No Big Surprise: Emotions may drive politics

In 1992, Time magazine reported an amazing discovery: Women and men are different. Only adults were shocked at this stunning discovery. A syndicated Washington Post story carried in the Detroit News proposes another shocking hypothesis government will undoubtedly fund studies for with millions of taxpayer dollars: Emotions may drive politics.

Duh. How's that for emotion?

What they're planning to do won't come cheap.

"But social psychologists ... have begun to study political behavior using such specialized tools as sophisticated psychological tests and brain scans."

Emotions are great motivators which is why skillful speakers use them to manipulate the masses. When people succumb to emotions they stop thinking rationally. Wait.. that's too kind. When people succumb to emotions they stop thinking. Period. If people thought instead of felt Muslims wouldn't suicide-bomb themselves and everyone around them into the after life. If people thought instead of felt they wouldn't burn homes and loot shops whenever their favorite team won a championship, or lost a championship, or a referee's call or jury verdict didn't go their way. If people thought instead of felt they wouldn't be so easily herded into mobs and lead to slaughter. Moooo!

As valuable as emotions may be for getting things started that might not otherwise (like the American Revolution) there are some things better left un-started. Like suicide bombs, looting, burning, overturning police cars, or voting for Democrats (note to self: consider removing Democrats to avoid rousing emotions). Emotions eventually wear off (except in the Middle East) but after they lift us from our easy chairs into action logic and reasoning sustain us.

Already we know the majority of college students don't understand credit card offers and their cognitive skills are sinking. Is it any wonder many American's can't reason their way politically and must resort to feelings? All they have left to guide them through life is their feelings. We've substituted self-esteem for self discipline. Individual responsibility, once a hallmark of the American psyche, has been supplanted with entitlements and civil suits. And moral relativism is more appealing than accountability because everyone's OK when measured by relativism's individualized yardsticks. Do American's really want Dr. Phil and Oprah as political consultants or worse -- candidates?

Social psychologists should save their (read: our) money and time and study something that truly escapes logic: If everyone did it before and still does it, why is everyone upset at Britney Spears?

Civil Rights Leaders: "The first thing you got to do is get mad."

The Detroit News' article, Civil rights advocates organize for action, reported that 500 people gathered in Detroit's Northwest Activity Center to get mad -- and it wasn't over a cartoon. I suppose that's the good news. Mary Francis Berry, former chair of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, believes a key ingredient to combating discrimination is, I don't make this up, more discrimination. She used stunning logic to motivate the attendees, "The first thing you got to do is get mad." This must mean Muslims throughout the Middle East and Europe are on the verge of authoring some ground breaking anti-discrimination legislation of their own. According to Ms. Berry they've taken the first step.

All this over confusion about what the word /discrimination/ means. One of the definitions from www.dictionary.com states:

"Treatment or consideration based on class or category rather than individual merit; partiality or prejudice: racial discrimination; discrimination against foreigners."

"Treatment or consideration" is important language. The ballot proposal uses more specific language, exploiting the common pejorative use of 'discrimination' and making clear 'treatment or consideration' includes favoritism:

"The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin.."

Ms. Berry is mad she may have to give up her hard fought-for "preferential treatment" for any group she may be a member of but is apparently oblivious the other side of the coin is "discrimination against" other groups. Instead of the coin having a single value, "no discrimination," she sees a black and white side. It's OK to give preferential treatment to blacks and we presume women, and it's OK to discriminate against non-blacks and men. When the referee flips the coin she wants "preferential treatment" for her group on both sides. Those mobilizing against the ballot initiative devalue individual merit and instead categorize our state's citizens by the color of their skin. Prejudice and discrimination is OK as long as it benefits Ms. Berry's groups. That's a prejudiced and xenophobic due process that doesn't exist in the US constitution. The Bill of Rights and the 14th amendment guarantee and protect individual rights, not group rights.

Or does it?

Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O'Conner, champion of progressive constitutional interpretation, seems to agree with Ms. Berry.

“We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today."

- GRUTTER V. BOLLINGER, http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-241.ZO.html

Here Justice O'Conner exceeds liberal expectations by interpreting the US Constitution not just for what it meant to say (apparently the framers made clear their real intentions to her with the help of Dionne Warwick's psychic friends) but discovered sections with expiration dates like the pizza coupons I find in my TV Guide insert. Of course, none of them are good for 25 years and usually expire minutes before I arrive to pick up my dinner.

