Category Archives: Politics

Politics

A Clash of Rights – Part 2

Leave a comment

Continuing from my last post, I want to discuss the idea of a clash of rights again. Let’s think about it from a political sense for a moment. Does a person have a right to associate only with those of the same political beliefs? And if so, can this right extend to those who have a business that serves the public?

An example I used on Facebook was that of a small city, where there was one event center, owned by a staunch Democrat. The mayor of the town is a Republican, and the event center owner hates him and everything he and his party stand for. Let’s say they are both white men. The mayor wants to rent out the event center for the start of his re-election campaign. The Democratic owner of the event center refuses, stating he will not rent it out for a Republican event. Is he within his rights to refuse service?

I would hope he has the right to refuse to serve the Republican, based on his political views. But maybe not. The Republican has the right not to be discriminated against for his political views, and the Democrat has the right of conscious. Which right trumps the other?

That’s not so far-fetched. And of course political rights clearly don’t trump some civil rights. If it had been a black person wanting to rent the event center for his daughter’s wedding, the white Democratic owner couldn’t refuse to rent to him on the basis of political views. Or say it was a black owner. He couldn’t say, “You know, you white Republicans have oppressed my people enough. No, I’m not going to rent it to you for your daughter’s wedding, based on my political views.  I don’t think that would be within the law.

You see, a person doesn’t choose his race, but he does chose his political opinions and actions. So should a person be allowed to refuse to serve another person based on the politics of the two? I think that’s a very important question that needs to be settled. Race is inherent; political affiliation is not. Must a person who runs a business that serves the general public be forced to serve someone of a different political stripe? If the event is a political one, I would think not. If the event is a private one (such as the wedding reception), I would still think not. I would still like to see the person retain his right to conscious based on his political beliefs. In those cases, I can’t really see how anyone’s civil rights were violated.

What say you? Do you agree with me or not? Do we have the right to act on political conscious?

I think I’ll end this post here.  In the next one I’ll start honing in more on how this relates to the homosexual situation. And in one after that, I may finally get into where I stand on the narrower issue.

 

Politics

A Clash of Rights – Part 1

2 Comments

Some days ago I wrote out a blog post in manuscript; not completely, but enough to get me going once I got to my computer. Alas, I have no idea where that piece of paper is. It’s not in all the usual places. I could look in unusual places, but that seems like work, more work than starting from scratch.

So, having finished my stock chart reading for the evening, and not yet ready to exit The Dungeon and read, I’ll try to recreate this.

The impetus for this post is the recent passage of religious freedom bills (RFRA) in Indiana and Arkansas, as described in this post. I won’t repeat what I said there. At least I don’t think I will. And, I’m fairly sure I won’t be able to finish my thoughts in just one post of reasonable length for a blog, maybe not in two. So I hope readers of this post will indulge me my wordiness, and come back for all doses of this. And my full argument won’t be clear until the very end. If you stop before that you may get the wrong impression of what I’m saying.

I got into a couple of Facebook debates on the state RFRAs. Nothing earth shattering. Mainly I said I hadn’t read the bills/acts in question, didn’t know what they said, but didn’t know why they were needed. The general interpretation of the acts by one side was that they gave license for people to discriminate against the homosexual community based on their own religious views. The interpretation of the other side seemed to be that the right of conscious based on religious views needed to be preserved, and government actions were leaning towards doing away with religious conscious. I hope that’s a reasonable summary, and not too repetitive of my former post.

Trying to think of this from a larger viewpoint than just the homosexual community, it seems what you have here is a clash of rights: one group’s right to be treated justly, and another group’s right to act on their conscious, regardless of the reason why they have that position.  Let’s say this was a case of a landlord not wanting to rent to a black person because his religion (or political conscious) forbids him to. The USA has determined that in such a clash of rights, the civil rights of the black person outweigh the right of conscious of a landlord, and he/she can’t behave that way. He/she cannot base rental decisions on race.

