Friday, April 20, 2012

 

Conservatism's Main Line

Really Simple Conservatism


The essence of Conservatism in government is to preserve and reinforce the good things, good ideas, and good laws in the nation, and to work diligently to eliminate the bad things, bad ideas and bad laws as permanently as possible, all for the benefit of the citizens.

While these things, ideas and laws are not precisely all good or all bad, the tendency is to group them into good and bad lists, with the understanding that in the process of undoing a bad thing, idea or law, its good part will be preserved by government as nearly as possible. As in most cases in life, the Devil is in the details. The conflicts with other political groups, progressives in particular, tend to occur when the notions of good and bad, and the timing of decisions are in opposition.

Then too, conservatives have a deep down desire to live in a system where there is great predictability, a goodly measure of certainty, security, comfort, and knowledge of the law (especially natural law and natural rights), and as well having equal opportunity for advancement, and the twin attributes of freedom and liberty. Conservatives do not want rapid and highly experimental changes in our way of life, unless the matter is urgent and provably necessary, and that the ramifications of the change are well understood and accounted for. Then, they will support changes.

So, you are a Conservative if you sign up to:

Good Things, Good Ideas, and Good Laws

1.    Truth and Honesty

2.    Freedom and Liberty

3.    Morality and Moral Rectitude

4.    Christian Religion, Charity and Religious Tolerance

5.    Natural Law

6.    Natural Rights

7,    Natural Duties

8.   The Declaration of Independence

9.   The Constitution of the United States (Read Plainly)

10. The Federal System: A Sovereign Nation with Sovereign States

11. Checks and Balances on Power in Government

12. An Electoral System as Prescribed by the Constitution

13. Customs, Traditions, and Institutions Designed to Preserve the Nation

14. Individual Responsibility

15. Common Sense and Practicality

16. Fiscal Responsibility and Frugality in Government

17. Balanced Budgets Yearly, with Planned Debt and Debit Reductions Included

18. Prudent Changes to Laws as Needed

19. Prudent and Humane Foreign Policies

20. An Adequate and Modern Defense Force

21. Subsidiarity: Make Decisions at the Lowest Level of Government

22. Free Market System with Adequate Regulation, and no Penalties for Wealth

23. Trade and Mutual Defense Treaties with other Nations

24. A Space Policy and Program to Keep the Nation at the Forefront

25. A Judicial System that is bound to interpret the Laws of the Nation, and not to extend them

26. A Legislative System that can extend the Laws at the will of the people

27. The Will of the People is Represented Properly by Congressional Representatives

28. Prudent Stewardship of the Nation’s Land and Natural Resources

29. Strict Maintenance of the Sovereignty of the Nation

30. Participation in Global efforts to improve other Nations

31. Effective Immigration Policies and Procedures

32. Government Seed Money Properly Used for Sparking new Areas of Endeavor, such as for Space

33. Social Conservative Principles, i.e. Ant-Abortion, Anti-SSM

34. Just Killing (Death Penalty), and Just War

35. Care for the Ill, the Disabled, the Old, and the Handicapped

36. Majority Rule with Minority Protections

37. Absolutely no Reapportionment or Redistribution of Wealth for its Own Sake

38. Equal Opportunity for Advancement


Eliminating Bad Things, Bad Ideas, and Bad Laws

1.     Lies and Dishonesty, Fraud and Abuse in Government

2.    More Government Restrictions on Freedom and Liberty than are Needed

3.    Moral Relativity

4.    Full Secularization

5.    Laws Impinging on the Natural Order

6.    Laws Impinging on Natural Rights

7.   Shirking Natural Duties

8.   Bending the Declaration Improperly

9.   Bending or Subverting the Constitution

10. Increasing Federal Power at the Expense of the States

11. Subverting the Checks and Balances

12. Championing a Fully Democratic Election (No Electoral College)

13. Trashing the Existing Customs, Traditions and Institutions

14. Collectivists in Power Positions

15. Flights of Do-Good-ism, Irrationality, and Undue Humanitarianism

16. Tax and Spend and Tax and Spend ad nauseam

17. Deficit Spending Year-in and Year-out

18. Imprudent and Hasty Changes that End up being Counterproductive

19. Uneven or Detrimental Policies towards the World of Nations

20. A Mediocre, out-of-date or Deficient Military

21. Keeping or Arranging that Decision-Making Stays at a Very High Level Unnecessarily

22. Overregulation or even Collectivizing the Economy

23. Looking Inward to our nation, and not Outward to Other Nations

24. Killing the Space Programs

25. Judicial Activism and Allowing Foreign Influences in Decisions

26. Government that Largely Ignores the Will of the People

27. The Will of the People is Actively Thwarted

28. Poor or Overly Invasive Stewardship of our Natural Resources and Land

29. Allowing Foreign Influences to Impinge on our Sovereignty

30. Ignoring the Plight of Other Nations

31. Not Solving either Immigration Problem: neither Illegals; nor Desirables.

32. Government Takeover of Industry

33. Social Hedonism

34. Unjust Killing and Unjust War

35. Minimizing the Care Needed by the Unfortunate

36. Minimizing Minority Protections

37. Redistribution of Wealth Arbitrarily Because it is Possible to do.

38. Insisting Upon Equal Results as well as Equal Opportunity







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Sunday, April 08, 2012

 

Election Predictions

It is a long time from now to November!

Here we are in April, and the usual suspects are placing their bets on the outcome of the election in November. It’s a fun game, but there are so very many disturbing events possible between now and seven months from now, that there is little to gain in making a prediction, except of course, the “inevitability tactic” of touting your selection over and over in hope of influencing the outcome. Impovrished thinkers long to back a winner. So declare one for them!


