The Critical Factor in American Politics: Who Owns Your Body and Mind?

The critical question whose answer determines the balance of power in American politics today is: Who owns your body and mind?

There are three answers to this question which are given by significant numbers of Americans.  They are:

1) I own my own body and mind.

2) God owns my body and mind.

3) The collective, effectively the government, owns my body and mind.

The idea that an individual owned their own body and mind was essentially a cornerstone idea of the Enlightenment and one which played a critical role in the thinking of the minds of the Founders of the United States of America and the Framers of the Constitution.  The purpose of government was to protect the individual rights of  the people.  Only if an individual owned their own mind and body did such an idea make sense.  Only then could a person have a sovereign right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of his own happiness.

Yes, some of them thought that God also owned their minds and bodies, but that even then an individual had a right to acknowledge that or to deny that ownership.  The individual, in their minds, could either freely give themselves to God or they could sin.  They believed in free will.

Some who believed that God owned their minds and bodies believed the state must help God assert this ownership.  Many a nation had established a religion and was all too committed to using government power to force others to make value choices these people believed God wanted them to make.  In America, the early Pilgrims were such an example.  Later many Calvinists in New England had similar ideas.  The colony of Virginia had an established religion, The Church of England, which was funded by the colonial government.  In addition to establishing churches, the colonies frequently codified many of their religious beliefs into laws.  By the time of the American Revolution and in the decade that followed, many of the thinking Americans came to the conclusion that government should not play this role of trying to force people to act within the confines of religious beliefs.  The need for a broader freedom of conscience was becoming widely recognized by thinking Americans.

The idea that the collective owned one's mind and body has been around probably as long as people have associated in bands or tribes.  Medieval European city and nation states used this idea to build hierarchical societies in which the serf served the local aristocratic lord and that lord served the King.  The King pretended to serve God, built and protected the state, and pretended to be the caretaker for the poor, dumb serfs.  The serfs were to devote their lives to the nation, the King, and God. 

The socialists extended this ancient idea to the state alone with no particular pretense that they depended upon God's authority to take control of the masses of the people.  As socialists became more and more common, thanks largely to government controlled education, the demands of the state based on collectivist ownership increased.  The Prussian government began such an expansion of the state based on socialist ideas of collective ownership of the people's minds and bodies.  It provided schools, medical care, and retirement benefits to the people in exchange for fairly complete control of their lives.  The Marxists advanced their version of such claims, as did the fascists and the National Socialist German Workers Party.  The Progressives in America borrowed the idea of the socialist government-run state schools, heavy regulation of productive labor, control of medical care and retirement benefits, and have created their own socialist variant.

As I have noted many times, ObamaCare is based on the assertion that the collective owns every individual's body and mind.  There can be no other basis for a governmental demand that each American must care for the maintenance of his or her mind and body in accordance with rules established by the government.  The government is claiming the right to have its property maintained.  It is telling Americans what medical care they must pay for coverage on in their insurance whether any particular individual has any need for that coverage or not.  The government is doing this very explicitly on a collectivist basis.  Someone needs that coverage and therefore every individual will pay for it.  This requirement is so important to the government that ObamaCare will actually cause many millions of individuals to lose the insurance they have and were happy with.  After all, there is nothing so important to the socialist as the principle of collective ownership and its assertion.  This is not actually being done for the sake of the welfare of each American individual.  No, it is being done to create a strengthened mandate that every individual's mind and body belongs to the government.

Of course this idea was asserted already in many other laws.  For instance, Progressive governments have long asserted that almost any activity that earns income or salary comes under its powers of regulation, control, and taxation.  American governments also believe they have the right to dictate minimum wages, which means they assert that they have the right to prevent individuals from earning a living at all.  Progressive governments have long levied taxes on an individual's pay from their own labor.  These are very blatant claims that an individual's labor belongs to the government.  Now what is your labor but one of the most critical ways you use your mind and body to support and maintain your own life.  Yet, these same governments pretend they are not violating anyone's right to life.  Controlling and taxing your labor is effectively a claim of ownership of your mind and body.

The balance of power in America today is the result of a two-party system in which one party, the Democratic Party, is wholly of the belief that every individual's mind and body belongs to the collective, or effectively to the government.  The other party, the Republican party, is more disparate in its parts.  It is composed of three major factions, which either hold that:

1) An individual's body is only self-owned.

