When Donkeys and Elephants Lay Together

There’s something reassuring about being able to predict a response or reaction. When we drop something, we know that it is likely to fall.  When we hit a beehive with a stick, we have good reason to believe that bees will become perturbed and seek to hurt us. When we go out in the rain, we anticipate getting wet. 

Knowing these things, we act accordingly. When something reacts in an unpredictable way, it can be more unsettling. Imagine your surprise if your car blew up when you tried to start it, or going for a prostate exam, only to find out you’re a male who’s pregnant. The current political climate in the United States causes this same kind of cognitive dissonance.

It used to be that one could predict how a given party would react to a given situation, regardless of whether they were in power or not. Think back to what you believed a few years ago, and try this simple test to see if you agree:

1. Name the party that believes government can do a better job than the private sector
2. Name the party that believes in the free market
3. Which party is more likely to raise taxes on the rich
4. Which party is more likely to lead us into war
5. Which party can be trusted the most?

OK, question 5 was a trick question, as history has repeatedly proven that both parties thrive on lying pathologically, but the other 4 questions were much easier to answer, when thinking back to the way things used to be. Why have things become so confusing in the last few years?

Government has grown in terms of expenditures and the number of employees under both Republican and Democrat presidencies. Bush (Republican) created the TSA. He and the Republicans also bailed out the banks and Wall Street, whom he and the Republicans argued were too big to fail, and he initiated the auto industry bailout. The Republicans also pushed to lower lending requirements so that more people could buy houses they couldn't afford, which contributed to the economic meltdown in no small way.

Now we have the Democrats wanting to lead us into a war that we have no business being in. Operating as if they were merely puppets with the hand of the military industrial complex shoved up their backsides, they argue that Syria has crossed a red line, and it’s somehow our responsibility to punish them for it. Secretary of State Kerry even pulled out an Adolf Hitler reference, so you know they’re serious. How could any reasonable person want an Adolf Hitler to go unpunished?

You know when a political party throws Hitler’s name around that they are feeling like they’re losing the battle…

Ignoring, for a moment, that the US used chemical weapons in Vietnam (ask our Vets and thousands of deformed Vietnamese babies whether Agent Orange was a chemical weapon), our administration and likely our congress will be asking us to intervene in another country’s civil war, where chemical weapons have been used by one or possibly both sides. Is this really something we need to be involved in? Who elected the United States as the keeper of the red line? If that is really our role, why did we do nothing when Iraq was gassing Iran and the Kurds in the 80’s? It’s not even clear that the International laws prohibiting the use of chemical weapons apply when the weapons are used within a country’s boundaries, as in the current civil war. Just what red line are we enforcing? For whom? Why is nobody else enforcing it?

What unintended consequences are we prepared to deal with if we blast a few Syrian sites?  What if we kill innocent civilians, including children? What if we uncover a large repository of chemical weapons, and we merely aerosolize them, which results in many additional casualties? What if our involvement only makes the situation worse? What if our involvement causes more harm to Americans?  How do we ameliorate any of these concerns? Can we really believe in the promise that says no boots on the ground? Refer back to question 5.

I don’t buy the notion that this isn't a declaration of War. Of course we’re declaring war, even if congress doesn't pass anything saying so. Disagree? What if any country in the world decided to blow up some of our military installations via a precision-guided strike? Wouldn't we consider that an act of war and immediately seek to fight back? Of course we would. Oh wait, that already happened. It’s called Pearl Harbor…

Let’s imagine a best case scenario. We bomb a few bunkers where we think the Weapons of Mass Destruction (oops, wrong war), I mean where there’s a stockpile of chemical weapons, and it turns out that our oxymoronic military intelligence was actually correct, and there were chemical weapons there. What now? What did we accomplish? Which side did we strengthen? Did we actually help an Al-Qaeda backed insurgency? Have we learned nothing in the past 35 years?

There is no best case no scenario – only bad, worse, and worser. We as a people gain nothing by involving ourselves in this conflict, and it should be clear to all that we risk a great deal, including what will be increased terroristic threats.

It doesn't surprise me that the military want to fire their guns, or that the industries who support the military can weave a good sounding story about why we need to do it, but what blows me away is that it doesn't matter who’s in power any more. Wasn't it the Democrats just 10 or 11 years ago saying that we had no business going into Iraq (or some argued Afghanistan). We can’t even rely on the Democrats to object to war anymore. 

You may be curious about the title of this posting. In my mind, I picture the symbols of both parties. It’s pretty easy to tell the difference between a donkey and an elephant, but I honestly have trouble remembering which animal belongs to which party. With all the muddling of the lines between the parties, and confusion about who stands for what, and what animal belongs to whom, I really believe that both parties need to adopt some new mascots, and would propose the following:

With this mascot, we'd be a lot less concerned about who's on the left and who's on the right, because we know that it's simply a matter of perspective.

