Expect Obama to be No Friend to Secular Americans

If Obama is as smart as he seems to be, he will not be the secularist's friend during his term in the White House (assuming he has a term in the White House). He will either need to toss secularism to the wolves, or he will need to give up his office in four years to somebody else who will toss secularism to the wolves.

One of the observed facts of this campaign is the degree to which McCain's nomination of Sarah Palin galvanized the religious right to work for his campaign. It generated millions of dollars in campaign contributions, and millions of hours in volunteer labor, that he would not have otherwise had from the religious right.

It turns out that it had other ill effects. Palin's utter lack of experience, combined with her inability to form a coherent sentence on political policy, more than cancelled out the political advantages of her religious leanings. However, let us imagine for a moment that Palin was, in fact, capable of making intelligent statements about political policy – that she knew the Bush Doctrine, could cite numerous Supreme Court cases, was widely read, had travelled broadly as Governor of Alaska to set up trade deals with, for example, Japan, China, Russia, and the like.

There are a lot of religious conservatives that have these types of credentials. She happened not to be one of them. But that was a happy coincidence, not a law of nature.

I also want you to note the fact that the Obama campaign never attacked Palin's religious beliefs or her credentials. The criticism heaped on Palin came from forces outside of the campaign (or forces whose connection to the campaign were largely invisible). Obama does, in fact, seem smart enough to know that it would be political suicide to challenge the Religious Right – that his political future depends on his ability to appease them.

He will almost certainly continue to appease them through four years as President.

He will give them the Office of Faith Based Initiatives – making this a permanent part of the American political system. And he will, in all likelihood, increase funding – his way of paying to prevent the religious right from campaigning too heavily against him.

He will certainly condemn what I expect will be the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals' opinion that 'under God' in the Pledge is unconstitutional. He will – probably with some politeness – assert in all likelihood that it is absurd to think that 'under God' in the Pledge is somehow oppressive. He will, by necessity, put his Justice Department to work defending "under God" and "In God We Trust" before the Supreme Court, as well as campaign publicly on what he is doing to protect these traditions. against us on this issue. And he will campaign against us hard enough so that the religious right will have little reason to doubt his sincerity, and thus have less of an incentive to close ranks and form a political army that will work against him.

[Note: Having a national pledge that equates one who does not favor 'one nation under God' with one who does not defend a nation 'indivisible, with liberty and justice for all' certainly goes a long way towards prejudicing the population against such a person, and there is a growing stack of evidence on how real and potent that prejudice is.]

So, I suspect that, in addition to giving the religious right the Office of Faith Based Initiatives, he will also give them the courts. He is going to choose his battles – and his battles will be on Roe v. Wade and forms of discrimination other than discrimination and the promotion of prejudice against atheists. He will toss the atheists to the wolves in order to save others who are more important to him.

The Religious Right will probably realize that if they keep the right to subject generation after generation of school children to the propaganda that atheism is as un-American as tyranny and injustice, that they will win on the other issues eventually.

I would like somebody to ask Obama the question – while there is still a chance to do so – "President Bush said that we need common-sense judges who believe that our rights come from God, and declared that these were the types of judges he would appoint. Do you share his view that a person who does not believe in God is, by that fact alone, unqualified to be a judge?"

As I said above, his personal views do not matter. What I am writing about here is the fine art of political manipulation. It has to do with being effective, versus being right, and a mindset that says that being effective goes a long way towards being right. He will console himself by telling himself about the good that he has accomplished. Though it was sad that he had to sacrifice some people (atheists, secularists) to realize these goods, the gains were important enough to justify the sacrifice.

So, what comes from all of this pessimism?

Well, actually, I think that we ought to live in the real world and make real-world plans that reflect the facts of the universe that surrounds us. What I have stated above is what I believe to be the political facts.

What I mean is that, if you believe in fact-based initiatives rather than faith-based initiatives, if you would prefer a society that did not teach prejudice that particularly targets young children, values science education, and would like to end the social barriers that keep atheists out of public office and positions of public trust, you need to take this message to the people themselves.

It is because our culture is the way it is that a politician like Obama will almost certainly need to sacrifice secular values in order to obtain other goods. It is because of the things that people are willing to invest their contributions of political time and money in that the politician who refuses to sacrifice seclar values will find himself replaced by one who does not refuse. It is only by changing the culture, from the ground up, that we can alter these political facts.

It means that it is time to stop thinking that the situation will magically correct itself. It means that it is necessary to contribute political time and political money to protesting the sacrifice of secular values.

Obama will almost certainly sacrifice secular values just to stay in office. Mumbling among ourselves will not accomplish anything.

Writing letters to Obama himself will be worth than useless. He will toss them aside and scoff, "Live in the real world, people. If I followed your suggestions I might as well simply resign and give my seat over to Huckabee or Palin because, by following your advice, I would give them an excellent chance of winning the next election."

The message has to be taken to the people themselves, and delivered in such a manner that even those who do not want to hear that message cannot ignore it.

Until we create a culture in which it is safe for a politician to support a secular government, we are self-deluded fools if we demand politicians to support secular government. Such a politician will simply be replaced with a different politician who does not have, or is smart enough not to let people know that he has, secular values.

We need to create a culture in which it is safe for politicians such as these to hold secular values, and we cannot do so by hiding our beliefs and praying that, without any effort on our part, a messiah will come along and do all of the hard work for us.

It is up to us to make the political and cultural environment safe for politicians with secular values.

Religion and "More Harm than Good"

Today, I want to spend some time on a point that I made in yesterdays post. It is a point that relates to something I read this morning – an article that suggests that the "New Atheism" argues that religion "does more harm than good".

This question – phrased this way – contains an assumption that is, itself, morally questionable. It suggests that the way we should evaluate something is to sum up all the good that it does, then sum up the harm it does, and accept everything where the good exceeds the harm.

However, this is a nonsensical way of doing moral calculus.

It suggests that if we have something that produces (to speak abstractly) 10 units of good, that it can then produce up to, but not more than 10 units of harm without any moral objections being raised against it. If it produces 10 units of good and 9 units of harm, then it still does not do “more harm than good” – which means that it is immune from criticism according to the standards listed above.

It is easy to see why an institution that does great harm would want us to use a standard like this. It is easy to see why an institution that does great harm, and great good, would want us to simply ignore the harm that it does in virtue of the fact that it does good. However, it is still the case that a competing institution that does a little less good, but also does significantly less harm, is a better institution. The fact that the first institution passes the “less harm than good” test does not save it from this type of criticism.

Yesterday, I wrote about Proposition 8 in California to remove the right of same-sex couples to get married. This is an example of an institution motivating people to behave in ways that are harmful to others. The claim that the religious institutions in this case do good in other areas is irrelevant. It is still the case that an institution that does just as much good as these religious institutions – but which does not contaminate the good that they do with harmful actions such as these – is a better institution than one that mixes good deeds with great harm.

On this, there is the related issue that faith is a good thing – that a person ‘with faith’ is somehow better off than a person 'without faith'. This, of course, is a prejudice. A person 'with faith' is like a person living his live in an experience machine – some type of machine that makes a person believe that she is living a wonderful life when, in fact, her life is a lie.

However, even independent of this consideration, we have to question the value of faith when it is faith that somebody else deserves to be harmed. The people who are most adamantly in favor of Proposition 8 – the people who put it on the ballot and contributed millions of dollars and countless labor hours to get it passed – are mostly people of great faith. However, the institutions they have faith in are institutions that are driving them to do harm to others.

The idea that we must respect another person's faith – when that faith causes them to come at innocent people with laws that do great harm – is absurd. The person who shall be harmed by an action has a right to demand that those who do them harm actually justify their actions. "I have faith that you should be made to suffer" simply is not good enough.

There is also the question – when we consider doing harm and doing good – of the difference between prevention and response. We typically see religious institutions responding in great numbers to those who are the victims of poverty, health problems, natural disasters, and the like. We often hear the claim made that atheists seem to contribute less to these types of efforts than theists (thus concluding that theists are 'better people' than atheists.

However, when we turn our attention from the realm of response to the realm of prevention, we see a huge difference between the contributions of atheists compared to the contributions of theists.

The theist recipe for prevention is to have prayer in schools, pass laws against abortions and gay marriage, and to prevent atheists from holding public office and positions of public trust. This, to them, is the model way to prevent every type of evil from terrorist attacks to plague to hurricanes.

Actually, this follows the pattern that ancient tribes used where, when they were faced with a anything unusual and potentially harmful – from famine to a solar eclipse – respond by identifying some segment of the population that needs to be sacrificed to the gods in order to win their favor.

If you listen to people talk, Proposition 8, and similar laws and amendments around the country, are the 21st century equivalent of identifying some group of people who need to be sacrificed to the gods, so that the gods will be pleased and grant our community good fortune. It is not as brutal and bloody as the silver dagger and the blood-stained altar, but it has the unfortunate effect of doing harm to far more people.

To make matters worse, they are using the government as an instrument to force this sacrifice on others. This is not a case of people sacrificing volunteers from their own religion to appease the gods and buy their favor. This is a case of people going to the government and getting a law passed telling others, "By law, you must submit yourself to being a human a human sacrifice to our God, who will not protect us from terrorists and earthquakes unless your well-being is offered up as a sacrifice to Him."

