Get God into Government?

As American politics approach the famous or infamous "Iowa caucuses," of course that is very much in the news. One particular item of comment concerned which candidate so-called Evangelical voters are going to favor. Accordingly, the news reporters interviewed a few such.

One of them said, "We've got to get God back into this country." Another said, "We have to get God into government."

I dearly wish I could have asked them exactly what they meant. But absent that, my reaction would be to say that America is not a theocracy, never has been, and anyone who thinks that a theocracy is in any way desirable should look at the example of Iran, where the opinions of the ruling ayatollahs trump the views of the more secular organs of government such as, indeed, President Ahmadinejad. Considering the freedoms that prevail in Iran—or rather the lack of them—should make anyone think twice before wishing for a theocracy in this country. (But they'd probably try to argue that a Christian theocracy is a good thing even if a Muslim theocracy is a bad thing.)

I have a feeling that these respondents, if I were to expostulate with them on the notion of church-state separation, would give me the standard Religious Right line that church-state separation is a "myth." And I would point out that it was Thomas Jefferson who, in a famous letter to the Danbury Baptists in 1802, wrote of a "wall of separation" between church and state. (And the idea has even earlier roots, going back 150 years earlier still, to Roger Williams who was exiled from the Bay Colony in Massachusetts and established Rhode Island to provide religious freedom.)

If I did have my hypothetical chance to interrogate these same (presumably) caucus-bound Republican voters in Iowa, I have a feeling that before too long we'd hear that they want to see things like a return of prayer to the public schools; posting of the Ten Commandments in courthouses, city halls, etc.; total outlawing of abortion and same-sex marriage. These have been issues for, and aims of, the Religious Right for a long time—in some cases for decades.

Just as an aside, when they helped elect Ronald Reagan, and maybe ditto for George W. Bush, they were very disillusioned that these objectives of theirs were not realized. That those policies were not enacted, even by presidents whom these people thought were one of them or at the very least largely on their side, shows that these are not popular (in the original sense) or mainstream positions.

I think some polls have shown that about one-third of American voters consider themselves Evangelicals. Even if that is so and is not an inflated statistic, that number still is not a majority. Yet this minority aspires to political power such that it can trample on those who don't agree with it. The majority in the US gets to wield power via elections; but when it comes to rights (e.g. the civil rights of minority groups), the government is set up so that the majority cannot impose its religious views or practices on a minority. Nor a minority on the majority. The arbiter of any disputes about that is our court system.

Some of the earliest polities in America—for example, the seventeenth-century colony settled by Puritans in Massachusetts—were in fact set up as theocracies. A dissenter such as Roger Williams was kicked out of Massachusetts and went on to found Rhode Island. But the Framers of the Constitution, a century and a half later, in envisioning the shape of a federal government, wanted to avoid any government like that.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

Update, January 4, 2012
This posting received a comment from a faithful follower of this blog. While I have the power to moderate all comments—that means I can allow or not allow a comment to be posted—I am pledged to allow dissenting opinions to be expressed on my blog.

However, I have to object to what was said; and I at first did so by writing a comment myself, commenting on the reader's comment.

However, I think I will use this avenue, an "update" to my original posting, to further express my refutation of what this person says.

He accuses liberals of being opposed to "school choice." Now, what exactly is school choice?

First, the term is a euphemism of the sort that I particularly hate because it obscures what is really being talked about. To me that is deceptive and downright evil.

"School choice" means what are also called school vouchers. Vouchers are given to parents of school-age children who can take them and use them as payment for school tuition; that is, tuition at private schools, and that usually means parochial--religious--schools.

So, school vouchers are beloved by the Religious Right. I, however, am strongly opposed to them. They allow tax money—my tax dollars—to be used to pay for religious education. I don't think I should be forced to pay for religious, sectarian, doctrinal education—which might, for example, teach Creationism instead of evolution. I believe that breaches the Constitutionally-mandated separation of Church and State.

