without an orthodox understanding of God. Tom Altizer, a religion professor at Emory University, was a key member of the Godless Christianity movement, and he traces its intellectual roots first to Kierkegaard and then to Nietzsche. For Altizer, a post-Christian era is one in which "both Christianity and religion itself are unshackled from their previous historical grounds." In 1992 the critic Harold Bloom published a book titled "The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation." In it he cites William James's definition of religion in "The Varieties of Religious Experience": "Religion … shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they consider the divine."
Which is precisely what most troubles Mohler. "The post-Christian narrative is radically different; it offers spirituality, however defined, without binding authority," he told me. "It is based on an understanding of history that presumes a less tolerant past and a more tolerant future, with the present as an important transitional step." The present, in this sense, is less about the death of God and more about the birth of many gods. The rising numbers of religiously unaffiliated Americans are people more apt to call themselves "spiritual" rather than "religious." (In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, 30 percent describe themselves this way, up from 24 percent in 2005.)
Roughly put, the Christian narrative is the story of humankind as chronicled in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament—the drama of creation, fall and redemption. The orthodox tend to try to live their lives in accordance with the general behavioral principles of the Bible (or at least the principles they find there of which they approve) and anticipate the ultimate judgment of God—a judgment that could well determine whether they spend eternity in heaven or in hell.
What, then, does it mean to talk of "Christian America"? Evangelical Christians have long believed that the United States should be a nation whose political life is based upon and governed by their interpretation of biblical and theological principles. If the church believes drinking to be a sin, for instance, then the laws of the state should ban the consumption of alcohol. If the church believes the theory of evolution conflicts with a literal reading of the Book of Genesis, then the public schools should tailor their lessons accordingly. If the church believes abortion should be outlawed, then the legislatures and courts of the land should follow suit. The intensity of feeling about how Christian the nation should be has ebbed and flowed since Jamestown; there is, as the Bible says, no thing new under the sun. For more than 40 years, the debate that began with the Supreme Court's decision to end mandatory school prayer in 1962 (and accelerated with the Roe v. Wade ruling 11 years later) may not have been novel, but it has been ferocious. Fearing the coming of a Europe-like secular state, the right longed to engineer a return to what it believed was a Christian America of yore.
But that project has failed, at least for now. In Texas, authorities have decided to side with science, not theology, in a dispute over the teaching of evolution. The terrible economic times have not led to an increase in church attendance. In Iowa last Friday, the state Supreme Court ruled against a ban on same-sex marriage, a defeat for religious conservatives. Such evidence is what has believers fretting about the possibility of an age dominated by a newly muscular secularism. "The moral teachings of Christianity have exerted an incalculable influence on Western civilization," Mohler says. "As those moral teachings fade into cultural memory, a secularized morality takes their place. Once Christianity is abandoned by a significant portion of the population, the moral landscape necessarily changes. For the better part of the 20th century, the nations of Western Europe led the way in the abandonment of Christian commitments. Christian moral reflexes and moral principles gave way to the loosening grip of a Christian memory. Now even that Christian memory is absent from the lives of millions."
Religious doubt and diversity have, however, always been quintessentially American. Alexis de Tocqueville said that "the religious atmosphere of the country was the first thing that struck me on arrival in the United States," but he also discovered a "great depth of doubt and indifference" to faith. Jefferson had earlier captured the essence of the American spirit about religion when he observed that his statute for religious freedom in Virginia was "meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination"—and those of no faith whatever. The American culture of religious liberty helped create a busy free market of faith: by disestablishing churches, the nation made religion more popular, not less.
America, then, is not a post-religious society—and cannot be as long as there are people in it, for faith is an intrinsic human impulse. The belief in an order or a reality beyond time and space is ancient and enduring. "All men," said Homer, "need the gods." The essential political and cultural question is to what extent those gods—or, more accurately, a particular generation's understanding of those gods—should determine the nature of life in a given time and place.
If we apply an Augustinian test of nationhood to ourselves, we find that liberty, not religion, is what holds us together. In "The City of God," Augustine —converted sinner and bishop of Hippo—said that a nation should be defined as "a multitude of rational beings in common agreement as to the objects of their love." What we value most highly—what we collectively love most—is thus the central test of the social contract.