In his dissenting opinion, the much older Chief Justice Rehnquist recognized the hypocrisy that escaped O'Conner, Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer:

In practice, the Law School’s program bears little or no relation to its asserted goal of achieving “critical mass.” From 1995 through 2000, the Law School admitted between 1,130 and 1,310 students. Of those, between 13 and 19 were Native American, between 91 and 108 were African-Americans, and between 47 and 56 were Hispanic. If the Law School is admitting between 91 and 108 African-Americans in order to achieve “critical mass,” thereby preventing African-American students from feeling “isolated or like spokespersons for their race,” one would think that a number of the same order of magnitude would be necessary to accomplish the same purpose for Hispanics and Native Americans.

In a famous Abbot and Costello skit, Bud Abbot flips a coin and tells Lou, "Heads I win, tails you lose." Maybe that's where Mary Francis Berry found inspiration for her revivals. Come election day, Michigan citizens won't be so easily hoodwinked.

This fall, without any anger, I'll vote to approve the civil rights initiative.

Counterfeits and cults

During employee orientation at a bank I once worked for, I was told how bank tellers would be trained to recognize counterfeit money. It wasn't what I expected. Instead of spending time with Treasury Agents and learning the intricacies of counterfeits, ink recipes, border variations, and serialization, they studied the real thing. They were told to rub it, smell it, crumple it, feel it, and generally to awash all the senses with genuine green backs. I think they did just about everything short of licking it. The obvious point here is you can't recognize fakes by studying fakes. You can best recognize fakes by knowing what the real thing is.

I was reminded of this a couple years ago while listening to a radio interview with a deprogrammer. Deprogramming is a curious occupation. These are the folks that rescue people from cults and help them recover from the brain washing. The interviewer asked, "How can you recognize a cult?" The response was interesting. "You can't recognize cults except by being familiar with major world religions." Again, the best way to spot a fake is to know the real deal.

By this yardstick Scientology looks more like a cult than a major world religion. The Roman Catholic Church doesn't threaten lawsuits against anyone that says something bad about it. Not since the Spanish, Peruvian, and Mexican Inquisitions (1478-1571) have Roman Catholic representatives held people against their will or tortured them to convert them to Catholicism or dissuade them from leaving the church. Neither do they hold copyrights on the bible or criminalize its reproduction.

Another thing major world religions don't do is terrorism. Jews don't strap explosives to themselves to blow up marketplaces. Buddhists don't kidnap and decapitate. Hindus don't issue death threats against authors of uncomplimentary fiction. Sikhs don't encourage the killing of non-Sikhs and the elimination of entire cultures, and Christians don't treat women as property or discourage their education.

Only the followers of Khomeini, Bin Laden, and other radical Islamicists do these things. Recently an editorial cartoon published in a Danish newspaper has inspired all kinds of protests, threats, and vandalism against anyone responsible for publishing the cartoon, associated with publishing it, and apparently anyone or webpage that's Danish and more recently German (since Die Zeit republished the cartoon).

One of my favorite quotes is, "You can tell the size of a person by the size of what bothers them." That applies equally well to religions as it does individuals. If a cartoon, book, or movie upsets you so much, how strong is your faith? Jesus encouraged his followers to turn the other cheek and that they would be blessed whenever they were persecuted for His sake. Those are big words for a big religion. If your faith can't endure a cartoon then you've already caricatured it yourself without the Danish.

Why I'm OK with same-sex marriage

The proponents of same-sex and traditional marriages are needlessly in opposition to each other. Both sides have forgotten the purpose of marriage and the government has become a rudderless accomplice in states' battles for same-sex marriage and similarly wrongheaded defense-of-marriage amendments in both state and federal constitutions. If both sides understood what a compelling government interest is and marriage's benefit to society all parties could agree on how best to put their money where their mouths are (or should be) -- tax policy.