The atheist recipe for prevention, on the other hand, is to take measurements of nature, form a hypothesis of how nature operates that best explains those observations, use that hypothesis to make predictions, test those predictions, then keep the hypothesis that makes accurate predictions and throw out or modify the hypothesis that does not.

Then, using the power of prediction that they acquire from this method, decide what the results will be of particular actions and choose the actions that will produce the best results. The scientist predicts the direction that a hurricane will take, so that the reactive elements commonly associated with a local church simply has less to react to.

When we measure the ‘charity’ of theist and atheist organizations, we typically do not count the lives saved by the science that said, 'A hurricane will hit in three days.' We tend to count the polio victims who received aid on the side of the ledger, but we do not count the people who did not get polio because biologists (with a firm understanding of genetics and the theory of evolution) never got polio, or small pox, or (some day) malaria.

Malaria, for example, will not become a thing of the past by praying to a God to get rid of it. Malaria will become a thing of the past when people put into practice the things that scientists have learned about malaria through their detailed study of the physical world.

There are those who clearly believe that religion does do more harm than good. Rather than hold that religion might do 10 units of good and 9 units of harm, they would argue that it does 1 unit of good (perhaps) and 10 units of harm.

However, for the purposes of this posting, this dispute is of little consequence. However much or how little good comes from religion, we can do better if we can get rid of the harm. We can set the question of how much good remains once the harm is removed for another day.

Religious institutions that do harm certainly have a strong motivation to get us to adopt a “more good than harm” standard. It gives them a license to do harm, so long as they can assert that there is some good elsewhere being done.

However, we have no reason to accept this standard, and many strong reasons not to. Those strong reasons not to come from the unnecessary harms that those religions want a license to commit.

It does not matter whether a particular religion does more good than harm. California's Proposition 8 is an example of certain religions doing harm. Their "good to harm" ratio of a religion is probably going to be higher for a religion that does less harm than for a religion that does more harm. That is to say, the good to harm ratio is going to favor the religion that does not motivate others to support Proposition 8 than for the religion that does.

Morally, the question of "more harm than good" or "more good than harm" turns out to be substantially irrelevant. Regardless of the current ratio of good to harm, thta ratio would be better if only those religions associated with harm would simply cut back on the harm they do.

No on Proposition 8 - California

There is a measure on the ballot in California, Proposition 8, whose purpose is to overturn a California State Supreme Court decision that made homosexual marriage legal in the state. It has collected a lot of support – a lot of money – among those who are opposed to gay marriage.

I had been thinking that the people of California were good people, on the average, and would not allow this measure to pass. However, news reports have reached me recently suggesting that Proposition 8 is heading toward victory in California. Gay couples there are rushing to get married before the right to do so is again taken away.

The specific argument that I would like to see being made against Proposition 8 is that it is yet another example in which religion inspires people to go to great effort and to put a great deal of enthusiasm into doing harm to others (in the name of God). It is not as violent as a bomb on a crowded bus and will probably not kill as many people. However, this does not change the fact that the Proposition, if passed, will severely millions of lives. Legislation has always been the greatest and most destructive of all of the weapons of mass destruction for those who seek to do harm to others.

I want to add that a lot can be said in favor of those who have given up bombs and guns as their tools of choice for imposing their religious views on others. The theocrat who decides to use the ballot box instead at least gives their opponents (victims) the opportunity to argue in their defense, and they spare society the widespread disruption of physical violence. This is a huge step forward, and it should be acknowledged.

However, the fact that a particular group of people determined to do harm to others in the name of God have decided to give up bombs and guns and limit themselves to the ballot box does not argue against the fact that they still do harm to others in the name of God. This is their goal, their passion, they can think of nothing else in their life that gives it more value than to make sure that the group that they have properly targeted is sufficiently harmed by their actions.

I have argued in the past that it is a mistake to claim that the number of people who actually get their morality from their religion is anything more than a miniscule fraction of the population. The proposition that A implies B . . . or even A tends to lead to B . . . is sufficiently discredited when one can find case after case after case of A and not-B. The huge number of cases in which the Bible prescribes or proscribes some conduct that religious people ignore are a huge number of counter-examples to the thesis that anybody gets their morality from their religion.

Instead, what we have is a group of people who get their morality from their culture, who then read that culture morality into their religion. These people do not get their morality to God, they give their morality to God through their selective use of biblical test, taking from it only what they want and ignoring that which they find inconvenient. It is because this culture is bigoted that they find bigotry in their religious text. They read those values into their religion and, in this case, they read hatred into that religion. They invent a god to give support to their hatred.

They do not assign their bigotry to God but they still share the bigotry that their culture-mates are assigning to God.

So, this is not a case where religion causes people to be evil. In fact, it is actually quite difficult to make the case that religion causes people to be evil . . . or to be good. Because they create a religion to hold their values, the values must come first. Morally good people invent good religions and good gods. Morally vicious people invent vicious religions with vicious gods.

Still, the important point for the purpose of this blog is that the opposition to gay marriage gathers a lot of its support from a religious faction that puts a high value on hate. This is an example in which religion is intimately connected to motivating people to act in ways harmful to others. Yet, in the eight years in which this campaign to do harm in the name of God has been waged, I have not heard people expose these particular campaigns for what they are.

When the current group of atheist authors – Harris, Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, and others – filled the air waves, a part of their message was that it is time to stop coddling religion and to expose it for what it is. Yet, on a national campaign issue that had its primary purpose the use of legislation to do harm to the well-being of millions of American citizens – a classic example in which it is possible to connect religion to a motivation to do harm – religion was still coddled. Nobody, as far as I could tell, pointed out the similarities between using a law to destroy the lives of millions of people that one’s religion has taught one to hate, and using a bomb against the enemies of one’s religion.

The task of describing Proposition 8 accurately – the task of communicating the thesis that this is an example of people being driven to do harm to others in the name of religion – cannot be trusted to a political group that aims to oppose Proposition 8. There are certain things they cannot say – certain groups they cannot offend. It is up to us to carry the message that this type of legislation is actually an excellent example of causing harm in the name of God. It is yet another example in which religion is involved in motivating people to behave in ways harmful to their neighbors.

Given the content of this posting, I believe that I should take at least a couple of moments to address a claim that some might make, “But look at the good that religion has done?”

However, the good that religion has done, if there is any, is not relevant to this debate. Consider the person who gives you $10 to buy some groceries but slices you with a razor at the same time. We can say of him, “Look at the good he did, giving that person money so he could eat.” However, this does not change the fact that he would have been better off still getting the $10 without being cut, than he was getting the $10 and getting cut at the same time.

The charitable contribution does not excuse the harm done by cutting the recipient

Nor is it the case that any good that religious people do excuses the harm they do at the same time. The good that they do with their charitable work would be just as good if it were not accompanied by such enthusiastic devotion to such harmful behavior as getting a ban on gay marriage passed in the state of California (or any other state).

So, this is a post not only in favor of supporting the campaign to reject Proposition 8 in California. This is a post that speaks against the habit of refraining from saying the obvious – that this ballot initiative is just another example of how religion in this country is intimately tied to behavior harmful to others – of making people enthusiastic beyond reason over the prospect of doing something that is harmful to others.

In the name of God.

A Filibuster-Proof Majority

The Filibuster Proof Majority

According to a site that I follow, fivethirtyeight.com, the Democratic Party has a 30% chance of obtaining a filibuster-proof majority (60 seats) in the U.S. Senate.

I do not want that to happen.

The Democratic Party is not a font of all wisdom and virtue. Just as the Republicans have tied themselves to people who have absurd beliefs about the real world (the Religious Right), the Democratic Party also has an element with equally absurd beliefs (the Anti-Business Left).

One area in which this is the case is with NAFTA (North American Free Trade Association) and LAFTA (Latin American Free Trade Association). On this issue, the Democratic left wants to see free trade curtailed – wants to see policies enacted that “keep jobs here in America” and stops the flow of jobs overseas. The fact of the matter is that by "shipping jobs overseas", the populations of other countries become more prosperous, which has two effects.

First, they are less likely to go to war because, the more a country trades with others, the more it has to lose by getting involved in armed conflict.

Second, a more prosperous country has more use for the goods and services of other countries.

In addition, there is the simple moral, humanitarian issue underlying this. To fight to prevent people who are now earning $200 per year . . . per year . . . with no health care, no decent food, and surrounded by outlaw militia that have nothing better to do with their time from earning $1000 per year, and later $2000 per year . . . is morally depraved. Yet, when the Democratic left talks about international trade they speak as if this part of their plan is perfectly acceptable. The welfare of human beings in other countries seems, to them, to be of no moral significance whatsoever, a long as Americans can "preserve their jobs".

Even that part of the Democratic Left's approach to international trade is absurd. Assume that you had a choice – you could either make Africa like Europe, or make Europe like Africa. Which do you think would benefit America more? All we have to do is look at how much economic benefit we obtain from trade with Europe compared to what we gain from trade with Africa. How many jobs are created because the Europeans are prosperous enough to buy what Americans are selling, compared to how many jobs are created by the demand for American exports coming out of Africa.

