The Parable of the Coat-Giving Father

The Democratic Party answered the State of the Union speech with a view from another world.  In Stacey Abrams' world, Americans were in good shape financially under Obama, but are now living in a deep depression.  On behalf of the Democratic Party, she made a plea that we all work together to take care of one another as we once did when we brought an end to Jim Crow laws.  In this vein, she demanded that we terminate the use of fossil fuels to prevent the end of the world by global warming and that we use the force of government to end all discrimination against LGBTQ persons.

Oops, the main opposition to Jim Crow was always the Republican Party!  Oh well, hardly anyone knows anything at all about history anymore.  The Democratic Party controlled education system has seen to that.

Oops, there is mounting evidence that the Earth is cooling, particularly in the thermosphere, and will continue cooling for the next few decades due to a great reduction in solar activity.  Additions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere does virtually nothing to change the temperature of the Earth's surface or troposphere.  Ending the use of fossil fuels will only make energy more expensive and less dependable, hurting those with lower incomes the most.  The Democratic Party is all in for hurting people with higher energy costs.

Oops, the Democrat Obama administration fought hard to maintain Don't Ask, Don't Tell in the courts against veterans backed by the Log Cabin Republicans.  The Obama administration lost the court case at the Appeals Court level and their next defense of DADT would have been before the Supreme Court.  They gave up the case because it looked like they would lose again in the Supreme Court and at about that time polls showed that Americans did not support DADT and were supporting gay marriages.  The Democrats are hardly winter soldiers on matters of principle, despite their pretensions.

In emotional support for her take care of one another thesis, she offered the parable of her Father Giving Away His Coat to a man on the highway on a cold and rainy night.  He was walking home from work and came upon a man cold and shivering who had no coat.  He gave the man his coat because he knew that he was not alone -- his family would come to get him.

Is this freedom to choose your own values and to act on those values what the Democratic Party stands for?  What that party stands for is actually this story:

A man on the highway is alone, cold, and shivering.  A government strongman in body armor and armed with a semi-automatic weapon is patrolling the highway and notes the condition of the cold, shivering man without a coat.  He waits for another man to come along who has a coat.  He confronts that man and points his weapon at the man and demands that he give his coat to the cold, shivering man.  He then demands the now coatless man's wallet and takes 40% of the money in the wallet.  He takes a quarter of that and puts it in his own wallet.  He turns over a half of what he originally took to his department claiming, without any need for evidence, that it was taken because the man who had it was engaged in crime (the Father did often hitchhike).  What happens to the other quarter?  The Democrats in control of the government give it to Solyndra or some other scheme by rich and connected people to take advantage to the American people.  This is the actual pattern of Democratic Party controlled governments.  See New York state, California, Illinois, Connecticut, New Jersey, Detroit, St. Louis, Baltimore, Chicago and many, many other examples.

This is the party of Jim Crow laws, so it is capable of doing terrible harm to many Americans, always justified by the claim that you have to harm some people to help the greater number or the most needy.  There is no surer path to power than that paved by the claim that you will use the power of government to help most of the people, while ignoring the fact that most people are far better at choosing their own values and managing their own lives than are government legislators and bureaucrats who do not know us as individuals and do not even care to do so.  After all, they see most of us as Deplorables, which is natural given that they really do believe that most of us have no business choosing our own values and managing our own lives in accordance with our own values.

Stacey Abrams would not allow her own Father to choose his own values and manage his life in accordance with his values,  She is blind to how important that very likely was to him.  I am not endorsing self-sacrifice, but men need to be free to choose their own values.  There is no freedom if we are not free to do so and, if having done so, to be free we must be free to act in pursuit of our own values.

It was refreshing to hear Trump endorse freedom and clearly condemn socialism.  Unfortunately, his advocacy of a law to require paternity leave is inconsistent with freedom.

The Many Rights of the Individual

Two hundred and forty two years ago, the Second Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence, which states

“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

The idea that every person has unalienable rights by virtue of the nature of man which are not dependent upon a government granting or recognizing those rights is very frightful to socialists or any other supporters of tyrannical government.  They hate the Declaration of Independence.  They hate the fact that it declares that the only justifiable reason for government is its dedication to the protection and support of every single individual’s rights.  They hate the fact that the Declaration of Independence states clearly that when government acts to deprive men of their equal, individual rights, then it is the right of the People to alter or abolish it.

The Declaration of Independence is not the only essential American governing document that the socialists hate.  Barack Obama declared in a radio interview when he was an Illinois state senator in its state legislature that he did not like the U.S. Constitution because it was a barrier to socialism.  Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan just wrote in the opinion of the four dissenting justices of the Supreme Court in the Janus case that decided that public employees cannot be forced to pay union dues that the majority were “weaponizing the First Amendment.”  The five justices of the majority had used freedom of speech as the reason for not allowing unions to forcibly collect union dues or even to collect them as a default unless a public employee underwent a process to deny the union the right to collect the money from his paycheck.

Justice Kagan and many others of the left have become very incensed that freedom of speech and freedom of religion have been used to thwart them in their dictation of how Americans can think and act.  They are terribly upset that people associating with one another in business were allowed freedom of speech in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010.  They have been incensed that some businesses have been able to escape infringements of their right to freedom of association by virtue of claiming their freedom of religion, whether in their hiring practices or in their wedding cake baking services.  The present session of the Supreme Court also used freedom of speech to deny the socialist California legislature to require organizations giving advice to pregnant women to tell them about their options to have an abortion.  Hence the socialists or Progressive Elitists are more and more horrified by the individual rights recognized in the First Amendment of the Constitution.

Unfortunately, those who favor a government whose functions violate the individual rights of some, often in the name of providing more security or comfort for others, have long been able to keep the courts from recognizing the many individual rights which were supposed to be protected by the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.  It was recognized when the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution that individuals had many rights not explicitly dealt with in the earlier amendments of the Bill of Rights.

What are our individual rights, whether recognized by our government are not?

• The right to life, not to be supported, but to be allowed to act to support it ourselves, as we allow others to do so also.  This is a general right to manage our own life and to fully claim self-ownership.
• The right to determine our own actions and to undertake them, provided we do not act to prevent others from determining their own actions and undertaking them with all of us barred from the initiated use of force.
• The right to choose our own values and to pursue those values to try to achieve our own happiness.
• The freedom of conscience, the right to use our own judgment and to act upon it.  Freedom of religion is a subset of this right and is far from all-inclusive.
• The freedom of association, which is also the freedom to choose who we will cooperate with and for what purposes.  This includes our domestic partnerships, our business partnerships, our hiring choices, our freedom of contract, our choice of friends, and those we join in our recreational activities.
• Freedom of speech or communication of our thoughts and ideas in all the forms this may take.  The freedom of assembly is part of this, as it is part of our freedom of association.
• The freedom of privacy, or the freedom not to share those parts of our lives we do not wish to share knowledge of with others.  This includes the right to be secure in our papers, our homes, and such as prescribed in the 4th Amendment.
• The freedom of equal protection of our income and property and the other fruits of our labor and thought.
• The right to own and bear arms so that we might protect our own lives and individual rights.
• The right to fair and just treatment when accused of a crime as prescribed in our 5th , 6th, 7th, and 8th Amendments.

I will not claim this to be an all-inclusive list of our natural rights.  I do not claim that life is so simple that it is always easy to understand how one individual’s exercise of his rights will affect others as they try to exercise their own rights.  But, good societies and good governments -- legitimate governments – will always try very hard to make individual liberty their primary goal and will defer as much as is possible to the individual’s right to make his own value choices and manage his own life.  No legitimate government can take the stance that it is justified in violating the rights of some in the interest of other persons.  Legitimate government cannot violate any person’s rights.  It must respect the equal rights of every citizen and legal resident.

