Politics and Science – All Manure

Either President Barack Obama is a dumbass or he thinks we are. I’m leaning toward the second, but I’m willing to accept it is a combination of the two.

Obama announced today that he is going to divorce politics form scientific decisions made by the government. And tomorrow I’m going to divorce the green pigment from the paint on my wall. To claim that either anything done by the government or that any policy set forth in science can be removed from political consideration is – you’ll forgive me for this – patent bullshit.

The announcement came on the heals of reversing the Bush administration policy of not using federal money for embryonic stem cell research. Are we to understand that making this decision was not politically motivated by the Barack of Obama? A certain and large segment of the population (including the immediately preceding President) held that destroying embryos holds strong moral implications. By allowing the embryonic research to go forward, Obama is making the (political) decision that destroying an embryo is not tantamount to murder. Agree or disagree, that is not a scientific decision, it is a political one.

Has this man never seen a science fiction movie? Let me summarize the basic plot to 99.6% of all sci-fi movies. 1) Use a new scientific technology that looks cool on camera. 2) Create a situation where the characters have to make a moral decision about using the new technology. 3) blow things up (this is for the people who might vote for Obama; they won’t get #2) All technology is just a tool. Where, when and how to use the tool is a political and moral decision.

So, as we continue down this road where political considerations are removed from scientific decisions, what will our future look like? How will the Obama administration proceed from here?

In the brave new world of national heath care that President Obama has called for we will come to the point where elderly people will be sick, but their life expectancy and contribution to society will not equal this cost. Scientifically it would be easy to conclude that it is not worth spending the money on them. The next logical step is that if we are simply going to let them die, shouldn’t we proactively put them out of their suffering? Please, Mr. President, explain to me how you are going to approach this topic without bringing politics into the mix?

Or what about the other end of life, Mr. President. If we are going to provide the health care for the entire populace would it not be prudent to make sure that the people entering that populace were healthiest they could be? We have it within our scientific power to limit who can reproduce with whom. Only allowing those deemed, scientifically, fit to have children could be allowed. This would ensure that the children born would have the best genetic chance to remain healthy and not burden the health care system. Should we allow science to simply run its course, or should we use politics to decide the morally correct direction to take this tool at our disposal?

Or how about the tact the entire DNC is taking on global warming? While there are plenty of scientific minds that believe in global warming there is also plenty of evidence and plenty of scientists who reject the premise. The party has, however, deemed the debate to be over and is plowing ahead with, ahem, political actions without regard for the scientific debate about this topic.

Oh, wait, how about this one!? In those science fiction tales referenced before, science breakthroughs happen in mere minutes with the result of tests seen within a few scenes. But here in the real world science advances take time and are often found wrong. Recent enough to be considered modern history, the predominant scientific theory held that people with darker skin color, like, oh say… the President’s, were inferior due to being less evolved. The sentiment in the scientific community was that these inferior persons should not be allowed the same rights and privileges as more evolved persons. I’m pretty sure it was political arguments that railed against this line of thinking until it was scientifically proven wrong.

The thought of removing political reasoning from scientific processes, especially involving the government is ridiculous. Hey Barry, next time you want to announce something this outrageous, don’t make a general public announcement; save it for the Democrat National Convention. You’ll get more acreage out of your fertilizer.

Thank _______ !

We will soon celebrate the day of Thanksgiving. It is a good think to be thankful in general for our blessings and our good fortune. But to be simply thankful is, in and of itself, hollow and incomplete.

The word “thank” is a verb, it requires a subject and an object. When we receive a gift, we say “thank you.” This is the shortened form of the entire sentence “I thank you.” The subject is understood; the object is often left hanging, open for interpretation. If you just say “I am thankful for…”, to whom are you thankful?

Imagine receiving your shinny new Red Rider B-B gun from your parents. Then you say, “I am thankful for this B-B gun.” Wouldn’t your parents be a little miffed? Instead we say “Thanks mom and dad!” We declare whom we are thanking.

How often do we go around the table on Thanksgiving Day and say what we are thankful for? It is good to be thankful, but if you are not thankful to someone, something, your thankfulness is unfinished. It is like a transfer truck which is not pulling a trailer. The verb needs its object; your thanks needs a target.

Consider the original Thanksgiving Day proclamation by George Washington:

WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; … to be devoted by the people of thefe States to the fervice of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be;¹

The Day of Thanksgiving was originally set up for us to give thanks to God for his blessings on us. Let us all remember this as we declare what we are thankful for.

