Backers and pushers of the new health care reform law are touting this legislation as an historic, landmark triumph for consumer protection and fairness. They laud it as though it is the next best thing since sliced bread.
And yet, the new law that left-wing progressives are so enthusiastic about now is a mere shadow of the reform bill originally proposed in either the House or the Senate by the same leftist leadership. Initially, the law appears to give more business to insurance companies, which have historically been a bane to the leftist existence. It would not seem to punish the insurance companies as the left-wing has been trying to do for years.
But look a little bit closer into the legislation, and one can see exactly why the left is so excited about the new reform law.
Most of the law’s supporters are the same ones who insisted on a public option. Well, this law doesn’t offer that, and yet somehow it is heralded as a great triumph.
One would assume that those wanting government-paid universal health care have got to be sorely disappointed with this law. But alas, they are among the revelers.
Why? The answer is because, eventually, its provisions and mandates will result in government-funded health care anyway.
Consider that the new health care law now requires insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions. As such, additional cost is going to be incurred by insurance companies, which also will be unable to pass that cost onto their policyholders through higher premiums. In other words, insurance companies are being forced to eat these new costs.
Eventually, the profit-cost ratio—also known as the profit margin—is going to shrink to such narrow margins that insurance companies will be flirting with red ink more than they will black. And as demand for services continues to rise—as has been the trend for the past few decades—the cost burden will increase; meaning even higher costs to insurance companies.
It is not far-fetched to expect that, in the near future, insurance companies will begin operating in the red instead of in the black, thereby incurring more loss than profit. What may well result is an industry crisis not unlike the one currently being experienced by automobile manufacturing and financial credit: Too much owed and not enough money to pay for the debt. The end result will be bankruptcies.
When that happens, insurance companies will come groveling at the feet of Congress to beg for bail-out money. The government, of course, will hand over the cash along with its many strings attached; including de facto ownership of companies being bailed out.
Make no mistake: This is exactly what the new health care reform law is meant to do. It was designed to set the stage for an eventual government takeover of the health insurance business. And when government controls the purse strings, it shall control the entire health care industry.
That’s what the left-wing reformists really want: Government-run and government-funded universal health care like the kind that Canada and much of Europe have. The leftist progressives really believe universal health care to be the cat’s meow, the bee’s knees, and the answer to all of our health care ills (pun intended).
But they were unsuccessful in pushing this agenda directly through the front door of the American people; so they’ve settled for the backdoor approach, hoping to get what they want anyway without the consent of the people. They are hoping that the provisions and mandates contained in this new law will cause things to just go their way through a natural course of events; a chain reaction.
The burning question in my mind, though, is that if European style universal health care is so great, then why isn’t it leading the world in research and development, technology, and delivery of services? Why, in fact, has the world been led in overall health care quality and quantity by the free enterprise system of the United States of America, and not a socialist system providing universal health care to its citizens?
Unfortunately, leftist reformers aren’t interested in quality, quantity or even access to health care. They say different, but their motivations give them away.
What motivates our left-wing progressive leaders is the potential to expand their own power by seizing control over more of America via the federal government. Progressive followers just want more government; that’s what matters to them, because they believe government has the answers to all of a nation’s problems.
Whether or not the current approach is a success or a failure matters less to the progressive leadership than the drive for secondary monetary gain, power and control over peoples’ lives.
That is the Marxist way. It is the socialist way. And it is also the left-wing progressive way.
What really concerns me is that they may just get what they are after.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Small change in health care
When this year’s health care bill was recently voted into law its chief champion, President Barack Obama, announced that America was witnessing the kind of change that he had been promising.
But just how much change is there in the new law as compared to the way health care is now?
Currently, the responsibility for health care management rests on the shoulders of the insurance industry. This had been one of the most significant complaints of those seeking to reform and change the way health care is managed and delivered.
Insurance companies are evil, after all—full of greed and avarice. Health care reform was supposed to take the power away from insurance companies and put it into the hands of patients and consumers.
Does the new law accomplish this? Let’s take a look.
Under the new health care reform law, every American earning above the federal poverty level is required to purchase health insurance. According to government bean counters, there are currently 30-40 million Americans living without health insurance. So, the new law is going to expand business for health insurance companies by an additional tens of millions more policyholders; meaning that insurance companies will have even more involvement in the health care industry than they do right now. The law gives insurance more money and more power, while summarily taking the power to choose away from the patient and consumer.
Since people are now going to be required to purchase health insurance, they can no longer simply choose not to buy; they have to buy. Even though insurance companies will be in competition for those 30 million more policyholders, they don’t have to go into a price war to get them, because the consumer is going to have to settle on an insurance provider eventually, or else face a fine. Consequently, one probably won’t see significantly lower premiums because insurance companies will have no incentive to lower their prices. The customer isn’t going to simply walk away; he is going to have to settle on some sort of health coverage because it is now the law that he does so.
Another promise of the health care law is that it will drive the costs of health care delivery down because adding another 30 million more policyholders will expand the burden of paying for health care and end up lowering the cost to each consumer across the board.
However, the backers of this law seem to have ignored the old, fundamental economics lesson of supply and demand.
The number of new physicians has been on the decline in recent years. The mere cost of medical school coupled with the realization of six to seven digit loan debt, and the prospect of having to carry that debt for decades has discouraged many potential medical professionals from pursuing careers in medicine; not to mention there’s the high costs of doing business once a new doctor has completed his or her residency and is ready to strike out on his or her own.
In addition to maintaining a license through respective state medical boards, a doctor must also carry substantial malpractice insurance to protect him or herself against egregious lawsuits. Malpractice insurance coverage is a very expensive endeavor these days because of the frequency and prevalence of litigation and the amount of damage awards sought. The higher the coverage sought for malpractice insurance, the higher the premium.
Experienced doctors currently in the field of medicine aren’t getting any younger either, and eventually, they are going to retire, leaving a void in care that may not be filled.
Sadly, the number of new doctors is not keeping pace with aging practitioners.
Furthermore, a growing number of experienced doctors have been deciding to leave their practices and quit medicine altogether; primarily because the cost of staying in business simply outweighs the benefits.
Supply is thus on the decline.
Meanwhile, demand is poised to rise sharply as a result of the new law and demographics.
To begin with, the law requires insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions. That’s not to say it isn’t a good thing to provide coverage for pre-existing conditions. But there are consequences to doing so.
The chief consequence is that it is going to increase the cost to insurance companies, because they will be spending money that they might not have otherwise spent before. Not only will the increase in cost be shared by other policyholders, but there will be an added strain on medical services as well. More insured people in need of health care equals greater demand for services. And let’s face facts: People with pre-existing conditions are going to visit the doctor, the pharmacy, the emergency room, diagnostic centers, labs, and hospitals more often than healthier individuals.
So, as a consequence of the new health care law, demand is going to surge.
But the number of people with pre-existing conditions pales in comparison to the number of retirees that are going to require more care in the next few years.
The baby-boom generation—those Americans born between 1945 and 1964—is the largest age demographic in the United States. Many of these people are either retiring now or have retired, and more will be retiring over the next two decades. As the baby-boomers advance in age, the level of care will change from routine maintenance to more intensive health care needs. In fact, the first block of baby-boomers born immediately after World War II is already 60-65 years old. Chronic health problems are surfacing that shall require much more than just routine care.
Most of these people already qualify for Medicare and are on the public insurance dole. And many of them also have a combination of public and private insurance coverage to meet their health care needs. So, as the baby-boomers age and require more health care, the demand for services is going to increase significantly; and along with that, the cost to both the taxpayer and private policyholder alike.
There can be no denying that demand for health care services is going to continue to rise just as it has done for the past few decades. In fact, I forecast that demand will reach new highs never before seen in the health care industry because of the two chief reasons I just cited: pre-existing conditions and the baby-boomers.
If we think health care is expensive now, then let’s just wait another decade and the costs of care today may seem like a bargain.
The danger we are going to find ourselves in shall boil down to simple mathematics. The more demand for a product or service there is, and the fewer people there are to provide it, then the higher the costs, the longer the wait, and the less product or service one can expect to get for one’s money.
Let’s say 100 people all want an apple, but there are only 50 apples to go around. Either the cost of each apple is going to increase because there are more people wanting apples than there are apples to get, or each person is going to get less apple than they paid for in order to give all 100 people an apple; or both. In all likelihood, both scenarios are going to happen with regard to health care.
More patients minus fewer doctors will equal a higher market price for services and shall result in the consumer getting less for each dollar he spends on health care.
In other words, we won’t get anywhere near what we are going to end up paying for.
