Responsibility

I believe this entire mess we find ourselves in, politically, economically, and socially, is mainly caused by a misplaced sense of responsibility. People find it much more convenient to assign blame to some disliked individual or entity rather than those who actually took the actions which lead us to this disaster.

Think of the banks in our nation right now. I am willing to bet that did not cause a warm, fuzzy, sympathetic note to sound within your soul. Ask around about the banks; the responses will not be positive. You will probably hear something about how those greedy bankers gave out bad loans to make money and put us all in this miserable situation. What you won't hear is that those banks often didn't have a choice, thanks to government intervention like the Community Reinvestment Act. You won't hear about how the government effectively backed up sub prime mortgages through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, seriously distorting the market, making those sorts of loans profitable and hence encouraging the banks to act in a way they otherwise would not have. And yet it happened.

You'll almost never hear about how the people who signed those loans were responsible for this predicament. From the way people speak of this crisis, you would believe homeowners were forced at gunpoint to take the houses and mortgages. A loan is a contract, a promise; millions of people broke their promise and then promptly blamed the banks they screwed over for the economic recession.

We live in a confused time where many believe society and the state have the responsibility to improve our lives rather than the individual. This makes it all too easy to avoid responsibility for one's own actions and to pin bad times on unpopular scapegoats who themselves had little to do with the mess at hand.

A great wave of irresponsibility is killing this country. No one wants to admit they shouldn't have signed the mortgage or lease, or gone to college; no one wants to admit social programs are failing, that we can't afford them, that jobs in that sector should be cut; always find someone else to blame who didn't make the decision; always affix blame to those who did well, as if one could not do well unless they had done wrong. Until we fix this problem, there will be no solutions to the crisis we face. Let each be responsible for himself and we will soon see improvement. Give a man an excuse and he will take it.

"But it was the greedy profit motive that brought us into this mess!" some will undoubtedly say. Let's think about that for a second. Imagine an economic system (we'll call it "free market") where people make decisions based on their own greed and where all transactions are voluntary (nobody can be forced to do something). A person with no job and no assets tries to get a loan from the bank. The bank examines this person, realizes giving a loan will almost certainly lead to losing money, and promptly decides not to issue the loan. Guess what? Almost no sub prime mortgages are going to be issued by greedy banks, meaning there is no sub prime mortgage crisis.

"But they got around that by selling those mortgages, breaking them up into securities!" Ok, let us assume the bank tries that. They go to a potential investor and say "I'm considering offering this loan, but I want to hedge my bet against the risk of the buyer defaulting. If you buy a part of this mortgage, you will receive a chunk of the profit." The investor (also greedy) examines the buyer just like the bank did to determine if the buyer will actually pay the loan back, sees the buyer couldn't, and decides to turn down the chance to buy the security. Guess what? No sub prime mortgages, no sub prime mortgage mess.

"But this crisis is proof of market failure, that the market system doesn't work!" Nope. With the profit motive, it would be almost impossible for this sort of crisis to occur. But occur it did. Was the housing market really "free?" As we saw above, it was not. The government regulated this market and interfered with government sponsored enterprises that acted not on the profit motive but on the supposed "common good."

Let us start again. The man with no income and no assets looks for a mortgage. This time, the government seeks to increase home ownership among the poor, because it helps create a more equal America and it is the right thing to do socially. The government requires the banks to make a certain amount of mortgages out to low income people. Voilà, sub prime mortgage.

And the government also creates giant, government run corporations (backed by the Treasury) to issue securities for these loans. Banks can now offer loans with little risk to themselves. And the government will set interest prices low, which encourages people to build and buy houses. Now everyone can get a house, creating skyrocketing demand and increasing the attractiveness of investing in housing which is not backed by the government. That is, right until the number of buyers starts drying up.

Once demand starts falling (with a durable good like housing, this is inevitable; people do not need to buy a new house every day), the value of those houses starts sinking. Since artificial demand had propped up prices very high, those prices start sinking very far and very quickly. Investors begin losing money at a rapid rate, and businesses and individuals who invested in housing find their net worth plummeting. Banks and those government sponsored enterprises begin taking huge losses on these houses. With their cash on hand falling, the credit market seizes up, as banks cannot or will not lend right at the same time businesses and people who lost money investing need it the most. Panic begins to set in; stock prices drop like a rock, people are laid off due to falling consumption, creating less consumers and more pressure on local governments. And we end up about where we were in 2008.

