Faith is incompatible with American ideals

So I'm watching "In God They Trust", Tom Brokaw's thing on NBC tonight, and I'm getting royally pissed off -- and anger, as we know, stems from fear. The parade of subhumans espousing the virtues of using faith alone to justify government policy represents the most serious threat to the principles on which our state is based.

Let me reiterate these, for those of you who may be a bit fuzzy on this: reasoned analysis. It is historically demonstrable that no individual can be known to be good or evil, wise or foolish, knowledgeable or ignorant, capable or incapable; that, barring such awareness, we can grant nobody power that cannot be limited or revoked. It is historically demonstrable that we understand the world through observation, testing, and analysis -- not prayer or divine inspiration. Religious adherents throughout history have justified evil by citing some allegedly divine source, and it is historically demonstrable therefore that religion cannot be relied upon to evaluate action. Individuals are therefore known by their actions, and their actions are known by their effect on other individuals.

The effects on faith-driven policy are also historically demonstrable: harm to individuals. Be it faith in God, Gods, or some not obviously mystical ideal (facism/naziism, Marx-Leninism/Stalinism/Maoism, etc.), faith has always led those with power to injure, rob, and kill individuals who express a different conclusion based on faith -- or failed to express with sufficient stridency the faith of those in power.

So I say to you: believe, if you wish, in an omnipotent god or gods, invisible blue monkeys, or self-aware rocks, but if you base your policy positions on faith, you are not fit to be American, and you should shut up and stay home -- and if you can't do that, GET THE HELL (AND HEAVEN, AND ALL YOUR OTHER UNFOUNDED DOGMATIC RUBBISH) OUT OF MY COUNTRY.

Oh, and if y'all are still reading this, please refer to other of my posts which elucidate my positions on faith v. reason, morality, law, religiouos oaths, non-mystical religions, gay marriage, and abortion.

Open letter to the Colorado State Patrol: Enforce the two-second rule

Over the weekend I had the joy of driving from Colorado Springs to Denver (and back), including my reacquaintance with an irritating Colorado law.

A couple of years ago, the Colorado legislature passed, and Governor Bill Owens signed, law 42-4-1013 (1), which states that "A person shall not drive a motor vehicle in the passing lane of a highway if the speed limit is sixty-five miles per hour or more unless such person is passing other motor vehicles that are in a nonpassing lane or turning left, or unless the volume of traffic does not permit the motor vehicle to safetly merge into a nonpassing lane."

Huh? First of all, remember that the interstate highway from Colorado Springs to Denver, a 50-mile stretch that connects communities of a half-million and two-and-a-half-million citizens, is two lanes in each direction. How did the left lane become, rather than the additional lane for accommodating capacity, the "passing lane"?

The law passed because of voiced annoyance about being forced to drive behind somebody who was driving more slowly (that is, at the speed limit) than other drivers in the left lane. While admittedly annoying, this behavior was caused not because of individuals abusing the passing lane, but because of a far-too-familiar pattern of dangerous driving called tail-gating. Tailgating, or following too closely -- the Colorado Driver's Manual calls for following at two seconds, or in such away that one passes a fixed point two seconds or more after the vehicle one is following -- accounted for 8.1% of all accidents in the Colorado State Patrol's jurisdiction in 2003, behind speeding (17.4%) and lane violations (8.6%). Right away this should tell us that those folks bitching most loudly about passing lane abuse were probably the ones causing the most accidents -- you know, driving too fast.

The first question, of course, is if one can be arrested under this law for driving the speed limit in the left lane. After all, nobody should be going faster than that. The Colorado Driver's Manual makes much of following traffic, but isn't there a law against exceeding the posted speed limit? Of course. So the anguish felt by those most vocal in supporting the law could have no relief under enforcement of this law. The weasly wording about "passing" is irrelevant in this context. I actually make it a point, quite frequently, to set my cruise control at 75 mph and stay in the left lane -- especially if somebody's riding my bumper.

