Default is Better Now than Later

The Unites States is deeply in debt and we do not possess the political will to reverse this trend — or even to stop it.  We don’t have the votes to reduce our expenses enough to pay off some of our debts; we don’t even have the votes to keep our debt at it’s current ridiculously out-of-control limits.

Like children, we want what we want and we don’t care about consequences.  In February, Republicans managed to force through a pathetic $60B spending reduction and Democrats reacted as if it were the end of the world.  $60B in the scope of the Federal spending is nothing.  That’s roughly the equivalent of you or I giving up a weekend vacation.

That ridiculous refusal to come to grips with reality, and the many similar examples before it, led to the current “crisis” — except it’s not really a crisis at all.  The U.S. has been in this situation before, and probably will be again.  Just like any other nation in the same situation, we will pay off current debts, sell assets, and delay spending.  Hitting an appropriations limit isn’t a crisis, the crisis is the lack of moral backbone in the nations capitol.  There is no crisis this year which is substantially different from the crisis in which we’ve been mired for the last eighty years.  All of the talk about sudden panic is simply propaganda which is being created and distributed for the sole purpose of gaining support for the idea of borrowing more money — of further leveraging our children’s futures to avoid accepting responsibility for our own debts.

The Democrats have no legitimate plan to reduce the deficit.  They are willing to cut nothing other than national defense.  They want to raise the debt limit because they have no intent on ever reducing the national debt.  To them, this is a problem which will be solved by our grandchildren — so why worry?  To Democrats, economic growth “just happens”, so if we just keep spending ourselves into debt for long enough, a “recovery” will magically occur.  Democrats don’t accept that debt and taxes destroy healthy economies.  They don’t understand or accept that economic growth is caused by human actions — the actions of millions of entrepreneurs and working people.  They honestly believe that we’re just caught in “a cycle” which can be righted by spending ourselves deeper into debt.

We are trapped in a nation with these people — people who reject the principle of causation.  This does not bode well for our future.  It is better to settle this issue with them now, when the debt per taxpayer is only $130,008, than to push this trouble off into the future — a future where that number is almost certain to continue to rise.

All Cultures Are Not Equal

It is a popular, although largely unexamined, belief that all cultures are equal. To quote Dr. Mark Glazer of the University of Texas, “According to the tenets of cultural relativism, there are no inferior or superior cultures; all cultures are equal. To order cultures in an evolutionary scheme is unfeasible. All premises of good and bad and/or upper and lower are culture bound and ethnocentric. Put that way, we can see that schemes of evolution are ethnocentric not objective.”

This belief is based upon emotions and does not stand up to even the lightest intellectual examination, and yet it is taught in almost every anthropology program in the United States.

The First Proof

To begin, define an object as “United States Culture, Current.”  For the purposes of this exercise we will not need to define all of the attributes of this object, we can simply accept that this object reflects the set of attributes of the culture of the United States at this point in time.

Now, envision a change to this culture.  Start a campaign to educate Americans on the evils of littering, for example.   Define a new object as “United States Culture, Post-Litter.”  Now, compare the two.  Are they “equal”?  If you define litter as bad, then the Post-Litter culture is superior.  If you define litter as good, then the Current culture is superior.

The Second Proof

Cultures evolve constantly and every change is made for a reason.  This implies that each change, each adaptation, provided some advantage over the previous way of living.  Each advantage makes the culture “superior” to the previous version of itself.

The Third Proof

To believe that all cultures are equal, you must accept the unstated belief that culture has no purpose.  If you define any purpose for culture, then some cultures will perform better than others at meeting that purpose.

But do cultures have a purpose?  Yes.  Humans are not like honey bees, where most necessary knowledge comes at birth.  Humans are born with the ability to acquire language and culture.  Culture is how humans learn to survive in the world.  A culture which performs this task better is superior.  A culture which taught that all babies should be neutered at birth would perform this task terribly and would be an inferior culture.

Cultural relativism teaches that all cultures are equal — that the culture which neuters all children at birth is equal to any other culture on Earth.  To accept this belief, you must accept that a culture which causes it’s adherents to die out is equally good as one that causes it’s adherents to thrive.

An Approach for Cultural Objectivity

Cultural relativism became popular as a rejection of European cultural hegemony by European academics.  They felt that the only solution to remove European bias from cultural studies was to deny the existence of any standards at all.

A more honest approach is one that aims for true objectivity, not rejecting the existence of standards, but accepting the existence of objective standards.

As good a place as any to start with these standards is to judge each culture based upon how well it prepares it’s members to achieve the goals defined by Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs.

Maslow was a psychologist, not a politician.  His work, therefore, is criticized by those who feel that the items on the pyramid, or rather their order on the pyramid, should be modified to better reflect socialist ideals.  Even this is not a rejection of the concept of objective values, only of the specific details of how we define these values.  Perhaps there is a better chart than Maslow’s, or perhaps a better chart can be made.

Real work on defining objective standards cannot begin, however, until we first accept that objective standards do exist.  The current rejection of objective standards by most academics prevents investment in the development of new knowledge. If all cultures are equal, then progress is an illusion — a waste of time and effort.

The social sciences have become dead sciences; they can record facts and details but they cannot make useful contributions to humanity.  They have made themselves neutered and meaningless.  While the “hard” sciences of math and engineering make enormous advances every year which radically improve the lives of billions of people, the social science remain stuck in a descriptive rut — an incredible waste of human potential.

The social sciences are adrift due to this rejection of objective goals.  If all directions are equally valid, a ship will go nowhere.  Only by choosing a direction can progress be made.  But what if we choose incorrectly?  Well, what if you drive your car to the wrong destination?  You just start again and drive to a new destination — but you learn with each step.  With each wrong direction you get closer to the truth.  With our current denial of the value of directions, we’re not getting anywhere.

I Cannot Like the Republican Party

Facebook keeps recommending that I “like” the GOP/RNC; I keep not pressing that button.

I like a lot of people in the GOP.  I like a lot of principles that those people stand for.  I don’t like a lot of people in the DNC and I don’t agree with the principles for which the DNC stands.  And yet, I can’t convince myself to mouse click in support of the RNC.  Why not?

The RNC leadership seems mostly to consist of RINO’s — Republicans In Name Only.  These are professional campaigners who are more interested in election results than in principles.  That’s just not very attractive to me.  I don’t want to just win, I want to win for a good cause.  If we win by supporting something which is morally wrong, we have really lost. Republicans who spend too much time in the Beltway become big government Republicans — also known as Democrats.  Any Republican who has been in Congress for more than three terms should be suspected of being a closet Democrat.  If a Republican congressperson suggests that the solution to any new problem is more government,  we need to replace them at the first opportunity.  RINO’s aren’t an endangered species which we should be protecting, they are violent animals who stomp all over our Constitutional freedoms and they should be hunted to extinction.

The other belt where Republicans become confused is the Bible Belt.  It is appalling that the Republican Party has become the party of social conservatism.  The Republican Party is the younger of the two political parties in the United States and it was created to fight the Democratic Party on the issue of slavery.  The new Republican Party took the very non-conservative stance that slavery should be outlawed.  You may recall how our young Abraham Lincoln mossed the floor with their Stephen Douglas.  The Democrats should be the conservative party.  They have supported every anti-humanist idea from slavery to internment to communism.  Democrats believe that people are property of their governments, the exact opposite of the Republican belief that governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.  The Democrats viewpoint is extremely statist and conservative, while the Republican viewpoint is both liberal and radical.  Democrats love and trust government, what could be more conservative than that?  Republicans distrust and dislike government, what could be less conservative than that?

The Republican party needs to purge itself of the social conservatives who have been holding the party back for decades.  Republicans should not be arguing against gay marriage, republicans should be arguing against state marriage.  Marriage should be a private affair.  Government has no legitimate role in regulating marriage.  The social conservatives in the Republican party caused the entire party to miss the real issue.

Will the Republican party be smaller after purging both the Beltway and the Bible Belt — temporarily yes.  But it will also be a more likable party — one that is ready to grow and attract new members by having a real ideas and consistent moral standpoint.  Compromise doesn’t make us good Republicans, it just makes us bad Democrats.

Minnesota Government Holds MillerCoors Hostage

In a bald-faced attempt to punish citizens for not giving them more money and power, the bureaucrats in the Minnesota government have decided to prevent them from drinking MillerCoors beer. The Minnesota government is currently “shut down” due to Governor Dayton’s inability to work with the legislature to agree on a budget — or even to be in Minnesota enough to work with the legislature at all.

During the shut-down, most of the bureaucrats still get paid and still come to work — but that doesn’t mean that they do work.  Instead, the shutdown is like a sort of paid vacation where they have an excuse for refusing to do anything they don’t want to bother with doing.

For reasons which probably make sense only to a government employee or a mafia boss, the Minnesota government requires every beer label to register with some useless government office. Some numbskull bureaucrat gets paid good money to file these registrations. The citizens of Minnesota get to pay more for beer because it costs the beer companies money to comply with these stupid regulations and they also have the privilege of paying for the bureaucrats salary and office.

Doug Neville is a government spokesman. Apparently “spokesman” is a critical position which can’t be affected by the shutdown. Doug came to work long enough to tell MillerCoors that they must prepare a plan to remove all of their products from the shelves and stop selling them in Minnesota.

MillerCoors tried to renew their registration last month, but their application was rejected because they sent too much money. They then sent in another check, which was received on 27 June — but the government ignored it and three days later sent them a notice that their registration had expired.

Their registration obviously hadn’t expired, the bureaucrats were just sending a message. The message they intended to send was “See, you big companies need us. You had better put pressure on the voters and the legislature to do as we say or we’ll keep you shut down until we get what we want.”

Instead, the message that we as free individuals should receive is that we don’t need those government bureaucrats. We don’t need their labels, we don’t need their filing cabinets, we don’t need their databases, we don’t need their fees and taxes, and we don’t need them.

Yousef Nadarkhani to Be Executed for Faith

The Iranian courts have sentenced Yousef Nadarkhani to death by hanging, if he refuses to recant his conversion to Christianity. Yousef converted to Christianity at age 19. He is now a father and an evangelical minister.

Yousef was arrested in 2009 and sentenced to death in 2010. On 3 July of this year, the Iranian Supreme Court overturned his death sentence, on the condition that be renounce his Christian faith and return to Islam.

The Iranian government previously executed Hussein Sodmand, another Christan pastor, after he refused to renounce his Christianity.  In that case, Hussein’s body was so badly tortured that the Iranian authorities refused to release it to his family.

The Islamist judges have little choice but to convict and execute Mr. Nadarkhani. The Qur’an is very clear how apostates should be treated:

4:89 They long that ye should disbelieve even as they disbelieve, that ye may be upon a level (with them). So choose not friends from them till they forsake their homes in the way of Allah; if they turn back (to enmity) then take them and kill them wherever ye find them, and choose no friend nor helper from among them.

There isn’t a lot of judicial wiggle room in “kill them wherever ye find them” and few Iranian judges are interested in looking for wiggle room to avoid executing a hated kafir. If the judges fail to execute Yousef, they can themselves be charged with being Kufrul-Istibdaal. Their own judges would not likely be motivated a repeat showing of leniency.  Other Islamic nations, such as Afghanistan, Mauritania, and Saudi Arabia also execute individuals who convert to other religions.

Yousef’s lawyer, Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, has also been sentenced to  nine years in prison, presumably to discourage other lawyers from representing kafirs.

Remarkably, underground Christianity has flourished since the Islamofascist revolution of 1979.  At the time of the revolution, there may have been as few as 500 Iranian Christians in Iran.  Some estimates say that there may be up to 100,000 Christians now secretly worshiping in the Islamist state.

Small Business Owners Not Expecting Growth

Small businesses, the backbone of the American economy, do not plan to hire more workers within the next twelve months. Small businesses, defined those with 500 or fewer employees, employ about half of all free-market workers in the United States.

64% of small businesses, this time defined those with $25M or less in revenue, do not plan to hire any new employees over the year. 19% said they were hoping to add new employees, while 12% are planning to reduce headcount. 29% said they have lost employees over the last year, so 19% adding new employees would still leave a 10% gap over just the last year.

55% of the small business owners surveyed listed economic uncertainty as a significant factor in their decision not to increase headcount. With the current Administration writing thousands of pages of poorly considered regulation to punish American businesses, many small business owners feel that now is an unwise time to be investing money back into their businesses.

Other reasons for not hiring include a lack of sales (a result of soaring unemployment), the U.S. debt and deficit (it is difficult to compete with the AAA rated federal government for investor dollars), the increased costs of providing health coverage for employees due to ObamaCare, over-regulation and the threat of even more punitive regulation, and the high-taxes which reduce the incentive to work hard and get ahead.

84% of small business owners stated that the U.S. economy is on the wrong track; 79% believe that the level of government regulation is no longer reasonable. This is not an environment where any rational person would invest their time and money.

The Obama administration, on the other hand, blames the economic downturn on business owners. Obama is completely unwilling to accept or unable to understand that his own actions have led our nation to where it is today.