The profit motive is hardly evil and we cannot pin responsibility on those who wish to do well in life. This mess is largely the responsibility of well intentioned (but dead wrong) social "reformers" who believed they could fix perceived problems in society with the force of the government. What they failed to realize is that the profit motive keeps toxic assets out of the system. Those who cannot buy a home on their own probably do not deserve one; either they have not produced enough wealth to own one or they have frittered it away on other things. That they do not own houses is not a societal sin; it is not the responsibility of the wealthy, of banks, or of society to increase home ownership, but that of the individual who wishes to own a home.

Condoms, Interstate Commerce, and Why You Should Care

Think about condoms for a minute. Yes, condoms. We know what they do and (most of us) know how to use them. But how often do we think about where they came from? What went into making the condom, from the material being pulled out of the ground someplace to being on the business end of some randy fellow? I'm not in the condom making business, so I can't say exactly what goes into the production of condoms, but there are a few things I can reasonably guess at. For starters, there is latex and lubrication, made up of various materials, themselves made up of various ingredients from many different sources. The plastic wrapper is similar; the plant making condoms is located somewhere but not everywhere, so they have to be shipped by trucks running on diesel, both of which are made from materials manufactured all over the place.

Why am I asking you to think about this? Because if ObamaCare is a legal manifestation of the Interstate Commerce Clause, Congress can regulate or even ban condoms, because at some point in time any material used to make condoms may have crossed a state line.

Actually, now that I think of it, sex itself could technically be sold over a state line. That (sex) is interstate commerce. Ergo, Congress can regulate sex.

And the Republicans are about to win a massive election. Care yet?

It terrifies me that so many people would demand Congress pass a universal health care law without ever asking whether the Constitution allows such a policy. They asked no questions about this philosophy of government, just as Pandora asked no questions about what would happen if she opened the famous box.

ObamaCare goes far beyond a norm that is already far beyond what prudence and our Founding Fathers would allow. ObamaCare goes so far as to say that not participating in an economic activity is a form of interstate trade, because in an ever minute way it could possibly impact some form of interstate trade somewhere. Theoretically, any action or inaction could do that! If we allow this philosophy of government to stand, it follows that the government can regulate any activity or inactivity any person anywhere in this nation does. If this is allowed to stand, the government can effectively pass laws requiring us to do anything it bids because, in theory, we could possibly be involved in interstate trade were we left alone.

It creates an all powerful government. There are no checks if the government can regulate inactivity because people could have been involved in interstate trade instead. This clause was put into the Constitution mainly to prohibit states from imposing duties and banning trade among states; it was certainly never intended to allow the federal government to regulate the citizens of this nation down to the smallest detail of their lives.

Even if you believe a national health care system forcing everyone to purchase health care insurance is a good thing (an opinion we do not share), you should still be concerned by the new version of Pandora's Box you are opening. Very soon, people you do not support politically will have the government and these new powers you have unconstitutionally apportioned to the current administration. You may disagree with how they will use their new found ability to regulate your life, but you will have no moral right to say they do not have the authority to do so. You yourself gave it to them.

Details

Yesterday, the New York Times published an editorial lamenting the likely fall of Russ Feingold from his Senate seat representing Wisconsin. Forget for a moment whether they are right or wrong supporting this particular candidate and note the sense of bewilderment the article exudes. Historians will note that the last two years witnessed more government intervention in our lives than any other era of our nation; statists managed to push a universal health care bill upon the American people. The Times, and many statists, seem absolutely puzzled as to why they face annihilation at the polls in a few weeks.

Without realizing it, their attitude reveals the answer. The editorial (and Feingold) state as fact that the Stimulus worked to save millions of jobs and that ObamaCare is a great achievement. Opponents just do not realize the details! "Simplistic untruths" bought by the ignorant masses are what doom the intelligent statist candidate.

Let me put it this way: if our lives are so much better off, we would know it. That is the only detail that matters. People understand their own lives far better than Washington leaders do. All of the made up statistics in the world will not convince a family being evicted from their home and without a bread winner due to the lack of jobs that all is well. Considering the promises made in 2008, it should be no wonder there is anger against the government.

