Topic: Semi-random Thoughts

With Obama clearly taking the lead in the Democratic primary and Hillary along with her supporters becoming more desperate every day, there has been increased talk of a so-called "dream ticket" with Hillary Clinton as Barack Obama's running mate. This idea is completely ridiculous and would not be a pleasant dream at all, but rather a total nightmare.

The negatives of such a ticket are so numerous and so grave that I'm surprised that anyone even entertains this notion. But just in case some people haven't thought this through, I'll take the time here to enumerate the many pitfalls of an Obama/Clinton ticket.

A ticket with two controversial figures simply amplifies the negatives. It is well known that many people strongly dislike Hillary Clinton. At the same time, Barack Obama has recently become more controversial due to the Reverend Wright business and there are issues because he is black. What Obama needs in a running mate is someone who is more conventional and non-controversial, someone who will bring stability to the ticket. Hillary certainly does not do that.

The main argument against Hillary Clinton as a nominee is that she would certainly mobilize the conservative base to come out to vote against her, even if they would not otherwise have come out to support McCain. Her being on the ticket with Obama would still have this effect. All of Hillary's baggage would become Obama's baggage.

With Hillary on the ticket Obama's message of change, the greatest message of his campaign, would be significantly undercut.

Hillary does not compliment Obama's weaknesses. Neither one have a military background. Neither one have meaningful foreign relations experience, though I think that Obama does have a significant understanding of foreign relations and would be excellent for America's foreign relations.

There is almost no doubt that Hillary would continue to campaign as if she were on top of the ticket if she were in the VP slot. She wouldn't respect Obama and it's certain that she would not stay on his message, she would go back to her own message. When the issue of healthcare comes up in a debate or discussion how would she answer? Would she tow Obama's line, or would she undercut his plan? Since she criticized his plan so heavily in the campaign she would have no credibility in supporting his plan and if she didn't support his plan she would be undermining him. It's a total no win situation. The same goes for negotiating with enemies, with tax reform, etc. She would have no credibility in towing the Obama line and if she didn't she would undermine him.

If we assume that these two would actually be able to win the election together, what would happen once they were in office? Obama and Hillary in office together would make the campaign look like child's play. Hillary would certainly undercut and hamper Obama. Not only Hillary, but Bill as well.

Having a former first lady as a vice president is arguably even worse than as a president. She would no doubt try to assert her experience over Obama in the White House and Oval Office. On top of that, Bill would be there second guessing him and try to give advice and trying to put pressure on him. Hillary would still try to peruse her agenda once in office.

Having a former president as the husband of the vice president would be a disaster under any circumstance, but especially in this case. It is virtually a given that if Hillary were VP to Obama that once in office Bill and Hillary would team up against him and undercut his authority. We all know how driven Bill and Hillary are, which is fine in some respects, but it wouldn't work for a VP slot. There is no doubt that they would try to take over the show, and there is no doubt that the press would go along. How could they not?

Having Hillary as VP for Obama would be an unmitigated disaster. There is absolutely no way that anything good could come of it.

So having said that, who should Obama pick as a running mate? Well, the best option would be General Wesley Clark. There are numerous advantages to having Clark as a running mate, the only problem is that Clark is a Clinton supporter so he may not do it. However, if he would do it the fact that he's a major Clinton backer would actually be a great benefit as it could be one of the means of bringing the Democratic Party back together. I have no doubt that Hillary planned all along to have Clark as her running mate. Clark has been campaigning with Hillary since the beginning, and I think that Clark wanted to take a VP slot and he teamed up with Hillary because he assumed that she would be the nominee. Now that it looks like Obama will be the nominee Clark may be willing to go with Obama. But, I don't know the details of the relationships between these three. I do know that Clark has had some heated exchanges with the Obama camp, but that's a part of politics. I would hope that for the good of country and the election that Obama would reach out to Clark and that Clark would accept the spot. I think that Clark is so far above the rest of the potential running mates in terms of the benefits that he bring to an Obama ticket and presidency that this really needs to be what the Democratic party leaders push for. I don't know if it will happen, but it's what should happen.

By the way, Hillary is charging her campaign interest on the loans she gave to herself.

See: Hillary's loan, with interest 

Topic: Semi-random Thoughts
Unfortunately it doesn't seem that any of the presidential candidates, even Obama and Edwards, have good ideas for economic reform in America. Having said that, here is what I would like to see done:

Healthcare Reform : The primary goal should be eliminating employer provided health insurance. The second goal should be universal or near universal basic care.

Tax Reform : Move to a single income taxation system, basically eliminating the discrepancy between wage, capital gains, and inheritance taxes. Also dramatically reform the income taxation rates. Increase tax collection to pay down debt.

Government Spending Reform : Completely eliminate the current earmark privileges. Reduce the military budget (after ending the war in Iraq). Fully adopt PayGo at the Federal level.

Trade Reform : Eliminate all tariffs. Require labor, environmental, and safety standards for trade with the US. Use fines for violations instead of tariffs. Open trade with every country in the world. Enforce standards on a per-trader basis, not per-country basis.

Social Security Reform : Change how benefits are calculated to use a combined median-wage and inflation index instead of the current average-wage index. Reduce the Social Security payroll tax by 1%.

Those are the basic policy positions I would take, but lets look at them a little more deeply.

Healthcare Reform

I really don't know why the Democrat haven't figured this out, but it is a shame that they haven't. Healthcare reform can be billed as, and can in fact be, the greatest pro-business move in America in 50 years. We have to get employers out from under the burden of providing health insurance. This is the single biggest selling point of a national healthcare system. By removing health insurance from employers this helps both employers and employees.

This would eliminate a huge burden from employers and it would make things much easier for employees. You would no longer need to worry about losing your health insurance if you lost your job, you wouldn't have to worry about health insurance when switching jobs. This is an opportunity for real tangible change that would make everyone's life easier, so I can't figure out why politicians haven't picked up on this. The current growing trend, and what several of the candidates are proposing, is mandatory health insurance. This is a horrible idea, it is the worst of all worlds, and the only reason that this approach is even being proposed is because the health insurance companies like it, of course. This is where Edwards is right, it doesn't seem that Obama has the backbone to stand up against these corporations. Mandatory coverage just puts even more strain on the employers to provide coverage and more strain on people who lose or switch jobs. Employers provided health insurance is horrible. It provides an incentive for employers to discriminate against good workers who have health problems, and it gives them an excuse to pry into employees personal lives. This is an abomination and must be gotten rid of.

