A funny thing happened these past three years of the reign of “hope” and “change”.  On the right there was a message told again and again and again with perfect consistency. Obama is as liberal as you can get. He’s a radical, left wing, ideological madman. He’s a communist. He’s a socialist. He’s a maoist. He’s a fascist. Even though none of those things are the same, it hardly mattered. The message was clear. Obama is *not* one of us. He’s one of THEM. He’s an outsider. he’s destroying this great nation with his anti-Reaganism and his big government commie liberalism.

That side of the debate was consistent.  There was no evidence for it but the argument never deviated no matter what happened. It wasn’t based on FACT. It was based on feelings. The feelings of a people who were thrust out of power for failing miserably striking back at the new regime.

But on the Left and the center of the country things were much more muddled. The yearning to push back against the utterly FALSE narrative of the Right, the way we always do, was at war with the undeniable fact that the same president who wasn’t a radical Leftist also wasn’t doing anything remotely resembling what we WANTED him to do, or what he promised he would do.

This conflict was hard to cope with. I saw tons of different reactions to it.  Some decided to go the route of Blind Faith. They said to themselves, “I believe in Obama and while I don’t quite understand why he’s doing the things he’s doing I trust him to know more than I do and that he means well in the end.”  Others went the route of ever increasing rage at the Republicans. They said “Obama isn’t doing the things we want him to do but it’s because of those DAMNED Republicans! Standing in the way of everything, always blocking, always plotting to undermine and destroy his Presidency! I will place all my rage and anger at them! If it weren’t for them, he’d surely be the great President I always imagined him to be!”

Others went a different route that was less forgiving of the President, but it was still an attitude based on excuses.  Some imagined that the President was just not a fighter. Others that he wasn’t good at negotiating. Others that he wasn’t brave or that he didn’t have the strength of his convictions. Some said he picked poor advisers or stupid advisers or advisers who were secret moles working for the Republicans. Some said he was too inexperienced. Some even suggested he was not very intelligent. Some said he was too stubborn. Some said he was too much of a professor. Others that he wasn’t enough of a professor. Others that he wasn’t a good politician. And that he was too easily pushed around by Republicans. Some said he didn’t use the bully pulpit enough. Some said he didn’t gather the people to his cause. Some said he needed to make his CASE more. Some said we expected too much.

Still others didn’t know what to think or say. They just expressed their extreme sadness and sense of DISAPPOINTMENT with Obama. Almost treating him like he was a wayward kid who is goofing off in school.

But the President isn’t our child or our parent to be disappointed with or proud of. He’s the President. He’s the most powerful political figure in the country. And he got there through hard work and dedication when nobody would have expected it would have even been possible for someone so young, so inexperienced, and so.. well… black. It’s hard to imagine that someone who can do THAT, who can get the people behind him all over the country is stupid or bad at politics or a poor negotiator or any of the other excuses people came up with to explain his actions.

Now, finally I think in the blogosphere at least and I think amongst many other liberal communities amongst those who have been paying close attention, consensus is building and the reality is seeping through to people.

In the latest negotiation over the debt ceiling the blinders were lifted. When people saw that it was President Obama who put social security and medicare at risk for fundamental changes and painful cuts even when the Republicans hadn’t even bothered to do that, it was like a light bulb going off in people’s heads all over the world.

People were no longer able to deny it. Ahh now we see. Obama actually IS as brilliant, as capable, as intelligent, as politically savvy as we thought he was. He’s actually quite GOOD at his job. He’s quite effective and strong and goes all out to fight for what HE believes in. What he thinks is right for the country. He’s negotiating the best possible hand given his circumstances to achieve the ends he seeks.

The problem is…. those ends aren’t OUR ends.

Not the ends of Liberals.

Not the ends of Progressives.

Not the ends of Unions.

Not the ends of working people.

Not the ends of people suffering under the hardships of this economy.

No. The truth is, President Obama isn’t in any way an ideological foil for Bush-era Republicans that dragged our country through Hell for eight years. In fact, quite the opposite. He AGREES with them on many, many things. He might not be a Conservative. He comes at it from a different perspective. But that perspective is still totally contrary to the way most people on the Left, most people who call themselves Democrats or Liberals or Progressives or POPULISTS come at the problems the nation faces. 

And so there’s only one conclusion you can really draw. It’s not just that Obama is not a Radical Liberal. It’s that he doesn’t even BELIEVE in Liberalism. Not at all. He doesn’t want a balance between the best ideas of Liberals and the best ideas of Conservatives. He doesn’t think Liberals HAVE any good ideas. He thinks the old school systems like habeas corpus and single payer and social security and Glass Steagall are just that… old. Quaint. Dumb. They don’t fit his view of what society needs in the modern era. Believing in them makes you a rigid ideologue in Obama’s book. 

I’m sure there are a lot of people who consider themselves on the Left that agree with Obama about all of this. Particularly a lot of young people who seem to be being taught this new ideology from the political leadership of the Democratic party. They call themselves “liberals” or “progressives” too sometimes. But their brand of liberalism doesn’t match up with the historical brands of Left wing politics from FDR to Johnson to Martin Luther King. It’s something NEW. It’s something different. And it’s something I find myself as utterly philosophically opposed to as I am to ideological Conservatism. And most of the Left wing blogosphere seems to be realizing now that they are just as opposed to it.

 

Taking a step back… What is at the heart of this philosophical disagreement we have? What makes this divide between these two factions of the Democratic party exist? I have a lot of thoughts on this but by and large I think that at its core there is a difference of opinion about what the biggest problems our nation faces. What I think Obama believes, and I think you can see it in a lot of his rhetoric and actions, is that the biggest problem in our society is the inability of Government to form concensus. He thinks the problem is that the Left and the Right can’t get along. He’s think the poisonous battle between radical extreme Republican Conservatives and radical extreme Democratic Liberals is destroying the nation. And he sees himself as a Lincoln type figure who is trying to forge a compromise between the two sides before there is another civil war. And he’ll do almost anything to achieve that unity. Even if it means a lot of people have to suffer in the mean time.

That’s not how I see it. I don’t think the biggest problem is Democrat vs Republican, Conservative vs Liberal. I think by far and away the BIGGEST problem is POWERFUL vs WEAK. It’s the RICH vs the POOR. It’s the people so high up on the totem poll of society that they can’t even see us poor pitiful people underneath and don’t understand how their games effect us. 

Now why do I think that?

Because it wasn’t conservatives or liberals who created the financial crises and the housing crash. It was BOTH.

Because it wasn’t republicans or democrats who voted for war in Iraq. It was BOTH.

Because it wasn’t members of the right or the left who misled the nation on weapons of mass destruction. It was BOTH.

I can go on and on and on with this. Warrantless wiretapping. Targeted assassinations. Indefinite detention. Afghanistan. Libya. Destruction of Labor laws. Limitations on abortion rights. Draconian requirements for citizenship for illegal immigrants. The war on drugs.

In fact it was in all cases the same elites and powerful figures in both parties who come to agreement again and again to make decisions that are destructive to the middle class and the poor and seem to always keep the CEOs of major companies pouring in the record profits while income disparity continued to rise.

 

I think we made a mistake. Every one of us who were on the Left who voted for Obama thinking he would bring “hope” and “change” like he said over and over again made a terrible terrible mistake.  The mistake wasn’t voting for Obama. That was still the right decision. He was and is still the lesser of the two evils.

The mistake was not listening to the advice of Noam Chomsky who wrote before the election that if we lived in swing states (which I did), we should vote for Obama but “without illusions”. Whatever you think of Chomsky’s politics, I think that’s generically good advice. You have to be clear minded and realistic about the person you are voting for. You shouldn’t buy the marketing hype. You shouldn’t accept that someone is going to do the things he says he’s going to do just because he said it.  You should never have any illusions.

We have an impoverished left wing movement right now. We are, many of us in this movement far too young and idealistic and trusting. We voted for Obama and no matter how hard we tried to keep our hearts out of the vote and make it all about our heads many of us… most of us even I’d say had so very very many illusions. We bought the hype. Some of us a little bit. Others of us a LOT. You can see it in all the excuses and all the exceptions and all the many many many ways people tried to justify or explain or even just understand decision after decision Obama made that didn’t fit in even the slightest bit with our hopes and dreams. We had illusions. 

Just as the Conservatives were CONSISTENT in their message that Obama was in fact NOT one of US, the liberals of the Left has been consistent in their overwhelming desire to portray the opposite message. We would do anything, say anything to make sure Obama WAS in fact one of US.  But he wasn’t.  He never was. He’s a Third Way Centrist Democrat. And that’s something different.

 

It’s true.  The libertarian argues that nobody should ever be forced to do anything. Period. Fact. Except maybe not have an abortion or not get married to people of the same sex. But to fair not ALL libertarians want that. The true die hards say no. Nothing. Everything should be a personal choice. 

I on the other hand want to force you to do things. How terrible of me! Let me explain to you how horrible and EVIL I am.

 

First and foremost.  I want to force you to pay taxes. It’s true. I do. I think that when you are poor you should pay no taxes, but when you are making a decent amount of money you should pay some amount of that to the government. And the more money you make the greater percentage of it I think should go to the government. That’s right. The better you do the MORE I want to TAKE from you. I also want to take a little more from you if you consume more non-essentials than average and I want to take a little bit more from those who consume thing that create long term secondary harm to society like cigarettes. And I want to take more from those who engage in risky activities that could potentially cause great harm.