But the backers and pushers of the new health care law have convinced supporters that it is the next best thing since sliced bread.
I believe America is literally being sold a bill of goods. The salesmen (and women) have done quite a job selling their product as the best ever solution to the problems in the health care industry. They tout the new law as historic, landmark reform that is going to mean more affordable health care for everyone.
My question is simple: How so? When one analyzes supply and demand trends, one sees a different picture than the one being painted by the law’s proponents.
Furthermore, those who currently have fallen through the health insurance cracks because they can’t afford it are going to have to wait four more years before there’s even a possibility that they may be able to get coverage. In the meantime, what are they supposed to do? How does this historic, landmark reform help them over the next four years?
So the current problems with the health care industry won’t be entirely addressed by the new law for the next four years.
Exactly how is this helping the country, and more specifically, the health care consumer? How is it changing the way things are already done for the better?
I thought change that President Obama promised was supposed to be good. I thought it was going to make everything better. So far, I see darker clouds on the horizon than the storm we are currently weathering.
If this new health care reform law is representative of the kind of change that Obama campaigned on two years ago and has been promising us ever since, then we ought to start counting his change with pennies, because there will be too little of it to make a real difference one way or the other.
But just how much change is there in the new law as compared to the way health care is now?
Currently, the responsibility for health care management rests on the shoulders of the insurance industry. This had been one of the most significant complaints of those seeking to reform and change the way health care is managed and delivered.
Insurance companies are evil, after all—full of greed and avarice. Health care reform was supposed to take the power away from insurance companies and put it into the hands of patients and consumers.
Does the new law accomplish this? Let’s take a look.
Under the new health care reform law, every American earning above the federal poverty level is required to purchase health insurance. According to government bean counters, there are currently 30-40 million Americans living without health insurance. So, the new law is going to expand business for health insurance companies by an additional tens of millions more policyholders; meaning that insurance companies will have even more involvement in the health care industry than they do right now. The law gives insurance more money and more power, while summarily taking the power to choose away from the patient and consumer.
Since people are now going to be required to purchase health insurance, they can no longer simply choose not to buy; they have to buy. Even though insurance companies will be in competition for those 30 million more policyholders, they don’t have to go into a price war to get them, because the consumer is going to have to settle on an insurance provider eventually, or else face a fine. Consequently, one probably won’t see significantly lower premiums because insurance companies will have no incentive to lower their prices. The customer isn’t going to simply walk away; he is going to have to settle on some sort of health coverage because it is now the law that he does so.
Another promise of the health care law is that it will drive the costs of health care delivery down because adding another 30 million more policyholders will expand the burden of paying for health care and end up lowering the cost to each consumer across the board.
However, the backers of this law seem to have ignored the old, fundamental economics lesson of supply and demand.
The number of new physicians has been on the decline in recent years. The mere cost of medical school coupled with the realization of six to seven digit loan debt, and the prospect of having to carry that debt for decades has discouraged many potential medical professionals from pursuing careers in medicine; not to mention there’s the high costs of doing business once a new doctor has completed his or her residency and is ready to strike out on his or her own.
In addition to maintaining a license through respective state medical boards, a doctor must also carry substantial malpractice insurance to protect him or herself against egregious lawsuits. Malpractice insurance coverage is a very expensive endeavor these days because of the frequency and prevalence of litigation and the amount of damage awards sought. The higher the coverage sought for malpractice insurance, the higher the premium.
Experienced doctors currently in the field of medicine aren’t getting any younger either, and eventually, they are going to retire, leaving a void in care that may not be filled.
Sadly, the number of new doctors is not keeping pace with aging practitioners.
Furthermore, a growing number of experienced doctors have been deciding to leave their practices and quit medicine altogether; primarily because the cost of staying in business simply outweighs the benefits.
Supply is thus on the decline.
Meanwhile, demand is poised to rise sharply as a result of the new law and demographics.
To begin with, the law requires insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions. That’s not to say it isn’t a good thing to provide coverage for pre-existing conditions. But there are consequences to doing so.
The chief consequence is that it is going to increase the cost to insurance companies, because they will be spending money that they might not have otherwise spent before. Not only will the increase in cost be shared by other policyholders, but there will be an added strain on medical services as well. More insured people in need of health care equals greater demand for services. And let’s face facts: People with pre-existing conditions are going to visit the doctor, the pharmacy, the emergency room, diagnostic centers, labs, and hospitals more often than healthier individuals.
So, as a consequence of the new health care law, demand is going to surge.
But the number of people with pre-existing conditions pales in comparison to the number of retirees that are going to require more care in the next few years.
The baby-boom generation—those Americans born between 1945 and 1964—is the largest age demographic in the United States. Many of these people are either retiring now or have retired, and more will be retiring over the next two decades. As the baby-boomers advance in age, the level of care will change from routine maintenance to more intensive health care needs. In fact, the first block of baby-boomers born immediately after World War II is already 60-65 years old. Chronic health problems are surfacing that shall require much more than just routine care.
Most of these people already qualify for Medicare and are on the public insurance dole. And many of them also have a combination of public and private insurance coverage to meet their health care needs. So, as the baby-boomers age and require more health care, the demand for services is going to increase significantly; and along with that, the cost to both the taxpayer and private policyholder alike.
There can be no denying that demand for health care services is going to continue to rise just as it has done for the past few decades. In fact, I forecast that demand will reach new highs never before seen in the health care industry because of the two chief reasons I just cited: pre-existing conditions and the baby-boomers.
If we think health care is expensive now, then let’s just wait another decade and the costs of care today may seem like a bargain.
The danger we are going to find ourselves in shall boil down to simple mathematics. The more demand for a product or service there is, and the fewer people there are to provide it, then the higher the costs, the longer the wait, and the less product or service one can expect to get for one’s money.
Let’s say 100 people all want an apple, but there are only 50 apples to go around. Either the cost of each apple is going to increase because there are more people wanting apples than there are apples to get, or each person is going to get less apple than they paid for in order to give all 100 people an apple; or both. In all likelihood, both scenarios are going to happen with regard to health care.
More patients minus fewer doctors will equal a higher market price for services and shall result in the consumer getting less for each dollar he spends on health care.
In other words, we won’t get anywhere near what we are going to end up paying for.
But the backers and pushers of the new health care law have convinced supporters that it is the next best thing since sliced bread.
I believe America is literally being sold a bill of goods. The salesmen (and women) have done quite a job selling their product as the best ever solution to the problems in the health care industry. They tout the new law as historic, landmark reform that is going to mean more affordable health care for everyone.
My question is simple: How so? When one analyzes supply and demand trends, one sees a different picture than the one being painted by the law’s proponents.
Furthermore, those who currently have fallen through the health insurance cracks because they can’t afford it are going to have to wait four more years before there’s even a possibility that they may be able to get coverage. In the meantime, what are they supposed to do? How does this historic, landmark reform help them over the next four years?
So the current problems with the health care industry won’t be entirely addressed by the new law for the next four years.
Exactly how is this helping the country, and more specifically, the health care consumer? How is it changing the way things are already done for the better?
I thought change that President Obama promised was supposed to be good. I thought it was going to make everything better. So far, I see darker clouds on the horizon than the storm we are currently weathering.
If this new health care reform law is representative of the kind of change that Obama campaigned on two years ago and has been promising us ever since, then we ought to start counting his change with pennies, because there will be too little of it to make a real difference one way or the other.
Friday, April 9, 2010
God is constitutional, atheism is not
Since the days of Clarence Darrow and the Scopes Trial nearly a century ago, God has been under attack in the United States of America for simply being Himself.
The assault against the Supreme Being escalated during the counterculture revolution of the Sixties. But God has never been in more danger of being outlawed than He is right now.
Atheists and agnostics alike are intensifying their efforts to remove any and all public references to God. They are trying to eliminate Him entirely from public awareness. And when I say "public awareness," I mean to say out of sight and, eventually, out of mind.
The most notorious of these efforts has come from atheist activist Michael Newdow, whose exploits include a crusade to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance by declaring it unconstitutional by virtue of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Newdow is not merely an avowed atheist; he’s an itinerant, practicing humanist who has even gone so far as to promote the atheist belief by establishing it as a religion, complete with his own formal church and congregation. He is the founder of the First Atheist Church of True Science (FACTS). Not to mention he is also a classic triple threat: an ordained minister of Universal Life Church, an attorney, and a doctor of emergency medicine.
