Palin – Not Ready for Primetime?

September 9, 2008 at 5:25 pm (politics)
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Amidst the upsurge in enthusiasm for the McCain-Palin ticket as a result of last week’s Republican convention, many probably missed a notable absence on the Sunday morning talk shows.  While Obama, Biden, and McCain were on each of the three major networks, Palin was no where to be found, not even on the Republican mouthpiece, Fox News!

A McCain campaign adviser said Palin would not appear until reporters showed a willingness to treat her with “with some level of respect and deference.”

What?

Even if it was true that reporters are not sufficiently respectful or deferential, the appropriate response is not to go into hiding.  Are we to get the impression that this self-styled pitbull is all bark and no bite?  Will this be Palin’s modus operandi in dealing with foreign leaders or even Congress – promise to compliment her hair and then she’ll talk?

The patent absurdity of this excuse underlies the true reason – Palin just doesn’t have the depth to answer even softball questions.  Further, if what I blogged about her before is any indication, she’s prone to making some embarassing factual gaffes.

And this is the person McCain believes is ready to be the next president at a moment’s notice.  Honestly, I’m not sure which of the two is worse: the one severely lacking in judgement, or the one severely lacking in experience.

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Are we all subject to God’s Law?

September 8, 2008 at 1:29 pm (belief, politics, society)
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A blog on the The New Republic’s website about the progressive narrowing of the religious right’s social agenda reminded me of a question that’s buzzed around in my head from time-to-time.  We all know this agenda includes banning gay marriage and abortion, because the Bible says these are no-no’s, but the question is, why does the religious right seek to make these social issues, subject to punitive legislation, rather than merely private concerns?

Because God hates them?  Well, God hates lots of things, including adultery, divorce, and linen-wool blended clothing (Lev. 19:19), but no one is proposing to outlaw them, which I suppose is fortunate for a few mega-preachers.

Because they violate the Ten Commandments, upon which the entirety of western civilization is allegedly based?  That might work for abortion (Commandment VI), but gay marriage?  Is there some secret 11th commandment they’re not telling us about?  Should we also ban other religions (Commandment I)?  Playing golf on Sunday (Commandment IV)?

Because Jesus specifically forbade them?  No good there, either; he was completely silent on these issues.

Because they’re personally harmed?  It’s hard to see how two same-sex individuals uttering marriage vows harms anyone.  And wouldn’t aborted babies get a ticket straight to heaven?

Because they’re slippery slopes, leading inexorably to the complete destruction of society? I’d think the religious right would want society to fall into moral turpitude, do everything to hasten it, in fact, since that would fulfill prophecy of Jesus’s return (2 Tim. 3:1-4) and the moving in to their new heavenly mansions.

I’m trying quite hard, but I fail to see the religious right’s method for determining when a Biblical injunction should apply only to themselves, and when it should apply to society as a whole.

Even more curiously, these behavioral autocrats believe that man is inherently fallen and will always do all sorts of nasty stuff.  So why should they even care what any non-believer does?  Are laws against certain sins supposed to make the country more moral?  If so, why not scrap the entire legal code and make the Bible the basis of our laws, turn our democracy into a theocracy?  Because, as we know, that’s worked so well in the past.

As a libertarian, I find their professions of faith in freedom hypocritical.  Liberty is not granted piecemeal; it’s not even a grant, but our inherent right.  The best protection of one’s own freedom is the protection of everyone else’s.  A government with the right to trample on your neighbor’s freedom also has the right to trample on your own.  If the religious nannies really practiced what they preached, they would cease being obstacles and live their lives as an example.

If you wish to observe a particular day as holy or refrain from pre-marital sex in compliance with the dictates of your particular religious brand, more power to you.  Just don’t extend those rules to the rest of us, or you may find yourself living by the rules others think you should live by.

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Palin needs a course in American history

September 3, 2008 at 11:46 am (politics, society)
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The website Fundies Say the Darndest Things! (linked to the left) is a treasure trove of absolute batshit crazy statements from the religious faithful.  While being stupendously funny, they’re also a mite sobering when you realize that they’re made in full seriousness.