But then here’s what I want to do with that money that I am FORCING you to pay.

* I want to build great schools so that your kids can get a great education for free in small classes with great teachers

* I want to build awesome roads and highways so you can travel safely and easily and repair them when they take harm 

* I want to create a good and fair police force so that people can be protected from the more dangerous elements of society.

* I want to be create fire departments and pay for top notch equipment so that our firefighters can respond quickly and effectively to save lives whenever fires break out anywhere in the country.

* I want to build and maintain sewage systems so that you can have a clean safe environment in which to live

* I want to deliver clean fresh water to every home and cheap reasonably priced electricity so that people can have cooling in the summer and heat in the winter and lights to run at night.

* I want to be able to deliver a letter you to anywhere or anyone in the country for a tiny fee.

* I want to have a system where by the time you reach an age such that you can no longer work or if you have a disability or any impairment making it impossible for you to work you can have all your basic needs taken care of so you don’t starve and can live your remaining years in modest comfort.

* I also want to create another system that ensures that if you have a spate of terrible bad luck for whatever reason such as an unexpected illness or a natural disaster or an unexpected robbery or losing a job through no fault of your own, or WHATEVER you can get a modest amount of aid from the State so that you and your children can survive and retain basic food and shelter until you can get back on your feet again.

* I want to create emergency response systems that can react in the case of severe disasters like hurricanes, flooding, and forest fires

* I want to also create a system through which the people can in rare circumstances when it is needed raise an army to defend the nation from dangerous threats abroad

* I also want to use that money to setup vaccines for children to fend off the worst diseases and eradicate some of the most harmful illnesses effecting humanity

* I want to also fund research into other things that can better humanity and make all of our lives easier and happier.

* I want to create fair and effective courts staffed with skilled well trained judges and effective lawyers that will adjudicate disputes and preserve a Just legal code to protect people from being cheated, manipulated, or abused.

* I want to also be able to pay to create polling places and run periodic elections so you and I can both vote for men and women who will decide on our behalf and only in accordance with our will what if any other uses to which the money taken from you will be put for the betterment of all

Yes. I want to do all of THAT with YOUR money.  And I don’t want to have to ask your permission for it first. I don’t want to have to get your consent before every tax collection. I want to take a small portion of your money to do these things and if you don’t want to pay then I want to charge you a fine for not paying. And if you continue to not pay, unless you’ve built up a huge movement and changed the laws somehow, I want to be able to punish you as if you were a criminal for not paying and not contributing and being a selfish prick who thinks its okay for you to take all the benefits of living in this State and give nothing back in return.

 

Not only that… but I have the TENACITY to want to force you to do other things too. Oh no. It’s not just pay taxes when you can afford to. I have these other ONEROUS and TERRIBLE requirements of you:

I want to force you to fill out a piddling survey called a census once every ten years giving your government a small amount of information to use to provide better services to you.

I also want to force you to apply for a license to do dangerous tasks like operate a motor vehicle that prove that you know what you’re doing and have the basic physical capacity to do the task. 

I also want to force you to, if you run a business abide by certain regulations that ensure that your business does not contribute negatively to the public health. E.g. you can’t sell milk with rat poison in it. And you can’t dump toxic sludge into our rivers and streams. I also want to force you not to discriminate between people you hire based on stupid irrelevant shit like skin color or gender or sexual orientation or age.

I ALSO want to force you to abide by a certain set of basic laws that ensure that people can retain property and preserve people’s safety. That is, you can’t rape someone even if the privacy of your own home and you can’t walk into someone else’s home and take their stuff and you can’t slaughter animals for fun or execute trespassers on your property. I want to FORCE you not to do those things. I DEMAND that you not do things like that.

 

Do you see?  It’s true. I want to force all kinds of things upon you that might not be your own natural choice. And I want you to be stuck with them until you can convince a majority of your fellow citizens to act in concert to change the laws to do things differently. (and for certain fundamental things described in a document called the constitution it should require a SUPER majority of your fellow citizens be convinced before you can change them) And if you try to do that I intend wholeheartedly to fight your attempts to change said laws with every ounce of breathe and every bit of energy in my body.

But that’s also basically ALL I want to force you to do. That’s it. There might be a few tiny things I’ve forgotten but by and large I have no greater requirements upon you. You are free to have your own religion. You are free to have your own cult even. You are free to say whatever you want, do whatever you want, run whatever business you want, purchase whatever you want (aside from people), live wherever you want, believe whatever you want, and care about whomever you want. You can have as few or as many children as you want. You can even hold as many parties as you want. You can have sex with whomever you want and you can watch whatever pornography you want and masturbate whenever you’d like. I don’t want to force you to marry anyone or not marry anyone. I don’t want to force you take certain drugs or not take certain drugs. You can be friends with whomever you want and you can even hate whomever you’d like and hopefully love whomever you’d like as well. It’s EVEN ok with me if you do research into global warming or stem cells. Radical, I know.

And I have no intention of EVER wanting to force you to do any of these things. Asides from the things I mentioned above. I’m cool with you doing basically anything else. I have no intention of ever creating a world where you are forced to work at specific tasks or forced to only own a certain amount or forced to only eat certain things. I’ve got no interest in that whatsoever. Anyone who says that I do is a liar and a fool.  

 

And when you add up all these things that I want to force you to do and all the things I want to be able to do with the proceeds of your forced labor do you know what we end up with?   A society that looks pretty much a LOT like the one we have RIGHT NOW. IT would look a lot like the society that we’ve been building for hundreds of years and the one that has brought us the wonders of modernity and the great gains in wealth and life expectancy of modern societies around the world.

You know what? I just realized something in writing this piece.

I AM A CONSERVATIVE. 

In the traditional sense, I want to keep things basically the way they are. I don’t want to change things. I don’t want to go on some radical experiment of radical individualism or radical corporatism that might end up with who knows what kind of society as a result. Sure there’s still a lot to change and a lot to get better but I think we’re more or less on the right overall trajectory even if we’ve sometimes veered off course a bit here and again. Maybe not fast enough. Maybe not always in the best way. But still generally running on the right principles that would take us to a good and stable outcome. 

So yes. I’m a traditional conservative. It’s all you libertarian lunatics that don’t ever want to force anyone to do anything that are the radicals.

That said, I think you radicals have somehow seized a huge amount of control in this country over the last 30 years or so and are starting to take us off into absolute crazy land and undo all these things I’ve described above. So right NOW, I stand in contrast to THAT and thus I’m very much a Liberal. I want to change the system to remove YOU from power before you screw things up any further and things have changed so much we might never ever be able to get back on course…

 

Listen carefully to this and listen carefully to me.

In every story, in every philosophy, in every work of literature, in every line of poetry, in every piece of art, in every religious text I think there is this singular underlying argument.  The question is simple. The answer is impossible.

Is there hope for us?

We see it all the time. Whether it be in the text of Ayn Rand or the words of Karl Marx. From the story of a sin carrying apple all the way up to the tale of a bespectacled wizard. It repeats again and again. Hegel, Kant, Jefferson, Einstein, Twain, Vonnegut. A Brave New World. Animal Farm, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Native Son.  Everybody weighs in. Everybody has an opinion. And they tend to fall into two camps.

One camp believes that we are bad. If there is any hope then it is a shadow of a shadow of a hope. There are some good people. Heroes. But most people are weak. Most people are cowards.  Most people are sheep. Most people have forgotten what it means to care.

The other believes just the opposite. That there is good all around us. That we are capable of so much. That most people when given a chance and the right circumstances will do the right thing. There is a lot of hope. If those bad apples amongst us don’t ruin it for the rest of us.

I’ve always leaned closer to the second camp.

At times though it is hard.  When you see people horde wealth while people starve, when you see people callously ignore the future of the planet for the pleasures of the moment, when you see us lock away in cages millions of people out of fear, when you see the man you helped elect continue a system of imperialism imposed by the predecessor he replaced whom you despised. It’s hard then to still believe in people. It’s hard not to think that there’s something broken in us and it may never be fixed.

“There are no heroes left in man”

Let me tell you a story.

There was  a man named Mohamed Bouazizi who was a street vendor in Tunisia. He wanted to earn money so that he and his sister could go to college and get an education. He was harrassed by the police for years. Spat on. Beaten. Humiliated in public. His wares were taken away because he lacked the money to pay them the bribes he was expected to pay. 

One day he couldn’t take it any more. He ran to the Governor’s office. He demanded his wars back. The governor would not see him. 

Bouazizi would not be denied.

On December 17, 2010, at 11:30 AM,  standing in the middle of the street at  the height of traffic Mohamed Bouazizi spoke these simple words: “how do you expect me to make a living?”  and then he lit a match and set the world on fire.

When he died 5000 people attended his funeral. And they chanted these words “Farewell, Mohammed, we will avenge you. We weep for you today. We will make those who caused your death weep.“

Protests built in Tunisia after Bouazizi set himself on fire. The police tried to crackdown on them. It only made the protests stronger. Images of the crackdown went out across Facebook and Youtube creating even more support. Strikes happened throughout the country including lawyers and other elites. The country ground to a halt. Some of the protests threatened to become violent. And finally President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled the country and resigned 28 days after Bouazizi’s martyrdom.

It could have led to nothing. Another meaningless blip on the screen. Nobody cared much about a tiny country like Tunisia. People figured Ben Ali’s stupidity brought it upon himself. Nobody was frightened.  I remember reading an article on my twitter stream it was titled “What if a revolution happened in Tunisia and nobody noticed?”