Here is an interesting slant on school vouchers from the article on that subject in Wikipedia:

In some Southern states during the 1960s, school vouchers were used as a method of perpetuating segregation. In a few instances, public schools were closed outright and vouchers were issued to parents. The vouchers, in many cases, were only good at privately segregated schools, known as segregation academies.[6] Today, all modern voucher programs prohibit racial discrimination. [Wikipedia, s.v. school vouchers]

Public school teachers and teacher unions such as the National Education Association oppose vouchers. For all of the arguments both in favor of and against vouchers, see the Wikipedia article.

An interesting alternative, which does not seem to me to be as objectionable, is called "education tax credits." This basically says that if you pay to send your children to private school, you don't have to pay taxes which go to finance public schools. That seems fair, but I'd hasten to add that by the same logic, people such as myself, who have no children, probably should not pay for public schools, either.

There was an important ruling by the Supreme Court: in "2002 in a landmark case before the US Supreme Court, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, . . . the divided court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled the Ohio school voucher plan constitutional and removed any constitutional barriers to similar voucher plans in the future. . . " [Wikipedia, ibid.].

However, in Florida vouchers were struck down:

In 2006, the Florida Supreme Court struck down legislation known as the Florida Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP), which would have implemented a system of school vouchers in Florida.[67] The court ruled that the OSP violated article IX, section 1(a) of the Florida Constitution: "Adequate provision shall be made by law for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools" [Wikipedia, ibid.].

How Three Republican Presidents Got Elected

Perhaps arguably, three of the last four Republican presidents to be elected--Nixon, Reagan, and G. W. Bush--stole their elections.

First, Richard Nixon. A week before the presidential election of 1968, Hubert Humphrey achieved a big lead over his opponent, Nixon, by finally distancing himself from President Lyndon Johnson and his Vietnam War policies. Peace talks between the North Vietnamese and the Americans were underway in Paris at the time.

Then, on the very eve of the election, Richard Nixon persuaded the premier of South Vietnam to withdraw from the peace talks by promising him a better deal if he, Nixon, got elected.

This act on Nixon's part might have constituted treason, and Nixon had no standing to interfere in such talks. As a result, Nixon won, very narrowly--by half a percentage of the vote, the smallest margin of victory ever.

And, as a result of Nixon winning and the peace talks having come to an end, the war went on for another seven years and thousands more Americans were killed.

Of course that is not the only wrongdoing that Nixon ever did. Much earlier, when he was running for Congress, he accused his opponent of being a Communist. When a journalist said to him, "But Mr. Nixon, you know that [your opponent] is not a Communist," Nixon said, "Yes, but I wanted to win." That should speak for itself.

And, for those who know history or can remember back 40 years, Nixon gave us the Watergate scandal, which would have gotten him impeached if he had not resigned to avoid it. Mr. "I Am Not a Crook" was indeed a crook.

Okay, now Reagan, who did something similar. University students in Iran, during that country's revolution which ousted the Shah and brought in the current "Islamic Republic," had captured a number of Americans from the US embassy and were holding them hostage. Then US President Jimmy Carter had been powerless to get those hostages released.

Behind the scenes, and again illegally, Reagan (then candidate for US President) got the Iranians to promise NOT to release the American hostages until after the US presidential election was over. That helped continue the image of Carter as helpless in the face of the hostage "crisis" and helped Reagan get elected. Not coincidentally, the hostages were released on the very day that Reagan was inaugurated.

And--again parallel with Nixon--once in office Reagan continued his illegal acts. In the scandal called "Irangate," Reagan's staffers were illegally selling arms to Iran in order to get money to aid the so-called Contras in Nicaragua, in defiance of the US Congress, which had voted that no aid should be given to the Contras. (The Contras were right-wing forces trying to overthrow the Leftist government in Nicaragua. Seems that rebels whom our government wants to support are "freedom fighters," but when we are not on their side, they're rebels or some such.)

And last but not least, George W. Bush. (Hopefully you remember this one.) In the election of 2000, the results of voting were very close and the outcome depended on the vote count in Florida. There were a lot of ambiguous ballots, which were being manually examined. (Remember "hanging chads"?)

The matter at one point was under the control of the (Republican) Florida Secretary of State. Plus, the governor of Florida just happened to be George W. Bush's brother!