The first thing that rubs me the wrong way about Newdow is that he comes across as a know-it-all. I suppose that is inevitable when one is a practicing attorney, physician and clergyman. I think he’s probably got too many advanced, professional degrees for his own good. It is no wonder that the guy is a professed atheist. He thinks he knows everything about human origin, human function, human behavior, human nature, and even human destination. He’s got all the answers, after all.
But I don’t take issue with Newdow’s atheism. He is free to subscribe to whatever beliefs he wants to, and practice those beliefs in whatever way he chooses. What I do contend with, however, is his premise that God is unconstitutional. Therefore, all public references to God—in particular “In God We Trust” on U.S. currency and “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance—should be removed.
As the basis for his argument, Newdow cites Amendment I of the U.S. Constitution and the specific clause that begins with “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…”
The fundamental flaw in this argument is the notion that “God” is a religion.
He is not.
Religion is a belief system both in process and organization. It functions as a body of members that follow organizational laws and rules.
God, on the other hand, is a being. He is an individual to those of us who believe in Him. He may be pluralistic to those who believe in more than one god. He may even symbolize and represent the self for those who believe that they are their own gods.
So, to argue that invoking “God” in the Pledge of Allegiance or on U.S. currency violates the Constitutional provision prohibiting an establishment of religion is fundamentally flawed.
The being of “God” may be the object of worship for several world religions, but He is not Himself a religion.
Furthermore, Newdow contends that “God” as invoked on our currency and in the Pledge refers to the Judeo-Christian deity. Therefore, public reference to “God” is the same as endorsing Judeo-Christianity.
He cannot prove this.
While he can make the case that the nation’s founders and legal framers were referring to the Judeo-Christian God in their writings, there is no proof that exists establishing that “God” as named on the currency or in the Pledge is the same Judeo-Christian God. Such an assumption can be made and implied; but one cannot prove beyond a preponderance of the evidence that a generic reference to “God” is the same Judeo-Christian God of the Bible.
Quite a few of the founders were self-described deists, who believed in the existence of God, but did not necessarily subscribe to Judeo-Christianity. Theirs was more of a philosophical belief in a Supreme Being responsible for intelligent design.
Certainly American Muslims don’t see God the same way that Judeo-Christians do. To Islam, God is Allah and His Word is the Quran.
To many American Indian tribes, God is the “Great Spirit” of the Earth, and His Word is contained in the stories and legends passed down from generations of tribal elders.
To Buddhists, who worship the self, “God” is the self. When one reaches nirvana or enlightenment, then one is essentially one’s own God.
Hindu, Shinto and other polytheistic religions may worship more than one god, but they defer to these gods in proper nomenclature of “Gods” out of respect for them and their powers.
Even atheism, which professes belief in no god, tends to endorse the idea of the self as God. By denying the existence of any being more supreme than the human mind, atheists propel human beings to a level of supremacy and divinity, to God-like stature. So, to the atheist, “God” may just as well refer to oneself.
The people of the United States of America subscribe to a plethora of different belief systems. The generic, but proper nomenclature of “God” pays homage to the spiritual and religious diversity that exists in our country because it is inclusive rather than exclusive. To invoke “God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and on U.S. currency is to include the beliefs of many; not just a few.
So, if Michael Newdow wants to erase “God” from the public consciousness, he will end up offending much more than just the Judeo-Christian population; he will offend every religious or spiritual person in the United States of America because, by removing “God” from any and all public declarations, Newdow would essentially be forcing his belief in no God(s) upon everyone else.
That’s right: Newdow’s insistence on getting his way is tantamount to forcing everyone else to accept his belief system (atheism) while publicly forfeiting their own.
This is religious intolerance in its clearest form, and for Newdow to insist that the U.S. Supreme Court rule in his favor would be for the United States government to adopt the atheist point of view and force everybody in America to accept his belief that there is no God(s).
In and of itself, Newdow’s very own argument is unconstitutional. He wants to push his belief system (atheism) on the rest of us by means of federal force.
And make no mistake: Atheism is a religion to Newdow and to the congregants of his very own atheist church.
Therefore, because Michael Newdow has his own religion (atheism) and is trying to get “God” removed from public consciousness in order to conform to his own belief system in no God at all, he is in direct violation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which begins with “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…”
Newdow wants the U.S. Supreme Court to rule in his favor, thereby compelling Congress to enact legislation that supports his religious point of view of no God(s).
I don’t know how one can be more blatantly in violation of the First Amendment than that…or more intolerant of other religions or spiritual beliefs.
The credibility of this man is suspect, because he insists on the one hand that having a public awareness of "God” violates his rights, while on the other hand, he is willing to force his beliefs onto the rest of us through government action.
Sorry, Michael, but you can’t have “God” removed from public reference and still call that constitutional, because such a ruling would be “respecting an establishment” of your religion.
God isn’t a religion; atheism is by virtue of Newdow's own established church. Ergo, God doesn’t apply to the First Amendment, but atheism does.
The assault against the Supreme Being escalated during the counterculture revolution of the Sixties. But God has never been in more danger of being outlawed than He is right now.
Atheists and agnostics alike are intensifying their efforts to remove any and all public references to God. They are trying to eliminate Him entirely from public awareness. And when I say "public awareness," I mean to say out of sight and, eventually, out of mind.
The most notorious of these efforts has come from atheist activist Michael Newdow, whose exploits include a crusade to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance by declaring it unconstitutional by virtue of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Newdow is not merely an avowed atheist; he’s an itinerant, practicing humanist who has even gone so far as to promote the atheist belief by establishing it as a religion, complete with his own formal church and congregation. He is the founder of the First Atheist Church of True Science (FACTS). Not to mention he is also a classic triple threat: an ordained minister of Universal Life Church, an attorney, and a doctor of emergency medicine.
The first thing that rubs me the wrong way about Newdow is that he comes across as a know-it-all. I suppose that is inevitable when one is a practicing attorney, physician and clergyman. I think he’s probably got too many advanced, professional degrees for his own good. It is no wonder that the guy is a professed atheist. He thinks he knows everything about human origin, human function, human behavior, human nature, and even human destination. He’s got all the answers, after all.
But I don’t take issue with Newdow’s atheism. He is free to subscribe to whatever beliefs he wants to, and practice those beliefs in whatever way he chooses. What I do contend with, however, is his premise that God is unconstitutional. Therefore, all public references to God—in particular “In God We Trust” on U.S. currency and “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance—should be removed.
As the basis for his argument, Newdow cites Amendment I of the U.S. Constitution and the specific clause that begins with “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…”
The fundamental flaw in this argument is the notion that “God” is a religion.
He is not.
Religion is a belief system both in process and organization. It functions as a body of members that follow organizational laws and rules.
God, on the other hand, is a being. He is an individual to those of us who believe in Him. He may be pluralistic to those who believe in more than one god. He may even symbolize and represent the self for those who believe that they are their own gods.
So, to argue that invoking “God” in the Pledge of Allegiance or on U.S. currency violates the Constitutional provision prohibiting an establishment of religion is fundamentally flawed.
The being of “God” may be the object of worship for several world religions, but He is not Himself a religion.
Furthermore, Newdow contends that “God” as invoked on our currency and in the Pledge refers to the Judeo-Christian deity. Therefore, public reference to “God” is the same as endorsing Judeo-Christianity.
He cannot prove this.
While he can make the case that the nation’s founders and legal framers were referring to the Judeo-Christian God in their writings, there is no proof that exists establishing that “God” as named on the currency or in the Pledge is the same Judeo-Christian God. Such an assumption can be made and implied; but one cannot prove beyond a preponderance of the evidence that a generic reference to “God” is the same Judeo-Christian God of the Bible.
Quite a few of the founders were self-described deists, who believed in the existence of God, but did not necessarily subscribe to Judeo-Christianity. Theirs was more of a philosophical belief in a Supreme Being responsible for intelligent design.
Certainly American Muslims don’t see God the same way that Judeo-Christians do. To Islam, God is Allah and His Word is the Quran.
To many American Indian tribes, God is the “Great Spirit” of the Earth, and His Word is contained in the stories and legends passed down from generations of tribal elders.
To Buddhists, who worship the self, “God” is the self. When one reaches nirvana or enlightenment, then one is essentially one’s own God.
Hindu, Shinto and other polytheistic religions may worship more than one god, but they defer to these gods in proper nomenclature of “Gods” out of respect for them and their powers.
Even atheism, which professes belief in no god, tends to endorse the idea of the self as God. By denying the existence of any being more supreme than the human mind, atheists propel human beings to a level of supremacy and divinity, to God-like stature. So, to the atheist, “God” may just as well refer to oneself.