Somebody noticed.

Meanwhile a couple countries over Egypt was having its own problems. A rash of police brutality and torture there was making its citizenry already uncomfortable. A man named Khaled Mohamed Saeed was brutally beaten and killed by the police. There were numerous witnesses and yet the police denied it and tried to cover up the killing. It looked like they would get away with it and it was just the same old same old. Nothing would change. An Egyptian man named Wael Ghonim who was living in America and working for the Google at time would not let it go. He secretly made a Facebook group titled “We are all Khaled Said”. The group eventually grew to have hundreds of thousands of followers.

A protest was planned by many of the groups who had long protested the conditions of Egypt. It would take place in January 25th, their National Police Day.

Egypt had had protests before. Like here in the United States there are often protests of the conditions. Sometimes they happen for a day or a weekend. Then people go home. They get back to work and go about their normal lives. Maybe it is enough to cause tiny adjustments. Maybe it helps people network with like minded individuals. Rarely does it turn into anything bigger. Rarely does it mean anything more. I doubt anyone who planned this protest knew it would turn out to be something quite different.

On January 17th copying the Bouazizi incident and Egyptian man set himself on fire in front of the Egyptian parliament. 5 Others attempted to set themselves on fire. Then this happened:

 “I will not set myself on fire! If the security forces want to see me on fire let them come and do it!”

Twenty-six year old Asmaa Mahfouz asked people to come with her to Tahir square on January 25th. And oh boy did they come. They came in hordes. They came in the masses. And they didn’t just come, they stayed. And the protest grew bigger and bigger. Hundreds of thousands. A million. More. They stood and they protested in Tahir square, stood against the tanks and the militia and the security forces all determined to stop them. The regime shut down the internet in fear. It changed nothing. The protests grew huger in city after city throughout Egypt.  And now the whole world was watching.

Even then, the outcome was not certain. It could have all gone to shit in an instant. January 29th was the pivotal moment. The order came down from on high to use lethal force and live ammunition to disperse the crowd. The tanks were there. It could have been a massacre. It would have ended the protest. And fear would have driven away any likelihood of further. It could have happened then that the spark lit by Mohamed Bouazizi and fanned by Wael Ghonim, Asmaa Mahfouz and others might have been snuffed out. It was a remarkable moment in the history of Egypt and the history of the world. The story goes that young military officers were torn between their duty to their people and their duty to follow the orders of their superior and to enforce the laws. Some called their parents on their cell phones asking them what should they do? What was right? Their parents, themselves long time retired officers gave them a remarkable answer. In Egypt there is a tradition that the military is never to be used against the Egyptian people. It exists to serve them. So they told their children not to follow orders. Not to participate. Young soldiers came down from their tanks and joined the ranks of the protesters. And the military was forced to choose between rescinding the order, defying their government or having a veritable insurrection on their hands, seeing the start of a brutal and bloody civil war.

“Never say there’s no hope! Hope disappears only when you say there’s no hope.”

Egypt turned a small flame into a firestorm. The people of Egypt demanded change. And they GOT change.  On February 11, Hosni Musbarak President and dictator of Egypt who had ruled their nation for 30 years was forced to step down even after even the day before swearing he wouldn’t. On May 24th, Mubarak who had once been at the heart of international power, untouchable, unassailable, was ordered to stand trial for premeditated murder.

The whole world was inspired by the events in Egypt. Protests broke out all over the place in the aftermath. Libya, Bahrain, Syria,Yemen, Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Oman, Gaza, The West Bank, on the borders of Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Western Sahara, Côte d’Ivoire, Italy, Greece, China, Chile, London and Madison, Wisconsin. Some were small. Some were big. Some might have happened regardless of the events in the Middle East. But so many of the people taking place saw Egypt and Tunisia as an inspiration.

To see what’s happening here you have to look at it in the greater context of recent history. In the decades that just passed throughout the world we’ve seen a total lack of accountability for people with power and money. We saw an economic crash that devastated the world economy. We saw illegal wars break out and a mysterious secret network of prisons run throughout the world where torture was a matter of course. We saw power consolidated and wealth remaining concentrated in just a few hands. And even when wrong doing was exposed. Even when administrations were changed. Nobody faced any sort of consequences. Bankers weren’t jailed for cheating people out of their homes. Investors weren’t punished for gambling with the money people needed to buy food. Oil Companies saw little consequence for letting oil pour unchecked into the Even Osama bin Laden remained uncaught for his violent killing of innocents. People were getting used to it. It was starting to get to be the norm. People just expected the major forces to play games with us as their pawns. It seemed like this was just the way things were going to be.

Then Egypt changed the trajectory of society. If this President who was at the center of the games of power for thirty years could be laid low by the people he pretended to serve, maybe anybody could be. Maybe nobody was safe. Maybe change was POSSIBLE. Maybe people could awaken.Maybe there was hope.

We don’t know what the ultimate consequences of these changes will be. Maybe it’ll all die down. Already we see many protests throughout the middle east brutally taken down by regimes determined to retain their power at all costs.

But we already saw some signs of good. After Egypt, protests in Libya sparked a civil war. But when their leader Muammar Gaddafi spoke madness and threatened to bring great violence to all those who opposed him and it looked like a massacre was about to happen in Bengazhi as Gaddafi’s troops closed in. But then a remarkable thing happened. If the tales are true, many in Gaddafi’s government resigned in protest, and cried warning to the world of what might happen. They asked for help. And all around the world, all over the internet, people demanded that their government not allow a slaughter to continue. Even not trusting their government to do the right thing or for the right reasons. Even after the horrible illegal war in Iraq and even after the long endless conflicts in Afghanistan and drone attacks in Pakistan. People still decided that even giving authority to go to war to the untrustworthy powers of the world would be better than allowing the rebels to be slaughtered. And so the government reacted. A resolution was passed in the United Nations security council at the behest of the Arab League to authorize the use of force to save the civilians of Libya. Five nations abstained. No one said no. And a massacre was averted.

“You underestimate the character of man.”

We ask the question again and again. Are we good? Are we Just? It’s as if we’re asking… are we worth it?

When I see these events *I* find myself convinced more and more. We are. We’re capable of such greatness and glory as to shake the heavens off its hinges. We split the atom. We built the internet. We created democracy. We created Justice. We created freedom. And we did not die doing it.

And yet I can hear the other side still always there always arguing always denying. I heard a person comment on Egypt.. he said that Tahir was nothing but a big party and that those fools had no idea what they were getting into and were unready for the real hard work of building a nation.  A party? Over 800 people DIED in that party. And every one of them was at risk day after day.

I heard another person argue that Egypt was all well and good but we Americans are too lazy and too busy eating our hamburgers and playing our playstations to ever stand up for ourselves in the same way. So many people chimed in in agreement. So many people thought the same. It could happen in Egypt but not here. Never here.

I wonder at this sentiment. Can’t happen here? It DID happen here. What do they think the American revolution WAS? What do they think the civil war was for? Why do they think there WAS a civil rights movement? It happens all the time here. It never stopped happening here. People come together. People fight for what they believe in. People change the world.

It happens everywhere. Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, the Gaza Peace Flotilla, Tianamen Square. Do people really think the Jesus was a fluke, that Moses was a once in a lifetime thing?  Good happens everywhere and all the time and not by accident.

The other day I saw a congressmen take to twitter to ask if two people who love each other should be allowed to get married in the State of New York. And people came out of the woodworks to tell him YES. Yes they should. It is in things like this that I see hope everywhere. I think we’re worth it.

“They are weaker than you think.”

In Tahir, during the revolution, amidst all that talk of freedom and justice and of fairness and righteousness. A female reporter from the West was sexually assaulted. People who said they wanted peace did that to her. People who said they were there to fight for freedom did that.  What kind of monsters were they? The normal kind I’m afraid. The human kind. She was saved finally by a group of women from the crowd came to her defense and about 20 Egyptian soliders broke it up.

In spite of it all, the other side isn’t wrong.  Those cynics with whom I so greatly disagree are not wrong. We are terrible. We do horrible things to one another again and again and again. You don’t get a Tahir unless you have a brutal Mubarak with security forces beating civilians. With every battle to overthrow a dictator you get a monstrosity like Abu Gharaib prison.  Every time the world comes together to end the horrors of the Holocaust… doesn’t that just show that there WAS a holocaust that needed to be ended? And how did it get so bad? For how many years did people turn a blind eye and hope for someone else to solve those problems? We wouldn’t have needed a civil war and a civil rights movement if there hadn’t been cruelty after cruelty, injustice after injustice done to people for no other reason than that they had the wrong colored skin. How many people are starving right now. How many future generations are being doomed by our inaction today?

When people say that we are weak and we are flawed and we lack the courage of our convictions, that we are selfish and we are greedy and we are so very often too afraid to stand up for ourselves, they aren’t wrong.

“Do not say this is how it has to be.”

When you paint the question in such stark terms of A versus B, of good versus evil, there can be no answer. If you ask are we mostly evil or are we mostly good, as much as I would love to believe simply and without reservation that we are mostly good, anyone who approaches the question honestly and fairly cannot come to such a simple solution. No. There is only one answer to that question. And that is, it’s neither. We’re not just A OR B, one way or another. What we are is COMPLICATED.

Humanity is complicated.