The Wall Street Journal published an editorial that compliments this topic well. It follows the thought of the book The American Voter: large segments of the voting population do not vote based on political philosophy or party identification but rather on how things appear or "feel" at the time of election. The short answer to the statist confusion is that people did not see their lives improve at all under the last two years, but they did notice the enormous bill charged to their account in the form of federal debt. They tried big government, it failed miserably, and they will not try it again.

A Proposed Voting Test

I brought up the topic of creating a voting test in earlier blog posts. I've created such a quiz, which you can take here. While I would love to give a longer test, any "realistic" test would have to be short enough to not hold up voting at the polls. Another problem is that the longer the test is, the more likely a controversial question would pop up. I do not think anyone could realistically challenge any of the questions there as politically biased toward any particular ideology.

What Is The Tea Party?

What is the Tea Party? Future historians, current political scientists, and interested average citizens all must ask this question. Given its nebulous nature yet powerful influence over this important election cycle, it is worth spending some time understanding this phenomena: its origin, its composition, goals, impact, and future roll in our political society.

Origins

The simple fact of the matter is that while Republicans proclaimed to love small government, it expanded at an enormous rate during the Bush Administration. While the Democrats pushed for a great deal of spending during this time, Republicans had the opportunity to block additional spending but failed to do so; they often made matters worse, in particular with exploding pork barrel projects. In 2006 and in particular during 2008, conservative and independent voters finally had enough of the hypocrisy of Republican members of government. An unfortunate side effect of the two party system and the imprecision of the electoral mechanism is that the party pushing for even greater government spending came to power, believing they had a mandate to radically transform America into an increasingly socialistic state.

In 2009, a perfect storm hit America's political scene. The economy was in flames, largely due to a housing market bubble artificially expanded by government intervention requiring or facilitating mortgages being issued to low (or sometimes no) income buyers. Our government has proven itself completely incapable of dealing with this problem; in fact, its own fiscal situation has dramatically deteriorated over the last couple of years. While the economy burned, fiscal conservatives, fed up with both parties but particularly egged on by the new administration's openly statist attitude, became even more agitated without a party channel to vent through. The government's feeble attempts to improve the economy (largely wrecked by government policies) with yet more corrupt government spending has proven so ridiculously absurd that a very large segment of Americans have written off the government as an effective tool for positive change.

In February, following a "stimulus" of unimaginable cost with almost no public scrutiny being passed along party lines, Rick Santelli delivered a now famous rant on CNBC. It should be watched. In it, he calls for a "tea party" to be held in Chicago, referring back to the famous Boston Tea Party of 1773, where colonists protested unfair tax laws by seizing British cargo ships and dumping the tea into Boston Harbor. I do not know if Santelli was aware of the tea party held in Binghamton, NY that January to protest a tax on soda; being an upstate New Yorker, I would certainly feel some pride in thinking this movement was born in my backyard.

After Santelli's rant, tea parties began springing up across the nation. By Tax Day (April 15th), a massive, nation wide protest was conducted, organized via the Internet largely by local people fed up with the current system. Rallies continued to be held throughout the summer, culminating in a very large rally in Washington, D.C. on September 12th. Since then, tea parties have been held often throughout the nation, sometimes organized by local leaders and sometimes put together by national leaders who have the respect of the tea partiers.

Goals

The Tea Party has a single, unifying goal: the government has become too large, too powerful, and abusive. While social conservatives certainly join the Tea Party, the Tea Party itself is not a social movement outside of the economic role of government. Tea Partiers tend to know the Constitution is our agreement as to what the government may and may not do and that many actions our government has taken recently overstep those limitations. Austrian economists like F. A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises tend to be popular reading, in particular Hayek's The Road to Serfdom.

Their argument is simple and extremely difficult to refute: politicians are not responsible with taxpayer dollars, in particular when the government becomes so bloated that it becomes impossible to hold those politicians accountable for money that disappears into the bureaucratic abyss. Government does not know how to improve our lives better than we do ourselves; politicians also have motives outside of our conception of good, whereas we do not. We have never consented to be ruled like children, but rather demand we be governed like citizens.

Government failures will always be defended by a cry for more money; if only more money were spent, the government could achieve great things! The Tea Party rejects this argument. Governments should not be trying to redistribute wealth (a god awful opportunity for corruption) or trying to create a better society (since when do politicians understand all of society, what a better one would look like, have a clear plan to achieve it, and the virtue to see it through?).

