Mr. Moderate

For ’tis the sport to have the engineer
Hoist by his own petard
William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene 4

The initial Soviet deployment of the 40th Army in Afghanistan began on December 25, 1979. The final troop withdrawal began on May 15, 1988, and ended on February 15, 1989. Due to the high cost and ultimate futility of this conflict for this Cold War superpower, the Soviet war in Afghanistan has often been referred to as the equivalent of the United States’ Vietnam War.
Wikipedia article on the Soviet War In Afghanistan.

As hundreds of Muslim “enemy combatants” remain held in the Gulag at Guantanamo, lost in all of the moral outrage mounted by the Republicans is the fact that during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the United States funded and provided arms to those very same Muslim “enemy combatants” (really, “terrorists”) for the purpose of defeating the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Continue reading ‘USA Terrorism’ »

I wrote yesterday about the lack of logic it requires to simultaneously believe that humans evolved over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, and that God created humans much as we are today at one time in the past 10,000 years. It would seem from the USA Today poll that roughly 22% of all Americans believe both ideas to be definitely or at least probably true. Yesterday’s post was about the total illogic involved with that 22% of Americans believing both ideas to be true.

In this post I would like to take seriously the idea, expressed in that same poll, that 66% of all Americans believe “that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years.” Ever since Bishop Ussher produced his Bible chronology that “deduced that the first day of Creation began at nightfall preceding Sunday October 23, 4004 BC in the proleptic Julian calendar, near the autumnal equinox,” back in the 1650s, people who desired to take the Bible literally have asserted that no fact produced by science can possibly contradict the idea that God created everything that now exists about 6,000 years ago. Some modern young-Earth creationists, disturbed at chronologies of Egyptian civilization that seem to be unbroken to much earlier dates, have accepted that Ussher might not have computed everything exactly right, and they are willing to push back the creation of the universe to somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago, but no further than that.
Continue reading ‘Young Earth Insanity’ »

To hear the right-wing talk show hosts rant and rave, one of the two worst enemies of America is socialism (the other is “Islamo-Fascists”). But socialism is so deeply embedded into our American system these days that we would not be the great nation we are without socialism. Let me enumerate a few socialist government programs that at least 80% of the people (on average) would vote to support if the question were put to them:

• Anti-Trust Laws
• Social Security
• Unemployment Insurance
• Medicare (health care program for older people)
• Pell grants
• Student Loans
• Consumer Product Safety Commission
• Food and Drug Administration
• Building roads, bridges, sewers, water systems, and other infrastructure.

Socialism has its roots in the progressive movement of a century ago, and Republican President Teddy Roosevelt was a leader of that movement, closely associated with the passing of anti-trust laws to prevent the robber barons of commerce from creating vast business monopolies for the purpose of sucking as much profit out of the public as they could manage. His cousin, Democrat President Franklin Roosevelt, gave us numerous social programs, and the most popular is probably the Social Security System.
Continue reading ‘Successful Socialism’ »

In the Bible, the Book of John, Chapter 8, verses 31-32 reads (more or less) like this:
8:31 Then Jesus said to those Judeans who had believed him, “If you continue to follow my teaching, you are really my disciples
8:32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

In this essay, I will make the same claim that Jesus made, above. If you believe me, and you follow my teaching, “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Now, Jesus was trying to teach the Jews to be free from sin. But of course, my objective is to teach you to be free of sin too. In my case, you will be free of sin by recognizing it as an incoherent concept which cannot have any hold over you unless you willingly enslave yourself to the idea of sin. Once you reject the idea of sin, you are immediately free of sin, and of coercion by any church which preaches that you must do penance (usually by paying money) repeatedly for your sins, which the church will repeatedly assert you commit almost continuously when you are not at church doing penance (usually by paying money). Thus, this freedom I give you is economically valuable to you, as it gets you out of a lifetime of doing penance (usually by paying money).
Continue reading ‘Know The Truth’ »

When I write about “utility” in this essay, I’m referring to an ethical principle that is usually stated as something like: “the maximum amount of happiness for the maximum number of people.” This ethical system is usually called “utilitarianism.”