We collections of a multitude of cells and a plethora of moments are complex. Every single instance is a chance for us to do good or to do ill, to help or to harm. Every single moment we make mistakes. Every single moment we learn. Every second of every day is a chance for us to go beyond ourselves, to be able to empathize… to catch a glimpse behind the eyes of another human being and see that unending complexity laid out before us and to try, just a little, to understand it. And with that understanding grows friendship, love, generosity, heroism, and justice.  We have that capacity within us to see into the windows of experiences that which we can never truly understand and know that they are beautifully complex and wonderfully extraordinarily different. 

It’s in our complexity that I see hope.

There are 7 BILLION of us now on this planet. To me that means 7 billion chances every second of every day to do good. 7 billion chances to say words that inspire, to give a helping hand, to be a hero, to save a life, to learn from a mistake, to become just that little bit stronger. 7 billion chances every second to be able to make someone smile. I’ll take those odds any day.

“Even now there is hope for man.”

Whatever happens to us there are countless countless instances of good in this world. They wont be erased by the end result. All the horrors we unleash will not undue the single moments of kindness we take a chance to give one another as a gift unsolicited asking nothing in return. The one doesn’t erase the other. There is no grand calculus. The good is real. And it matters. And we KNOW it matters. That’s why there’s hope.

We only need to see it and be inspired by it to do good and to be better. We only need to try and understand each other and to see the complexity in us and to forgive one another when we do wrong. If we can do that then there’s no end to the good that can come about. There’s no reason why we can’t create a world of endless hope.

I think that’s very possible.

What do you think?

You have to elevate something. That’s just a fact. If you don’t elevate anything how will you have an excuse to throw a big party?

I mean really after yearly birth day parties, anniversaries, graduations, Christmas, New Years’s, Valentine’s Day, the Super Bowl, the World Cup, the Olympics, various sports playoffs, the occasional promotion, and family and friend weddings, funerals, births, graduations and reunions, people quickly realize that there just aren’t enough excuses to throw a party in one’s life. 

When you’re young you don’t have to worry about this. Everybody expects you to occasionally throw or attend completely random parties thrown for no apparent reason whatsoever. Indeed many a school encourages it by orchestrating such random and arbitrary party throwing (though I suspect that is done as much for the teachers and administrators than for the students).

But when you’re an adult well you aren’t supposed to party just willy nilly. You have to have a reason. It’s gotta be a holiday, a religious ceremony, or a sporting event. Or something directly related to family. Those are pretty much the only acceptable partying excuses for adults. Sometimes an adult will step out of line and celebrate something unorthodox like the quitting of a much hated job or retirement, or maybe moving into a new home, or Friday night poker night, or getting that fancy piece of furniture you always wanted… but these are quite clearly looked down upon as an indulgence. You can do it once in a while but too often and people will start to look at you funny and ask questions. What’s the matter with you? Stop acting like a kid! Grow up already!

Yes being an adult is just hard. You just can’t party as much as you’d like. So many of us live in this prison of unfulfilled partying desires. What are we to do?

The answer, ELEVATE something! Look you can’t just celebrate some random arbitrary person’s wedding or birthday. Everybody would know then that you were just using it as an excuse to party. But if you ELEVATE someone to a position of pre-eminence and importance than that’s different. Then well, everybody knows that when something significant happens to THEM it’s an event of momentous historic proportions. We can’t let such a big opportunity go to waste right?  We have to throw a REALLY BIG PARTY!  In fact we better make it a MONSTROUS GARGANTUAN PARTY to make up for all the missing party opportunities we’ve been lacking. And you don’t even have to worry about making sure enough people show up. The whole WORLD is invited!

The British people know this well, as this morning they engaged in their regular ritual of elevating some people of a particular blood line to a level of great significance so as to give the people an excuse to hold a monstrous gargantuan once in a life time party!  And by all accounts it went well. People who cared had fun and enjoyed themselves. People who wanted something to gripe about got something to gripe about. It was a win for all around.

Though some party poopers brought up some sort of weird meta-philosophical issues. Cuz of course party time is always the best place for deep questions of social and philosophical significance as everyone knows.  They asked such questions as does it really make sense to elevate people into such fame and significance solely on the basis of their bloodline? Is this moral or just? And what about the wealth factor? What about the dark and dreaded history of the British Empire. yadda yadda yadda.

To be sure the answer to these questions is of course no. We SHOULDN’T be elevating people based on solely who their parents are. That’s dumb. Everybody knows it’s dumb. Big fricking deal. You aren’t a genius wise man in a sea of fools for pointing out this one apparent obvious fact that anyone with two brain cells to rub together can figure out. What you are is being annoying. Don’t you get it? People want to PARTY. It’s that simple really. And geez can’t they party for once without your damn morality and ethics getting in the way of every little decision they make?

I mean think about it, it COULD be worse. In fact, it IS worse. Take a look at the United States. We elevate all KINDS of people here for oh so many bad reasons. We elevate the President elect every 4 years giving them a totally full head that can’t possibly help them govern well so that we can hold a gigantic party on the national mall in honor of winning or swindling a voting contest. We elevate NUMEROUS people every year for being good at pretending to be people we think we’d like in television and movie and we hold nice parties to give them shiny trophies in honor of how good pretenders they are. We elevate people whose job it is to give us the news so they can have a yearly party with the other elevated elites heedless of how much this association undoubtedly influences and corrupts their ability to do the news. We elevate people for being good singers. We elevate people for being good at sports. We elevate people for earning millions by being brutal exploiters of workers. We even elevate those of us must skilled in presenting strategies to conquer and control the masses. 

Perhaps worst of all we elevate some people out of pure morbid fascination and unremarkable curiosity. We elevate some ‘reality stars’ for no apparent reason other than that we find them mock worthy and ridiculous. Heck we elevate buffoons like Donald Trump just because they are loud and obnoxious enough to say patently false things that shock us.

In short we have our own aristocracy nearly as arbitrary in its construction as that of birthright and in some ways worse since qualification oft entails anti-virtues like greed, intolerance, stubbornness, and relentless aggression. This hardly matters. They often still serve as excellent excuses for party throwing, take for example Glenn Beck’s rally on the national mall.  Quite a nice party that. Or for that matter, Jon Stewart’s.

This happens everywhere. It’s not just us thank god. Make no mistake there’s plenty of elevation of dictators and demagogues throughout the world. Dear Leaders are praised and worshiped by their people who are oft even more starved of opportunity to party than those of us in the West. Is it any surprise that they jump at the opportunity to celebrate their dictator’s every major pronouncement?

Now the philosophers amongst you might put for a theoretical concept that even if we do have to elevate something it doesn’t mean we have to elevate things so arbitrarily and often badly. And you’re right. There’s at least two clear as day better ways to go about it.

One is we could elevate people based on virtues.  That is we would eschew the normal elevation of people based on blood, money, success, power, celebrity, anti-virtue, or morbid fascination and instead substitute things we as a people decide we really care about.  You know, things like honor and courage and justice and wisdom and reason. Or how about elevating people on the basis of compassion and tolerance and the desire to help people? How about elevating people who exhibit the most selflessness and the greatest willingness to sacrifice for others and for the furthering of virtues and the greater Good?  We could you know. In theory.

We even do do a little bit of this. We elevate Martin Luther King and give him a holiday. We don’t hold very much of a party on his birthday, so it kinda goes to show how small the elevation is compared to sports stars and princess marriages, but it is at least SOME elevation on the grounds that he was a virtuous and deserving person. We COULD do a lot more like this. Maybe we don’t celebrate when “the Prince” gets married, but we celebrate when someone of extreme virtue who sacrificed a lot to bring peace and to help people, gets married.  That person could be the Prince… or it could be a random dude in a town in the middle of nowhere.  Identification remains a problem but hardly an insurmountable one.

The other idea is to eschew the idea of elevating people altogether and elevate ideas and concepts that matter. There’s no reason why we can’t elevate say Evolution to a celebratory thing or the theory of Gravity or the Internet. We could even elevate the ideas of the virtues themselves. Why not have a Generosity day? Or an honesty day? We could elevate events as well, like the day we first achieved flight or the amazing accomplishment of reaching the moon.

We do do a little bit of these non-people elevations now. But they seem particularly small and drowned out by the elevation of celebrity and stardom. We hardly pay a lick of attention to the anniversary of the end of world war II even though to be sure it was an event worth elevating.

Of course there’s another idea too but it requires a drastic sacrifice on people’s part. So much a sacrifice that I don’t think it all likely. That is we could just stop elevating everything. The result, much fewer excuses to party. This is so far beyond the realms of likelihood it’s hardly worth mentioning. But it COULD happen. We could all become the types of people who wear all black and write poetry about how nothing matters and nothing is real and believe unitedly that there’s no point in elevating anything ever.

But… although I don’t like parties, most humans do enjoy their parties a great deal. I think it must be some sort of genetic disposition ingrained in many of us (though don’t ask what that says about me).  And but so.. I don’t really think it likely that we’ll abandon our chance at eking out a few extra parties in our life and stop elevating things altogether.

So given that I’d say fine. Let’s go ahead and enjoy our parties and keep on elevating as we’ve been doing. But slowly let’s try, TRY to transition to a world where we start elevating people on the basis of virtues and then eventually to a world where we elevate the virtues themselves without the need of a human symbol attached to them. Then one day we’ll reach a point where we can party all the time and never feel an ounce of guilt. 

We’ll all be Kings and Queens of our destiny! To the future! Cheers!