The solution is a national health insurance system. This needs to be clear, we aren't talking about government run health care, but rather government run health insurance. In fact, I wouldn't even recommend a truly government run health insurance system either, but rather I would recommend a quasi-government system, where the government acted like a broker, to give government the ability to drive down prices and make demands, but keep the actual insurance in the actual insurance in the hands of private industry. Everyone's healthcare would be provided through the government, but would be held and run by the private insurer, just like it works now with employers. Your employer provides you the insurance, but they aren't the insurer. Same idea here, except the insurance is paid for via taxes, and is provided to everyone who pays taxes. There would still have to be a separate system to deal with people like the homeless, etc.

Tax Reform

The tax code needs to be simplified, no question there. The main reason it is complicated in the first place is due to corporate and special interests. Most of the deductions need to be simply eliminated, including things like the deduction for interest on a home mortgage, etc. Why should renters, generally poorer people, be subsiding the people who can afford to buy a house? It is popular, but it makes no sense. Eliminate deduction for dependents also. Why should without dependents subsidize those with dependants, typically children? Its basically a tax on being childless. There are many other much more complicated rules, most of which are popular, that also need to just be eliminated.

As a further simplification, eliminate the different types of income, and just have income. There are some valid arguments for the different classifications, but they are more trouble than they are worth. The Republicans have been wanting to get rid of the so-called "death-tax", the estate tax, then fine, let's get rid of it, and just count inheritance as normal income, problem solved (not the way they wanted to, but hey). Right now the wealthy a pay lower tax rate on capital-gains than they do on wage income, but the poor and middle class typically pay a higher tax rate on capital-gains than they do on wage income. This further skews investing in America to favor the wealthy.

After we simplify the code and simply count yearly income as income, next the tax brackets need to be radically overhauled.I have tinkered with taxation brackets several times, but here are my latest views. First we have to look at the current income tax brackets for 2007:

$0 - $7,825 - 10%
$7,825 - $31,850 - 15%
$31,850 - $77,100 - 25%
$77,100 - $160,850 - 28%
$160,850 - $349,700 - 33%
$349,700 and over - 35%

Keep in mind that these brackets are cumulative, i.e. we all pay only 10% on our first $7,825 of income, then 15% on our next portion of income, etc., thus what you actually pay is much less than simply looking at the percentage next to you yearly wage income.

The problem with these brackets is that they have way too much to do with low levels of income and don't address income at the really high levels. This was not typically the case in American history, when usually the tax brackets dealt most with the very high income levels.

What I propose is to eliminate most of the brackets at the bottom end and dramatically reduce taxes there, while adding many more brackets going up into the millions. Here is what I would propose:

$0-$30,000 - 0%
$30,001 - $100,000 - 10%
$100,001 - $300,000 - 15%
$300,001 - $500,000 - 20%
$500,001 - $1,000,000 - 25%
$1,000,001 - $3,000,000 - 30%
$3,000,001 - $5,000,000 - 35%
$5,000,001 - $10,000,000 - 40%
$10,000,001 - $50,000,000 - 45%
$50,000,001 and over - 50%

Some things to keep in mind here are that most people with an income under $30,000 today pay almost no income tax anyway, due to deductions. I would eliminate the deductions and just have these people file a simple form saying their total income was under $30,000 and move on with it. We waste tons of money dealing with the nonsense in this tax bracket, and usually it ends up that they pay no taxes anyway, but why waste time with the filing and processing instead of just calling it a simple zero?

The numbers are a little hard to compare since I would eliminate many tax deductions, but generally this would be a tax cut for everyone with an income under half a million. The average income tax rate actually paid by those in the top 1% in 2006 was 19.4, per the Congressional a Budget Office (see blog post from Dec. 18th below).

The percentages I provide here would be much closer to what would really be being paid, whereas due to deductions the current percentages greatly overstate the payments in those brackets.

Keep in mind also that under the current income tax system these percentages are applied only to wage income. Under my system these percentages would be applied to ALL income, including inheritance and capital gains. This means that capital gains for people with an income under roughly $500,000 a year would be taxed less than they are now. For people over that level of income they would essentially be taxed more.

Adjustments to these numbers would have to be made to ensure that enough taxes were being collected. Tax revenue would generally have to be increased over current revenue in order to, combined with cutting spending, be able to operate without a deficit and pay down the debt.

Government Spending Reform

The biggest and most direct spending reform would be the complete adoption of PayGo, where any bill that cuts tax revenue or that incurs a cost must pay for that cost in the same bill. Congress has already adopted PayGo, this was done in 1990, but the Republican controlled congress, under the leadership of Tom Delay, then developed ways to work around the PayGo rules. These ways need to be removed and PayGo needs to become solidly enforced again.

In addition to this, earmarks need to be completely eliminated as they currently are. There were $29 billion worth of earmarks in 2006, for projects considered to be unnecessary "Pork" projects. In 2007, under the Democratic Congress, that number dropped to $13.2 billion, but this is still way too high. There could perhaps still be some earmarking system, but not the current system whereby individuals can add earmarks on their own without any review, to an already established bill. At the very least a committee should be setup to review earmark proposals before they can be added, or a whole new process should be setup for the funding of projects of interest to a given state. I would perhaps favor a standing 6 person bipartisan committee, with an additional 7th person that has to be a Congressman from the same state as the Congressman requesting the earmark. This committee would review and approve earmarks before adding them to current bills. The committee would have to support the earmark by a simple majority.

Trade Reform

Trade is the area where America interacts most with the world, and this is greatly overlooked as one of our greatest public relations tools. Firstly, I do favor free-trade, but I also favor-fair trade and safe-trade and think that these things are immensely important for addressing everything from terrorism to global warming to immigration.

Firstly we should stop, as well as we can (this depends on cooperation as well), from dealing with countries and start dealing directly with corporations. There are many advantages to this, though it also can make things more complicated. When we negotiate trade deals at the national level to reward and penalize companies for things that they aren't directly responsible for, and also this drives companies to move around from country to country based on trade deals, but there is no need for all that, and its a waste of resources and everything else.

We should very simply come up with one set of rules, any anyone who wants access to American markets has to follow those rules. As long as you follow the rules then you get free and unfettered access to the American markets, no tariffs. If you don't follow the rules you can be fined or, if the infraction is bad enough, barred.

The biggest problem with tariffs is that they punish the wrong people. Tariffs typically drive down wages in the country of origin, because in order to stay competitive while still paying the tariff it gives an incentive to pay workers less. This is the opposite of what we should be doing. What we should do instead is require compliance with a given set of pollution regulations, minimum wage, and employee rights. These rules would be the same for everyone. If you can't obey the rules then you pay a fine or are barred. This would move what is currently being paid in tariffs to the US into wages and improved working conditions in the home country, which would in turn also eventually open up more foreign markets for American companies as well, without adversely affecting consumer prices in America. At the same time, it would reward good corporate stewards for being good stewards no matter where they are. This would help to foster better relations with places like Iran and even perhaps Cuba, which could be opened up to trade as long and the proper conditions were met and of course as long as the home country allowed it. This would do more to promote progress and democracy than shutting off interaction with such places as we do today.