Another issue in which I worry about an unchecked Democratic majority is on the issue of Iraq (and of foreign wars in general). Far too many Democrats think that they know with certainty, and without evidence, that the best thing to do is to leave Iraq. They might be right. I, on the other hand, am reluctant to draw a conclusion one way or the other without evidence, and the evidence (in this case) is hidden from my sight.

On this issue, the Democratic Left is much like President George Bush. Bush did not need to actually look at the intelligence reports. He knew that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was ready to use them on the United States. If the intelligence reports said otherwise, this simply proved that the analysts could not do their job very well. The Democratic Left knows that the best option is to leave Iraq. If the intelligence reports contradict this option then they, too, will simply assume that there was something wrong with the intelligence reports.

So, here is my recommendation to my readers. If you live in a state with a close Senate race, I would like you to take a good look at the Republican candidate in that election. If the Republican candidate is half way decent (not lost in some second-coming fantasy that utterly prevents him or her from making rational real-world decisions), then there is reason to consider voting to prevent the Democrats from having entirely unchecked political power.

We could be better off as a result.

The Pledge Project Revisited

We are nearing the one-year anniversary of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals hearing of a case in which Michael Newdow argued that "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and "In God We Trust" as the national motto were unconstitutional. This is a second case, in which 'standing' should not be an issue. Michael Newdow, who argued the case on his own behalf 5 years ago, is arguing this time on behalf of parents who have full and legal custody of their own children.

At this point in the game, it is becoming increasingly unlikely that Court will release its decision before the election – which is a good thing, since it would likely become a major campaign issue and could perhaps alter the course of this election. (Though it should not do so – there are far more important criteria to base one’s vote on – a lot of people have a rather warped sense of what is important.)

However, the Court cannot wait too long after the election to render their decision. The Courts web site states that decisions are released up to one year after the hearing, and that one-year anniversary comes up in early December, right in time for annual war on Christmas.

Long time readers know that I consider this issue to be extremely important when it comes to anti-atheist bigotry and all of the issues tied to this bigotry. Through the national motto and the Pledge of Allegiance the U.S. Government is involved in a program of teaching children that those who are not 'under God' or who do not 'trust in God' are not good Americans.

See, The Pledge Project: Table of Contents

An atheist, according to this message, is not 'one of us.' 'We' trust in God, so a person who does not trust in God does not belong in the group identified as 'we'.

An atheist – or even a theist whose religion does not argue for putting the nation 'under God' – is the patriotic equivalent of somebody who supports rebellion, tyranny, and injustice for all.

Planting this bigotry into the brain of a very young child gives these ideas a strong emotional component. Many children learn to associate trust in God and the idea of a nation ‘under God’ with the deep emotional need of acceptance and belonging. This deep emotional link makes it quite difficult for the child, when she becomes an adult, to shake this idea. The very thought of not trusting in God or being 'under God' brings an emotional turmoil that even the adult would have trouble dealing with.

This motto and this pledge, then, feed society’s anti-atheist bigotry and, in turn, feeds off of it. The relationship is the same as that which existed between segregation (marking certain facilities or sections of a restaurant as ‘white’ and ‘colored’ respectively) and racial bigotry. Segregation was the product of bigotry. Yet, the signs, the rules, and the laws also promoted bigotry by teaching even young children to see a social difference between the two – to see members of one group as superior to members of the other group.

The effect was pronounced on both groups. Segregation not only taught white children that they were superior to black children, it taught black children that they were inferior to white children. It taught them this lesson at a young age where they learned the lesson not only intellectually, but emotionally. They adopted the attitude of inferiority, because this was the attitude that they were taught.

It took World War II, and the proven worth of the black soldier (along with countless black soldiers proving to themselves and others that they were as good as white soldiers) to end this stupor and begin the drive for racial equality at home.

Atheists also suffer from the effects of a learned sense of inferiority. There is a reason why atheists do not stand up to the likes of Kieffe and Sons, Monique Davis, Elizabeth Dole, and the local school in which children are taught daily to regard those not 'under God' as un-American. It is because they, too, have this learned sense of inferiority that makes them timid and afraid – unwilling to earn the displeasure of the 'superior' members of society, those who trust in God and support a nation 'under God'.

The last thing we want is for the better part of America (or that which the government told us in no uncertain terms was the better part of America) to be angry with us. Because we, quite obviously, do not deserve equal consideration and equal respect of our government and our fellow citizens.

When these decisions are released, I can easily predict that theocratic Americans (because a nation 'under God' is the very definition of theocracy) will scream and shout at the top of their lungs that this decision is wrong and something must be done to stop this outrage. While, on the atheist, humanist, and theist-secularist side of the equation, the bulk of the population will cower and declare, "Now look at what you did. You made them mad at us again. Shame on you."

Actually, the shame belongs to those who do not stand up to bigotry.

It is morally outrageous for any country to have a motto that says, “If you do not trust in God, then you are not one of us.”

It is morally outrageous for a country to have its youngest children pledge daily to regard Americans who do not support a nation 'under God' the same way they regard Americans who support rebellion, tyranny, and injustice for all.

It is morally outrageous to have the government of a free society involved in a campaign that is effectively designed to put up an insurmountable barrier between peaceful, law-abiding citizens and public office and positions of public trust. Because, this much is clear, 'under God' and 'In God We Trust' are being promoted precisely because they are effective in locking atheists out of public office and positions of public trust. This way, theists only need to compete with other theists for these positions.

The role of the atheist is never to govern, but always and only to be governed – never to lead, but only to obey.

Bigotry does not end as a result of the target group "playing nice". Bigotry ends when the "target group" musters the courage to make the bigots uncomfortable with their bigotry – when they muster the courage to stand up to the bellicose anger that the bigot inevitably uses to defend his position of social superiority. They have no reason – absolutely no reason – to give up their position of superiority without a fight. The question is whether their victims have the courage to fight back.

Once again, I end with my standard disclaimer. The right to freedom of speech, association, and religion is not a right to freedom from criticism. It is a right to freedom from violence. Fighting back, in this sense, is morally limited to fighting back with words and private actions (actions that one may legitimately perform without justifying them to anybody).

It also may include non-violent civil disobedience – such as the sit-ins of the 1950s where the object is to do no physical harm (and threaten no physical harm) to person or property, but to send a message to people who would not otherwise have an opportunity to hear it.

It means, in this instance, an unwillingness to be meekly sit down and shut up (as we are often told to do) as the theocrats rant and rave against the suggestion that it is not the government's right or duty to declare citizens who trust in God or who support 'one nation under God' are superior to those who do not believe that there is a god to trust or to be under.

No on Measure AA

I received in my email recently a press release calling for opposition to “Measure AA” in Villa Park, CA. The measure would put the motto “In God We Trust” in the city council chambers.

The Press Release says that the Council missed the point in putting this measure on the ballot. However, the press release itself appeared to miss a few points.

Point 1: The press release opens by stating that opposition is being lead by Bruce Gleason, the leader of Backyard Skeptics, "a community of humanists, freethinkers and atheists and an affiliate of Atheists United." This, in a country where any position that gets associated with atheists or atheism is guaranteed to make that position unpopular.

We live in a society where a majority of the people view atheist as those who least share their values, as being unfit to hold public office purely in virtue of their beliefs, and those whom they would least want their child to marry. I wrote just a few days ago about Senator Elizabeth Dole's strategy of defeating her challenger, Kay Hagan, to atheists. The main strategy for denigrating the teaching of evolution is by associating it with atheism – a strategy also used in the movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed."

Supporters for Measure AA would have paid good money to have somebody associate opposition to this measure with atheists. This association was handed to them free of charge.

I am not saying that Gleason and the Backyard Skeptics should not be involved in this campaign. In fact, I think that the victims of bigotry need to take the lead in this type of fight. Blacks did not obtain any measure of political equality by sitting home and watching Davey Crocket, and 21st century atheists will gain no measure of political respect by sitting home and watching Survivor.

However, that involvement should at least pay attention to the fact that we live in a society with a great deal of anti-atheist bigotry. This fact needs to be acknowledged and tacked directly.

I am an atheist, and I oppose Measure AA. For many of you, the fact that I am an atheist will be seen as reason enough to support this measure. From the time you were a small child the government has been feeding you a steady diet of anti-atheist bigotry. One of the forms these lessons have taken is to put on the money and in public buildings a message that tells you, "In order to be counted as a true American, one has to trust in God." The government should not be involved in teaching hate. The government should treat all of its law-abiding citizens with equal respect, regardless of their religious beliefs. This is why I oppose Measure AA.

Point 2: The Press Release mentions that the use of the motto violates the Constitution. This ignores the fact that most people believe that it is consistent with the Constitution – and this (probably) includes a majority of the judges on the Supreme Court.

We are dealing with a culture that is built on the practice of reading what one wants to read into texts such as the Bible. This culture wants to see the Constitution as protecting their religious supremacy, so this is what they see in the Constitution. According to their argument, the motto, "In God We Trust" is an example of religious expression protected by the Constitution. It is also an example of freedom of expression. Those who oppose this measure are the ones who are anti-freedom and anti-Constitution.

