Wednesday, December 29, 2010
ACLU Survey
Preliminary Results
Short versions of ACLU positions on some key controversial issues:
• Against the Death Penalty
• For Legalization of Drugs
• For Abortion
• Wants Illegals to have full government support
• Against many Military programs: Predator strikes
• For Open Borders
• For Same Sex Marriage
• For Bigamy and Polygamy
• For Pedophilia rights
• For Visas for Anti-American Foreigners
• For the right to disrupt military funerals
• For giving citizen rights to captured enemies
• Against parts of the Patriot Act
• Actively suing to remove religious symbols from public buildings and public property, based on the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
I am strongly opposed to each of these positions, and I am therefore anti-ACLU. My reasons for opposing these positions are still being formulated, but some of my thinking is quite obvious without going into details.
I accept the concepts of just killing and just war, which should be distinguished from murder as stated in the Decalogue.
I believe that in the case of murder, an eye for an eye is a just penalty. In the case of treason such acts jeopardize the existence and welfare of the nation, and therefore warrant the extreme penalty. I believe that in egregious cases of forcible rape, the extreme penalty is warranted.
The concept of legalizing drugs has one great benefit: the destruction of drug cartels and their distribution networks. However, with dangerous drugs readily available on the market, there would be a rush to try them out, thus creating a new generation of users, with all of the attending problems. No one can say how long this transitional spree would last, thus placing many thousands of our youth in great jeopardy for long periods.
Since I believe that each life begins at conception, I believe that abortion is murder and must therefore be prohibited. Every fetus carries all of the gene information and processes needed to grow a person, given the proper environment and nourishment, and should be accorded the status of a proto-person that cannot be murdered by abortion. I also believe that there are a few strict exceptions to this rule: triage to save the mother’s life; and rape, which is forced conception, and hence is a just killing.
I believe in the sovereignty of the nation and its borders. I do not believe in allowing all and sundry to enter the nation at their whim. What isn’t understood about the illegal status of certain foreigners? Are we a nation governed by laws or not?
I do not want to have my taxes continually raised to support a growing flood of illegal foreigners.
We have failed to create a satisfactory temporary worker program, or a temporary visitor program that polices the return dates, or an employer monitoring program for hiring illegals. We must do these things.
The legal benefits of same sex marriage can be obtained through contract law, making this putsch strictly an attempt to force citizens to recognize and accept gays as ordinary citizens and to allow them all of the benefits and rights of marriage. Marriage is traditionally between a man and a woman, and it should stay that way. Ultimately, I must consider gays to be outside the norm of society, but able to exercise the rights of citizenship but not the right to force us to ignore the teachings of the Bible on homosexuality.
As for bigamy and polygamy, it is illegal throughout the nation, but not enforced in Mormon enclaves. I do not challenge this illegality for the majority of citizens in most states, and I would be against propagating such pro bigamy laws further.
I believe that war is a dirty yet reoccurring necessity that must be fought to win in each case. I also believe that we must be militarily strong as all times for obvious reasons.
It is an abomination and a shame that some people want to desecrate the funerals of our soldiers, or limit grave marker types of a religious nature.
I believe that we are in a war with parts of Islam, especially the Muslim Brotherhood, and its active arms, the jihadist groups in many countries. They declared this war on us, and have inflicted major casualties on both our civilian and our military people for years.
We are fighting against men that wear no uniforms, are not officially sanctioned as soldiers, and therefore have no rights as soldiers. The Geneva conventions do not apply, either. We therefore have the right to hold these captives until the war ends, in Guantanamo or elsewhere.
We must protect our homeland from insidious attacks from within. However, excessive use of force, or violation of citizen’s rights must not happen. Warrantless entry must be reserved for egregious cases and must be carefully monitored by the court.
Suing to remove historic religious symbols of Christianity from public display that have been in place for decades is an overzealous, unnecessary, weak, and vindictive application of the establishment clause and it reflects a nasty and unfair bias against the Christian religion, and no other.
There should be no legal objection for other religions to display their symbols if they are in keeping with the current aesthetic standards and space allocations for the sites. However, some such displays can be expected to cause civil unrest and even civil disobedience in some parts of the nation.
