Obamanomics 101

Does being a liberal Democrat turn off some kind of reality switch in your brain?  Honestly, President Obama went to college, right?  He studied and even taught constitutional law, a subject that does not suffer dunces, from what I understand.  I mean this as a compliment; I think Obama is an extremely smart person.

But then I heard him talking about his new health care plan, and the charge that government-run agencies inevitably perform terribly in contrast to the private sector.

Addressing this topic in relation to health care, Obama scoffed.  Why, he asked, if government is so terrible at everything, are all the health insurance companies saying they won’t be able to compete with it?  “That’s not logical,” he said, leading me to wonder if our president can define the adjective “logical.”

Mr. President, the private health insurance companies won’t be able to compete with your health care monstrosity because yours can’t fail.  You won’t let it.  You can keep pumping cash into it no matter how badly it performs.  You can undercut any private insurance company because you don’t have to turn a profit to keep running.  You just take the money from us through taxes and use it to prop up your program.  The private insurance companies don’t have the bottomless pockets of Uncle Sam to back them – and they also don’t have the law-making power of Washington in their corner.

Furthermore, where do you think the price cuts are going to come from, Mr. President?  Say a private company charges $1000 for insurance, and your program comes in and offers it for $800.  Who takes that loss?  The doctors, pharmaceutical companies, and private medical practices, that’s who.  They’re going to be squeezed; not you.

And of course, let’s not forget about the fact that taxes will be raised (are already being raised) to pay for this health care program.  I love how Obama’s big slogan during the campaign is that “for 95% of Americans, their taxes will not be raised one bit.”  What, are ninety-five percent of Americans tee-totalers, or Amish, or diabetic?  Because from what I hear, taxes on alcohol, gas, and soda are going up.

What’s illogical, Mr. President, is to ignore reality in favor of idealism.

The “Coarse” Culture

I hear conservatives lamenting our “coarsening” culture all the time.  What do we expect to get out of society, they ask, when kids are constantly inundated with violence from the internet, video games, and music?  The more reasonable ones aren’t silly enough to say that Marilyn Manson and shoot-em-up games produce violent kids, but they do say that all this violence becomes so commonplace to kids that they view it as the norm.  I’ve even heard Bill O’Reilly say that kids are “living in video games nowadays,” as if young people are so inured against violence that they can’t tell fantasy from reality.

I hardly think the youth of America is that stupid.  In fact, I’m quite sure most of them would laugh at how stupid such a statement like that is.  I think that there is an argument to be made against the glorification of violence, instant gratification, and image in modern culture, but I think we’re going way overboard in some instances.

But how coarse is our culture nowadays?  Sure, kids see violent video games and violent TV, as well as all sorts of butchery and human monsters on the news.  But I also see a culture in which you can get charged with assault for smacking some idiot who’s in your face.  A culture that infantilizes young people by instructing them that running to a parent or teacher is the best way to solve your problems.  A culture in which the government decides what’s good and bad for us by banning trans-fats and putting taxes on junk food.

A couple hundred years ago, you had pistol duels in the streets and horse-thieves hanged by ad hoc militias.  You had the expectation of getting shot (or at least beat up) if you got out of line with someone.  A nineteenth century kid didn’t have video games; he got to watch people hang in the streets and get (lawfully) shot over an argument.  Think of all those kids on the frontier, where law enforcement wasn’t always present to handle thieves and thugs.  These kids grew up with real-live, actual violence, not fantasy images, actors, and pixels on a screen.  They weren’t being raised to sit in front of monitors, gorge themselves on sugar, attend self-esteem seminars, and play schoolyard games where you don’t keep score so as not to hurt anyone’s feelings.  And they probably didn’t have parents telling them that “violence never solves anything” and “come tell me and we’ll sue those bastards.”

I’m not saying that the Wild West and vigilante justice is the best social environment.  I’m saying that it seems to me, compared to the culture of a few generations ago, the kids today are growing up in pansy-land.

Liberal Moral Certitude

So ABC is once again setting itself up as another mouthpiece for the Obama administration.  Wow, what a shock.  And just the other day, Obama was whining (I’m sorry, there’s just no other word for it) about how Fox News seems intent on “attacking” him.

