Vouchers for religious schools

A letter to the Tribune demands a response.  (Vouchers for religious schools, December 12)  I’m guessing the Tribune was sympathetic in that it printed the letter.

The letter touches on a very common issue, and one that is commonly misunderstood.

I pay thousands of dollars a year in property taxes.  Two-thirds of that goes for public schools.

When our kids were young, we wanted to send our kids to a private school, a religious one, but we couldn’t afford it.

Why should I have to pay twice for my kids’ education if I wanted to send them to a non-public school?

If the state were to give money to a religious school, that is a subsidy.  If the state were to give us a voucher to be used for any school, that is not a subsidy.  Unless, of course, I didn’t pay any property taxes.  But even renters pay them indirectly. 

Education is important for every person in our society.  Public education is one option but not the only one.  To demand that parents pay for both is not only not fair, it is tyrannical.  The state is not technically demanding that every child attend its schools, but it is making it exceedingly difficult for parents not to send them there.  That is not right.

An Open Letter to the American People

Congress just passed a bill that allows our government to continue spending money at its current rate for another two months. 

This is considered by most as being a good thing, because then the government won’t shut down, because it has run out of money.  Actually, it wouldn’t run out of money.  More like you left you wallet at home while at the store.  You have the money; you just can’t access it right that minute. 

They say that we would be defaulting on our debt if we didn’t raise the debt ceiling.

No.  We would be defaulting on our debt if we were going out of business.

But we are not. 

What they might not mention is that it’s not that there isn’t enough money to be had.  This is money that they want to borrow.

The government is in debt.  They are not interested in paying off the debt.  They are only interested in paying interest on that debt.

They don’t see a problem with this. 

Does anybody see a problem with this?

You wouldn’t do this. 

You wouldn’t advise anybody to do this.

Only very foolish people would do this, just keep going deeper and deeper into debt without any intention of paying off the debt.  Those people and our federal government.  You can add some state governments to that as well.

This means that an ever-increasing amount of any money they get will be used for interest payments, or, you could say, just totally wasted money.  Billions and billions of dollars every year. 

The Federal Reserve Bank, which for some unknown reason, has been given responsibility for the health of our economy, in their extraordinary wisdom, has been keeping interests rates as low as possible for years now. 

They say this is to stimulate the economy. It is also to hide the magnitude of the government debt as well as to lower the interest payments.

When I was a kid, it was common for people to retire and live off the interest on their savings accounts.  But since the government has gone off on its spend-as-much-money-as-possible agenda, the Fed has no interest in returning to normal interest rates.  Then we would be spending a trillion dollars a year just on interest.  Again, totally wasted money.

So the government has totally ruined a significant retirement option for millions of our people.

Why?

The short answer would be that they want(ed) to use the money for short-term political gain.  The more money they spend, which is often just given to people in some way, the more public favor they believe they will receive.  They can create new headlines to distract people from the longterm losses to our people.

I believe it is time to end this.  Long past time, and we need to do this now.

No more.

You may ask how we can do this.  What action can I take right now to change this?

And I would have to say I don’t know.

You can write the politicians, but I don’t even know if they will see the letters.  You can write the newspapers, but they won’t print the letters.

The place to start is public awareness.  Talk about this.  Every time you get in a political discussion.  Or start a political discussion with this issue.

If you meet candidates, tell them what you think.  Don’t just ask them what they think.  Tell them what you think and expect. 

The biggest problems in government right now are not specific bills but the culture.

Writing massive bills that are too big to read and discuss, where you have to vote for ten things you don’t like to get five things you do.  Drawing Congressional districts that almost ensure a particular party’s success.  Spending money that only increases the size of the federal government and the dependency of the American people on the government.

Oh, and spending money the government doesn’t have, so that it has to borrow money for pay for these things.  And that includes letting the Federal Reserve create money, but that’s another story.

All these things have gone on for too long with nobody apparently trying to stop it.  Oh, a few people have tried.  Rand Paul is one.  But he’s not trying hard enough, or the system is too entrenched for him to make any headway.  If you’re not in the majority party in the Senate, or the House for that matter, the leaders of those chambers won’t give you much attention.

So it’s up to us.  The people.  I’m sorry I can’t give you more things to do with a greater chance of success.  Maybe somebody reading this can do that.  I hope so.

 

 

The Court Called Supreme and Abortion

There is a case before the Supreme Court now that affects all of us.  On the surface, the case is only about abortion, but it deals with five important issues that concern all of us. 

The first issue is the question of what a Constitutional right is. 

There is talk that this case might overturn a previous Court ruling that not only made abortion the law of the land but also engendered the belief that abortion is a Constitutional right. 

At the time when our Constitution was written, the only rights anyone was talking about were unalienable rights, those spoken of in the Declaration of Independence, rights that precede and supersede government and that government cannot restrict or take away.  These, the Founders said, were given to human beings by God.

The Founders debated whether to include some of these unalienable rights in the Constitution itself.  They were concerned that people might think that these rights came from the government rather than from God.

They finally decided to add them as amendments to our Constitution, and the first ten became known as the Bill of Rights. 

So a Constitutional right would be an unalienable right, one that government cannot restrict or take away. 

Abortion is now legal, but is it a right, a Constitutional one at that?

This is the second issue: how do we know a right is a Constitutional one?

A Constitutional right would have to be an unalienable right, given by God. 

The thinking of the Court was that abortion was a part of some privacy concerns of the Fourth Amendment.  That would be limiting government intrusion into a person’s life.  Is a limitation or ban on abortion an intrusion into a person’s life?  Or are they prohibitions on wrongful activity?

If I were making bombs in my basement, do I have a right to privacy?  If I were aborting a baby, would I still have that right to privacy? 

One of the foundational rights of our country is the right to life.  When does a baby get that right?  When we decide?  When her mother decides?  Then how is that an unalienable right, if other people can decide when or if a person gets it?

That’s the basic issue of abortion.  Not the mother’s rights but the baby’s.

So then the question: how do we decide if an issue, a right, is a Constitutional right? 

I think we should be very careful before we assert that some new right is a Constitutional right.