2) One nominally owns one's own body and mind, but ought to give them to God of one's free will.

3) God owns everyone's body and mind, but God is too weak or lazy to force everyone Himself to obey his will and acknowledge his ownership, so the government must perform this task of forcing obedience for Him.

As far as the use of government power through its monopoly on the use of force is concerned, there is little friction and little difference between Factions 1 and 2.  The consequences on the use of force by government of Faction 3, however, are profound.  The most critical and common issues affected are government policies with respect to sex and procreation.  The portions of our society most directly affected are women and those who are lesbians, gay, bisexual, or transgender.  Many American women and LGBTs find the use of force by Faction 3 of the Republican Party to be extremely threatening.  More often than not, these groups find this threat more frightening than the broader and more equally applied, by gender and sexuality at least, threats to self-ownership of the Democratic Party.

I am fully in agreement that the use of government by Faction 3 for its purposes is highly immoral and highly irrational.  It is threatening.  But, I see the claim of collective ownership by the Democrat Party as even worse.

First, the collectivist agenda of the Progressives, in full control of the Democratic Party, has been very successful in getting the government to control our daily lives in many ways.  It dictates what values we are free to pursue and it takes many hours of our time and effort from each of us by force.  The amount of our labor it commands has steadily increased, but for secondary fluctuations such as major wars.

Second, more and more Americans, especially younger Americans, find the claims of Faction 3 to be wrongheaded, even as many of them embrace the idea of collective ownership of our minds and bodies.  Faction 3 has poor prospects of controlling the government to do its will on a national level, because many Republicans oppose them, as do all of the Democrats.  Only a very few states are so dominated by Faction 3 that there is a practical likelihood of their enacting their program.  At the national level, even when the Republicans controlled the House, the Senate, and the presidency, this faction was never able to accomplish much of anything toward their agenda.

Third, the range of those aspects of human life claimed as the purview of government control by force is much larger on the part of the Progressive collectivist agenda of Democrat Party.  It applies to everyone and to almost anything we do.  It is without any real boundaries at all.

Most Americans say they want smaller government, yet the dominion of government keeps growing.  The Republican Party is clearly the party of at least less massive government, though it is not really the party of smaller government as it ought to be.  Yet most Americans favor the Democratic Party in Generic Congressional Polls.  The reason is primarily due to the fear of many women and almost all LGBTs of the agenda of Faction 3 of the Republican Party.  If this agenda were to be put into effect, that fear would be well-justified, but it has almost no chance of being put into effect.  Yet because so many women and LGBTs vote for the Democratic Party out of this exaggerated fear, the less massive Republican Party is unable to attain enough offices to prevent the Progressive collectivist attack upon our individual rights which has been very successful in many ways.

At this time, the biggest issue of government is the repeal of ObamaCare with its takeover of 16 to 18% of the US economy, its many harmful effects on medical care and its cost to individuals, and its blatant claim of government ownership of our bodies and minds.  Most Americans recognize that ObamaCare is a massively troublesome program, even if most underestimate its harms.  Yet, we have seen anti-ObamaCare candidates for the Senate defeated by Democrat collectivists who favored ObamaCare and the rest of the Progressive collectivist agenda because women, young people, and LGBTs found the ideas of Faction 3 Republicans abhorrent.  And even though Ken Cuccinelli, a Republican candidate for Governor in Virginia, has vowed that he will not try as Governor to implement his previous Faction 3 agenda as required by his support from the Tea Party, he is likely to lose that election to a highly corrupt collectivist, Terry McAuliffe.

There are many who believe that the Tea Party is a movement of Faction 3 Republican types.  It is not so.  It is primarily people more aligned with Factions 1 and 2.  There are also a few Faction 3 types who have agreed that the threat of the Progressive collectivist agenda has become so great in America that they will give up trying to codify their religious beliefs in the law at least until the collectivist threat is defeated.  Ken Cuccinelli is a man who has made this pledge.  He has fought ObamaCare with more determination and effect than almost any politician.  He is strong in his support that we each own our own labor and should be free to cooperate with others to our mutual benefit in the private sector.  He understands that government should be smaller.  It should be dictating fewer of our values to us and less involved in our lives.  He is a strong Tea Party promoter and candidate who has agreed to live by the rules of the Tea Party to leave his religious beliefs in the private sector and not use the force of government to promote them.