Likewise, poor stewards in good countries would be penalized more than what they are now or instead of simply relying on the home country to penalize them. There may be problems getting other countries to agree with these terms, that would remain to be seen, but basically any country that didn't agree would simply still be under a tariff. Regardless, we should work towards removing all tariffs and breaking down the barrier to trade, while at the same time focusing much more on ensuring the quality and fairness of that trade.

Social Security Reform

I have written about Social Security several times on this website and already covered what really needs to be done with it here:

Getting a grip on Social Security: The flaw in the system

Basically, Social Security is really not that bad off and with just a minor adjustment can easily be made solvent. In fact, with the minor adjustment so much money will be saved that it would be possible to reduce the Social Security tax, making it effectively another tax break for the middle class.

All that really needs to be done is to stop using average wage indexing. I think a good way to do would be to use a combined median-wage and inflation index instead. This would currently reduce the rate at which Social Security payment would be projected to increase. Some people complain about this, but there is no need for complaint. Currently Social Security payments are scheduled to increase dramatically above the rate of inflation, so people 30 or 40 years from now are schedule to get as much as 40% more per paycheck, after adjustment for inflation, than people today. This really makes no sense. Why should people in the future be getting paid more than people today? There is no reason why, and it wasn't even understood that this would happen the way that it has when the legislation was passed, because what has happened is that since wage discrepancy has dramatically increased over the past 20 years, the average wage has gone up much higher than the median wage, yet, the people making the high wages in the top 1% that are pulling that average wage up are not paying Social Security taxes on those wages. Thus, the poor and middle class are having to pay for increasingly higher payments even though their wages aren't going up. This is a hugely unfair tax on the middle class, and its really unnecessary.

Conclusion

I think that these economic reforms would strengthen the American economy, simplify the tax system, be more fair, and help the poor and middle class, while not harming American businesses, indeed the overall effect would be beneficial to business.

Topic: Semi-random Thoughts

With the Iowa Caucasus taking place tonight I have heard many pundits and reporters decrying the Democratic Party caucusing system. The system they are using is antiquated, but it has many advantages and should be a partial model for all major elections.

If you don't know about the Iowa Democratic Party caucus voting system, they basically have a 15% threshold that any candidate must meet in order to receive any delegates, and if they don't reach that threshold then there is a 2nd round of voting whereby the voter can change their vote to a different candidate that has already met the 15% minimum. This allows voters to avoid wasting their votes.

This could all be made much simpler however with an instant-runoff system.

The voting system in America is really a horrible system which virtually guarantees the perpetuity of the two dominant parties. This problem could easily be overcome with an instant-runoff system, and even in cases where it didn't affect the two party system, it would still greatly improve the voting system and make it more equitable and representative.

In the system we currently have for basically all of our elections a person gets a single vote. They can choose to cast that vote for a single candidate. When there is more than two candidates, this almost always ensure than the most popular candidate will not get elected. The reason for this is quite simple.

Let's say that there are three candidates. When more than two candidates are in a race it is most often the case that two of the candidates share some political leanings and the reason that two candidates sharing similar political leanings are running is because that political leaning is probably the most popular in the country. The election of 2000, when Gore, Bush, and Nader ran is a perfect example.

In our current system, what typically happens is that the voting block of the most popular political leaning gets split when there is more than two candidates.

So, for example, in 2000 both Gore and Nader were "progressive" or "liberal" candidates. Bush was the conservative candidate.

Because there were two progressive candidates the progressive vote was split. This, as we all know, "cost Gore the election", something that is a hot button issue that I don't wish to get into. But, due to the way our voting system works, the conservative candidate won, even though far more people voted progressive. Gore won the popular vote all by himself, but when you factor in the Nader vote it is clear that the voice of the nation was in favor of a progressive leader, not a conservative one. Yet, the conservative won because the progressive vote was split. Something similar happened when Ross Perot ran in 1992, perhaps costing Bush Sr. the presidency. Perot tended to attract more conservative voters, thus siphoning voters away from Bush Sr.

With an instant runoff system, instead of simply selecting one candidate on a ballot you rank the candidates on the ballot from 1 to N, with 1 being for first choice, 2 your second choice, etc.

Thus, in the 200 campaign people who wanted to support Nader could have ranked him 1 and Gore 2 (or chosen to only vote for Nader and rank no one else). In 1992 Perot supporters could have ranked him 1 and Bush 2, etc. In such cases, after their primary candidate failed to gain enough votes to win the election then the votes would have gone to their secondary candidate, thus in 2000 Gore would almost certainly have won and in 1992 Bush Sr. would possibly have won.

The instant-runoff system has many advantages. Not only would it prevent the problem of "wasted votes" when there is more than two candidates, but it would also make other parties more viable and have a greater voice, making the political system more responsive to voters. The instant-runoff system would give a lot of people the confidence they need to vote for a third party candidate, knowing that if that candidate doesn't win, at least the election won't be likely to go to the person they totally oppose.

There is really no downside to this system, other than having to retool the voting procedures and machines, but it is doubtful it will happen because the two main parties know that it would empower alternative parties, so it is in their interest never to adopt such a system. Nevertheless such systems are gaining support and are being adopted at the local level around the country. You should defiantly support such a system in local politics in your area if you ever have the opportunity, it could be the single most important change to the American voting system in American history.

To learn more about instant-runoff voting systems see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_run-off_voting

http://turbulence.ucsd.edu/~bewley/muppets.html

And by the way, congratulation to Barack Obama!

Topic: Semi-random Thoughts
There is a collective effort this Easter weekend to blog against theocracy, and I figured I would get my 2 cents in. I just watched the movie "Jesus Camp" last night, so this is a more poignant topic for me at the moment. If you have not watched "Jesus Camp" I encourage you to do so via the links at the bottom of this post.

There is an interesting split within the Christian community, and within many other religious communities, especially among Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam). This is a very basic split along theocratic and secular lines. Of course there are an almost infinite number of splits within these religious communities, but one of the most basic splits is over the role of religion in government.