I frankly doubt that, after 200-some years, anyone is going to discover a new right today that everybody would agree that this right comes from God.  And that’s what a Constitutional right is.

Should we decide these questions by taking opinion polls?  Are unalienable rights unalienable because a majority of nine people on a court say so?  It may not even be a unanimous decision.  Shouldn’t an unalienable right at least have some consensus in a country?  If half the country is opposed to something, can we really say that this right is unalienable, such that it can never be changed. 

Saying that these rights come from God suggests to me that the Founders were thinking of some external point of reference, like the Bible, because other religions don’t all agree with our understanding of unalienable rights, e.g. the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  You can’t really talk about God in a generic sense.  It would have to relate to a religion that the people were familiar with.  A religion is a common understanding of God.

Thirdly, the fact that something is legal doesn’t mean that it is right.

Lying is illegal if you do it in court while under oath, but in everyday life, there is no law against it.  Does that mean it’s alright to lie, if you haven’t taken an oath beforehand that you won’t?  I would say no.  I’m guessing some would disagree, saying it depends on the circumstances.

But we could probably agree that there are things that are right and things that are wrong.  But our laws don’t forbid everything that is wrong, and in some cases may specifically allow things we believe to be wrong.

So whether something is right or wrong is not determined by laws.  Laws only determine if certain behavior requires a public response to inhibit it, not whether something is intrinsically bad. 

Fourth, something isn’t a right, just because loud voices insist that it is. 

People seem prone to declaring rights that everyone is supposed to accept as inviolable ones.  Governments can endow the people with rights, and they can revoke them as well.  And asserting that something is a right does not make it one, and you should not expect that everyone is going to agree with you.    You can expect to be challenged.

Where does abortion fit here?

The public is divided.

And the last issue isn’t about rights but about equal protection.

The Fourteen Amendment to our Constitution guarantees equal protection under the law. 

Does that mean that different abortion laws in different states constitute unequal protection under the law?

By that thinking, states shouldn’t make laws.  Only the federal government should, so every state has the same laws.

No, equal protection under the law means that the law will apply equally to all those affected by the law.  Because you can drive 75 in Montana does not mean that you can drive 75 in Illinois.  And it does not mean that Illinois must change its law to match Montana’s.  But it does mean that in each state, the penalty for breaking the law will, or should, apply to everyone equally.

Soon the Supreme Court will make a ruling on a recent abortion law. 

Just remember. 

The law and the ruling are about a lot more than just abo

finding answers to gun violence

Our local newspaper keeps printing editorials crying out for solutions to the problem of gun violence. 

I think the thing that we seem to be forgetting here is that the key word in gun violence is violence and not gun.

We had a man just a few days ago who killed 8 people with his car.

We are making a big mistake if we think that these events are not related, that a man mowing down people with his car is a different problem than people mowing down people with a gun.

The problem is not the abundance of cars, I mean, guns.  The problem is that we have people who want to hurt and kill other people, and they have no moral or mental constraints that prevent them from doing so.  Sure, if you take away all the guns, you will cut down on gun violence.   Though we laws against certain drugs, yet there seems to be little problem for people who want them to get them.  I suspect that would be the same for guns. 

You will probably see more car violence.  And in some cultures, the preferred method of killing people is bombs. 

Removing all the guns may reduce the number of total murders, but is that a win?  You may think so, but if you don’t deal with people’s hearts, turning anger and hatred into peace and love, then you are setting your sights too low.

And this is the real problem.

You can’t give peace to angry hearts and turn hatred into love without God. 

There.  I did it.  I said the G-word right out here in public. 

So-called secular countries are a new thing in human history.  Countries have always acknowledged God or a god in their lives.  We started off with the communist countries that denied the very existence of God.  Now the West joined in with secularism, that, while not necessarily denying God’s existence, it affirms that such belief is a private matter and not relevant to public life and policy-making.

But when we were not afraid to acknowledge God publicly in our country, that acknowledgement gave people pause in that they knew they were accountable to a Higher Power, that people were created in God’s image and thus worthy of respect, and there were God-given rules for life: the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule.

pornography in public schools

I agree with the Sun-Times editorial that censoring books is never a good idea (Censoring books . . . , November 19).

But the current issue is not about censorship.  It’s about exposing minors to pornographic literature.  Sure, they can find it on the internet if they want, but schools exist to teach kids about life, how to live it and how to get along in it.  A person goes to school to learn good things that will help them.  Not all things are helpful here.  School libraries have to choose which books to carry.  They cannot carry everything. 

A book about a person’s self-discovery can be helpful.  If the book has pornographic content, then what help it gives is mixed.  Like two steps forward, two steps backward.  Find another one that doesn’t have the pornography.  There are thousands of other books that are helpful without crossing those lines.

After all, we have laws, and have had them for a long time, that minors should not have ready access to pornography.  Certainly schools should not be the place for a person to access it.  We can do better.  We need to. 

We need to consider whether books build a person up, teach them good things, provide them with essential knowledge and experiences that they will need in life.  They should not have to read pornography to get that.  They can find that on their own if they want it, but not in a public school.

If a student is merely offended by something they read, that shouldn’t be a reason to remove the book.  If the book exists merely to offend people, then again, I think we can and should do better.

the newest big government spending bill

I’m not a fan of the new trillion-dollar infrastructure bill.  I try to see what’s in it, and I find maybe a half trillion dollars for roads, bridges, water, airports, etc.  But what’s the other half trillion dollars for?

Whenever the government wants to spend money for your good, if you do the math, the numbers never match up. 

They tell you about all the good things the bill will do, but the price tag is always well above what is needed to do those good things.  Go try to find where the money goes.  You’ll probably need a FOIA request and a lot of patience.  Don’t be surprised if you never get your answer.

sports and stereotypes

So what’s the stereotype with a sport team’s name?  (When we talked about Native American stereotypes, November 16)

The Chicago Blackhawks have a portrait of an Indian chief.  Ever been to a rodeo on an Indian reservation?  They wear their headdresses proudly.  What’s the negative stereotype here? 