The next question is why so many people stay in the left lane when they're not the fastest vehicles on the road, and I'll give you the answer: because of tailgating. When I want to pass somebody who is driving at 65 mph in a 75 mph zone, and I see other 65 mph drivers ahead of that driver, it behooves me to stay in the left lane until I have passed the cluster. If traffic is heavy, I may encounter periodic pockets of slow drivers to pass. The problem is this: if, having passed one driver and observing that someone is coming up rapidly behind me, I notice that there are in fact several closely-packed vehicles coming up behind me, I know that if I return to the right lane, I am unlikely to be able to again reenter the passing lane before I am forced to slow to the speed of the next slow vehicle in front of me. I then have to wait until a gap in the passing lane, driving below my desired speed the entire time, before being able to pass the next vehicle. If I stay in the left lane and am still driving faster than the vehicles in the right lane, I'm still passing, even though those behind me who wish to drive more rapidly might still get really pissed off. The law above has done nothing.

In normal traffic, of course the slower vehicles should be to the right, the faster vehicles to the left. But there are lots of levels of slow, and lots of level of fast, and this system requires free movement between or among the lanes -- and this is only possible if drivers are following at a safe distance, gauged by the 2-second rule. Following too closely not only causes accidents: it also increases the severity of traffic jams. This is discussed nicely here, so I'll refrain from reinventing the wheel.

In summary, then, the law above should not have been passed. Rather, the Colorado State Patrol -- and municipal and county enforcement -- should be more aggressive in catching and punishing individuals who drive too closely. A publicized campaign, plus vehicles pulled over daily, would encourage drivers to follow safely when a patrol car was visible, just as the same patrol car inhibits speeding. The law was a knee-jerk response to frustration that it no way alleviates, and as such is the worst kind of law. The high place of tailgating in the causes of accidents makes punishing it a much more appropriate expression of state power.

Is this any way to enact a constitution?

Quick contrast: in 1787, our Constitution required passage in the legislatures of 9 of 13 states, more than 2/3 of the states, to be enacted.

This year, the Iraqi constitution requires approval of 1/3 of the voters in all 18 provinces to be enacted.

Why would a constitution be valid when only a minority -- a 1/3 minority, no less -- approves of it? How could it be valid if it was accepted by less than the majority of the population? Historically, when a government is established by a minority, that government is, well, tyrannical. In our own country, out of a reasoned understanding that, as individuals will not support a measure that will harm them, a majority could not form except to support something mutually beneficial, passage of the Constitution had to be based on a 2/3+ majority. Legislatures, sure, but the legislators are answerable to the voters of their states; adult, non-slave males were the only voters, but, well, that's the way it was.

If you go to the trouble of enfranchising everybody (correcting, at least, one deficiency from the 18th century), to require less than a simple majority to establish a government is, well, an obvious effort to establish a tyrannical government. A government supported by less than half of the population can be created only through military force, and, in this case, that force is ours. That's not the way to spread democracy, even if democracy were what we actually should be spreading. We should spread the ideas of individual sovereignty, the rule of law, and civic responsibility, such that individuals within existing countries will form groups that will use political means, if possible, or military means, if necessary, to bring about a limited, constitutional democracy. If we don't do that, we should be satisfied with providing an example of such a government at home, not one that relies on dirty tricks to stifle or punish those who criticize current policy, or one that twists intelligence estimates to justify an unjustifiable policy, or one that appears to allocate the funds extorted from its population to benefit those who are allied with the current establishment.

At any rate, how can yesterday's vote on the Iraqi constitution be viewed as anything other than an imposition by the United States of a tyrannical regime?

Statistics

In almost all areas of public policy, we see borne out that statistics are the most pernicious of lies. "More likely to" has become a way to enshrine in law a failure of logic.

The failure is simple to see, but, I guess, equally easy to ignore. Simply stated, it is the assignment to all members of a group characteristics applicable to only a portion of the members of the group. It is, by extension, the attribution of causality where none is statistically demonstrated. Statistical correlation is a pretty loose thing, but causality requires a 100% correlation: the factor under consideration must always lead to the outcome discussed, and it is helpful if the outcome discussed can arise only from the factor under consideration. Statistics other than 0.00% or 100.00% are meaningless when individuals or individual cases are considered.

To put it crudely, if 99.99% of all blond-haired individuals are irredeemable axe-murderers, and you meet a blond(e), absent behavior you cannot say whether that individual is from the 99.99% or the 0.01%. It is therefore prudent to be cautious around blond(e)s, but treating all of them as one would treat an axe-murderer -- that is, badly -- most likely shall result in the other members of the 0.01% becoming axe-murderers. That might make it easy to deal with blond(e)s: kill'em all. But until you've done so, you'll have more axe-murders. Add to that the fact that the non-murdering variety of blond(e) might accumulate non-blond(e) friends, who might act to avenge actions against their in-no-way-homocidal blond(e) buddy -- even chosing axes as their weapon. In short, an action based on statistics is likely to lead to an outcome contrary to that intended -- in this case, increase in axe-murders instead of security against axe-murdering blond(e)s.