No, Mr. President, they’re not attacking you.  Other than partisan scarecrows like Sean Hannity, they’re simply being critical of your administration and the decisions you make.  I mean, you didn’t honestly think to just do whatever you want, pass any bill, make any policy decision, and we’d all just go along with it because you’re a cool guy, did you?  We need the media to be critical of especially politicians and most definitely the president.  This is a requisite part of the United States of America.  Those in power should always – always, President Obama – be challenged.  And it is certainly not the job of the media to print “positive” stories about you.  How about the truth instead?

This is the biggest problem with the debate in this country nowadays.  It’s no longer about the actual policy.  It’s not about the facts, or the numbers, or the reality.  It’s all about feelings.  Obama thinks Fox News is being unfair to him.  He (and the left) think they’re on the side of moral supremacy.  Therefore, if you disagree with them, you can’t possibly be making a rational argument – you’re just a big fat meanie.

Look at the way the health care debate has devolved.  When an opponent of universal health care says we can’t afford it, it will take away choice, it will lead to rationing, it will lower the standard of care, it doesn’t work in other countries, etc., the Democrats don’t care.  They don’t hear any of that.  They simply think that anyone opposed to this wonderful plan of theirs is a heartless greedy bastard who wants to see kids deprived of medical care.

How else do you explain this willful dive into economic ruin?  How else do you explain how an otherwise rational man like President Obama trumpets about how he inherited this huge deficit and yet his plan is to run up a deficit that’s not only unprecedented, but literally impossible to sustain?

Ignoring reality has become convenient to them.  They think feelings and hopes can substitute for cold hard facts.  I’m sure it woud be a much nicer world if that were so, but nothing can stand proxy for the truth.

Whining About God

I have a sticker in my room that says “No Prayer in School” with a big red line crossing through a pair of clasped hands.  When I first put it up, I took it to mean that teachers in public schools should not - cannot – lead their students in prayer, to whatever god.  This would be a clear example of the government establishing a religion, which the First Amendment is pretty conspicuous about.

But some Americans think “No Prayer in School” should mean that no one is allowed to pray in school, at all.  Why?  If kids want to pray in school, so what?  I understand that a line has to be drawn somewhere, but preventing people from expressing their faith (or lack thereof) in public seems a poor place to draw it.  No atheist student is going to be hurt if he sees one of his peers praying.  Similarly, religious kids probably won’t be scarred for life if they witness a classmate pray to a deity different than theirs.

I’ve also seen stories on the news about memorial crosses being taken down because of lawsuits, the word “God” taken out of the Pledge of Allegiance, and students being prohibited from using faith-based rhetoric.  I’ve even seen grown men and women on television mewling about “In God We Trust” on currency.  I think that in most of these cases, people just need to grow up.  Separation of Church and State doesn’t mean the destruction of the Church.  If all those people out there who use “Separation of Church and State” as a mantra to abolish religion are really concerned with the Constitution, they would be defending the rights of Christians to practice their faith as much as they defend the rights of atheists to deny it.

To be clear, I’m a secularist who doesn’t take the supernatural claims of Christianity any more seriously than those of Greek Mythology.  But you’ll never catch me acting like I’m offended by seeing a cross or hearing about God in public.  This is foolishness.  Enough with the “I’m a victim” mentality.  America has a long tradition of Christianity – deal with it.  Stop pretending like the government is trying to convert you every time God is mentioned.  And you Christians out there aren’t helping when you try to get “Intelligent Design” taught as science in public schools or the Ten Commandments displayed in courtrooms.

We’re supposed to be living with each other’s viewpoints – not trying to make everyone conform to one viewpoint.  I’ve always thought that one of the greatest things about America is that there’s room for everyone.

Faith Versus Atheism

Sometimes I feel as if there’s a huge disconnect between people when they’re talking about belief in God or a lack thereof.  A lot of times I’ll get in discussions with people and when they hear that I’m an atheist, they immediately want to make the topic about Christian morality.  They make assertions about my lack of moral standard, then often state some version of, “Without a god, everyone would just run around crazy, doing anything they want.”  Eat, drink, and be merry, so to speak.  Or they’ll say something about how comforting their faith in Jesus is, or how it’s better to be safe than sorry and simply pray to God even if He might not be real, or that faith in Jesus helps mankind.