Perhaps surprisingly, I really really like these videos:

 

 

 

The first of these videos has the more clear references to actual economic theory and is really sort of a masterpiece. The second one has catchier music and excellent production quality, but is much less informative. Still, maybe it proves how much of a nerd I am, cuz I greatly enjoyed them both.

I’m no economist, but I suspect the central conceit (though perhaps a necessary conceit) of both of these videos is the idea that Economics is somehow stuck in this deep fatal war between Keynes and Hayek. The idea that we must choose one or the other or else! Only one can be true. There can’t be even a whiff of truth in the other. One will stand. One will fall.

If I had to choose between these extremes I’d choose Keynes, though I think Hayek makes some good points. But I think judging by the video I’d much rather hang out with Hayek and couldn’t stand five minutes around Keynes. Nevertheless, that’s not really the reality we live in. Nobody, I hope, is advocating purely following the will of Keynes or Hayek.

In reality the theory of economics is far more vast and interesting than these two albeit extremely influential chains.  Mill, Bagehot, Wicksell, Fisher, Friedman, Tobin… There’s a LOT of economic theory and it builds on each other in meaningful and important ways. It’s inconceivable to me that modern economists are simply trying to force the government to choose between following Hayek’s vision and Keynes’s vision. In reality I suspect theories are much more complex and recommendations are rooted in more than just these explanations.

That being said, I’m not at all sure economists know what the heck is going on now either. I think we know a lot more than we did in the past, but that doesn’t equate to certain knowledge. However, I just don’t think it’s the ignorance of our economic theory that’s our core problem. We aren’t stuck on one or the other wrong evolutionary track.  Rather I think the problems are 3:

1. Not all of economists who speak authoritatively and are listened to and influence policy are actually knowledgeable or as knowledgeable as they claim to be in the body of economic theory to date. This is a huge failure of education.

2. Those economists who ARE knowledgeable about the theory of economics, at least the best that we’ve got in that regard, are not listened to, or even in some cases highly regarded by the people who are in charge of making policy.

3. Often there are ideological motivators that are infleuncing decision making that have nothing to do with the theory or the body of knowledge we have developed.

I might consider adding a fourth that the public is also too lacking in a basic understanding of that theory sufficient to make sound judgments about whether or not we are abiding by it.

 

In short, I think what’s happening in economics is roughly equivalent to what’s happening in Climate Change.  The economics profession has started to be treated as if it lacks credibility and the least credible amongst them are being elevated to positions of influence beyond their knowledge or ability.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think even the best economists are perfect and I’m sure, sure they have gotten things vastly wrong and will get things vastly wrong in the future, even the best and the brightest of them.  But I’d rather put my future in the hands of those economists who are well trained, well versed, intelligent and knowledgible about the history and theory of economics than I would in just random chance or cowering away and just letting things happen. And I’d CERTAINLY trust them a lot more than some of the ideologues who seem to have outsized influence today and are driving things based on ideological concerns and not fact or principal or science.

But what seems to be happening today is that we are trending away from a belief in fact and a belief in knowledge and fact in general.  We ignore Climate Change. We question evolution. We doubt the birth certificate evidence of our own eyes. We question 9/11. Conspiracy theories thrive in their stead.

And the deep problem underlying that erosion of belief in fact and knowledge is a parallel erosion in our trust for one another. We’ve become so partisan that we can barely talk to one another without malice. We’ve become much more geographically, economically, racially,  and socially segregated that we are willing to admit in or refusal to give up the conceits of the mixing pot. The gap between generations stands wider than ever. Our scientists are seen as liars, our politicians as opportunists, our military and police as draconians, our doctors and lawyers as thieves, our media figures as children playing games, our clergymen as threats to our children, our businessmen as crooks, and our economists as fools. To be sure many if not all of these institutions have not performed admirably in recent years. However, though there is certainly good reason to doubt them, we run wholesale away from them at our great peril. There has to be a way to reform these institutions and to reform our perception of them so that they can become again the pilars on which a functional society is built. And at the same time we need to change the way we perceive each other so that we can start to work together to create a better future again.

 

If we need to create some more fun rap videos to encourage more people to care about and think about knowledge in general as a valuable goal in and of itself, then I’m all for it. I’m 100% on board with these even though I think they are clearly tilted more in the direction I don’t agree with. Maybe these kinds of things can get us to talking with one another about things more momentous than a birth certificate in a fair and rational way again.

Keep at it. I want to see more fun creativity like this. Biology, Physics, Politics, Philosophy, History, Sociology. All of it. We need it.

Snoglefallwick… groksbregabon…  ignafsnigg…

*cough* *cough*

ahem.

 

Dear sirs and gentlewomen.

Submitted for your approval, it has come to my attention that there is a grave crises in your world… ur… I mean our world.  It seems that not enough of… of us have acknowledged the fundamental undeniable truth that Barack Obama is a secret muslim born in Kenya.

According to recent polling only 11% of you have acknowledged the truth, and only 16% more are even considering the possibility. I do not understand why you have not yet accepted it as truth!!!!!! Are you all a bunch of blognsotchs!!!!! 

No matter, I will now try to allay any doubts you may have remaining. Heed me.

Many of your great and wise leaders have acknowledged this claim and expressed it publicly.

Donald Trump:

 

Charlie Sheen:

Talking about a possible presidential run — Sheen defeated Obama amongst GOP voters in the same polls as his victories of Palin — he mused about the idea and then hit the birther sweet spot.

“For starters, I was f**king born here, how about that? And I got proof! Nothing photoshopped about my birth certificate,” Sheen said

link

 

Sarah Palin:

 

These are your leaders. It is known that they are genetically designed to be perfectly suited to persuade you of all things. They are perfectly suited to be your next overlords. Since they say that this is true you must believe. Believe them. Now. That is all.

shzzzzzzzzzzzzz

It has come to my argup— *cough*  attention that many you do not yet believe. You have been foolishly convinced by such arguments as the follows:

• Presidents are not required to produce their birth certificate, long form or otherwise. No other President has been subjected to such an inquiry, so why President Obama?
• There has never been a single credible piece of affirmative evidence suggesting that Barack Obama was born anywhere other than where he said he was.
• Barack Obama released his Birth Certificate in July of 2008 to numerous press organizations AND posted a scanned copy of it online. You can view the copy they scanned here.
• The Birth Certificate Obama released is the exact same type you would get if you lived in Hawaii and requested your birth certificate. It is sufficient for purposes of getting a passport, a license, or any other purpose you might need a birth certificate for. It fully meets the State Department’s requirements for a birth certificate.
• The birth certificate Obama produced is both signed and has a serial number and a seal contrary to conspiracy theorests claims. Factcheck.org released high resolution scans after having been provided the certificate here. Other news organizations have confirmed and photographed the certificate such as NBC in this news story here.
• While the Birth Certificate the President produced was indeed labeled “Certification of Live Birth” that is not unusual. Hospitals do indeed sometimes create a long form or original birth certificate that contains additional information such as birth weight or parents home town, but it is not what is kept by the State or issued to citizens for the purpose of proving citizenship. Hawaii’s laws prevent the issuing of copies of these “long form birth certificates”. The Certification of Live Birth is for all legal purposes a person’s birth certificate.
• The federal Health Information Privacy Act of 1999 — a law passed to protect medical records from public scrutiny — prevents hospitals from confirming births directly
• On July 28, 2009, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, director of the Hawaii State Department of Health certified that she had personally seen Barack Obama’s ORIGINAL birth certificate and made a statement to US Today. Specifally she said: “I, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, Director of the Hawaii State Department of Health, have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen.” Pretty hard to refute.
• Hawaii’s Republican Governor from 2002-2010 Linda Lingle has adamantly disputed birther claims saying “…I had my health director, who is a physician by background, go personally view the birth certificate in the birth records of the Department of Health.” Lingle added, ” … The president was in fact born at Kapi’olani Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii. And that’s just a fact.” link
• Hawaii’s current Democratic Governor Neil Abercrombie stated that their investigation showed that OBama’s birth certificate was written in their archives
• Two separate newspapers the Honolulu Adviser and the Honolulu Star Bulletin both printed birth announcements for Obama on August 13 and August 14, 1961 respectively. The information in the announcements they state that they got directly from the Hospitals and the announcements match including the address they list for Obama’s parents which in turn match State records. The Honolulu Adviser in response to the controversy went to their microfilmed archives, dug up the announcement and posted a copy online.
• Politifact ranks Trump’s claim that nobody who went to school with Obama knew him as Pants on Fire false and cites evidence of over a dozen students and teachers who knew him during elementary school and many many more who knew him during later educational experiences.
• “Joshua Wisch, a spokesman for the Hawaii attorney general’s office, noted that a public index of vital records, available for inspection in a bound volume at the Health Department’s Office of Health Status Monitoring, lists a male child named “Obama II, Barack Hussein” as having been born in the state.”  “Wisch, the spokesman for the attorney general’s office, said state law does not in fact permit the release of “vital records,” including an original “record of live birth” — even to the individual whose birth it records. “It’s a Department of Health record and it can’t be released to anybody,” he said. Nor do state laws have any provision that authorizes such records to be photocopied, Wisch said. If Obama wanted to personally visit the state health department, he would be permitted to inspect his birth record. But if he or anybody else wanted a copy of their birth records, they would be told to fill out the appropriate state form and receive back the same computer generated “certification of live birth” form that everybody else gets — which is exactly what Obama did four years ago. ” link
• Claims that Obama spent $2 million hiding his birth certificate are false. They use the total number for all the President’s legal fees and conflate it with those used regarding birtherism
• None of 17 law suits filed by December of 2008 (which might explain some of those legal fees) have resulted in any relief for plantiffs.
• The argument that Obama’s paternal step-grandmother said he was born in Kenya is misleading. The full transcript and audio of the encounter with her reveals she repeatedly stated that Obama was born in Hawaii even after being badgered relentlessly to get her to say otherwise. The video was then cut off to make it seem like she said otherwise when in reality she was not understanding the question from the translator the first time it was asked.
• The Kenyan Birth-Certificate release was a lie and a forgery. It shows The Republic of Kenya which didn’t exist at the time and a blogger admitted to creating the forgery based off an Australian birth certificate.
• The argument that anyone can get a Short Form Birth Certificate from the State of Hawaii even if you were not born in Hawaii is misleading. While it’s true that anyone can do that, NOT anyone could get one that lists one’s place of birth as Hawaii. You actually have to be born in Hawaii to get a short form birth certificate that lists Hawaii a your place of birth, which Obama was.
• It’s arguable that even IF Obama was not born in the United States he’d still meet the “natural born citizen” requirement of the constitution because legally “natural born” does not mean “born on US soil”. Having one parent who is a US citizen may be sufficient.
• Obama did have dual citizenship with the United Kingdom and Colonies through his father but per their laws since he did not swear an oath of allegiance to Kenya and renounce his US citizenship upon reaching adulthood, therefore he lost his other citizenship.
• Having a parent who is not a US citizen or having dual citizenship does not disqualify one for President. If it did, President Chester A. Arthur would also not have been eligible.
• Even if the President were suddenly proven not to have been born in the US it would not change the fact that he lived most of his life here, it would not change his basic views or beliefs in the least, and it wouldn’t make him any less American in values or principles. It also would not change the fact that 53% of the American population voted for him and that he was officially elected by the electoral college and that he swore the Oath of Office as required by the Constitution. It wouldn’t make him any better or worse a President. In short where you are born does NOT determine what kind of person you are, nor should people be judged by their place of birth. And it is not fair to hold this President to a different standard of proving his “Americanness” than you hold others… including Arnold Schwarzenegger or John McCain.
• If Obama had found a way around the law and released his Long Form Birth Certificate there’s no doubt the conspiracy theorests would say “what took him so long” and cliam it was a forgery anyway.  Indeed the birther mess was only fueled more by Obama’s release of his short form birth certificate. It was after that that the conspiracies exploded.
• Most of the people who originated the Birther claims are in fact known to follow other major conspiracies: 