The above applies to racial profiling and racism (et al.) in general, but I'm writing this because I keep hearing social conservatives spout statistics on traditional contrasted with non-traditional parenting (single-parent households, homosexual partner households, communes) as an argument to, I don't know, require individuals by law to not have children except by their heterosexual spouses. Statistics on commission of crimes, expulsion from or abandonment of school, drug-use, and violent behavioir all show greater incidence of each among children of single-parent households than those of two-(heterosexual)-parent households. But the statistics are nowhere near 0 or 100 percent. Do all children of single-parent households commit crime, drop out of school, or draw weapons? The statistics say no. Do all children who commit crime, drop out of school, or draw weapons come from single-parent households? Again, no. Our prisons, drug-rehab clinics, and anger-management classes all have more than a few individuals reared by their biological fathers and mothers. So there must be something else involved -- good parenting, perhaps? And if good children emerge from single-parent households, homosexual households, and communes, isn't it possible for unwed/divorced/widowed individuals, homosexual individuals, and good ol' group lovin' individuals to demonstrate good parenting?

There something else missing in the discussions of social conservatives. What percentage of individuals who cooked the books at Enron came from two-parent households? It is the individual, not his or her background, that makes decisions; it is those decisions that lead to actions; it is those actions that lead to effects -- and it is on effects that we must judge individuals.

So the social conservatives should just shut the hell up (yes, John Leo, I mean you) until they can incorporate logic into their sermonizing.

The American Dream

I've heard the American Dream summarized in a number of ways, most often "owning a house" and "doing better than one's parents". I have a better characterization, which is tied to the very reason America has been, and could continue to be, great.

Simply, the American Dream is to control one's destiny. Owning one's home is a way to control one aspect of that destiny, and assuming we can keep the Christians and the Socialists from propping our doors open, it gives us an inviolable personal sphere. Owning and operating one's own business is another aspect: it gives us a source of income that is dependent on our own efforts only, not on somebody else's whim or competence -- again, assuming the Christians and Socialists can be held at bay. I know, I know: you have to worry about employees, but that's where good management comes in. True Americans seek to create situations in which their welfare is completely within their control, where they don't have to rely on the goodwill or capability of somebody else, where they will rise or fall based on their own will and effort, not on somebody else's. It is the un-American, or the child, who seeks to place large parts of his or her welfare into the control of another entity.

So when I hear about the crisis facing the NPBGC, I stand amazed at the obviousness of the solution: don't count on anybody else to take care of you, if you can help it. And if you've got a salary with a company offering a pension, you can help it. Americans should push not for greater government control over corporate pensions, or tightening up ERISA, but to get their employers to let them opt out of pension plans in exchange for comparable increases in their pay -- and invest the excess themselves. If you aren't too savvy, you can work with a financial advisor -- the guy may be incompetent, and you might still get screwed, but unlike your corporation, whose economic interest is in making the company look good and giving high returns to shareholders, the financial advisor at least has an economic interest in preserving your assets.

Believe no one, and trust only those who earn it.

A dramatized assault on the Constitution

So, with the World Series depriving me of my Tuesday night shows, Commander in Chief wound up on my television (I take neither credit nor blame: my wife was controlling the remote while I puttered on the 'puter), and having seen the pilot and this episode, I have to wonder if the show's producers intend to base every episode's plot on a blatant violation of the Constitution.

In the pilot, the President threatened Nigeria with military action in order to prevent its government from executing a woman for adultery. In tonight's episode, she ordered a military assault on San Wherever-the-fuck to destroy cocaine fields and encourage a popular uprising because the country's dictator had ordered the death of DEA agents.

Neither of these actions lies within the President's authority.