Judging from the broad shape of American life in the first decade of the 21st century, we value individual freedom and free (or largely free) enterprise, and tend to lean toward libertarianism on issues of personal morality. The foundational documents are the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, not the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament (though there are undeniable connections between them). This way of life is far different from what many overtly conservative Christians would like. But that is the power of the republican system engineered by James Madison at the end of the 18th century: that America would survive in direct relation to its ability to check extremism and preserve maximum personal liberty. Religious believers should welcome this; freedom for one sect means freedom for all sects. As John F. Kennedy said in his address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in 1960: "For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew—or a Quaker—or a Unitarian—or a Baptist … Today I may be the victim—but tomorrow it may be you—until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped."
Religion has been a factor in American life and politics from the beginning. Anglican observance was compulsory at Jamestown, and the Puritans of New England were explicitly hoping to found a New Jerusalem. But coerced belief is no belief at all; it is tyranny. "I commend that man, whether Jew, or Turk, or Papist, or whoever, that steers no otherwise than his conscience dares," said Roger Williams.
By the time of the American founding, men like Jefferson and Madison saw the virtue in guaranteeing liberty of conscience, and one of the young republic's signal achievements was to create a context in which religion and politics mixed but church and state did not. The Founders' insight was that one might as well try to build a wall between economics and politics as between religion and politics, since both are about what people feel and how they see the world. Let the religious take their stand in the arena of politics and ideas on their own, and fight for their views on equal footing with all other interests. American public life is neither wholly secular nor wholly religious but an ever-fluid mix of the two. History suggests that trouble tends to come when one of these forces grows too powerful in proportion to the other.
Political victories are therefore intrinsically transitory. In the middle of the 19th century, the evangelist Charles Grandison Finney argued that "the great business of the church is to reform the world—to put away every kind of sin"; Christians, he said, are "bound to exert their influence to secure a legislation that is in accordance with the law of God."
Worldly success tends to mark the beginning of the end for the overtly religious in politics. Prohibition was initially seen as a great moral victory, but its failure and ultimate repeal show that a movement should always be careful what it wishes for: in America, the will of the broad whole tends to win out over even the most devoted of narrower interests.
As the 20th century wore on, Christians found themselves in the relatively uncontroversial position of opposing "godless communism," and the fervor of the Prohibition and Scopes-trial era seemed to fade a bit. Issues of personal morality, not international politics, would lay the foundations for the campaign for Christian America that we know as the rise of the religious right. The phenomenon of divorce in the 1960s and the Roe decision in 1973 were critical, and Jimmy Carter's born-again faith brought evangelical Christianity to the mainstream in 1976.
Growing up in Atlanta in the '60s and '70s, Joe Scarborough, the commentator and former Republican congressman, felt the fears of his evangelical parents and their friends—fears that helped build support for the politically conservative Christian America movement. "The great anxiety in Middle America was that we were under siege—my parents would see kids walking down the street who were Boy Scouts three years earlier suddenly looking like hippies, and they were scared," Scarborough says. "Culturally, it was October 2001 for a decade. For a decade. And once our parents realized we weren't going to disappear into dope and radicalism, the pressure came off. That's the world we're in now—parents of boomers who would not drink a glass of wine 30 years ago are now kicking back with vodka. In a way, they've been liberated."
And they have learned that politics does not hold all the answers—a lesson that, along with a certain relief from the anxieties of the cultural upheavals of the '60s and '70s, has tended to curb religiously inspired political zeal. "The worst fault of evangelicals in terms of politics over the last 30 years has been an incredible naiveté about politics and politicians and parties," says Mohler. "They invested far too much hope in a political solution to what are transpolitical issues and problems. If we were in a situation that were more European, where the parties differed mostly on traditional political issues rather than moral ones, or if there were more parties, then we would probably have a very different picture. But when abortion and a moral understanding of the human good became associated with one party, Christians had few options politically."