Christianity and Islam both stem from Judaism, and the Jews from which these religions sprang were indeed theocrats. All three of these religions establish theocracy as the only acceptable form of government. This fact has caused great struggle and contradiction and strife within societies dominated by these religions for as long as they have been around. In the 1st century the Jewish historian Josephus commented on this himself in a work that was directed against the critics of Judaism. He stated:

"Now there are innumerable differences in the particular customs and laws that are among all mankind, which a man may briefly reduce under the following heads: Some legislators have permitted their governments to be under monarchies, others put them under oligarchies, and others under a republican form; but our legislator had no regard to any of these forms, but he ordained our government to be what, by a strained expression, may be termed a Theocracy, by ascribing the authority and the power to God, and by persuading all the people to have a regard to him, as the author of all the good things that were enjoyed either in common by all mankind, or by each one in particular, and of all that they themselves obtained by praying to him in their greatest difficulties. He informed them that it was impossible to escape God's observation, even in any of our outward actions, or in any of our inward thoughts."
- Josephus; Against Apion, 1st century

What many people don't realize is that prior to the rise of Christianity, most of the Western world was governed by secular government. The ancient Jews were not a secular people, and when Christianity split off from Judaism it retained the anti-secular values of Judaism, eventually taking over the Roman Empire and leading to the establishment of over 1,000 years of Catholic theocracy in Europe.

Eventually people had enough of the abuses and social destruction that reigned under this system and efforts to put and end to theocracy emerged, even among Christians. The Founding Fathers of the United States of America were among the leaders of the movement for secular government. What they established, through great effort, both physical and intellectual, was a secular Constitution and a secular model for government, after over 1,000 years of European theocracy.

"The settled opinion here is, that religion is essentially distinct from civil Government, and exempt from its cognizance; that a connection between them is injurious to both;"
- James Madison; Letter to Edward Everett, March 18, 1823

"Notwithstanding the general progress made within the two last centuries in favour of this branch of liberty, & the full establishment of it, in some parts of our Country, there remains in others a strong bias towards the old error, that without some sort of alliance or coalition between Gov' & Religion neither can be duly supported: Such indeed is the tendency to such a coalition, and such its corrupting influence on both the parties, that the danger cannot be too carefully guarded agst.. And in a Gov' of opinion, like ours, the only effectual guard must be found in the soundness and stability of the general opinion on the subject. Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance. And I have no doubt that every new example, will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Gov will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together;"
- President James Madison, 1822

The problem for Christians, however, is that there will always be a conflict between secularism and theocracy, because at base the Christian religion really does call for theocracy. At base the establishment of Christianity as the dominant religion of Europe was only possible under theocracy, and the continued dominance of Christianity over the long term is only possible under theocracy.

With the rise of Fundamentalist Evangelical Christianity in America over the past 20 years many so-called moderate and liberal Christians have claimed that the Religious Right misrepresent the "true values" of Christianity, but I disagree. I think that the Religious Right in America are the true embodiment of Christianity, they are reading the whole Bible and taking it seriously. It is really the secular, moderate, and liberal Christians who misrepresent the religion. They are merely espousing modern secular values and then claiming that those values are reflected in the Bible or in the teachings of Jesus, but in fact they are not. It is the secular Christians who fail to be honest about the religion.

The movie "Jesus Camp" offers the perfect example. In the movie "Jesus Camp" there is a well meaning "moderate Christian" who comes in at intervals and comments on how the "extremists" have twisted and distorted the "true message" of the Bible and Christ. If only that were true, but in fact I found that all of the ideas espoused by the extremists were solidly rooted in the Bible itself, indeed in the New Testament.

In the Jesus camp, "Children on Fire", children from toddlers to teenagers were fundamentally instructed to believe in authority, not to question, to take all belief on faith and on what they felt in their hearts. The issues go beyond the camp however, and into the fundamental basis of evangelical ideology. Fundamentally evangelical Christians preach that "truth" is determined by feeling, by emotion. "You know the truth when you feel the Holy Spirit come into you." That is the message of evangelical Christianity, and what does this really amount to?

Science is about looking for ways to objectively evaluate observations and data to determine objective facts. Science relies on impartiality, peer review, and intentionally trying to remove one's emotions from the equation. Religion, especially evangelical religion, is about the complete opposite of this. Evangelical religion is about feeling and emotion and "sensing" the truth. In addition to this, it is also strongly about social ties, hierarchy, and your status among peers. This is the real reason why the evangelical movement is so widely embraced by politicians, because evangelicals learn to believe and accept "truth" based on feelings and social pressures, not on objective observations, skeptical inquiry, and rational argumentation. No, for evangelicals, emotion is truth, and when emotion is truth that means that one's beliefs can be manipulated by charismatic people, dramatic presentations, and social pressures.

The thing is, the precedents for all of this are indeed in the New Testament itself. This was the core of Christianity in the very beginning, and indeed I do think that evangelicals are very close to resembling the beliefs, values, and traditions of early Christianity.

In early Christianity it was all about faith, believing what someone said was true because of who they were, how they made you feel, what social groups they were a part of, and the types of things they said. This is made very clear in both the letters of Paul and the later Epistles. These letters were indeed direct appeals to real living people, the real living congregations, they weren't stories about someone, like the Gospels, these were live documents.

Anyone who doubts this should read not only letters from Paul like 1 Corinthians, but also the later epistles, such as 1 John and 2 Peter.

1 John 2:
3 We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. 4 The man who says, "I know him," but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 5 But if anyone obeys his word, God's love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: 6 Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.
...
9 Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. 10 Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble. 11But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him.
...
15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For everything in the world the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.
...
18 Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. 19 They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.

20 But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. 21 I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. 22 Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the antichrist he denies the Father and the Son. 23 No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

24 See that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. 25 And this is what he promised us even eternal life.
...
1 John 3:
7 Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. 8 He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work. 9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. 10 This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.
...
11 This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. 12 Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother's were righteous. 13Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. 15 Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.

16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.
...
24 Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.
...
1 John 4:
1 Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

4 You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 5 They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.
...
13 We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

2 Peter 3:
3 First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. 4 They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation." 5 But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. 6 By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. 7 By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
...
10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be burned up.

11 Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives 12 as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. 13 But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.

You can see here very clearly where the ideas of Evangelical Christians come from, they come straight from the Bible itself. This is not a religion that can be apologized for, and this is not a religion that ever was, nor ever will be, compatible with secular democracy. The only way in which Christianity and civil society can co-exist is through the common ignorance of Christians about their own religion and their lack of faith in it. Christians who actually take the time to read the Bible and believe in it and follow the religion are people like Evangelical Christians, who will only accept theocracy, and why shouldn't they if what the Bible says is true? If the Bible is true then theocracy should be the standard, democracy should be abolished as the way of the devil, secularism should be abolished, science should be destroyed, and we should look to our hearts and our feelings for the Holy Spirit to guide us to the truth.

John 8:
12 When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."

13 The Pharisees challenged him, "Here you are, appearing as your own witness; your testimony is not valid."

14 Jesus answered, "Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid, for I know where I came from and where I am going. But you have no idea where I come from or where I am going. 15 You judge by human standards; I pass judgment on no one. 16 But if I do judge, my decisions are right, because I am not alone. I stand with the Father, who sent me. 17 In your own Law it is written that the testimony of two men is valid. 18 I am one who testifies for myself; my other witness is the Father, who sent me."