Simply put, Tea Partiers wish to live their lives unmolested by the government.

Impact

The Tea Party confuses many politicos because it is not a traditional mechanism for political participation. Our rules and political norms largely rule out the possibility of a successful third party. Any third party would largely take away votes from either the Democrats or the Republicans, handing the party least impacted a victory over what would essentially be a divided party. Bull Moose, the Green Party, Ross Perot; each and every time, the major third party always helps the party farthest from them on the political spectrum win the election.

With very few exceptions, the Tea Party is not a political party but rather a political movement. It has provided Independents who demand fiscal conservatism an outlet to vent their rage outside of the Republican Party, a party that has spent the last decade destroying its own image as fiscally responsible. Tea Partiers owe no dues and largely have no leaders. It is a decentralized rejection of the statist status quo.

Rather than divide the Republican Party, the Tea Party has conducted an insurgency campaign within the mechanism of the party. Republicans with reputations for fiscal irresponsibility have faced strong primary challenges; many established Republicans have since lost their positions not to Democrats but to largely unknown individuals.

Perhaps most importantly, the Tea Party has brought in millions of individuals who have never really taken an active roll in politics and radically changed the social mores of our country. This is one of the few times in our nation's history that a liberal government has faced massive, vocal opposition to their domestic policies. The silent majority is silent no longer. Statist philosophy is no longer allowed to go unchallenged in the court of public opinion. Before, the few people who would speak up against the state were largely dismissed as extremists; now, statists have to prove their goals are not only possible but desirable to an audience no longer inclined to blindly accept the precept that "the state can fix all."

Future Roll

The future of the Tea Party largely depends on how well Washington implements reforms toward a smaller, Constitutionally bound government. This is unlikely, to put it mildly. It is likely that future government projects will have to overcome strong political resistance from Tea Party politicians (generally in the Republican Party) and political revulsion in popular opinion. The stigma of TARP, the Stimulus, Cash for Clunkers, and ObamaCare will not be forgotten quickly, and politicians who assume new spending can be authorized without a serious explanation for the necessity of that spending will pay for it at the polls.

With the probable exception of ObamaCare, however, most current government spending will not be rolled back. Too many have paid too much into Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid to get nothing in return, and even Tea Partiers will not wish to end up losing everything in these Ponzi schemes. These systems will continue towards bankruptcy in the near future, eventually screwing over everyone still alive at that point in time.

The protests and rallies may die down as new spending decreases, but the fiscal instability of our system will continue to plague our nation for many decades to come. Any government, regardless of which party controls it, will reignite this flame if they propose yet more government programs. The notion that government is the problem, not the solution, has always been a strong aspect of the American political ethos. We have entered an era where this ethos has found a voice, a resounding, booming voice that has caused every politician that desires reelection more than progressive policies to fear for their political life. It is appropriate that the Tea Party has adopted the Gadsden flag as its own: politicians fear treading on the liberty of the people like they have not in many generations. The silent majority has found its voice and it will not lose it again in the near future.

Re: Democracy in America?

A few years ago, HBO created a great series on Caesar's rise and the civil wars that followed called Rome. It was remarkably well done for a historical fiction, depicting the life of average Romans very well. In the episode Triumph, one of the main characters, Vorenus, is running for office as a magistrate of Rome and Caesar's slave Posca is helping Vorenus to learn the ropes of politics. Slow to comprehend complex laws, Vorenus suggests such learning can wait after the election since it was distinctly possible he might lose. Posca lets Vorenus know the election is effectively rigged and Caesar's man Vorenus is not going to lose. Understandably, Vorenus is upset; this is a perversion of democracy, but Posca points out a chilling thought: the people are crying for bread and stability, not clean elections.

I bring this up because I am just finishing up covering Napoleon with my 10th graders. In an assignment, I had the students write a paragraph asking whether they would vote to give Napoleon absolute power in a plebiscite. While Napoleon was never that blunt about things, he did hold numerous plebiscites to legitimize his power grabs which eventually lead him to become an authoritarian ruler. Every single class voted in a similar manner as the French people did: in favor of a dictator, so long as they believe that dictator will bring peace, justice, and tranquility or glory. The final count was 30-13.

Most of the supporters mentioned an increase in equality of citizens, price control, and the need for a strong government to preserve the peace. Most of the dissenters opposed the notion of having an all powerful king, especially since France had just suffered a revolution to remove an absolute monarch.