What about business-to-consumer services based on sexual orientation?  This is a harder area to define, in my mind. With regard to race, a person is whatever race they were born with. It wasn’t their choice. In the case of sexual orientation, it seems to me that the jury is still out on whether it’s a choice or an in-born trait. Or perhaps it’s always a choice or always an inborn trait. I suspect it is an inborn trait in many cases, and a choice in many as well. If it’s a choice, do the civil rights or the homosexual person (by which I mean both males and females who practice same-sex relations) trump the right-of-conscious of the straight person? Or are the rights about equal, and hence neither side should require any special mention in the law as being a protected class.

These are difficult issues in my mind. I realize people who read this might disagree—on either side. It might be clear cut to some that it’s always a choice or always an inborn trait. Someone might even say it doesn’t make a difference whether it’s a choice or inborn. It is how it is, and discrimination vs. conscious must be settled one way of the other.

Without settling the question concerning the clash of rights as it relates to homosexuals, I want to consider the broader picture of other areas of conscious. Alas, as I thought, I’m out of space in this blog post. Look for another post in a day or two—at least I’ll try to get back to this that quickly.

Engineering, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, flood studies, Politics

Bad News All Around Us

Leave a comment

The news yesterday was awful, just awful. We listened to no news on Sunday, preferring to take a “day of rest” from the news. We watched a couple of movies on television in the evening, and did not have news on before that. So yesterday morning as I went to work, I heard what I missed on Sunday, namely the killing of Dr. Tiller. Then, on Monday we had more bad news.

Dr. Tiller, whatever his profession and whatever his status as a legal or illegal provider of controversial abortions, did not deserve the vigilante justice he received. This is not the way to save babies from having their lives terminated before they have a chance to fully develop and breathe. Eliminating service providers will not reduce the number of abortions. Changing the hearts and minds of those who want to have abortions will. You won’t change those hearts and minds by murder.

The bankruptcy of General Motors. Actually, the bankruptcy is not really sad news: the Federal take over of it is. I believe it is unconstitutional for our government to own the means of production. Every time we Americans face a crisis, we look to government to get us out. Each time that government gets a little bigger and a little more powerful and controls a little more of our lives. Shame on us for not taking more responsibility for ourselves.

The loss of the French flight is disturbing. This has all the earmarks of a terrorist attack (eerily like Pan Am over Lockerbee), though mechanical failure of some sort is possible. It’s just sad is all I can say.

I got little done at work yesterday, and little done at home as far as writing is concerned. At work my main task was to get writing on the flood study report for Centerton. I had hopes of major progress. About all I accomplished was to get past the blank screen. I typed a table of contents and made decent progress on the Introduction, but not even close to what I hoped. I’m happy to report that today I’m doing much better, and words are flying from my brain to the paper, or rather to the screen. Last night I got little writing done. I worked some on the new chapter in In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I think I added maybe 400 words. I typed some in the appendix previously started for the harmony of the gospels. I’m now within a hundred or two hundred words of finishing that.

But as far as freelance research goes, or preparation for the Chicago book fair–nothing. When I went to the Dungeon to begin my hour or two of evening work, I was overwhelmed by the amount of papers all around me that should be culled and discarded of filed. Genealogy papers. Writing papers. Bills. Mementos. Etc. The work to get this all done is just immense. I could not, in my inner mind, justify spending an hour researching freelance markets and generating more papers. I couldn’t justify printing out samples to bring to Chicago. It all seemed like so much work that I really don’t have time for.

Or maybe it’s just fear of success raising its ugly head again.

Health, Politics

Corporate Foraging

Leave a comment

This time of year is when I forage, in the office. Beginning about Dec 15th, the ladies begin bringing in little treats. Or various vendors begin dropping off gifts such as tins of popcorn or meat trays or boxes of peanut brittle, not for me but for the company as a whole. Or we give out meat and cheese trays to our clients, and one department head always mysteriously orders one too many, which of course we then have to consume. If I wanted to, I wouldn’t have to take a lunch. Although, since I can’t have the sweet treats, I do have to limit my foraging to what I’m supposed to eat.

Of course, foraging in the office has a different effect than it had in the days of hunter-gatherers. Back then, foraging took considerable energy and effort. One stayed slim and trim and built muscle while foraging. Today, it merely means taking about six steps from the corridor to the conference table in Dept 1, or ten steps in Dept 2, or…you get the picture. Foraging has a negative impact on the body, an impact which I am indeed feeling.