The people of the United States of America subscribe to a plethora of different belief systems. The generic, but proper nomenclature of “God” pays homage to the spiritual and religious diversity that exists in our country because it is inclusive rather than exclusive. To invoke “God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and on U.S. currency is to include the beliefs of many; not just a few.
So, if Michael Newdow wants to erase “God” from the public consciousness, he will end up offending much more than just the Judeo-Christian population; he will offend every religious or spiritual person in the United States of America because, by removing “God” from any and all public declarations, Newdow would essentially be forcing his belief in no God(s) upon everyone else.
That’s right: Newdow’s insistence on getting his way is tantamount to forcing everyone else to accept his belief system (atheism) while publicly forfeiting their own.
This is religious intolerance in its clearest form, and for Newdow to insist that the U.S. Supreme Court rule in his favor would be for the United States government to adopt the atheist point of view and force everybody in America to accept his belief that there is no God(s).
In and of itself, Newdow’s very own argument is unconstitutional. He wants to push his belief system (atheism) on the rest of us by means of federal force.
And make no mistake: Atheism is a religion to Newdow and to the congregants of his very own atheist church.
Therefore, because Michael Newdow has his own religion (atheism) and is trying to get “God” removed from public consciousness in order to conform to his own belief system in no God at all, he is in direct violation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which begins with “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…”
Newdow wants the U.S. Supreme Court to rule in his favor, thereby compelling Congress to enact legislation that supports his religious point of view of no God(s).
I don’t know how one can be more blatantly in violation of the First Amendment than that…or more intolerant of other religions or spiritual beliefs.
The credibility of this man is suspect, because he insists on the one hand that having a public awareness of "God” violates his rights, while on the other hand, he is willing to force his beliefs onto the rest of us through government action.
Sorry, Michael, but you can’t have “God” removed from public reference and still call that constitutional, because such a ruling would be “respecting an establishment” of your religion.
God isn’t a religion; atheism is by virtue of Newdow's own established church. Ergo, God doesn’t apply to the First Amendment, but atheism does.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Is the health care law unconstitutional?
Possibly.
That probably depends upon who’s interpreting the law.
Conservatives may point to the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the last of the Bill of Rights, which expressly grants powers to the states and the people that are not constitutionally granted to the federal government—states’ rights.
Meanwhile, progressives apply the so-called “Commerce Clause” in Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, the section that enumerates the powers of Congress. This side of the argument contends that because Congress is granted the power to regulate interstate commerce as well as levy taxes and fines—and the health care bill includes tax and fine provisions—then this new law falls under the “Commerce Clause.”
But is it really and truly constitutional?
The answer lay with the perspective of the framers of the Constitution and the founders of the nation.
In order to understand any part of constitutional law, and in particular the U.S. Constitution, one must study history and the people who authored the document. Their intent is ultimately the right way to interpret the Constitution; not the intent of modern legal minds.
This is known as strict construction. Rather than looking at the U.S. Constitution as a living document that changes with the times, circumstances, culture and needs of the people, strict construction regards the Constitution as a constant, stable legal authority that transcends the passage of time and changes in our socioeconomic environment. In other words, the Constitution is what it is, and it’s not what it wasn’t intended to be.
The only accurate way to interpret the Constitution is to look at it from the points of view of its authors and framers. What were their intentions? What did they mean? And why?
Through careful study of papers, diaries and other written effects of historical figures, we can piece together an understanding of what philosophies coursed through their veins and what exactly they were thinking when the Constitution was ratified on September 17, 1787.
A study of the period is also necessary to understand and appreciate the kind of socioeconomic and political thought that went into drafting the U.S. Constitution and infused its words.
The people of the new United States of America were predominantly either the rugged individualist types or those embracing the Age of Enlightenment and its concepts of natural rights, as developed by 18th Century philosophers John Locke and Immanuel Kant. Either way, most Americans of the time favored individual liberty and the freedom to self-govern. They owned property for the first time in their lives and were the first of their lineage to do so. Many carved an existence out of the wilderness. Others built fortunes out of nothing but their own sweat, blood and tears.
The point is that a character study of the people of early America reveals that they did things themselves; not merely because they had to for survival, but mostly because that is what they believed in. They did not believe in a government that could or would take care of them from cradle to grave. Even if that were possible back then, the people of the period would not have stood for it.
After all, these people had just fought a long, bloody war for independence against an overbearing, paternalistic government bent on running their lives down to the minutest detail. The last thing Americans wanted was for the United States government to assume the role of a paternal caretaker. They’d already been there and done that.
No, what America’s founders and the Constitution’s framers envisioned was a government that defended and upheld justice, protected and regarded individual rights, and respected the individual’s freedom to self-govern. Self-sovereignty was an important principal to those valuing liberty. No longer were men and women subjects to a government. Rather, the government was now a subject to the people.
No longer were men judged by their bloodlines and birthrights. No more was the socioeconomic status of a man’s father the fate and destiny of the son. And property was not the exclusive privilege of nobility any more. In fact, nobility no longer existed in the new America. Instead, men and women were judged by their deeds; not their pedigrees.
The idea of a strong central government, quite frankly, alarmed most Americans of the day; especially the notion of a government arm reaching into the private, personal lives of citizens. The rights of states and, most especially, the people were paramount.
In fact, so adamant was the founding generation against big, intrusive government that it even staged a “whiskey rebellion” just a few years after the end of the Revolutionary War to protest a tax levy on whiskey as a means to fund the back pay of soldiers in the Continental Army.
To understand the mind of the average founding American is to understand the context under which the U.S. Constitution was authored.
So, after having said all of this, is the health care law constitutional?
Honestly, I don’t know for sure. But I suspect that it isn’t. In fact, I gather that a lot of what the federal government has done to grow itself into the titan that it has become probably is outside the lines of constitutionality.
Our founders did not intend for the federal government to take over aspects of American life best suited for the individual to govern. They intended individual liberty to be preserved the way it was founded in 1787.
Today’s legal experts may interpret the Constitution by virtue of the current culture and according to their own political points of view. But they would be wrong to do so.
The U.S. Constitution was not meant to be interpreted by today’s standards. Rather, it was meant to be read, interpreted and applied by the standards of its founding.
And I doubt very seriously that government managed health care was what the founders and framers had in mind when the “Commerce Clause” was authored.
Interstate commerce refers to trade occurring between states. To regulate interstate commerce at the time of our nation’s founding was to (1) establish uniform currency backed by the federal government; (2) ensure fair trade practices, such as tariff-free exports and imports across state lines; (3) protect interstate transportation of goods from one state to another; and (4) defend the legal rights of individuals from entities doing business in more than one state. The intent of granting Congress the authority to regulate interstate commerce was to provide authority where individual states were in dispute or had none outside of their own borders. The “Commerce Clause” was not meant to give the federal government carte blanche power to make decisions for private industry or to force individuals to buy a product.
But that’s exactly what the new health care law does. It makes decisions for private insurance companies by requiring them to take on an additional 30 million policyholders and accept pre-existing conditions, while also forbidding companies from raising premiums to make up for additional costs incurred and the added burden to their profit-loss ratios. The law also compels the private citizen to purchase a product that he or she might otherwise not want or is unable to afford.
While progressives may contend that the law is constitutional because Congress is acting within its powers to regulate interstate commerce, history is being ignored. And history is the only objective way to accurately and correctly interpret the U.S. Constitution.
We cannot judge the Constitution by today’s standards. Rather, we ought to be judging today’s standards by the Constitution and the way it was meant to be enacted.
What we may want today doesn’t necessarily match up with the founding interpretation of the Constitution.
But, really, the purpose of the new health care law has nothing to do with constitutionality; it’s a power grab, pure and simple. That is all most federal legislation amounts to any more. The Constitution be damned, because power is more important than either the law or its heritage.
The authors of the health care law can rationalize the “Commerce Clause” all they want to fit it into their agenda; but at the end of the day, when all is said and done, and when one gets right down to where the rubber meets the road, this law is incongruent with the original intents of the U.S. Constitution.
History supports that.
That probably depends upon who’s interpreting the law.
Conservatives may point to the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the last of the Bill of Rights, which expressly grants powers to the states and the people that are not constitutionally granted to the federal government—states’ rights.
Meanwhile, progressives apply the so-called “Commerce Clause” in Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, the section that enumerates the powers of Congress. This side of the argument contends that because Congress is granted the power to regulate interstate commerce as well as levy taxes and fines—and the health care bill includes tax and fine provisions—then this new law falls under the “Commerce Clause.”
But is it really and truly constitutional?
The answer lay with the perspective of the framers of the Constitution and the founders of the nation.