These students will be voting in the next presidential election. While I would not extrapolate the attitudes of one small section of 10th graders from this one district to prove this rule, I think history does provide many, many examples of citizens voluntarily (and often enthusiastically) approving power grabs by individuals promising stability away from democratic bickering, price controls to threaten the upper classes, and increased equality. Rarely, if ever, have those power grabs turned out well for the people in the long run.

Current State of the Afghanistan Conflict

I am about to pick up The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost at the Owego library. This book was written by the Soviet General Staff to analyze their performance during the conflict. Given the situation we find ourselves it, it seems like an appropriate book to read. Before I do, I want to jot down a few thoughts I have about the state of the conflict.

We find ourselves at war with a terrorist band rather than a nation state. It has similarities to what the Romans faced trying to purge the Illyrian pirates but with far greater international and internal pressure to reduce unnecessary violence, even against the terrorists themselves. This enemy has already proven themselves capable of striking at us and striking hard; there is no reason to believe that, left unmolested, they could not perform even worse feats against us.

This war also has parallels to the Punic Wars. There, tribes and cities would routinely switch sides to whichever power appeared to be the strongest at the present moment in time. Tribes and factions throughout the Muslim world, not to mention individuals, are far more likely to join Al Qaeda if Al Qaeda has the appearance of winning the conflict. It is imperative that we never allow such an impression to be made.

Afghanistan is one of the worst places we could be fighting such a conflict. Iraq was far better. Guerrilla insurrections survive by not fighting pitched battles but rather operating with hit and run tactics, always preserving their fighting force from the militarily stronger opposition. This means the guerrillas need a place to operate from that either cannot be located or operated in by their stronger enemy. There are generally two places to hide: the terrain and the population.

In Iraq, the terrain is not particularly well suited to hide guerrilla bands. Large areas are fairly open; forests are few and mountains are primarily located to the north in Kurdish territory. The population was initially not hostile towards Al Qaeda or other insurgent groups. Ironically, the setbacks we faced in 2006, when Al Qaeda was left in charge of large segments of the population, proved to be beneficial for the United States. Strict Islamic law was applied; Iraqis, who have a long history of living in a quasi-western civilization, were appalled. At the end of 2006, the United States declared their intention to see the conflict through to the end, launching "the surge" and increasing the number of troops on the ground by tens of thousands. Al Qaeda was never strong enough to take on the full power of the United States military and after alienating the local population found themselves having no place to hide. Since 2008, casualties in Iraq have plummeted despite America having less than one third of our troops remaining in country.

This was a great win for us. Al Qaeda had declared that Iraq would be their central front in their jihad against us, but in the end Al Qaeda was largely annihilated! We should be proclaiming those two facts throughout the Muslim world to show we are more than capable of beating this enemy. As I said, and as ancient and modern history show, the side that appears to be winning is the side that people join while the other suffers desertions.

Unfortunately, political considerations got in the way. Our current administration declared that the Iraq war was "stupid" and that the surge would increase rather than decrease violence there. Afghanistan was the good war, the area we needed to be fighting in. Perception is what determines whether a person or tribe will join Al Qaeda; our performance in Iraq would be a great piece of propaganda, especially concerning Al Qaeda's boast that they would win there, but this administration will not use it because it would undermine their earlier ardent opposition to the liberation of Iraq.

So instead we sent a surge of troops to Afghanistan, put General Petreaus in charge, and gave them a two year deadline to achieve the impossible. Afghanistan is mountainous and borders Pakistan, a country that isn't hostile to the Taliban/Al Qaeda message. The people of Afghanistan are different from the people of Iraq; they do not have a long history of living a semi-western lifestyle and sharia law is more acceptable there. Our enemies can hide in the terrain and the population with far greater ease than they could in Iraq.

Moreover, this administration is blatantly putting political goals ahead of the military situation. Our generals flat out told the President that a timetable for withdrawing from Afghanistan is merely giving the enemy a countdown to victory, creating the impression among the locals that they cannot trust our commitment and driving them towards the enemy who will be there long after July 2011. If the Taliban remain then (and they will), communities will not want to explain why they helped the Americans to those brutal warlords. Best way of not having to say sorry is to not piss off the warlords in the first place.