It is a serious mistake to allow the Progressive collectivist Terry McAuliffe to become governor of Virginia.  His strong support of ObamaCare and all things collectivist will do serious harm to the people of the state of Virginia.  If you value your rights and you are voting in this election, it is a serious mistake to vote for McAuliffe or even to vote for the Libertarian candidate.  The Democrat will bring nothing but evil accomplices into the state government, while Ken Cuccinelli will bring in many Faction 1 and Faction 2 Republicans instead.  This will be very good for the people of the state of Virginia.

Allow Same-Sex Marriages as a Basic Individual Right

For centuries, most people of the Judeo-Christian tradition have believed that God frowns upon people of the same sex having sexual relationships.  Indeed, for centuries they often thought God demanded that they execute, often very gruesomely, men thought to be having sex with men.  This vision of morality has been transformed for the better, but translated into governments only recognizing opposite sex marriages.  In recent times, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ontario, British Columbia, Quebec, and then Massachusetts came to recognize same-sex marriages.  Today in the United States, the District of Columbia, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont recognize same-sex marriages.  In addition, California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin offer either civil unions or domestic partnerships to same-sex couples.  Forty-one states forbid same-sex marriages, including North Carolina which just passed a ban by referendum earlier this year.

The referendum ban of same-sex marriage in California was challenged in federal court and was declared unconstitutional.  This ruling is under appeal and is still working its way through the federal court system.  Washington passed a law authorizing same-sex marriage and Gov. Chris Gregoire signed it earlier this year.  The Maryland legislature also authorized same-sex marriage this year and Gov. Martin O'Malley has signed it into law.  But, referendums to ban same-sex marriage in Washington and Maryland will be on the ballot in November.  Maine, which presently bans same-sex marriages, has a referendum on the November ballot to allow them.  Minnesota, which presently bans same-sex marriage by statute, has a referendum on the November ballot to additionally forbid same-sex marriage in their state constitution.

How does one rationally analyze the role of governments with respect to marriage and with respect to same-sex marriages in particular?  We have to decide what marriage really is and why government has necessary and legitimate functions with respect to marriage.  In the oldest Judeo tradition, marriage was commonly not a domestic partnership between one man and one woman.  Each husband might have several wives.  This was surely not marriage of the nature of those recognized by government in America today.  Early Christians commonly did not marry, since many thought the end of the world was rapidly approaching with the return of Christ.  After that brief period, Christian marriage was often a means of cementing favorable relationships between families, clans, tribes, aristocrats, and even nations.  A young woman was pretty much the property of her father and the father eventually traded her to a man for a degree of allegiance and goodwill in many cases.  She was now her husband's property.  Marriage was not the spiritual union of two people in the way many think it is today.  It was a commercial and political act in many cases.  The church supported this viewpoint of marriage by providing a patina of spirituality, though spiritual connections between the husband and wife were very commonly missing.

Even today, the role of government is not to provide a spiritual content to marriage or even to assess whether such a spiritual basis for a marriage exists.  An honest evaluation of marriage as provided by government license and contract is that every marriage is a domestic partnership and any spiritual meaning to the union is provided by the married partners independent of government.  The domestic partnership that governments offer is a legal contract with legal implications for shared property, procreation and the raising of children, taxes, mandated time off work to care for one another, and permissions to make medical decisions for one another if one partner is unable to make such decisions.

The only case of such issues in which the sex of the partners may make any difference at all is with respect to procreation and the raising of children.  In the modern world, adoptions may easily take the place of procreation, but many married partners also have no children and there is no title of aristocracy demanding an heir.  Should children be adopted in the relatively rare case by two partners of the same sex, there is little reason for one having to be a high-earning man, since many women are now high-earners.  The domestic partnerships that are formed by government marriage licenses are just as appropriate today for partners of the same sex as they are for partners of opposite sexes.

Each and every American adult competent to care for himself has a very broad sovereign right to life, liberty, property, the ownership of his own body, mind, and labor, and the pursuit of his own happiness.  Legitimate government cannot violate that broad range of fundamental individual rights.  There must be a strong presumption against laws that limit the exercise of personal actions which do not do harm to others.  Legitimate government does not interfere with the association of one adult with other consenting adults, unless substantial harm is thereby done to others.  Legitimate and individual rights-protecting government is highly limited and minimal government.  If it acts to place limits on the relationships and associations of individuals, it must have a very substantial reason for such limits and a strong case for the harm those associations or relationships would do to others.  The only way such harm to others occurs is if the partnership uses force to harm others, but there is no new issue here since initiated harm done by force by any individual to others is already prohibited.  There is no more reason to prescribe the number and sex of domestic partners than there is to do so for a business partnership.  Indeed, a domestic partnership is very much like a business partnership in all respects relevant to the role of government.

