In God We Trust - child abuse?

South Dakota has ordered that every public school post in a prominent position our nation’s motto: In God We Trust.  The Freedom From Religion Foundation co-President thinks that it’s “a terrible violation of freedom of conscience to inflict a godly message on a captive audience of school children” (South Dakota GOP reminds students: ‘In God We Trust,’ July 31).

Maybe somebody should tell her that our nation was founded on the belief that God gave unalienable rights to human beings.  She might call that “a godly message;” the Founders called that a fact.

Unalienable rights require a Higher Power.  A government cannot give unalienable rights, because it cannot take them away.  Without unalienable rights, you don’t have the United States of America.

If we don’t teach our kids that we have these rights from God, they won’t know they have them, and they will give them away, and we will be right back to where we were before the American Revolution.

protecting our elections

I am happy to see that the Tribune (Has the U.S. bulletproofed its elections? NYET, July 27) is concerned about foreign influences in our election.

I am concerned that we have more citizens of other countries living in our country that at any time in our history, and nobody seems to want to ensure that they don’t vote.  We don’t even want to know how many there are.  The census could have told us that by telling us how many citizens we have. 

Is that really a problem?  We don’t know.  How would we know?  But nobody thinks we can have tens of millions of foreign citizens living in our country and that that could be a problem? 

A big complaint about the Russians was fake ads to hope to change people’s opinions.  You don’t think tens of millions of foreign citizens living here won’t have any influence on people’s opinions? 

We welcome millions of foreign citizens into our country every year, and we have no idea how or if they might influence our elections.  The biggest way they would influence our elections is probably by voting, but we make no attempt to see that they don’t.  I would call that criminally irresponsible.

a tax exemption is not a government subsidy - a response to George Will

George Will is a conservative, so we should agree more, but his latest article is dead wrong, in my opinion, not so much in what it said but what it assumes.

Will assumes that anything that could be taxed and isn’t is a government subsidy.  That assumes that the government has a right to our money, and it only allows us to keep what it does through mismanagement.  When the government does not tax non-profits, that is not a subsidy. 

Not taking money from an organization or individual is not the same as giving them money.  Not taking money means that the government is not involved in your organization or your life.  Giving money means that the government has the right to control a part of your organization or life.

His article assumes that we have a deficit and debt problem, because the government is failing to collect taxes that rightfully belong to it.  We have a deficit and debt problem, because our government now assumes that people can’t take care of themselves, and it’s the government’s job to do that.  And that takes enormous amounts of money that tax revenues will never cover.

Will talks about relatively wealthier people using the phrase ‘income distribution,’ as if money is doled out by fate, and whatever is given to one leaves less for everybody else.  That just encourages resentment and class warfare and discourages people from thinking that they can actually improve their lives.

Will also did say something that he should have caught and rejected.  He said that the Cadillac tax of Obamacare “is integral to the structure and financing” of it.  How can a tax that doesn’t start until 10 years after the passage of a law be integral to its structure and financing?  I think they only said that to get that tax into the law.

 

Will should be happy they repealed a new tax.  He should focus his energies on what the government thinks its role is in society.  Promote the welfare of the people with unlimited opportunity or promote the welfare of the people by giving them money?

election meddling

The Sun-Times is rightly concerned about Russian meddling in our elections, but we have between 11 and 40 million citizens of other countries (but who’s counting?) living in our country, and nobody apparently wants to make sure that they don’t vote in our elections.  That sounds to me like potential for some serious foreign meddling in our elections.

True equality in America

True equality in America means that you can be criticized by a person of a different race, gender, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation without calling that person a phobe, a bigot, or some kind of -ist, and you are free to criticize a person of a different race, gender, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation and not be called a phobe, a bigot, or some kind of -ist.

trying to understand the President

A reader (July 24) thought it was important to write a letter bashing the President.  It seems that letters that do that get prioritized for publishing.

I would like to defend the President against this reader’s complaints.