The more enlightened we become the dumber we seem to get -- and not in the good the-more-we-know-the-more-we-know-we-don't-know way. I'm talking good old fashioned dumb epitomized by, "It depends on what the meaning of 'is' is." How can an institution like marriage, sanctioned by religions and governments around the world for thousands of years suddenly be misunderstood? This kind of infectious dumbing presents symptoms in only the most enlightened individuals. The most recent outbreak occurred in Massachusetts' Supreme Court when the court ruled in favor of same-sex marriages, saying the state could not withhold from same-sex couples the rights and privileges of marriage.

I guess it depends on what the meaning of 'marriage' is.

"Old” marriage is a man and woman living together and raising children. Raising children requires parents make sacrifices to feed, clothe, instruct, discipline, and socialize their children to become productive citizens. Parental responsibilities interfere with careers, incomes, education, socializing, recreation, and limit parents' involvement in other extracurricular activities as commitment to their children's activities take precedence over their own. Children become adults, soldiers, enter the labor pool to replace and support retiring, older workers, and pay taxes. In exchange for raising children to adults government recognizes marriages as unique social contracts between a man, a woman, and society that benefits everyone. On behalf of society government taxed families at lower rates, provided deductions for dependents, schools, and supported parents' rights to make decisions on behalf of their minor children. Without children civilizations can't outlive their citizens. A society's health and stability benefits all its members. In essence, children are the raw material society willingly trades benefits and privileges for to guarantee its survival -- making it a compelling government interest.

“New” marriage is consenting adults wanting the advantages of “old” marriage without the attendant benefits to society. Without children a marriage is only adults cohabiting to optimize living expenses.

Tax policy is one instrument government uses to influence its citizens' behavior. The antique definition of marriage and the tax policies that favored it have become increasingly dysfunctional as the nation's demographics changed and the understanding of marriage's purpose atrophied. The imbalance between the two and confusion between the practical and legal applications of marriage has created a rift between those petitioning to legalize “new” marriage and those wishing to protect “old” marriage. For all these reasons the policies crafted to benefit families, and tax policies in particular, have become a tools so blunt the damage caused is indistinguishable from what they seek to construct.

Government used to understand the value of “old” marriage but weakening parental rights legislation and tax policy neglect demonstrates progressive retarding over the last 50 years. In 1948 the federal tax burden on a family of 4 was 2%. By 1960 it has risen to 12% and 24% by 1990. 1997 estimates of all federal, state, local, social security and medicare taxes approached 40%. At this rate we more resemble alligators eating their young than any great society.

Remedies are readily available. Government can get out of the marriage business and focus instead on families. This keeps tradition with the first amendment's non-establishment clause, allows consenting adults to enter into binding contracts, and frees legislatures to shape tax code into an instrument resembling a pen more than a paint brush.

Legislators could start by codifying the definition of dependents to include dependent relatives and contractually-dependent others within a single household. They could then increase the per-dependent deduction to a meaningful amount closer to 2005's Health and Human Services Poverty Guidelines ($9575 for single persons in 2005) than the IRS' $3200-per-dependent exemption. They should then take whatever that amount is and index it to inflation so it needn't require an act of congress to keep pace with the economy. Using $9000/dependent a household of four would require a combined income exceeding $36,000 before the lowest tax rates take affect.

Not only might taxes be simplified, but families may more easily afford to have an adult stay at home and care for their children and other dependents and not rely on schools to feed and baby-sit their children before, during, and after school. When tax policy is aligned to accrue benefits to society instead of the self esteem of “marriage” it doesn't matter which definition you use.

Whether it's old or whether it's new
In the beginning you were a child too.

Book Review: What Went Wrong?

This is the second year I gave Thomas Sowell's recommended Christmas book list to my wife for ideas, and this is another year I wasn't disappointed and her shopping was abbreviated (for me at least). Of the many books he recommends, Bernard Lewis' What Went Wrong? is the first (and shortest) I've completed.

In What Went Wrong?, Mr. Lewis outlines Muslim history starting with the creation of Islam and follows its rise to the pinnacle of civilizations and religious tolerance to its current state where its arts, sciences, human rights, politics, and education are at historical lows when measured against nearly any other present-day non-Arab culture. This hundreds-year-long trend began long before the United States ever existed. Some of the most interesting (and perhaps incriminating) evidence of Arab civilization's attitude towards the rest of the world includes its complete disinterest in reports of Columbus' new world, time (clocks, watches, etc.), or even electricity.