A society with such a legitimate government will be one which minimizes the use of force.  The government should act to prevent all individuals from initiating the use of force.  That government also minimizes its restraints on liberty such that its own use of force is also minimized.  Government which violates individual rights does so by the use of force or its threatened use.  Governments are commonly the worst abusers of the use of force in the nations of the world today.  There are no highly legitimate governments operating at this time.  Some are much less worse than others, but all are massive abusers of the rights of the individual.  The United States federal government violates very many of our rights today and American socialists and Progressive Elitists want it to violate many more of our individual rights.

Many Americans, whether socialists or religious traditionalists, want to use government to prescribe a moral code by which everyone is expected to live.  They are often certain that their moral code is right and that a good society can be achieved if only the government will force everyone to live by their moral code.  The fact that there is often more variation in the moral codes held by the political factions pursuing such moral code prescriptions by law than could possibly be encoded into law rarely dawns on them.  These same people, especially the socialists, are very inclined to either use government or extra-governmental force and intimidation to prevent dissenters from their moral ideas from exercising their freedom of speech, press, and assembly.  According to the socialists and sometimes those who speak for God, if you have morally wrong ideas, you forfeit your freedom of speech, press, and assembly.

No freedom is a freedom at all if one will not allow those you think are wrong from exercising their freedom.  There is no freedom of speech if a minority or a single individual is not allowed to state their own ideas.  There is no freedom of association if one is not allowed to discriminate in the choosing of those one wishes to associate with, even if that discrimination may be what many may call bigotry.

The Christian who refuses to associate with gay people is wrong in my opinion, but he is acting fully within his rights.  To make him bake a cake for a gay wedding may very well be an infringement upon his freedom of conscience.

The gay organizations that want to force non-discrimination against gay people outside of the government itself are very wrong in doing so.  They should be as determined to protect their own freedom of association and conscience as anyone else should be.  Imagine a law that requires every gay bar to bring in heterosexual people until they represent their proportion in the population at large among their customers each night when the federal inspectors come around to make a count at the bar.

Many of the religious conservatives were very unhappy about the Supreme Court ruling allowing gay marriages.  In fact, this should have been a very obvious requirement respecting freedom of association.  Unfortunately, our government does not actually recognize the freedom of association.  It also very much limits the freedom of contract in general.  In reality, people should have as much freedom in forming their domestic partnerships under contract as they would have in forming a business partnership.  If three men and three women wanted to form a domestic partnership, that is their right as much as it would be the right of one woman and one man.  The same is true for one woman and two men or for two men and one woman or for three men or for three women.  The government has no business interfering with such an exercise in freedom of association and freedom of contract.  What such domestic partnerships might aim to accomplish and their sexual relationships are not government business, except insofar as the adults entering into the contract choose to make those matters a part of their lawful domestic partnership contract.

A much more harmonious society results when government is not being extensively used as a tool to prevent individuals from exercising their broad and many individual rights.  There are many claims that we live in an very uncivil society today.  Well, what do you expect when we have to fight over the control of a government that is constantly willing and wanting to violate our rights.  When we have a government that loves to take more from the rich and redistribute it to the many more voters who are not as rich, do the rich not have a right to believe they are threatened by that government?  If the rich use their money and connections to manipulate the regulatory state so that it is much harder for small, upstart companies to compete with their larger companies, is it not reasonable that the small businessmen will be very upset?  If the federal government owns half the land in a state and it controls the use of that land so that the environmentalists on the left and right coasts are happy, is it not to be expected that many in the state where that land is not of use to them are going to be unhappy?  If you are a coal miner, a river barge operator, a store owner in a coal town, or a dock worker in Norfolk, VA, is it not reasonable that you will be very unhappy when the federal government decides that a pregnant woman eating only fish from a river downwind from a coal-fired power plant might according to very imaginative argument and highly cherry-picked studies of islanders who only eat seafood develop some problem due to mercury released from coal combustion so that coal-fired power plants are being shutdown?  Or you want to build an office building, but you have to wait 5 years before starting as you work through endless environmental studies which keep requiring you to spend more and more on the building itself, not to mention the lawyers fees.

Then there is the shear weight of the taxes.  You are young and you do not expect Social Security to be around in 40 years when you might retire, but you are paying into it out of every paycheck, instead of putting that money into your own retirement investment fund.  Medicare costs will exceed its revenues in 2026 according to the ever-changing projections, so if that program is still going to be around, you will have to pay higher Medicare taxes soon.  Meanwhile, you may still be struggling to pay off the money you borrowed to go to college.  Thanks to all of that loan money available, the colleges built themselves up like spas for the rich, but the education you received was no better and maybe worse than the education people received 30 years earlier, but you paid much more for it.

Perhaps you are struggling to start a new business and the paperwork required by the governments and by your business customers is overwhelming, thanks to big government.  Meanwhile, you need to buy equipment so you can expand, but the county personal property tax penalizes you for having that equipment, making it harder for you to hire more people.  The more people you hire the more the governments expect you to act as an unpaid tax collector.  If you do business across state lines, you now have to worry about collecting sales taxes for each and every one of many thousands of taxing authorities even though you have no presence in their areas and no vote to determine the taxes or the politicians who decide to levy them.  Imagine the deluge of paperwork now coming your way.

When the governments do too much and forget the principle that their legitimate function is simply to protect everyone’s equal individual rights, then it is pitting the people against one another.  Good people are simply trying to protect themselves from the hurt that the government can do to them.  Immoral people are very happy to try to wrest control of government so they can take advantage of most of the people.  If you think there are not endless numbers of schemes or conspiracies to do just that in Washington, you are very naive indeed.  The evil-doers are some foundations, environmental groups, people who want welfare, labor unions, educators, scientists, professions that want restrictive licenses, and many businesses, not to mention many politicians.

It is absolute pie in the sky nonsense to think government should hurt some and violate the rights of some in order to help some greater number or the most needy.  Government will start with some plausible such proposal that almost everyone will agree with.  After it has established numerous such programs, the people will no longer have the time or will to think about them.  The government arguments for the next set of programs can be much less plausible now.  Soon it is a free-for-all.  Soon one has what we have now, government for special interests.  The people are bewildered and no longer in effective control.  Some simply trust to the authorities, but most Americans are now very jaded.  But, this is exactly what should have been expected when we allowed government to disregard a strict adherence to its legitimate role as the protector of every individual’s many and broad rights.  When we give this up as a critical and essential principle, we give up all hope for a just, fair, and harmonious society.

Post-Mortem Observations on the 2016 Election

Hillary Clinton is claiming that she lost the election because FBI Director Comey re-opened the investigation of her criminal e-mail activities days before the election.  In reality, her speculation and that of many others claiming a single reason for her loss, or for that matter a loss in any close presidential race, is simply silly.  It was a close contest and the loser was the loser for many, many reasons.  Yes, changing one or two choices the candidate made might have made the difference and brought victory instead of defeat.  But, almost always there are many choices any one of which might have changed the outcome of the election.

Broadly speaking, Hillary might have had a more positive attitude toward allowing businesses to grow, and she would have won the election.  In fact, she might well have won the election had she simply not been a threat to those who earn a living in whole or in part due to the coal industry and due to the fracking of oil and gas.  She very barely lost Pennsylvania with its 20 electoral votes and while she lost Ohio rather more decisively, it was still an obtainable state.  Hillary especially lost votes in western PA and in eastern and southern OH, relative to Obama's results.  See the US map on the front page of The Wall Street Journal of 10 November 2016, which color codes the degree of the Democrat vote loss relative to the 2012 election.  These are areas in which coal was long a mainstay to the economy and in which the recent booms due to oil and gas from fracking operations have produced an economic revival.

So, did Hillary lose the 38 electoral votes of OH and PA because she was threatening the fossil fuels and all the service providers of these areas?  Had she won those votes and still lost Michigan, she would have had 270 electoral college votes to Trump's 268 electoral votes, assuming his win in MI holds up.  Her completely bogus and irrational vendetta against these industries may well have cost her the election.  Irrational choices often have direful consequences. As hard as I have fought to argue against the false catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis and such additional bogus claims such as measurable harm from mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, Hillary's loss of the election due to her desire to destroy the fossil fuel industries is sweet indeed.