We forget that those teams that don’t have mascots of a particular minority group have names like Boilermakers, Packers, Patriots, Steelers.  I was never a packer, but I worked in the meat business all my life.  They called us butchers long after we actually butchered anything.  But I can identify as a packer.

Does anybody think that packers and boilermakers and steelers and patriots are offended by having a sports team include them in their name?

I think people are spending too much time thinking of ways they are and should feel offended.  I think they are missing out on so much of life.  Nobody is disparaging you here.  Nobody is thinking less of you.  Nobody is pigeonholing anybody, because they mention or picture one aspect of their lives. 

There is a football team called the Vikings.  I’m sure everybody pictures a certain kind of boat and a certain kind of head gear or dress.  Nobody thinks about the descendants of Vikings or less of them in any way. 

true property tax reform

Property tax reform generally does not take into consideration the biggest problem with property taxes.  (When will City Hall turn property tax hikes into property tax reform?, November 3)

Property taxes do not take into account a person’s ability to pay for them. 

I didn’t give much thought to property taxes until one year I was out of work for much of it.  And then came my property tax bill.  I said there is something wrong here. 

The government needs to move some of the things in the property tax bill to another source of revenue, like the income tax.  Since 2/3 of the property tax goes for public education, that would be my first choice. 

Now that would be real property tax reform.

the new and latest answer to gun violence

A part of me wanted to laugh out loud except that this is serious. (Pritzker gives his prescription for gun violence ‘public health crisis,’ November 2)

In typical modern American government practice, the answer to a problem is money.  Lots of money.  And a new government agency.  And lots of new government employees. 

Two hundred fifty million dollars.  Now that’s doing something.  Nobody can say that Pritzker didn’t do something or wasn’t serious about gun violence.

But gun violence is a moral problem.  And we no longer know what moral problems are.

At the root of gun violence is a complete disregard for the value of human life.  Uncontrolled anger, hatred, and disregard for the public good. 

These are all things that come from within a person.  The government can only provide external restraints and incentives.  But it won’t and can’t touch the human heart.  It can only distract people with activities and threats.  The threats aren’t working, so maybe by adding more activities we will keep people too busy to want to kill each other.

No doubt experts will point to other countries with less gun violence for the answers to our problems.  What they forget is that our country is based on freedom. 

That sounds dangerous to a lot of people.  It didn’t sound dangerous to our Founders, because they believe this freedom comes from God.  And people who believe in God learn about the value of human life and that God holds people accountable for their actions. 

So we in America are trying to live in freedom without the God who gave us freedom, and we are finding that it’s not working.  Rather than bringing God back into our national life, we want to gradually reduce our rights and our freedom and see how much or how little we will live with.

 

The Sad Truth about Freedom and Countries like the United States

I am writing this a few hours after I learned that Jon Gruden, a head coach of a professional football team, resigned his position after the New York Times dug through his past and found private emails from years ago where he spoke crudely and disparagingly about certain protected peoples in our society.

I was wondering if Gruden would now be allowed to get a job somewhere else, or would his remarks from years ago bar him from any meaningful employment in the future.  Would any apology be considered truly remorseful and acceptable, considering he’s only doing it after all this was made public, so, of course, he has to.  But did he really mean it?

But this article isn’t really about Gruden, but about freedom, and what are the risks that are inherent in that, and whether they are worth it.

It is a fact in life that not everybody will like everybody else.  And it can be for any of a myriad of reasons.  A lot of the time we don’t even know the reasons.  We don’t usually stop to think about it.  It can be their personality, their appearance, their eating habits, their general attitude, or, it can be something really important, like their race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

When our country was founded, it was based on inalienable rights, things you could do without the government’s permission, interference, or regulation.  Now, rights in our country are not focused on things you can do, but things you can’t do and things that we are to do for you. 

So before, the government was focused on things you can do, freedom.  Now it is focused on things you can’t do, unfreedom, and things that we do for you, meaning, that the government must now compel other people to do things for you, whether it is merely paying for it, as in taxes, how you run your business, and how you treat people.  I don’t mean here things like robbing, stealing, assaulting, or killing people.  I mean where we hurt people’s feelings.

When our country was founded, the Founders debated whether to include a list of inalienable rights to the Constitution.  They finally agreed to and did so through amendments to it.  They were concerned that people would think that these rights came from the government rather than from God.

None of these rights compelled anybody to do anything for anybody else.  A few compelled the government to do certain things.

The Declaration of Independence states that governments exist to secure these inalienable rights given to us by God.  Now government exists to see that everybody gets what their new rights are, things that the government, meaning everybody else, has to provide for them.

You now have rights to things.  And other people are compelled to give them to you.  Either things that cost money, payable through our taxes, or intangible things like not being offended.  Now we have speech monitors to make sure you say nothing inappropriate, as judged by the crowd, social media, and certain loud voices in our society that we are supposed to listen to.  Anything you have said or done privately at any time in your life can be made public and held against you in the court of public opinion.  And other brazen acts of offending people are enforced by the courts and the law. 

Changes in countries, especially those like ours where we make laws to govern us change slowly.  We see a problem, and we make a law to prevent that from happening again.  And over time, like planting trees, we have changed the entire landscape of our nation.

I agree that people should be nice to each other.  I don’t think that this is something that must be compelled by the government or public pressure, such that people lose their jobs over it.  People may act more cautiously, but they still won’t like you, and we shouldn’t compel them to act like they do.

Sure, the world is a better place where people are kind to each other, care for each other, and respect each other.  The problem is that these are not things that any law will produce.  Forbidding people to say disparaging things to or about other people can limit the disparaging things that people say to or about other people, but it also limits a lot of other things people will want to say as well.

When we have society or the government policing people’s speech, such that their jobs, livelihoods, and reputations are at stake and that people’s entire past can be trolled looking for any possible offense against the written and unwritten laws of social decorum, then we are allowing a tyranny as stifling as any dictatorship.

Yes, I know that we are not allowed to shout ‘Fire’ in a crowded theatre if there is no fire.  But that extreme example is now used to justify limits all across the spectrum.  We are no longer focusing on freedoms but limitations.  We have turned the whole system on its head. 