It is a waste of time to argue to somebody that they should believe Q because P implies Q when they have already rejected P. If there is any interest at all in pursuing this argument, then the argument needs to backtrack and prove the truth of P, before one can effective assert that P implies Q. In this case, it means defending the principle of the separation of church and state, rather than merely asserting the principle as if everybody already accepts it. They do not.

Any decent person has to recognize that he is capable of error. It is pure arrogance for he Christian to assume that the Jew or the Atheist is wrong, just as the Jew or the Atheist exhibits pure arrogance in assuming that the Christian must be wrong. The reason why the founding fathers argued for freedom of religion is because it did not want the government to take sides in these disputes. They wanted the people to debate these differences among themselves and reach their own decisions free from government interference. It is ludicrous to suggest that the national motto, "In God We Trust", is not an example of taking sides.

Point 3: The Press Release does not ignore, but does bury, the absurdity of the claim that the motto is being used to promote patriotism.

Here’s a question to be asked of anybody who defends posting the national motto:

So, tell me, do you believe that a person who does not trust in God cannot be patriotic?

If the answer to this question is, "Yes.", then one can launch into a speech against religious bigotry – of how bigots try to gain advantage for themselves by putting down others and calling them inferior, and that no good government would post signs declaring that one group of peaceful, law-abiding citizens who hold one religious beliefs are, in its eyes, inferior to all others. A clear example of this is anybody who would claim that a person who trusts in God is a patriot, and those who do not trust in God are not.

If the answer is, "No", the response is, Then this is not patriotism. If you agree that a person who does not trust in God can be a patriot, then promoting trust in God is not the same as promoting patriotism. You cannot have it both ways. If this sign is meant to promote patriotism, you have to say that patriotism requires trust in God. If you deny that patriotism requires trust in God, then this sign does not promote patriotism.

Summary

The press release does include a statement from Stuart Bechman, the head of Atheists United, that “These efforts serve the singular purpose of promoting the idea that the United States is a Christian nation and that non-Christians are second class citizens or not citizens at all.”

This statement should not be buried at the end of the press release. That should be the lead, because this is what the dispute is all about.

Slavery, at one time, was constitutional. You cannot argue that something should be the case by arguing that it follows the Constitution, because the Constitution was written by fallible human beings. Even arguing that something violates the Constitution, it is still reasonable to ask whether it is right or whether it is wrong.

The first argument should be why the motto should be rejected even if there were no Constitutional prohibition against it. The first argument should be to point out why it is wrong for any government to post a sign in its public halls that say, "Those who do not trust in God are not welcome here – we do not think of you as one of us."

Then, after establishing the wrongness of this proposal, it is meaningful to point out that either (1) the founding fathers were wise enough to see the wrongness of this type of conduct and write it into the Constitution, or (2) the founding fathers made yet another mistake by using the Constitution to defend something that is, in fact, wrong. These become the only two options where the wrongness of the act has already been established.

The reason people want to post "In God We Trust" in government buildings is because they want to send the people a message that there are two classes of citizens in this country. "We" – the superior, first class, 'good', 'patriotic' Americans, trust in God. 'They', who do not trust in God, are not good enough to be included in the group called Americans. It is to be expected that Sullivan and those like her would love to see a sign on the City Council walls that brand them as superior citizens to those who do not share their religious beliefs. But the question remains whether it is legitimate for the government to be posting this message in public meeting rooms.

In fact, Sullivan is clearly seeking to make trust in God a religious requirement for public office. "All members of this Council trust in God, so that if a person does not trust in God, do not make them a member of this council." She seeks to deprive American citizens of one of their most fundamental right – to run for office as a political equal regardless of one’s religious beliefs – by hanging an advertisement favoring candidates who trust in God in the City Council chambers.

Sullivan's purpose with this measure is to establish religion – to establish 'trust in God' as a religious test for public office, and she wants to advertise this message of bigotry, division, and exclusion from the walls of the City Council chambers itself. That is something that the Founding Fathers told us we should not tolerate. And they were right.

Crises and Competence

So, are you sufficiently frightened yet?

Three months ago, you had a good idea what the world would be like two years from now. Even with the question of whether Obama or McCain would become President, the differences here would not be earth shattering. After all, we survived eight years under Bush. With a Democratic Senate and House, we could probably survive four years of McCain.

Now, intelligent people have to be asking, what will the world be like in two years? Unemployment in the double digits on a global scale? Baby boomers with their retirement accounts all but destroyed and nothing to live on but Social Security, and a government too bankrupt to even pay that. Perhaps we will be dealing with double-digit inflation, destroying investments by doubling the price of everything on the shelves.

These events are providing quite a shakeup.

Now what?

Well, we have the hucksters for religion going around saying, "In these times of uncertainty, turn to God – the only certainty in the world."

One of the problems with this option is that those who choose this route become almost worthless when it comes to solving a problem. When a house is burning down, or an earthquake has buried a quarter of a city's population in rubble, the people huddled in a prayer circle on the lawn are not actually doing anything to help bring the fire under control or rescue their buried neighbors. This is a terrible time to turn to prayer. This is a time to do some physical, real, materialist universe work.

However, in the current situation, a great many people are wishing that there was something they could do. Having the opportunity to pick up a shovel and actually do something useful would be a relief, compared to sitting home and watching the news. The situation is just too big for most of us. What can we do?

These concerns have two implications.

The first is that, for those who can do something, the previous concerns hold. It is time for them to get to work, to do what they can, and not waste time in prayer, superstition, and other nonsense. Real-world problems require real-world solutions. This requires having people who have studied and who understand how the real world works put their knowledge to use. A lack of understanding of the real world – real-world ignorance – is not going to help any of us.

This, of course, carries with it a lesson relevant to who should become President (and who should become vice-President with a possibility of becoming President in the future). We need people in that position who have a grasp of reality. In particular, we need people who know that they do not know everything, and that it is necessary to turn to experts in a field in order to figure out right answers. This means having somebody in the office of President who is at least competent enough to recognize the competence of others when he sees it – a quality that we can judge in this election by looking at who one chooses for a vice-Presidential candidate.

Those of us who have an unfavorable view of Bush and who have warned about how his stupidity is a threat to all of us like to blame others for putting Bush into office. We did not vote for him, so none of this is our fault.

However, we all did not work as hard as we could have worked to get the right person in office. The fault lies not only with those who did not vote for Bush, but those who did nothing (or did not do as much as they could have) to challenge a culture that treated incompetence and stupidity as virtues worthy of holding the highest office in the land.

I am not talking about merely campaigning for one candidate or the other. I am talking about the types of behavior that we engage in that helps to shape the culture that we live in – the values that we express to our friends, families, co-workers, fellow club members, and other acquaintances on what counts as a virtue worthy of admiration and respect, and what it is foolish for people to hold in high esteem.

Of course, eight years ago the liberal community was under the delusion that all value-systems were equal, that it makes no sense to say that one person's values were any better than anybody else's. Eight years ago, within the liberal community, criticizing somebody else's values was considered a fundamental error and something that ought not to be done. Let us ignore the fact that this view is internally inconsistent – it proved to be quite destructive. It gave destructive and dangerous value systems equal standing to the values of peace and competence.

We started to see that error on 9/11, where we were finally forced to wake up to the idea that all value systems are not equal. Now, we are being forced to wake up to the idea that competence is real – that folksy wisdom that allows a hockey mom to become President might work in a Walt Disney movie where everything is under the tight control of the director, but has as much bearing on the real world as teleporters and warp drive.

So, what is it that we can do in these circumstances, other than huddle in a circle and pray?

One of the things that we can do is to use this opportunity to promote the idea that competence is a virtue, incompetence is a vice, and the idea that an incompetent (but likable) idiot can run the country is one of the most dangerous and most destructive ideas floating around this country today. The way we mold the culture – the way we create a culture that values competence – is through the things we say in the company of our friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, club members, and classmates.

In other words, we need to challenge the idea that elitism is a dirty word, and that elitists are worthy of condemnation.

I am an elitist. By that I mean that when there is a job to be done, the job should be given to those who are the best skilled in performing that job – the elite. If there is a military operation to be conducted, we want elite forces to do it. If there is a medical outbreak to contain, we want elite medical specialists to contain it. If there is a financial meltdown to handle, we want elite economists to tackle it.

This means that we also want elite people in office – highly educated people, highly competent people, people who have the ability to recognize competence in others and who are willing to put elite people into positions that require competence.

"You people who think that folksy ignorance is a virtue got us into this mess – and the rest of us let you do it. We will not be letting you do that to us again. There is too much at stake."

That's our job in this crisis. That's what we can do. Because we are going to get through this a lot better and a lot faster with intelligent, competent people working on the problem, then we can ever hope to do by trusting to idiots backed by a circle of supporters praying that the idiot can come up with the right answer.

Marketing Truth

Today’s topic comes from one of the discussions that I had at Beyond Belief 3. This was a discussion of the role of truth in a political campaign.

As will all free-flowing discussions, it touched on a number of related topics. It touched on the need for a candidate to pretend to agree with the things that he does not agree with in order to attract voters. It touched upon what the religious views of the various candidates were, compared to what the candidate claimed to be true. For example, why do we believe that Alaska Governor Palin is seeped in religious ignorance, while Obama’s religious views are less dangerous. Is it the case that “our religious fanatic is better than your religious fanatic?”