Not only is there no reason to place a prohibition on same-sex domestic partnerships, but because our individual rights are equal, we cannot limit marriage contracts to only those who desire a single partner of the opposite sex.  While anyone may exercise their own freedom of conscience in the belief that same-sex domestic partnerships are immoral, abhorred by God, or simply biologically uninteresting to them, government and the People whose individual equal rights are to be protected by government cannot make such judgments in the political realm without violating the freedom of conscience of others with a differing viewpoint.  They cannot legitimately use force to prevent others from exercising control over their own bodies and minds, from evaluating and choosing whose most intimate company they desire, and from pursuing their most personal and individual happiness.

Individual human beings are complex and highly differentiated.  We are all different in the way our minds observe reality, analyze and evaluate it, and assess our own relationship to it and to others.  Our biochemistries differ, our senses operate at many different levels, our nervous systems feel differently, our bodies take very different forms, and we respond very differently to other individuals.  Among the most complex and highly differentiated aspects of an individual's nature is his or her sexuality.  We cannot be serious about the individual right to pursue happiness if we have government place obstacles and unequal treatment in the way of individuals whose sexuality is different than that endorsed by a religion or just recent and local tradition.

It is a basic violation of individual rights for government to discriminate against individuals based on their sexuality.  Legitimate government ought to provide same-sex marriage contracts which are equivalent to those it provides to couples of the opposite sex.  It should even provide a more enlarged concept of domestic partnership contracts as broad in terms of the combination of adult individuals bound in the contract as is the case in small business partnerships.  Government commonly interferes with our freedom of association in far too many ways.  It is time that it stop interfering with that broad freedom of association in our domestic partnerships which it is the right of each and every adult individual to claim.

Understanding this, one should vote for Question 6 in Maryland to allow same-sex couples to marry in Maryland.

Equal Rights in Domestic Partnerships

Robert A. Levy, Chairman of the Cato Institute, and John D. Podesta, President of the Center for American Progress, wrote an interesting article for the 8 June 2010 Washington Post called Marriage Equality for All Couples.  They noted that the 1967 case of Loving v. Virginia, ended the ban on interracial marriage in the 16 states with laws banning it at the time.  The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that "marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man.'"  This decision was based on the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868.  Sadly, it took 99 years for this ruling to finally be made.  At the time of that decision, 74% of Americans disapproved of interracial marriages.  Twenty years ago, only 6.8% of newly married couples said they married outside their race or ethnicity.  That number is now 14.6% according to a recent Pew Research Center study.  Clearly, the earlier prejudice against interracial marriages has subsided and more and more Americans are claiming their equal right to marry, whatever their racial mix may be.

The right of people to marry who are not heterosexual has not yet been given a basis in the federal courts.  In 2003, the American opinion was that only 37% supported same-sex marriages.  A February Washington Post poll found that 47% of Americans now support same-sex marriages.  65% of those ages 18 to 29 support same-sex marriages, so the trend will continue in the direction of increasing support.  Robert Levy and John Podesta are the chairmen of the advisory board of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which is supporting the case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger.  This case is aiming to have California's Proposition 8 outlawing same-sex marriages declared a violation of the 14th Amendment and is now before the federal district court in California.  The case is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court.  It ought to win the freedom for all couples to enter into equal marriages.

I have long made it clear that government should not be claiming to play a role in marriage at all.  For many, marriage is a spiritual union and I fully understand that concept even though it is not the case that I believe in a god.  There is good reason to reserve the term marriage to meaning a spiritual union and allowing people to control that spiritual content in their marriages without any presumption on the part of government that it has anything to say about that spiritual content.  Those who are religious or who have spiritual values which are not religious are best served by adopting a more appropriate term for the contract that government offers to couples.  It would be better if this were universally called a domestic partnership contract or agreement.  All of the issues which involve government are better described as contractual in nature.  Recognizing this, provides a separation of church and state in marriages/domestic partnerships which would help to diminish the passion of the argument from religious quarters against equal rights in domestic partnership contracts.