1)         Yes, Trump has been hard on John McCain.  This reader, like so many others, judge McCain’s life entirely on events that happened 50 years ago when he was in the military.  John McCain was in Washington for 35 years.  I believe he was a major factor in denying the President some things that he wanted, and he did so by being one of a very few Republicans who sided with Democrats against him.  It’s Trump’s comments that get publicized, while we know little about McCain’s side in their relationship.

2)         He praises dictators, because he wants to negotiate with them.  He’ll get far more if he comes to them with a smile than with threats. 

3)         He thinks Trump wants NATO disbanded.  Hey, NATO exists for the sake of Europe, not the United States, yet they want the US to carry the burden of protecting them.  By Trump saying NATO perhaps should be disbanded he is telling Europe to figure out what they really want and step up in taking care of themselves. 

4)         I read both Chicago newspapers and watch news on the mainstream media.  They all try to portray the President in a bad light any opportunity they get.  If I want to get a letter printed in the papers, bashing Trump will raise my odds considerably.  The President thinks the press is abusing its freedom by acting irresponsibly.  I agree.

5)         Attacking the judicial system?  Our government has three EQUAL branches of government.  The judicial branch believes it has more power over the other two.  Why should one unelected judge have more authority than the President of the United States?  It seems nowadays that a lot of judges are guided more by politics than justice or law.

6)         He doesn’t treat migrants as criminals.  Anyone who enters our country to live should be screened medically, vaccinated, and have a criminal background check before they are allowed to roam free in our country.  When our borders are flooded with 3 and 4 thousand new people every day, there’s no time to do all that or build luxury hotels.  You make do with what you have.  Criminals can’t just walk out, but the migrants are free to leave any time they want.

Frankly, I am tired of the newspapers and media continually bashing the President.  Go use your space and time in actually trying to solve our problems instead of just complaining about them.

free speech and hate speech

An Islamic group recently complained at a news conference about “a culture … that exists in the political fabric in America today [that] . . . is problematic and poisonous.”  (Pritzker called on to crack down on political hate speech, July 23) 

The group insists that “people’s ideas and ideologies are fair game for debate, . . . but there’s no room . . .for attacks based on race or religion.”

There are three problems with these views.

1)         Our country has for some time now been defined by identity politics.  We must have Congressional districts and other political districts drawn to ensure a particular group gets a representative that ‘looks like them.’  This means that views and ideas apparently can be unique to a group of people.  Obviously, somebody who doesn’t look like them doesn’t understand them enough to represent them.  So, yes, sometimes ideas are associated with particular groups.  People today are too quick to assume that a disagreement on someone’s views is also an expression of hatred for a group of people.  Which leads to the second problem.

2)         People are associating disagreement with hatred.  Frankly, I think this has a lot to do with the Wizard behind the curtain who sees this as an effective way to stifle debate on a subject.  Yell ‘hate’, and everybody shuts up.  Certain people who get a public voice are quick to make the association, and people are intimidated from responding to this scheme.  You can make a lot of people afraid to express their opinions, and it’s working.

3)         It separates ideologies from religions, as if one has nothing to do with the other, and one is acceptable to criticize and one is not.

What is an ideology?  According to the Oxford Dictionary: a system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy.

And what is a religion?  It’s a lot more than simply one’s beliefs about God.  A religion encompasses all of life, what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is bad, what is true, what is false. 

Religions are definitely open to debate and criticism.  They deal with the biggest issues of life.  They need to be talked about.  Publicly.  A lot of people don’t know how to discuss controversial issues, but that shouldn’t stop it from happening.

One of the founding principles of our country is free speech.  Nobody says that means yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater, but it does mean that if someone thinks you’re a jerk, they can say so.  That doesn’t promote good conversation or intelligent debate, but that’s part of the risk with free speech.

‘Love it or leave’: Is it un-American?

A recent reader (‘Love it or leave it’ is un-American, July 23) is close but confused.  I say that kindly. 

America is both a place and an idea.  An American is not just someone who lives here but someone who embraces the idea of America. 

Part of that idea is that people are free to speak their minds.  Does that include hateful speech?

