The above video gives me hope for the future of Islamic nations. The uprisings sparked in Tunisia have spread like wildfire through nations repressed by religion, censorship, and income inequality. Some have been successful, while others haven’t, and the deciding factor seems to be one of courage in numbers.

In places like Tunisia and Egypt, the people came out in such numbers that there was no way for the government to win. At best, they could slaughter their own workforce in order to maintain control of their compound. In China, the internet surveillance was on high alert, and the police response was swift, dragging people out of their homes in the dead of night. Had four protesters come up for every one they took away, China would be the only thing in our news right now.

People like Veena Malik are very important. By coming out on national television and saying several things that would likely get her swiftly killed if she said them in the streets, she has given the church and the government an impossible dilemma. If they kill her, she becomes a martyr for her cause. If they don’t, she gives courage to all of those who were previously afraid to speak out to follow her example.

I think of DADT as good manners, but lousy policy. One’s sexual orientation is not relevant to the job at hand; it’s a distraction. Making an issue of it while on duty should be punishable by reprimand rather than discharge. I feel the same way about religion.

On a separate note, women will never have equal rights in this country until they have equal responsibilities. This includes registering for the draft. The government either needs to do away with it or apply it without discrimination.

Most claims of religious discrimination are claims of violation of the first amendment statement that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. I think the first thing that is important to understand here is that the government doesn’t give us our rights, it just hasn’t managed to take all of them away yet. The Constitution isn’t a document granting us rights, it’s a document restricting the actions of government. The thing to note here is that it isn’t the job of Congress to prevent discrimination, but rather to not cause it.

Claims of religious discrimination range from legitimate to ridiculous, and resolving them is difficult in the sense that the ones seemingly being wronged are often the ones asking for the discrimination. Some examples that are already happening:

An Orthodox Jewish couple in Bournemouth have issued a county court writ claiming religious discrimination. Why? This couple contends that they are being held hostage on Shabbat because walking out their door triggers their neighbor’s motion light, and thus their prohibition of ‘making fire’, one of many things they aren’t allowed to do on the Sabbath. Lets say Jehovah’s Witnesses were afraid of motion lights too. Would putting outdoor motion lighting on your front door be a hate crime? This  highlights the problem of the government getting involved in private affairs. What happens when one religion requires motion lights on their door while another forbids it? There is no way to please everyone.

What I find disturbing about this kind of case is that looking at the above definition for religious discrimination, it is the couple who is doing the discriminating by demanding special treatment because of their beliefs. No one else can sue their neighbors for having motion lighting unless they also subscribe to this belief.

Another example is that of the burkha. A girl in Florida tried to get her drivers license photo taken with her burkha on. Obviously the state shot this down. The same goes for being identified before boarding airplanes. It is an interesting dilemma because, while it is the burkha wearers who want the special treatment, denying it is essentially preventing Islamic women from travelling. I would also note that if you are an identical twin, they don’t force you to come up with additional identification to prove you aren’t your sibling. An airline could hire a woman to take the burkha wearers into a private room for identification, but if the airline were small enough to only have one ID checker, then they would be forced to be discriminatory in their hiring practices by only hiring a woman. It is the FAA that requires such checks, so it is a government matter, just as it would be if they were carded at a liquor store. The ACLU thinks it is disallowed because of religious discrimination caused by 9-11, rather than the obvious security reasons of identifying passengers. I’d challenge them to try to go buy some liquor one night wearing a ski mask and see how far they get.

The intent of the constitution as it relates to religious discrimination should be interpreted as a sort of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy. Those in government should not commit religious acts while on the job, or add them or their terminology into policy, and the government shouldn’t take religion into account when making decisions. Where the lines of discrimination law should be drawn for businesses and individuals, I admit I don’t know. Anyone have any opinions?

An excerpt outlining the three main options for going forward:

“The first is annexation of the West Bank. But this would bring 2.4 million Palestinians into Israel, giving her a population 40 percent Arab. With a higher birth rate, Palestinians would soon outnumber Jews and vote to abolish the Jewish state, thus creating a bi-national state. That would mean the end of the Zionist dream.

The second option is the Meir Kahane solution. The late rabbi urged the expulsion of the Palestinians from the occupied territories. But the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands or millions of Palestinians would mean innumerable casualties, a severing of all ties to the Arab world, the moral isolation of Israel and a break with the United States. America could not stand by and let such a human rights atrocity take place.

The third option is the Netanyahu option: no annexation, no ethnic cleaning, no Palestinian state — but permanent control of the West Bank to assure the “Hamastan” in Gaza is never replicated on the West Bank.” -Pat Buchanan

That third option looks pretty good on the surface, which means it is politically nearly guaranteed. Unfortunately it leaves Palestine as a giant concentration camp in permanent apartheid and war.

It really bothers me when religions attempt to simply out-breed their enemies. If they are the source of conflict, the last thing we need is more of them. If I lean towards the Palestinians in this conflict, it isn’t because they are right, but because they are oppressed.

While this comes as no surprise to those of us who have been paying attention, I think it deserve some further scrutiny. The obvious conclusion would be that religion causes a desire to torture, but I think that may be backwards. Another recent study showed the religious as being far more likely to seek extreme life prolonging measures when deathly ill. What does all this have in common? A fear of the unknown extreme enough to lead people to oppose the values they claim to have, just to scrabble at a scrap of hope. It is religion that is an irrational safety blanket for some very rational fears, that provides the self  righteousness and justification for the commission of atrocities that were already desired by those susceptible to it’s pull of absolution. It is the dichotomy of hope and fear that got both Bush and Obama elected by the same electorate. While hope and fear are polar opposites, they are two sides of the same coin.