When it comes to a candidate’s lies, we are quick to jump on any distortion of the truth that an opponent might make (even if it seems to be merely the type of slip we all make from time to time), while forgiving the deliberate distortions of friendly candidates.

We talked about Fox News and its business model. I hold that Fox News did not set itself up to be the propaganda arm of the Republican Party. Rather, Fox News set itself up with the idea that people tune in to hear people who are telling them what they want to hear. For Fox News, stories are not driven by ideology. They are driven by popularity, so that, if the popularity of certain ideas change, Fox News will seek to preserve its high ratings by pursuing the new trend.

In this conversation, I mentioned that there is no organization out there that is marketing truth.

Here’s my proposal. I would like to see a non-profit organization created whose purpose is to promote truth and reason. This organization would be smart enough to take whatever contributions that it can raise and go to a public relations firm. It will then tell the firm, “We want to sell truth – or, more precisely, promote a love of truth – in America. We want Americans to be more enamored with science and reason, and less enamored with superstition and nonsense. I want you to help us.

There are a number of people out there professing an interest in promoting science and reason over superstition and nonsense. However, none of them, that I am aware of, has gone to the effort of hiring professional public relations and marketing experts to sell this particular product. They think that they (the rank amateurs in this field) can do as good of a job, or better, than the experts.

Why is it that people who know the value of going to an expert scientist when they want to know something about a medical problem, or global warming, or the possibility of an asteroid impact, or engineer a bridge, or program a computer, do not recognize the value of going to experts when it comes to the task of selling product, such as selling a love of truth and reason? It seems to be nonsense that people who would never be so foolish as to think that they can do brain surgery on their own child themselves (without specialized training) can design a marketing campaign for a whole nation.

One of the questions that came up with in this discussion was, “How do we pay for it?”

At the moment, I could not think of any quick answers to that question. However, an answer came to me later – a rather obvious answer. That this, too, is a question for whatever public relations form takes up the task of marketing truth and reason. You ask them, “We need to raise money for this campaign. So, in designing this campaign, design a fund-raising program for it as well.”

I am simply following the same general principle that I have described elsewhere. “If you want something done right, don’t ask me to do it. Ask a professional to do it.” The very idea of an individual providing advice where there are professionals to ask – from areas of finance, law, medicine, engineering, and even matters of ethics and of marketing – is a sign of arrogant foolishness.

The arrogant fool sometimes gets lucky. And there is a small number – a very small number – of true geniuses who can figure things out without a lot of training. However, when it comes to betting one’s life, one’s well-being, and one’s fortune, it is not wise to assume that one is going to be lucky, or that one is one of these geniuses.

However these experts may decide to market truth, there is certainly an argument to be made for making the investment. The objective would be to get away from (or at least to get a little bit further from) all of the things from myth and superstition to deliberate deception that are clogging our social interactions and our efforts to make a better world.

Elizabeth Dole's Anti-Atheist Senate Campaign

Are you, my atheist – agnostic – freethought – humanist – secularist readers, tired of being used as the tool with which others bash the things you claim to value? I say claim to because I think that a person who values something would be adverse to being used as a tool in its destruction.

Earlier this year, Kieffe and Sons auto dealership put out advertisements telling you to sit down and shut up. They should have not only been forced to apologize, but to run an advertisement in which they retracted their earlier statement. Instead, they made money. (See: The Pledge Project: Sit Down and Shut Up.)

Then, Illinois Representative Monique Davis told an atheist witness to a legislative hearing that atheism is a philosophy of destruction and that he had no right to be there. Her so-called apology actually was founded on the bigoted belief that atheism brings immorality – a school shooting that, like all school shootings, can be blamed on the fact that God has been removed from the schools, and only religious students can be moral. She should have lost her job over this. (See: The Moral Argument for Davis' Resignation in Detail)

We had Army general Petraeus endorse a book that said that atheist soldiers are incapable of fully contributing to their military unit and, unlike Christians, may have a personal agenda that could lead to the unit's failure. (See: Petraeus Book 'Endorsement' Draws Fire)

We had North Carolina Senator Elizabeth Dole send out an fundraising letter in which she accused her challenger of meeting with 'those people' – atheists, secularists, humanists – that no good North Carolinian would be comfortable sitting down to dinner with. (See: Guess Who Is Not Coming to Dinner.)

In a society, we grow certain cultural elements by the use of praise and reward, and we inhibit or shrink them through the use of condemnation and punishment. In each of the examples given above, the perpetrator was met with more praise and reward than condemnation and punishment. So, in this culture, those elements were allowed to grow.

What, for the Elizabeth Dole re-election campaign, began as a profitable fundraising letter, is now a full-fledged campaign. Dole now seeks to defeat her opponent, Kay Hagan, by accusing Hagan of talking with atheists, humanists, and other undesirables. (See Friendly Atheist: Republicans Smear Senate Candidate Kay Hagan for Meeting with Atheists.)

Let's be clear about what Hagan's crime is here, according to Dole. Hagan is not being criticized for agreeing with any particular set of positions. Dole is condemning Hagan for the crime of merely talking to atheists, scularists, and the like. Not only are we wrong - we do not even have a right to present our case to those who may be our elected officials.

I want you to know what it means to allow this campaign to succeed.

If it succeeds, it will serve as a warning, from one end of this country to the other, that no candidate is to meet with or associate with atheist citizens. It will serve to put up a firewall (or, actually, strengthen an existing firewall) between atheists and those with political power. where the last thing a person in or seeking political power wants to be seen as doing is having an association with atheists, freethinkers, humanists, and the like. If we allow this meeting to be punished rather than rewarded, we would be foolish not to expect that future meetings will be harder to come by.

So, if we value what we claim to value, we will not allow ourselves to be used as a weapon for the destruction of those values. It is time to react with anger to make sure that bigots suffer punishment for their behavior, rather than reward. Whereas Elizabeth Dole's defeat for her bigotry earlier would have been a good thing, it is now essential to anybody who wants the secularist community to have any voice in the political arena.

Once again, I hasten to add that there is a right to freedom of speech and freedom of association, and freedom of religion. This right is not a right to immunity from condemnation or criticism for what one says, who one associates with, and one’s religious beliefs. It is, instead, a right to freedom from violence. So, in calling for the condemnation and punishment of these bigots, that condemnation and punishment must stay within the boundaries of words and private actions. Private actions have to do with issues like where to shop, what channels to watch on television, what to buy, who to go out with after work, what causes to contribute to, and who to vote for.

Dole and her cohorts deserve condemnation and punishment for their bigotry, but not the type of punishment that violates – or even threatens to violate – their rights through violent actions or threats of violence against persons or property.

However, within those bounds of words and private actions, we have our rights as well.

The bigotry that Dole is attempting to milk and nurture in her campaign is, actually, the same bigotry that resulted in the candidates for President having two faith-based debates or meetings, but which allowed them (encouraged them) to refuse to participate in Science Debate 2008.

We claim to value science, the scientific method, reason, and scientific thought. There is, in this country, a very strong anti-science contingent.

How does that anti-science contingent grow? It does so by equating science with atheism and by asserting that whatever is associated with atheism is to be condemned. Here, again, we claim to value science, but we allow ourselves to be used as a weapon in its social degradation and abuse. If we truly value that which we claim to value, we would not allow ourselves to be used as a weapon in this way. We would think that it is important to take a stand – to condemn and to punish (within the bounds established by existing rights as stated above) those who use us in this way.

One of the things that this campaign complains about is the desire to see 'under God' removed from the Pledge of Allegiance and 'In God We Trust' removed as the national motto. It is time to put some effort into communicating with the country why no good person would support 'under God' or 'In God We Trust'. These are the tools through which the nation teaches hatred and contempt for atheists to young children every year – an adverse emotional reaction to those not 'under God' or who do not trust in God – that gets fixed into their immature brain and frozen there.

By planting anti-atheist bigotry into the brains of young children, North Carolina (and the country as a whole) creates a block of adult voters with that same bigotry fixed into their brain that these candidates can then exploit in campaigns such as this.

To fight back, we must fight against the practice of feeding anti-atheist bigotry into the brains of young children. If we are not willing to do so, then we are willing to allow them to continue to use us as weapons for the sake of promoting an anti-secular government and anti-science values that will ultimately do all of us great harm in the long run.

There are those who say that, because of Dole's campaign, it would be a good idea to contribute to Kay Hagan's campaign. That would do some good, and I will not argue against it. However, this type of contribution is fighting the symptom, not the disease of bigotry itself. In order to fight the disease of bigotry the message has to be delivered to the people themselves.

I suspect that there are others who would be thinking that the North Carolina campaign is so far away from here that, "It does not concern me, so I have no reason to get involved."

If you are a member of an atheist, agnostic, humanist, secular, or similar organization in any state, then you need to be asking yourself how you are going to protect the electability of any politician that should happen to meet with leaders of organizations such as yours. If you can't (or won't) protect the electability of those leaders, then those leaders have every reason to avoid you and your organizations and to focus their attention instead on organizations who will take steps to protect and promote the electability of those who meet with them.