19 Then they asked him, "Where is your father?"

"You do not know me or my Father," Jesus replied. "If you knew me, you would know my Father also." 20 He spoke these words while teaching in the temple area near the place where the offerings were put. Yet no one seized him, because his time had not yet come.

21 Once more Jesus said to them, "I am going away, and you will look for me, and you will die in your sin. Where I go, you cannot come."

The core problem of Christianity is that it is not an objective world-view and it is wholly incompatible with objectivity. From the epistles of Paul to the Gospels to the later epistles, everything is about believing in authority, accepting things as true because of authority, because of a feeling, because of faith, etc. There is no room in this religion for objective or skeptical thought. There simply is no logic or reason to the religion at all, there never was. It is a religion that at its core leaves followers open to manipulation because it has always been based on charismatic appeals, social pressure, faith, and emotions. It leaves people with no way to objectively evaluate "truth", they can only "feel it", and those feelings are of course nothing more than emotional strings that charismatic leaders can and do pull. That is why this religion became, and has remained, so popular with government and politics. Believers in it are eminently vulnerable to manipulation.

There is no way that secular society and Christianity can ever be compatible, not in the long run. It's time that the so-called moderate Christians wake up to this fact and reject this ancient cult for their own good, the good of society, and the future of humanity.

Segment on Jesus Camp from ABC News

Jesus Camp the movie

http://www.firstfreedomfirst.org/

http://www.ffrf.org/ 

Topic: Semi-random Thoughts

You may not realize it, but there are actually many Arabs and Middle Eastern people who support secularism, free thought, and who are even atheists.

One example of this can be seen on the now popular Al-Jazeera newscast linked below:

http://switch3.castup.net/cunet/gm.asp?ai=214&ar=1050wmv&ak=nul

If this does not work for you also try:

http://www.flurl.com/entry/view/1248618/Dr_Wafa_Sultan

Dr. Wafa Sultan, the woman speaking in the linked video above, does live in America, but this interview was aired on Al-Jazeera. I have yet to see a similar interview aired on American television directed at American religion.

Everyone in the Middle East is not Muslim, and the people in the Middle East that America and "the West" should be dealing with, interviewing, working closely with, and sponsoring, etc., are the secularists and humanists in the Middle East. One major problem that I see in the American media is that our only knowledge of the Middle East and Arab people is of them as religious extremists. They are not all religious extremists, and in America it seems that we are simply tossing the secularists whom we should be supporting to the wolves because we don't even acknowledge that they exist. There are millions of people in the Middle East who are also opposed to religious extremism, and these people exist in every single country in the Middle East. We have to at least be aware of these people in America before any further progress can take place. Hopefully, with increasing awareness, these groups will get increasing recognition, media coverage, and material support.

It is not as though secularism and humanism have been unknown in Middle Eastern history or that Middle Eastern cultures don't know how to approach these issues, indeed many aspects of the European Enlightenment and movement for secularism came from Middle Eastern culture and various texts, both Greek texts and original Arabic works, which had been transmitted to the West in Arabic.

Please, take the time to visit some of the websites below to become familiar with secular and non-religious groups in the Middle East and Arab speaking world. Even just writing to these organizations to show support can be a great help and boost.

Secular Islam Summit

Women's Alliance for Peace and Human Rights in Afghanistan

Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)

Liberal Demokratic Party of Afghanistan

The Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI)

Women Against Violence

Arab Atheists

Network of Secular Arabs

Maryam Namazie (Iranian Humanist)

Tariq Ali

The Center for Inquiry is one American based organization that does work with secularist groups in various countries, including the Middle East.

http://www.centerforinquiry.net/

Topic: Semi-random Thoughts
I find that most people, even non-religious people, completely misunderstand religion and religious history. This is no accident, because most of the religions that exist today completely misrepresent themselves and religious history.

Most people seem to believe that people were initially highly religious, and that we have become less religious over time.

This is, in fact, the complete opposite of the truth, but people believe this because this is what most present day major religions claim. The major religions today (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism) are based on the idea that "truth" was revealed at some time in the past. They all claim that their religion has some ancient origin and that the original people were the most devout followers of the beliefs, etc., and that we have since strayed from these beliefs.

These are completely bogus claims however. Most of the present day beliefs of these major religions have developed relatively recently, in some cases within the past couple hundred years.  These religions have become more and more sophisticated over time, developing increasingly vast and encompassing views of "God", and then taking the modern views of God and imposing them back on an ancient past, in which those views never actually existed. They then tell us that, in fact, our view of God today and our religiosity today has "degenerated" from the past, yet really the opposite is true.

The reality is that in every society around the world, religions have become more sophisticated, more controlling, and more defined over time (with the exception of recent scientifically based distancing from religion). If you look at religion in the pre-Columbian Americas, the most elaborate and powerful religions were the ones of the most advanced civilizations. Some of the least advanced tribes actually had no religion at all, and not even any words for "gods" or even "spirits".

Religions are constantly adding more ideas and more justifications for belief and developing deeper and deeper psychological holds on people's minds, but at the same time they claim that they are rooted in the past. The reality is that religions were very weak in the past, and they have become stronger over time.

Religions become stronger and more pervasive as societies become larger and more complex.

Christianity and Islam are very new religions. These are religions that developed during, and shortly after, the peak of Western Civilization in the Roman Empire. The concept of God that is a part of Christianity and Islam is very much a product of 500 years of Greek philosophy, its not some primitive notion that has been a part of the human psyche for thousands of years. "Civilization" goes back about 10,000 years, with modern day religious concepts having been invented mostly within the past 2,000 years, after a high  level of civilization had been achieved.

Most primitive cultures around the world still had little or no concept of "a God" as recently as the 1800s, and some of them had no religion at all. If you look at where true formal religions existed historically, they existed in the most civilized areas, in the Middle East, the Mediterranean, parts of Asia, and Central and South America.

Most of the tribes of North America, Africa, and Northern Europe had little or no defined religions and few concrete notions of gods until relatively recently. They had superstitions and various "animal spirits" that they were concerned with, but that's about it, and in fact prior to the late 19th century there were still several tribes of people in the world who had never even heard of the concept of gods or religion. These tribes have all been either completely wiped out or converted within the past 100 years.

The African Pygmies, Zulus, and tribes of Cameroon, the Fuegians of  Tierra del Fuego in South America, Australian tribes, and several North American tribes are all recorded to have either outright denied the existence of "gods" or spirits when asked about them, or they stated that they did not worship gods because they couldn't affect anything.

One of the real ironies of all this is that the major religions themselves, when you read their texts, tell us that there used to be many non-religious people. The texts of major religions all complain about "non-believers", and "those who do not acknowledge gods".

The reality is that religious belief has become pervasive through the concerted efforts of religious believers who have spread such religions, often by force and war.