The problem here is that people today have expanded the meaning of hate to include criticism, disagreement, or even disliking a person.  A lot of people don’t like me, but they don’t hate me. 

There are people who believe in the idea of America who want to change things to make it better.  And there are people who don’t believe in the idea of America who want to change it into something entirely different. 

When we talk about loving America, we mean the idea of America, what it stands for.  I’m don’t think we can or should even assume that every person in elected office believes in or even knows what the idea of America is.

Immigration and the Constitution

Our Constitution was written with 6 goals in mind, as given in the Preamble to the Constitution.

Two of them are to form a more perfect union and to ensure domestic tranquility. 

Our country has never been more divided or in more turmoil than it is today, and I would say that the government is responsible for most of it.

One example is immigration.  I’m not saying here what’s right or wrong as to our policies.  I’m just saying that on something as divisive and tumultuous as this, we need to take a break and let our country find a common ground. 

The whole system is broken, and they won’t fix it.  We need to shut the whole thing down until we do, until our country can agree on what it wants.  Our government exists for the sake of the We, the People.  We are putting the needs and wants of people who are citizens of other countries above that of our own.  That is not how our country is supposed to run.

What is America?

The United States was founded on five beliefs as given in the Declaration of Independence:

1)         All people are created equal, i.e. nobody has a divine or inherent right to rule over other people, as they did in Europe and much of the rest of the world.

2)         God gave people unalienable rights.

3)         These include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

4)         Governments exist to secure and protect these rights.

5)         When governments don’t. the people have the right to change it or make a new government that does.

We are missing something here today.

A secular government cannot recognize unalienable rights.  Unalienable rights precede and supersede government.   That requires a Higher Power.  The courts would call that a religious statement; the Founders called that a fact.

But not all religious believe in unalienable rights.  The most basic one is the right to change or reject your religion.  At least one major religion in the world today does not believe you have that right.  Another major religion resigns people to different positions in life from which you cannot change.

Some say these unalienable rights are simply natural rights.  They don’t require a God.  But that is then simply an opinion, no better than another’s. 

Either man is the highest power on earth or God is.  But which God?

 

It is the God of the Bible that gave unalienable rights to human beings.  And it was the Bible and Christianity that told the Founders that this was so.

Unalienable rights are things you can do without the government’s permission or interference.  Secular countries can only offer government-given rights, which are things that the government is obligated to provide for people, which generally comes at an enormous expense and compels people to do things for other people, which is the opposite of freedom.

Our country is at the crossroads, the tipping point.

We are losing the country that gave us freedom.  We are becoming a country where everything has to be controlled to ensure that the results meet the approval of those with the loud voices who are getting the attention of the media and who might someday run our country.

children at the border

Children being separated from their parents at the border has been a big topic in all the media outlets lately.  I think the media are doing a major disservice to their audiences, however, by not providing the larger context to the situation.

Since October, border crossings have more than doubled over the previous year.  In May alone, we had over 140,000 people cross into our country through our southern border.  That’s over 4,000 people a day.  Every day.

There is no room to house them all, there is no money to make nice housing for them, and there isn’t time to do it if they could.  Tomorrow they have another 3 – 4 thousand people coming.

Ideally there would be family housing, but, again, there is neither the time nor the money to make this all happen. 

So people need to be housed in large rooms with a lot of people together.  In a situation like this, you probably wouldn’t want your children too close for too long with too many people you don’t know.  So it makes sense for their safety to house the children separately. 

Anyone entering our country should be checked medically for communicable diseases and vaccinations and background checked for possible criminal links before they are allowed to fully enter our country.  This is why the areas that these people are staying in are secured. 

None of this is ideal, but you do the best you can with what you’ve got.

Why do we want to count citizens of another country in our census?

Why do we want to count citizens of another country in our census?  We counted slaves before they became citizens and could vote, because they had no other political allegiances.  If we are going to base our Congressional representation and electoral counts on people who are citizens of another country, I would call that a foreign influence on our elections and government.

a plan to end gerrymandering - a letter to somebody with more influence than me

I am glad that you are fighting to end gerrymandering.  It has been an issue for me for years.  Finally, I hear others talking about it as well.