“Not surprisingly, almost all of the people who’ve been most prominent in pushing this story have a history of conspiracist thought. There’s Jerome Corsi, who’s best known as the co-author of the book that launched the Swift boat vets; he’s a chief proponent of the claim that the government is secretly planning to form a “North American Union” with Canada and Mexico. Philip Berg, who filed the lawsuit that had until now drawn the most public attention, is a 9/11 Truther. Andy Martin, who’s credited with starting the myth that Obama is a Muslim and has been intimately involved in the birth certificate mess as well, was denied admission to the Illinois bar because of a psychiatric evaluation that showed he had “moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character.” He also has a long history of anti-Semitism. Robert Schulz, who’s responsible for the ads in the Tribune, is a fairly notorious tax protester. In 2007, a federal judge ordered Schulz to shutter his Web site because he and his organization were, in the words of the Justice Department’s Tax Division, using the site to promote “a nationwide tax-fraud scheme.”"   link

• If President Obama was lying about anything related to his birth it’s nearly inconceivable that during the vetting process or the two vicious campaigns he went through none of it would have come out. Both Hilary Clinton and John McCain had people researching deeply into the President’s past trying to dig up anything that could give them an advantage. Why wouldn’t they have found something? Do people really think Donald Trump’s people would be better?
• If the evidence that there was some kind of issue with the President’s birth was credible, why then have nearly all news outlets ignored it since 2008 after it was disputed the first time until now when Donald Trump has brought it back up without adding a single shred of new evidence?

 

Such are the kinds of arguments your puny minds have grasped on to refute the obvious truth. I will not explain to you why all of the above is foolish human nonsense. Here goes.

BARACK OBAMA WAS NOT A US CITIZEN!!!

There. Now you must believe. All of our research has shown that weak human minds are convinced by those who shout the loudest.  Also I know that you.. ur WE humans believe greatly in being polite and taking people at their word. This is my word. You must take it.

Thus I have won. No. I am #Winning. We are all #Winning. After all I am Nephyo, the greatest blogger to ever live and I have written a lengthy blog post. This should put this issue to rest and solve the crises for good.

I Thank You and my Overlords thank you for your patience and consideration. SUBMIT TO US!!! Peace Out.

Kellen

There is a distinction that I’ve always thought was rather apparent but of late it seems like more and more I read people who don’t acknowledge it. So I thought I’d write about my understanding of this distinction in its totality and you can tell me if my understanding is wrong, incomplete, or flawed.

The idea is fairly simple. There is a fundamental difference between saying that a particular action is one that you ought to do and saying that a particular action is something that you are allowed to do.  We can have discussions about whether or not some particular behavior ought to be engaged in  and we can have discussions about whether or not society ought to allow a particular behavior to be engaged in but those are fundamentally different conversations.

Ought is about what’s morally right, what’s Just, what’s appropriate, what’s good, what’s decent, what’s compassionate, or what results in the best outcomes.  Allowed is about what a particular authority makes possible or viable.  Usually the authority is the State, but it can also be your boss or your parents or guardians or someone else who you give the ability to determine the bounds of your behavior in a given context.

Why does this distinction matter?  

Because it’s important to recognize that these two concepts vary completely independently even when talking about the authority of the State.  It’s entirely possible for an action to be one that you ought NOT do but which you are entirely allowed to do and that you ought to be allowed to do. That’s very very common.   For example, in my last post I posted a video showing the behavior of protesters protesting a gathering of the ICNA, a muslim group accused of being radically fundamentalist and terrorist supporters, who were meeting to have a dinner to raise money for women’s shelters and to relieve homelessness and hunger in the United States. Now I did not have any kind of point when posting that video. I just wanted to show people how people were acting. However, if I were to have a point, if I had bothered to comment on it my thoughts would have been simply this:  Those people ought not be doing that. Protesters are fine and acceptable even when you are protesting something I think doesn’t deserve to be protested. But those protests were simply wrong. They weren’t just voicing their disagreements, they were terrorizing and attacking people, trying to make people, including children feel unwanted, hated, and despised.

I think that behavior is morally wrong. If we’re having a discussion about right and wrong and good and bad things to do I will always 100% be against that type of protest. In fact, I think it’s a very good thing to try and get as many people as possible in the world to have the requisite level of basic human decency to understand that that behavior is unquestionably deplorably wrong.

But if we’re having a conversation about whether they ought to be allowed to engage in that behavior? Well that’s different. I’m equally as adamant that they ought TO be allowed to engage in that protest. Society should not ban it. No government agency should implement any kind of punishment to them for doing it. I think if it’s a moral problem then it’s a moral problem for the people to solve independently from relying upon the force-based authority of the State.

That’s not an uncommon thing. There’s lots of people who think that a lot of things are wrong but should still be allowed.  For me that’s actually my default position on the majority of things.  I believe that the authority of the State should be pretty narrowly construed. It should only not allow behaviors that are dangerous to civilization itself or that directly interfere with people’s ability to live free or pursue their safety and happiness. So yes you ought not be allowed to murder, rape, torture, or enslave. I think it makes sense for the State to be setup so that it does everything within its power to prevent those things from ever happening.  But beyond that there’s literally millions of things I think are wrong but I absolutely want the State to have nothing to do with. I want no authority figure preventing people from doing it. I just want to convince people not to do it.

I’m actually more extreme on this then the current state of the law. For example, I think indecent exposure laws are kinda silly. If someone wants to go outside stark naked I think they should be completely allowed to do that. Then we should have as a society the discussion about whether or not people ought to go outside stark naked. When is appropriate? When is it dangerous?

Likewise even though I completely believe in global warming and I think that one important step toward ending global warming is switching to more efficient resources like cfl and lcd light bulbs, I differ from some 80% of the populace that don’t care if we ban incandescent light bulbs. I thinkpeople ought not use incandescent light bulbs… but I’m pretty leary of the idea  of banning them altogether. I think people should be allowed to make and sell and buy incandescent ligh bulbs… I just think nobody should.  That’s why to me I would much rather see a solution that raised the price of incandescent light bulbs to be commiserate with the harm caused by their greater energy use and that’s contribution to global warming. Likewise I like the idea of raising people’s awareness of the great benefits of cfl and lcd bulbs which I think is likely to result in people buying them voluntarily and has already been doing so.

That being said if it comes down to the question of the survival of hte human race… well then yeah I’d say that’s a case where it’s ok for the State to use its authority to make it so we aren’t even allowed to purchase inefficient bulbs. I just don’t think we’re quite at that point yet. I think there are other areas where the State should focus its authority to stave off the threat of global warming.

That doesn’t mean I’ll weep the day the incandescent light bulb ban goes into effect. I’m not going to be outh there protesting it. I think it’s wrong… but I also think that it’s just not that significant enough t o be wroth fighting.  And while I wouldn’t go so far as to say you ought not protest that ban… I also think there’s a lot better things that you probably could be doing instead.

The other side happens too.  There are things that we ought to do that we ought not be allowed to do. Though this side is a lot harder to illustrate because it is a lot less common.

