A Libertarian Christmas Poem

I don’t plan to do lots of linking to my other blog, but I am quite proud of this post at My Own Pie.

Please tell me if you love it or hate it or feel something in between.

Take It

     As a Christian I am not “supposed” to use earthy or suggestive language, but here goes.  At the moment I feel that our Congress is treating us like a man committing a certain crime against a woman.  I feel like we are being told to shut up and take it.

     The Democrats and Republicans are hashing out deals and deciding what reforms they will make to the health insurance industry.  However, they do not seem to be listening.  They seem to be doing to us whatever they wish.

     What happened to the transparency we were promised by Democrats?  What happened to Barack Obama’s specific promise that deliberations over health “care” reform would take place on C-SPAN?  Weren’t we supposed to have legislation posted on the Internet so that we would have time to consider it and tell our representatives what we think?  In fact, I think we should amend the Constitution to rename the House of Representatives the House of Elite Rulers.  They cannot represent us, if they do not listen to us.

     There were town hall meetings a few months ago.  Many of our elected legislators listened, but they did not like what they heard.

     Now they are safely ensconced behind closed doors to hash out plans for overhauling a large segment of our economy and a large and important part of our welfare.  Shame on them, whether they have an R or a D after their name.

Those Greedy Insurance Companies

     Have you seen the report about the actual profits made by health  insurance companies?  To hear some people talk, those evil companies are the greediest of all.

     The reality is that the health insurance industry is near the bottom in terms of profits.  In the Fortune 500 list of 53 industries, they rank 35th.  So unless you approve of the government’s taking over 34 other major U. S. industries, it is just plain wrong to use the profit margin of the health insurance industry as an excuse for taking them over.  (Unless you want to bail them out the way the government bailed out some of the banks.)

     There are other reasons to dislike insurance companies–the high cost of premiums, the hassles, the occasional failure to pay up.  But painting them as greedy monsters just doesn’t cut it.  And the mainstream media would do the public a great service by exposing this lie.

     But, you might argue, the Congress is not planning to take over the health care industry.  They are just planning to give a public option.  It would be absolutely stupid to think that given a cheap public option, the private companies will not be driven out of business.

A Big Decision

     After a lot of inner turmoil, I have made a significant decision. I have decided that I will join the Libertarian Party and support their candidates whenever possible. When not possible, I will continue to support the most libertarian-leaning candidates available.

     This decision caused me turmoil because I have been a very dedicated Republican throughout my adult life.  When I say dedicated, I mean active.  I mean that I have given money, time, and effort to supporting the Republican Party.  I have campaigned for Republican candidates, I have officiated at Republican primary elections, I have been a delegate to county and state conventions, and I even served as a precinct chairman.

     I have known for awhile that I was more libertarian than conservative, but I hesitated to make the switch.  For one thing, I am not a perfect libertarian.  There are aspects of libertarian thought, especially parts of the Libertarian Party’s platform, that I do not completely accept or embrace.    For another thing, I was convinced, mainly by other people, that I would be throwing away my vote to vote for a Libertarian candidate.

     As other Republicans have said, the Republican Party has left me.  I became a zealous Republican because I believed not only that the platform was good and right, but because I beleived that people like me could influence the party and make it even better.  Instead it has gotten worse.

     I have launched a new blog to write about libertarianism–but mostly to help make libertarian thought more widespread.  It is called My Own Pie, and I plan to use it to disseminate information about the Libertarian Party and the libertarian movement but also to convey my own thoughts and opinions.  As we approach the next election, I hope to persuade people to vote Libertarian.

     I will probably phase this present blog out of existence, so that I have time to maintain the other one.  It will be a different sort of blog, because I will not permit it to get bogged down in meandering arguments or, worse, in misrepresentations of my posts.  I will delete any comments I do not like, which does not mean comments I disagree with.  I will still welcome debate and disagreement there, but it will have to be honest, sincere disagreement.

     In other words, I will not let comments like “you think that because you are white” or “you enjoy watching people suffer and die” pass for arguments.

Whitey Changes His Tune

I’ve tried several ways to make a particular point, but my detractors have not accepted any of them.  I am now going to try another approach.  Preapare for sarcasm.  If you take anything I say literally in the comments section, I will delete your comment as quickly as I can.  This is what I do NOT actually think.