The Founders knew that with freedom comes responsibility.  If the people did not have a moral code to willingly want to do what is right and fair and kind, they would have needed a large government to closely monitor the people.  They believed a moral education was imperative, so they promoted the use of the Bible in all their schools to teach love for other people and a high moral code. 

Our modern emphasis on rights as things that the government must provide for people and things that are intangible like words and feelings is contrary to the entire spirit and intent of our nation’s founding. 

How can I be so sure?

Since our government assumed responsibility for taking care of everybody, they have found there isn’t enough money in the country to do all that.  They are driving the country deeper and deeper into debt, merely paying the interest on the debt yet continually borrowing more. 

I submit that the United States is the freest country in the world, and part of that freedom is the freedom to say wrong things, inappropriate things, bad things even, as long as you don’t do bad things to other people, like the aforementioned robbing, stealing, killing, etc. 

When we put our focus on what people say more than on what they do, we are making a petty tyrant dictatorship such that people become afraid to say anything important anymore or saying what they really think about things. 

And that is not how you want to run a country.  And that’s certainly not the United States of America.

 

Thoughts on Columbus Day

Now that Columbus Day is over, maybe the discussion and debates over its merits and appropriateness will subside for another year.

I think if Columbus Day is more about celebrating Italian Heritage than Columbus, maybe they should use Joe DiMaggio as their face rather than Columbus.  He’s far more popular and comes with less baggage.

I do think that those who object to Christopher Columbus miss the whole point of it.  It all comes down to whether you think the entire Western Hemisphere would have been better off if it had been left alone rather than settled by Europeans and if the world would have been better off as well.

Two separate questions.

As for the first, when Columbus sailed from Europe to the New World seeking knowledge and new trading routes, he didn’t pass any ships from the Americas traveling east seeking knowledge and new trading routes.  In fact, when he arrived, he didn’t find any merchant ships, harbors, or navies.

He found no major cities, roads, or infrastructure.  Correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t think he found so much as a written language or native literature.  When Columbus came to the New World, Europe had already had major universities for hundreds of years.  Libraries had been in existence in the Old World for at least several thousands of years.  I don’t think he found any when he arrived here. 

I venture to say that if Europeans had not settled in the Americas, life in the Americas today would not have advanced beyond what it was before they arrived.  Why would we think it would have?  What would have sparked a change?

You can decide if the peoples who lived here before Columbus benefitted by the arrival of Europeans or not.

This is not to say that great evils were not committed by Europeans in their dealing with indigenous populations.  And vice versa.  And among the indigenous peoples themselves.  It is called the human condition.  Europeans did not invent scalping, and scalping was not an Indian invention in response to European hostilities.  And it is common knowledge that the various Indian tribes did not live here in perfect harmony with each other.  They often warred with and enslaved other tribes.

The second question is whether the world benefitted by the arrival of Europeans in the New World.  Simply put, there would have been no United States of America if Europeans did not have a New World to move to.  Europe and everywhere else was ruled by kings, whatever name you might call them.  Emperors.  There was no ‘of the people, by the people, for the people.’  It’s not a stretch to say that freedom was born in America. 

If Columbus didn’t ‘discover’ America, somebody else would have.  It’s not an accident of history that many of those who came to America came to escape persecution.  They came wanting freedom.  Yes, others came for economic opportunity, but the United States was founded more by those who wanted freedom than those who just wanted economic opportunity.

But jump forward to modern times to get the bigger picture.

The United States, despite all the criticism about a racist founding, historical systemic racism, and inherent racism today, is still the hope of millions of people who move here every year seeking a better life.

And if it has not been for the United States, the world today would be run by either fascists, Nazis, or communists.  Or all three.  There would be no free nations as we know them.  Blacks would still be living primarily in Africa.  You can ask them yourself where they would rather be living.

Columbus Day this year has been met by protests and marches calling for Indigenous Peoples Day.  Particularly as a replacement for Columbus Day. 

I believe this movement is more a movement to erase the memory of Christopher Columbus than a promotion of anything that will benefit indigenous people anywhere.

We in the United States take our history and our freedoms for granted.  And with that freedom came an incredible standard of living, even when we have people today trying very hard to ruin it.  And we take that standard of living for granted as well. 

We are indeed blessed to live in the country we do.  And if it wasn’t for Christopher Columbus and those who would have followed if he hadn’t first ventured out, we wouldn’t know what freedom is.  We do well to remember and honor those who risked all to sail to unknown places not knowing what they would find.

the real source of the 'gun problem'

A Tribune letter writer laments that guns “are just too available in the U.S.”  (National gun problem, October 6) 

I’m guessing the writer doesn’t know that we didn’t always have background checks for guns (1998) or FOID cards for gun ownership (1968).  Buying a gun used to be a lot easier than it is today.

It’s not guns that are the problem.  It’s people who want to hurt other people.  Guns are just a convenient way to do that.  You can do it from a distance, and it’s quick.

Sure, the easy availability of guns can help people who want to hurt other people do it more often. 

But the Founders thought it was important that the people are armed (Read the Federalist Papers.), such that it is a part of the Bill of Rights to our Constitution.  The bigger problem is that we have too many people in our country who want to hurt or kill other people. 

I submit that when our country basically declared itself a secular nation back in the 60s, and anything having to do with God was essentially removed from our public schools, the public square, and the public consciousness, our society lost the moral groundings that caused us to value each other. 

Plus, the push for diversity and the identity politics of the left have divided our country into all kinds of separate, competing groups, and we have lost everything that used to unite us.  We are no longer united states nor a united people.  Gun violence is just the symptom of a much deeper problem.

people protesting for DACA

I have sympathy for all the people seeking DACA protection.  It’s a touch situation to be in.

The Sun-Times spoke recently about their frustrations.  (‘There’s a lot of us,’ October 4)

I have two suggestions I would like to make for them:

1)      You do understand why it’s so hard to get legislation to help you, right?  Immigration used to be a process where people would apply and countries would choose who they would accept, based on what a person had to offer and what we needed as a country.