All the standard arguments, all of which are either flawed or bankrupt.  But more to the point, they completely miss the issue.  I try to operate on reality, not on hopes and dreams.  I might wish with all my heart that my loved ones weren’t going to die one day, for example.  Wishing may be nice, and hope gives us strength, but neither one is going to change reality.

God either exists or He doesn’t.  Our feelings about the matter don’t make a bit of difference.  I’m an atheist because I think the evidence is lacking.  That’s it, there’s nothing more to it.  It doesn’t matter whether this reality fits my hopes and drams, whether it’s morally a good thing, or whether my fear of death might be alleviated.  I’m not going to pick up a belief – especially one this important – because I want it to be true.

I find the idea of intelligent alien life in our galaxy fascinating.  It would be great if we could discover something else out there.  But there’s no evidence yet, so I’m not going to make a statement of belief.

This is what it all comes down to; this is where it should all begin.  Before the Christians start in with their ideas of morality, whether religion is good for mankind, whether it gives people hope, and so on, they need to address the primary issue:  Where’s the evidence for it?  Even if we find that faith in Jesus is the most wonderful, satisfying, life-affirming emotion known to man, that’s imply an argument for why you should have faith.  It says absolutely nothing about whether Jesus was the son of God.

In other words, I don’t really care if your belief is useful.  I want to know whether it’s true.  Explaining to me all the myriad of ways that it’s useful doesn’t get us any closer to the truth.

Why Kids Should Read Fight Club in School

I once heard Bill O’Reilly make an asinine statement about the novel Fight Club, saying that it was “about fighting” and promotes violence among kids.  Apparently, O’Reilly thinks that Palahniuk’s novel glorifies underground fighting clubs.

As for me, I’ve called Fight Club the greatest American novel ever written, and I’ve even said that kids should  read it in school rather than Huckleberry Finn.

It seems clear that if O’Reilly even bothered to “read” the book, he skimmed over it and took what he wanted out of it.  His point is bogus, and anyone who thinks Fight Club is about fighting needs to read the novel and actually try to understand it.  It doesn’t glorify underground fighting clubs, any more than Lord of the Flies glorifies barbarism among kids or Huckleberry Finn glorifies calling African Americans “niggers.”

It’s more descriptive so say that the book glorifies individualism and strength.  It showcases the disillusionment of a generation against the consumer-based materialism that’s killing their souls.  The fighting – which was only one rather small part of how the young men responded – was not a typical gathering of brutal thugs trying to beat the hell out of each other.  The whole point was that they were everyday average individuals: accountants, middle-aged fathers, office employees, mail men.  They were normally timid and passive men, men who had no outlet and no voice, men who had lost all confidence in the power of themselves to accomplish anything meaningful.

The fight club changed that.  They didn’t fight to win, to hurt others, or even to have fun; they fought to prove it to themselves that they weren’t dead, that they could conquer their fear.  I’m not saying that violence is the best way to help someone do that – I’m just saying that the point is a good one.  The cause is noble.  And yes, the overall message is a good one for kids to learn.

I find it difficult to look at today’s youth without thinking that individualism and independent thought are being sacrificed for adherence to trend.  Where is the personal strength, were is any devotion to values?  Almost a generation ago, Kurt Cobain wrote: “All the kids will eat it up / If it’s packaged properly … Not an ode just a fact / Where our world is nowadays.  An idea is what we lack / Doesn’t matter anyway.”

I agree with everything but the last line.  It does matter.  For me, Fight Club was a rejection of nihilism as much as it is a rejection of a popularity-based culture.  It almost reads like a self-help novel for disillusioned young men.  A kid who reads Fight Club and thinks it’s a statement about how fighting is cool is the one who could benefit the most from the book’s actual message.

Getting Paid for Good Grades

In a couple days, I saw two different programs on TV that presented the new experiment of giving money to kids for grads.  One was The Colbert Report where a Harvard professor was talking about how it’s our “responsibility” to do this for the kids if it helps.  The other was Newt Gingrich and his daughter talking about a similar case in Florida.

First of all, I think it’s great if a program like this works.  From what I understand, the preliminary numbers are good.  It’s being tested in districts that are doing poorly (where the dropout rate is high, for example).  Kids who had no interest in school and were failing are now getting As for the first time in their lives.  And why?  Because they get fifty bucks for every A.  Classic positive reinforcement.  This is a pretty clear-cut example of how incentives work:  Reward a behavior, and you get more of it.