——————–

     I have always been an ardent supporter of government programs.  I have believed thoughout my entire adult life that there is no problem that cannot be fixed if the government provides the solution.  My high school and college teachers remember me as a rabid Marxist bent on revolution and the rise o the workers.  But now. . .

     There is a black man in the White House, and I have completely changed my mind.

     When Hillary Clinton was drafting and promoting a bill to reform the health care industry and health insurance, I was completely in favor of it, because she is white.  I like everything that white people do.  Even if she or her husband had personally aborted babies, I would have adored them, because they are white.  I really liked it when President Clinton had his way with the young intern Monica, because anything white people so is fine with me.  The fact that she is white (does Jewish count as white?) made it even better.

     I like President Clinton very much, because he is white.  I cannot say if I liked him more than George W. Bush, because it is hard to tell which one of them is whiter.  They both looked pretty pasty to me.  In the end I went with Clinton, because Bush did get pretty tan under the West Texas sun. 

     I liked President Carter, too.  I think that he was a really good president, because he was very white.  His teeth were especially white.  I appreciated the rise in inflation and unemployment while he was president, because if it happens during a white man’s administration, it’s okay by me.  I remember long gas lines during one family vaction, but it was okay.  My parents said we should enjoy waiting for gasoline because a white man was our president.

     A white man once told me that I should try heroin.  I thought, “Well, since he is white I had better do what he says.”  If a black man had told me that I would have said, “No way, man!  I won’t do what you say because you are black.”  It’s easy to make decisions that way.

     Of course, it makes it hard to decide on certain issues.  For example, was Clarence Thomas lying or was Anita Hill lying?  Since they are both black I could not make up my mind.  Of course, Hill is a woman, so there you go!  She was obviously not lying, because she is a woman and Thomas is a man. 

     In the O. J. Simpson case it was easy.  He is black; his victim is white.  He obviously didn’t murder her.  (Oh, but she was a woman!  I thought that I was supposed to side with the woman over the man.  I’m so confused.)

     Anyway, back to the topic at hand.  I wish that John Edwards had won the election.  He is very, very white.  If he were president right now, I would have punched those folks at the Town Hall meetings in the face for challenging health care reform under a white president.  As it is, I applaud their efforts to oppose a black man.  I love health care reform and I love white people, so it would have been a winning combination to have John Edwards supporting such legislation.

     And if John Edwards had wanted to ban firearms, I would have volunteered to help round them up.  And if he had imposed a 200% tax increase, I would have voluntarily turned over my bank account.  He’s white, so I would agree with anything he wanted.  I’d even die for a white president if he asked me to.

     For awhile I came under the spell of Alan Keyes.  What was I thinking?  He’s even blacker than Obama.  Even if he could personally close every abortion clinic in America I would be against him, because he is black.  Now that Obama is president, I am staunchly pro-choice.  That’s just how it works for me.  Issues don’t matter, only color.

Here It Is, The Ode to Obama

In case you are interested, here are the words to the chant and the song that the children in a school in Burlington, New Jersey, sang about President Obama:

Mm, mm, mm,

Barack Hussein Obama!

He said that all must lend a hand

To make this country strong again.

Mm, mm, mm,

Barack Hussein Obama!

He said that we must be fair today.

Equal work means equal pay.

Mm, mm, mm,

Barack Hussein Obama!

He said that we must take a stand

To make sure everyone has a chance.

Mm, mm, mm,

Barack Hussein Obama!

He said red, yellow, black, or white,

All are equal in his sight.

Mm, mm, mm,

Barack Hussein Obama, yes!

Mm, mm, mm,

Barack Hussein Obama!

—–

Hello, Mr. President.  We honor you today.

For all your great accomplishments, we all doth say “Hooray!”

Hello, Mr. President.  You’re number one,

The first black American to lead this great nation.

Hooray, Mr. President.  We honor your great plans

To make this country’s economy number one again.

Horray, Mr. President, we’re really proud of you,

And we stand for all Americans under the great Red, White, and Blue.

So continue, Mr. President.  We know you’ll do the trick.