 

Now our immigration is based pretty much on whoever shows up, and nobody is counting or cares how many people come in.

 

A lot of people think that that is no way to run a country.

 

If you can get Congress to secure the southern border for good, your chances of getting DACA legislation will measurably increase.

2)      I think your chances of gaining public favor will increase a lot too if you protested with signs that were written in English.  Little things can make a big difference.

 

Two essays on religion and human rights

The Sun-Times editorial (Hold firm, Benet Academy, for LGBTQ rights, October 1) touches on some of the fundamental issues facing our country today. 

The issue at hand is whether human rights conflict with each other, how they might conflict, and how we might resolve the conflict. 

The free exercise of religion is one of the foundational rights of our country.  The Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution to clarify what some of these inalienable rights that God gave to human beings are, and the free exercise of religion was put in the very first Amendment. 

But our country has removed God from the public square, our public schools, and the public’s consciousness so that our society now finds higher values than religious ones such that religious ones are now trumped.

Many religions believe that homosexuality is not God’s plan for human beings, and they have a right to teach their adherents what they believe is that plan.  Gay people have a right to work.  Nobody’s arguing about that

These religions are not teaching that gay people don’t have a right to work, nor are they trying to prevent them from working.  They just believe that if they are to teach their values to their students, then everyone who is in a position of teaching should embrace those same values.  That’s not too much to ask or expect.  And society should respect that and not try to force everybody to conform to the latest enlightened thinking of the day.

_______________

I am not a Roman Catholic, but I feel I need to respond to a letter published in the Times regarding the Catholic Church.  (Benet Academy and 21^st-century Catholicism, October 4)

Christians are not impressed by the enlightened thinking of the day.  We do not believe that everybody who lived before the 21^st century was somehow morally and intellectually inferior than people living today. 

We believe that this wonderful, magnificent world that we live in was not the result of random and necessary chemical reactions.  We do not believe that life, all life, and the human body with all its intricate tiny parts can be explained without an intelligent Being being responsible for it.

We believe that God created human beings in His image, and loving His creation, He gave them the instructions on how to live this life.  The owner’s manual, if you will.

We don’t look at opinion polls or read newspapers to decide what to think and believe.  Forgive us if we don’t immediately respond to what the public or the media or the elites deem as the enlightened present state of human wisdom.  We are not impressed by the latest marches or parades or court rulings.  We see truth as eternal and not shaped by public opinions or polls.  We believe that the Creator knows best how the creation is supposed to function, and that He revealed this plan to human beings.  We do not believe that human beings are left to learn the laws of life by trial and error, but they are informed by the Inventor Himself.

We will never deny any person’s right to work, but please don’t tell us that we should ever hire a person who should be representing our values someone who doesn’t believe in them.  You wouldn’t ask that of any other organization. 

property taxes and the disabled

I really appreciated the Sun-Times article about 27,288 Cook County homeowners who pay no property taxes, because they are disabled.  (You pay more in property taxes . . . . , October 3)  I thought we weren’t supposed to call disabled people disabled.  Something about how that is offensive.

Yet it seems that that tag is quite fine when it allows them to save enormous amounts of money on their property taxes.

We just had the Paralympics where hundreds of disabled athletes ran, jumped, swam, and did all sorts of things better than full-bodied people to show everyone that they are not disabled after all.

But I’m not writing this to begrudge anyone not having to pay property taxes.  I’m happy for them.  The whole property tax system is broken, because it does not take into account a person’s ability to pay for them.

In this case, many people considered disabled here are well able to pay these taxes.  The article notes Senator Duckworth who is earning far more than most of us will ever earn.  And there are many older retired people who are not able to pay these taxes.  Yes, the county and state have some kinds of freezes and exemptions for seniors, but they are simply far outdated. 

The easiest solution is to shift more of these tax levies to the income tax, which is the only tax that considers a person’s ability to pay them.  School funding is the obvious first choice.

 

The Single Biggest Problem Facing America Today Part 3

We have been saying in these articles that if we don’t know what America is, what kind of country we were founded to be, we will gradually change into something else.  Most of us won’t even know it, but America will be gone, just as if we had been taken over by a foreign country. 

If I had to describe what America is in one sentence, it would be this: God has given unalienable rights to human beings. 

But what does this all mean? 

The first thing this means is that we are not a secular country.  I think different people would define what a secular country is differently, but the current version that our country has bought into is that it is unconstitutional for our country to favor one religion over another, or even to favor theism over atheism.  Our government must be neutral to all religions, meaning that each one has the same value as another, or essentially no value at all in how our country is run.  If you can’t invoke one, then you can’t invoke another.

Supposedly this is based on the First Amendment, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

What people are forgetting is that at that time in Europe, they had and still have today state churches.  The Queen of England is head of the Church of England.  A king or queen could personally not have any belief in God at all, and yet they would still be head of a Church by virtue of their position.  Our Founders did not want the government running the Church or the Church running the government. 

What people are forgetting is that a religion is a worldview.  Everybody has a worldview; nations have worldviews.  For all of world history, nations all had a religious worldview.  If not explicitly, then implicitly.  Now in the last century, with the rise of communism, we have countries whose worldview explicitly does not include a god.  There are people in our country who say that we were founded as a secular nation, and thus we are and should be one today.

The problem with that is that our nation was built on the belief that God did something that affects every human being.  Without that, we don’t have our country.

This secularism in our country today stems from several decisions of that court called supreme that removed prayer and Bible reading from our nation’s public schools. 

Except that prayer and Bible reading in public schools have been the practice even before our nation officially became a nation.  If this was indeed unconstitutional, then the Founders would have seen that this ended in their generation.  It would not have taken almost 200 years for the practice to be deemed forbidden by our Constitution.  They knew what they meant by the First Amendment better than we do and whether it had prohibited prayer and Bible reading in the public schools.  Why would the First Congress establish the office of chaplain in Congress and open their daily business with prayer if prayer was forbidden in the government and the public square?  

But the bigger question is: how can we teach our children and the millions of immigrants who come here every year the principles of our nation without mentioning God?

If we don’t recognize the role of God in the founding of our nation, then the very idea of unalienable rights will change.