Here’s what I think is interesting.  Failing kids are suddenly getting As because they get a monetary reward.  They’re not being given better teachers, more school equipment, smaller class sizes, tutors, self-esteem tutorials, books delivered to their homes, after-school programs, field trips, or computers.  No, they’re given money, which they can spend on video games, clothes and iPods if they want.

So the problem becomes this:  The kids could have gotten straight As all along.  The smashing success of these programs is that they point out the striking but perhaps uncomfortable truth:  There’s not as much wrong with the public school system as we thought.  The problem lies with the kids being motivated.  The responsibility lies completely with the kids and their parents.  The schools don’t need more money; the kids just need to get their asses kicked (or better yet, perhaps the parents need to get their asses kicked).

Furthermore, depending on the sweep of the success of these programs, this is a clear indication that the problem is not lack of opportunity.  So many liberal social crusaders would have us believe that many kids don’t have the same opportunities as others, that they’re the victims of under-funded schools, social dysfunction, and even discrimination.  Certainly those things are present, but as these pay-for-grades experiments show, they don’t tell the whole story.

These kids are perfectly capable of excelling.  The opportunity is there.  The opportunity is not the problem.  That Harvard professor spoke of “responsibility.”  Perhaps he should look a little deeper and discover what this program seems to have revealed about responsibility.

Darwinian Capitalism, Part Two

I was extremely impressed by the comments wingnut left on the first part of this post.  A self-proclaimed “Christian Socialist,” he shared a wealth of stunning revelations.  I’d never even considered this, but can you believe that capitalism is a scam concocted by the Illuminati?  You want evidence?  They pyramid on the back of the dollar bill is a “Columbian freemason symbol” and the United States government is located in … the District of Columbia!

Wingnut, I hate to be rude, but you need some tough love.  If you spare the rod, you spoil the child, after all.  You need to stop surfing the internet all day and picking up bits and pieces of convoluted conspiracy theories.  You need to stop reading Dan Brown novels.  If you’re going to spout this nonsense, can’t you at least come up with something original, rather than just parroting urban legends and pseudo-intellectual chatter?  You might also want to check out a book on formal logic so you can learn how to use that gray matter between your ears.

You asked if I saw anything illegal, immoral, or just plain sick in this “pyramid of servitude,” this “felony of extortion” done to eighteen-year-olds, how the “kids on the bottom always get hurt from the weight of the world’s knees in their backs.”

You know, it takes a whiner to be a socialist, but to be outraged at the idea that eighteen-year-olds should get a job to pay their own way in the world – that is the position of an infant.  A literal infant.  What I find “just plain sick” are the snivelers in this world who’d prefer to complain about hard-working and successful people rather than become hard-working and successful themselves.

One more thing:  You seem preoccupied with demonizing money, as if our society is focused on valuing the dollar above all else.  But you’re painting the dollar in some abstract sense, which is ignorant in reality.  Money is nothing more than a convenient and speedy method of exchanging goods and services.  That’s it.  Just as a rocket is a more powerful version of a cart and horse, money is a more powerful version of trading a goat for a bushel of wheat.

And if I may quote Ayn Rand: “It’s the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is the loudest in proclaiming his hatred for money – and he has good reason to hate it.”

Pelosi’s Legacy, Part Two

In the first part of this post, I quoted Gordon Gekko’s infamous defense of greed.  I was a bit confused by the comments left by spiritualway.  You said that greed only introduces corruption and individuals of the Pelosi type into our economic system, and that the only competition you ever saw created by greed was ruinous, short-term competition.

I think we should define what we mean by the word “greed.”  If you mean greed in the sense that the person is willing to do whatever it takes to make a buck (steal, cheat, scam, break the rules), then I agree with you.  As much as I applaud Gekko’s “Greed is Good” speech, he was still a crook.  He broke the rules, he cheated.

I’m using the word “greed” to mean a guy trying to make the most amount of profit as possible – without cheating or scamming anyone.  Plenty of people might call a ruthless corporate raider trying to become a billionaire greedy, but I don’t necessarily think that’s a pejorative term.  Plenty of people call Wal-Mart executives greedy, but look at the wealth and jobs they’ve created and the low-price products they offer.  I dare to say that they always try to get the most bang for their buck.  Is that greed?