So here’s a hearty hip-hooray:

Hip, hip, hooray!  Hip, hip, hooray!  Hip, hip, hooray!

—–

Forgetting the fact that the lyrics are simply terrible, literarily speaking, a couple of things stand out to me.

Strong again?  We have done a lot to root out terrorism, and we stopped Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror in Iraq.  I’d say that we were already pretty strong.

One has to wonder what “equal work means equal pay” means in the mind of the author.  Is it simply referring to the widely held truth that people should be paid fairly for their labor, or is it a simplistic statement of the socialist-communist notion of everyone’s getting paid equally.  That worked out really well in the Soviet Union and in the early days of Communist China, no?

I pointed out in the post before this one that the lines about equality echo the Sunday school song “Jesus Loves the Little Children.”  That connection is more than a little disconcerting to me.

The lines about making our country’s economy number one is amusing.  I get the impression that we are supposed to be embarrassed and ashamed that we have had the number one economy in the world.  It was those greedy capitalists that made that happen, after all.  Besides it is not fair to all the other countries of the world that we have so much while others have so little.  Isn’t that the way it goes?

Singing About the Great Leader

     Imagine that it is 1981.  Children at an elementary school sing a song in praise of Ronald Reagan, as song written by their teacher, a devout Republican who was excited that her candidate won.  Would you approve or would you consider it inappropriate?

     Imagine that it is 2001.  A zealous teacher writes a song about how great George W. Bush is and teaches it to her class.  Would you think it was appropriate in a public school, or in any school, for that matter?

     I would find it highly inappropriate in the United States of America.  We have a president who is a civilian and a fellow citizen.  He (or perhaps she in the future) is not a monarch or a member of the aristocracy.  The president is not our Great Chief or Big Brother or Dear Leader or any other title that despots love to take to themselves.  That is why no official oath of office in the United States includes a pledge to support the President; rather, our leaders pledge to support the Constitution.

     I wouldn’t want children glorifying either Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, especially since many of their families did not vote for him and did not support him.  It is not right to propagandize children or to force them to support a particular political viewpoint.  Besides, Reagan stood for individualism, not for hero worship.  He himself would have been appalled at people making up songs glorifying him.

     Of course children should learn about the President of the United States.  It is important for them to learn the name of the current president and to learn biographical data about him.  It is important that they learn to show him the respect that he deserves by virture of his office, whether he is Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, or Barack Hussein Obama.  Given that Obama is the first black American President, he deserves special focus, but he does not deserve worship songs.  No human being does.

     Singing the praises of a president is done in totalitarian states where leaders institute cults of personality.  It should not be done in a free republic.  At least it should not be required of anybody, least of all impressionable young children.  Teach children facts, and let them formulate their own opinions.

     We should not put our hope in a president or any other man.  In secular terms, we should put our hope in our own abilities and our own potential to prosper and succeed.  We should not think of ourselves as dependent upon the Great Father in the White Building; we should believe in our own value as human beings, equal in every significant way to those who happen to have authority over us.  (As a Christian I obviously believe that we should put our faith ultimately in God through Jesus Christ.)

     That is why I oppose the singing of a song in praise of Barack Hussein Obama by school children in New Jersey.  I don’t care if the subject of their song were as white as fallen snow or as black as midnight or somewhere in between, it is not proper for a schoolteacher to require kids to praise the president in song and chant.  I also wouldn’t care if the president were farther right than William F. Buckley or father left than Frank Llewellyn, it’s just not right.

     You can watch the video of the song on YouTube or on FOX News.  Michelle Malkin has written about it, too.  The most disturbing part of the song, from my perspective, are the lines:

Mm, mm, mm,

Barack Hussein Obama

Red and yellow, black and white,

All are equal in his sight.

     The words will be familiar to you, if you ever attended Sunday school.  It is reminiscent of a song called “Jesus Loves the Little Children.”  I’m not very comfortable with implicitly comparing the President of the United States with Jesus.

WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:  Parents Angry Over Obama Song

How Would You Like It?

     Perhaps you were one of the many detractors of George W. Bush.   What if you opposed his policies and actions as president, but everybody dismissed your disagreement by saying that you were just prejudiced against people from Texas or against people named George?  I don’t think you would like it.