One of the ways to do this is to make noise about Dole's campaign not only in North Carolina but locally – to make sure that such behavior gets the condemnation and criticism it deserves among the people of whatever city or region you happen to live in.

Or, you can sit back and observe as people work to make sure that anybody who should show any type of respect or consideration for your views and your values are punished for their actions, and those who declare that you should be regarded as somebody who decent people should not invite to dinner (meet with, or talk to) are rewarded for their bigotry.

We can judge a person's true values by his actions – and what he really does not care about (in spite of his claims to the contrary) by his inactions.

McCain's Health Care Plan

As I said yesterday, both the McCain camp and the Obama camp seem to have adopted a policy of distorting their opponent's views to score political points. Today, voters are not getting anything in the way of truth. If you see a campaign advertisement, you might as well simply tag it as a lie (and the politician who says "I endorse this message" as a liar) and move on.

Yesterday I wrote about McCain's distortion of Obama’s view on Iraq – by classifying 'redeployment' as 'surrender'. Today, I am going to write about Obama’s mischaracterization of McCain’s health care system.

Several organizations that measure the truth of political advertisements have attacked Obama’s statement. See, for example the write-up on PolitiFact.com .

McCain's health insurance plan gives $2,500 to individuals and $5,000 to families for a tax credit to apply to health insurance. As the Obama advertisement points out, this goes to entirely to the insurance companies – as if it is a bad thing. Of course it goes entirely to the insurance companies. It's supposed to be spent on insurance. Would you expect money spent on insurance to go to a bakery?

Think of it this way. A company tells an employee that she can spend up to $50 per day on meals. On this particular day, the employee spends $41.59 on meals. So, the employee files an expense report with her employer, and the employer covers the $41.59.

The whole $41.59 ultimately goes to the restaurant that served the meal. Of course it does. It's supposed to. If the company gives money to an employee to cover meals, and the money goes to cover meals, is this supposed to be odd?

Now, let's alter the company’s meal plan a bit. Let's say that the company tells its employees, "You have a choice. You can either sign up for the Macaroni Grill meal plan, or the Outback Steakhouse meal plan. Whichever plan you choose, you will have to buy all your meals from that restaurant. We will pay half the cost of the meal. You pay the other half. However, your share of the cost of the meal will be tax deductable."

So, the employee buys all of his meals at the same restaurant. If he runs up a $50 tab at a particular restaurant, then his company will pay $25, he will pay the other $25 out of his pocket, but be able to deduct the expense off of his taxes. If the employee is in a 20% tax bracket, she will pay $25 for the meal and save $5 on her taxes, for a total cost of $20.

The company then gets bought out by McCain, Inc., which alters the meal plan. The company than says, "We will give you $2,500 per year for meals. You can eat wherever you want. If you end up spending less than $2,500, then we will cover all of your expenses. However, if you end up spending more than $2,500, then you pay for everything over that amount. We will not subsidize that portion."

Obama objects to this plan and says that it will increase costs for the employees who travel.

Actually, that depends on the employee.

If the employee spends less than $2,500 on meals, then his expenses will drop from $1,250 in pre-tax dollars (or $1,000 in after-tax dollars if we assume a 20% tax rate), to spending nothing. The agitator who is trying to get the employees to reject the plan by saying, "This will cost you more money!" would be lying – manipulating his fellow employees through a campaign of deception.

If, for example, the employee decides to spend $3,000 on meals, then he will still be getting $2,500 of that free, and spend $500 out of her pocket for the rest. Her after-tax expense would be $500. Under the old meal plan, she would have paid half of the total price for those meals but gotten a tax break of 20% (or $300), leaving a total cost of $1,200.

However, if the employee buys more or more expensive meals, If she spends $5,000 on meals, then, on the old plan, she would have had to cover $2,500 in expenses in pre-tax money, meaning an out-of-pocket after-tax cost of $2,000. Under the new plan, she pays for the whole cost of everything over $2,500 or $2,500 in after-tax expense.

In short, the plan provides three significant advantages over the current system.

(1) Choice: People get to eat at whatever restaurant they want rather than with one of the restaurants that the company has selected.

(2) Price elasticity: Buyers are more sensitive to price. This gives buyers an incentive to look for less expensive options – which gives companies an incentive to lower costs and to offer less expensive options.

(3) Freedom:

One area where the analogy above breaks down is that I have compared a company-offered plan with a government-supported plan. The advantage of the government supported plan is that the employee can take it with her.

Today, countless employees are trapped in their current job because they cannot afford to give up their company-provided health insurance. This gives a significant amount of power to the employer. In fact, where on paper it appears that the company is giving an employee a benefit in terms of paying a part of the health insurance, in fact the company makes that money back by offering less in terms of wages. The employee takes lower wages than she would accept if she had the option of leaving the company and taking her health insurance with her.

Now, if somebody does not like this option, or is making too little to take advantage of the tax credits, McCain's plan allows employees to continue to use the traditional option of signing up for company-offered health insurance (if available). If you do not like the new plan, then you can stick with the old plan. Though there would, of course, be some implications from the fact that people with lower medical bills will opt out of the current system, leaving only higher-cost patients within that system.

There are elements of the plan that Obama could honestly criticize. However, Obama opted against honest criticism in order to promote malicious representations instead.

Obama’s advertisements and statements on this matter are not only dishonest, they are harmful. Because of his deception, the American people on the whole are being made worse off than they would otherwise be. He is using lies and deception to warn people away from going down a path that may well be in our best interests, to manipulate us into going down a path of his choosing, rather than providing us with the facts and allowing us to choose for ourselves.

Much the same way that President Bush manipulated us into a war of his choosing.

Yet, Obama "approve[s] this message." Obama approves of the practice of using malicious distortions to manipulate the voting public into taking a course that he wants us to take.

That’s not a quality that I want to find in any presidential candidate and, less so, in any president. We have suffered through enough of that.

Iraq and Target Fixation

Iraq and Target Fixation

I take a weekend off to go to a conference and, while I am gone, both the Obama and the McCain campaigns decide to throw aside all respect for truth. Both are currently attempting to score political points by making claims about the other that are entirely false. They are both making several claims that fit this description, but I want to focus on two of them (one per candidate).

I wish to start with McCain’s representation of Obama’s strategy with respect to Iraq. McCain is attempting to cast as ‘surrender’ a type of strategy that can perhaps best be described as a redeployment – the way that a general on the battlefield might move a regiment from one part of the line to another as a part of a strategy for winning the battle.

(Tomorrow I will write about Obama’s representation of McCain’s strategy with respect to health care.)

I want to look at the way McCain (and Palin) are trying to describe Obama’s position with respect to Iraq by looking at a syndrome that the military is familiar with called ‘target fixation’.

Target fixation is a state (which I have most often seen in reference to combat pilots) in which the soldier becomes so fixated on a target that he is trying to destroy that it attracts all of his attention. He loses what is known as ‘situational awareness’.

For example, a fighter pilot picks out an enemy plane as his target. He tries to get on the enemy’s tail, or to get a lock for his radar. The enemy plane jinxes and twists in order to get out of (or reverse) the situation. The attacker then becomes so focused on fighting this one enemy that he loses track of everything going on around him. He does not see the enemy’s wingman line him up for a kill until it is too late.

An intelligent target can take advantage of an attacker’s target fixation. He can use it to lead the enemy attacking him into a trap. The fixated attacker does not see the trap until it is too late, because he is not watching what is going on around him.

However, target fixation can kill pilots without the intelligent intervention of the enemy. Pilots in the grip of target fixation can hit the ground or some other obstacle, simply by having their attention focused too heavily on a single target.

I am not going to stick to my position on the Iraq War – that I am not going to say which strategy is best until after I have attended all of the top secret military briefings on the conflict. Until that time, I do not have sufficient evidence on which to make a decision. And if I can offer a moral note, anybody who does offer that they know what to do in Iraq in spite of their substantially incomplete knowledge should be smacked down (verbally) for the moral crime of arrogance.

However, even though I can offer no intelligent guidance on how to conduct the war, I can still assess the logic that the McCain campaign is using to attack Obama’s position on the war. That language is the language of target fixation. As such, it is preventing the people of the United States from having an intelligent debate on these issues (as intelligent as it could b given the possibility of error).

In the Vice Presidential debate, Governor Sarah Palin said to Senator Biden:

Your plan is a white flag of surrender in Iraq.

When I heard this, a scene as if from a movie popped into my mind. In this scene, a lead fighter pilot has become fixated on a particular target. His wingman, who has preserved situational awareness, sees that the lead pilot is getting himself into a dangerous situation. He yells at the lead pilot, “Break off! Break off!” However, the lead pilot, who sees breaking off as surrender, refuses to do so.

Breaking off in this type of situation is not the same as surrender. It is simply a matter of using sound strategy against a determined enemy. The attacker will sometimes have to redeploy his forces, moving forces from one area where they are doing no good into another area where they can strike with greater effectiveness.

Similarly, there is nothing about the Obama strategy that is like surrendering to the enemy. The strategy is to pull resources away from one section of the battle where they are (allegedly) doing little good, and moving them to other sections of the battle that are crumbling. Over the past five years, Bush has allowed the Afghan/Pakistan front and the Domestic front in the war on terror to crumble to point that they seem nearly ready to collapse. We need to shore up those fronts – the Afghanistan/Pakistan front because that is where the terrorists really are hiding, and the domestic front because a powerful economy gives us strength.