Of course, Obama had himself threatened the coal industry, but many people did not take that so seriously back then.  Whatever his predilections, they may have thought that Congress would keep him from destroying the industry.  As it happened, Obama used the regulatory agencies to do that destruction, so a Hillary following him and using the same strategies had to be taken as a more serious threat in this election. In addition, the growth of the oil and gas production in eastern and southern Ohio and in western Pennsylvania was remarkable in the four years straddling Obama's re-election, with the realization of the importance of fracking to the benefiting areas of OH and PA taking some time to occur to much of the population in those areas.  Try as hard as Obama's EPA did to find an excuse to attack the fracking practice, they had limited success in doing so, though pressure among the "environmental" Democrats continues to mount for doing so.  Some unnecessary and wrongheaded regulations based on the catastrophic man-made global warming fraud are in the pipeline now.

Some Democrats like to make a big deal about Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote by about 798,000 votes.  Of course the rules are that one has to win the electoral vote, which requires the candidates to try to appeal to people across the nation.  This requirement helps to minimize factions in politics, which we surely have more than enough of as it is.  It helps to keep candidates from just favoring those who live in high population density areas.  It helps to keep them from stomping on the interests of those who live in low cost of living areas too much.  In other words, it penalizes those who want to exterminate the industries that some people depend upon for a living if they do not live in those high population areas.  It means that if you promote a minimum wage of $15 an hour for the entire nation, you might incur a political cost for the concerns that many people living in low cost of living areas, almost always outside high population density areas, will have about losing their jobs or their businesses.  It even serves as a bit of protection against those who would discriminate against people based on their ethnicity, since ethnicity is not evenly distributed across the country or between low and high population density areas.

Hillary needs to grow up and realize that she lost the election according to its rules.  Of course, it is too late for her to ever grow up.  But others may still have that within their grasp.  The claim that those extra 798,000 votes mean much is diminished by a number of additional factors.  For one, the Democrats rack up a few hundred thousand illegal votes in presidential elections.  In addition, because the most populous state of California, which is heavily Democratic, had a Senate election in which both candidates on the ballot were very leftist Democrats, the Republicans of that state had much less incentive to go to the polls than did Democrats.  As a result, Trump did not get many votes in California that he would have had if a Republican had been allowed on the ballot in that Senate seat contest.  The Democrats of California have found an interesting way to diminish the meaning of the popular vote for the presidential elections.

It is interesting to note that Republicans in the elections for the House of Representatives received 3.1 million more votes than did the Democrats running for House seats.  The Republicans won 238 House seats to the Democrats 193 seats.  Republicans won 22 Senate seats (counting LA which is not technically decided until December) and the Democrats won only 12. Trump won 30 (counting MI) of the 50 state popular vote contests.  Even with a Republican presidential candidate who was not all that popular, the Republicans trounced the Democrats.  Nonetheless, such a beating can be reversed in the next election cycle if the Republicans do not keep enough of their promises, such as finally repealing ObamaCare and allowing the economy to grow.

Prof. Walter E. Williams on the State of American Blacks

Professor Walter E. Williams, George Mason University, asks these very challenging questions of those who believe in the politically correct viewpoint of the Progressive Elitist and of those who simply do not think about such issues:

"Is the reason the black family was far healthier in the late-1800s and 1900s  because back then there was far less racial discrimination and greater opportunities?  Or, did what experts call "legacy of slavery" wait several generations to victimize today's blacks?"

When I ask similar questions, I am very frequently called a racist, though I am merely making the inquiries any rational person with a minimal knowledge of history and a normal respect for the abilities of one's fellow man would.  Even Prof. Williams is presented with a problem on how to get readers to acquire sufficient knowledge that he can ask these questions without having them simply dismiss him and the remainder of his article.  He provides several paragraphs of relevant black history in America before he chances posing these questions.  Those of us with such viewpoints as Prof. Williams are very much aware of the ignorance of those who vehemently claim the state of American blacks is explained by the "legacy of slavery."

His article is one that very much needs to be read by most "educated Americans", who are most noteworthy for their university-programed ignorance.  Our universities almost never have the intellectual integrity and courage to ask the questions Prof. Williams asks in this article.  They are unwilling to demonstrate how absurd the politically correct viewpoint is in the light of history, whereas Prof. Williams is a man of admirable courage and integrity.
He also does his homework.  All you have to do is read and a wee bit of thinking.  Of course, you are also welcome to check up on his facts.

If he is wrong about his facts, I want to hear about it.  I would not bet that he is, given that the formidable Dr. Thomas Sowell has a very similar viewpoint.  And while this may mean nothing to the reader, so did the highly esteemed Virginia Baker of Norfolk, Virginia.

Freedom of Association and Anti-Gay Discrimination

As I have made it clear many times, I do not believe that homosexuality is in any way immoral.  Morality as it applies to homosexual acts is very similar to the application of morality to heterosexual acts in many important respects, though clearly it is differentiated by the absence of concern for the potential of responsibility for creating a baby.  I have supported gay domestic partnership contracts in their governmental form and noted that government really has no business addressing the spiritual aspects of marriage for anyone.  It should only grant domestic partnership contracts to consenting adults with no more concern for their sex or numbers than is appropriate for a business partnership contract. Adult individuals have the right to form the voluntary associations and contracts of their choice.

I have long been embarrassed by the stand of many Republicans for whom I have often voted on their stance on the issue of homosexual discrimination by government.  Government has absolutely no business discriminating against homosexuals or bisexuals or heterosexuals.  Government must support the rights of every individual to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of their personal happiness.  This does not allow exceptions for homosexuals, bisexuals, or heterosexuals or many other characteristics individuals have or choices that they make.  Of course, for every Republican who embarrasses me in this regard, there are many more destructive and immoral choices made by almost every Democrat Socialist Party candidate.  Political candidates are never entirely rational and moral.

I argued for an end to the Clinton Defense of Marriage Act and for the end of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.  I contributed to the Log Cabin Republican effort in accomplishing these tasks and praised their work.  I contributed to the Marylanders for Marriage Equality group when it was trying to promote the ballot initiative to equalize same-sex marriages in Maryland.  That campaign was successful, with about half of all Maryland Republicans voting for it.  Unfortunately, these groups are now turning to attempts to make it unlawful for businesses in the private sector to discriminate against gay people.  On this matter, I part ways with these groups, for reasons of general principle and because their effort actually undermines their own right to freedom of association in a very fundamental and harmful way.

I find it an immoral act for a business to refuse service to someone because they are homosexual or because a gay couple may be married. I prefer not to do business with such a business and I applaud others who would not do so also.  In doing so, I am discriminating in accordance with my values.  This personal choice and expression of my own values and moral code is not one that I have the right to impose on others by the initiated use of force.  It changes nothing morally if I join a majority of voters and elect politicians who will use the force wielded by government to accomplish this same goal of imposing my values and my morality on others.  They too have a right to choose their own values and their own moral code.  The fact that I disapprove of the choices some people make does not give me the right to marshal the force of government to suppress their choices of values and actions made in accordance with their moral values.

Good government cannot be achieved or evaluated without a rational reference to principle.  Legitimate government has one and only one purpose.  That purpose is to secure and protect the equal, sovereign rights of the individual to life, liberty, property, the ownership of one's own body, mind, and labor, and to the pursuit of one's own happiness.  Government cannot do this if it does not allow individuals the implied freedom of conscience and the freedom of association.  The individual in possession of his own mind establishes the principles and values of his conscience and he acts in his life upon those principles and values in forming associations with others.  Good government imposes very little in the way of morality on its citizens.  It only requires that they respect the equal rights of others by not initiating the use of force against others and by not defrauding them.