Topic: Semi-random Thoughts
Christianity was a movement of, by, and for the poor and oppressed within the Roman empire. It began as a Jewish movement, among the poor and oppressed immigrant Jews who lived throughout the empire, but it struck a chord with others as well.

Christianity was not the first or only movement for the poor and oppressed in the Roman empire, but it was one of the first that combined this type of movement with religion and sacred texts. The Jews had a history of revering texts as sacred and using those texts as a grounding for their beliefs and their culture. This was not the case with most other cultures, whose beliefs were more fluid and more open to change. There is no Greek or Roman equivalent to the Pentateuch, no "official" text that defines their beliefs. This tradition of sacred texts helped to cement the Christian message in ways that were uncommon among the "gentile" cultures.

It would be too much to call Christianity be beginning of class consciousness among the poor, because there was class consciousness among the poor before Christianity, but Christianity is perhaps the first merger of class consciousness among the poor with a significant written framework that was used to universalize the movement and spread it throughout the empire.

Christianity represents a step in the evolution of class consciousness and class warfare, which was specifically produced by a merger of Greek and Jewish tradition. Christianity gives us a look at the ancient world from the perspective of the outsiders, and in doing this it is one of the the most significant ancient examples that we have of the views of the oppressed in their own words.

This is in part because we had a class of people, immigrant Jews, who were at the same time non-citizens who opposed the status quo, and educated enough to read and write in Greek.

This is both a virtue of Christianity and also its problem.

The rise of Christianity in Rome is what it would have been like if a movement among southern slaves in America had overturned the government and scholarship of the United States.

Would there have been some justice to this? Yes, there would have been.

Would the views, beliefs, and teachings of slaves have been representative of the most well educated and enlightened individuals of the day, or indeed even of the average freeman? No, of course not.

Both the early Christians and the American slaves had very valid moral platforms, but moral platforms don't provide knowledge, education, and an understanding of how the world works, etc.

Christianity was a morally virtuous movement of the uneducated masses, who, like American slaves, used the words of respected thinkers of the time to point out the hypocrisy of the times.

The so-called words of "Jesus" are like American slaves quoting the Declaration of Independence, which they did in their writings, and using them to show the hypocrisy of the times, to rub the words of the respected thinkers in the eyes of the citizenry and in the eyes of their oppressed brothers and sisters to show that the words are good, but meaningless because they are empty in their application.

Christianity puts the words of Plato in the mouth of God. Christianity cursed this world because the Christians saw the hypocrisy of the earthy systems.

From a scholarly perspective, however, it is just as wrong to take the writings of American slaves, where they roughly quote Jefferson, and claim that these were original ideas of the slaves, as it is to take the words of the Jesus character where he roughly quotes Plato and claim that they are "his" original ideas.

They weren't original ideas, but they were, perhaps, original applications.

This is where I believe having a scholarly understanding and appreciation of Christianity and the Jesus myth affords a greater respect for the religion than actually believing in the religion itself.

Christianity isn't the teachings of one "man", some otherworldly leader; it is a collective expression of class consciousness, and the work of many different writers and thinkers among a class of oppressed people. To take the words of these people, these real human beings who were struggling for justice, and put them in the mouth of a god is an insult to humanity.

That these people themselves did this, however, is nothing more than a reflection of how stories were told at that time, and a reflection of their own abused lack of self worth.

These people had to create a god to say the things that they felt too powerless to say themselves.

This is why the gospels, indeed almost all of the writings in the Bible, are anonymous. They are anonymous both out of practical concern and out of a lack of self worth, which is very clear in the New Testament writings.

To take a moralistic movement of the uneducated underclass of ancient Rome, no matter how deserving of respect the movement might have originally been, and elevate it to the status of the most sacred set of beliefs and a paragon of both virtue and knowledge, however, is absurd, blind, foolish, self-destructive, and, I would argue, irreverent!

The poor and the oppressed and the disadvantaged deserve our respect. We should be working to help these people and to put an end to the institutions and social structures that contribute to the conditions of poverty, ignorance, and discrimination. However, the poor, oppressed, and disadvantaged, while they can teach us things about respect and human dignity, are not sources of education, knowledge, governance, and institutions.

The problems created by the rise of Christianity are the same problems that we have seen with the movements of the poor and oppressed in recent history, most notably the Communist movements. Christianity and Communism are very similar, both historically and ideologically. Both were movements of poor and oppressed people, who despised the existing social systems and sought to overturn them. The problem is that when people who have been oppressed come to power they tend to undermine and destroy the fruits that had been created by their oppression. A certain amount of social, cultural, intellectual, artistic, and material wealth is created by empowered members of society at the expense of the exploitation of others, however these creations themselves are good and valuable.

Greek scholars were able to study and investigate nature and understand how it worked because of the system of slavery that afforded them the luxury of being able to spend time and resources on investigation and education.

The under classes were deprived of this education, and indeed some of them came to despise it. Unfortunately, when underclasses or underclass ideas come to power, as in both the rise of Christianity and Communism, wealth (of all kinds), though perhaps ill-gotten originally, is destroyed and lost.

Yes, Christianity represented the hopes and dreams of oppressed people, but it never did, and never has, represented the knowledge and tools of enlightened people. The challenge is, and has been, to unite these principles, but this can only been done by bringing the oppressed up into a wealth of knowledge, not by bringing knowledge into the poverty of the oppressed.

Topic: Semi-random Thoughts
Bill O'Reilly and other conservatives are continuing to spread the 50 year old "War on Christmas" myth. They claim that "secularists" are trying to undermine the Christian roots of the Christmas holiday, by using phrases like "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas", etc.

First of all, as an atheist I can tell you that I, and my like minded acquaintances, am perfectly happy with Christmas. I have always celebrated Christmas and will continue to do so. I say Merry Christmas and I have a Christmas tree.

The irony is that so much of Christmas isn't Christian in the first place. That the "War on Christmas" crowd complains about the use of the phrase "Happy Holidays" is also quite ironic because the word "holiday" comes from "Holy-Day". "Holidays" used to all be "Holy Days" in the Roman tradition.

First of all, virtually every part of Christmas comes from "pagan" tradition, not Christianity. About the only part of Christmas that is "Christian" is the name.

The date of Christmas comes from the Roman celebration of Natalis Solis Invictus, a.k.a. Saturnalia. The holiday was a celebration of the rebirth of the Sun God after the winter solstice. This was the major holiday in Rome, and it was co-opted by Christians who lived in Rome because it was a traditional Roman celebration. Once Christianity became the religion of Rome the holiday became officially adopted by the Christians.