I am not saying that this is the best strategy. It may well be that the Iraq front is the most important front in this conflict, and it would be foolish to weaken ourselves there in order to strengthen these other areas.

I am saying that the rhetoric that the McCain campaign is using against Obama is inaccurate – that Obama’s stated strategy does not involve surrender in any way. It involves the type of strategic redeployment that springs from situational awareness, recognizing that the war against terrorists has to be fought on a wide front that includes attacking their headquarters (which are on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border) and maintaining a strong economy/

We should clearly understand that the current economic crisis is a part of the war on terror. It represents a substantial deterioration of our economic ability to fight the war efficiently. Money that goes into preventing this economic collapse is money that cannot go into fighting military operations. It is also money that cannot go into education, technology development, infrastructure repairs, and similar investments. It is a multi-trillion-dollar blow against the war (probably arranged by Allah who has decided to ally Himself with the Jihadists who are fighting in His name).

McCain should at least be honest enough to describe Obama’s suggestion accurately. To the degree that we can do so, we should be discussing whether this redeployment of resources away from the Iraq front and into the Afghanistan/Pakistan and domestic fronts actually make sense. To the degree that we cannot do so (because we cannot attend the intelligence briefings that would be necessary to give us the important pieces of information) the candidates should at least have the integrity to present the options honestly.

Or, where the candidates refuse to be honest, we should seek an honest understanding from other sources.

Beyond Belief 3: Candles in the Dark

For each of the past two years I have taken the presentations from the Beyond Belief conference and written a post summarizing and criticizing each presentation.

See:

Beyond Belief 2006

Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0

I am going to do the same this year. However, this year I will be working under the advantage of actually having attended the conference. The organizers decided, for some reason, to send me an invitation. So, here I sit, in La Jolla, California, waiting for the conference to begin - tomorrow, as I write this, at 8:30 am.

The subtitle for this year's conference comes from Carl Sagan's view of science as a "candle in the dark". Each presenter is to have come to the conference this year to present "a potential solution to a problem that they have identified in their area of expertise or informed passion.

The presenters this year tend to be involved in studying the brain as it relates to some field of study - morality, law, politics, economics.

I have nothing in principle against mixing neural science and ethics. However, I think that there is a serious problem with how the current batch of researchers are going about the problem.

Specifically, I am a moral realist. Furthermore, I reject the claim that there is some hard distinction between 'is' and 'ought'. Loyal readers should be familiar with my claim that we should focus instead on the distinction between 'is' and 'is not'. Morality either belongs in the realm of 'is' (somehow), or it belongs in the realm of 'is not'.

However, this does not tell us where to find morality in the realm of 'is'. In past conferences, I have found that the neural ethicists were looking in the wrong spot.

Let me illustrate with an example. A researcher takes a hoard of subjects and performs brain scans on them while they think about planets and stars and take astronomy tests. He may learn a lot of interesting things, However, it would be a mistake to call this researcher an astronomer. Studying thoughts about stars and studying stars is not the same thing.

Neural ethicists seem to be unaware of this distinction. They study the brain while the subject thinks about moral concepts or works through some moral problem or puts down an answer on some moral test, and they think they are studying morality. They are not. They are studying beliefs and other attitudes on morality

Tomorrow, I will be able to ask this and other questions of the presenters (I hope). I will wait until the Science Network posts the presentations on line before I start posting my summaries. However, I should have something of a head start in writng them.

And, as I have done in the past, I note that the Science Network provides these items for free. If you (like me) think that there should be more of this type of information out there in the world, then please become a member, or make a contribution.

Earmarks and Tax Loopholes

One of the issues that is being discussed in this election, and which was brought up a number of times in the first Presidential debate, is the issue of earmarks.

Earmarks involve putting an item in a bill that sets aside a bit of money to engage in a special project such as building a bridge or a section of highway, where the money then gets spent in the legislator's congressional district. In the Presidential debate, the contestants seemed to agree that these earmarks came to a total of $18 billion in the past year.

However, I wondered why the contestants did not mention the many other ways in which a legislator can negotiate special favors on behalf of specific groups or individuals. Why the focus on just earmarks? This $18 billion is trivial compared to the manipulations that are possible using other methods.

Tax Loopholes and Tax Cuts

Here is a rhetorical trick that I am quite tired of hearing in political discussions – the rhetoric of tax loopholes and tax cuts.

If you create a special tax break for some group or business, those who are in favor of the break like to call it a "tax cut" and to brag about it accordingly. At the same time, if a legislator is opposed to this particular break, she calls it a "tax loophole" that she promises to close. When she advocates closing this loophole, the proponents of the break then say that she is "voting in favor of raising taxes."

We see this currently in the financial bailout bill, and in plans to end particular subsidies to energy companies. One of the ways in which the financial bailout package was sweetened (in order to attract more votes) was by putting in special tax breaks for those alternative energy.

In passing this legislation, those who supported it can then go home and say, "I voted to cut taxes." They do not dare mention that what they did was vote to create tax loopholes through which special interest groups can then pay less taxes. They simply use the more generic claim of "I cut taxes." They make the claim as if to say, "You are paying less to the government because of what I have done."

However, this is typically not true. "You" do not have the means to take advantage of these tax cuts – only those with the resources to hire tax accountants and tax lawyers have that privilege. Even then, the loopholes they exploit will have to be large enough to cover the cost of the tax accountants and lawyers.

In other words, these types of government favors are for the rich – for those who can afford the lobbyists to get it passed, the marketing firm to persuade the public, and the tax lawyers and accountants to keep it legal.

Similarly, if any candidate threatens to close those loopholes and remove their special breaks, we can count on the special interest group that is benefitting from that loophole to accuse that the plan is to "raise taxes." In Colorado, we have a proposition on the ballot that would eliminate hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies to oil companies (who are making tens of billions of dollars in profits). Of course, the oil industry is running advertisements saying that this is a plan to "raise taxes by hundreds of millions of dollars" and that the customers can rest assured that the costs will be passed onto consumers.

There is so much spin involved in these types of debate that one cannot read (or write) about them without getting dizzy. The winner of these conflicts tends to be the person who can create the scariest advertisements, and that tends to be the people who have the most money – who can pay for the most expensive commercials and the market research that goes into making sure that those commercials are effective.

Technically, there is little practical difference between a $300 million tax break and a $300 million tax subsidy. There is no difference between saying, “You all have to pay the same amount – then we will give Group G $300 million out of the money we collect,” and saying “You all have to pay the same amount, except for the members of Group G, who will be allowed to pay $300 million less.

Which means that, if it is good for the economy and for the people at large that an industry get a $300 million tax break, then it is also good for the people at large that they get taxed $300 million in order to give the industry in question a tax subsidy. An advertisement that says, "Keep our $300 million tax break" is no different than an argument that says, "Tax yourselves $300 million more and give the money to us."

It only looks different.

And looks are what is important in political spin.

An 'earmark', then, is a piece of legislation that says, "Tax the people $X and give it to this group over here." A tax loophole is little different from saying, "Tax the people $X so that this group over here can keep its money."

There is no particular virtue in being opposed to earmarks, as McCain claims to be, and being "in favor of lower taxes" in the form of tax subsidies to particular individuals.

I would bet that, if you added up the value of all of the tax loopholes that exist – the "tax cuts" as their proponents like to call them – it amounts to far more than $18 billion in special favors.

The discussion over earmarks is a diversion – a distraction – a concern over a trivial matter such as spilled coffee while ignoring the multi-vehicle pileup with death and injuries in which the coffee was spilled.

I am not saying that all tax loopholes are a bad thing. I would not say that all earmarks are bad either. Many of the earmarks that legislators approve are for things that would get done anyway under more general legislation such as improving infrastructure. The difference is between giving $18 billion to an agency and letting it decide which infrastructure to improve, and giving $18 billion to an agency and a list of infrastructure improvements for it to make.

What I am objecting to is the political language that plays upon the false attitude that earmarks are different from tax breaks in some significant way – that a person who is opposed to earmarks but in favor of tax loopholes is somehow being consistent when, in fact, she is not being consistent at all.

Even though not all earmarks are bad, and not all tax loopholes are bad, an argument can be made for getting rid of both of them completely. The argument says that, "Getting rid of all $18 million in earmarks may get rid of some good earmarks, but it will get rid of more bad than good."

Similarly, closing hundreds of billions of dollars in tax loopholes may close some good loopholes, but it will close far more bad loopholes and, thus, be a net benefit. It would, of course, be to our advantage to allow the good earmarks and eliminate the bad – and allow the good loopholes and eliminate the bad. However, if we seem incapable of having $X billion in good earmarks and loopholes without generating 10 x $X in bad earmarks and loopholes, we may benefit from ending the practice entirely.

This is an empirical question, and it would take an empirical study to support any conclusions.

The Vice Presidential Debate

The vice-presidential debates are coming up on Thursday night. ("Tonight", as most of you read this.)