     Bill Cosby, Maureen Dowd, Jim Wallis, and Jimmy Carter have all said that President Obama’s detractors are racist or acting out of racial animosity. 

     Yes, yes, yes, some of Obama’s detractors are bigots who hate him because he is black.  Yes, some of them cursed the day that a black man became President.  Yes, some of them will like nothing that he does simply because he is black. 

     However, many people are opposing the President for the same reasons that they opposed Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter himself–they do not agree with left-of-center views.  If Carter and others want to insist that people oppose the Democrats’ health care proposal because of Barack Obama’s blackness, then they had better explain why the same people opposed Bill Clinton’s (rather, Hillary Clinton’s) health care proposal.  Clinton is about as white as can be.  And Carter is pretty white himself–whiter than Clinton, I think–so he had better explain why people opposed many of his policies and actions while president.

     Would the folks who said, “Bush lied, people died,” like it if people dismissed their ideas and called them names?  Or did they want people to listen to them make the case, as they supposed, that President Bush knew that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but wanted a pretext for attacking them?  How would people who opposed the Patriot Act feel if people said, “Oh, that’s just because of your deep-seated animosity for white men.  You wouldn’t disagree with the Patriot Act if a black man were behind it”?

     You know what Barack Obama has said?  He has said that people oppose the health care reform bill because they have a different view of the role of government in people’s lives.  This is one of the best things that he has said.  Will those who adore him so much accept his word that people have political reasons, rather than racial reasons, for disagreeing with his health care proposals?

Racism, Racism Everywhere

     Former President Jimmy Carter said it.  Columnist Maureen Dowd said it.  Joe Wilson’s son and many other people who know him denied it, as did the White House.  Is Joe Wilson a racist?

     In terms of the debate over health insurance reform, it doesn’t actually matter.  Joe Wilson could be the most hateful racist in America, but the facts about the Democrats’ proposals for reforming the health insurance indutry would still be what they are.  The race card is called that because it is part of a game.  It is a diversionary tactic.

     Pretty much everyone in America is a racist by Carter’s logic, including him.  A lot of people believe that Clarence Thomas lied.  A lot of other people believe that Anita Hill lied.  If calling a black person a liar is racist, then they are all racists. 

     I wonder if Carter has a grand theory as to why Barack Obama has said that some of his critics and political opponents were lying.  Could that be because of racism.  When President Obama called Kanye West a name, was he being racist?

     Can’t we as a nation grow up and talk about things without looking for racism everywhere?

     Please, let’s not get diverted.  Joe Wilson said, “You lie.”  Either the President lied or he didn’t.  It doesn’t matter that Wilson is white and Obama is half black.  Wilson could be black and Obama could be white, and the facts would still be what they are.

     Wilson did not say, “Black people are liars,” or “You lie because you are black.”  If he had, then a discussion about his racism and about racism in general would be warranted.  Because he simply said, “You lie,” then the discussion should be about whether or not the President lied.

     As often happens in politics, the truth is a mixture in this issue.  The most publicized health insurance bill does say that undocumented residents will not be covered by the public insurance option.  However, when Republicans tried to insert a requirement that applicants prove their citizenship it was rejected–several times.  The only reason not to put an enforcement clause into the bill is that you don’t plan on enforcing it.  That is one way that illegal aliens get government benefits now.  Officials simply look the other way.

     It’s too bad that Wilson burst out with his challenge to the President during his speech to the Congress.  Wilson had a valid point to make, but it was not the right time or the right place or the right manner in which to make it.  Now, instead of discussing the President’s speech, we are discussing Wilson’s brief outburst and the fallout from it.  We are talking about whether people are racists, when we should be talking about how much (or how little) government we want in our lives and how we can possibly pay for the ambitious plan being proposed.  We are talking about Joe Wilson instead of talking about the problems with health care in America.

     Let’s get back to business.