That's just the beginning. All of the following traditions come to us from "pagan" (pagan just means non-Abrahamic) culture:

• Christmas Trees
  
• Mistletoe
  
• Poinsettia
  
• Holly
  
• Wreaths
  
• Exchanging gifts
  
• Elves
  
• Santa Clause
  
• Bell ringing
  
• Caroling
  
• Yule log
  
• Fruit Cake
  
• Magical reindeer
  
• Winged angels
  

All of these aspects of Christmas are originally from the winter solstice celebrations of various "pagan" cultures. So as you can see, Christmas was never very Christian in the first place.

Additionally, after the Protestant Reformation most Protestant groups, especially those from England and early America, rejected Christmas as a pagan practice.

Christmas was actually made illegal in many American colonies by the Puritans and Pilgrims. Where it wasn't illegal it was still not popular.

Christmas didn't become a nationally recognized holiday until after the Civil War.

As much as Christians now lament the "commercialization of Christmas", it was actually the commercial interests that made Christmas popular in America in the first place. In the late 1800s department stores and other businesses are the ones who made Christmas what it is today. Christmas in America has ALWAYS been highly commercial, largely secular, and mixed with a wide variety of cultural traditions.

The other irony is that guys like Bill O'Reilly are really complaining about the effects of free-market capitalism. They complain about the fact that Christmas has become too commercial and that terms like "Happy Holidays" are becoming more widely used.

Well, Christmas is so commercial because we live in a capitalist society, which Bill O'Reilly claims is God's gift to mankind. Which is it Bill, are you pro-capitalist or anti-capitalist?

Likewise, terms such as Happy Holidays are being used because corporations want to include as many people as possible and not be exclusive. It's another product of a free-market system. As a company do I want to market only to Christians, or also to Jews and people of other faiths (since just about every culture and religion celebrates around this season)?

Don't forget that many of the country's major department stores are based out of the major cities like New York and L.A.

These cities tend to be much more cosmopolitan than "red state America", and thus the people who set policy for these department stores are much more sensitive to multiculturalism.

Why is our country run by multiculturalists from the "blue states"? Because of free-market capitalism. Free-market capitalism is both liberalizing and centralizing. The free-market tends to move towards inclusiveness and new ideas. Capitalism tends to centralizes economic means and power. What the conservatives are really railing against with their "War on Christmas" rants is free-market capitalism.

Why don't people like Bill O'Reilly and other Christians just come out and admit that they are anti-capitalists?

At any rate, as an atheist I am perfect happy and comfortable with Christmas, as well as Christian Christmas carols and nativity scenes. I mean, since all the nativity scenes are built wrong anyway, what is the harm?

All nativity scenes are anti-Biblical, since the Bible says that when the wise men (the Bible doesn't say how many wise men) visited Jesus he was living in a house and was a young boy. The Christian nativity scenes just prove again how little they read their own holy book. It seems that Christians can't get anything right about their religion and few of them have any knowledge of it. Maybe a good Christian activity for Christmas would be to read the Bible and try to find inspiration for their Christmas celebrations there, where they can see that there is no such celebration in the Bible and that all of their traditions are either wrongly practices or are pagan traditions.

All the while, I will happily sing Christmas songs, and decorate my Christmas tree, and enjoy the holiday season.

There is no war on Christmas. The reality is that Christmas never was what the Christians claim that is was. It was never a Christian holiday in the first place, and it was made popular in America BY commercialism, not as a religious holiday.

Merry Christmas!!!

Topic: Semi-random Thoughts
With the nomination of judge Sam Alito to the Supreme Court by George Bush much is being discussed about his "judicial philosophy". In these discussions the issue of State's Rights often comes up with commentators stating that his position on State's Rights is one of the aspects that defines judge Alito as "a conservative".

"State's Rights" is actually neither a "conservative" nor a "liberal" issue. In all of the comments I have heard on the State's Rights issue from sources ranging from NPR to the New York Times to MSNBC to FOX News, none of the commentators, including supposed Constitutional experts, seemed to have any understanding of why the issue of "State's Rights" has been interpreted as a "conservative" vs "liberal" issue. In fact, several went on to give explanations of why interpreting the Constitution in such a way as to reserve rights to the States is "conservative", while all of them failed to address any of the real history of the issue of State's Rights.

Having said that, I will now explain why the issue of "State's Rights" as been interpreted as a "conservative" vs "liberal" issue.

First it is important to note that there is nothing inherently "progressive" or "conservative" about at which level laws are made, State or Federal. The laws themselves are what are either progressive or conservative.

The reason why conservatives have generally advocated for State Sovereignty is that the Federal government has generally been more progressive than certain State governments, especially in the South. There are several different major times when these issues were very significant.

When the United States Constitution was written there were major conflicts between the interests of the State governments and the Framers of the Constitution. The Framers of the Federal Constitution were liberal progressives who spent a lot of time and effort making sure that there was division of powers written into the Federal Constitution and that there were many protections for individual rights written into the Constitution.

The Framers, especially James Madison, viewed many of the State governments as oppressive. While the Framers took great care to dilute power at the Federal level, many of the State constitutions were written to concentrate power. Many of the States were like small kingdoms.

That most of us carried into the Convention a profound impression, produced by the experienced inadequacy of the old Confederation, and by the monitory examples of all similar ones, ancient and modern, as to the necessity of binding the States together by a strong Constitution, is certain. The necessity of such a Constitution was enforced by the gross and disreputable inequalities which had been prominent in the internal administrations of most of the States.
- James Madison from letter to John G. Jackson, Dec. 27, 1821

Besides, some States have no bills of rights, there are others provided with very defective ones, and there are others whose bills of rights are not only defective, but absolutely improper; instead of securing some in the full extent which republican principles would require, they limit them too much to agree with the common ideas of liberty.

...

I wish also, in revising the constitution, we may throw into that section, which interdict the abuse of certain powers in the State Legislatures, some other provisions of equal, if not greater importance than those already made. The words, "No State shall pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law," &c. were wise and proper restrictions in the constitution. I think there is more danger of those powers being abused by the State Governments than by the Government of the United States. The same may be said of other powers which they possess, if not controlled by the general principle, that laws are unconstitutional which infringe the rights of the community. I should therefore wish to extend this interdiction, and add, as I have stated in the 5th resolution, that no State shall violate the equal right of conscience, freedom of the press, or trial by jury in criminal cases; because it is proper that every Government should be disarmed of powers which trench upon those particular rights. I know, in some of the State constitutions, the power of the Government is controlled by such a declaration; but others are not. I cannot see any reason against obtaining even a double security on those points; and nothing can give a more sincere proof of the attachment of those who opposed this constitution to these great and important rights, than to see them join in obtaining the security I have now proposed; because it must be admitted, on all hands, that the State Governments are as liable to attack the invaluable privileges as the General Government is, and therefore ought to be as cautiously guarded against.
- James Madison, Introduction of the Bill of Rights (1789)

The colonies were ruled, after all, mainly by governors that were appointed by the King of England, at least at some point in their history. The State rules were often very protective of their powers and it took great work to get the States to cooperate and allow things like free trade between States etc. Many of the States wanted the ability to use tariffs on interstate trade as a way to fill the State coffers, etc.