Unalienable rights are rights that precede and supersede government.  Government did not give them, and government cannot take them away.

But if we don’t recognize these rights as having come from God, then they must have come from the government or the consensus of the people.  The government is now the highest authority.

Our Founders debated whether to include an enumerating of these unalienable rights in the Constitution, because they were afraid that people would come to think that these rights came from man and not God, hence they would be subject to change or restrictions.  They finally settled on including some of these rights as the first Ten Amendments to our Constitution.

But it needs to be asked what God we are talking about.  How would the Founders know that God gave these unalienable rights to human beings? 

The Declaration of Independence says that the Founders deemed these rights to be self-evident.  Some have concluded by this that the Founders were deists, that these rights were merely natural law.  The problem with that is that a deist god wouldn’t give rights to human beings, let alone inform them that it had. 

And I can’t imagine a nation would go to war with the world’s superpower over the musings of its philosophers. 

Generally, we speak of God as a belief.  The Founders spoke of God as a fact.  And without God, you don’t have unalienable rights, and without unalienable rights, you don’t have the United States of America

the other side of diversity

We have long been told that diversity is our strength, yet a lot of us sensed that there was something wrong here.

Diversity is a strength if we are all united in the same goals, the same dreams, the same visions. 

But we are not.

And when we are not, we divide into a myriad of racial, ethnic, and sociological groups, all competing for pieces of a pie that is limited by how much money our governments can print, borrow, and spend.

We are far from the days of John F. Kennedy, when he said: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

Today America is not about people being free to pursue their dreams but people waiting for and relying on the government to come in and give them a hand to pursue their dreams.  Or if not, at least enough help so they can live comfortable lives.  So each group looks for a set-aside, a program, a law, an interpretation of a law, a court ruling, an investment. 

And the government is not only required to work on behalf of its citizens but millions of citizens of other countries who live here as well. 

The American dream is no longer your freedom to pursue what you want but our promise to do as much for you as possible.

And these means that diversity represents competitors, not competitors that force us to work harder, run faster, and jump higher, to become the best we can be, but to work harder to get government assistance.  

And we are finding that there isn’t enough money in the world to meet every need and to solve every problem.

We no longer believe in the American Dream.  We had always believed that the Dream was possible given the basic freedoms our Constitution provides.  Now we believe those freedoms are not enough; everybody needs help from the government.  We need more rights, more money, and the government compelling other citizens to assist us in our endeavors.

Uniting a divided country

 A Tribune reader was bold enough to suggest the answer to America’s divisiveness.  (Eisenhower’s ‘Middle Way,’ September 19)

I submit that Eisenhower’s answer was suitable to Eisenhower’s time far more than ours.

If half of America was traveling northeast, so to speak, and the other half was traveling northwest, you could probably convince a lot of them that traveling north would give them much of what they both wanted, enough to live at peace with the other half.

Today’s political climate is more like half of America wants to travel east and the other half wants to travel west.  Any advance in one direction takes away from the goals of the other half. 

The reader suggests his middle way positions as the way to unite our country, but frankly those are some of the very issues that currently divide us.

I do think that most Americans have not clearly defined their political philosophies as those at both ends have, so I do believe there is hope for us.

I submit that the root problem is that we have been lax in teaching to our children and the millions of people who have moved to our country in recent generations the true foundations of our nation.

A few examples: Those of us who are older are quite familiar with stories of our ancestors who came here with nothing, started their own businesses, and achieved the American dream.  We were the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Now we view the government’s role as taking care of people, so there is no need for bravery any more.  It’s the government’s responsibility to eliminate poverty, and they can’t spend enough money to do that.

We used to teach our kids in our public schools to love their neighbors as ourselves, to do unto others as we would have others do unto us, and the Ten Commandments.  But that was deemed too religious for us, so now we just teach them to tolerate each other, which can mean no more than to ignore each other.  We have lost the ties that bind us together.

These are not differences that have an easy middle road.

I agree with the reader that there is hope for our nation, but we lack an Eisenhower who has the position that we might listen to him and the wisdom to show us the way.

The Single Biggest Problem Facing America Today Part 2

We said in part 1 that the single biggest problem facing America today is knowing what America is, what the defining principles are that make it what it is.  If we don’t know what they are, we will soon become a different country.  And we won’t even know it.  But that America which we used to call the greatest country in the history of the world will be no more.

We said that the United States is founded on 5 ideas, actually propositions, as given in the Declaration of Independence.

The first proposition is that all men are created equal.

Some people today, educated people even, assert that the Declaration is sexist, because it says that all MEN are created equal.  What about women?

Throughout the history of the English language, the word ‘man’ has always had two meanings: man as distinct from woman, and man as distinct from animals.  Everybody spoke of mankind, and nobody thought it only spoke of men.  But recently, people started complaining that this use of the word is sexist, because they felt women were intentionally excluded, or unintentionally because they were so demeaned in men’s eyes.  I don’t think anybody who thinks this will accept any explanation I can offer to the contrary, so I won’t even make any more.

The Declaration talks about being CREATED equal.  That means, in the sight of the law and God, we are all on an even plane.  There is nothing inherently different between us such that one has more intrinsic worth or position than another.  One man cannot rule over another without their consent. 

We forget that at the time the Declaration was written, nations were ruled by kings.  Kings weren’t elected.  This rule was passed down through families, except for the occasional military coup.  But it was accepted that some people had a divine or inherent right to rule over other people.

But, no, the Founders said, we are all created equal.

We will no longer have rulers but representatives.

But, people will say, didn’t we have slavery?  Isn’t that one people ruling over another? 

Indeed it is.

Prior to the American Revolution, slavery was legal in all the colonies.  But that wasn’t the decision of the American people.  They were colonies, under British rule.  When the colonies became independent states, some states soon became free, and some remained slave states.  It took a Civil War and several Constitutional amendments to finally get rid of it.

But the Declaration of Independence declared the ideal which the nation as a whole finally lived up to.   But if the Declaration of Independence didn’t define our nation in this way, we might never have ended it.  It was colonists living under kingly rule who rebelled against that rule who clearly described the true condition of men.  I mean, humans.