To be honest, I am not hopeful for the measures I have seen to replace it.

For one reason, they all talk about competitive districts.  I live in Wilmette.  Say, for example, Wilmette was the size of a standard Congressional District, and it was heavily Republican.  Should Wilmette be broken up and added to other districts to make the races more competitive? 

Chicago is highly Democratic.  Should it be divided up like spokes on a wheel to link each part of Chicago with a Republican-leaning suburb? 

The answer in both cases is no.

Districts should not be drawn up with any political end in sight.  If an area is highly one way or the other, it should be left alone.  It’s not the lack of competition that is the problem; it’s when districts are drawn to remove the competition. 

A second reason, and the courts have agreed on this, is that they all talk about creating minority districts.  Districts must be contrived for the sake of certain minorities so that that minority has enough of a majority in that district to most likely elect a minority to office. 

What’s wrong with that?  First of all, that is one of the complaints about gerrymandering.  Put as many of a certain constituent into as few districts as possible.  You may concede a few seats, but you have diminished their overall influence in the legislature.  Is it better to have, say, one black in the legislature than having blacks as a minority in a number of districts, so that there are a lot of representatives who have to consider blacks in their policy decisions?

And which demographics is so favored to have a district carved out just for them?  Is it only on racial lines? And which races or ethnicities?  Just blacks?  Hispanics?  What about Muslims?  Orientals?  (I use the word orientals, though it is out of favor today, to distinguish Far Eastern Asians from, say, Indians, Iranians, or Pakistanis.)  Heck, what about Polish, or Jews?  What about Catholics or Protestants?  You don’t think they all have some unique interests that deserve special attention?

With these two factors, we will end up with electoral districts as misshapen and contorted as any gerrymandered district is now.  Is it fair because both parties agreed to it?  A compromise? 

Any demographic can be used to draw a map that favors or disfavors any party or policy.  If Hispanics favor Democrats, then a Hispanic district becomes a Democratic district. 

I submit that the only way to draw a district is to admit no demographic information to the committee but where somebody lives.  Follow natural border lines as much as possible, city, county boundaries, major divides, like large rivers, lakes, mountains, highways, etc.

Somebody will always complain about the results, but they will be able to look at a map and see that nobody was trying to screw anybody over.  All the districts will be as normally shaped as towns on a map.

Thank you.  I wish you well.  Keep up the good fight.

Larry Craig

Is the Electoral College still needed?

A reader makes the case to replace the electoral college, whose “need has vanished” and whose use brings damaging angst (July 5).

Her case is less convincing when it is apparent when her motive seems to be driven by her contempt for President Trump.  Bush’s victory in 2000 played a part here, but I have no doubt she would have written the same letter if that outcome had been different.

I think the reader underestimates the knowledge and intellect of the average person at the time of our founding and vastly overestimates the political acumen of people today.  Having access to the internet is no guarantor of an understanding of wise political policy for a nation.

The only alternative to the electoral college is a popular vote, and the Founders were wary of that for anything.  The clearest evidence of that is the existence of the Senate.  If the selection of the President should be left to a majority vote of the people, then why not all of our laws?  We would then only need one house of Congress, the House of Representatives.  We certainly would not need or want a Senate where a state as small as Rhode Island has as much political impact as states like Texas and California. 

They knew masses of people can be easily swayed, and they wanted to slow down the process of political decision-making. 

But to quote the source she used to begin her letter, “It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice.”  The Federalist Papers, no. 68

The Founders’ concerns were not that most people didn’t live in cities or that they didn’t have political parties to give them the right information.  In fact, they also didn’t think of this position as one for which people would campaign, especially one where people would need enormous amounts of money that people would donate to their cause.  They just felt this task was simply too great for the average person.  In time this was circumvented by states having the people vote for electors who had already committed themselves to a particular candidate. 