One  example requires looking at the narrower view of “allowed” that relies upon the authority of parents.  For example, I’d say a young teenager who lives in a very dangerous neighborhood probably ought not be allowed to go out roaming the streats at night. I think that “allowance” makes perfect sense as a rule and it’s one that parents have every right to implement and in the general case should be obeyed.

However…  I can concoct many circumstances where a young teenager actually OUGHT to disobey that rule. That is there are cases where even though they aren’t allowed, it’s nevertheless the right thing to do. Take for example, a teenager’s young friend is threatening to commit suicide one night and the teenager is the only one who would be able to talk them  out of it but only if they go to them immediately.  I’d say then that teenager certainly cannot be said to have done something wrong by going to his or her friend and talking them through their problem and getting them not to kill themselves even though they broke the rule of what is and is not allowed. That’s not to say that sneaking out of the house is necessairly the BEST course of action. IT’s simply a morally acceptable course of action. There might be other actions that are even better, like talking to one’s parents about it if one knows their parents are the kinds of people who would be understanding about it, or calling the police.  What is morally UNACCEPTABLE  is doing nothing when one knows someone they care about’s life is on the line or using the fact of their “allowance” as an excuse. But it’s a complex situation and of course it’s never entirely certain whether someone might be commiting suicide or how best to react to it., so I’m not trying to be overly judgmental here. My point is only that there could be a circumstance where breaking the rule and sneaking out of the house at night might be morally justifiable without deligitimizing the rule itself.

Likewise we can use an example at a State level.  We often have rules as a society to prevent certain protests in certain areas because they become too disruptive to the functioning of the society or they put people at risk. Sometimes I think those ordinances are overly restrictive and we can argue and have debate on how restrictive they should be.  BUT I would never argue that no such rule is ever justifiable. I think that you actually OUGHT to have rules about that. There should be certain types of protest that the State shouldn’t allow you to do willy nilly just for the fun of it. Your freedom to protest can impinge upon a great many other people’s freedom and also at the same time put yours and other people’s lives at risk. So it’s fine for the State whose job it is to protect people to have *some* rules  about what kinds of protests you are and are not allowed to do.

That being said… I still believe that there is a moral right to protest that exceeds the Rights protected by the State.  And I think if there is something that is important enough then you really OUGHT to break those rules about what you are allowed to do and protest anyway.  You should engage in civil disobedience if you’re government is becoming a dictatorship or your freedoms are being eroded or your people are being treated like slaves or there is a great inequity or injustice in society .You absolutely OUGHT to protest that. And the form your protest should take sometimes really OUGHT to break the rules of what is allowed. That doesn’t necessarily mean violence. But it could certainly mean going where you aren’t allowed to go and refusing to leave and forcing the police to pick you up bodily and move you.    That might mean chaining yourself to the bulldozer or the fence. That might mean covering yourself in oil. That might mean laying down on the ground in the middle of the street. That might mean occupying Tahir Square for weeks  on end demadning that your dictator shut down. Those are morally right things to do even though I think it’s also morally appropriate for them to not be allowed under normal circumstances.

Most situations aren’t that simple though. So let’s consider two case studies to better illustrate my point.

Smoking.

Smoking illustrates best how what we know can change our opinions about both what people OUGHT to do and what they OUGHT to be ALLOWED to do.  
At some point in the not too distant past we didn’t know the harm of cigarettes and tobacco, nor, one might argue, were they as dangerous as they are today (due to cigarette company manipulation).  You might argue that  SOME PEOPLE always knew but for the sake of argument let’s say that there was a time when that ignorance was nearly complete and certainly unproven.

During that time then I think we as a society had a default assumption both that you were allowed to smoke AND that it was NOT morally wrong to smoke. Some people may have considered smoking differing degrees of distasteful but most people didn’t think you were fundamentally breaking any moral rule or code by engaging in the act of smoking. You weren’t causing any harm unless you were deliberately doing it to make people around you uncomfortable, but even if you were while that might be very slightly immoral nobody would have ever imagined banning smoking on that basis.

Now our understanding of smoking has changed greatly as have our rules. We now know smoking causes considerable harm to yourself aND to people around you.  We also know that supporting cigarette companies means supporting some of the most deceitful and dishonest and immoral companeis to have ever existed. We know that cigarettes were deliberately manufactured to become more addictive and advertised in a deceitful manner in order to deliberately ensare younger people into smoking. And we know that was done by people who KNEW the negative health effects of smoking and who HID that knowledge from the public and tried to obscure and confuse the issue purely for the sake of profit.

Given that… today when we ask whether or not you OUGHT to smoke I think there’s pretty broad moral support to the proposition that the answer is NO. You ought NOT smoke. It’s just not a good thing to do morally.

That doesn’t mean you can’t mitigate the degree to which it is wrong. For example it is less wrong if you smoke by yourself at home then if you smoke in a nursery home filled with babies whose lungs are just developing. It’s LESS wrong if you buy cigarettes from companies that have better track records. And it’s LESS wrong if you smoke less and if you’re trying to quit. And it’s LESS wrong if for whatever reason you have a mental disability that is helped by not smoking.  IT’s less wrong if you don’t deliberately blow the smoke out into people’s faces to try and force them to enhale it. It’s less wrong if you don’t liter and throw away the bud.
But note the formulation there. It’s pretty much ALWAYS at least a little wrong. Just sometimes you can make it only minimally wrong and other times it’s downright despicable.  

However,  when it comes to whether or not it should be allowed well that’s where society is having a hard time drawing the line. Some wnat to ban smoking outright. Others want to create restricted rules as to when it should or should not be allowed.  Still others think it’s a personal choice and should always be allowed. I tend to lean toward the middle view which seems to be the one society is coalescing around.  

In my opinion, smoking ought to be allowed when it’s being done privately within your own home.  You should be allowed to do anything you want to yourself no matter how harmful.  we just should as a moral society try to discourage immoral actions of one antoher. But we shouldn’t judge. We ALL do some things that aren’t morally right. I think it’d be a pretty boring world if we didn’t.

When it comes to public places where your smoking potentailly causes harm to others I think the question is harder. I think it makes sense to restrict it in areas where people are vulnerable such as hospitals, nursery homes and schools. I think it also makes sense for the State to set  an example by banning it in places like court rooms and legislative buildings.   I think it makes less sense to ban it in very large radiuses around all public facilities or all parks.  I think it makes  less sense to ban it in public restaurants (not kids restaurants) and hotels in dedicated smoking sections. And I think it makes even less sense to ban it in places like bars, strip joints, and casinos wehre there is sort of an expectation of smoking especially if they also have dedicated smoking and non-smoking areas.   

That doesn’t mean I would be super opposed to rules banning  smoking in those areas too.  It just means that I think the argument for banning it in those areas is a lot less strong. People have a reasonable degree of right to cause harm to themselves AND each other when they are willing knowing aware adults . As long as it doesn’t become the case where a person who does NOT want to be exposed to smoking has NO options then I think the law can be as loose as possible.

So that’s smoking.  How about something more controversial.

Abortion.

Abortion is another complex issue when it comes to both morality and authority and it’s certainly very unsettled.  Certainly many people will disagree with my assessment but my understanding of right and wrong with regard to abortion deeply revolves around these issues of allowance and morality together with what we know and don’t know and what’s knowable and not knowable.   Here’s my take on it.  I think abortion basically falls into four categories.

1. Very early.
Super early on, as in the time period when it can be argued that no real “pregnancy” has occurred and we start having debates about whether a certain procedure or pill counts as an “abortion” or simply as a contraceptive… during that period I am very certain of my opinion on both fronts.   I think whether you call it abortion or something else… causing that collection of cells deliberately or accidentally to not develop into a living human beings is totally both NOT morally wrong AND  totally ought to be ALLOWED.  And I think in a lot of cases where you are uncertain about whether you can raise the child well or if there are medical reasons to believe there would be great risks in carriyng a pregnancy to term, I can even say thaI think you probably OUGHT to get an abortion. I think there are cases where getting an abortion is totally the right thing to do.

2. Very late.
Super late in a pregnancy, say just before the child is about to be born… and indeed in a situation in the early time just after pregnancy I’m pretty sure that the reverse is true.  Whatever else  can be said about ending the life of a child under those circumstances I think you certainly cannot say that it is morally RIGHT to do it. And I think as a society it basically makes pefect sense to make that not something you are ALLOWED to do except under very rare extraordinary circumstances and even then not based on your own authority and will.

I can maybe concoct a story complex enough and a sob story deep enough that it might make you say ok let the person have that abortion on the day before the child was born…  but it would have to be one helluva story.  I think intuitvely it makes sense for society to make an assumption that at some point that collection of cells has promoted to an equal rights human being and I don’t think that point is at the point of birth. I think it happens somewhat before birth.
That being said I do think we need more mechanisms to allow children that are forced to be born under those circumstances can be assured to live a decent life.

3. Early.
Early on but beyond the point where we are arguing about whehter ro not that particular collection of cells has any chance of developing into a human being, but well before there’s any hope whatsoever of that collection of cells survivng outside of the mother without enormous intervention, then my opinion changes.  I still am mostly convinced that you ought be ALLOWED to get an abortion.  I have zero doubts about that. I don’t think you should be forced to preserve the growth of a potential entity that is wholly dependent on you.  But as to whether or not it’s something you OUGHT to do morally I think that’s a harder question. I can’t say with a certainty that it’s NOT wrong nor can I say with a certainty that it’s NOT right. I think the jury is still out on it. I’m not at all smart enough to say which is which. So in short, my answer is I don’t know what’s right. But I’m positive it should be allowed no matter what its moral status is becuase there are far too many circumstnaces where I think forcing the child to be born is more morally wrong than the abortion might be.

