… give or take
Yet more proof of the evolutionary roots of morality and ethics, for the religious doubters out there.
Keep in mind also that religion, by its nature, results in moral relativism. This is especially true of organized religion.
John Tamny, writing in Forbes, makes the fantastic claim that “The U.S. Constitution’s 10th Amendment is arguably the most important of all the amendments…” What? Ever heard of the first amendment? He’s basically saying that, given the choice, he would rather be free from a federal income tax than free to write his article. Makes perfect sense.
Nevertheless, he goes on to make several important points about the growth of the central government and the out-of-control nature of government spending. I part ways with him, however, when he starts preaching from the constitutional soapbox, a favorite hobby of the right nowadays. To these people, anything they don’t like must be unconstitutional in some way or another. Case in point:
Simply put, nothing in the Constitution allows for the existence of the Departments of Education, Commerce and Energy (to name a few), government-sponsored entities such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or ineffective bureaucracies such as the SEC and the FDA.
Nothing in the Constitution explicitly allows for me to have a turkey sandwich, either. Didn’t stop me from doing it. Not content to just criticize Obama and the congressional Democrats on substance (of which there is a ton), they have to connect everything to the foundations and inherent nature of the entire country.
Now, aside from the fact that this guy looks like the kid from Mad Magazine, and aside from the fact that his whole philosophy on state intervention in the economy is clearly wrong on the facts from history, I have a question: if all this stuff is unconstitutional, why haven’t they been abolished? That’s why we have courts, isn’t it? The FDA, for example, has been around for over 100 years! In all this time, nobody realized that its very existence is unconstitutional? Either this nation is populated by complete and utter morons, or Tamny’s argument is a dud. I wonder which is more likely.
Welcome to the empire of superficiality
The recent news of financial crisis in the jewel in the crown of the Muslim world offers everybody the opportunity to take a closer look at that shining city in the Gulf. Dubai—that outwardly gorgeous, irresistibly tax-free haven of opportunity and prosperity—is, and has been for a long time, a profound sham. Perhaps nowhere else on this planet can so many dark and shameful human tendencies be seen with such staggering, in-your-face clarity.
Dubai is the sheer embodiment of modern hypocrisy. It is, bar none, the absolute paragon of contradiction in our world. It is a place where rich and poor comfortably overlap, as do prince and slave, the medieval and the modern, the past and the future, the tragic backwardness of devout religious adherence and the idiocy of mindless hedonistic excess.
Foreigners come, like moths to a flame, beckoned by the siren call of no taxes and single-minded ambition. They come, unfazed by the stark horror of the modern day slavery that undergirds their fantasy world. They come, mouths watering at the prospect of wealth without work, of beauty without ugliness, of freedom without responsibility. And so, consciously or otherwise, they patronize a social-political-economic system simply unrecognizable to the values that lie at the heart of their own homelands—gender equality, freedom of movement, freedom of press, and basic human rights for everyone.
The contradictions inherent in this empire of superficiality have had (or at least begun to have) their inevitable financial consequences. Simon Jenkins, writing in the Guardian, has these thoughts on where Dubai goes from here:
I still have no doubt that Dubai will survive, despite its lack of oil or other natural resources. But it will do so as a benighted settlement on the Gulf shore, in hock to neighbouring and more cautious oil-rich states, such as Abu Dhabi. Its luxury apartments will become tenements to an ever shifting army of refugees from the torments of the Islamic world. Its towers will stand empty, unable to afford their energy-guzzling services. Its fantasy islands will be squatted or will rot and sink back into the sea. Where fresh water will come from, who knows?
In a society where over 80% of the entire population is foreign, where men outnumber women 3 to 1, and where illegal prostitution (coerced and otherwise) thrives alongside the use of Islamic Sharia law, the normal frame of reference for understanding human affairs barely applies. Up is down and down is up such that fantasy to the point of delusion is the only mindset useful for thriving within it.
It is truly fitting that this mirage of beauty, wealth and freedom should occur in a desert. And how poetic, indeed, that this city’s breakneck rise—marked by fantastic hubris, superficiality and the ruthless exploitation of the helpless—should be interrupted (if not concluded) with a humbling and equally impressive financial fall that exposes its darker internal workings.
Here is the first part of the five-part series of videos. Each speaker gives a very unique and compelling presentation, making for entertaining and informative viewing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNODiU_-CNo
Stephen Fry gives us a great way of thinking about the church’s preoccupation with sex and behavior thereof:
[The Catholic Church] is obsessed with sex… The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese… and that, in erotic terms, is the Catholic Church in a nutshell
Such an outcome is almost inevitable in an organization where, as Fry points out, virginity is institutionalized to an unnatural and twisted degree. Incidentally, in preparing this post I just did a Google search for “catholic church” and the first item that came up (I am not making this up) is a recent article in the Belfast Telegraph about the ongoing priest sex abuse scandal.
The economic crisis has highlighted the distinction between Texas and California in the area of financial management and governmental priorities. Lower taxes, greater emphasis on assimilation and easier regulation on companies are typically among the major factors credited to Texas’ outperformance in recent years, while the Golden State has pursued a not-so-golden path marked by fiscal waste and mismanagement. Because of their size, influence and ideological slants the two states can be seen as the paragons of modern American liberalism and conservatism, respectively. And this is happy news for the right, particularly in the age of the big-spending Obama Democrats. California’s economic crisis and fiscal debacle is seen as a sign of things to come for the country as a whole under Democratic leadership.
There is no question that unchecked progressive idealism, agnostic to the harsh realities of limited public resources is a recipe for disaster. But how is unchecked conservative idealism any less of a threat? Whether in the form of wars in the name of “national defense,” tax breaks for the richest, or subsidies to large corporations, Republican waste is necessarily just as bad.
And here is where we uncover the real story. As some have noted, Texas outperforms California in many respects even according to the goals of the high-tax, high-benefit model. Therefore, in many respects, right-of-center economic policies work. But we know that in many respects they do not. As I recently noted, the laser-focused concern with lowering income tax rates by conservatives is wrongheaded, with data backing me up. In addition, blind deregulation and trust in rational markets was a major contributing factor to the economic crisis.
We can conclude, then, that while a robust social safety net is a must for prosperity growth, other, unequivocally right-of-center approaches are vital as well. Common sense welfare and transfer payments are obviously necessary, but low taxes and light regulation for small businesses themselves constitute extremely powerful “welfare” policies insofar as they help lower- and middle-class people to start a company, run it profitably, and employ two or three other people.
The Texas-California divide brings to light some important distinctions between liberalism and conservatism, but it would be a mistake to see it as final proof that conservatism works and liberalism does not. Aside from the fact that the Texas government just seems to work better than the Californian, we must remember that, being a state, Texas benefits from many left-of-center policies and programs that are national in nature. And, again, we know that many economic assumptions of the right have been proven false.