We desperately need a new animal in Washington. One that has some Common Sense, and isn't afraid to use it...

What Makes a Marriage Gay?

There’s been a lot of talk recently about gay marriage.  Perhaps there should be more talk about how poorly we communicate, and how we’ve forgotten most of the lessons learned in school about the English language.  A marriage can’t be gay – it’s the individuals in the marriage that are gay, but I’ll save the grammatical distinction for another post.

 

 

I suppose all the conversation is really about same sex marriage, and whether it should be legal.  Many who are against same sex marriage cite religious reasons, and state that “God created marriage”.  Supporters of same sex marriage take the position that denying a same sex couple the right to marry is discrimination.  Any time a topic become this heated, logic seems to take a back seat in the bus to passion, and who can yell the loudest, while making disparaging comments about the other side.

I won’t undertake the question of whether or not God created a marriage – it’s a question to be answered by each individual, influenced by their beliefs.  I would argue that whether or not God created marriage is not the point at all.  Same sex couples are not arguing the case before the Supreme Court because they want God to bless their marriage – they simply want the government to allow it.

Today, marriage has been made into a civil institution.  Almost every marriage must have a marriage license, issued by the government, to be recognized by the government as a valid marriage.  Divorce is the commonly recognized (and sought) end to a marriage, and is granted by the courts. Married couples have different laws that apply to them – by one count, over 1,100 federal laws, statutes and rules.  While marriage may have started as a religious institution, we have allowed it to become a civil one, and therefore governed by the laws of man.  Unlike other sacraments of the church (baptism, communion, confirmation, etc.), the church allowed marriage to be taken over by the government.

There’s an old saying that says “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander”, which I’ll use in this blog to say that if married couples approve of, or seek the benefit of the laws that recognize a married couple’s status, then it’s hypocritical to claim that marriage belongs to the church and not the state. 

The recognition of same sex marriages is an inevitable and logical conclusion.  Since so many laws have been created to benefit married couples, the government will be forced into a position where it must eventually acknowledge same sex marriage as lawful, just as it did with interracial marriage.  To not recognize those marriages is a discriminatory practice.

It’s hard to imagine, but as recently as 1948, 30 states had laws against interracial marriage.  Interracial marriage was finally legal in all 50 States on June 12, 1967. Most people would think it unimaginable that interracial marriage would have been illegal in 16 states just 46 years ago, however, according to a 2011 Pew Research study, 16% of evangelical Christians still thought interracial marriage was a “Bad thing for society”.

Whether or not something is bad for society has little to do with the law.  Can anyone really argue that alcohol or tobacco are good for society?  Yet we have laws that protect these things, and generate huge amounts of taxation as a result of their consumption. Are some of the inane TV shows, movies and video games now available good for our society? Arguably not, and yet there are no laws prohibiting them outright.

It is to a large degree a measure of our freedom and liberty that so many choices are left to the individual rather than the state. The more laws there are, the less liberty we have, and the more likely we are to approach the threshold of a tyrannical government.

Should we do all things that are legal?  Certainly not.  With individual freedom comes individual responsibility, and the thresholds that each of us have should keep us safe from the precipice of illegality. To not accept individual responsibility means that we are ceding that responsibility to the government, which is why the number of laws in our country have grown to an unknowable number, as explained in an earlier blog post.  

But where does the ever-expanding scope of who can get married stop?  Today it’s illegal for people under a certain age to marry.  It’s illegal for people who are immediate family to marry (parents, siblings, and children).  Both polygamy and polyandry are illegal.  Marriages with non-humans are not recognized as legal.  Certainly, however, in our not-too-distant future, many of these boundaries will also be tested, and likely broken, all for the sake of equality, and the elimination of discrimination.

It seems to me that the better course of action is to reduce the number of laws, rather than increase it.  The more complex a system becomes, then the harder it is to manage it, and it continues to grow until it fails.

If federal law didn’t have 1,100 special rules for married couples, would we even be having the discussion of whether same sex marriage should be legal? If there were no laws that benefited married couples, would there even be a need to argue about what a legal marriage should be?

If someone is a homosexual, who am I to say whom they can love and spend their lives with?  If they seek to enter into a “marriage contract” like my wife and I have, they should be afforded all the same rights and privileges that contract affords.  Should a church be forced to conduct a marriage ceremony for a same sex couple?  Certainly not.  Is same sex marriage good for society?  It’s certainly no worse than alcohol, pornography or violent sports and video games, and if the relationship is really based on love, it would seem to me that it could do more good than harm, inconvenient as that may be for some to acknowledge.