When that party failed to deliver—and it did fail—some in the movement responded by retreating into radicalism, convinced of the wickedness and venality of the political universe that dealt them defeat after defeat. (The same thing happened to many liberals after 1968: infuriated by the conservative mood of the country, the left reacted angrily and moved ever leftward.)
The columnist Cal Thomas was an early figure in the Moral Majority who came to see the Christian American movement as fatally flawed in theological terms. "No country can be truly 'Christian'," Thomas says. "Only people can. God is above all nations, and, in fact, Isaiah says that 'All nations are to him a drop in the bucket and less than nothing'." Thinking back across the decades, Thomas recalls the hope—and the failure. "We were going through organizing like-minded people to 'return' America to a time of greater morality. Of course, this was to be done through politicians who had a difficult time imposing morality on themselves!"
Experience shows that religious authorities can themselves be corrupted by proximity to political power. A quarter century ago, three scholars who are also evangelical Christians—Mark A. Noll, Nathan O. Hatch and George M. Marsden—published an important but too-little-known book, "The Search for Christian America." In it they argued that Christianity's claims transcend any political order. Christians, they wrote, "should not have illusions about the nature of human governments. Ultimately they belong to what Augustine calls 'the city of the world,' in which self-interest rules … all governments can be brutal killers."
Their view tracks with that of the Psalmist, who said, "Put not thy trust in princes," and there is much New Testament evidence to support a vision of faith and politics in which the church is truest to its core mission when it is the farthest from the entanglements of power. The Jesus of the Gospels resolutely refuses to use the means of this world—either the clash of arms or the passions of politics—to further his ends. After the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the dazzled throng thought they had found their earthly messiah. "When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone." When one of his followers slices off the ear of one of the arresting party in Gethsemane, Jesus says, "Put up thy sword." Later, before Pilate, he says, "My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight." The preponderance of lessons from the Gospels and from the rest of the New Testament suggests that earthly power is transitory and corrupting, and that the followers of Jesus should be more attentive to matters spiritual than political.
As always with the Bible, however, there are passages that complicate the picture. The author of Hebrews says believers are "strangers and exiles on the earth" and that "For here we have no lasting city, but seek the city which is to come." In Romans the apostle Paul advises: "Do not be conformed to this world." The Second Vatican Council cited these words of Pius XII: the Catholic Church's "divine Founder, Jesus Christ, has not given it any mandate or fixed any end of the cultural order. The goal which Christ assigns to it is strictly religious … The Church can never lose sight of the strictly religious, supernatural goal."
As an archbishop of Canterbury once said, though, it is a mistake to think that God is chiefly or even largely concerned with religion. "I hate the sound of your solemn assemblies," the Lord says in Amos. Religion is not only about worshipping your God but about doing godly things, and a central message of the Gospels is the duty of the Christian to transform, as best one can, reality through works of love. "Being in the world and not of it remains our charge," says Mohler. "The church is an eternal presence in a fallen, temporal world—but we are to have influence. The Sermon on the Mount is about what we are to do—but it does not come with a political handbook."
How to balance concern for the garden of the church with the moral imperatives to make gentle the life of the world is one of the most perplexing questions facing the church. "We have important obligations to do whatever we can, including through the use of political means, to help our neighbors—promoting just laws, good order, peace, education and opportunity," wrote Noll, Hatch and Marsden. "Nonetheless we should recognize that as we work for the relatively better in 'the city of the world,' our successes will be just that—relative. In the last analysis the church declares that the solutions offered by the nations of the world are always transitory solutions, themselves in need of reform."
Back in Louisville, preparing for Easter, Al Mohler keeps vigil over the culture. Last week he posted a column titled "Does Your Pastor Believe in God?," one on abortion and assisted suicide and another on the coming wave of pastors. "Jesus Christ promised that the very gates of Hell would not prevail against his church," Mohler wrote. "This new generation of young pastors intends to push back against hell in bold and visionary ministry. Expect to see the sparks fly." On the telephone with me, he added: "What we are seeing now is the evidence of a pattern that began a very long time ago of intellectual and cultural and political changes in thought and mind. The conditions have changed. Hard to pinpoint where, but whatever came after the Enlightenment was going to be very different than what came before." And what comes next here, with the ranks of professing Christians in decline, is going to be different, too.