Mr. Woodward's recent book quotes the President as creating the July 2011 deadline because "I [Obama] can't lose the whole Democratic Party." This has absolutely nothing to do with the military situation. More of our troops have died this year in Afghanistan than in any previous year; Obama's reelection should not be a reason American soldiers die.

I need to remind the readers that Obama had absolutely no military experience prior to coming into office; there is little evidence he has studied warfare, either. It almost appears that his decision to send a "surge" of troops and put Petreaus in charge comes from the fact that those combination of things worked in Iraq (despite Obama's vocal opposition at the time). As I've pointed out, the terrain and people are very different in Afghanistan than they are in Iraq. From what I have read, it seems our President was shocked he could not get an exit strategy out of his generals. This was a common complaint against Bush by the Left. Wars are not fought with exit strategies; you pick your goal and then you beat and kill your opponent until they accept those terms or are no longer physically able to resist them.

Democracy in America?

I touched on this subject last year in a Facebook post, but it is a question that deserves serious consideration in a place where more in depth discussion can take place: should we allow everyone to vote? It is an inflammatory question, given the deep reverence Americans place on the right to vote, but I'm not asking this just to poke people in the eye. Democracy is the rule of government by the people; government itself involves the monopoly of the use of force. Government is extremely complex in operation and theory, but the electorate of this nation barely knows the basic facts, much less the theory behind what constitutes good governance or the empirical record of the history of governments.

Let me put it to you this way: would you let a group of 18 year old kids who have never worked on or even examined how vehicles work repair your car? Would you drive that car afterwords?

If you are like me, you are thinking of course not! That's a sure way of getting killed, along with whoever is in your car and whoever you happen to hit. Government is far more complicated than cars and the stakes are much higher: over a hundred million people died due to tyrannical governments in the last century. That doesn't include war. That is just governments butchering their own people.

My recent experiences in a history classroom have revealed just how little many students know about history or government. And they are two years away from voting. Many of the advanced political science students cannot tell how many female justices are on the Supreme Court (hint: if you can't, I'm heavily implying you are not qualified to take part in government). Doubts I once had about this study disappeared quickly. If anything, I think those numbers are skewed towards the brighter Americans, as those more likely to do poorly would refuse to take that test in the first place.

I'll grant that implementing restrictions on voting would be difficult. Politically, in fact, it would be impossible, as those who would lose that right would certainly use any chance to vote before implementation to protect that right.

But as a matter of principle, shouldn't we only encourage people to vote if they have made a concerted effort to understand good governance and current events? Rather than telling everyone to go vote, shouldn't we set a societal norm that those who do not put any effort into knowing shouldn't be deciding with matters of natural rights for other people?

I'm of the opinion that if you haven't read at least one of these books, you shouldn't head to the polls: John Locke's Second Treatise of Government, Publius' Federalist, or de Tocqueville's Democracy in America.

Again, I understand that the universal right to vote is a basic principle of American democracy now. But if the basic principles are wrong, everything built upon them is likely to be wrong as well. Just because a principle is basic to the populace does not mean it should go unquestioned.

52 to 48

I remember this collection of photos, 52 to 48, came out right after the 2008 election. I recall not reacting well to it. Somehow or another, it came to my mind again today, so I took a peek around, wondering if I would react better towards it.

I didn't. If anything, it may irritate me even more today than it did then. Mostly it is a bunch of young Obama voting hipsters putting up messages of how we all need to come together. You know, days after declaring Republicans warmongers, liars, corporate whores, bigots, and fools.




Sure, just like you did under Bush. And implying we were not putting the country first prior to the election just kind of irks me.


This guy votes. Proof positive democracy can be a bad thing.


You had my back when Republicans were the second coming of the Nazis? Sure, I have your back, just like you had mine. And it is spelled fifty two.


We were prior to that election, too. Just a thought.


ObamaCare is all that comes to mind. That, and Obama declaring "I won" when Republicans offered ideas.

What gets me is so many young people actually bought into Obama's promises to move the nation into a post-partisan era. Have none of them read Federalist 10? There will never be a post-partisan age; we are never going to be permanently united, a "purple" country if you will. Considering how "48" was treated, 52 should not have been surprised that the opposition would be dogged in their fight to oppose the new leadership. It frightens me that so many could honestly believe that they could be so downright partisan and nasty for years prior to an election, win absolute power, and think posting a few cutesy pictures about reconciliation would somehow defuse future partisanship. And they overwhelmingly tend to be young people. I do not think so many blatantly uninformed citizens have ever come out to vote prior to that election and it downright scared me. Having seen the results, I should have been more scared than I was.