So if a person forms his moral principles and values in accordance with a Bible verse of the Old Testament such as Leviticus 20:13

Leviticus 20:13 If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood [shall be] upon them.

without regard for the primitive, brutal nature of the times and the need of a small tribe to procreate madly in the interest of survival, it is not the role of good government to instruct this person on morality or to take actions against his discrimination in putting his moral beliefs into action, so long as his actions do not involve the initiated use of force or fraud.  Government should not require that the believer in Leviticus 20:13 not have an aversion for gay sex, though it must draw the line in not allowing the believer in this brutal dictum to kill or use other violence against those who have voluntary gay sex as adults.  In general, good government will no more prescribe morality than it will prescribe speech or dictate who one will marry or befriend.  Individuals have the freedom to choose their values and the moral principles by which they will live.  They enjoy freedom of conscience and freedom of association by choice.

These are freedoms are as critically essential to gay individuals as they are to heterosexual individuals.  Indeed, when the general principles of individual rights are not respected by government, it is various small minorities who usually suffer the most.  Historically, this has been clearly the case for homosexual and bisexual individuals.

Gay marriage is most often sold as a matter of equality, but that is a weak argument.  The response of some conservatives and other religious people is that everyone has the equal opportunity to marry someone of the opposite sex, so equality is maintained.  Of course, the freedom to enjoy one's own mind and body and to pursue one's own happiness may not be served by the equal opportunity to marry someone of the opposite sex.  In the context of rights, only the even-handed behavior of government is mandated.  Government must not differentiate the availability of equal domestic partnership contracts.  A person of religious belief or otherwise in the private sector, however, need not regard a domestic contract as the equivalent of a requirement of respect for that partnership that he might grant to other partnerships approved by his religion.  The private individual retains all rights to discrimination outside of governmental actions.

But the same-sex marriage advocates seemed rarely to worry about making a fundamental argument based on individual rights.  Too few of them have thought in general principles of the legitimate function of government and its very limited purpose.  Support for same-sex marriage has been based on a popularity contest riding the crest of a recent fad.  The broad and necessary right of a gay individual to choose his own values, who he wants to associate intimately with, who he wants as a domestic partner, and who else he will discriminate against for these purposes, is apparently unknown to him, with few exceptions.  Part of the problem is that most gay people do not think in terms of general good political principles because that would be inconsistent with the fact that most are too closely associated with the Democrat Socialist Party.  It is very difficult to find a valid and strong argument for freedom of conscience and freedom of association from the perspective of a collectivist!  Those arguments derive their strength from individualism and the clear and certain recognition that individuals are complex and highly differentiated.  Every individual has the right to life and the right to pursue his own happiness.  The nature of our lives, of our bodies and minds, and the paths to our happiness are rich in their variety.

I am discussing these fundamental issues of individual freedom pertaining to gay individuals now because of the recent hullabaloo over the Arizona state Senate Bill 1062 which allowed business owners to make association choices based on their religious beliefs.  Now my objection to that bill is that it is defective in limiting the freedom of conscience to that subset of conscience deriving from religious beliefs.  This is a common error in American law.  In reality, the individual has a broad freedom of conscience and it is wrong for government to limit that freedom to only its religious expressions.  I do not believe that when one owns a business, one gives up one's basic freedoms.  If that were so, then every business owner in exercising his right to earn a living and to own property for the purpose of doing so, would be losing other fundamental and necessary rights.  Our rights are broadly owned by each of us and we are rightly and properly deprived of them only when we initiate the use of force against others.

If a businessman is deprived of the right to discriminate against others for some choices or actions they take, can he long expect that he will be allowed to fire an employee who does not perform his job well.  Will he soon be forced to buy goods and services for his business from inept suppliers because a supplier might be a brother-in-law of the governor or represent an industry that makes large campaign contributions?  Must he sell items or services to some people preferred by the government at lower cost than to others?  Will he be allowed to fire an employee or not do business with a supplier who lies to him?  Businessmen have every bit as much need to discriminate among people based on their values as those who are not businessmen. An employee of a business has the right to judge his employer and if he finds him wanting, he is free to leave employment.  The consumer is free to discriminate against a businessman and not buy the goods and services he offers for sale, unless the service falls under ObamaCare, if you go along with one important aberrant claim on how limited our rights are.  In reality, our individual rights are not narrow, as American law tends to mistakenly take them to be, but they are broad, generous, and rich.

Legitimate and good government recognizes this fact.  The presumption of good government is that the freedom of the individual is sovereign and inalienable.  Only extremely rational reasons, agreed upon by most everyone, can be used to limit individual rights.  It does not impose the moral preferences bare majorities or a favored faction on others.  It must allow the individual the freedom to use his own mind and to act upon his own view of reality with only the most necessary limitation that we all have the equal right to do that.  None of us has the right to initiate the use of force to limit the choices and actions of others and we do not gain that right by manipulating a government to do this for us.  The presumption of individual freedom must be very strong in the healthy, individualist society.

Does the gay person refused service by a business suffer a measure of harm?  Yes he does.  He is done an injustice.  But, if the government forces a business owner whose moral beliefs dictate that he should not serve the gay person to serve him, then the business owner has also suffered a harm.  There is no way violating the rights of one person to prevent a harm or an injustice to another can be worked to prevent harm and injustice.  That course of action simply guarantees more harm and more injustice.  We have to expect in life that some people are going to make moral choices others of us will not like.  We cannot treat someone as a slave to be ordered about just because we believe they have done an injustice and that their morality is not as good as ours is.  No, in a free society one simply seeks out other adults who are willing to associate with us.  This is so for much the same fundamental reason that we do not force someone to associate with us for the purposes of sex.  Voluntary consent is critical in a free society.

While the modern Progressive Elitist does not believe freedom of speech and of the press is a broad right anymore and often wishes to limit them based on harm or hurt feelings, these rights are very broad.  It has served us well to enjoy a broad right to speak and write our minds.  It has served our society well to allow people to choose their own values, formulate or adopt their own moral ideas, and to manage their own lives.  While freedom of conscience and freedom of association are not always given the broad protections they should be given, for the most part in the non-business private sector they are tolerated by our government.  They should be equally tolerated in the business sector.  Indeed, they should be given a very committed and strong protection in all of the private sector in America.  If they are, gay individuals will prosper and flourish more certainly than if they are not.

Democrat Party -- The Party of the Welcoming Big Pre-Tents

Jon Stewart and his crew at the Daily Show actually did some interesting journalism while at the Democratic National Convention (DNC).  See the segment he did on Tolerance here.  DNC delegates and attendees were interviewed and each said that the Democratic Party was the party of the big tent with room for everyone, until they were asked for exceptions.

One young white man at the DNC says that everyone is welcome, "Except unless you own a corporation, or if you’re a hunter, a gun owner, white males."  Yes, though he seemed to feel at home in the Party, he actually excluded white males, with no exceptions.

So let us examine how many Americans are unwelcome in the Democrat Party by his prescription:

• Corporation Owners:  Corporations are owned by their shareholders.  How many Americans own shares in corporations?  A study in 2005 reported that about half of all American households owned stock due to the growth of 401(k) retirement plans.  This is about 57 million households in America.  Of course, many university endowments and union pension funds are also heavily invested in stocks, so university faculty and staff and union members are all very dependent upon the institution they belong to making money on their stock ownership.  In addition, many churches have investments in stock, as do many charitable foundations.  Now even if we exclude all those who are dependent in some way on stock ownership and only count those who actually own a stock or an investment vehicle that owns a stock, the young man has excluded at least half of all Americans, including many millions of women.  In truth, he has just expressed a desire to ex-communicate many millions of women who actually are Democrats.
• Hunters and Gun Owners:  It is estimated that about 52 million households in America have at least one gun.  Gallup reported a poll in October 2011 that found that 47% of American households had a gun on their property.  55% of Republican households had a gun according to this poll, while a sharp recent increase brought the percentage of Democrat households with guns up to 40%.  The young man wants again to make many Democrats unwelcome in his party.  There may be additional bow hunters or trappers who do not own a gun, who are excluded, but I am sure the number is relatively small.
• White Males:  This is a small minority of voting eligible Americans.  According to the 2010 Census, males are 49.2% of the population.  The white population is 63.7% of the population, though the separately grouped Hispanic/Latino population of 16.3% includes many who also think of themselves as white.  If we take the more restrictive 63.7% as white and assume that 49.2% of them are male, then the white male population to be excluded from the Democrat Party is 31.3% of the population.  I expect the Republicans would not be too upset if that complete block of 31.3% of the population voted for them.