This is not a political blog, and I have made very few political posts. Normally, when I want to make political comments I head over to The Senescent Man blog and post there. But today I will comment on the “corporate foraging” going on in America. First the big lending companies, then the banks, and now the big three automakers all want someone to bail them out, to infuse money in them to allow them to keep operating without declaring bankruptcy. We have a presidential candidate from the party of “fiscal responsibility” who proposed spending 300 Billion dollars to buy “worthless paper” to artificially prop up house prices. Talk about an ultimate oxymoron. We have a president from the same company who defies the will of congress and of his own party and loans money to those automakers, saying it necessary to discard free-market principles to save the free market.

What will the outcome be of this? The US government becomes an owner in these companies, or in some cases becomes their creditor. The taxpayer pays for this, either with more taxation today or more taxation in the future. None of these is a good outcome.

What was the cause of this crisis? Greed, pure and simple, it seems to me. People were greedy, wanting to own houses they couldn’t afford, and wanting those houses to always go up in value. Workers were greedy (through their unions), wanting to have the highest pay and benefits package they could squeeze out of the company. Corporate officers were greedy, wanting the highest possible salary and bonus with the best golden parachute waiting should they fail. And stockholders were greedy, wanting the best possible profit this quarter with rising stock price, with no thoughts to long-term viability of the company. Our members of congress were greedy, wanting to be seen as the promoters and sustainers of prosperity. Rather than all the sorry characters in this sorry story fessing up to their greed and seeking to make amends, they go to the taxpayers with their hands out and say, “Please fund our greed!”

Greed is what causes my foraging in the office, with the result that my body is in worse shape, and post-foraging depression when I realize just how many pounds I have to lose, pounds I’ve lost a few times already. And greed was the cause of the bubble that had to burst, resulting in Panic of 2008 and the corporate foraging taking place before our eyes. The depression that will follow will be the result of simple demographics, as the baby-boomers age and spend less; but it will come.

This has truly been a sad year in America.

America, Politics

Michelle says: It takes a family

6 Comments

Yes, that was the underlying message of Michelle Obama last night at the Democratic party’s convention, to the delegates, staff, media, nation, and world: It takes a family to raise a child, and that family consisting of both a father and mother, and if it happens, cooperating siblings, all working on their own initiative, all dedicated to the task at hand, working diligently, loving totally.

I thought the tribute she paid to her dad was touching, how he worked at a “filtration plant”–by which I assume she means a water treatment plant, and how he continued to do so even after he was physically diminished by disease. He altered his routine, taking longer to get ready for work, so that he could continue to support his family, which he saw as his duty, so that his wife could be a stay-at-home mom. Michelle praised he mother for that, and seemed to feel having that mom at home was important to her upbringing.

The relationship between Michelle and her brother (didn’t catch his name) also seemed important, based on their dovetailing testimonies. She influenced him to stay with coaching, and he influenced her to pursue public service as opposed to a Big Law partnership. Any parent would be proud to have such children, and feel that they had done something right in their raising.

Look at what was absent in Michelle’s speech concerning the influences in her life: neighbors, neighborhood, extended family, government programs. She mentioned her neighborhood, the south side of Chicago, but did so in almost derogatory language. You got the sense that the neighborhood would have pulled her down if the family hadn’t propelled her up. It appears, from Michelle’s words, that the government had no influence at all, either positive or negative.

A last impression I got was the positive influence Michelle has on her husband and children. As stable and positive as her raising was, Barack’s was turbulent: absent father, mother who seemed unstable, frequent moves, raised by a racist grandmother, experimentation with mind-altering drugs. Maybe Michelle helped her husband settle down and end the wild days of his youth. She is likely having that same influence on their daughters.

So, thank you Michelle, for that positive message, exactly what this nation needs to hear today, and echoing that of Bob Dole in 1996: To raise a child, it doesn’t take a village; it takes a family.

By the way, Michelle, have you discussed this with Senator Clinton?