Evolutionary Theology: An Argument For A Unifying Theory

2008-07-19T13:33:00.003-06:00

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(1) Universal Healthcare (not Socialized Medicine)

2008-07-05T11:30:00.001-06:00

Healthcare is a fundamental human right that must be provided if our American guarantee of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is to have any meaning.

Health care and health insurance costs have risen MANY times faster than the rate of inflation. More than 50 million Americans either do not have health insurance or have policies that fail to adequately cover them or their families. Moreover, our current private system incentivizes the denial of care in favor of reducing costs. In my opinion its a travesty that America, the most dominant nation on the face of the planet, has a healthcare system that lags far behind that of every other large developed nation in terms of both quality and efficiency.

Healthcare is a fundamental human right that must be provided if our American guarantee of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is to have any meaning.

To be clear, I want to point out that there is a vast difference between Single-Payer Universal Health Care (which I advocate) and socialized medicine (which I am firmly against). Please help me combat our right wing friends who are trying to "scare" people into believing they are the same.

Single-Payer Universal Health Care is nothing more than private, for profit healthcare businesses, just like we have now, providing services to everyone who is an American citizen and being guaranteed payment for such services from tax revenues collected each year. People will still choose their own doctors and health care will be managed and coordinated solely by doctors and patients (which is actually better than we have now). This is nothing more than a giant group insurance pool where risk and costs are spread among our entire population, services are paid for out of tax revenues, and exceptions to coverage and denials of benefits will become a barbaric thing of the past. Socialized medicine on the other hand is a fundamentally different system wherein the government owns the means of providing services both in terms of facilities and employees and controls and coordinates treatment.

(2) Free Trade / Offshoring

2008-07-04T23:50:00.003-06:00

I am not an advocate of Laissez Faire capitalism; neither am I a proponent of free trade. I believe government intervention in the marketplace is necessary to protect our jobs and people especially since our markets are increasingly global.

American jobs and pay have allowed us to enjoy a much higher standard of living than most of the rest of the world for a long time. If we open our product markets to unfettered global competition, companies will be forced to cut labor costs severely. This will continue to happen until our product prices and thus pay rates reach an equilibrium in the new global market. Company profits will definitely go up and owners will make out. But because "trickle down" is nothing more than a pretext for justifying (selling) this to the masses the result will be irreversible lowering of the standard of living for the working classes (until it also reaches a global equilibrium) and the gap between the rich and the rest will substantially widen.

Offshoring produces the same result. If we allow our companies to shop for labor in the global market and move operations offshore to capitalize on lower pay rates we will see a drastic reduction in the standard of living the of middle and lower classes (the working classes). The standard of living of the upper class (those that own the companies) will rise however as profits go up. Republicans / conservatives will claim that if profits go up, then its good for the economy, the working classes and everyone. They justify this with the farce that the wealth will trickle down to the lower and middle classes (i.e., in terms of more jobs). Even if we assume they don't offshore those jobs (which is a complete stretch), the "competitive" rates of pay that are now offered will be lower and lower. Result: just as I said above - irreversible lowering of the standard of living for the working classes. Another negative side effect is that in addition to the lower pay rates, American employees will be subjected to progressively worse working conditions for blue collar workers and ever deteriorating corporate cultures for low and mid-range white collar workers. We're already seeing this at my company.