Now, I used to believe that utilitarianism was the best form of ethics, but I recognized that it had several problems, and among those problems were a total failure to motivate rather ordinary behavior. Most of us spend most of our time doing things that do not make us very happy. Most of us work, for instance, not because it makes us happy (although some of may be happy as a result of our work), but rather because it produces money for us to use to meet the needs and wants which arise in our lives. In other words, happiness is only a small portion of what we obtain when we work; that portion which allows us to fulfill our “wants.” Our needs are matters of necessity, and if observed strictly, fulfilling them provides little to no happiness. (There may be, of course, blended situations where I need to eat and I want to eat a steak; eating a steak fulfills my need and my want at the same time. The higher we are on the economic ladder of success, the more likely it is that our needs will be fulfilled using wants in this same fashion.)
Continue reading ‘Utility Is Means; Not End’ »

Today I watched a C-Span show where Al Gore talked about his latest book, The Assault on Reason. Gore clearly recognizes the problem: reason is getting shoved out of public dialog. But he also clearly misperceives why that is happening. The advocates of God have realized that they are in a battle against rational thought and that they have been loosing since at least the Enlightenment. What we are witnessing in the arena of public discourse is just the most obvious examples of them fighting back. And, unfortunately for those who associate rational thought with civilized behavior, God is winning, and reason is on its way out.
Continue reading ‘God vs. Reason’ »

Unable to find a decent “permanent” job, I took a one-year contract position with a major contract labor company. This at least allowed me to have access to a decent health care plan, even if I was required to pay the entire group rate premium out of my gross earnings. However, I’m approaching the end of my one-year contract term, and that means I’m approaching the end of my ability to (barely) afford health care. Now, its true that I will have the option of continuing my coverage under the COBRA law. But it is also true that my maximum monthly unemployment benefit will just about equal my health insurance premium under COBRA, so how am I supposed to afford food, shelter, and other basic needs?

Unfortunately, my family and I have chronic health care problems. As long as we are covered by health care insurance, our chronic problems are manageable. But if we ever become uncovered, we descend into medical Hell, and getting covered again becomes increasingly problematic as our chronic conditions are all “pre-existing conditions” for any new plan. This means that I do not dare allow my plan to lapse, as exclusions for “pre-existing conditions” are waived if you are simply moved from one plan to another. That being the case, though, how do I afford food, shelter, etc. while paying for health care?
Continue reading ‘Health Care Horrors’ »

I have only come here seeking knowledge,
Things they would not teach me of in college.

Sting, Wrapped Around Your Finger

There is some debate over exactly what St. Thomas Aquinas meant when he wrote: “hominem unius libri timeo” — “I fear the man of a single book”. On the one hand, it is felt that a man of a single book has limited knowledge and limited horizons. “Having read so little he is quite at at the mercy of his one book!” On the other hand, it might also mean “that a man who has thoroughly mastered one good book can be dangerous as an opponent.” Luckily, we need not resolve this matter as both statements are true of the Christian fundamentalist. Such a person “of one book” (The Holy Bible) is both limited in knowledge and horizons and is also a dangerous opponent as they have no way to recognize error or defeat and thus plow onward incessantly, even when all around them ought to recognize the mistake(s) they have made.
Continue reading ‘Fundamentalist: Homo unius libri’ »

There seems little doubt that the American public is being subjected to a great deal propaganda coming out of Iraq. But how do we sort fact from fiction? Take, for instance, these paragraphs out of THIS STORY:

After the arrest, the military said, nine vehicles moved into the area and positioned themselves to “block and ambush Iraqi and coalition forces.”

Iraqi and coalition forces called in an airstrike. All nine vehicles fought, and five terrorist suspects were killed, the military said.

According to an official in Iraq’s Ministry of Information, the attack planes hit a line of cars queuing next to a gas station near Sadr City. Six cars were destroyed, three civilians were killed and eight others were wounded, the official said.

Continue reading ‘Paranoia Strikes Deep’ »

The State of Israel was born on or about May 14, 1948 when the Jews declared themselves free from the British Mandate established by the League of Nations after World War I. Since that time, the State of Israel has been in a continuous war with the Palestinian people and various Arab states who have at times taken up their cause. Presently, there are definitive peace treaties only with Jordan and Egypt.

I have been watching this conflict over the past several decades, and it seems to me that Israel does not really want peace. Instead, it appears to me that Israel is attempting to gradually push as many Arabs as possible out of “Greater Israel” (which includes at least the West Bank area if not the Gaza Strip). Every time it appears that things might be settling down so that peace talks could begin, Israel seems to find an excuse to do something to set off the fighting once again.
Continue reading ‘Israel: No Peace In Sight’ »