Jesus Is Not a Democrat (or a Republican)

     Let me make one thing perfectly clear right away. I have never believed that the Republican Party was the Christian party or that Jesus would support the Republican Party and reject the Democratic Party.  There is a lot of overlap between my Christian faith and my political views, but I do not confuse the two.  It is my opinion that the platform of the Republican Party during my lifetime has been more compatible with Christian faith (though decreasingly so), but I know that other Christians have the opposite view.  Let each person decide according to his or her own knowledge and conscience.  If Jesus were living in the United States in human form, I do not believe that He would join either party.  I am not sure that he would even say much about them.  He might just ignore the whole business altogether.

     Throughout the centuries, all kinds of groups have tried to co-opt Jesus for their political views–monarchists, classical liberals, revolutionaries, fascists, socialists, anarchists, neo-conservatives, etc.  Each one usually makes a persusaive case for why they are the group that supports Jesus and that has his support, but they obviously cannot all be right.  In my humble opinion, Jesus would find something to approve in each of the various political ideologies and something (probably much) to condemn in each of them, as well. 

     Jesus might approve of the monarchists’ use of authority to enforce just laws, but he might disapprove of the oppression that many monarchs have engaged in against their own subjects.  He might approve of the revolutionaries’ concern for the common person, but he might disapprove of their use of violence.  He might approve of the neo-conservatives’ desire to lessen the tax burden on working people, but he might disapprove of their lack of concern for the poor.  (I wrote might in each case, because I do not think that anyone should speak with certainty on such matters.  Who are we to put words into Jesus’s mouth?)

     Even when they do not actually claim Jesus for their cause, almost every group contends that it espouses the absolute moral and just set of values to make the world a better place.  It amounts to the same thing as co-opting Jesus (or Allah or Krishna or Zeus or whomever).  I am not saying that they should not believe in their cause or consider it right; I am trying to say that they should realize that others make the same claim.  They, whoever they are, must be willing to have a peaceful competition with other groups who espouse other ideologies, if we are to have any kind of liveable world or society.

     I was somewhat caught up in the conservative Christian movement of the 1980’s.  I made the error of conflating my Christian faith with my American citizenship.  Although, they are inextricably entwined, they are not identical.  I know that now.  One reason I know it is that my Democratic friends have gently reminded me of it. 

     Now the tables are turned.  Many Democrats are acting like they are part of the God party.  For the last thirty years or so, I have heard it preached over and over again that it is wrong to mix politics and religion and that the Republican Party is not the party of God.  Just when I and others started to get it, all of a sudden liberal Christians, including our current President, have taken to citing Jesus for their cause.  When not claiming to speak for Jesus, per se, they are telling us what our moral imperatives are.  Whoa!  What happened to not mixing religion and politics?  What happened to not legislating morality?

     I am not saying that it is absolutely wrong for folks to the left of center to believe that the teachings of Jesus support their views, only that it is hypocritical to say that those on the right may not do so but those on the left may.

     It really bugs me when some non-Christians and some apostate Christians to tell Christians what they should think or do.  Some examples that I have encountered include the quoting of Jesus’s words, “Judge not,” as a way of shutting Christians up.  Some people apparently think that the command not to judge (condemn, actually) means that we cannot call something wrong or work to prohibit behaviors that are immoral.  (Of course, that is precisely what the folks who tell us not to judge do–for example, prohibiting smoking in public places or prohibiting prayer in school.)  Another example, is quoting Jesus’s remark about rendering taxes to Caesar as proof that we should support government welfare.  Never mind that Rome provided nothing like our American welfare programs to the Jews and that Jesus’s words were simply a way to avoid the trap of a political argument, which is why I contend that He would not be either a Democrat or a Republican, and never mind that His greater point is found in what He said next:  “. . .and render to God what is God’s.”  He meant you.  He was saying that you and I and everyone else, should give ourselves and our lives to God, and that doing so is more important than the relatively unimportant question of whether to pay taxes to an oppressive occupying government.  Funny that liberals want to quote the first part of Jesus’s saying but ignore the second part.  (Actually it’s not funny, just strange.)

     So, please, stop it!  If you think that Jesus is on your side, be very careful.  He is probably partly on your side and partly on the side of your political adversaries.  If you ar not actually following all His teachings, then don’t throw selected ones in people’s faces.  He probably does not care much what your political views are or what the opposing political views are.  He cares about things that are much higher and much deeper than that.  Mostly he cares about you and about your status with Him.