Many ballots--from areas which might have favored Gore--were not recounted because the recount was halted by the Secretary of State. And then, the US Supreme Court, with a Conservative majority, ruled that Bush should be President. Many Americans were very angry at that, and considered that Bush had stolen the election.

Update, October 11, 2011
Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens says this, in a recently published memoir, about the Bush campaign's petition to the Supreme Court to stop the Florida vote recount:

By a five-to-four vote, the court granted the stay [that is, stopping the recount]. "What I still regard as a frivolous stay application kept the court extremely busy for four days," he writes. He adds that no justice has ever cited the opinions that provided the basis for their ruling.

Kinda of makes it sound like it was politically and partisanly motivated, doesn't it?

Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein

Strict Interpretation - When It Suits 'Em

Republicans and religious conservatives may advocate a strict interpretation--of the Constitution in the one case, and of the Bible in the other.

But they seem to me to be hypocritical because they can be shown to favor strict construction only when it is in their interests; and otherwise, they just ignore whatever they prefer to ignore.

Former US President George W. Bush effected "substantial military actions" in Afghanistan and Iraq "that under any traditional reading of the Constitution [would have] required a declaration of war" (Robert Dallek, "Power and the Presidency," Smithsonian, January 2011); but, as is implied, these actions were done without a declaration of war. But I don't recall Bush's conservative supporters crying foul, complaining about his possibly unconstitutional actions--even though they are always saying that they favor strict interpretation of the Constitution.

And I think it's somewhat analogous when religious conservatives point to the Bible as justification for their condemnation of homosexuality and gay people. They need to remember that the Bible was used to justify slavery in the decades preceding the Civil War.

Also, they point to a passage in the Old Testament book of Leviticus that calls homosexuality an "abomination." Leaving aside the fact that abomination may not have meant, when the Old Testament was written, what they would have us believe it means, Leviticus also calls the eating of shellfish and pork an abomination. It also forbids wearing clothing made of mixed fibers, and prescribes particular sacrifices for many types of sins and crimes.

Not only do these people not make the sacrifices that Leviticus says we need to perform, I'd wager they also eat pork and shellfish, and don't give any thought to whether their clothing is a mixture of fibers.

So it looks like the Constitution, and the Bible, must be strictly adhered to only when to do so happens to harmonize with the aims of Conservatives.

Copyright (c) 2010 by Richard Stein

Reagan (and Bush) on Energy and Consumer Protection

News has it that President Obama is installing solar energy-producing panels on the roof of the White House.

This item, and earlier ones, reminded us that President Jimmy Carter had also installed solar panels on the White House roof—and then Ronald Reagan removed them. Why would he do this, when it must have cost taxpayers money to remove them? My guess is, simply to thumb his nose at environmentalists.

Also, as is not very well known, on the day of his inauguration, Reagan froze all funding of alternative energy research by the Department of Energy. I can tell you that a lot of alternative energy research that is being called for today or has recently been started up, was going on in 1981 when Reagan halted it. On the smaller scale, Reagan's move cost many jobs (including, ultimately, mine—so yes, I have a personal axe to grind here) but it also set back the efforts to find new energy sources by 30 years.

Many of the bad things that Reagan did (okay, bad at least from my perspective, or any liberal perspective) were not publicized at the time. Reagan was very popular—remember, he was called "the Teflon President," and the Press was afraid to criticize him because of that popularity.

For example, he gutted federal regulatory agencies such as the EPA and FDA that were intended by Congress to safeguard our food, water, air, and so forth. He appointed as heads of these agencies industry-sympathetic people or even industry insiders who had no intention of allowing these agencies to function effectively.

Similarly, Congress passed laws to beef up (no pun) government inspections of food-processing plants. Had these measures taken effect, they might have prevented some of the recent outbreaks of food-borne illnesses such as Salmonella and E. coli from eggs, peanut butter, and so forth (there have been many in the last few years). But the stiffer inspection schedules were never implemented, because of eight years of foot-dragging by the Bush administration.