The economy and job growth can well stagnate over the Summer and into the Fall, after the pent up customer demand of the last years is exhausted. Oil prices may well become intolerable to swallow, etc. and the real job loss of 11% to 18% can turn against the imcumbent. Even now, some see through the highly touted figure of 8.2% to the reality.

The chorus of accusations against Obama will become much louder; his narcissicism; lies; bending the Constitution out of shape; etc. coming to a boil. Watch for more and more books accusing Obama of leading the nation into chaos and backing the accusations up with long lists of facts. Conservatives will pay attention, while progressives will try to drown out the chorus of facts with sly and subverting stories.

The Middle East can easily explode into yet another conflict, with Israel making a decision to attack Iran; Syria becoming even worse; and the public reacting unfavorably to the administration’s support for Palestine at the expense of Israel. There are many opportunities here in the foreign field for Obama to stub his toe badly and thereby forfit his reelection.

The administration’s stealth executive order approach to allowing illegal immigrants to remain in country by fiat does not sit well with many citizens, and that will be publicized heavily.

Then, too, Obama himself can hinder his own bid for reelection by words and actions that alienate many voters, not unlike his description of the right, which was contemptuously to the effect that they clutch the Bible in one hand and a rifle in the other. Or, his message to Putin that he would have “more flexibility” after he is reelected. Indeed! One hopes he finds himself out of a job.



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On Scientific Atheism


The Scientific Atheist Sees Chimeras

Isn’t it ironic that a scientific atheist decries our Transcendent God as so much chimera and smoke, and at the exact same time exalts modern science as the only real purveyor of truth?  He is fooling himself, of course, since at the heights of today’s science lie chimeras and smoke of equal or greater etherealness. 

What do we find there? Multiple Bubble Universes that can never be observed, directly or indirectly and cannot be tested; a General Theory of Relativity that cannot be reconciled with probabilistic  Quantum Theory, a mishmash of mathematical netherworlds that goes by the name of String Theory, or later on, Superstring Theory, that has lost its promise to perform the reconciliation of those theories so devoutly wished for into a “Theory of Everything” because they find that many thousands of solutions exist to the equations put forward; and, an Anthropic Universe that suggests strongly that our Universe was designed for Man, and this simply cannot be. These entities and theories are no less chimerical than that of God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost. There lies the irony!

This highly charged scientific soup is constantly stirred around hoping that something intelligible will magically pop out of the mixture to put order into our understanding of the origins of everything. They propose a God Particle(!) that permeates the Universe and gives mass to the particles of the Standard Particle Model—the so-named Higgs Boson, that physicists hope will be discovered at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland and France; and talk about measurements needed that are many, many orders of magnitude smaller than we can ever measure-- the so-named Planck Length (1.62 exp -35 m); Gravity waves are supposed to be carried by an ocean of Higgs Bosons; again, more unobservable entities. They fervently believe that there is a “Wave Function of the Universe” that accounts for all phenomena in the Universe, but this function is a figment of their imagination. It doesn’t exist.

For all of their prowess in creating scientific theories they cannot explain the origin of life, or abiogenesis, and their revered Darwinian Theory of Evolution is so riddled with holes it is laughable that scientists still defend it religiously in public with all their might, while admitting in private that the theory needs some serious overhauling.  The atheist gloried in the theory of evolution since it bypassed the need for God to perform his creation of the Universe and life. No more. That theory cannot explain the simplest of cell structures or molecules and how they were formed by random steps, or what information must be supplied and how, because it turns out that the number of steps needed for them is virtually unknowable and uncountable!  This in turn means that there has not been enough time since the Big Bang for random actions to create complex biological structures on Earth.

Science therefore has totally let the atheist down in his need for a mechanical, Godless self-creation. The problem is, most scientific atheists don’t know these facts and still hold to their outdated views, and as for other atheists, they hold to their beliefs without any support at all.

Truly ironic!

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Monday, April 02, 2012

 

Voter ID with Picture


Yes!  Give us picture IDs

This issue is an attempt to block the adoption by states of voter ID with pictures on the grounds that it would disenfranchise large numbers of citizens. I believe it is specious and devious to block states from insisting that their citizens must have an effective picture identification with them in order to vote.

First, any citizen that has no ID at all must obtain a Voter Registration Card, which is based on adequate documentation that the person is a citizen and has a permanent address in the district. In my view, once a Picture ID is law, the polling locations for the state can be set up to implement both the VRC and Picture ID, given adequate proof of citizenship. Obviously, if the person cannot provide adequate proof of citizenship, he must not be allowed to vote, and he cannot obtain a VRC or Picture ID. In this case, there is no disenfranchisement for the person if he cannot prove citizenship.

A lot of commentary has been devoted to the onorous need for a poor person to take the time and spend the money to obtain a Picture ID.  If the state provides both the picture ID and the VRC at the person's voting precinct free of charge, then when this person comes to vote for the first time, he can be provided these items, and can then vote; again, so long as he brings with him adequate proof of citizenship. So there is no hinderance to his voting, except proof of citizenship, no cost to him for the VRC and Picture ID, and no extra trip to obtain the Picture ID.

Therefore, I see all of the yelling to be mere blockage for what purpose I hesitate to state.  After a voting cycle or two, the number of citizens that have no VRC or Picture ID should decrease substantially, at the cost of the state providing the wherewithal to issue the full set of IDs at the precinct or equivalent level.

Even if the state requires the citizen to appear at a DMV to obtain a full ID, it is the duty of a citizen to make the effort. Employers should grant the time for this as well, in order to ensure a good voter turnout.

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