endless wars

On Veteran’s Day, we stop to think of those who have died serving their country in the military.  We ask the question: was it worth it?  Was the conflict worth the lives of those who gave it? 

Wars have changed in my lifetime.  Now we must fight kinder, gentler wars so that we don’t run the risk of being accused of war crimes.  If we had fought WW1 or WW2 under the new rules, we would have lost.  If both sides fought by the new rules, we would have had another endless war. 

War is hell.  I get that.  I missed my chance at war.  It would have been Viet Nam, but then that was one of those wars where we weren’t really trying to win it.  We wanted somebody else to win it, and we would help them.  And that is one of the reasons we get endless wars.   A short war requires going all out.  You have to defeat the enemy decisively, so that they surrender unconditionally.  Otherwise, you’re going to end up fighting the war all over again in a few years. 

This is what is happening in the Middle East.  Israel and its neighbors have been at war for 70 years.  Two of them experienced a major defeat, and they  signed peace treaties with Israel.  The others in most cases simply endured imposed cease fires, and the war just keeps going on and on.  They won’t end until one side defeats the other, so that they surrender.  Then the war ends.

Germany and Japan suffered tremendous losses in World War 2.  Frankly, that was the only way that war would have ended.  And it did.  And now we are friends and allies with both nations.  As horrible as war is, it almost seems necessary at times to resolve the issues. 

Now a new thing has emerged, yet it is actually an old thing.  Islam has been at war with itself and the non-Muslim world for 1500 years.  That’s not going to end soon or ever.  And this is a different kind of war.  The soldiers don’t wear uniforms and in many  cases do not have defined borders to their realms.   And they probably won’t surrender as easily as Germany and Japan did. 

If you don’t want an endless war if you were involved with one of these, you will need to use incredible power but you will need to warn everybody else to get as far away from the enemy as possible, because their safety cannot be guaranteed.

This is the simplest reason why wars take so long today.  We are trying so hard to protect people who not directly our enemy that we are not able to hurt our enemy hard enough that they would want to quit.  You quit; they win.  You keep fighting, and you have an endless war.

some advice for the Democratic Party and those candidates who are thinking about dropping out

The Democratic Party is in the process of choosing its next Presidential candidate.  Now we are hearing that one candidate has dropped out and another is close to dropping out, and nobody has even cast a vote yet.

But you may say, they are low in the polls and don’t have enough money to continue.  Nonsense.

The problem is that our current political system is not suitable for too many candidates at one time.  In a poll and even in the primaries, you must choose only one candidate.  Do you choose your favorite or the one you think will have the best chance of winning? 

Right now you have about 20 candidates running, and only one will win the nomination.  So you have people voting for 19 people who will not win.  You need to know who they would vote for if their candidate was out of the race.  That’s the only way you will know who the best candidate is. 

In the primaries, every voter should be able to vote for, say, up to 5 people.  You could rank them, but it probably isn’t necessary here.  That would give you a much better idea who the best candidate would be, who the majority of the voters really want.

Beto and Harris should not give up now.  As long as they can stay in the debates, they will have a chance.  But they should be fighting now to change the way votes are cast in the primaries.  The current way is not only not fair, but it won’t give them the best candidate.

religion and politics

I can sympathize with Steve Chapman’s concerns (Barr to nonbelievers: go to hell, October 17), but I think he misrepresents the role of Christianity in the founding and nature of our country.

Our country was founded on 5 beliefs as noted in the Declaration of Independence.  The second belief is that God gave unalienable rights to human beings.  An atheist cannot argue for unalienable rights, because there is no higher authority than human beings.  Same for a secularist or an agnostic.

 

And then too, not all gods recognize unalienable rights.  Allah does not, neither does Krishna.  The most fundamental human right is to live according to your conscience.  Islam does not recognize that.  You are not free to leave Islam for another religion.  Those unalienable rights include the pursuit of happiness.  Hinduism does not recognize that.  Everybody is a permanent member of a caste, a station in life from which there is no exit.

It was the God of the Bible who was the creator referred to in the Declaration.  And how did the Founders know that God gave unalienable rights to human beings?  From the Bible and Christianity.  The courts would call a religious opinion.  The Founders called it a fact.  Without Christianity, you don’t have unalienable rights, and without unalienable rights, you don’t have the United States of America.

The court called supreme was wrong to say that our government cannot favor one religion over another.  The very essence of our country depends on it.  What the Founders expressed was that our country cannot favor one Christian denomination over another.  That is what was meant by establishing religion in the First Amendment, like in England where the Anglican Church is the Church of England.

In the early years of our nation, people who didn’t believe in God were routinely rejected from juries and political office.  They felt that any person who did not believe in a future judgement before God could not be trusted to tell the truth. 

slave owners

I would like to take issue with the Sun-Times Fact Check (Fact-check: They signed Declaration of Independence – but nearly three-quarters also owned slaves, September 11).

It’s not just a matter of finding facts but understanding them.