Update, August 26, 2011
I recently learned that Rodger Mudd, of CBS TV news, did at the time report on Reagan removing the solar panels from the White House. It was a very brief news item and didn't mention any possible explanation.

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein

Reaganomics and Republicanomics

Remember Ronald Reagan and his "Reaganomics"? Reagan espoused the "trickle-down" theory, supposedly scribbled on a napkin by the young (and previously relatively obscure) economist Arthur Laffer, with his "Laffer curve."

The idea was that tax cuts and other economic policies that would help large businesses and rich individuals get richer would ultimately benefit everybody, because the benefits to them would "trickle down" the ladder to lower income levels. The rising waters would float everybody's boat--or so the theory went.

What happened is that under Reagan, the U.S. national deficit rose to unprecedented levels--a fact that those on the Right who are lambasting Obama for a rising deficit are conveniently ignoring.

Now, since the numbers are in, we can see similarly that the Bush economic policies, such as the famous "Bush tax cuts" that are now up for renewal, and that had the most benefit for the rich, hurt the total U.S. national income.

Here is an article by former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Reich on that subject:

www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-super-rich-get-richer_b_737792.html?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=092410&utm_medium=email&utm_content=BlogEntry

If you want to go into the economics of it more deeply (and you have patience), here is an article replete with tables (in .pdf format).

www.tax.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/Permalink/CHAS-89LPZ9?OpenDocument

Here is an article that shows the lasting, systemic harm to America's economic structure that was done by Reagonomics:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-white/rethinking-reaganomics-wh_b_749839.html

Copyright (c) 2010 by Richard Stein

What Is the Function of Government?

I just read a very interesting article in Smithsonian magazine (Oct. 2009 issue). The title is "A World Too New," and the author is Edmund S. Morgan, an emeritus professor of History at Yale. The article has to do with the knowledge and expectations that Columbus had for "the Indies," which affected the outcome of Europeans' early contacts with Western Hemisphere natives.

The entirety of the article is very interesting, but there were two very subordinate thoughts of Morgan's that struck me as very provocative. I've made my riff on one of those thoughts in the previous posting.

The second quote from Morgan paints a picture of the European society from which Columbus came, and which contrasted itself to that which they considered barbarian:

They had strong governments to protect property, to protect good persons from evil ones. . . .

For me, encountering this thought comes not long after I read some discussion, from different persons, about what the proper or legitimate role (or scope, or extent) of government should be. I think Morgan states it well, and succinctly. We have a Constitution and Bill of Rights that were written as they are to help ensure that the weak are not exploited or otherwise harmed by the strong (or more clever, or more ruthless, etc.) But some extreme conservatives and libertarians would not agree with this. I wonder if, if it were put to them, they would even say that we do not need or want the government to protect investors from a Bernie Madoff; or protect consumers from food manufacturers who might want to make and sell unhealthy food.

Well, actually, I think I know the answer to that one. It's easy to condemn a Madoff. Where it's just one individual, it's easy to condemn him. But, when it's corporations, or an industry—why, in that case some people almost seem to be saying that Business can do no wrong. Anti–big government people like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush feel that business must not be hamstrung by government oversight. But the interests of a corporation—usually meaning, in one word, its profits—can and often do conflict with the interest of consumers—who are more numerous. In other words, should or should not the government legitimately protect the majority (the public, or "consumers") from a minority—one corporation or one industry? So much seems to hinge on issues like this, of protecting one group from another. And that is precisely, as Morgan says, one of the central functions of government.

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein

The Game of Life

I was looking at a full-page magazine ad from The Teaching Company. I've known of this outfit for a while. They periodically send me CDs containing sample material from their courses, and I borrowed one of their courses from the public library. As far as I can judge, their material is authoritative.

This particular ad was headlined "Master the Rules of Competitive Behavior," and was for a course titled "Games People Play: Game Theory in Life, Business, and Beyond." Some of the individual lectures are titled "Practical Applications of Game Theory," "Pure Competition—Constant-Sum Games," "Credibility, Deterrence, and Compellence," "Encouraging Productivity—Incentive Schemes," "Bargaining and Cooperative Games," "Game Theory and Business—Co-optition," and so forth.