While there is very considerable overlap in these three excluded groups, it is also clear that the set of voters who fall into these three excluded groups is much more than half the voting population.  This is especially true since the voting turnout among whites is considerably higher than it is for Black Americans or for Hispanic/Latino Americans.

Virtually every other person interviewed mentioned that they excluded gun owners.  Many of them, who were mostly females, made disparaging remarks about males.  Comments about the owners of businesses were less common.  But even if the Democrat Party delegates were only to exclude gun owners and white males, the party would become a consistent out-of-power party.  The party that likes to claim inclusion and to be the Big Tent party, is really the party of Big Pretense.  In a punning mode, we might call them the party of the Big Pre-Tents.

In a discussion with my oldest daughter recently, I pointed out that it is becoming alarming that the population of college students is approaching 60% female.  I claimed that a good part of the reason for this is that males have been made to feel less than welcome by the education system.  She scoffed at this idea, saying that males just make poor students.  But in the context of the many male-negative comments made by the Democrat Party stalwarts and given the fact that educators are predominantly Democrats, it is entirely unlikely that male students are finding themselves in a welcoming environment when they are in the formal education system.  In the government-run and socialist union-dominated public schools through high school, they are in an unfriendly leftist environment.  Then those who do go off to college often drop out as they find the radical left wing beliefs there incompatible with their interests and with their understanding of the practical and real world.

The attitudes of the committed leftists in control of our education system on the education of American males, particularly white males, are certainly deleterious.  Males want to believe that they are the heroic protectors of women and children and this greatly motivates them to try to work and learn so that they can fill this role.  When the Democrat-dominated education system portrays them, especially white males, as brutes, unfeeling cads, and privileged evil-doing masters at every turn, this is destructive.  Many are fleeing the education battlefield for more peaceful and nurturing pastures where they are less often the victims of discrimination.

USDA Makes Heterosexism Ugly

Most of us did not know that heterosexism does not describe those who practice or advocate the desirability of heterosexuality.  No, according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Sec.Tom Vilsack, it means the belief that marriage can only be between one man and one woman.

I am trying to figure out where this idea comes from.  Does liberalism mean that only one man and one woman can enjoy the benefits of a liberal society?  Perhaps it does now, when liberalism seems to mean that one great socialist leader and his First Lady will rule the country and choose everyone's values and impose them on everyone using the force of government.  This was not the origin of the term liberalism, however.  Libertarianism still means that one favors liberty for all and conservatism still means one favors many traditional values, so most isms do not have a parallel to this new word heterosexism.

Why is it that sexism does not mean that one believes in the desirability of sex or that one enjoys sex?  No, in our strange new world, sexism means one is biased against those of one sex or another.  In this vane, one would think that heterosexism would mean that one was biased against heterosexual activities.  But no, heterosexists are according to the USDA advocates of heterosexuality.  This would be in keeping with the traditional use of words such as liberalism, socialism, conservatism, and libertarianism, rather than the screwy use of the word sexism.  But, the USDA says that heterosexism is not just in favor of heterosexuality, but that its essence is the denial of marriage to those who are not heterosexual.  I do not know why attitudes toward the marriage rights of others must be wrapped up in this term at all.  This is very strange.

But applying this rule to other words that ought to be of the same family, leads us to the conclusion that homosexism is the denial of marriage rights to those who are not of the same sex.  Bisexism is the denial of marriage rights to those who are heterosexual and to those who are homosexual.

The USDA is re-educating its employees against biases directed at those who are not heterosexual.  Of course, any government agency has no business being biased on the basis of sexuality in its hiring and promotions.  The USDA is going beyond this to attack certain ideas about marriage though.  Given that the U.S. Supreme Court has not yet ruled that states cannot discriminate in favor of heterosexuality in marriage, it seems a bit premature for the USDA to be framing those who oppose marriage rights for those who are not heterosexual as bigots.  Mind you, I think such people are bigots, but the government's courts and Congressional law have made no such determination.  The Obama administration is all in favor of discriminating against those who believe marriage should be reserved to one man and one woman, however.

Furthermore, the USDA does not make marriage laws, so it is pretty much irrelevant whether some of its employees believe marriage should be limited to one man and one woman.  Any effort to dictate that they cannot think this is an attack on the religious beliefs that many people hold and is as clearly wrong as would be USDA discrimination against the hiring of homosexuals or its attempt to re-educate them to become heterosexual once hired.

This USDA effort is in the context of a diversity and inclusion program.  It is being pushed forward by the Office of Personnel Management as a model for all of the other agencies of the federal government.  It will then be pushed upon the states and upon all government contractors.  In practice, such diversity training and incentives result in managers preferentially hiring and promoting two-fers.  They will be rewarded for hiring or
promoting lesbian women and homosexual Black men, while discriminating against heterosexual white males and even those who are only one-fers, such as heterosexual Black males or white females.  This leads to what ought to be seen as clearly unlawful and immoral discrimination.

To overcome the fact that this is such transparent wrongful behavior, it is useful to actually denigrate the word heterosexual.  It has to be converted into a put-down.  This has been done with white male as in "The Founders were just a bunch of white males, so their work was full of evil and discrimination.  Therefore we can dismiss the Constitution in its entirety, not to mention the Declaration of Independence."  The strangely defined word heterosexism helps to give the word heterosexuality a very negative connotation.  Defining heterosexism as evil and as a denial specifically of marriage rights helps to accomplish this important goal of the Progressive Elitists.

It will be interesting to observe in time if one sense of the meaning of Progressive Elitism becomes the belief that only Progressive Elitists are allowed to marry.  When that starts to happen, will most Americans see that as a new form of bigotry?  Or will they just accept the idea as a return to the aristocracy's natural rights such as they enjoyed in the Dark Ages and Medieval times?  After all, the Progressive Elitist believes most Americans are too stupid to choose their own values and to manage their own lives.  It is clear that they already think of themselves as the educated aristocracy who by right take care of the dumb and uneducated peasants, who should be treated just a little bit better than the pigs.  Maybe.  Many environmentalists and animal rights advocates among the Progressive Elitists believe most of the peasants should not be treated as well as the pigs or the snail darter.

As I have discussed many times, the government ought not to be in the marriage business.  If marriage is a spiritual union of two or more people, then it belongs in the private sector.  Government should only offer domestic partnership contracts and these should no more limit the partners than a small business contract does.  These domestic partnerships should be completely non-discriminatory, so long as the partners are only consenting adults.  See my prior discussions on the right to form domestic partnerships without government discrimination here, here, here, and here.  Marriage or domestic partnerships are surely relationships in which one should be completely free to exercise one's right to the freedom of association.

European Discrimination Against Mid-19th Century Slave Peoples

A favorite pastime of Europeans is to criticize the United States for its discrimination against black Americans or more recently for some complaints by Americans about illegal immigrants.  Our homegrown Progressives commonly view Europe, especially Western Europe, as the land of Nirvana.  They only wish our governments were as socially responsible as they believe the more socialist governments of Europe are.  As a result, Obama and his like have recently complained to the U.N. Human Rights Council about how horribly America still discriminates against black Americans and illegal immigrants. Obama's Justice Department recently filed a lawsuit against the state of Arizona for alleged discrimination against illegal immigrants and a complaint with the same U. N. Human Rights Council.

But the European Union has a major discrimination problem of its own.  The 4-10 Sep 2010 and the 18-24 Sep 2010 issues of The Economist discuss this problem.  It is the Roma, or Romanies, or Gypsies as they are variously called who it is thought migrated from Rajastan in India at about 1000 AD.  The Romanies were slaves in Romania until about the mid-19th Century.  Then in WWII, the Nazis uprooted them, took their possessions, and killed about 500,000 of them in concentration camps.  When the Soviets controlled Eastern Europe, they provided jobs, housing, and reduced the discrimination.