It is highly probable that maintaining the status quo affects the fewest citizens, mainly those few that have made this an issue after decades of observing such displays with no protest. I fail to see how most displays of religious symbols do any actual harm to anyone, if they even give passing notice to the symbols at all. Then, too, their own religion or non-religion should be strong enough to withstand walking or riding by a tasteful plaque depicting the Ten Commandments, or the Star of David, or even the Islamic Crescent, for instance.
I oppose the removal of prayer in our schools on the grounds that non-religious or other religious people can be accommodated in the schools in different locations at prayer time to perform whatever prayer or other activity they wish. No harm no foul. Besides, I fail to see the harm in being exposed to Christian prayers. Isn’t the student’s faith strong enough to shut out the Christian prayer message in any event if he so desires?
Sources: ACLU.com website, Wallbuilders.com/ACLU
Labels: ACLU
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Where Was Obama Born?
Cool it with the birther argument!
Whether any evidence to the contrary exists of Obama’s birthplace in Hawaii or not, we have an elected President that will serve out his term or terms. There is no reset or undo button we can press, much as it would be desirable to stop the plus changes to our debt levels immediately. All energies and focus should be directed to his and his party’s defeat in 2012, and not wasted on such unwinnable arguments. We need all of these progressives out of power!
If it is in fact a conspiracy, it is well-covered and virtually impossible to unravel, except by time and accident and human frailty—or devine intervention!
If it is not a conspiracy, which is heavily odds-on, then no amount of scrounging around or wailing at the wall right now, here or elsewhere, will result in anything but redicule, especially from the faithful!
So play the odds, and work on 2012 and all of the substantive issues in between now and then!
Labels: Obama
Thursday, December 09, 2010
Intellectuals
Discovering the Academic Intellectual
During my 43 year career in the computer industry as an engineer, project manager, chief engineer, and department head, I have been literally surrounded by high-powered intellects, most of whom had advanced degrees. For one project, for example, I had over 90 PhD level people working for me, together with even more masters degreed and bachelor degreed personnel, and their expertise covered the gamut of specialties needed for man-in-space endeavors. When these 90 were combined with the talent from other companies working on the same job, the concentration of mind power was awesome indeed. The problems we tackled and solved became legend in the manned spacecraft industry. Here was a case where both industry and trained intellectual academics worked together effectively to put men in space safely.
At the same time, our very close cooperation with academia exposed us to another type of academic, professional intellectuals that were a very different and curious breed. They were not on the same page as other intellects at all. Their entire focus was on thinking up ideas and publishing them in the hope that their fellow intellectuals would give them their stamp of approval, and that some government agency would provide them research money to continue to think up more ideas in a similar vein. These were not hard core scientists, but rather denizens of the soft worlds of imprecise disciplines such as literature, psychology, social sciences, and political sciences, where seldom any definitive answers take hold.. There was no use of logic or scientific method involved, but simply what their peers thought to be correct or merely interesting views.
At the time, I had no interest in delving deeply into this phenomena, but as I continued to observe them from afar for years, it became apparent that they had a following not only in academia, but also in government, industry, and politics, and were a significant influence on government policies, foreign relations, legislators, and other idea-oriented people that could potentially put their intellectual ideas into practice. In fact, these idea people were at the heart of the progressive movement, heavily populating professorial positions in our universities, and thus influencing the new generations of students with their most often heretical ideas. In their view, for an idea to be taken seriously, it must be fresh and challenging, yet sufficiently obscure, subject to multiple interpretations, and laden with inside jargon that only a handful of “the annointed” could hope to make sense of it.
What struck me most was their lack of controlled experimentation and hard analysis of their ideas, together with a total lack of taking any responsibility whatsoever for results from implementing their ideas in the real world through their “intelligentsia” compatriots in government and industry. In most cases by the time something measurable was available, these intellectuals were already far away from the idea and deep into dreaming up their next idea set. In contrast to scientists and engineers where failure could result in death of many people, failure of an idea didn’t seem to affect intellectuals in any way, either in standing or pay grade, except to ensure their tenure under the umbrellas of “academic freedom” and “publish or perish”. One exception to this was the fate of Ward Churchill of “Little Eichmann’s” fame, but it took a massive campaign to rid the university of his obnoxious presence.