I'll admit that maybe I ought to listen to at least some of this course before I base an opinion solely on the ad's copy and the lecture titles. But I think one or two things are obvious, even so.

The last lecture of the course is titled "All the World's a Game." Now, I've often thought that myself. I think a lot of the people who advance themselves and garner a lot of money or power (1) realize the game nature of life, (2) know what the rules of that game are, and (3) play that game skillfully and mercilessly. (This begs for examples. I'd say maybe a Napoleon or some other general, or maybe a Roman emperor who schemed his way to power.)

If I long ago recognized that all of life is a game, why didn't I try to be a successful player of the game? For one thing, recognizing that it's game is not the same thing as being able to play that game for your advantage. Now look at video games (and I must admit I don't play them, so maybe what I have to say is not authoritative): they require certain skills or traits. If the player does not possess these skills or traits to begin with, the game fosters their development by providing reinforcement, a la what we learn about in Psychology 101. I wonder whether playing video games makes people better players of the game of life. I suspect not, for a couple reasons; but it would be getting too far off my track to go there.

Where all this is tending: Looking over the titles of the lectures of the course "Games People Play" explicitly invokes the world of business. This course (or any instruction on how to practically apply game theory) sounds to me a lot like what people are taught in business school: things like how to manipulate employees to get the most out of them, relative to your labor cost (and employees are just another "ingredient" in the product, and employees are fungible--that is, interchangeable: any chair in the company can be filled by any person possessing certain qualifications). How to manipulate your customers, to get them to buy your product. And (when necessary), how to manipulate lawmakers and government regulators so as to enable you to carry on your game-playing in the most favorable environment possible.

My feeling about all this is that it seems cynical to me, first and foremost. Also, it's arrogant. The attitude or assumption is that the bosses (executives and/or those getting their MBAs) are smarter and therefore are fully justified in exploiting people and treating them just like any resource, even an inanimate resource. To say that it’s manipulative would be to restate what I hope I've already established. It even seems to me hostile, aggressive, and evil. Why, in a society that is supposed to be egalitarian, do we accept that some people have the right to manipulate others? Why do we let our government, our bosses, our teachers, our doctors, and even the people to whom we are customers, have secrets from us? And tell us half-truths and untruths? They believe we are not entitled to know this or that (I've blogged about this elsewhere). They know what is good for us (to know and to not know).

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein

The World Is Ruled by "C" Students

It may be widely thought that the most intelligent people are not the most successful. To put it another way—assuming that grades in school are a good measure of intelligence, which I admit may be a faulty assumption—the world is ruled by the B (or C, or C-) students.

When George W. Bush was president we often heard that he had been a C- student in school. Whatever you think of that man, being President of the United States has to be considered being successful.

I belong to Mensa, the high-IQ society. In Mensa we often talk about the fact that having a high IQ is no guarantee of success and that intelligence (or, again, I'm using grades as a proxy for intelligence) does not correlate with success (as measured by income, I believe). I've seen a graph published in Mensa publications that showed grades plotted against some measure of success (again, I surmise it was income). Success increased with grades, up into the average grade of B; and then it declined for those earning A's.

One might want to think about the reason for this. One probably simple and unarguable way to put it might be that success requires a kind of "smarts" that does not and never will correlate with simple IQ or book learning. Or, in a more contemporary lingo, the people with the good grades or high IQs may have one kind of intelligence but they may lack "social intelligence." In fact, IQ (as measured on IQ tests) and social intelligence are quite different attributes of an individual and may not correlate very well with one another.

One last word on intelligence and public office. Of course Dubya was not the only person in politics whose smarts might not have been of the highest. In the Bill Maher film Religulous, there is an interview with a Congressman from a Southern state who admits that there is no intelligence test for public office. On the other hand, Bill Clinton supposedly is very smart, and I don't think anyone doubts that Barack Obama is smart--both exceptions to the generalization stated above. I wonder if it can be coincidence that both of these men, highly intelligent presidents, are Democrats.

Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein