Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Politics

  • Who Are We After 9-11?

    Any number of speakers and writers, myself certainly included, have talked about the various things we need to do to make our country safer from terrorist attacks. We’ve also sung the praises of rescue and relief workers and of various leaders during the time of crisis.

    Other countries of suffered greater losses proportionally than we did, but I’ve learned that one cannot compare one type of grief and loss with another. Besides the grief and the loss, the attacks of 9/11 made us feel vulnerable. I didn’t lose anyone I knew personally, so there is a bit of distance, but in the time immediately after the attacks we were united as a nation in a way very rarely seen.

    There’s a question that I think is more important than just how safe we are, how we will prevent such attacks in the future, and the general strategy of the war on terror. In what ways has 9/11 changes us as a nation and as people?

    An individual who goes through tragedy, loss, or extreme hardship may come out of it stronger and as a better person. He or she will undoubtedly come out changed, but that change can be for the better.

    But it is also possible for a person to come out changed for the worse.

    • Fear can grip one’s life, so that all focus is on preventing any such tragedy again. A parent who loses a child can constrict the lives of her other children so that there is as little risk as possible of a repetition.
    • Anger can take over, so that revenge is the only goal, and one can no longer deal reasonably with people who are related in any way to the cause of the tragedy.
    • Resentment can poison one’s mind, so that one cannot see clearly what needs to be done.
    • One can lose all sense of balance, resulting in a continued life of misery

    I think a nation or a group of people have many of the same options. What will you become as a result of what has happened? This question goes far beyond the immediate response to danger. I’m not chiding anyone for responding to danger. My own objections to the war in Iraq do not result from a conviction that we shouldn’t respond, but rather than Iraq was the wrong place and time for it.

    But there are other responses that I think we need to look at. About a year after the 9/11 attacks I visited my brother. I flew into Buffalo and took a taxi. The driver was a Sikh, wearing the traditional headgear. I asked him how it was for him right after the attacks. I recognized he was a Sikh, but was he mistaken for a Muslim (or Arab, unfortunately the same thing in some people’s eyes) and was he in any danger. He told me that he had to abandon the traditional headgear and wear a much smaller and less obvious head covering after the attacks, because he was taunted and had been in danger.

    Now it’s unrealistic to expect that there won’t be a minority of people who will react in inappropriate ways, often because they are already filled with rage and hate for other reasons. The major event simply provides them with an excuse to be who they are anyhow.

    We still have a certain strong tradition of freedom. It has been weakened by attacks from various directions. I don’t give either major party a “pass” on this issue. Constitutional freedoms are up for grabs when people are afraid. The one thing a politician can’t survive is appearing soft on terrorism.

    I think that is behind Obama’s vote for the FISA bill, a tragedy in my view, and the Republican sneers about making sure terrorists are read their rights.

    Those are both the result of fear, and they do not do us any credit as a people. In particular I was struck by the phrasing of “reading terrorists their rights.” The fact is that we don’t read “criminals” their rights, we read “people” their rights. Those people may be criminals, but they have rights so that we can determine whether they truly are criminals. People have rights so that we can accurately determine whether they are also terrorists.

    This idea of restricting the government from arbitrarily determining who is good and who is bad and acting on it without accountability is deeply enshrined in our constitution, and derives many of its elements from common law that goes much further back. There is no crime that is so heinous that we should punish an innocent person for it. The very idea that we would determine arbitrarily prior to any process just what sort of person an individual is should strike terror to our hearts.

    It’s quite possible for us to respond to external threats in such a way that we become our own worst enemies. Will we live in fear, or will we make a stand that says that no matter what external terror puts us through we will remain who we are?

    There will be freedoms and conveniences we must give up. We must be prepared for more security at airports (I actually wish it was more vigorous than it is), and for more scrutiny when entering or leaving the country. There are justifiable shortcuts that are necessary. While I oppose FISA as passed, there is certainly a need for wiretapping as part of our security efforts.

    I also don’t think this is a Republican or Democratic issue. If we had had a Democratic president I suspect very similar things would have happened. It’s the result of being on the hot seat, which is not so easy, despite the fluency of some of us who criticize!

    But I think we need to reflect beyond remembering the loss and remembering the sorrow, and get a very clear vision of who we want to be. If we give up who we really are in exchange for security, just what are we securing?

  • I Like Sarah Palin

    . . . well, pretty much, to a certain extent, as politicians go. But I’m not going to vote for her.

    Come to think of it, I like John McCain pretty well also, but again, I’m not going to vote for him.

    I think it is unfortunate that so many Americans seem to feel the need not only to vote against a candidate, but to really despise that person and to think that they should not be regarded as even worthy of consideration.

    I am not unaware that Sarah Palin has said some questionable things about her own record, nor am I pleased that Republicans try to pretend she has more or better experience than Barack Obama. In fact, to Republicans who complain about what Democrats are doing to Palin, I would simply point out their own behavior. To Democrats who have been complaining, I would point again to their response now.

    It seems to me that many of the people who claim that they want cleaner and nicer politics are first to make snide remarks and insinuations about the candidates. They are quick to forgive similar behavior on their own side, and quick to condemn it on an opponent’s side.

    Not that politicians don’t give us plenty of opportunities, which is something we should also consider.

    Take, for example, the “bridge to nowhere” and Palin’s involvement in it. If a local politician doesn’t make every effort to get federal money for his or her city, county, district, or state, it’s likely he or she will not be re-elected. When one moves onto the national scene, one has to be against such pork-barrel projects.

    Why? Because we, the citizens don’t think it’s pork when it happens where we live. Here it’s “infrastructure development” and “investment in our future.” Over there it’s pork. As a politician on the national scale, of course, what was done locally is now pork, because it wasn’t where most of us live. In fact, it wasn’t in a place most of us have visited.

    This doesn’t excuse the spin. It just says that we won’t have politicians on the national scene who haven’t lived through the pork-gathering phase locally because we won’t elect them locally unless they bring us pork.

    Frankly, I like all four folks on the major presidential tickets, though I think Biden is the least inspired. Nonetheless, as politicians go, he’s not a bad guy either. I don’t think we’re electing pure scoundrels in either case. I am substantially in favor of Obama, and that’s how I plan to vote, but that’s a finely balanced decision based on policy, not on despising the other team.

    There are so many important issues before us, that if we spent our time simply going through the plans and potential policies of each team, we could profitably spend the time between now and election day. I don’t really expect that to happen.

    But even though I won’t get what I want, I’m tuning out all of this stuff. I’m bound to hear it, since I watch politics, but I’m just not interested. What little gets said about policy, I’m tuned in for. As for the rest of it, when I see a blog post title or a news headline that looks like it’s some more character nitpicking, I’m going elsewhere for my reading.

  • On Being Anti-Abortion and Pro-Choice

    While preparing this week’s Christian Carnival, which I hosted at my Participatory Bible Study Blog, I encounter a post on how Christians should make voting choices, What’s a Deal Breaker?, which is actually the end of a series.

    In general, this is an excellent article, in my view, because it discusses prioritizing one’s values and goals and thus making more intelligent choices between candidates. This would be a substantial improvement over the process of eliminating candidates based on a limited number of test issues, which sometimes results in an unnecessary and wasted third party choice.

    The “deal breaker” that the author, Chris Brooks, proposes, however, is abortion. Now I can easily understand how someone might make this a deal breaker issue. If one holds that all abortion is murder and should not be distinguished in any way from killing after birth, then one is probably painted into a corner simply by means of words. I would note that the logical conclusion of such a view, which few people make, is that the penalty should be the same for all involved. (Those who have drawn this conclusion have often made very tragic choices.)

    When I describe myself as “anti-abortion” I do not mean such a position. I don’t support the current exception-free Republican platform plank on the matter. I do, however, regard abortion as something we should sincerely hope to reduce to those specifically chosen exceptions.

    In calling this a deal breaker issue, Chris says:

    On abortion, I really didn’t want to argue whether abortion is wrong – both because people rarely change their minds in this debate and because I think most Christians already think it is wrong. Instead I focused on those Christians who believe abortion is wrong and yet support keeping it legal. I made the case that IF you think abortion is wrong, supporting its legalization makes you, in God’s eyes, guilty of “aiding and abetting” abortion. Supporting those who want to keep it legal is the same thing. [Note that the link here refers to his lengthier earlier discussion of this issue.]

    This is a position that I believe is logically flawed. I hear it expressed repeatedly. There is an unstated assumption in there, that “making something illegal” is always the best way to attempt to put a stop to it or reduce its incidence.

    Murder is illegal, and yet it happens every day. The sale and use of quite a number of drugs are illegal, yet we have one of the worst drug problems in the world here in this country where we are purportedly fighting a drug war. I could cite many examples, including the fact that speeding is also illegal, yet it happens more often than not on most roads here in my own county.

    The reason I cite murder and drugs, however, is that I would advocate different approaches to dealing with them. Willful taking of human life (outside the womb, and I do make such a distinction) should be illegal, and that is the key element in fighting that type of behavior, though I don’t think it is the only element.

    I personally would prefer at least some relaxation of laws on drugs, if not outright legalization, and an effort to reduce their use and the damage that they do by other means. It’s interesting that I often get similar responses to this call for legalization. I must want to get high without risking jail! But the fact is that I don’t use alcohol, much less illegal drugs, and I would have no intention of doing so were they legal. I am against them, but I believe that the best way to fight them is not through our current unproductive (or counterproductive) drug war.

    In the case of abortion, I believe that the fact that we are applying the law inside another person’s body is significant. The fact that the majority of people in this country do not see abortion in the same way as murder is also significant. Why? Am I arguing that people’s opinions changes moral imperatives? Not at all. But it does change what is the most effective approach to dealing with an issue.

    It’s not my purpose here to make a full case for abortion being legal, even though I deplore it in most cases. My purpose is simply to point out that people can and do differ on how to deal with a problem, even when they may agree on the desirable result.

    Crossposted to RedBlueChristian.com.

  • On the Troubles of Candidates’ Children

    I wasn’t going to say anything about this, because I wouldn’t want to have anything to do with spreading the story any further, but now that it has been discussed in the mainstream media, such as MSNBC.com, I want to make a short comment.

    I married late, in my early 40s, and picked up a ready-made family. My children are wonderful, and so are my grandchildren. Before I married, I understood that raising children was more complex than my experience would let me understand. Since getting involved personally, I realize that it is more complex than anything I imagined that I hadn’t been able to imagine!

    In my opinion, the stories circulated about Sarah Palin (to which she has responded by revealing that her oldest daughter is pregnant) should not have been repeated without absolute proof, and even were they absolutely proven, there would considerations of privacy. There seems to be a desire to find a major smear to put on her, and this one apparently looked good to some folks.

    I personally don’t share many of Sarah Palin’s convictions. Because I don’t, I’m not inclined to vote for her. But I think that her children should be given privacy, and any problems they have should not be a topic for public discussion. But more importantly, I disapprove in the strongest terms possible of the desire to see people of convictions fail, even to the extent of bringing their children into it.

    I would hope that this story would go away. In my view, responsible journalism should make every effort to kill it, and the rest of us should not repeat the story.

    Update: Some notes on Obama’s response here. I think he has done well.

  • What Decides My Vote (or Silly Experience Arguments)

    McCain has just stirred the pot by making an unorthodox choice for his running mate, Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. Contrary to much of the response on the left, I don’t see this as cynical, though obviously there’s political calculation involved. It’s bold and risky.

    It is, in fact, the first thing that’s happened since the end of the primaries that has made me think better of a candidate than I did at that time. It isn’t enough to make me vote for John McCain this time around, but that’s not because I think Palin is stupid, excessively inexperienced, or someone who would make a bad vice-president. The bottom line remains that I disagree with her on a number of matters of policy, insofar as I know what she stands for. We’re certain to find out much more over the next few days.

    I think my belief that “experience” is an argument you use in favor of someone you already like for other reasons, and against someone you already dislike, also for other reasons, is confirmed by the Democratic response. Republicans who are trying to argue that Palin has a better resume than Obama need a reality check. Democrats who think that they can successfully make her look so much worse on the basis of her resume need to rethink. If there is one thing that has been used cynically throughout this campaign, it is the experience argument, and it’s at a crescendo (at least I hope!) at the moment.

    The most positive thing about this choice, from my point of view is that it shows McCain can still think outside the box. Romney and Pawlenty were candidates that the political commentators would like. Lieberman was to some extent as well, though he had extraordinary negatives as well, being a very recent ex-Democrat, now independent, who had been a VP nominee of the other party, and also one with a substantially liberal voting record would hardly endear him to the Republican party’s right wing.

    McCain stepped out of the standard reasoning and picked someone almost out of the blue. Not that she had never been mentioned, but the vast majority of commentators didn’t take that seriously. She’s conservative, she’s vigorous and forceful, she seems intelligent, and she has also shown integrity in an incredibly difficult decision–her decision to carry her current child to term. Skin-deep pro-lifers might have waffled at that point. She’s living up to her convictions and showing that those are not simply things she believes are true, but things that are part of her being.

    Obama’s choice, on the other hand, was someone the political commentators were sure to like. It was largely media-safe, but rather boring. I’m not saying that Joe Biden would be a bad vice-president. Rather, he’ll be much the same as other vice-presidents.

    Does that change my vote? No, it doesn’t. As I said much earlier in the campaign, all of these other points do impact my vote, but they aren’t at the core. If I was looking at two essentially equal candidates, experience might sway me. If I found one candidate who was consistently honest, that would probably sway me. I count the historic possibility of Obama becoming the first African-American president of the United States as a plus. But if I couldn’t stomach who he is and what he proposes to do, that wouldn’t get me to vote for him. I look with favor on the possibility of having the first woman as Vice-President, but that doesn’t overcome policy disagreements.

    Since the primaries, I have been disappointed. Barack Obama has sounded less like an agent of change, and more like he’s under control of Washington insiders. The decision not to engage in town-hall meetings with McCain, while understandable from the political point of view, took away a great opportunity to change the way campaigns are conducted and perceived. Having the two candidates one-on-one in numerous settings would, I think, go a long way to blunting the effect of misleading negative advertising. It was an opportunity for change, but it didn’t happen.

    Obama waffled on FISA. He was wrong to vote for that bill. I’m extremely disappointed.

    He waffled on campaign finance. Here I agree with the decision, but as best as I can tell, he really approves of public financing, but thinks it is disadvantageous this time around. Now if he would have said that he has proven how the little people can gather the money to overwhelm big money operations in this internet age and thus the value of campaign finance reform has diminished, that would be different. He could then recommend taking the axe to part of the federal bureaucracy.

    McCain, of course, has done his waffling as well, on issue after issue, but he did most of it before and during the primary season. I liked him in 2000. I don’t like him now. There’s apparently a little bit of the maverick McCain spark left, but not enough.

    Now you could take this as a terribly negative view of the election as a whole, but I really feel pretty good about this election, when seen in comparison to others. Choosing a candidate to support is always an exercise in compromise. I disagree with each candidate on some issues. I am disappointed with each candidate, but largely because they are behaving as politicians generally behave. While I would like to see that change, I know how to relate their behavior to the background noise.

    So here are my major issues:

    • Iraq War – I think the Republicans in general have a terrible strategy at all for the war on terror, and McCain is simply following the same. The reality is that our strategy involves invading countries that support terror and retaliating for strikes. I’m amazed that conservatives who recognize the futility of “talking nice” to terrorists because of who they are don’t recognize the fact that retaliatory strikes don’t actually accomplish anything. McCain’s military experience argument is blunted for me by one fact–he apparently doesn’t recognize that we don’t have the resources to fight terror according to the current strategy. Somebody needs to work on a scalpel approach to replace our current sledgehammer.
    • 4th Amendment – I’m still hoping that Obama remembers who he was and will be better than McCain on this point, including warrantless wiretapping, rendition, torture, and all related elements I’m loosely grouping under 4th amendment. McCain has failed to show integrity here, in my view.
    • Supreme Court nominees – Obama is likely to appoint people I don’t like all that much, but they will replace other people and maintain the balance. The idea of a court that is consistently lined up with Scalia and company is horrifying.

    Those are not my whole list by any chance, but I rank those highest. Even though the economy has become more important than the Iraq war to most people, it remains my highest concern. I cannot make the fruitless killing less than #1 in my thinking.

    I would add that there are third party candidates that are options for those who cannot support either of the two major candidates. I don’t regard voting third party as throwing away your vote. I’m not going to do it this time. Those who say that Nader is siphoning off Obama’s votes or Barr is siphoning off McCain’s seem to have the odd idea that someone “owns” or is “due” particular votes. You earn the vote when you convince the voter. It’s only your vote when that voter pulls the lever.

    In summary, I think voting is a matter of priorities and compromise, and I think we do have a field of candidates to work with. I would love to find a year when there was someone out there who thought just like I did. Unfortunately, I’m convinced that candidate would lose, so maybe not so much!

  • A Forest of Signs and Waving People

    I headed out to vote yesterday in the Florida primary. We had contests for a number of local offices. I’m registered with no party affiliation, but there was one non-partisan race that needed thinning out and one race that would be settled by the Republican primary. It was a fairly easy task to fill out my ballot!

    I was struck again by the forest of signs around the polling place. There’s a sign indicating how close people can be to the entrance if they are going to solicit people’s votes. Actually nobody was all that close. They had chosen to gather around the entrance to the property Several people not only had signs, but had volunteers with t-shirts and hats who would wave to prospective voters on their way in. My precinct is in a church, so I suspect those folks wasted a bunch of waves on people visiting the church office or something of the sort.

    It’s not my major point, but one guy was standing by the road, and someone, possibly a friend, or perhaps even a political opponent had pulled up beside him in a pickup truck and they were talking. He waved to me and then tried to wave me around the truck, but unfortunately he also waved someone coming from the other direction. It took him a couple of minutes to think of the idea of getting that pickup truck out of the way of voters trying to get to the polls or leave again after voting.

    What I’m wondering is just how much such a display of signs and waving people impacts anyone’s interest in voting. My approach to choosing candidates is to read their web sites, read the literature they send out, read the newspaper interviews or fact sheets on them, and so forth. On local candidates, information can be hard to come by, but usually you can find out something more substantive than the person’s name and the office for which they are running.

    I can’t resist another detour here on the subject of campaign literature. This year I did read one piece of campaign literature that would have impacted my vote if I had been able to vote in that primary. (The candidate involved won his primary.) This was a simple postcard with a list of claims that I could easily fact check, and which appear to have been mostly true. They were negative, but provided good reasons not to vote for his opponent. Negative advertising can be of value. I don’t object to something just because it’s negative; I object if it is inaccurate or twisted and also negative.

    But to reiterate, how much do signs and waving people impact votes? Earlier in the campaign I saw some people holding signs for a candidate on an overpass over the interstate and waving to passing motorists. Is it possible that there is someone out there who doesn’t know who they plan to vote for and lets themselves be persuaded because they saw someone standing on an overpass with a sign and waving? It just seems too bizarre for words.

    Perhaps they just use that to gain name recognition, but then just what value is that type of recognition? You don’t know anything about the candidate. I get the sample ballots our elections office kindly provides and look up each and every candidate. Name recognition has nothing to do with it.

    Oh well, this will be only one of my election season rants. It seems to me that it is such a privilege to actually have a government in which we can each participate, and that any citizen would be willing to spend just a few minutes every couple of years to actually vote based on some idea of who the candidates are and what they stand for. Signs and waving people seem to argue against that.

  • Georgia and Ossetia – Asking the Right Questions

    I am not proposing answers at this point, because I haven’t had time to study the situation in any detail, but it seems to me the right time to point out some problems with the questions.

    It appears to me that almost everything I read about the situation with Georgia, Russia, and Ossetia involves ad hoc justifications for something someone wanted to do in any case. One of the major problems with American foreign policy, in my opinion, is that we really don’t have one, that is, other than attack the people we don’t like (sometimes), support the people we do like (sometimes) and blather a lot about everyone else.

    In addition, the justifications for what we do seem to have very little relationship to the actual reasons. Publicly, during the first gulf war, we heard about atrocities and about defending poor little Kuwait. I’m not denying the atrocities, nor am I even saying that Kuwait was undeserving of defense, but we did not similarly take a military position on East Timor, where atrocities were also happening. Unfortunately for the folks on that piece of an island, they lacked oil.

    In the case of Ossetia, I suspect that if we moved some of the players a bit, but kept all other factors the same, our reaction would be substantially different than it is.

    Here are some questions:

    Just how small does a territory have to be before we no longer think it deserves independence from the surrounding country? Will we apply the same standard here?

    What conditions must exist before one portion of an existing country can declare independence and receive support? (In this case, differentiate Kosovo wanting independence from Serbia and Ossetia wanting independence from Georgia.)

    Do the conditions for independence of some region change if it’s the Russians that back up the breakaway region rather than the United States?

    How big does a country have to be before it can be regarded as an oppressor?

    How long ago must a territory have been conquered before it can be considered an integral and essential part of a country? (Remember that Kuwait was once part of Iraq, sort of, Georgia was part of Russia, while Ossetia was also a conquered territory. Then there’s that other Georgia that was once largely Cherokee country, because a British colony, became part of the United States, attempted to separate, but was forcibly kept in the union with military force.)

    I don’t know the full history of Ossetia, and it will probably be some time before I might even imagine, probably incorrectly, that I understand the situation, but it seems to me that we are not working on the same set of principles in all of these various places.

    It sounds to me like atrocities are military actions carried out by the other guys, and invasions are when other people’s armies enter a country that is not their own.

    If we did that sort of thing, of course, we would demand that one consider the fact that we were merely defending the just desire of the local population for self-determination. Or something like that.

    Some background from the BBC.

  • John Hobbins on TUCC

    When I wrote much earlier about Jeremiah Wright, I tried just a little bit to put it in context of the African American church as I’ve experienced it. That effort was weakened by the fact that I’ve never attended TUCC, and thus anyone could say I was reflecting a very different experience based on those black churches I have attended. I spent my teen years in Guyana, South America, and was the only white person in my youth group, but was TUCC similar?

    Well, John Hobbins of the Ancient Hebrew Poetry blog has attended there, and he manages to say many of the things I felt, but for which I never found the right words.

    I strongly commend his posts Unity Day at Barack Obama’s Church of Origin: What the MSM will never tell you and Unity Day at Trinity UCC in Chicago.

    (Update: John has now added another post.)

    I have a high regard for Dr. John Hobbins based on reading his blog regularly, and I strongly commend both of these articles to you to read and consider.

  • Edwards: Is Marital Fidelity Strictly Personal?

    I have posted before on the sex scandals involving Larry Craig and David Vitter. Now with the admission of infidelity by John Edwards, we have yet another sex scandal.

    One response, as is often the case with marital infidelity, is to claim that this is strictly a personal issue, one between him and his wife. And the spouse is certainly the primary person who is wronged. If John Edwards (or David Vitter or Larry Craig before him) were private individuals, their deeds would be a private matter to be settled privately. (One must note that unlike Edwards, so far as I know, both Craig and Vitter violated laws, while Edwards violated only his marriage vows.)

    But Edwards is a public person, who has sought public office multiple times. He does not claim that marriage vows are temporary or optional. In public he portrays a family man. I don’t think infidelity in that case is strictly personal. Whether or not one fulfills one’s vows is of paramount importance in judging integrity.

    I have certain standards for sexual morality. I claim to be moderate, am regularly called liberal, but my personal standards are rather old fashioned. I believe in marital faithfulness. I don’t believe in pre-marital sex. If I violate those standards it should (and doubtless would) have an impact on the way people regard me as a Christian teacher and leader in my church.

    But both in and outside of the church we seem to have accepted a curiously bipolar attitude toward sexual sins. On the one hand we are scandalized and yell and scream about them a great deal. On the other, we excuse them in practice. I can find few people in churches, for example, who will say they believe that premarital or extramarital sex is OK, but when it is practiced, the consequences are quite limited unless the person is a very public figure.

    It seems as thought we know it’s wrong, but we also know that we are weak, and think “there but for the grace of God go I.” This is similar to early problems in dealing with drunk driving. Police, judges, and juries so often knew that they were guilty of the same thing from time to time, and were aware that they might just as well have been the defendant, so they went easy on what was regarded as a human weakness. Mothers Against Drunk Driving waged quite a campaign to make driving under the influence a truly shameful deed before it was treated as seriously as it deserved. (You’ll still find some cases where good old boys let one another off on this one.)

    Marital infidelity, of course, doesn’t kill as many people as does driving under the influence. But when one gets married, one does make a commitment, and normally that commitment is for life. If you can make a commitment “until death do us part” and then casually violate it, it says something about your integrity. When you cover it up, it not only says something about your integrity, I believe it is morally corrosive. You become practiced at lying.

    I believe that a willingness to ignore one covenant, that of marriage, is a significant factor in deciding whether the person in question will be faithful to another covenant, for example, the oath of office. Will the person who swore to be faithful to his wife, and then strayed while covering it up regard the oath to “uphold and defend the constitution of the United States” any more seriously?

    In an atmosphere where lies and half-truths are so common, it may seem very odd to make a big deal out of this one particular issue. But I would suggest that if we drop out of the search for integrity simply because so many people have failed to provide it, we will continue to enable our politicians to become less and less honest with us.

    I do not believe marital fidelity is strictly personal when it is committed by a person seeking the trust of others. Violation of a lifetime vow is a very bad indicator of personal integrity.

    PS: I commend the mainstream media for waiting for confirmation on this one. I rarely find them commendable, but they did much better than average here.

    Crossposted to RedBlueChristian.com.

  • Barack Obama’s Income Redistribution Plan

    In a recent ad we hear the following:

    “A windfall profits tax on big oil to give families a thousand-dollar rebate,” an announcer in the ad says.

    (Source: MSNBC.com.)

    The entire energy debate seems to have become a pandering game, with each candidate dulling any responsible suggestions he might make with various bribes to the public. McCain, who used to oppose off-shore drilling now supports it, and though he admits it’s more long term, he still brings it up in connection with current high gas prices. (I actually regard it as a short-term non-fix, because I believe “long term” should mean at least a century when we’re talking energy policy.)

    Obama seemed to resist this particular idea, though he will now allow it as part of a compromise. Which leads me to a digression. In reality, any candidate is going to have to compromise on the actual laws he will propose. Little of what is promised by either candidate in the campaign will actually happen. Why are we so shocked when a candidate suggests he would accept something he opposes generally as part of a compromise package? What should annoy us is that the candidates pretend they will be able to somehow govern without significant policy compromises.

    The problem here is that the debate is being framed in terms of managing gas prices. The capitalists among us should object to this, no matter how it is done. The way to reduce the price is to either increase supply or reduce demand, and the best means to accomplish that is the natural market forces. There are those who will object that foreign cartels change this equation. But in actuality capitalism does not call for people to be required to sell. That is simply one aspect of supply.

    We can artificially push down the price of gas temporarily, but that will not solve our problems, because all of the factors that push gas prices up will still be present. The oil-drilling idea has the advantage that it will eventually increase supply. It will be useless (except psychologically) in the very short term, provide some value in the longer term, but will not provide a truly long term solution in my opinion. Nonetheless I would support limited drilling provided reasonable environmental concerns are dealt with.

    High gas prices are the best possible thing for the long term because they will push us to change the way in which we consume and produce energy. There are many technologies becoming available, and as gas prices increase, they will become more and more economical. This is a good thing. If we artificially hold the prices down now, such an adjustment will have to be made sometime, and the longer we wait, the more painful it will be. It’s time now to do more than talk about breaking our addiction to oil.

    But back to Obama’s redistribution plan. This is classic redistribution of wealth. Take the money away from the oil companies that are making profits, and give it to people who are having to buy the high-priced gas. This has many of the hazards of price controls, only it actually won’t work. The oil companies will find a way to get the money back, and a couple of years from now we’ll realize that the rebates did nothing more than attempt to buy our votes. (Buying my vote was unnecessary for Obama. Despite my strong opposition for his gas tax/rebate plan, McCain still annoys me even more.)

    The whole notion of “windfall profits” is fairly ridiculous in any case. Just what is the windfall? The price of energy has gone up. I remember this discussion in a public policy toward business class when I was in college relating to excess profits. (Looking at the current situation, I suspect “excess profits” would be the better economic description for the situation. I fail to see the windfall, but perhaps I’m just not looking at it right.)

    Excess profits appear to be fairly well defined (see Wikipedia for a decent, if rather abbreviated discussion). The problem is that while the definition is clear, calculating what would be an excess profit is much less clear, and in practice the term “excess profit” becomes synonymous with “windfall profit” and simply refers to any profit the person speaking doesn’t think the one making the profit should have.

    Note in addition that very few people talk about the oil company profits in terms of percentages (see this report to congress for some numbers, though I haven’t checked them), because those would sound much less overwhelming. It’s easy to make any large company’s profits sound obscene, even when the return is not really all that far out of line with other industries. This is not to say the oil companies are not profiting. It’s just that I don’t think it’s bad for them to do so.

    In the case of oil we have a choice similar to what we have in other industries–don’t buy their product. In this case I have to add “as much”, and in addition note that reducing our consumption will take time. And lest anyone think I’m suggesting something that I will not do myself, let me note that fuel costs have cut into my business severely. I have had to change the way I plan my days to avoid certain driving in order to handle the higher gas prices.

    I believe we need to feel this pain now in order to change the way we produce and consume energy. I am disappointed with congress and with both our presidential candidates, though I’m not surprised at their action. We, the voters, are demanding that they behave irresponsibly, and they’re just doing what we ask. No, not what we say we want. What our actions show we want.

    Unfortunately, what many of us want is lower gas prices tomorrow. What we’ll get is an even worse problem a few years in the future.