The Founders were greatly concerned that larger states would have an unduly effect on the nation’s policies, because they had so many more people.  In the last election, Trump’s support was widespread, while Clinton’s was confined to the coastlines and a few spots in-between, like Chicago. 

So if you were to travel the country,  you would find more places that favored Trump than Clinton, and that was how it was designed to be.

freedom and freedoms

The Tribune printed a major article from somebody who is an emeritus English professor, so we know he is very smart (The freedoms we must not take for granted, July 4). 

Yet there are so many things in his article that I would say are wrong, I don’t know where to begin. 

So let me take a step back and show the bigger picture.

Our country was founded on the belief in unalienable rights given to us by God.  The courts consider all talk of God as religious and unfit for public discussion, instruction, or knowledge.  The Founders called that a fact. 

This absence of the God factor has also removed the concept of unalienable out of our vocabulary as well.  So now all our rights are government given rights.  Unalienable rights are things you can do without government permission, interference, or regulations.  This is what freedom means. 

Government rights are things that the government is now required to see that you have, and this generally comes at an enormous expense, as more and more things are becoming to be seen as rights.  Government rights also generally require people to do things for other people, which is one of the definitions of slavery.

THIS is what is jeopardizing our freedom.  We can argue the other points in his article, but this is the core issue that is dividing our country and changing the American idea.

more on the census

The Sun-Times printed a major article making the case that the census should count everybody and not just citizens (The census and slavery, July 2).  But then, that was never the issue.  The census was never about not counting people.  It just wanted to know how many citizens and non-citizens we have in this country. 

The writer insisted that citizens and non-citizens should be counted alike, such that the census should give us only the total number of ‘persons’ living here and not just the total number of citizens.

But then his case simply falls apart.

He notes the fact that slaves were counted in the census.  They neither voted nor were citizens.  But then, for that fact they were counted as less than full persons.  Is that because they were regarded as less than full persons?  No, it is because they neither voted or were citizens, and the number of persons counted determined the Congressional representation of the state.  To count them equally would give slave states more power in Congress than the free states thought they should, because the slaves had no voice in government.  The author contended that this gave the slave states more power.  No, it gave them less power.  They got fewer Representatives than they wanted. 

The article also noted that Indians were excluded from the census.  Why?  Because they were nations within a nation.  They were not under the jurisdiction of the United States.  They had no loyalty to the United States.  They did not even become citizens until 1924 under a special act of Congress.  Which, by the way, shows that the Fourteen Amendment does not give to every person born in our country automatic citizenship.  It was written for former slaves who had no ties to another nation. 

So the author’s point that non-citizens were counted in the original censuses is valid, but up to a point.  They were not counted as equal to citizens, and non-citizens who had at best divided loyalties were not counted at all.  People living in our country illegally would fall under one or both of these categories.

income inequality

Will somebody please explain to me why incomes should be equal?   Or maybe I should say less unequal? 

I admit I think Bryce Harper is vastly overpaid at $25 million a year, especially since the minimum wage for a professional baseball player is only $550,000 or so.  I think they are vastly overpaid as well. 

Economics is like that.  I can write a book that sells three copies and make nothing.  Someone else can write a book, working no harder than I did, and make millions. 

Is that fair?  Is that right?

If I lost my job, they could replace me in a few days and never miss me.  CEOs are like MLB superstars.  A good one can bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.  Everybody wants them, and the price goes up. 

The problem isn’t justice; it’s envy.

Should the census ask the citizenship question

I found the editorial cartoon (July 1) a little unsettling.  “It’s unamerican to count how many Americans are in America.”

Does citizenship mean nothing anymore?  Is an American simply anyone who lives here?  Without respect to any loyalties or commitments to our country? 

We don’t have a census just to see how many people live here, like a kid may count his baseball cards to see how many he has. 

The census is used to determine how many Representatives in Congress a state will have, and consequently how many electors in the Presidential election. 

The Founders never would have imagined that we would have 30 million non-citizens living in our country or that they would have a voice in Congressional representation.  Why would I say that?  Because then there is not much point in having citizenship at all.