The Constitution is pretty explicit: the President is Commander-in-Chief of the military only when the military is called into "actual service" -- and the only entity authorized to call the military into service is Congress. We've been living so long with imperial activity by our sitting Presidents, under the presumed authority of the un-Constitutional War Powers Act, that the majority of Americans seem to not even realize that the President can't do that. The Constitution separated those military powers because the signers of the Constitution recognized that the most dangerous thing to any country is the investiture in one person of the authority both to activate and command the military force of the country: such an individual can drain the blood and wealth of the country on wars and military violations of other nations' sovereignty that are irrelevant to the security of the country, and which indeed damage the security of the country by necessitating action and defense against an ever-widening range of countries that hate and fear the country for its actions. (I'll talk about Iraq in another post). The fact that so many idiots in our country shout "rah, rah" every time the President talks tough makes it incumbent on our elected officials to remember that separation of powers and enforce it. It'd also be nice if TV writers would actually make mention of it from time to time.

In the first plot, Geena Davis should not have gotten involved. If y'all are so upset about something like this (in the real world, of course, not on television), there's nothing stopping you from funding a group seeking to change that country's government, or even getting together some like-minded individuals to spring the broad yourselves. After all, the citizens of TV-land Nigeria don't seem to care enough, so why should the U.S. burn taxpayer money and risk a multinational reaction by violating Nigerian sovereignty with military action? How does that protect U.S. citizens?

In the latter plot (episode 3, I guess), the proper response would be to go before Congress and present a case for a declaration of war against San Wherever-the-fuck: attacks on U.S. sovereignty by killing U.S. citizens (who were, well, kind of violating San Wherever-the-fuck-ian sovereignty by trying to dictate what its farmer could and could not grow) are always good for a "Go get'em" from even the most independent-minded of Congressmen. In the context of the show, of course, press coverage of the request would probably have had the same serendipitous effect as the announcement of an imminent attack, and it would have had the advantage of compliance with the Constitution. Stupid show.

I know, it's just a TV show, and I'm glad that Geena Davis has a job. But it's just another reminder that nobody is arguing the Constitutional point in public, and we've got a sitting President who isn't nearly as cute as ol' Geena throwing military force around as though he were . . . well, King George III, the very inspiration for our Founders' decision to separate war-declaration and commander-in-chief functions in our own government. Sigh.

FEMA and recovery

With all the investigations and hearings in our future regarding Hurricane Katrina and the governmental response thereto, I'm pretty sure that one question we shall never hear is the one asking whether disaster planning and relief is a federal responsibility. I wrote that sentence, by the way, before I saw David Brooks on Lehrer say that Katrina proved "that we need government." With his view in mind, the logical question is: what do we need it for?

As I have often done, I will start with the Constitution. Therein I find no provision of authority for responding to national disasters, with the possible exception of Article IV, section 4: "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence." So sending the National Guard, or even the standing military, to restore order where it has been destroyed or disabled, is a Constitutional obligation of the Federal government. But supply of vehicles for evacuation, food and water for the stranded, medical care, etc. -- I don't see it. Nor do I see any reference to guaranteeing the right to live at the expense of other Americans in a city that cannot be sustained otherwise -- but that's another post.

This, of course, is not the end of the discussion, because we can amend the Constitution. But it serves as a good starting point for the question of whether the Federal government should have this authority and responsibility. As we consider this question, it is important to remember that government cannot perform any action without taking money from individuals through force or threat thereof, and as such, government action is at its basis fundamentally immoral, and must be limited to the necessary.

So the question is: do we need FEMA? I say no.

First, a pop quiz: what are the qualifications for FEMA director?

That's a trick question: there are no qualifications. FEMA's director is a political appointee, whose appointment doesn't even need to be approved by Congress. So that position, like so many others in the federal government, is another way for a politician to take my money and give it to somebody else as a reward for being as stupid as he is. I guess elevating FEMA back to Cabinet-level, as it was in Clinton's day, would allow for Senate approval, but the vacancies in the Supreme Court have provided and shall yet provide a demonstration of the utter irrelevancy of that.

But again, why do we need FEMA?

The principal function of FEMA in recent years appears to be throwing money around and hoping it hits someone who needs it. The extent to which American citizens and even foreign governments have thrown money into New Orleans et al. should demonstrate that Americans are wealthy enough and generous enough to give oodles of cash voluntarily when they consider the cause just. I must emphasize this, because it is the basis of a just society: individuals are left to their own consciences on whether or not to surrender their resources for another's benefit.