I suspect that they are going to be totally worthless. They are not going to address many of the core issues that should be addressed with respect to job of being the vice president. What we are going to get is a 'debate' in which the moderator will ask a question, and the candidate will give us his or best guess as to what the person at the head of the ticket would say about that issue.

This is not what I want to hear.

The Subject of the Debate

If I were in charge of moderating the debate, I would begin with the following:

The most important job for the vice-President is to stand in and be President in case something happens to the person we elected to that position. At any moment an assassination, a heart attack, an airplane crash, or an unfortunate encounter with a pretzel could end that person’s life or render him incapable of serving as President of the United States. In this case, you get to take over.

So, let's work with that assumption. Let us say that John McCain and Barak Obama are no longer capable of being President of the United States, and the job is going to fall to you. I am going to ask you a set of questions, and I want you to answer how you would address that issue as President.

I do not want to hear the names "John McCain" and "Barak Obama" even mentioned in your answers. I do not want you to sing the praises of the person who leads your ticket. I do not want you to criticize the person who leads the opposing party’s ticket. They are no longer with us – that is why you are here. Now, the nation waits for you to answer the important question, "Now what? Now what will Sarah Pahin or John Biden do, now that she or he is President."

Now, let's go to the first question. As President, how would you approach . . .

These are things that I, as a voter, have a right to know about the person who sits a heartbeat away from being President.

The two campaigns will not like this option. The first and most important problem will come from the vice presidential candidate questioning some of the presidential candidate’s policies. The presidential candidate, let us assume, is pro choice. They do not like the idea of the vice presidential candidate questioning the policies of the presidential candidate – that would be disastrous. This leaves us with the option in which the vice presidential candidate tries to do his or her best imitating the presidential candidate.

Rhetoric and Generalities

The news has been reporting that a lot of effort has been going into preparing for this debate. Biden needs little training – he has been in politics long enough that he would do better as a teacher than as a student.

On Palin's side, her handlers will help her to provide answers that disguise her lack of knowledge of specific facts, and allow her to speak rhetoric. She will likely speak passionately about the wonders of a free market – on how it creates jobs, lowers costs, and generates opportunity. She will speak harshly about government waste and how important it is to root out these wasteful government programs and eliminate them. She will lament on how bad it would be to have a situation where the government will be stepping in to medical discussions that ought to be left between a patient and her doctor.

But, they will be light on specifics.

Part of the idea is that, if she doesn't say anything, then she can't say anything wrong (though, in Palin’s case, her handlers have discovered that there is some need to teach her how to utter coherent English sentences).

It is important to note who are handling Palin's training for this debate. These are people who have had years of experience hiding ignorance – hiding it at least well enough to win an election or two. Yes, we know that Bush was an ignorant fool. However, getting Palin (an McCain) elected doesn’t include wasting resources convincing us. There are others who will be easier to convince.

Handlers

One concern that people should have is that, while handlers can prepare a candidate for a scheduled debate against a known opponent, there is no way that they can prepare a President for an emergency like 9/11.

Remember George Bush on the day of the 9/11 attacks, sitting in a class of grade school children while America was under attack, not knowing what to do? He was incapable of action – incapable of leadership. What would Palin do if she were President, and some terrorists successfully launched another attack against us? Will she be carrying a stack of note cards in her pocket for just such an occasion?

How would Palin address the issue of a Russian invasion of Georgia? A nuclear standoff between India and Pakistan? A radical Muslim overthrow of the government of some oil-rich country? A Cuban Missile Crisis? Increased tensions between China and Taiwan? North Korea’s restarted nuclear program?

One option will be that President Palin will still be under the influence of her handlers. If this is the case, then her handlers will be in charge of foreign policy. Palin would simply be a figure head that these handlers will use to either sell their product to the public or to hide it from them with meaningless diversions.

If President Palin is not being handled, then where will she turn to interpret the events going on around her? Her personal history suggests that she is going to pray to God to tell her what to do. She will then see some random event – something that she will take to be a "sign from God," and whatever idea that pops into her head at that moment will determine her policy. She will step into it with utter conviction that it is the right thing to do because her instructions came from God, and God could not possibly be wrong. She will be throwing a dart at a dartboard (and, given her level of ignorance, she will be throwing the dart while blindfolded).

She might get lucky.

She probably won't.

I would rather give the darts to somebody who does not think that God is going to tell him where to throw it. I want a dart thrower who will remove the blindfold and use his eyes and his mind to decide where and how hard to throw the dart.

Nothing at the debates will show us how President Palin will handle an issue she was not prepared for, or what type of ideas might somehow spring into her otherwise empty brain.

Personal Financial Responsibility

There is a group of people among those whose morally culpable behavior contributed to the current meltdown in the financial markets whose blameworthiness is being swept under the rug.

We have heard people putting the blame on greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street. those few highly paid wall street executives who can drive a company into the ground and then retire with a multi-million dollar “golden parachute”.

We are missing is any discussion of the contribution that came from the greed and irresponsibility on Main Street.

Politicians, certainly, cannot deliver the message. They need to tell the voters, “This is not your fault. You are the victim. They did this to you. Vote for me, and I will make sure that they pay for their crimes.”

The fact of the matter is that some of the culprits are probably in the audience at every political rally. The honest politician would have to look out into that audience and say, “Given the way some of you have run your household finances, you have made your contribution to this. If we have a right to be angry at the prospect of bailing out greedy wall-street executives, we have just as much a right to be angry at the prospect of bailing out the financially irresponsible homeowner.”

A lot (though certainly not all) of the moral responsibility for the country’s current financial mess rests with those who took out loans that they could not afford. These people received a package in the mail or saw an advertisement on television from somebody promising to lower their monthly payments by hundreds of dollars, or to get them into a house that was larger than they dreamed they could ever afford, and the leapt at the opportunity. Or, they refinanced their homes in order to cash out some of the equity built up by rising home prices. Or both.

They were greedy. They wanted things, and they were not going to let a little issue like fiscal responsibility prevent them from satisfying this hunger. They went into debt – more dept then they could afford.

When the grace period on these loans ended and the value of their payments went up, they found that they were now being asked to pay more than they could afford. Some went into foreclosure. The bank seized the property and then sold it. But, with a lot of property being sold, the prices started to drop.

Others tried to sell their homes to get out from under their debt, but their homes were now worth less than the debt they needed to pay.

The world is full of risk. Often even the most responsible person will find herself the victim of a universe that cares nothing about his or her happiness delivering random blows that force them into bankruptcy. The most financially responsible person cannot guarantee financial solvency. So it is not the case that everybody who lost their home is to blame. At the same time, some of them could have acted more responsibly than they did.

If we are going to get angry and say, “Why should we bail out wall street?” then we should be equally angry and say, “Why should we bail out financially irresponsible homeowners?” In both cases, they could have helped the nation avoid this mess if they had only acted responsibly.

Ultimately, I do not advocate the type of cold callousness of refusing to help those who have gotten themselves into this kind of bind. We would be worse off living in a society where everybody was that callous. However, this does not change the fact that many of the people who took out loans, the people now dependent on our aid, put themselves in that position. They created a burden for us, and this should be figured into our response.

We have reason to turn to our neighbors and demand some measure of fiscal responsibility, to offer praise to the financially responsible neighbor, and condemnation for those who are financially irresponsible. We certainly have many and good reasons to promote financial responsibility in the community at large.

Here are some of the rules for financial responsibility.

(1) Create a savings account that you can draw on in case of emergencies. Instead of depending on other people to rescue you from some financial setback, give yourself the tools you need to rescue yourselves. Keep yourself in a financial position where you can say, “Don’t worry about me. Go help those who really need it.”

(2) Put a substantial percentage of each paycheck away in savings. If you are accustomed to living off of 80% of your income, and you have no debt, then you will be better off than you would be if you are living off of 110% of your income and this includes $200 per month in interest payments on credit card debt.

I constantly hear from people, “I cannot cut my expenses. All of the money that I get goes to essentials.” This is nonsense (in most cases). If you are making anything above subsistence level, then you can save money.

(3) Avoid debt. You do not need credit cards. Next time you put some debt on a credit card, think of it this way. That new purchase is going to go to the bottom of your debt pile. You will pay for that movie, game, tool when it reaches the top of your revolving credit list. How long will that be? And how much will it cost you when you add on all of the interest payments from the time of purchase until the time it reaches the top of the credit card list.

If it currently takes you 6 years to pay the current principle on your current debt and you have a 12% interest rate on your credit card, then the $50 dinner you buy today will end up costing you $100 by the time you actually pay for it. You can either pay $100 for a $50 night out, or you can buy two nights out (by not having any debt).

(4) Buy things that you can afford to keep if something goes wrong. It turns out that, in this housing crisis, it is the price of high-end houses that are dropping. People who bought modest homes well within their budget are not only staying in their homes, but their homes are not dropping in value either. People who are foreclosing or trying to get out from under staggering debt are selling larger homes and buying more modest homes. So, while the price of high-priced homes has dropped, the price of modest homes has stayed steady (depending on location).

The people who obeyed these basic principles of financial responsibility are not the ones who got our country into this mess. If everybody had behaved like them, then there would be no mess for us to dig our way out of.

It’s the moral difference between being a part of the problem, or being ready to be a part of the solution.