As I have written many times also, domestic partnership agreements ought to be a parallel to small business partnerships in that government does not dictate the sex or number of partners.  Two men, or two women, or two men and two women, or any other combination of several people ought to be free to enter into a legal domestic partnership contract.  Joint property, joint responsibility for raising children, the sharing of income, and critical medical decisions and support could readily all be incorporated into such domestic partnership agreements.

Very likely, most families would still be built around one father and one mother, but the huge number of divorces and resulting serial marriages are clear evidence that one-man-one-woman marriages do not work for large numbers of people.  Sometimes the failure is largely the result of two people becoming bored with one another or of one simply yearning for some change of pace.  Sometimes, the couple simply do not always share the same cycle of need for sex.  Sometimes, the strains of earning income, cleaning house, purchasing food and clothes, maintaining the house and cars, agreeing on a common vacation, and raising the children are simply too much for two people.  Some people would do better in larger domestic partnerships in which tasks are spread over more specialists or where they can be varied over time.  With most public schools having severe shortcomings, many such extended family groups would be able to have a member or two specialize in home-schooling the children, while a sufficient number of others remain to bring home the bacon.  One member might be particularly good in managing the family investments, while another is great in playing with the kids and caring for the yard.  One may love to cook, while another loves to work on the cars and keep them running.  Another may like purchasing the groceries, the furniture, and the clothes for the children.

Of course, in many such cases, family members may have the option for having a sexual life enriched by more than one sexual partner.  Sex is one of man's greatest pleasures in life.  It is very important to many people that they are able to optimally enjoy this pleasure.  There is no valid ethical principle that says that it is immoral for a man or a woman to have more than one sexual partner in any period of his or her life.  The ethical issue is whether the person one chooses to have sex with is a person of good character who is of great interest to and highly valued by the chooser.  If someone is fortunate enough to find more than one such person with whom they can form a more intimate bond with shared life-affirming sexual pleasures, people of good will ought to be ready to simply wish them the best.  This is true whether the individuals in the serious and sincere sexual relationship are of different sexes or the same sex.

A knowledge of history makes it very clear that while some people may be entirely heterosexual, very many people are bisexual or homosexual.  When societies are not burdened by severe heterosexual bigotry, it is clear that many people are happy to give outlet to their bisexual or homosexual desires and choose to pursue their happiness in that way.  In our present time, the video market in erotic movies and the rich offering of sexual images and discussions offered on the Internet, make it clear that sex is both of great interest to many people and that their interests are highly varied.  These interests, when given anonymous expression, do not conform to the publicly affirmed principles dominant in our society.  It is clear that many sexual interests are being suppressed, some for good reason, but many for no more reason than traditional prejudice.  It is no one's right to interfere with the exploration, development, and expression of another's optimal sexuality, so long as only consenting adults are involved.

We are all complex and highly differentiated individuals and one of the great expressions of that is in our sexuality.  To suppress the sexual development and expression of others is to attack the rights of the individual in a very basic and fundamental way.  This is an attempt to deny the nature of man and as such it is not consistent with a rational understanding of man and reality.  Let us hope that a step in the direction of our sexual liberation will be made with a Supreme Court decision that same-sex marriage must be allowed because all people have an equal right to pursue their happiness in domestic partnerships.

We cannot trust our liberty to those under 30!.....Yet!

The Pew Research Center recently released a study of the opinions of Americans born after 1980, sometimes called the Millennial Generation.  Two-thirds of them voted for Obama.  This compares to about a 50 - 50 split of older voters.  This is the greatest such voting difference between generations found in 40 years of polling.  The Millennial Generation thinks much more highly of government as the solution to problems than do the older generations.

The Millennial Generation has less confidence that wars sometimes need to be fought than the older generations.  They are also stronger supporters of individual sexuality rights and are more strongly in favor of immigration.  On the former issue I believe them often naive, while on the latter two issues they are right.  They have also been slowly catching on to Obama.  While 32% more of them voted for Obama, now only 14% more would do so.

Interestingly, college educated Millennial Generation people are more skeptical of government.  Apparently, the unrelenting effort of most of our colleges to indoctrinate students to become Progressive Elitists, is not as effective as I thought it was.  Still, this Millennial Generation seems to need a lot of seasoning before they can be trusted.  Maybe by 2012 their swing away from Obama and his politics of envy and leveling will be sufficiently complete that he will not get a majority of their votes in his attempt to win re-election.