Now that more people are beginning to understand this, how will the Republicans / conservatives try to repackage it in order to deceive the working class into unwittingly voting against their interest again? Mitt Romney's advice is that the lower and middle classes should buy up as much stock as they can while prices are low. This is the golden secret. WTF!?!

Unfortunately, when the Republicans wrap this BS in patriotism and nationalistic pride there are lots of people who buy in. Add to this a few sound bytes from some conservative charlatan talking about his faith in God while standing in front of the Ronald Reagan diary and half the working class can be persuaded to vote completely against their interest. They'll even try to convince others that the Republican agenda is actually God's agenda and everyone else is bereft of morals. It's really scary to me how this fascism can be so overt but go unrecognized by the masses.

(3) Iraq

2008-07-04T23:47:00.003-06:00

Bring the troops home immediately.

Regarding Iraq (and even Afghanistan), I originally believed that if we were going to do this thing, it should be with such devastating, broadly applied force that there would be no reason to send ground troops in anywhere except to pick up the pieces. After this, the question of a continuing problem in this region would be moot. Since we opted instead to pursue this in an inefficient, half-assed fashion, and continue to do so, I advocate the immediate withdrawal of our troops. Now for those of you who are ready to hit me with the "lets see how you feel after we're attacked again" rebuttal, here's my response: Reread sentence one again. That would be the position I would advocate. In the meantime, I don't plan to live in fear.

For a long time now, we've been spending $50 Billion per month that would have been much better spent right here in the USA - on our infrastructure, our homeland security, our healthcare, our education system, etc. Once our troops are home, the $50 Billion per month "savings" will go a long ways; nevertheless, I still am a firm advocate of extracting, dollar for dollar, out of oil or otherwise, the amount of money that we've pumped into that middle-eastern pit since this war began. But for this lame war we've waged, our economy would not be in the shambles we currently find it - our dollar would be worth much more and inflation would be markedly less. Why have we done this? Because of a flawed assumption that if we bring capitalism and a democratic form of government to these poor, disadvantaged Muslims our "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" ideals will provide them with newfound hope for their futures causing them to accept Jesus, abandon their terrorist agendas, and start pursuing capitalistic profits like good God fearing Americans. This is yet another example of how little the Bush administration and the pious religious right understand about middle eastern culture.

Let's assume for a moment, hypothetically, that Bush and his Missionaries of Democracy succeed beyond their wildest dreams - we now have a stable westernized Iraq with a democratic government, suburban shopping malls and a WalMart on every corner. Would that mean that there would no longer be terrorists planning to attack us? Would anyone even claim there would be less terrorists as a result? Seriously? If you say yes to either of these, let me know; I want to add you to my list of evils. :) (Hmmmm ... A Wal-Mart on every corner would be a special brand of hell that I'm not sure I would inflict on anyone - that might even create more terrorists and worsen our security.)

(4) Economy / Taxation / Spending / Budget

2008-07-04T23:43:00.002-06:00

Capitalism, left to its own, leaves a lot of people behind.

While working toward my undergrad degree in finance, I took a lot of courses in economic theory. During this time in school, I bought into the all the "Laissez Faire" / "Invisible Hand" / "Pure Capitalism" arguments aimed at curbing government intervention in the economy. As theories go these were very neat and tidy - that was their appeal. In the nearly 18 years since however, real life has taught me that in practice, capitalism, left to its own, leaves a lot of people behind. Consequently, I believe a balanced approach mitigating the harsh effects of free markets with regard to the lower socioeconomic classes through balanced government intervention is the best and most compassionate policy. The alternative is nothing more than giving the lower classes the "invisible bird". -|--

Regarding taxation, I am very much a "fair tax" (national sales tax) advocate. I strongly advocate abolishing the IRS and taxing "use" / "consumption" as opposed to income. I do believe, however, that items deemed "necessities" must be exempted from this method of taxation. A key benefit of this approach is that it provides an incentive toward savings as opposed to spending.