In order to understand any part of constitutional law, and in particular the U.S. Constitution, one must study history and the people who authored the document. Their intent is ultimately the right way to interpret the Constitution; not the intent of modern legal minds.
This is known as strict construction. Rather than looking at the U.S. Constitution as a living document that changes with the times, circumstances, culture and needs of the people, strict construction regards the Constitution as a constant, stable legal authority that transcends the passage of time and changes in our socioeconomic environment. In other words, the Constitution is what it is, and it’s not what it wasn’t intended to be.
The only accurate way to interpret the Constitution is to look at it from the points of view of its authors and framers. What were their intentions? What did they mean? And why?
Through careful study of papers, diaries and other written effects of historical figures, we can piece together an understanding of what philosophies coursed through their veins and what exactly they were thinking when the Constitution was ratified on September 17, 1787.
A study of the period is also necessary to understand and appreciate the kind of socioeconomic and political thought that went into drafting the U.S. Constitution and infused its words.
The people of the new United States of America were predominantly either the rugged individualist types or those embracing the Age of Enlightenment and its concepts of natural rights, as developed by 18th Century philosophers John Locke and Immanuel Kant. Either way, most Americans of the time favored individual liberty and the freedom to self-govern. They owned property for the first time in their lives and were the first of their lineage to do so. Many carved an existence out of the wilderness. Others built fortunes out of nothing but their own sweat, blood and tears.
The point is that a character study of the people of early America reveals that they did things themselves; not merely because they had to for survival, but mostly because that is what they believed in. They did not believe in a government that could or would take care of them from cradle to grave. Even if that were possible back then, the people of the period would not have stood for it.
After all, these people had just fought a long, bloody war for independence against an overbearing, paternalistic government bent on running their lives down to the minutest detail. The last thing Americans wanted was for the United States government to assume the role of a paternal caretaker. They’d already been there and done that.
No, what America’s founders and the Constitution’s framers envisioned was a government that defended and upheld justice, protected and regarded individual rights, and respected the individual’s freedom to self-govern. Self-sovereignty was an important principal to those valuing liberty. No longer were men and women subjects to a government. Rather, the government was now a subject to the people.
No longer were men judged by their bloodlines and birthrights. No more was the socioeconomic status of a man’s father the fate and destiny of the son. And property was not the exclusive privilege of nobility any more. In fact, nobility no longer existed in the new America. Instead, men and women were judged by their deeds; not their pedigrees.
The idea of a strong central government, quite frankly, alarmed most Americans of the day; especially the notion of a government arm reaching into the private, personal lives of citizens. The rights of states and, most especially, the people were paramount.
In fact, so adamant was the founding generation against big, intrusive government that it even staged a “whiskey rebellion” just a few years after the end of the Revolutionary War to protest a tax levy on whiskey as a means to fund the back pay of soldiers in the Continental Army.
To understand the mind of the average founding American is to understand the context under which the U.S. Constitution was authored.
So, after having said all of this, is the health care law constitutional?
Honestly, I don’t know for sure. But I suspect that it isn’t. In fact, I gather that a lot of what the federal government has done to grow itself into the titan that it has become probably is outside the lines of constitutionality.
Our founders did not intend for the federal government to take over aspects of American life best suited for the individual to govern. They intended individual liberty to be preserved the way it was founded in 1787.
Today’s legal experts may interpret the Constitution by virtue of the current culture and according to their own political points of view. But they would be wrong to do so.
The U.S. Constitution was not meant to be interpreted by today’s standards. Rather, it was meant to be read, interpreted and applied by the standards of its founding.
And I doubt very seriously that government managed health care was what the founders and framers had in mind when the “Commerce Clause” was authored.
Interstate commerce refers to trade occurring between states. To regulate interstate commerce at the time of our nation’s founding was to (1) establish uniform currency backed by the federal government; (2) ensure fair trade practices, such as tariff-free exports and imports across state lines; (3) protect interstate transportation of goods from one state to another; and (4) defend the legal rights of individuals from entities doing business in more than one state. The intent of granting Congress the authority to regulate interstate commerce was to provide authority where individual states were in dispute or had none outside of their own borders. The “Commerce Clause” was not meant to give the federal government carte blanche power to make decisions for private industry or to force individuals to buy a product.
But that’s exactly what the new health care law does. It makes decisions for private insurance companies by requiring them to take on an additional 30 million policyholders and accept pre-existing conditions, while also forbidding companies from raising premiums to make up for additional costs incurred and the added burden to their profit-loss ratios. The law also compels the private citizen to purchase a product that he or she might otherwise not want or is unable to afford.
While progressives may contend that the law is constitutional because Congress is acting within its powers to regulate interstate commerce, history is being ignored. And history is the only objective way to accurately and correctly interpret the U.S. Constitution.
We cannot judge the Constitution by today’s standards. Rather, we ought to be judging today’s standards by the Constitution and the way it was meant to be enacted.
What we may want today doesn’t necessarily match up with the founding interpretation of the Constitution.
But, really, the purpose of the new health care law has nothing to do with constitutionality; it’s a power grab, pure and simple. That is all most federal legislation amounts to any more. The Constitution be damned, because power is more important than either the law or its heritage.
The authors of the health care law can rationalize the “Commerce Clause” all they want to fit it into their agenda; but at the end of the day, when all is said and done, and when one gets right down to where the rubber meets the road, this law is incongruent with the original intents of the U.S. Constitution.
History supports that.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Who is to blame for the recession?
Bush is…or so we are led to believe on a daily basis.
Frankly, the notion that George W. Bush is responsible for the current recession is like the old assumption that Herbert Hoover was responsible for the Great Depression. It is asinine.
Bush, like Hoover, presided over the impetus of an economic mess. So, it only stands to reason that he gets the blame, right? It is not unlike the coach whose team loses a game. The team is largely responsible for the loss, but the coach gets the blame.
Well, both the Great Depression and our current Great Recession were the result of greed, avarice and excess.
The Great Depression happened because banks overextended themselves on investments, many of them rather risky. When the stock market fell on Black Friday, October 29, 1929 investments went belly up, too, and banks were quickly losing thousands to millions of dollars on their investments.
A nationwide collapse of the banking system occurred because small, local banks were unable to get money from the larger regional or national financial institutions, which went broke from their investment failures and the failure of those they invested in to pay the money back that was owed. The lending system collapsed, causing massive business failures.
The Great Recession happened much the same way. The financial industry was selling a lot of loan products and overextending credit. The collapse was triggered by sub-prime lenders and borrowers in the mortgage lending industry. Many of the loan products tailored to low-income people were encouraged, mandated and/or backed by the federal government through federal loan programs called Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
In the late 1990s laws were passed in Congress requiring the lending industry to make home loans more accessible to lower income consumers; the idea being that even low income Americans deserved the right and the chance to own a home.
The only practicable way for financial companies to recover inevitable losses incurred from lending money to those with limited income and/or poor credit was to tailor their products designed to get people into their homes at minimal cost and eventually recover their losses at a later date.
What emerged were interest-only home loans in which the borrower paid only the interest on the loan, never touching the principal. This permitted lenders to offer loans at significantly reduced interest rates, too. As such, monthly payments were at levels that lower income consumers could afford.
But there was a caveat to these loan products: They had expiration dates attached to them. At a certain point in time, the interest only loan would revert to a traditional principal plus interest loan product, so that the lender could start recovering its losses.
What this meant for the consumer was a monthly mortgage payment suddenly and significantly higher than what he had been used to paying. In no time, borrowers were falling behind on their payments, because they couldn’t afford what the mortgage now cost them. They were spending more money than they were taking in, leaving them in the red.
Widespread defaults and foreclosures resulted, causing a collapse of the real estate market. Home values plummeted, eventually leaving people with mortgages higher than their homes were actually worth.
Home construction ground to a halt, leaving millions in the construction industry suddenly unemployed. All other occupations related to the housing industry were similarly impacted.
The worst part about this catalyst is that the federal government had initially backed the loan products that ended up getting a lot of consumers into deep trouble.
Yes, thanks to the foresight of our esteemed leaders who just wanted to make home buying more fair for those less fortunate, an economic crisis erupted.
But I can’t place the blame squarely on the shoulders of government. Consumers share in the responsibility, too.
People failed to read the fine print when they purchased their low-cost mortgage products. Consequently, they reaped the whirlwind of their own ignorance.
The American economy has always had a consuming culture, because of the free market, free enterprise capitalist system that has made the United States the economic envy of the world. The trouble is not too much consumption, but rather not enough money to buy with.