But the point of my previous article was that greed is good, but greed mixed with political power is bad.  The politicians are creating problems in the free market with their sweetheart deals.  A greedy businessman may be a jerk to some people, but he doesn’t have the power of a Barney Frank (for example) to pass laws that help his corruption.

Spiritualway, I think I remember you saying you’d been in the pharmaceutical industry.  I’ve heard that the smaller companies can’t get their foot in the door (even though their products are of comparable quality and for a lower price) because of politicians and lobbyists who shuffle their regulatory requirements to the bottom of the pile (often until the copyright runs out and most of the profits have been made).  This is manifestly unfair and a product of the “bad” version of greed – but this isn’t a problem of capitalism, is it?  This is because of government intervention that shouldn’t be there at all.

Also, you said that speculation serves no useful purpose economically.  I admit that I’m not very knowledgeable on this topic, but I thought that it was a matter of Economics 101 that speculation creates liquidity (and thus stability) in the market?  If there were no speculation, there wouldn’t be guarantees, and wouldn’t that result in wild market swings for certain commodities, for example?  That would adversely affect many people.

Ann Coulter, Apemen, and Evolution

In my post Why Ann Coulter Thinks Evolution is False, Part Nine, I was making the point that pseudo-scientific creationists like Ann Coulter are quick to leap to hoaxes such as Piltdown Man while ignoring the literal deluge of legitimate hominid fossils.  Gunner Sykes left a comment asking, “So, what evidence do you have that Australopithecine fossils are our ancestors?”

Let’s ask a couple questions in a similar vein.  What evidence do we have that the background microwave radiation in space is leftover from the Big Bang?  What evidence do we have that the time dilation observed in accelerated subatomic particles is the result of relativity?

You’re missing the forest for the trees, Gunner.  The theory of evolution says that man descended from apelike ancestors.  If that’s true, we should expect to find species that appear transitional between apelike creatures and man.  Behold, we find the many hominids of the Australopithecus and Homo genus.  Not only are they more human-like than apes, but they grow progressively more and more like modern humans as they get more recent.  If this is not evidence of transition, then what would be transitional between an ape and human?  This is exactly what evolution predicts should be found.  This is how theories are validated; this is the heart of science.  The theory makes predictions, the predictions are tested, and if they pan out, the theory reaches the rarefied air of relativity, quantum theory, and yes, evolution.

Of course, a theory as powerful as evolution is not built on a few anecdotal snippets like this.  A couple of fossils are not going to prove the theory incorrect or correct.  The presence of transitional species between man and apelike ancestors is one little piece of the story of human evolution.  If the theory of evolution is true, we should also find other sorts of evidence of man’s evolutionary past.

How about genetic evidence?  Chimpanzees (and our other primate relatives) have twenty-four pairs of chromosomes.  Humans have twenty-three.  If evolution is true and we share common ancestry with modern apes, this means that sometime in the history of Homo sapiens, two of our chromosomes must have combined (folded) together.  If this folded chromosome couldn’t be found, then the current idea of human evolution would be completely destroyed forever.  But it was found, exactly as was predicted by theory.

Or vestigial evidence?  Humans have a coccyx (the remnants of a tail), an appendix (useful for herbivores but not so much for the omnivores we’ve become), yolk sacs when we are embryos (empty yolk sacs since as placental mammals, we don’t need them) and muscles in our head that once were used to move our ears.  Human infants – like chimpanzee infants – have the grasp reflex.  We have wisdom teeth, which cause so many people trouble because they are left over from when our jaws were larger and used for grinding more plant matter.  We also have innate lower back and knee problems – indicative of a species that has only recently began walking upright.  Human childbirth is the most dangerous and painful of all the mammals because our cranial size has increased so quickly and our awkward narrow pelvises are needed for upright locomotion.  Hemorrhoids, a uniquely human experience and a consequence of walking upright, are another example of the shoddy “design” and tradeoffs the theory of evolution predicts.

The evidence is all there for anyone to see.  It’s not shoddy, it’s not iffy, and there is definitely not a lack of it.