For example, the article states that “in 1776, slavery was legal in all 13 of the new states.”  It fails to note that the United States was still a colony of Great Britain in 1776, and King George was responsible for most of their laws.  The colonies then spent the next 7 years at war, so slavery was not the first thing on their minds.  However, the northern states did begin enacting laws soon after such that by 1804, all of them had either abolished it or were in the process of doing so. 

The new Constitution wasn’t ratified until 1788.  The very next year, Congress had to deal with the question of new states coming into the Union.  They passed the Northwest Ordinance, which said that any new states would be free states, i.e. no slavery would be permitted.

But imagine that you lived at that time and were opposed to slavery, what would you do?  

You knew that any person who was put on the auction block would be bought as a slave.  You knew that many (most?) of them were treated harshly.  You knew also that if you bought a slave and then set them free, their future could be very uncertain.  You could pay their way back to Africa, but the same people who enslaved them the first time could maybe do it again.

So what do you do?

If I were wealthy and lived back then, I think I would secure as many people as I could.  Yes, they would work for me.  Everybody works.  But they would be treated kindly, housed, fed, and educated.  In the absence of legal freedom, they would have security and care.  Of course, in future generations, I would be branded a slave owner. 

But what would you do?

Solving Chicago’s Budget Crisis

I am a long-time Tribune reader and subscriber.  I still don’t understand the thinking of the people who run this paper. 

Today you run a major article on how to solve the Chicago budget crisis.  (September 9, “Forget property taxes. Forget Springfield.  Here is the one way to solve Chicago’s budget crisis.”   Here is the one way to solve Chicago’s budget crisis”).  I’ll accept your printing of this article as your endorsement of the writer’s view.  And, of course, the only possible answer is another tax.

The article notes right away that “the pension benefits of public employees are constitutionally guaranteed.”  But so is a flat tax for the residents of the state, but the politicians don’t see a problem with changing the Constitution on that.  A raise in a flat tax affects everybody, while a graduated tax only affects a portion of taxpayers at a time, so it’s easier to pass. 

Public pensions are bankrupting the state of Illinois and most of the communities in the state.  It is easily the number one problem facing Illinois today, and the only solution is to change the State Constitution. 

Yet both Chicago newspapers are silent on this issue.  Why aren’t you leading the way in saving our state?  You’re supposed to be the defenders of the people, the watchdogs, the ones who hold our leaders accountable.  You’ve watched this crisis develop for generations, and you’ve done nothing. 

Shame on you!  You should have weekly articles on this demanding that the necessary changes to the Constitution be put on the ballot for 2020.

Protecting our kids from smoking

The Sun-Times ran an editorial about protecting our kids (September 9, “For kids’ sake, Illinois should ban flavored e-cigarettes”).  I have several.  They are adults now, but they are still my kids.

But the kids in this editorial are “teens,” “young people”, and “under 21.” Adults don’t need this protection, because it is their right to smoke and they should know the risks.

But these same people who we need to protect, because they don’t have the maturity, knowledge, or wisdom to make responsible decisions for themselves are able to vote for people who will be making decisions for the people of our entire country. 

How can people who can’t make good choices for themselves be able to make good choices for the rest of the country?

The Illinois State Constitution

The Illinois State Constitution contains the following lines:

1)      Membership in any pension or retirement system of the State, any unit of local government or school district, or any agency or instrumentality thereof, shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired.

2)      A tax on or measured by income shall be at a non-graduated rate.

My question is: why is one considered a promise that cannot be altered and the other not?  State pensions are bankrupting the state, Chicago, and who knows how many other communities, but politicians refuse to address this, because they call it a promise. 

Does a promise mean that nobody can say, “Hey, we made a mistake”?  Or, circumstances have changed.  We are now broke.  We cannot afford this.  I’m sorry.

But the same wording is used to say that an income tax shall be at a non-graduated rate. 

Isn’t that a promise too? 

But the state wants to change one but not the other.  I’m sorry, but that is wrong.

The Constitution also says that:

3)       The State has the primary responsibility for financing the system of public education.

Two thirds of public education funding is done at the local level through property taxes.  The state is clearly acting in defiance to the state Constitution.  Who holds the state accountable for this?  The state could easily raise the income tax to pay for schools and reduce property taxes all across the state.  That would have no problem passing, because it would reduce housing costs substantially.

4)      Appropriations for a fiscal year shall not exceed funds estimated by the General Assembly to be available during that year.

Our state routinely spends far more than it takes in in revenue.  Nobody is surprised by this.  They pass the budgets knowing full well that they will have to borrow money to pay for everything. 

Does nobody pay attention to the State Constitution?

5)      The State militia consists of all able-bodied persons residing in the State except those exempted by law.

Our country fought its first war against its own government.  Many of the Founders were concerned that this new national government might at some point try to limit or infringe on the people’s unalienable rights.  In the Federalist Papers which were written to encourage the passage of the new Constitution, they talk about states being able to resist the power of this national government through their militias. 

A semi-automatic gun is modern engineering applied to guns, like an automatic transmission on a car.  Gun violence is a lot more than a gun problem, which is beyond the scope of this letter.  To prohibit semi-automatic guns is essentially rejecting the whole concept of a militia. 

My last question is: who can and will confront the state and hold it accountable for not following the Constitution it is based on?