But we haven’t been teaching this to our children and all our new immigrants, because this equality is from God, and some people have been led to believe that it is unconstitutional to talk about God in the public square, our public schools, and the government in general.

But without a grounding in our founding principles, the understanding of them changes.

We can’t say that people are created equal, so what’s left is equal, the idea that everybody is equal, and if things don’t look equal, it is the responsibility of the government to make them equal.

So if any particular group of people, and race is now the most commonly used definer, has, say, less than the average rate of homeownership, then that group is deemed not equal, and it is now the role of government to find a way to increase homeownership in that demographic group to equal that of others (meaning: whites).

The idea of equality morphed again, so that now the common word is equity.  The difference is that equity focuses on the need for government to take stronger action to make sure that ‘less equal’ groups become more equal to, well, white people.

Equity requires the government to help people it considers disadvantaged in some way, so that they do better in life, however the government determines its criteria. 

This is achieved in either of two ways:

One, the government funnels money either directly or indirectly to these selected people or groups.  The other is to compel its citizens to favor these people or groups in certain ways over other people or groups.

The question for us now is whether this view of equality and equity is compatible with what America is.  Is this consistent with the founding principle of all men, I mean people, are created equal.

And the answer is no.

How can I be so sure?

Economics.

Our country has been in existence for almost 250 years.  It was the early 60s when the court called supreme ruled that we cannot favor one religion over another, including apparently even just believing in God as well.  It was the mid-60s when government began assuming the responsibility to take care of everybody.  Before then, it was called charity, and it was all voluntary.

Since then, government spending has grown exponentially, and we have learned that there isn’t enough money in the world to do everything we now want government to do. 

For all of our nation’s history prior to that time, our government was able to live within its means, and government debt was considered irresponsible and immoral. 

But now, the list of peoples who need to be made more equal and all the ways that equality needs to be achieved have driven our nation into such debt that it has long given up the idea of paying that debt off.  And that is un-American.

So, no, it is not the role of government to meet every need, solve every problem, look over and check up on all its people (non-citizens as well as citizens) to see that they are all living the American dream.   

Part 3 – what are rights?

 

 

The Biggest Single Problem Facing America Today Part 1

I am sure that we can all write out own lists of problems in our country, and many of us could even rank them in order of importance.  I suspect that what I call our biggest problem won’t even make most lists. 

Why?

It’s not the kind of problem that would make the nightly news.  You can’t put it on a cell phone video or explain it in a soundbite.  You need to look at all of our problems and then step back and survey the whole picture of what is happening in our country

The biggest single problem facing our country today is answering the question: what is America?

Historically, countries formed from descendants of common ancestors.  We have seen a lot of migration in the last some decades, but when Africans move to Italy, we don’t call them Italians.  We still call them Africans. 

But people move to the United States from all over the world, and they become citizens, and we call them Americans.

That’s because America was built on an idea or set of ideas, such that ethnic roots are irrelevant.  But more and more people in America can’t tell you what those ideas are.  We don’t teach them in our schools anymore, and we certainly don’t teach them to the millions of people who move to our country every year.

So if we don’t know what our founding principles are, we will create or imagine other ones, and our country will change into something it is not and was never intended to be.  And we won’t even know it.  And the things that made us what we are will cease to exist.  It will be like we were taken over by a foreign power, a coup, but nobody will even know.  It will happen slowly, over generations, each new generation growing up with a new normal, until one day it is gone.  And most people won’t even know it.

These ideas are five in number, and they are given in the Declaration of Independence. 

The first idea, or maybe I should say proposition.  An idea sounds vague and not necessarily grounded in reality.  The first proposition is that all people are created equal. 

In what sense are any two people equal?  We are all unique and are different from everyone else in innumerable ways: looks, intelligence, aptitudes, abilities, personalities, etc.  But note that it says created equal.  It is not talking about physical characteristics.

In the context of our country’s founding, it is the statement that nobody has the divine or natural right to rule over other people.  We forget today that at the time nations were ruled by kings.  Kings weren’t elected or chosen by the people.  It was a position they were born into. 

Our Founders said, no, we are all created equal.  We don’t have rulers. 

Yes, but you will say, they had slavery.  Isn’t that one people ruling over another?  Indeed it is, and we ended up fighting a very costly civil war to end that.  People don’t always live up to their ideals, but the first step is establishing them.  We will talk more about this in part 2. 

Secondly, the same God who created us equal also endowed us with unalienable rights.  These rights are how we define liberty and freedom, by our ability to exercise these rights.

These rights come from God and precede and supersede government.  Government didn’t give them, and government can’t take them away. 

When the Founders created our country’s new Constitution, they debated whether these rights should be enumerated in it.  They were concerned 1) that people would come to think that these rights came from the government at some point in the future and not from God, and 2) that these were all the rights that people were endowed with. 

Eventually they decided to add them to the Constitution, but by way of amendments.  The first ten amendments to our Constitution are called the Bill of Rights.  These rights were things you could do without the government’s permission or regulation.

Thirdly, these rights include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Fourthly, they said that government exists to secure those rights.  Remember this point.  The role of government is a key issue today.

And, lastly, when the government does not secure our rights, it is the right of the people to either change the government or replace it.

But what does all this mean, especially today in a politically divided country?

We will look at this in the remaining articles.

 

new sex education program for Illinois

Illinois just signed into law new sex education standards for the state of Illinois.  (Pritzker says new sex education law ‘will help keep our children safe’ – but GOP rivals blast it as ‘obscene’, August 21)

These new standards are touted as medically accurate and age-appropriate.  I contend that they are neither. 

1)      The new standards assert that there is no normative sexual behavior.  I contend that biology regards sex organs as reproductive, and since evolution, which is taught as science, asserts that the purpose of life is reproduction, then using sex organs for the purpose of reproduction is normative sexual behavior.  But they say no.

If sex organs are not for reproduction, then they exist for our pleasure, and children then need to experiment with all the various ways to find what they like best.  I think this is highly inappropriate for children.