Adults, meanwhile, are responsible for their own welfare. Each level of government is responsible, with the taxes received, for preventing individuals (on their own or as part of a gang or foreign army, for example) from harming person or property, and for maintaining the public order that allows for such protection, but not for protecting individuals from the consequences of their own actions or decisions, or the vagaries of fate. Individuals have to be able to identify the potential threats to their property (the reasonable ones, you know, like, say, a hurricane on the Gulf Coast) and prepare for themselves and their wards appropriate measures for surviving and/or escaping such threats and their consequences. I understand that not everybody can afford homeowners' insurance (although, again, that might be a sign that one should move), but even so, even if one might have no savings, one should be aware of that fact, and identify and cultivate resources in the community (like the guy who drives old people to church on Sundays, or the neighbor who has a big truck ro a phone) through making friends, etc. Poverty is a social ill, but at an individual level it results from circumstance, individual decisions, and individual actions. I've talked about this in my piece on Social Security, but individuals bear the responsibility for acting on their conscience, not compelling other individuals to act for them. And, as I pointed out above, individuals across the country take that responsibility in disaster after disaster. No individual has the right to use force to take property from others, even to sustain his or her life.

I came across a quote that I think is illustrative. In his first term in office, President Grover Cleveland was given a bill to give seed money to drought-stricken farmers in Texas. In vetoing the bill, Cleveland said, "Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character." While the national character bit is a load of crap, it is useful to contrast this attitude with the overprotective parenting being practiced by our current President -- when somebody wakes him up, that is.

And we're back to the much-maligned federal response to Katrina. An insurance company that failed to pay up per a policy would be subject to lawsuit, and since we are forced to pay for this rather dubious federal insurance policy called FEMA, I guess we should expect the same. Better, though, would be to stop having to pay this compulsory premium. It's a federal agency, subject to the funding whims of the legislature; its leadership is more likely than not to consist of not-especially-qualified political cronies of the President. Look at what Bush did to FEMA: marginalized it within a larger agency, redirected its focus away from natural disasters and to "terrorist attacks", and put a crony in charge. It's a repository of forcefully extracted money that is more likely than not to be distributed based on political or fraudulent considerations -- consider, for example, Brown's performance during Hurricane Frances. And it performs a function that the Constitution does not authorize the federal government to take on.

The alternative puts the responsibility where it belongs: in the hands of the individual. The individual must identify threats to him and his property, purchase insurance or create "insurance" through relationships with neighbors and families; exert the necessary pressure on his municipal and county governments to make sure there are enough firefighters, emergency personnel, and police to respond to a local disaster, and that roads are adequate to evacuation; to pressure his state to make sure that intrastate arteries are adequate to evacuate your municipality; and to give money and materiel that he can spare to those private entities that are positioned to aid those in need. That's what an American adult should do, and must do: to rely on the federal government is to become a child, and be deprived of property to fund incompetence and corruption on top of what may actually go to aid the needy or rebuild the territory.

I should also note that cities do not have the right to exist, and although individuals have the right to live wherever they want to, they don't have the right to do so on the subsidy extracted from their fellow citizens. Similarly, culture does not have the right to exist, but is maintained by choice by those willing to do so. New Orleans is not essential to our national economy: docks, warehouses, oil rigs and refineries are at the mouth of the Mississippi because there's an economic reason for them to be there; the need for workers to support them, of places for those workers to live, for groceries and haircuts and medical service and all those other things will drive resettlement of the area, but New Orleans has never been a good site for a city. The individuals filling the economic needs of the area will choose where to locate their homes and facilities, and while one might expect them to choose more wisely than the French royal government, nobody else should be forced to pay for the implementation or the consequences of their choices. And New Orleans' culture can survive in the homes of refugees, the musical libraries and museums, the bistros and whatever the hell else that open around the country to serve those interested in that culture. It is not the government's role to take my money so some moron can see his culture preserved by an entity larger than himself.

This post is way to long to go into the Army Corps of Engineers, or other federal actions, so I'll leave those for later. To sum up: kill FEMA, and let New Orleans and New Orleansians survive on their own and with the aid of those who choose to help them.

Commander in Chief

I've got three words for people who think the idea of a woman as President is so bizarre that it would make compelling drama: Margaret fucking Thatcher.

Still, "First Gentleman" would make a fine sitcom, and I have to confess that, in watching the pilot, the sequences with Geena Davis' character's husband amused me -- especially with the constant references to Hillary Clinton's tenure as First Lady.

First Lady. What a fucking stupid office. No Constitutional provision for it, of course, and only the irrational sub-humans' need for monarchy can explain it. Sigh.