Regarding spending and the budget (and the corollary issue regarding the size of government), I believe that government has gotten too large (both federally and at the state level). I believe we could cut the size by approximately 20% just by eliminating wasteful, bureaucratic practices and programs. Finally, I believe in having legislative mandates for a balanced budget, but not a constitutional amendment.

(5) Energy Policy

2008-07-04T23:39:00.004-06:00

Nuclear energy is the key to our future. Period.

This is an issue where I part company with a number of Democrats. The solution is very simple though. Nuclear energy is clean, it's environmentally friendly, and it's cheap. It's also a proven technology and it's safe. This is especially true for Generation IV technologies such as Liquid Fluoride (Molten Salt) Reactors. We need to invest heavily in nuclear power capacity and infrastructure right now. Currently the US generates only 19% of its electricity from nuclear plants (as compared to 80% in France). This needs to double over the next 5 years and double again within 8. The government needs to intervene in any way necessary to insure this happens and make it the primary goal of our national energy policy.

Meanwhile, we must continue continue to also ramp up our efforts and research into alternatives such as cellulose derived ethanol, solar power, and wind power. Lets require that by 2011 every new vehicle sold in the US be flex-fuel capable and / or electric. Lets also heavily incentivize the installation of residential wind generators and solar panel units.

(6) Stem Cell Research

2008-07-04T23:37:00.003-06:00

Full federal funding of all stem cell research (adult or embryonic) needs to occur immediately!

Type rest of the post here
This is a very important issue and we've wasted lots of time and opportunity. Government should not be in the business of inhibiting and repressing scientific research that can improve or even save the lives of millions. History will not be kind to Bush or cronies, but this issue will stand out among many of his blunders, as one of the most backwards and regressive decisions ever made by a sitting U.S. President.

(7) Social Security

2008-07-04T23:32:00.004-06:00

I support partial privatization.

Partial privatization would allow a portion (e.g., 50%) of an individual's social security contributions to be invested in managed funds. The other 50% could continue to be handled as it is currently. This strikes a balance between the overriding policy objective of providing a baseline level of social insurance for retirement while still allowing a portion of the fund to potentially earn higher revenues. Moreover, with implementation of a Fair Tax system we would receive the additional benefit of an incentive toward savings which further reduces the social insurance risk associated with privatization. My position (50% partial privatization) would cut the short term privatization cost to the government in half while securing the solvency of our social security trust fund for many decades to come.

(8) Environmental Policy / Kyoto / ANWR Drilling / Off Coast Drilling

2008-07-04T23:31:00.005-06:00

Ratify Kyoto immediately. ANWR / Off Coast drilling provide neither a short or long term solution to our current energy crisis; they simply prolong reliance on a resource that is not sustainable. We absolutely must shift our focus away from oil to other renewable alternatives.

I support ratifying the Kyoto treaty immediately and implementing the carbon cap and trade system wherein buyers pay a charge for polluting, while sellers are rewarded for reducing emissions by more than was needed. The theory is that those who can most easily reduce their emissions cheaply will do so, thereby achieving the pollution reduction at the lowest possible cost to society.

Regarding ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) and Off Coast drilling I am absolutely against it - but not for the reason most liberals are against it. I'm a pragmatist so if this provided a solution I'd be taking a hard look at it. It doesn't though. We absolutely must shift our focus away from oil to other alternatives; ANWR / Off Coast drilling simply prolongs reliance on a resource that is not sustainable.

The right wing is spinning ANWR / Off Coast drilling as short term solutions for high gas prices. The most conservative estimates however indicate that it will be at least 5 years and more likely as much as 10 years before any gains from these drilling operations could begin to offset prices at the pump. It is a rock solid fact that neither ANWR nor Off Coast drilling can provide a short term solution for high oil and gas prices. Moreover, because oil is not a sustainable resource, they don't provide a long term solution either. We need to begin immediately to focus all of our efforts and research toward sustainable technologies such as nuclear, cellulose derived ethanol, solar, wind, and hydrogen fuel cells. This will ensure that we develop a long term solution that eliminates our dependence on oil.