Since credit cards were introduced a half-century ago, the American public has been largely spending somebody else’s money and not their own. They have been spending money that they personally do not have. This so-called plastic money isn’t money at all. Rather, it is literally a promise to pay back somebody else who hands over the cash for the good or service you want to buy. It is placing the burden to pay for goods and services on somebody else with our implied or explicit agreement to pay a third party creditor back at a later date.
Credit, of course, is nothing new. Nineteenth Century farmers opened up lines of credit at general stores and mercantiles in order to get the goods they needed to harvest their crops and sell them to market. Once the money was in their hands, though, the farmers paid off what they owed to the store. Some had to extend their credit because of a bad crop year, but most of people didn’t just keep buying things on credit. Most often it was cash on the barrel head or nothing.
Modern society, however, doesn’t seem to understand, appreciate or respect what credit is. Consequently, it has been used recklessly and abused over the years. A large number of consumers even began to use credit cards to pay balances on other credit cards. Instead of using real money to pay down a balance, people would just put that balance on another credit card, then another, and another. Before they knew what was happening, they had become overextended on credit with debt into the tens of thousands.
American consumers today are able to buy more things on impulse simply because they can with a credit card and line of credit. Consuming today has little to do with need and most to do with want.
So, you like that 60-inch flat panel television with the home theater package? No problem. Just put it on the card.
Heck, people have gotten so casual and laissez-faire about using credit cards that they will even pay for a fast food meal—no more than a few dollars—with plastic instead of cash. But by the time one gets the credit card statement showing that charge, the food is long gone, and one is stuck still paying for the meal months or years later.
That is the root cause of the current recession: Careless and reckless use of credit. Because we didn’t handle our credit wisely or responsibly, we ended up owing incredibly huge debts that just could not be paid back; especially when our interest-only loans reverted to interest plus principal products too high for our current incomes to cover. We had to default, got foreclosed on, and filed bankruptcy. Creditors lost vast amounts of money by carelessly and loosely giving credit to just about anyone willing to put their plastic cards in their wallets.
Ergo, our current economic predicament.
It is true that George W. Bush presided over the start of the Great Recession, and it’s true that he did little to help the situation. But that doesn’t mean he gets the blame for it, either. Rather, if you are looking for someone to blame for double-digit unemployment, a tanked housing market, and broken financial industry, I suggest standing in front of a mirror and looking into it. The face looking back at you shares much of the blame.
Frankly, the notion that George W. Bush is responsible for the current recession is like the old assumption that Herbert Hoover was responsible for the Great Depression. It is asinine.
Bush, like Hoover, presided over the impetus of an economic mess. So, it only stands to reason that he gets the blame, right? It is not unlike the coach whose team loses a game. The team is largely responsible for the loss, but the coach gets the blame.
Well, both the Great Depression and our current Great Recession were the result of greed, avarice and excess.
The Great Depression happened because banks overextended themselves on investments, many of them rather risky. When the stock market fell on Black Friday, October 29, 1929 investments went belly up, too, and banks were quickly losing thousands to millions of dollars on their investments.
A nationwide collapse of the banking system occurred because small, local banks were unable to get money from the larger regional or national financial institutions, which went broke from their investment failures and the failure of those they invested in to pay the money back that was owed. The lending system collapsed, causing massive business failures.
The Great Recession happened much the same way. The financial industry was selling a lot of loan products and overextending credit. The collapse was triggered by sub-prime lenders and borrowers in the mortgage lending industry. Many of the loan products tailored to low-income people were encouraged, mandated and/or backed by the federal government through federal loan programs called Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
In the late 1990s laws were passed in Congress requiring the lending industry to make home loans more accessible to lower income consumers; the idea being that even low income Americans deserved the right and the chance to own a home.
The only practicable way for financial companies to recover inevitable losses incurred from lending money to those with limited income and/or poor credit was to tailor their products designed to get people into their homes at minimal cost and eventually recover their losses at a later date.
What emerged were interest-only home loans in which the borrower paid only the interest on the loan, never touching the principal. This permitted lenders to offer loans at significantly reduced interest rates, too. As such, monthly payments were at levels that lower income consumers could afford.
But there was a caveat to these loan products: They had expiration dates attached to them. At a certain point in time, the interest only loan would revert to a traditional principal plus interest loan product, so that the lender could start recovering its losses.
What this meant for the consumer was a monthly mortgage payment suddenly and significantly higher than what he had been used to paying. In no time, borrowers were falling behind on their payments, because they couldn’t afford what the mortgage now cost them. They were spending more money than they were taking in, leaving them in the red.
Widespread defaults and foreclosures resulted, causing a collapse of the real estate market. Home values plummeted, eventually leaving people with mortgages higher than their homes were actually worth.
Home construction ground to a halt, leaving millions in the construction industry suddenly unemployed. All other occupations related to the housing industry were similarly impacted.
The worst part about this catalyst is that the federal government had initially backed the loan products that ended up getting a lot of consumers into deep trouble.
Yes, thanks to the foresight of our esteemed leaders who just wanted to make home buying more fair for those less fortunate, an economic crisis erupted.
But I can’t place the blame squarely on the shoulders of government. Consumers share in the responsibility, too.
People failed to read the fine print when they purchased their low-cost mortgage products. Consequently, they reaped the whirlwind of their own ignorance.
The American economy has always had a consuming culture, because of the free market, free enterprise capitalist system that has made the United States the economic envy of the world. The trouble is not too much consumption, but rather not enough money to buy with.
Since credit cards were introduced a half-century ago, the American public has been largely spending somebody else’s money and not their own. They have been spending money that they personally do not have. This so-called plastic money isn’t money at all. Rather, it is literally a promise to pay back somebody else who hands over the cash for the good or service you want to buy. It is placing the burden to pay for goods and services on somebody else with our implied or explicit agreement to pay a third party creditor back at a later date.
Credit, of course, is nothing new. Nineteenth Century farmers opened up lines of credit at general stores and mercantiles in order to get the goods they needed to harvest their crops and sell them to market. Once the money was in their hands, though, the farmers paid off what they owed to the store. Some had to extend their credit because of a bad crop year, but most of people didn’t just keep buying things on credit. Most often it was cash on the barrel head or nothing.
Modern society, however, doesn’t seem to understand, appreciate or respect what credit is. Consequently, it has been used recklessly and abused over the years. A large number of consumers even began to use credit cards to pay balances on other credit cards. Instead of using real money to pay down a balance, people would just put that balance on another credit card, then another, and another. Before they knew what was happening, they had become overextended on credit with debt into the tens of thousands.
American consumers today are able to buy more things on impulse simply because they can with a credit card and line of credit. Consuming today has little to do with need and most to do with want.
So, you like that 60-inch flat panel television with the home theater package? No problem. Just put it on the card.
Heck, people have gotten so casual and laissez-faire about using credit cards that they will even pay for a fast food meal—no more than a few dollars—with plastic instead of cash. But by the time one gets the credit card statement showing that charge, the food is long gone, and one is stuck still paying for the meal months or years later.
That is the root cause of the current recession: Careless and reckless use of credit. Because we didn’t handle our credit wisely or responsibly, we ended up owing incredibly huge debts that just could not be paid back; especially when our interest-only loans reverted to interest plus principal products too high for our current incomes to cover. We had to default, got foreclosed on, and filed bankruptcy. Creditors lost vast amounts of money by carelessly and loosely giving credit to just about anyone willing to put their plastic cards in their wallets.
Ergo, our current economic predicament.
It is true that George W. Bush presided over the start of the Great Recession, and it’s true that he did little to help the situation. But that doesn’t mean he gets the blame for it, either. Rather, if you are looking for someone to blame for double-digit unemployment, a tanked housing market, and broken financial industry, I suggest standing in front of a mirror and looking into it. The face looking back at you shares much of the blame.
Life still isn’t fair, so get over it
Throughout human history people have tried everything to make life fair for them. But it never has been and never will be as long as life remains imperfect.
Unfairness is a universal truth ranking up there with death and taxes. Life just is unfair, and there’s really nothing we can do about it. So get over it already.
The fact is that there’s always somebody else who seems to have it better than you do. Somewhere in the world, somebody else has more money and more material possessions than you. Somebody somewhere is healthier and happier than you. And undoubtedly, somebody somewhere is probably having more fun and experiencing more pleasure than you are right now.
So, what’s to be done about it?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing can be done to make life fairer for you so that you can have the same pleasures, happiness, money or material possessions as another person.
But try telling this to the avowed Marxist-socialist, whose fundamental belief is in a fair, equitable and even distribution of money and material so that everyone has the same things and nobody wants. Modern left-wing progressives are cut from the same cloth as traditional Nineteenth Century socialists. They have been influencing federal and state domestic policies for a hundred years. Their goal is socioeconomic egalitarianism where everyone is equal and has an equal share in everything. Nobody wants, everyone is taken care of, and there are no have-nots.