So I began to accumulate my observations over the years as I encountered these intellectuals, because I belatedly realized that they were in fact a dangerous breed to the American way of life, and in many instances were actively anti-American. Noam Chomsky comes to mind as a prototypical intellectual that fits this mold. Characteristic of the type is, of course, great intellectual depth in some discipline or other, such as semantics and linguistics in Chomsky’s case, and a predilection for giving outlandish opinions on any and all subjects that come to their mind whether they are well-founded and qualified on the subject or not. There are many examples of well-known academics that branched out into open commentary on the world as they see it; Albert Einstein is yet another example of a brilliant physicist but muddleheaded Public Intellectual.
As a beginning, I needed to develop a profile of such intellectuals to help me identify them for what they are as I came across them in real life, reading, or on TV or radio. My profile of such intellectuals became a relatively simple list of applicable phrases to describe their mindset and their actions. Not that every intellectual exhibits all of these characteristics, but most of them will have a significant number of the attributes in their makeup. Obviously, the more attributes one of them shows, the more certain the diagnosis will be that we are dealing with such a person.
So, on to the list of attributes and characteristics as I see them:
Attributes of Academic Intellectuals
1. Arrogance
2. Egotistic and condescending
3. Certainty of their reasoning with or without proof.
4. Brushes off alternatives with contempt
5. Articulate and deviously able to defend their ideas.
6. Frustrated Idealists
7. Materialistic
8. Will not take responsibility for their ideas or the outcomes of the ideas if used
9. Prefers the safety of the shadows behind the throne and the protection of academia.
10. Are horribly wrong much of the time, especially in the long view.
11. Will not admit their errors.
12. Tend to support collectivist ideas; socialistic, communistic, Marxist.
13. Supports the concept of non-discrimination across all disciplines and areas.
14, Pacifistic to a fault; hates war; and seems to be fundamentally a coward.
15. Atheist or Agnostic in their outlook on religion.
16. Shows contempt for the common man, and desires to remake him in their image.
17. Attempts to convert their students to their point of view
18. Not objective in their presentations
19. Prefer the academic life
20 Strives to influence government, industry, academia, and the military
21. Narrow expertise in some specialty; attempts to trade on that in other domains.
22. Tend to state opinions as facts without any proof.
23. Is facile in inventing ways that events support their point of view.
24. They drive to remake society in their most often Utopian image.
25. Use pseudo-philosophy to support their views
26. Usually Nihilistic and Hedonistic
27. Flaunt rules, conventions, traditions, and laws--all are malleable in their view..
28. Levelers for: equal outcomes; no discrimination; equal societies; redistribution of wealth.
29. Internationalists—one world government
30. Secular Humanists and progressives
31. PCMC
32. Supporters of Big Government, authoritarian, even totalitarian in outlook.
33. Use personal attacks against detractors rather than defending their position (calling the opposition racist, homophobic, etc.)
After composing this list, I was somewhat shocked to discover the unusually great correspondence between this list and my previous list of the attributes of Liberals. This leads me to the conclusion that most Public Intellectuals are Liberals. The converse may or may not be true, since one can be a Liberal without the depth of expertise and the recognition in some field that is evident in Public Intellectuals. It is quite possibly true also that the Elites of the Liberal camp are also Academic or Public Intellectuals.
Labels: Elites, Intellectuals, Liberals
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
My Verities
1. The way is God and truth,
2. The virtues are Faith, Hope, and Charity/Love.
3. Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Fortitude follow closly behind.
4. Then comes my belief in Devine Law, Natural Law and Natural Rights
5. I must explicitly state my belief in the Golden Rule.
6. I am a sinner: I have not succeeded in following these beliefs, but I strive to perfect myself.
7. I believe in the Constitution as it was intended to be used.
8. But there are glaring exceptions to this paen to life: I believe in just war, just killing, and proper regard for the real nature of religions and pseudo-religions within our nation. A so-called religion that strives to conquer our nation, and to prevail as the one true religion, is not acceptable. I am speaking of Islam here.
Labels: Citizenship USA, God, Jihadists, Morality, Natural Law, Natural Rights, Philosophy