While perusing through this month’s entries, I read the following gem:

11. Are you offended by the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?

Sarah Palin: Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance.

Sarah Palin, in case you’ve been buried in a cave for the past week, is John McCain’s recent choice for running mate, and potential Vice President (not to mention President…).  The “oopsie!” is of course not the obvious grammar mistakes, but the fact that the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance was not added until 1954.  And it was not written by the Founding Fathers, but by a Christian socialist minister in 1892.  Curiously, the source page for the above quote was deleted, but nothing ever truly disappears off the internet.  A simple search of the page on Google retrieved it from cache.

Frankly, it doesn’t much surprise me that the evangelical Christan Palin holds this mistaken view of American history.  Ask any such Christian, and they’ll offer up a wholly revisionist history of the country’s founding, claiming, among other things, that it was established as a Christian nation (it wasn’t) and that the Ten Commandments inspired American law (sorry, no good there, either).

Palin holds a worldview that doesn’t seem all that dissimilar from the current president’s.  Is that a good thing?  I guess it depends on your view of how the past 8 years have gone.

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Why you can’t get enough scandal

August 28, 2008 at 10:42 am (politics, relationships)
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Nothing titillates and arouses like a good scandal, particularly if it involves sex, betrayal, or avarice.  The question is why.  Among the array of the things that do or could impact us, why are we more interested in a scandal which touches us only in the remotest sense?

One evolutionary psychologist believes he has an answer.  In a recent Washington Post article, Why Fluff-Over-Substance Makes Perfect Evolutionary Sense, Hank Davis from the University of Guelph in Ontario explains that the primal parts of our brains evolved long ago when knowing information about “who needs a favor, who is in a position to offer one, who is trustworthy, who is a liar, who is available sexually, who is under the protection of a jealous partner, who is likely to abandon a family, who poses a threat to us” conferred survival advantages.  Yes, our brains have become more complex since then, but these primal parts still remain as instinctual guides.

Sounds very plausible, so far.  But the article goes on to suggest,

[I]f the evolutionary psychologists are correct, people will tend to choose leaders they can relate to personally — and reject the leaders with whom they cannot see having a personal relationship.

This is true, but I don’t think it’s necessarily for the reasons the evolutionary psychologists propose.  Earlier in the article, it was mentioned that questions over the military service of John F. Kennedy and George W. Bush dogged these two politicians for years, yet that didn’t prevent them from being politically successful, as the model might have predicted.  And consider Bill Clinton, who long battled accusations, some of which turned out to be true, over sexual infidelity.  He also lied about his dalliances.  This cost him dearly among some, but for the most part, voters looked the other way–again, contrary to the model. (I could go on…*cough*DC’s Marion Barry*cough*).

Instead, I think perhaps our values wield a stronger influence over our perceptions of others, and our receptivity to them.  If I, for example, value economic equality, I’ll be more receptive to thinking I could have a personal relationship with politicians who share it, and overlook whatever “character flaws” they may have.  These values don’t necessarily have to be public policy-oriented, but policy proposals should be framed in general value terms, e.g., “the minimum wage is a question of fairness” or “the war on terror is about protecting our families”.

As much as I like their theory, I don’t think the evolutionary psychologists have got it quite right.

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Medifraud for all!

August 26, 2008 at 11:30 am (politics)
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Cato-at-liberty recently blogged on the disclosure that much-heralded Medicare “savings” were actually the result of covering up instances of endemic waste and fraud.  The blog perfectly captures the hilarious inanity which keeps broken programs like this going.

Short summary: After the cover-up is exposed, it is also revealed that Medicare’s attempt to reduce the avenue by which fraud occurs in the first place was thwarted by industry lobbying in Congress. Congresscritters are indignant, not at themselves (of course), but at Medicare.  One calls the agency “incompetent,” but this is no barrier to him forcing all of us to join the program.

Fun fact: the Medicare Trustees estimate that the program’s unfunded liabilities through 2075 are $40 trillion, a figure, believe it or not, that only keeps rising every year.

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