2)      Consequently, being cisgender, or attracted to people of the opposite sex, isn’t normative either.  Teaching this to children only encourages them to build on any and all impulses before they will even begin thinking about whether they want to have children or not.

3)      Sex is taught entirely on mechanical functioning without a context of marriage and love.  Girls used to save themselves for marriage.  Here, long before they have ever even given any thought to things like that, they will see sex as something to experiment with at the youngest ages and to make lifelong decisions.

4)      Religions teach values and things like the purpose of marriage and its sanctity, but here sex is no more religious and has no higher value than eliminating our bowels or digesting food.  It is merely a biological function, but one that you can share with somebody else.  Anyone.

The only purpose for this education is to try to gain more public acceptance for, let’s say, non-traditional sexual relationships. 

property tax woes and solution

I feel bad for the residents of Bellwood and Maywood and a host of other suburbs hit with these huge property tax increases.  (Businesses and minorities hit hardest by latest tax bills, county report says, August 17)

People buy homes to build up some equity, but property taxes can drive fear into the hearts of any homeowner.  Property taxes are absurd in that they don’t take into account a person’s ability to pay them.  People lose jobs, but the taxes are unaffected.

I have long suggested that we need to shift as much of these costs to the income tax.  Not only will they affect people proportionately, but the taxes are paid in increments rather than two large lump sums. 

The biggest single expense in property taxes is public education.  We always hear about poor school funding in poor neighborhoods.  Well, here is the answer.  Property taxes become manageable, and schools get their needed funding.

 

meaningful census data

I am always excited to see the new census data when it comes out.  (Second city still third, August 13)  I was a little disappointed, though, in the way the information was presented.

Imagine a questionnaire on the Olympics: what’s your favorite Olympic sport: gymnastics, swimming, or other?

To say other does eliminate two possibilities as our favorite sport, but it really makes you want more information.

The article broke races down into four categories: white, Black, Latino, and Asian. 

I think we can all pretty much agree on what constitutes the first three, but I think the Asian category is too broad to be meaningful, and I think if you going to take the time and effort to even take a census, then you need to make it meaningful.

I’m sure that a dozen people would break down Asia a dozen different ways, but I suggest at least three distinct people groups, or races, if you will.  I think, for practical purposes, people divide races by general characteristics without quibbling over the details.

First, there are Arabs.  And I would include the Persians with this as well.  The whole area west of the Himalayas apart from India, which is the second group.

Then there are the Far East Asians, all those east of the Himalayas. 

Three different groups, as distinct as groups can be, not only in appearance, but religions, customs, and cultures. 

If you’re going to take the time and money to find out exactly who is living in our country, then you need to take that extra step.  To say a person is Asian is just not enough to be meaningful in this context.

Is voter suppression really a problem?

No doubt you have heard about the hundreds of bills passed in the different states trying to suppress voting rights and voter turnout.  Evil people and coincidentally all of the same political party.

The Chicago Sun-Times gave a full page to a story about the “battle to pass federal voting rights legislation.”  (Aug. 28 marches for new generation, August 12)  The federal laws are needed to supersede all the malicious laws passed by the states.

The message of the article is urgent, because of “a wave of voter suppression laws” passing in our country.  “Voting rights are under attack.”  There is a “continuing fight for civil rights.”  “suppress voting rights”  “advance voting rights”

At this point, I was really anxious to read examples of these egregious acts of evil people depriving or suppressing people of their right to vote.

Here is a list of the ways that politicians of that other party are suppressing voting and voter rights, according to the article:

1)      banning drop boxes 

Who knew that using drop boxes was a right?  How did we get by for 240 years before this?  You do realize that putting a ballot in a drop box is not actually voting.  You haven’t voted until somebody puts that ballot into the tabulation machine.  When you vote in person, you put it in yourself.  When you use a drop box, you don’t know when or if that ballot is ever counted.  You have no idea if the person collecting the ballots opens each one first and discards the ones they don’t like.  And we don’t know if that person adds a bunch of her own.

2)      banning mail-in voting

Nobody is banning that.  There are always people who physically cannot leave their homes to go somewhere to vote, and they will always be able to vote absentee.

One of the principal tenets of elections in a free society is that people are able to vote in private, free from any outside influences.  When people vote in person, they go to a secluded place and make their choices, away from the eyes and voices of other people. 

We don’t have that with mail-in ballots.  We don’t know if people are pressured to fill out a ballot in a certain way.  We don’t even know who is filling out the ballot.  Plus, when officials have stacks of opened ballots that they then need to feed into a tabulation machine en masse, we have no safeguards that ballots won’t be discarded, changed, or if they even add fraudulent ballots to the pile.  We don’t know.  When people vote in person, you put your own ballot into the box.  That is the safest and most secure way to vote.

3)      slashing early voting hours

Early voting is a relatively new concept.  How is that a right?  And how many days and what hours are you entitled to?  And how are fewer hours suppressing your right to vote?  Nobody thought voter rights were suppressed when everyone had to vote in person on one day for almost our country’s entire history.  It was difficult for some people, yes.  But people planned their lives around that one day, election day.

4)      restricting mail-in eligibility

Two fundamentals of a safe and secure election in a free society: a) ensuring we know who is voting and that they are eligible.  That can only be done in person.  b) ensuring that the ballot is filled out without any coercion or undue influences.  Again, that can only be done in person.

People leave their homes for countless reasons: work, shopping, visiting.  Voting should be another one of those reasons.  Voting by mail is a luxury, not a necessity, for almost everybody.  Asking people to vote in person so we can verify their identity and ensure they vote in private is not a hardship.  Once, twice a year.  Make the effort.

Yes, voting is a significant responsibility in a free society.  The only way we can truly protect that right to vote is to put up the strongest and highest bulwarks against any possibilities of fraud. 

One fraudulent vote can erase your vote.  You’re worried about voting rights, then you need to protect your vote against any possible false votes.  As much as possible, you need to put your vote into the voting box yourself.  That’s the only way you know you voted and that nobody did anything to your ballot.  And the only way you know your vote mattered is if the election tried very hard to eliminate any possibility for mischief.