Now that the Eastern European countries are in the European Union, there are anti-discrimination laws, but they are largely unenforced.  They are commonly discriminated against in jobs.  In Slovakia, they are 10% of the population, but are 60% of the special needs school population.  Many are in the special needs schools to escape the bullying in the regular schools.  Boys are often put to work at an early age, cutting any schooling they get short.  Girls are often married off as teenagers.  The conditions of Roma settlements are often as bad as those of poor areas of Africa and India.  Their incomes, health, illiteracy, criminality, and life expectancy are worse than any other group in Europe.  Since the population of many European countries is shrinking and the Roma have large families, these problems will have a growing impact on Europe if they are not addressed.

Spain and Macedonia treat them better than many countries, while Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia treat them very poorly.  An MEP from Hungary called for the mass internment of the Roma.  Violent attacks are often made on them.  The entrance of the Eastern European countries into the EU with its freedom of movement rules has allowed some Romani to seek a better life in Western Europe.  However, the Western Europeans have become upset with the appearance of shanty towns, an increase in pickpocketing and begging by children, and an increase in rapes and fighting.  In Western Europe, Roma have been evicted forcibly in Greece, attacked by mobs in Belfast, Ireland, and firebombed in Italy.  The Italian government began deporting them.  The French government has deported 8,000 Romani this year, sending them back to Romania and Bulgaria.  In fact, French police were ordered to clear 300 camps, with priority being given to removing the Roma camps.  When the European Commission complained to Nicolas Sarkozy, he suggested that Luxembourg, where the EU's justice commission resides, should provide the displaced Romanies a home.

The population of Roma in a number of countries in Europe:

Romania, 1,850,000
Bulgaria, 750,000
Spain, 725,000
Hungary, 700,000
Slovakia, 500,000
France, 400,000
Czech Republic, 300,000
Great Britain, 265,000
Macedonia, 198,000
Italy, 145,000
Albania, 115,000
Moldova, 108,000
Germany, 105,000
Kosovo, 38,000
Croatia, 35,000
Montenegro, 20,000
Slovenia, 9,000

There is one country, according to The Economist, where the Romani are treated just like other immigrants and those immigrants are treated pretty well.  Of course, those of you who are not Progressives know the answer immediately.  The country that has welcomed them and allowed them to make a much better life for themselves is the United States of America.  Yes, that same country Obama and the Progressives so love to denigrate.

Arizona Community Colleges Sued for Asking to See Green Cards

We hear that the Obama administration has been promoting more vigorous crackdowns on employers who hire illegal immigrants.  One might expect that employers would want to respond to that by checking on prospective employees more carefully before hiring them.  Now when I hire someone, I have to see and copy at least two forms of identification for each hire and register them with the New Hire Registry within 10 days of their first day of work.  In every case, my employees have provided a driver's license and a social security card, though other documents can be accepted.  Now, as we have all read, there is a large market supplying illegal immigrants with driver's licenses and social security cards.  It would seem logical that an employer, not being an expert in detecting counterfeit documents, might ask a non-citizen he might wish to employ for a green card.

Big mistake.  The Maricopa Community Colleges in the Phoenix area are being sued by the Obama Justice Dept. for asking non-citizen hires to show their green cards.  The Justice Dept. says that requiring any document beyond those required of citizens is discriminatory.  The government is asking a judge of the Executive Office for Immigration Review in the Justice Dept. to order the Maricopa colleges to pay a civil penalty of $1,100 for each of 247 non-citizen job applicants who were required to provide additional documents.  The county taxpayers probably do not have anything more important to use their income for than to replace the lost $271,700 of education money in their community colleges during this government-induced and prolonged recession!

Government-induced recessions cause high unemployment rates.  The government believes that equality of outcome is the way to judge whether discrimination has occurred.  Since the Bureau of Labor Statistics report of 6 August 2010 for the unemployment rates in July tell us that the government-induced recession has caused 8.7% of white people to be unemployed and 16.6% of black Americans to be unemployed, the government is guilty of mass discrimination by putting so many more black Americans out of work than white Americans.   If black Americans had the same unemployment rate as white Americans, there would be 1,431,000 fewer unemployed black Americans.  Since putting someone out of a job is surely at least 100 times worse than asking them to provide a green card, the government should be fined about $110,000 per extra black American they have put out of a job.  This yields a total "fine" of $157.41 billion.  Now the only effective way to fine the government is to force it to reduce taxes.  So its penalty for discriminating against black Americans by inducing this recession should be a tax reduction of $157.41 billion.  There should be additional fines for the Latino unemployment excess and for all the business losses that have occurred as well!

But of course the government lives by a very different set of rules than it imposes on the People it rules.  You will not see the Justice Dept. suing the government for such a tax break due to its truly discriminatory practices, given its false definition of discrimination.  That very false idea of discrimination is also behind the absurd report to the United Nations Council on Human Rights that claims that a state of the United States, Arizona, is violating the human rights of Americans.  We the People are ruled by an absurd government, which with its many violations of our Constitution and our equal, sovereign individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness has established itself as an illegitimate government, as defined in our Declaration of Independence.

U.S. State Dept. Tells U.N. We Are Guilty of Many, Many Human Rights Violations

In an early move to placate the international community, Obama had the U.S. join the U.N. Human Rights Council.  The current member nations of this august body of human rights exemplars include:

Angola
Egypt
Nigeria
South Africa
Zambia
China
Kyrgyzstan
Pakistan
Saudi Arabia
Russian Federation
Argentina
Bolivia
Cuba

The U.S. just delivered a 29-page report to the Human Rights Council in which the State Department said that some Americans were still victims of discrimination.  In particular, blacks, Latinos, Muslims, South Asians, Native Americans, and gays are victims of high unemployment, hate crimes, poverty, poor housing, lack of access to health care, and discriminatory hiring practices.

The report welcomed "observations and recommendations that can help us on that road to a more perfect union."  The American Civil Liberties Union approved of the Obama administration's submission to the U.N. Human Rights Council, but decried the fact it did not address the issues of "inhumane prison conditions, racial disparities in death penalty cases, and abuses in the immigration system."  The director of the ACLU's human rights program said, "It is time for the U.S. to match its human rights rhetoric with concrete domestic policies and actions and create a human rights culture and infrastructure that promote American values of equality and justice for all."

OK, you have been wondering when I was finally going to step in here and punch this Progressive viewpoint in its sniveling nose.  Did you notice that human rights are always referred to by statists and not individual rights?  They ought to be the same thing, but somehow they never are.  Human rights are always take to include the obligation of some individuals to serve others, usually in some collective group.  So, to be clear and differentiate my viewpoint from the Progressive idea of human rights, I will address these issues on the basis of our individual rights.

Individuals have the right to freedom of association and they have the right to discriminate.  They are not required to choose who they associate with or how they discriminate on a rational basis.  What is more, government would hardly be the agent anyone rational would turn to for the purpose of determining who each individual shall associate with and to dictate to each individual how they should discriminate.  These issues are much too complex for government, which is incredibly simple-minded and totally lacks the knowledge of how each American individual is differentiated and what their values are.  Individuality and those differing values require individuals to discriminate among those with whom they will choose to associate.  What is more, we should have learned long ago that no good comes of individuals forfeiting their own independent judgment to government beyond those basic protections which government provides by preventing itself and individuals from initiating the use of force against one another. 