A pipe dream if I ever heard one.
The rift between rich and poor has existed since the dawn of human civilization. In every society, in every culture, in every country and political nation, there are rich people and there are poor people. Even in socialist countries where egalitarianism is not only the exclusive practice but also the law, there are those who seem to have more than others.
Take the former Soviet Union as Exhibit A. The Russian Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 ushered in a 75-year period of communism, or extreme social egalitarianism. During that time, the number of poor Russians grew exponentially as the government took from the haves and divided up its booty to distribute equally among the have-nots.
The result was long lines of poor people waiting to get their daily rations of food, clothing and other material necessary for living.
By trying to institute a policy of fairness, equality and sameness the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics brought more suffering to its people than had even been suffered under the rule of the Czars. In other words, by trying to make things fair, the Russian leadership ended up only making things worse for the Russian people.
By taking money from the haves, the USSR caused massive unemployment, because the haves employed the have-nots. Communist Russia turned its haves into have-nots, too. So everyone was now equally poor and poorly the same.
And yet, despite all of the widespread suffering experienced throughout the USSR, there still existed the haves in government; those in power who dictated to and over the people. They were the ones trying to make things “equal” and the same for everyone else, while personally living beyond their means themselves, and way above the level of the average Russian citizen.
All things being equal, then, the Soviet Union in all its extremism wasn’t truly equal after all. Fairness was something propagandized, but not practiced by the government elite.
The former USSR has since become an object lesson on how not to do things.
But despite what we have gleaned from Russia’s political fiasco, today’s leftist progressives seem impervious to the lessons of history. They ignore the fact that socialism—whether in mild or extreme forms—fails on its own.
Modern leftists believe that they can do better than the Bolsheviks did. They think that they have the answers and that the results of their plans will be different.
Renowned Twentieth Century physicist Albert Einstein once offered his definition of insanity: Doing the same things over and over again, and expecting different results each time.
Based on Einstein’s explanation, left-wing progressives must be insane because they truly believe that they can do better than the last socialist efforts to equalize society.
Progressives point to communist China as an example of socialist economic success. But the communist China of today is nowhere near the original Maoist China of the 1950s.
The old communist China was a third world country, very nearly medieval in its technology, health care, food and living standards.
Not until the 1990s had China made the transition out of the dark ages of communism and into a modern age of industrialism and technological advancement. Largely with the help of the United States of America—a right-wing capitalist and free market nation—China has become an emerging world industrial, economic, political and military power. America’s self-destructive domestic economic policies have handcuffed her own businesses and industries, thereby helping China immensely in its drive to compete with the rest of the world because American companies have relocated operations overseas where the corporate climate is friendlier and the cost of doing business is much cheaper. America, in fact, has gone out of her way to support and promote China to her own disadvantage and detriment.
As such, China is merely a shadow of its former self. It is more like a hybrid of socialist and capitalist—capocialist.
If it weren’t for capitalism, communist China would likely not be any better off than its failed Russian counterpart, the USSR.
So, to the progressive propagandists who like to use China as a model of socialist success, I’d like to point out that it is only successful when funded by capitalism. China is funded by the capitalist United States, and that’s why it is successful. Period.
But I digress: The utopian idea of fairness cannot be successfully implemented by government policy. That has been tried many times before, and it has failed consistently.
The bottom line is that man cannot mandate fairness, because life itself isn’t fair.
Consider all of the equality laws that exist in the United States of America. The federal codes are fat with them. And yet, despite exhaustive legislative efforts to make everyone equal under the law, inequality still exists. This is because fairness is a human character trait; it isn’t a legal matter.
Fairness cannot be legislated any more effectively than morality can.
As such, I’d like to say something to the individual who cries that life is not fair, and then appeals to his government for help: Life will still be unfair, even after the bureaucrats are through manipulating individual liberty yet again. Your only comfort and gain will be a superficial notion that somebody in power somewhere did something about your unfair circumstance by proposing and passing yet another law; one that will only end up getting lost in the tens of thousands of other laws clogging the books. Such a law will have no effect whatsoever on making your life any more fair than it already is or is not. Instead, all any law against unfairness does is shave yet another chip off the statue of liberty. Eventually, once all the people with an axe to grind are through trying to make life fair for them, all that shall remain of essential liberty will be a pile of chips and shavings that once resembled freedom.
Unfairness is a universal truth ranking up there with death and taxes. Life just is unfair, and there’s really nothing we can do about it. So get over it already.
The fact is that there’s always somebody else who seems to have it better than you do. Somewhere in the world, somebody else has more money and more material possessions than you. Somebody somewhere is healthier and happier than you. And undoubtedly, somebody somewhere is probably having more fun and experiencing more pleasure than you are right now.
So, what’s to be done about it?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing can be done to make life fairer for you so that you can have the same pleasures, happiness, money or material possessions as another person.
But try telling this to the avowed Marxist-socialist, whose fundamental belief is in a fair, equitable and even distribution of money and material so that everyone has the same things and nobody wants. Modern left-wing progressives are cut from the same cloth as traditional Nineteenth Century socialists. They have been influencing federal and state domestic policies for a hundred years. Their goal is socioeconomic egalitarianism where everyone is equal and has an equal share in everything. Nobody wants, everyone is taken care of, and there are no have-nots.
A pipe dream if I ever heard one.
The rift between rich and poor has existed since the dawn of human civilization. In every society, in every culture, in every country and political nation, there are rich people and there are poor people. Even in socialist countries where egalitarianism is not only the exclusive practice but also the law, there are those who seem to have more than others.
Take the former Soviet Union as Exhibit A. The Russian Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 ushered in a 75-year period of communism, or extreme social egalitarianism. During that time, the number of poor Russians grew exponentially as the government took from the haves and divided up its booty to distribute equally among the have-nots.
The result was long lines of poor people waiting to get their daily rations of food, clothing and other material necessary for living.
By trying to institute a policy of fairness, equality and sameness the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics brought more suffering to its people than had even been suffered under the rule of the Czars. In other words, by trying to make things fair, the Russian leadership ended up only making things worse for the Russian people.
By taking money from the haves, the USSR caused massive unemployment, because the haves employed the have-nots. Communist Russia turned its haves into have-nots, too. So everyone was now equally poor and poorly the same.
And yet, despite all of the widespread suffering experienced throughout the USSR, there still existed the haves in government; those in power who dictated to and over the people. They were the ones trying to make things “equal” and the same for everyone else, while personally living beyond their means themselves, and way above the level of the average Russian citizen.
All things being equal, then, the Soviet Union in all its extremism wasn’t truly equal after all. Fairness was something propagandized, but not practiced by the government elite.
The former USSR has since become an object lesson on how not to do things.
But despite what we have gleaned from Russia’s political fiasco, today’s leftist progressives seem impervious to the lessons of history. They ignore the fact that socialism—whether in mild or extreme forms—fails on its own.
Modern leftists believe that they can do better than the Bolsheviks did. They think that they have the answers and that the results of their plans will be different.
Renowned Twentieth Century physicist Albert Einstein once offered his definition of insanity: Doing the same things over and over again, and expecting different results each time.
Based on Einstein’s explanation, left-wing progressives must be insane because they truly believe that they can do better than the last socialist efforts to equalize society.
Progressives point to communist China as an example of socialist economic success. But the communist China of today is nowhere near the original Maoist China of the 1950s.
The old communist China was a third world country, very nearly medieval in its technology, health care, food and living standards.
Not until the 1990s had China made the transition out of the dark ages of communism and into a modern age of industrialism and technological advancement. Largely with the help of the United States of America—a right-wing capitalist and free market nation—China has become an emerging world industrial, economic, political and military power. America’s self-destructive domestic economic policies have handcuffed her own businesses and industries, thereby helping China immensely in its drive to compete with the rest of the world because American companies have relocated operations overseas where the corporate climate is friendlier and the cost of doing business is much cheaper. America, in fact, has gone out of her way to support and promote China to her own disadvantage and detriment.
As such, China is merely a shadow of its former self. It is more like a hybrid of socialist and capitalist—capocialist.
If it weren’t for capitalism, communist China would likely not be any better off than its failed Russian counterpart, the USSR.
So, to the progressive propagandists who like to use China as a model of socialist success, I’d like to point out that it is only successful when funded by capitalism. China is funded by the capitalist United States, and that’s why it is successful. Period.