Furthermore, there was the issue of slavery. Most of the Federal Framers wanted to abolish slavery, but many States made it known that they would not give up slavery in order to enter the union. Basically, slavery was a deal breaker issue for the Southern States. In order to get around this issue the Framers decided to adopt this concept of how State's Rights were originally interpreted.

The Framers didn't want slavery and they didn't want the Federal Constitution to be supportive of slavery, yet they knew that they also had to allow it in order to make the new government work. The solution was to leave slavery issues mostly out of the Federal Constitution and state that any rights not granted in the Federal Constitution defaulted to the States. This put the "responsibility" for slavery on the shoulders of the States.

The Framers wanted the Bill of Rights to overrule State law, such that the States would not be able to pass any laws that contradicted the Federal Constitution, and we also know that the Framers wanted the Federal government to have more power over the States than what it had because they saw the Federal Constitution as more protective of liberty than many of the State constitutions, some of which they considered to be dictatorial in nature.

Nevertheless, the slavery issue had them in a bind, so they had to allow more States rights than what they thought prudent in order to absolve the Federal Constitution from responsibility for slavery. The way States rights were interpreted was like a nod and a wink to the States to say "we don't like slavery or want to support it, but we know that we can't stop you from having it, so as long as the Federal Constitution doesn't say that you can't, then you can assume that you can."

So, from that point, the proponents of slavery were the major supporters of "State Sovereignty".

The next major conflict between State's Rights and the Federal government again relates to slavery. The Civil War. The Southern States said that they were succeeding because their State Sovereignty was being usurped by the Federal Government.

After the Civil War the 14th Amendment was passed, much to the chagrin of the Southern States. The 14th Amendment did what James Madison wanted done originally, extended the power of the Federal Constitution over the States.

The actions of the Federal government were seen negatively in the South, where the Federal government was the one that forced Reconstruction policy on the South that the Southern States didn't want, like allowing blacks to vote and own property, etc. Again the Southern conservatives complained about "State's Rights".

This continued on.

In the 1940s anti-lynching laws were passed by the Federal government and "forced" onto the States.

In the 1950s the Federal government forced the Southern States to integrate their schools and other public institutions, again usurping "State's Rights".

In the 1960s the Federal government put an end to the Jim Crow laws in the South with Federal legislation.

It is from these acts that the conservatives have come to defend "State's Rights". On all of the really major issues in American history, the Southern conservative States have tried to hide behind "State's Rights" in order to defend their own abuse of State power to oppress minorities and regulate society. The Founding Fathers detested this abuse of State power, and its a major reason why the Federal Constitution was written in the first place, instead of just keeping the Articles of Confederation.

The liberal Founders wanted to ensure that they created a secure Constitution that would guarantee rights to people and protect freedom, because they knew that many of the State constitutions did not protect freedom, indeed they abused power.

Now, whether a policy is set by the State or the Federal government is not a "liberal" or "conservative" issue. Who sets the policy has no impact on the effect of the policy, other than making it regional or national. The policy itself is what is either liberal or conservative. It is just the case that in the history of the United States the Southern conservatives have often found themselves at odds with the Federal government, and thus they have been supporters of "State's Rights", because that served their cause at the time (or rather it failed to serve their causes because they lost on every count).

If the policy that the Federal government seeks to enact is conservative, however, then the conservatives will want Federal law to trump State law. There is every reason to believe that if a bill were signed into law that made abortion illegal nationally that the far-right would support Federal law overruling State law such that States could not even make it legal if they wanted to, just like States cannot make cocaine use legal even if they want to.

So, I find all of this talk of how "State Sovereignty" is a conservative characteristic quite absurd. There is nothing inherently conservative or liberal about State Sovereignty. If a State passed laws that made gay marriage legal, allowed public nudity, made recreational drugs legal, and required that all public officials be atheists, and then the legislators argued in favor of State Sovereignty they wouldn't be considered a conservative just because they were favoring State's Rights.

Likewise, the fact that conservatives have been the ones trying to stop progress by hiding behind State's Rights doesn't actually make State Sovereignty a conservative issue.

Topic: Semi-random Thoughts
The Bush presidency is an absolute disaster. The worst part is that we actually have no idea how bad it really is. We have recently learned about the incompetence of Michael Brown as director of FEMA, but how many more Michael Browns are there still at work in the administration? We do know that George Bush has made more political appointments than just about any other president in history. He has put his friends and relatives into positions of power throughout the government and these people have no real experience or ability to do the jobs needed.

Even worse, however, are the competent people that he has put into government positions, for they have been busy dismantling and undermining our government institutions for the past 5 years. The Environmental Protection Agency is a prime example. This agency has been turned from an agency that is used to protect the environment into an agency used to help corporations exploit the environment at the public expense.

The budget deficits that have been reported are really nothing compared to the full extent of the debt that is being created by the Bush administration. The National Debt is now $8 trillion, and the 2005 budget deficit is projected to be $319 billion.

This doesn’t really tell the whole story though, because the Bush administration has completely wrecked the government, and the cost to repair the damage that he has done could easily be in the hundreds of billions as well.

This has been one of the most secretive, if not the most secretive, administrations in the history of the country. At the same time the Bush administration has engaged in the most significant restructuring of the federal government since the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s.

Where is the oversight? There is none! The press? Yeah right, the press isn’t doing any investigative reporting, they just “report” on press releases. All the press does is sit there and wait for government agencies and corporations to send them information; they don’t go out and get any information. If the press is reporting on this government as good as they reported on Enron, as I suspect that they are, then we will be in for a huge surprise when a new administration comes in and pulls the covers off the works of the Bush administration.

Other government agencies? Yeah right, all of the dissenters are continuously silenced by the Bush administration.

No telling what kind of nonsense and destruction is taking place within our government institutions, and from the little we have been able to learn, what is taking place is ill conceived, poorly done, counter productive, or is an act of dismantling.

When Bush leaves office we will find that the government he has left in his wake is going to be one that is even more bankrupt than what anyone has yet reported.

What really needs to be done, aside from impeaching Bush for deception in leading the nation into war and incompetence, is that an independent audit of the federal government needs to begin right now! This won’t happen of course, but what will happen is that the next administration that takes office is going to face monumental challenges and will likely have to spend its entire time just repairing the damage done by Bush.

I honestly don’t see how the Bush administration can stay in power of three more years. The level of incompetence that has been publicly exposed at this point is extremely troubling, and what is even more troubling is that we are likely only seeing the tip of the iceberg.