1 – Full proclamation text here – In many of our founding documents, an “F” is used where you use an “S” now.

Vive La Thanksgiving

It’s the beginning of November. That pagan death festival is just behind us and Thanksgiving is most of a month away.

And yet our little town has their Christmas decorations up for some “Christmas in November” event. K-Mart is running ads on the radio about their November Christmas sales ending with “Merry November!”. Our local Christian station will begin playing 24 hour non-stop Christmas music on the day of Thanksgiving. The around-the-clock music is annoying enough, but their inability to wait until one holiday is over before beginning the next is even worse.

Of course, there is also that really annoying Garman commercial set to “Festival of the bells”. It has already began running and reminding me how much I don’t want to buy from a company that sees a Christian celebration as nothing more than a capitalist enterprise.

But Thanksgiving folks! What about Thanksgiving! There is a history here. Our nation sat aside a day for us to give thanks to God for his many blessings (one of which would be the kid in the manager a month later). It is a time for families to get together and eat way too much. It is a time for us to celebrate our heritage.

Thanksgiving should not be skipped!

My wise mother thinks that Thanksgiving should be moved forward to put more space between it and Christmas. I like the idea, but either way we ought to keep our holidays separate and whole. These days have meaning.

We’ve watered down the celebration of Washington and Lincoln’s birthdays to a one day President’s day mattress sale. Christmas is more about the unholy elf and his possessed reindeer. Resurrection Sunday has just been written off as a day for Wal-Mart to sale candy. Independence day seems to hold no more prevalence than communist, I mean, Labor day.

Can we Please keep Thanksgiving? Not as just the warm up to Christmas, but as it’s own distinct, independent holy-day?

Please?

Gays in Court

The decision by the California Supreme court to “legalize” homosexual marriage is an affront to our society. This is not merely because of their decision going against the wishes of the people of the state of California, tradition, scientific evidence or just plain common sense. It’s most egregious affront is due to the liberal mindset embodied in this decision.
Ask yourself this: why did the State not have the right to define marriage as being allowed between two individuals of the same sex? It is because the State never had the right to define marriage of any kind in the first place. God has already done that. If you do not believe in God at least accept nature’s argument in that a union between a man and a woman (and only a man and a woman) produces the offspring necessary to continue our survival. Also consider that it has been proven time and again that a stable home with a man and a woman is the best place to raise these kids. Marriage was ordained before the State, any State of any kind, ever came into being. The State does not invent, endow, empower, or any other affirmative verb you can think of, the institution of marriage; it simply recognizes a function of the church as being important for the wellbeing of the State.
The court, and in the larger sense the state of California as a whole, injecting themselves into this debate displays the belief that man can counteract the decelerations of “Nature and of Nature’s God.” The root of this belief is that man, and his decisions, are the ultimate law. Holders of this philosophy seek constantly to establish the perfect law, the perfect society, in which the rule of the State has answered all of the questions of life.
They hold to a firm standard that all must be treated absolutely equal. This is not the same as being treated equally before the law; it is an equality established no matter what position one holds. When an innocent person or a multiple murderer comes before a court, they are each treated equal. The law looks at them the same, until the trial is concluded. This is not the same as being equal in truth. In reality, the murderer is in no way equal to the innocent man. He has given up his rights and his position by doing damage to our society. While violating nature’s law (homosexuality) may not require a punishment declared and delivered by the State, it does not merit an equivalence with the natural order of marriage.
This mindset that all points of view and all actions must be considered equal is the same mindset that will not make a distinction between the United States military and savages that blow up women on subways. This is the same belief system that will demand a moral equivalence between the USA and Fidel Castro’s Cuba. These are the same people who decry capital punishment because we cannot establish a strong enough argument in their eyes to warrant punishing the criminal’s actions. But then these same modern philosophers will allow abortions claiming that if that is the wishes of the woman, who are we to interfere?
Followed to its logical conclusion (the death knell for most liberal ideas) this ideology of absolute equivalence leads to trying to negotiate with evil instead of crushing it. This is the root of the idea of sitting down with terrorists and trying to understand them. It is the thinking behind policies of training and reconditioning criminals instead of punishing them. The decision by the California supreme court is a dangerous decision; but it is not nearly as dangerous as the belief system from which it sprang.

Music : An Interactive Event

Across cultures, across continents, music is a powerful force. Music has been known to stir the hardest of hearts and to “sooth the savage beast.” But music, compared to other mediums, is a very interactive event requiring active participation on the part of the listener.