It is as if the whole country is in a Kübler-Ross model of the stages of grief.

1. Denial: This is where we were between WWII and the Bush years. We were the greatest country on earth. It was our birthright, not just a side effect of being the last manufacturing power standing after the war due to the distance of our homes from the front lines.
2. Anger: We clearly transition from denial to anger early in the Bush years. We believe all of our problems are external in nature, that it isn’t our fault. The Axis of Evil is the source of our pain. Wars ensue on multiple fronts.
3. Bargaining: Hope. Perhaps if we elect a Democrat, they will fix everything. We will give the banks whatever they want, bail out the manufacturing industry, borrow money, whatever it takes. The final days of Bush and the first 100 days of Obama.
4. Depression: This is where we are now. consumer confidence is low, the parties are fragmented, the future unclear.
5. Acceptance: This is where we are going. We need to accept that our problems are fundamental and widespread, that the middle east won’t have peace, China isn’t going away, and the Dollar isn’t intrinsically strong. Our economy isn’t  in a downturn, it has seen a correction, and we aren’t going back to the golden age of the 1950′s any time soon. It is time to pick up the pieces, make some hard choices, and begin to move forward.

We are a government of the people, by the people. It hasn’t led us here, we have led it here. We can take it back, but we can’t do it without a majority. Our next president should be a Ron Paul.

• On thinkers he says, “thinkers tend to prefer to rely on their own wits, live an independent existence, take entrepreneurial risks, and accept responsibility for the consequences of their failures. They tend not to seek or rely on leaders for direction, and do not generally find causes or identity politics compelling.”
• On feelers, “Feelers are more sociable, prefer the security of groups of simpatico friends, and readily follow the direction of group leaders. Their need to belong makes them vulnerable to groupthink, and susceptible to the notion that the group is more important than any individual.“

I’m not a big fan of this terminology, but the points are valid. I’m going to switch the terminology towards individualists and followers, since I think there are far too many groupthink intellectuals out there (socialists), and thoughtless individuals (couch potatoes). 

Both of these would appear to be valid ways of going through life, but at some point the followers run into a problem of scale. The very strength in numbers that gives them power also robs them of their free choice. Once a group gets to a sufficient size, it takes on an identity of its own. It becomes simple minded and self serving, bloated and corrupt. Those followers that make up its members find themselves in the position of opposing many of the policies of the collective; but having the choice of being with it or against it, left out on their own, they continue their support.

Individualists have been blamed for many of the problems of society, from the destruction of family values, to corporate greed, to the collapse of the economy. I would argue that we are a relatively tiny portion of society, and that we have been vilified by the collectives as a way of passing blame to those who are not organized enough to defend themselves.

• “Family values” is just a code phrase of conformity. Having grown up in several different family units and situations, I can say with confidence that it was enlightening, and that there is no single right way to raise a family.
• Corporate greed is a problem of the collective. We should mistrust those in power and those organizations that have grown too large. When they stop serving us, we should stop serving them.  “The difference between corporations and governments is governments have a monopoly on force. It’s a lot easier to vote with your feet or your wallet than it is to change a government with your vote.” -P.J. O’Rourke
• The collapse of the economy can be blamed on a great many things, but to claim that the government was powerless to stop it and lacked the ability to regulate it is ludicrous. They control the tax rates, the interest rates, the laws, the tariffs, the subsidies, minimum wage, and the printing of money, and we are expected to believe that they were powerless?

At the feet of those disciples who sacrifice free thought for membership, we can clearly lay a great deal of the worlds problems, from partisanship, to war, to oppression, to censorship. These are not the tools of individuals.

Too many run the daily news through a filter of religion and partisanship before they form their opinions, and even more these days have become too lazy even to do that, instead relying on tailored media to save them the effort of forming their own opinions, and offering them false outrage on a platter. If you only listen to the news sources that match your politics because all of the others are biased against you and make you angry, then you are a part of the problem, not the solution. Form your own opinions. Emotional response has been shown to physiologically inhibit rational thought when watching politics. Don’t get angry at the other guy, seek deeper understanding and push solutions.

I’ve always been irritated with the ‘In God we trust” on our currency. Getting past the obvious hypocrisy and camels and eyes of needles, I felt like it was another attempt by religion to infiltrate governance. Niall Ferguson has changed my thoughts on the matter. In this clip on the Colbert Report, he explains the concepts of currency and  money in a fiat system.

This got me thinking and I did a little research:

In 1862, due to the Civil War, paper money was issued without the backing of precious metals.

In God We Trust first appeared on our currency in 1864.

Coincidence? I think not. God was not put on the currency to make people who have money believe in God, it was put there to make those who have God believe in the value of worthless paper; to give it the divine aura of trustworthiness. We didn’t need to trust God before fiat currency, we could trust silver and gold. No one was going to trust government, so the big G lent a hand.

Here are a few of the better Obama Moments thus far:

On religion: This is the first of a series, the rest should be linked at the end.

On Race:

On the middle east:

Pat has done the unthinkable for a major political commentator, he has invoked Godwin’s law at the highest level, comparing the Jewish state to Nazi Germany.

James Carville once said about Hillary and Obama, “If she gave him one of her cojones, they’d both have two.” 

I would say of Pat Buchanan that if he gave Bush one of his cajones, the man wouldn’t be able to lift it.

Pat Buchanan debating Clifford May (foundation for the defense of democracies (an anti-islamic neocon group))

“They triggered a blitzkreig against the Palestinians, in Gaza, which in my judgement is  an Israeli Concentration camp, where a million and a half people are locked up, cannot go out or come in, the’ve been controlling food, electricity, fuel, and the innocent people in Gaza are the ones suffering” -Pat Buchanan