But I digress: The utopian idea of fairness cannot be successfully implemented by government policy. That has been tried many times before, and it has failed consistently.
The bottom line is that man cannot mandate fairness, because life itself isn’t fair.
Consider all of the equality laws that exist in the United States of America. The federal codes are fat with them. And yet, despite exhaustive legislative efforts to make everyone equal under the law, inequality still exists. This is because fairness is a human character trait; it isn’t a legal matter.
Fairness cannot be legislated any more effectively than morality can.
As such, I’d like to say something to the individual who cries that life is not fair, and then appeals to his government for help: Life will still be unfair, even after the bureaucrats are through manipulating individual liberty yet again. Your only comfort and gain will be a superficial notion that somebody in power somewhere did something about your unfair circumstance by proposing and passing yet another law; one that will only end up getting lost in the tens of thousands of other laws clogging the books. Such a law will have no effect whatsoever on making your life any more fair than it already is or is not. Instead, all any law against unfairness does is shave yet another chip off the statue of liberty. Eventually, once all the people with an axe to grind are through trying to make life fair for them, all that shall remain of essential liberty will be a pile of chips and shavings that once resembled freedom.
Life isn’t fair
Two universal truths most people recognize as absolute certainties are death and taxes.
But there is a third: Life isn’t fair.
No matter how hard we try to make things work out for us or others, life just happens.
Life itself is ambiguous, unpredictable and even chaotic.
While I believe there is an order to things, the natural course of life cannot be planned, cannot be predicted, and does not fit neatly in a bottle.
A large part of the reason why is because of our own imperfections. Our imperfect bodies and imperfect hearts have forged an imperfect environment around us, the imperfect world that we live in. As a result, we have to deal with its consequences; namely that things just don’t happen or work out the way we want them to.
Life isn’t fair.
While I’ve always known this truth, rarely has it hit me square in the face. That is, until last month when my wife and I received a telephone call that our nephew-to-be had died in his mother’s womb.
He was just two months shy of his due date when his heart stopped beating.
He would have been his parents’ first child, and the first of the next generation in my bloodline.
His loss hit us all very hard; none harder, of course, than his parents.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve found myself pondering more than any other time in my life the universal truth about fairness.
Why did my brother and his wife have to lose their first child, while America’s welfare queens seem to have no problem popping babies out and increasing their income? How come my brother and sister-in-law had to go through the pain of losing a single baby, but a histrionic and egocentric narcissist like “Octo Mom” can produce eight healthy newborns, which have earned her fame and fortune?
Is it fair that my brother and sister-in-law must go into debt to the hospital over the loss of their child, but “Octo Mom” can get a book deal, appear in magazines, and get invited onto the television talk show circuit just to tell the story of how a doctor surgically implanted eight fertilized eggs into her?
And is it right or just that a woman can casually select to abort an otherwise very healthy baby because her child is inconvenient and unwanted, yet my brother and his wife can’t even bring a child into this world?
The answer, of course, is that life just isn’t fair. Some people get all the breaks in life, and others don’t get any. Some people are born, while others never get the chance.
Millions of abortions have been performed in this country, terminating the lives of unborn or partially born children who would otherwise have been born alive and healthy had they been given the chance to live.
It is a travesty that people like my brother and sister-in-law are denied the opportunity to be parents, while other expecting parents can summarily choose to kill their unborn children simply because the child wasn’t planned; the parents weren’t ready to be parents; or the child was just an inconvenient burden to them.
My nephew wasn’t planned, either. He was a complete surprise. And my brother and sister-in-law were in no position financially to afford the costs of not only birthing a child, but also raising it. Yet, they wanted to give this little boy his life, because it was at no fault of his that he was conceived. They wanted to bring him into this world and raise him as their son the best they were able to.
But his birth and his life weren’t meant to be.
What burns me up about abortion on demand is that it takes the life of a child whose beating heart and functioning brain were meant to be. It is foiling nature and denying God the life He chose to breathe His spirit into. So many babies whose lives were meant to be are not here to claim their birthrights, because brilliant man in all his finite wisdom decided he could intervene and interrupt nature’s course; so he did.
Here we stand in judgment of unborn lives; we who were born and given life are determining the fates, the lives of others. That’s not fair and it’s not right.
Life isn’t ours to give or to take away. It is God’s and His alone to grant. When we determine to make that choice, then we are playing God.
Imagine that: Imperfect man trying to impersonate a perfect being. What an oxymoron.
Life is so full of contradictions like that, because it just isn’t fair.
And while I accept my nephew’s death as life not meant to be, I cannot and will not accept abortion on demand this way, because we really have no way of knowing whether life was meant to be or not. It was terminated before it ever had a chance to be.
Abortion, like life, just isn’t fair. But unlike life, which we can do nothing about, we can do something about abortion. The cycle of infanticide can be broken.
The question is whether or not individuals and communities have the courage to do what’s right, instead of settling for doing what they want.
Life may not be fair, but it does deserve a fair chance.
But there is a third: Life isn’t fair.
No matter how hard we try to make things work out for us or others, life just happens.
Life itself is ambiguous, unpredictable and even chaotic.
While I believe there is an order to things, the natural course of life cannot be planned, cannot be predicted, and does not fit neatly in a bottle.
A large part of the reason why is because of our own imperfections. Our imperfect bodies and imperfect hearts have forged an imperfect environment around us, the imperfect world that we live in. As a result, we have to deal with its consequences; namely that things just don’t happen or work out the way we want them to.
Life isn’t fair.
While I’ve always known this truth, rarely has it hit me square in the face. That is, until last month when my wife and I received a telephone call that our nephew-to-be had died in his mother’s womb.
He was just two months shy of his due date when his heart stopped beating.
He would have been his parents’ first child, and the first of the next generation in my bloodline.
His loss hit us all very hard; none harder, of course, than his parents.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve found myself pondering more than any other time in my life the universal truth about fairness.
Why did my brother and his wife have to lose their first child, while America’s welfare queens seem to have no problem popping babies out and increasing their income? How come my brother and sister-in-law had to go through the pain of losing a single baby, but a histrionic and egocentric narcissist like “Octo Mom” can produce eight healthy newborns, which have earned her fame and fortune?
Is it fair that my brother and sister-in-law must go into debt to the hospital over the loss of their child, but “Octo Mom” can get a book deal, appear in magazines, and get invited onto the television talk show circuit just to tell the story of how a doctor surgically implanted eight fertilized eggs into her?
And is it right or just that a woman can casually select to abort an otherwise very healthy baby because her child is inconvenient and unwanted, yet my brother and his wife can’t even bring a child into this world?
The answer, of course, is that life just isn’t fair. Some people get all the breaks in life, and others don’t get any. Some people are born, while others never get the chance.
Millions of abortions have been performed in this country, terminating the lives of unborn or partially born children who would otherwise have been born alive and healthy had they been given the chance to live.
It is a travesty that people like my brother and sister-in-law are denied the opportunity to be parents, while other expecting parents can summarily choose to kill their unborn children simply because the child wasn’t planned; the parents weren’t ready to be parents; or the child was just an inconvenient burden to them.
My nephew wasn’t planned, either. He was a complete surprise. And my brother and sister-in-law were in no position financially to afford the costs of not only birthing a child, but also raising it. Yet, they wanted to give this little boy his life, because it was at no fault of his that he was conceived. They wanted to bring him into this world and raise him as their son the best they were able to.
But his birth and his life weren’t meant to be.
What burns me up about abortion on demand is that it takes the life of a child whose beating heart and functioning brain were meant to be. It is foiling nature and denying God the life He chose to breathe His spirit into. So many babies whose lives were meant to be are not here to claim their birthrights, because brilliant man in all his finite wisdom decided he could intervene and interrupt nature’s course; so he did.
Here we stand in judgment of unborn lives; we who were born and given life are determining the fates, the lives of others. That’s not fair and it’s not right.
Life isn’t ours to give or to take away. It is God’s and His alone to grant. When we determine to make that choice, then we are playing God.
Imagine that: Imperfect man trying to impersonate a perfect being. What an oxymoron.
Life is so full of contradictions like that, because it just isn’t fair.
And while I accept my nephew’s death as life not meant to be, I cannot and will not accept abortion on demand this way, because we really have no way of knowing whether life was meant to be or not. It was terminated before it ever had a chance to be.
Abortion, like life, just isn’t fair. But unlike life, which we can do nothing about, we can do something about abortion. The cycle of infanticide can be broken.
The question is whether or not individuals and communities have the courage to do what’s right, instead of settling for doing what they want.
Life may not be fair, but it does deserve a fair chance.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