If I were to refuse to hire any black Adventist person, let us say, that is within my rights, as long as mine is a private company.  The government, on the other hand, cannot refuse to hire Adventist blacks.  Why?  First, because government must treat every individual equally before the law.  Second, government is the only agent in our society allowed to use force against individuals.  That use of force must be tightly controlled to prevent its abusive use.  One of the most important controls is that it must be applied equally to all citizens, so that the majority of citizens will be inclined to feel the need to protect those who have become the victims of government discrimination on the basis of race, religion, peaceful creed, employer or employee, income, or property.  It is government that proves to be the monolithic rights violator because it has a monopoly on the use of force in a society.  Therefore, legitimate government, as defined in our Declaration of Independence, has the sole function of protecting the equal, sovereign rights of every individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

That being the case, it is very irrational that this report did not bemoan the fact that the government discriminates against people who are more productive and those who earn more income.  When the ACLU calls upon the American values of equality and justice, where is their outcry against the progressive income tax code?  Or, where is the acknowledgment by the government that it has no right to discriminate against hiring white males for government positions.  Where is the acknowledgment that government cannot claim to treat Americans equally and with justice when it discriminates against firms owned by white males when it lets contracts for goods and services?  Where is there condemnation of the fact that employers are forced to keep employee income and tax records and submit reports to governments without just compensation?

While these awful infractions of unequal and unjust discrimination by the U.S. government go unmentioned, the ACLU bemoans the conditions of prisoners, who are treated better here than almost anywhere in the world.  And what are the immigration abuses they are talking about?  Apparently, our policy is only to deport people who are felons, while illegal border crossings and misdemeanors are ignored.  Where is the abuse in that?  When we provide most government services and force many private companies to provide free charity work to illegal immigrants, it is a puzzle to me that we can be said to be abusive.

It may be true that more blacks receive the death penalty, but that may be less because they are black than because of a combination of the nature of the crimes and their likely being poorer and less able to obtain the services of the better lawyers.

We shall have to wait with bated breath for the constructive comments to come from Cuba, China, the Russian Federation, Zambia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan on how the U.S. might achieve an admirable human rights record.  Do you suppose any of them will do what the ACLU failed to do?  Will they point out that the primary abuses of human rights in the U.S. are due to our government's failure to govern in accordance with our own Declaration of Independence and our Constitution?  Will they point out that our progressive income tax system is a violation of every individual's equal rights to life, the pursuit of happiness, and property?  Do you suppose they will demand that the U.S. government stop its baleful discrimination against the white male minority or the employer minority?

Levy: The Moral and Constitutional Case for a Right to Gay Marriage

Robert A. Levy is the chairman of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C.  He recently played a major role in strengthening the Second Amendment to the Constitution in the case of Washington, D.C. vs. Heller.  He recently wrote an article appearing in the New York Daily News on 7 January 2010 on the right to gay marriage called The Moral and Constitutional Case for a Right to Gay Marriage.  It is an excellent article, consistent with my oft-stated belief that we would be better served by getting government out of marriages, which I believe are a spiritual union of partners.  The government should only be offering an important legal contract for domestic partnerships, somewhat akin to a small business partnership.  The spiritual aspect of such a domestic partnership, the marriage aspect, is not something government can or should attempt to address.

Levy points out that New Hampshire and Washington, D.C. have just joined Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, and Vermont in legalizing gay marriage after disappointing defeats in California, Maine, and New York.  Levy says:

The primary purpose of government is to safeguard individual rights and prevent some persons from harming others. Heterosexuals should not be treated preferentially when the state carries out that role. And no one is harmed by the union of two consenting gay people.

For most of Western history, marriage was a matter of private contract between the betrothed parties and perhaps their families. Following that tradition, marriage today should be a private arrangement, requiring minimal or no state intervention. Some religious or secular institutions would recognize gay marriages; others would not; still others would call them domestic partnerships or assign another label. Join whichever group you wish. The rights and responsibilities of partners would be governed by personally tailored contracts — consensual bargains like those that control most other interactions in a free society.

Levy notes that more than 1,000 federal laws dealing mostly with taxes and transfer payments have provisions for married people.  The states have many more laws with provisions for married people.  But Levy says:

Whenever government imposes obligations or dispenses benefits, it may not "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." That provision is explicit in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, applicable to the states, and implicit in the Fifth Amendment, applicable to the federal government.

Levy also observes that:

No compelling reason has been proffered for sanctioning heterosexual but not homosexual marriages. Nor is a ban on gay marriage a close fit for attaining the goals cited by proponents of such bans. If the goal, for example, is to strengthen the institution of marriage, a more effective step might be to bar no-fault divorce and premarital cohabitation. If the goal is to ensure procreation, then infertile and aged couples should be precluded from marriage.

More and more people are unable to find any substantial merit to the claim that gay domestic partnerships weaken or threaten heterosexual marriages.  As Levy notes, nearly 60% of Fortune 500 companies offer employee benefits to domestic partners.  The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has also voted to apply employee benefits to the gay partners of federal employees.  The clock is running out on this cruel act of discrimination.

Obama Calls for Equal Pay for Women

Senator Barack Obama and his running mate Senator Joe Biden are calling upon the Republicans to back legislation requiring equal pay for equal work, which is supposedly to result in women making as much money as men do on average.

Interestingly, since Obama has a huge Senate office staff and both Sens. Biden and McCain have large Senate office staffs, we can check up on what each of these Senators is providing on average in pay to the men and the women working for them. This has been done at L'Ombre de l'Olivier.

Senator Obama has 27 male and 30 female staff employees and he pays the women an average of 80.0% what he pays the men. This is very close to the percent discrepancy commonly claimed to exist in the general workforce by many of the studies most often cited in the MSM. More careful studies with appropriate corrections for education, time in position, shifts worked, hours worked, etc. show that the differences are actually much smaller. But let us judge these socialists by their own criteria.

Senator Biden pays his 15 male employees very well, but also pays his 25 female employees more than does Obama. However, he pays his female employees only 65.7% what he pays his male employees.

Senator McCain has 17 male and 25 female employees. He pays his female employees 105.1% of what he pays his male employees. Apparently, an Equal Pay for Equal Work Law would require him to reduce the pay of his female employees.

Admittedly, in the above analysis, it is implicitly assumed that with such substantial numbers of employees, these politicians have been as likely to hire women as men for the more responsible and skilled positions on their staffs. Perhaps McCain pays his female employees slightly more on average because more of them are in the more responsible and skilled positions. Perhaps Obama and, even more so, Biden are reluctant to hire women for these higher level positions. But, whichever version is the case, these two Democrat Senators are not living in a manner consistent with their talk. One way or the other, or both, they are discriminating against women. There is clearly a great deal of hypocrisy being exercised by these two Democrat candidates.

Sometimes those who most think a particular piece of legislation is needed are those who examine their own actions and thoughts and find that they will not do the right thing unless they are forced to do so. This results in a love for using force with government as the agent and a considerable victimization of many good people who do not need to be forced to do the right thing.

Thanks to Robert Bidinotto for pointing out the above link.

The Right to Offer Employment Without Enslavement

As an adult with full possession of his senses, I have the right to choose to devote hours of my life to productive work. No one has the right to deny me that choice or to prevent me from doing productive work. Others have this same right. Furthermore, we have the right to work with one another to carry out tasks which we have agreed to perform together. No one has the right to deny us this cooperation. For them to do so is a significant violation of each of our individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of our happiness.

Now suppose that of the several people working cooperatively to accomplish the tasks they have chosen to work on have come to terms in this cooperation which take into account that one or more have invested many more previous hours of work and provided capital in order to make it possible for others of the group of cooperating individuals to have the job that they have chosen to take. Commonly the individual or group of individuals who invested prior hours of work and capital to make other jobs possible are the owners of a business. One would think that their efforts to create other jobs which did not require years of work with low income so that every possible penny could be re-invested in the business and who mortgaged their home and used a substantial part of their prior life savings to start a business and guide it through the first 5 to 10 years when most businesses fail, would be considered something of a good guy.