Of the many interesting facts and stories in this book is Mr. Lewis' discussion on the problems many cultures and languages have with the word secular, and how the concept of religion being separate from politics is an invention of Christianity. Even if by necessity, no religion before Christianity imagined politics and religion could or should be separate. The US Constitution's non-establishment clause may owe much to Jesus' ".. give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and give to God what is God's."

If you're in a rush, reading the forward, conclusion, and afterword will give you the gist, while still leaving your appetite whetted for the meat between.

This accounting of Muslim's past and present serves as a warning for us all. First is how a civilization's arrogance begins its downfall. Whether that civilization is secular or religious its dismissal of other culture's progress in politics, arts, or science leads to its stagnation and that stagnation leads to is isolation and makes it vulnerable to both military and cultural invasions. Both have plagued Arab states for the past few hundred years.

Once a culture has fallen behind instead of planning to catch up or seriously ask what went wrong or how to fix it, it asks, "who is to blame?" With few exceptions blame is placed externally. Rather than confess responsibility for the problem or the solution and proceed to a remedy leaders of trailing cultures fault outsiders and not their own beliefs, traditions, or attitudes. Paranoia becomes the national psychosis and loathing its foreign policy.

This is not an argument for multiculturism. It is an invitation to consider the value of the cultures, groups, churches, and parties we belong to or identify with, weigh the benefits each provides us, the opportunities we've taken, the values they promote, and whether we're better off as members or if it's time for our own reformation.

Procrastinators Anonymous

The easiest reading to recommend is reading that makes ourselves look like better, warmer, smarter people -- or simply more sympathetic. That is precisely the reason I recommend the essay, Procrastination, by Paul Graham. Paul Graham is one of those essayist that write about subjects important to me and seem to affirm my opinion on most of them. It increases my self confidence knowing that other more famous, better spoken, highly thought of people than myself share my opinions. Or at least Paul does.

My mother will tell you I'm a procrastinator. I was even born a few weeks late. Apparently I had something better to do even then than getting slapped by a doctor and sucking-in my first breath of air. Ultimately it couldn't be put off any longer and what should have been a Halloween birthday had to wait for Thanksgiving.

My wife dispenses with euphemisms altogether and prefers the term lazy. She sees all the stuff I've ignored and is justifiably insulted at the insinuation that I'm too important to do the little stuff and leave it for her. As valuable as procrastinating may be its constant indulgence isn't always good for others.

What would we do without W?

Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, and Bernard Shaw have all proposed changes to our alphabet. Standing in their esteemed company requires extraordinary brilliance or extraordinary arrogance. Several months ago some of my neighbors started a grass roots campaign to rid our alphabet of the letter W. The lawn signs, appearing up and down my street are fairly simple in appearance: a big letter W inside a circle with a slash through it.

At first I thought they'd visited a City Slickers-inspired dude ranch and returned with fresh visions of Jack Palance's Curly in their saddle-shaken sun-baked noggins, inspiring the naming of their homes to The Nasty-W. But my neighbors aren't the cattle-drive type and the coincidence of so many Casa sin W's appearing at once suggested a coordinated plot.

Most of these signs are difficult to find now. Michigan's winter got an early and snowy start so the movement is mostly mute until the spring. The no-W faithful will have to rely on bumper stickers and buttons.

One of Franklin's suggestions was to represent "th" by combining the 't' and 'h' into a single glyph that looked like an h with a hash on the stem. He also eliminated the letter c replacing its hard and soft sounds with K and S respectively. My neighbors' propaganda has proposed no substitutes for the letter w or the unique sound it makes -- markedly different from any other.

But my neighbors have been delinquent to circulate petitions for the new alphabet, explain their rationale, or provide examples of how a W-less alphabet would function. In my impatience I've developed some of my own.

The new alphabet is more easily understood if you fake a French accent. For a real authentic "Inpector Jacques Clouseau" sound replace W with V, S with Z, and TH with Z.

Veaponz of maz deztruction
Share ze vealth -- higher vage vithholding taxez!
Viva le Velfare!
"I did not have zexual relationz vith that voman"

As cosmopolitan as it sounds, I prefer keeping W in the alphabet, though Franklin's suggestion of eliminating C would simplify spelling bees.