The current hype with ANWR and Off Coast drilling is nothing more than an attempt by Big Oil (oil companies, oil lobby, and the current White House administration) to distract from the real issue and obtain additional drilling rights now while Bush is still in the White House under the pretext of it being a solution to our current energy crisis. At the very least, Bush and Cheney should both be indicted criminally under the RICO statute for their collusion with Big Oil in perpetrating this crime against the American people. Even better - lets try them as traitors and hang them.

(9) Illegal Immigration

2008-07-04T23:28:00.003-06:00

Lock down our southern borders by any means necessary. Legal immigration and illegal immigration are two completely different topics.

My position on this topic is three fold:
1) Abolish birthright citizenship immediately;
2) Set a date and close our southern borders down - if that requires a solid physical fence, so be it;
3) For illegal immigrants who are already here however, especially those with children who were born here, we have to take a compassionate position and allow a path to citizenship.

Just in case someone is tempted to send hate mail invoking the "give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses" quote and trying to confuse / complicate this issue by arguing that this country was founded by immigrants, let me remind you that we're talking about two completely different topics. No one is suggesting that we close our borders to legal immigration.

(10) Abortion

2008-07-04T13:48:00.002-06:00

Since studying the case in law school, I have been a firm supporter of the Supreme Court's holding in Roe v. Wade.

I agree with the trimester analysis as well as the "viability" distinction which they drew. I feel very strongly that within the framework set forth in Roe, the government has no right to interfere with a woman's decisions regarding her body and any such interference is a violation of the right to privacy that is protected under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.
This has been made into a moral issue, but it is not. This is squarely about who has the power to decide - the government or the individual. I will go with the individual every time.

(11) Censorship / Free Speech

2008-07-04T13:46:00.001-06:00

The freedom of speech and a free independent press are the best tools we have for protecting our liberties and holding government accountable.

Currently the FCC has the power to grant or withhold broadcast licenses based on content. This constitutes censorship and is an arbitrary and capricious exercise of administrative power amounting to an abridgement of the right of free speech. Broadcasters should have the same rights accorded to publishers of books and magazines.

(12) Gun Control

2008-07-04T12:57:00.001-06:00

The 2nd Amendment prohibits any infringement on "the right of the people to keep and bear arms". I don't find anything ambiguous about this nor do I see how it can be susceptible to any other interpretation.

When studying this issue in law school, I tried to approach it with a completely open mind. I've never really been a "hunter / sportsman", so my only bias was probably that of my generally left political slant. Suffice it to say, after extensive study, I've been fully convinced that the Constitution conferred an individual right to the people to own guns. All the counter "militia" based arguments, in my opinion, were nothing more than legal rhetoric and obfuscation drummed up to support a predetermined result. About two weeks after I wrote this post, the Supreme Court gave their opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller (June 26, 2008). Needless to say, I believe they got this one right.

I'm hopeful that Heller will be a step toward getting the Brady Act repealed as I believe it is also unconstitutional. Similarly, any other restrictions imposed by other federal legislation or by the states are, in my opinion, unconstitutional based on the clear language of the Amendment.

(13) Education - Vouchers / NCLB / Creationism / Intelligent Design

2008-07-04T12:17:00.001-06:00

No Child Left Behind Act ... teach to the test ... Repeal It ASAP.
Vouchers - Just say no.
Evolution / Creation / Intelligent Design ... Here's an idea: At least in public schools lets teach hard science facts and leave the theories of supernatural intervention for Sunday School.

With regard to creationism and intelligent design, they are "not science because they cannot be tested by experiment, do not generate any predictions, and propose no new hypotheses of their own." (Nat'l Academy of Sciences)

This does not mean that Intelligent Design and Creationism do not have their place, I think they do, but this should be left to individual families and their churches.

Don't like my opinion? Fine. Let's talk about an objective concept such as "separation of church and state". Public schools are paid for and administered with public tax dollars. To acknowledge the existence of alternative explanations for the origin of life is one thing, but to legally require the teaching of religious theories in a public school is completely improper and in my opinion, fascist.