I try not to use this blog to blow off steam, though it has happened a few times. The actual lesson here is that my generation and younger seem to have had a piss poor education and that so long as people exist, they will disagree passionately on policy. All the pictures of happy hipsters in the world will never change that.

Religious Insanity

Oh my God. What an unimaginable mess this Ground Zero Mosque has become. Let us just get a few things straight:

1) Thousands of Americans were butchered at the Twin Towers by Muslim terrorists. Any opinion not recognizing this fact as being very salient today should be rejected out of hand. The vast majority of Americans remember that day vividly; anything resembling a victory monument is going to go over badly.

2) This mosque looks like a victory monument. The history of Islamic conquests show prominent places in the Western World being converted into mosques (Hagia Sophia was a former church; the Al Aqsa Mosque is built on the ruins of the Jewish Second Temple). The Twin Towers were prominent symbols of America's wealth and prosperity; they most certainly were not attacked at random. No, this mosque is not literally at the site of the Towers, but it is as close to it as possible and at a site destroyed by that terrorist attack. The complete lack of willingness to negotiate on this point by the mosque builders lead me to believe that it is intentionally built close to the terrorist site. It does not matter what the actual intent is, mostly because it is not possible to know; the point is, the optics are horrible.

3) Americans do not hate Muslims. Given everything, the remarkably low rate of violence against Muslims shows we do not blame all Muslims for 9/11 or our current War on Terror. President Bush made great efforts to separate terrorists from peaceful Muslims, both on the battlefield and in our minds. Yes, isolated incidents of hatred can be found, but just as many against whites, protestants, males, the wealthy, Latinos, or any other grouping can be found, and such anecdotes are not proof of widespread hatred among the populace.

4) Opposing this mosque is neither a violation of 1st Amendment rights or proof of hatred. The vast majority of those who oppose a mosque being built at that site have made the caveat that Muslims have the right to do so. The principle is that Americans must allow such things legally; it has never meant that Americans must like what other people do or that they should not apply social pressure to change that offending behavior.

5) This mosque is not about bridging divides and establishing community healing. The community has made it clear that building a mosque at this spot sticks in their craw; a religious leader truly dedicated towards peace and community would not become adamant that the community just deal with it, sticking it to that community again.

6) Americans are tired of being accused of hatred. Christmas cards given out by teachers can land a person in trouble for not being sensitive to other cultures, but asking (asking! not attacking, asking!) another religion not to build on what is basically a graveyard of Americans killed in the name of that very religion is proof of hatred? Regardless of where you stand in this cultural battle, the optics are pretty clear that Christians must be sensitive to any potential sore point (real or imagined) of other cultures but at no point are other religions required to return the favor. People are sick of that arrangement and this mosque is where a line has been drawn.

7) Despite that, Americans will not support blatant acts of hatred. This Qu'ran burning fool in Florida garnished roughly 0% of Americans to his side. People on all sides of the political spectrum and vast majorities of Churches, Mosques, Temples, and other religious institutions have condemned this act.

This situation is getting out of control quickly. The perception alone that Muslims do not care about a very sensitive issue to most Americans, or perhaps worse that they are intentionally jabbing at it, is going to breed more prejudice against American Muslims than 9/11 itself did. The terrorist attack was a clear example of lunatics; this mosque is supposedly being built by "moderates." After decades of being prodded to be more sensitive towards others, Americans expect the favor to be returned.

As for the Qu'ran burning: stupid, but it proves my point. The American government burns a bunch of Bibles last year; George Bush is shown defecating on Jesus in South Park (an episode that drives the censorship point home); Dogma. Do Christians respond with violence? No! But draw a picture of Muhammad and people end up dead. A group burning Bibles wouldn't even get notice in the news, but a very few lunatics in Gainesville decide to burn a few Qu'rans and the entire world goes into a hissy fit.

In short, the Ground Zero Mosque is doing irreparable damage to our society. Opposition is based on very raw feelings concerning this area and Islam, not on an outright hatred of the religion. In the name of peace, sensitivity, and community, the leaders of this mosque project should accept one of the multiple offers to build the mosque elsewhere in an effort to show they do indeed respect the opinions and mores of the American nation.