4. Late.
And likewise my position reverses when we’re talking about a fetus that isn’t fully developed but that we can say has a decent chance of continued survival and growth outside of the womb. given current technology.  Here, I think again I’m pretty sure we can probably say that it’s not morally right to have an abortion. The only real question is whether  or not carrying the child to term might be MORE morally wrong. And I can think of many situations where I think it very easily could be more morally wrong to do so. I think things have to be taken into account like the life of the mother, rape, incest, the chances oft he child’s survival, and what kind of life the child is likely to lead. But I think even if the grave decision to terminate the pregnancy is made… I don’t think it should be done lightly or trivially. I don’t think we should pretend that something bad didn’t happen.   

On the other hand… when talking about what society ought to allow in late abortions I am not sure at all. I think sometimes they should be allowed and I think sometimes it might make sense to restrict them or to create control or limitations to make it more difficult. But they have to be RATIONAL controls and just and fair ones.  They can’t be insulting guilt trips designed to manipualte and guilt trip women into not getting an abortion.Tthat’s wrong.  IF that’s the only option people can come up with… then I’d rather just make it 100% allowed then to have society treat people that.  But I think we do have a reasonable system in most States that restricts abortions in the third trimester except in cases of rape, incest, or for the life of the mother.  I think that’s a perfectly reasonable compromise, provided you trust people to make those determinations fairly. And I think as knowledge and understanding and opiniosn change the nature of that compromise can shift and change over time and that’s fine.  I just don’t believe there is an easy certainty abotu what ought and ought not be allowed by the State under those circumstances. You have to balance the rights of the mother against the rights of the fetus.  I don’t think that’s easy. But I reject the easy overy simplistic answers about how best to draw those lines.

The point of all of this is simply to illustrate that questions of how we should order society wtih regard to allowance and disallowance are very different questions than questions about how we should as individuals choose to behave. Indeed, one of my main beefs with a lot of fundamentalist religions is their tendency to what to obscure or eliminate the differences between these two questions. They have a tendency to want the State to enforce ONLY their particular vision of what people ought or ought not do in their daily lives.

And that has huge implications when it comes to questions with regard to our basic freedoms. I think thoes freedoms are deemed “basic” because they represent the minimal degree to which  the State ought to protest  our ability to behave in certain ways. We need to be allowed to assemble, to gather, to speak our mind, to have a free press, and to practice religion no matter what. That’s really important and should never be broken simply because someone or some group decides that the way in which you exercise that right is morally wrong.

But that doesn’t mean we should *ignore* questions about moral rightness.  On the contrary I think that’s what hte public sphere of debate is FOR. We argue and complain about whether each other’s behaviors are morally “right”. We criticize each other and mock one another when we do wrong things and praise each other and clap each others on the back when we think that what we’re doing is right. And I think we HAVE to do that. I think it’s incredibly important that when we see reprehensible behavior we feel no fear about POINTING IT OUT. It’s the silence of well meaning people that allows atrocities to happen.

But the way in which you go about pointing that out may well be constitutionally protected but that does not mean it’s inherently immune to any form of moral critique. If you criticize someone, they have a right to criticize back and nobody should sling around and pretend that because of those critiques someones fundamental rights are somehow being abridged. That last is just a childish attempt to intimidate people into letting you say and do whatever you want whenever you want without being criticized or questioned or challenged on it. And that too is, in my humble opinion, very very wrong.  

Though of course you’re still allowed to do it.

This is one of the most disturbing videos I’ve ever seen. It speaks for itself.

 

“It’s Martin Luther King Day!”

“Hey, you’re right! What an awesome holiday!”

“Wait you know he was one of us right?”

“WHAT? No way, that dude was TOTALLY on our side!”

“Puh-lease, everybody knows he would have hated you people.”

“Right, and you think he’d like you any better?”

“My POINT is that if you look at his writings and speeches he clearly believed the same things we believe.”

“Maybe at first, but by the end he was totally on board with OUR Philosophy!”

“Was not!”

“Was too!”

“MLK is MINE!”

“NUH UH HE’S MINE!”

“OK, this argument is getting us nowhere. Let’s talk about something else.”

“How about that terribly tragic shooting that took place the other day.”

“Yeah, that was truly a shameful tragedy. If only we could have prevented it.”

“I agree, but unfortunately that Loughner guy was a total lunatic. Not much we can do about that.”

“Agreed. He was coocko for cocoa puffs. But…”

“But what?”

“But… you know you kinda have to admit he was more on your side than mine.”

“Oh you have GOT to be kidding me! I was just thinking about how totally obvious it is that he’s on YOUR side!”

“Wh… what? My side? I’ve never heard anything more ludicrous in my life.”

“Look at the books he favorited. They are so totally your side books.”

“Please, your side reads some of those books just as much as our side. Besides, if you listen to the crazy stuff he spouts in that video you can’t help but admit it sounds more like you than us.”

“No way, it sounds exactly like you guys to me!”

“Have you ever even listened to us? We reject everything about those videos!”

“Well SO DO WE!”

“Oh just stop arguing and take him. He’s obviously one of you!”

“No way! We don’t want him! You can have him!”

“Well we aren’t taking him! No way, no how!”

“Okay, okay wait. I’ve got an idea. We’ll take Loughner but on one condition. You guys have to own up to the fact that Timothy McVeigh was always on your side!”

“Timothy McVeigh! You can’t be serious!”

“Of course I’m serious. One psychotic mass murderer for another. Fair’s fair.”

“Timothy McVeigh is worth at least 10 Loughners. No… if we take McVeigh you have to take Loughner, the Beltway Sniper, that guy who was sending anthrax through the mail, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad who shot up that military base, the guy who killed Dr. Tiller, Saddam Hussein, and oh yeah Osama Bin Laden.”

o_O

“Okay, okay, we’ll take the guy who killed Dr. Tiller. But the rest still stands.”

“No no no no no no. If we’re talking Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden you’re going to have to own up to some bigger fishes than that. For Hussein, I’d say you have to take at least someone like Mussolini. And for Osama bin Laden, I’m pretty sure the only fair trade is Adolf Hitler.”

“HITLER!?!?!”

“Yes that’s right.”

“Hitler is worth a thousand bin Laden’s any day! No if you want us to take Hitler we’re going to have to up the anti a LOT. I’d say you need to take Genghis Kahn-”

“No problem there he was pretty bad ass.”

“For a psychopath. Sure.”

“Anyway continue.”

“As I was saying you get Kahn, and also Pinochet, Attila the Hun, Pol Pot, Nero, Caligula, Ivan the Terrible, Rasputin, Charles Manson, Goebbels, Josef Mengele, Henry VIII, Kim Jung Il, and Jack the Ripper.”

“Now wait just a minute! If we’re going to take all of those people, then you HAVE to take Stalin too. Oh and on top of that I think we should get to keep Martin Luther King.”

“Fine. We’ll take Stalin if we must. But for Martin Luther King further negotiation is necessary.”

“I’m listening.”

“Alright. So you want Martin Luther King, I’m thinking that we want Jesus.”

“But–”

“Now hold on I wasn’t quite done. We want Jesus. So we’re willing to not just let you have King, but we’ll even throw in Ghandi, Malcom X, Rosa Parks, and Nelson Mandela.”

“Hmmm… That’s nearly acceptable. But we also want Abraham Lincoln. We’re willing to trade you any and all other US Presidents from Abraham Lincoln’s reign on up.”

“Not bad, not bad… We get FDR, JFK, LBJ, Reagan, Eisenhower…”

“If you want em you got em. But let’s talk other areas. We’d also like to have every famous scientist from Benjamin Franklin to Isaac Newton to Einstein on our side.”

“That’s quite a lot to ask for…”

“I know but name your price.”

“OK, if you get every famous scientist then we first of all get every famous transformative religious figure not already mentioned–”

“Done!”

“WAIT! I wasn’t done yet.”

“Okay, okay go on.”

“We also get famous authors. Literary figures like Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, Chaucer, Tolstoy, Emerson, Wiesel, George Orwell, Maia Angelou the whole works.”

“That’s quite a lot to ask.”

“You’re getting Einstein and Hawkings for Christ sake!”

“True… but still….”

“Okay, okay you drive a hard bargain. We get the whole set of famous economists and psychology people Freud, Jung and the likes, and we’ll throw in for you every other major philosopher in history from Aristotle to Kant to Rawls to Locke to Nietsche.”

“Now you’re talking.”

“So we have a deal?”

“Almost, but one last thing needs to be settled. You see we covered recent presidents but we still haven’t taken care of Thomas Jefferson. We want him on our side too.”

“That’s possible but to get him we’re going to need to have every other founding father on our side.”

“Okay, but you also have to take King George III.”

“hmmm. Alright I think that’s acceptable.”

“Sweet! Then we have a deal?”

“Deal.”

“Done.”

*they shake hands*

 

And so it was that all historical arguments were finally ended for all time.

Bumped in honor of the holiday. Original Post Date: January 18, 2010 11:17 PM. Also added video:

 

In this entry I discuss The Bible, Martin Luther King, and Deepak Chopra amongst other things.

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