(14) Affirmative Action

2008-07-04T11:58:00.003-06:00

Affirmative action is no longer about non-discrimination. It is overt racial preferencing that amounts to nothing more than government sanctioned reverse discrimination.

This not only discriminates against the majority but also has a negative impact on the minorities its supposed help because their acceptance (be it for college admissions or even a job)now carries with it the stigma that it was achieved by a preference. Affirmative action is an idea whose time has come and went. It is completely unneccessary today and for proof of this, I point to our new President of the United States. And yes, I absolutely voted for him because he earned it.

(15) Victimless Crimes / Marijuana / Drug Policy

2008-07-04T07:25:00.002-06:00

This entire category of crimes should be thrown out.

We're wasting way too much money policing, prosecuting and incarcerating people for crimes that hurt no one but themselves. In many cases, the laws themselves are creating a vicious cycle from which there's no escape. This is yet another example of the precept that you cannot legislate morality. We should tax these activities heavily in order to provide a disincentive, but they should be legalized and the tax revenue used for worthwhile causes and pursuits.

(16) Death Penalty / Capital Punishment

2008-07-03T23:42:00.004-06:00

If we're going to continue to have capital punishment as an option in certain cases, then I completely disagree with the Supreme Court's recent decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana (June 25, 2008).

In the recent case, when determining what punishment the Eighth Amendment proscribes as cruel and unusual, Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, stated that "evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society" must be taken into account.

This brings to mind the oft quoted passage from Dostoevsky that the degree of civilization in a society can best be judged by how they treat their prisoners. If the Court planned to use this case as an opportunity to take the enlightened approach, they should have employed it to its full extension - banning capital punishment entirely. With this rationale, I could have agreed.

Instead however, the Court used a flimsy "non-homicide" distinction, to try and justify their holding. Do they seriously think that the collective opinion of America will be persuaded by the notion that child rapists are somewhat less culpable than a person who commits intentional murder?

I believe that if we're going to persist in allowing capital punishment as an option at all, we should do so not under the delusion that it operates as a deterrent, but rather with pure acknowledgement of it as retribution for the most egregious crimes. Let's at least call it what it is - unadulterated, visceral lex talionis. In this vein, I can't think of a more fitting application of this principle than to the crime at bar.

This Court had two ways to get this right but in my opinion got it doubly wrong. They should have either banned capital punishment entirely under the 8th Amendment paying homage to the "evolving standards of decency ... of a maturing society"; or they should have executed this defendant on the grounds that child rape is every bit as egregious and deserving of the ultimate retribution as intentional pre-meditated murder.

If our society truly is maturing and our standards of decency are truly evolving, I believe we must end capital punishment. If for no other reason than the number of people that our flawed system convicts only to find out later they were actually innocent.

(17) Gay Marriage

2008-07-03T20:50:00.003-06:00

Given what I said above, that the order in which I've arranged these posts is reflective of my level of concern with a particular issue, further explanation is probably unnecessary. I do find it cathartic though, so below are a couple quick points.

First, I want to state that even though I've listed this issue at the bottom of the page, it's still not far enough down in my opinion. This issue is on a completely different playing field from the issues above. Although I just can't make myself care much about it, curiously, every time I see (or hear) Rosie O'Donnel on TV, I find myself becoming more and more against it.

Personal biases notwithstanding though, I firmly believe that the government has no business regulating the activities of consenting adults. It's rudimentary that morality cannot be legislatively enacted, or executively proclaimed.

Its also legal precedent in this country that marriage is a fundamental right that is protected under the 14th Amendment. Given this, I don't see how we can treat two similarly situated groups of people differently based on their sexual preference without violating the equal protection clause. From a purely Constitutional perspective, I think we have to "legalize" marriage without restrictions of any kind.

The bottom line though for me is that there are far too many "big" issues right now to worry much about this one.