But no. Such a person is regarded with great suspicion by government. Governments at all levels are inclined to believe that this employer must be watched with an eagle eye and closely regulated. Regulation means that he will commonly be told that he must do this and he must do that or the full force of government wielded violence will fall upon his head. So, he must keep books which may require the investment of many, many more hours each year than the needs of his business actually require. He must collect payroll taxes from his employees and keep records on them and submit forms on the process to the governments. Each quarter of the year he may be required to submit state unemployment insurance fund payments with filled out forms to the state government, even in those quarters where virtually every worker has exceeded the $8500 limit on which the tax is collected. The time to fill out the form may be 30 or 40 minutes and the payment may be less than $10. The state government is not bothered by this in the least. After all, they did not have to pay the employer for his time. Indeed, the employer is never regarded as an actual individual having a finite number of hours in his life. This employer apparently has no right to believe that he has a right to these hours of his life at all. The state, local, and federal governments are all very sure that they can require an employer to turn over many tens of hours of his life every year to them.

Slavery has always been present throughout all of recorded history. Slavery is not just the case of putting chains on a man and then telling him that he must do this and that or you will whip him. In fact, the slave will do better work if the chains are not present. The slave master may find it more effective to tell the slave to do this and that and keep me happy or I will kill your wife and children. Or, in the modern age, he (or a large gang of slave masters) may instead say, you have invested years in earning a house and saving money or in building a business. How wonderful, because this means that we can force you to do our bidding with the threat that we will take your house away from you, we will take your savings, or we will take the capital of your business away. This has great advantages, because this gang of slave masters now does not have to look so brutal as they would standing there with the blood of your wife or children dripping from their hands. Now they have merely to take money and property, which is so much cleaner. But does not taking this money and property mean that they are taking the hours of the employers life used to make the money and acquire the property? Is this not a clear violation of his right to life and certainly of his right to pursue his happiness? Is this slightly higher level of abstraction really too much for most Americans and others to comprehend? Apparently it is. Or do they understand, but they really do not believe that a man has the right to life and the pursuit of happiness?

Once upon a time, Americans thought that the individual right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was something every man had a right to fight for whenever anyone used force to deprive him of these rights. Americans fought King George III and the English Parliament in the name of this right, but apparently any American today who is an employer is especially deprived of these individual rights. Yes, everyone is substantially deprived of them and everyone is substantially enslaved by requirements imposed with the threat of force upon many of the hours of his life. But, no one is so heavily enslaved as the damned employers.

So, what is the most recent imposition upon my time? The 2007 Survey of Business Owners and Self-Employed Persons, which Title 13, United States Code, requires businesses and other organizations that receive this questionnaire to answer the questions and return the report to the U. S. Census Bureau. The form requires information on the business and on the four principal owners of the business.

So what information is so critical that the government feels justified in taking 30 minutes of my time? Is the business owned by another company, employee owned, is it a cooperative, owned by an estate or trust, an American Indian tribal entity, a non-profit, publically held, did any individual own 10% or more of it, is it jointly owned by a husband and wife, did two or more members of the same family own the majority of the business, how many owners are there, and give the % ownership by the top four owners.

Owner: How was ownership acquired? When was ownership acquired? What functions does owner perform? How many hours does owner work a week? [60 or more is regarded as an adequate upper limit! Government workers have no idea.] Was business the primary source of income? Prior to this business, was owner ever self-employed? [Yes, I cut lawns as a kid.] What was the highest education level? Is owner male or female? What age is owner? Was owner born in US? Is Owner Hispanic, if so what type? Is owner White, Black, American Indian, Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, other Asian, Native Hawaiian, Guamanian or Chamorro, Samoan, other Pacific Islander, or some other race? [Other, human.] Is he a veteran? Is he a disabled veteran?

Business: What year was the business established? What sources of capital were used to start the business? [No government grants, loans, or insured loans, that's for sure. I did not meet the racial and gender requirements.] What was the total amount of capital used to start the business? Did business operate from home? Operate as a franchise? Did franchiser own more than 50%? What sources were used to finance expansion and capital equipment in 2007? How much of sales was from export in 2007? Did business establish operations outside US in 2007? Did business outsource functions outside US? What languages was business conducted in? What types of workers were used? What benefits were supplied? Do you have a website? Have e-commerce sales? Make on-line purchases? What are business hours? Is business currently operating?

Congress does not even read the bills they pass. What are the chances that they will study this data to learn anything about business from it? Actually, the fixation on such issues as the race of the owners suggests that they have no interest in understanding business. They simply want to have justifications for continuing to discriminate against those businesses owned by white males. They also want information on the extent of outsourcing overseas so they can monkey with businesses on that prime issue for demagogues, read most politicians.

I really am tired of being a slave to governments. Is there something wrong with me because I feel that way? Don't be shy you lovers of government expansion. Justify my slavery. Tell me why I should embrace it as a rational man. Ease my pain by giving me understanding. If you cannot do so, then share my pain enough that you will start taking action to reduce my enslavement. Don't continue being a slave master yourself. Surely you do not believe in slavery? Surely you find yourself appalled at what you have wrought? Free the slaves!

A World with Many Fewer Women

Mark Steyn published a commentary in the Washington Times today about discrimination against women. He starts by discussing the claims of some that Hillary Clinton is losing the Democratic nomination as their Presidential candidate to a relative unknown with little experience because she is a woman. The best part of this discussion is how light-weight he describes Obama to be:

How else to explain why their gal got clobbered by a pretty boy with a resume you could print on the back of his driver's license, a Rolodex apparently limited to neo-segregationist racebaiters, campus Marxist terrorists and indicted fraudsters, and a rhetorical surefootedness that makes Dan Quayle look like Socrates. "On this Memorial Day," said Barack Obama last Monday, "as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes - and I see many of them in the audience here today."

Hey, why not? In Obama's Cook County, Ill., many fallen heroes from the Spanish-American War still show up in the voting booths come November. It's not unreasonable for some of them to turn up at an Obama campaign rally, too.

Then he notes that old-time sexism is common in much of the world. He relates some statistics about how people in many cultures are choosing to have male babies, while aborting female fetuses. In India there are 1000 boys for every 900 girls nationally. In some Punjabi cities there are only 300 girls for every 1000 boys. In China, the one child per couple requirement has couples also choosing boys over girls. The result is that the first generation born under this policy has 119 males for every 100 girls. One supposes that as couples can increasingly afford abortions, this ratio of males to females will grow.

Europe and Canada are dependent upon immigration not to lose population. Indian women in England and Wales gave birth to 114 boys for every 100 girls between 2000 and 2005. Indians, Chinese, and Koreans living in America have 1.05 boys to every girl for the first child, 1.17 boys to every girl for the 2nd child if the first was a girl, and 1.51 to 1.00 for the third child if the first two children were girls! It looks as though a lot of Asian-Americans will have to use their relative wealth to import wives from their homelands if they wish to marry within their ethnic group. India and China had better continue their economic growth at a high rate, so their young men will be able to import wives from other parts of the world. It is not clear that these societies are open to allowing their men to marry women from other cultures, however. The only other solution would be an inversion of the old practice of one man having several wives.

Steyn assumes that this female feticide will lead to a return to a kind of patriarchy. Perhaps it will mean the men will have the majority of votes in some democratic societies, but the very important law of supply and demand will operate here. As societies become too rich in males, the perceived value of the rarer females will increase. This first wave of very high preference for male children will be moderated. Young men will be desperate to acquire desirable and even just acceptable wives. These wives will be able to name their price and with many societies starting to modernize, they will more and more be able to choose a husband and hold the power of divorce to ensure that their man will treat them with honor and respect, not to mention giving them considerable power over spending family money. This will likely transform some of these traditionally very patriarchial societies.

Early America had a huge imbalance of excess males to females. This empowered women in America compared to their situation in old Europe at the time. In time, that gender imbalance became much less in the East than it was in the West. In 1869, the Wyoming Territory constitution allowed women to vote and to hold public office. In 1870, the Utah Territory allowed full suffrage to women. In 1893, Colorado approved female suffrage. By 1912, Idaho, Washington, California, Michigan, Kansas, Oregon, and Arizona gave women the vote. There is a pattern here. Western states, which suffered from too few women, valued women enough to give them a vote before the Eastern states did. This is evidence of the ubiquity of the Law of Supply and Demand.

It will be very interesting to see how the shortage of women among Indians and the Chinese plays out.