Legislating Morality

Four out of the five Catholics on the United States Supreme Court apparently believe that it is a perfectly proper function of federal, state and local governments in this supposedly free country of ours to legislate morality among the populace such that conduct deemed to be philosophically moral or immoral may be rewarded or punished at the whim of the majority.

So says Justice Antonin Scalia about same sex marriage in his dissenting opinion in U.S. v. Windsor: “As I have observed before, the Constitution does not forbid the government to enforce traditional moral and sexual norms… I will not swell the U. S. Reports with restatements of that point. It is enough to say that the Constitution neither requires nor forbids our society to approve of same-sex marriage, much as it neither requires nor forbids us to approve of no-fault divorce, polygamy, or the consumption of alcohol.”

Scalia was referring in part to his earlier dissent in Lawrence v. Texas, in which he opined that he sees no constitutional violation of liberty problem whatsoever with legislators criminalizing sexual practices between wholly consenting adults in the privacy of their bedrooms, to wit: homosexual sex in that case.  

Do you think Scalia’s opinions might have anything to do with his religion? Surely it must be so.

This obviously isn’t just about morality so much as it’s about Scalia’s own particular Christian religious morality. It is crystal clear to me that if a state legislature ever saw fit to criminalize the doggy style sexual position between two consenting adults in the privacy of their bedrooms, he would have no objection upon fundamental liberty constitutional grounds.

Thankfully, at least one of the Catholics, Justice Anthony Kennedy, and four other Justices, recognize that it is a violation of liberty and equal protection of the law under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution to deny same sex married couples the same rights and benefits the government affords to heterosexual couples.

Thus, SCOTUS, by a vote of 5 to 4, struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), provisions which define the term “marriage” in moral terms as limited to unions between heterosexuals and thereby deliberately treat homosexuals unequally under the provisions of thousands of federal statutes conferring benefits upon married couples.

To me this decision was a classic no brainer just like the 1954 SCOTUS decision in Brown v. Board of Education which struck down public school segregation laws as unconstitutional violations of equal protection of the laws.

Sadly, I think that if Justice Scalia and his four cohorts were on the bench then and had their way there would still be government sanctioned racial segregation in the United States of America today on the grounds that, in their misguided minds, the Constitution neither requires nor forbids our society to approve of equality for blacks.

Scalia has no problem with striking down other laws as unconstitutional when he disagrees with the moral principles involved. He, for example, would have voided Omama care as a violation of constitutional guaranteed liberty even though that law is grounded upon the ostensible moral principle that we all have an obligation to help everyone get health care insurance.

After all, the Constitution doesn’t expressly forbid or require Omama care schemes so why not leave that up the legislators too?

He’s a constitutional hypocrite, that’s why.

The fact of the matter is that attempts to legislate morality, especially religiously oriented morality, are usually futile because people are just going to disregard such laws and do what they damn well please anyhow. That was the case with prohibition in the 1920’s and in hundreds, if not thousands, of other instances throughout recorded history right up to our never ending War on Drugs.

Justice Scalia and other hard core religionists see homosexuality as a religious morality issue and are consequently blind to the clear fact that it’s a civil rights issue. They view homosexuals as second class citizens due to their immorality and believe that the majority of heterosexuals therefore have the right to discriminate against them.

Many of these religionists even take the position that recognizing the inherent civil rights of homosexual’s amounts to an attack upon their own precious religious liberty. “A House, Senate and president together defending traditional marriage is ruled unconstitutional, cries one outraged religionist. “Can a Roe v. Wade-like "right" to same-sex marriage — pulverizing religious liberty — be far behind?”

Next, he warns that such disregard for religious freedom will culminate in: “forcing churches to marry same-sex couples — a new kind of "shotgun wedding" for the 21st century… In shielding homosexuals from being "demeaned," they now seem ready in the near future to hold a gun to the head of clergy who refuse to marry them. That will not be America.”

“I’m furious.” declares another. “We at the National Organization for Marriage, (NOM) and tens of millions of other Americans will never accept it… “It’s wrong, plain and simple. There’s a stench to these decisions that has stained the Supreme Court… We will do everything in our power to preserve marriage across the country because marriage as God created is the most important social institution we can offer men, women and children… Marriage is hanging by a thread in America. It lost today in California, and those responsible will be coming after every remaining state that refuses to abandon the truth of marriage.”

If gays can get married and receive the same government benefits as straights, that destroys their religious liberty. Soon the government will be forcing churches to marry gays. Civilization and God’s creation of the institution of marriage is hanging by a thread. We’re the heterosexual majority and we ought to have the right to legislate our idea of morality.

This is the exact kind of hysterical nonsense we heard during the 1950’s and ‘60’s while the civil rights movement was raging. The world was about to come to an end because blacks were being granted equal protection of the law. The liberty of whites was about to be destroyed. Civilization and God’s creation of the inequality of the races was hanging by a thread. Soon the government would be forcing whites to marry blacks. We’re the white majority and we ought to have the right to legislate our idea of racial morality.

That’s what we get when we have the courts allowing the politicians to legislate morality. 

Public School Teachers Are Government Agents

Some people, especially religious folks, and more particularly evangelical Christians, just can’t seem to understand that public schools are instruments of the government and public school teachers are government agents.

In the United States of America, unlike most other nations, the government and its agents are not supposed to promote religion to their captive audience of students, including Christianity. That doesn’t seem to sit well with those government agents who love the First Amendment Freedom of Speech clause but hate the First Amendment Establishment Clause.

They just can’t help trying to evangelize their pupils every chance they get. Again and again they deliberately violate the Establishment Clause in public schools and attempt to justify it by claiming the right to free speech. They know the rules but they violate them anyway and then wonder why it sometimes backfires on them. Sometimes they don’t get away with it.

A longtime substitute teacher in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, found that out the hard way. He’s been fired for violating school policy prohibiting the distribution of religious literature on school grounds and proselytizing his Christianity to students. He discussed Bible verses with a kid and gave him a Bible.

Now if this guy, Walter Tutka, the teacher, were an atheist who proselytized atheism to a student and gave him atheist literature, no one would be complaining about it, least of all any right minded atheist. He would have been booted out the schoolhouse door so quickly he’d have had no time even to clean out his desk.

But Walter Tutka is an evangelical Christian; more specifically a member of Gideon’s International – a ministry known for providing Bibles to school children across the world. Time and time again the U.S. courts have told the Gideon’s that they are not allowed to proselytize and hand out Bibles in public schools. It’s unconstitutional. But time and time again they’ve been doing it anyway and complaining bitterly when caught.

This guy knew he was violating the rules. His Christian supporters know he was violating the rules. They actually think, though, that he has a God given right to violate the rules and that firing him amounted to hostility towards religion. “It’s unfortunate the Phillipsburg School District chose the path of religious hostility and intolerance against a retired man serving his community…,” Hiram Sasser, director of litigation at Liberty Institute, whined.

The school board said Joe Imhof, a close friend of Tutka, was basically telling God to “go to hell… Just because this guy gave a student a pocket New Testament on his lunch hour – that’s enough to throw you out of school… They have said tonight, ‘God, we don’t want you in this school.’

“It is so awful,” said Tutka’s pastor, Chris Hussey. “I’ve never seen something so absurd in my life.” Hussey said the incident should serve as a stark reminder to Christians that there is a war on the culture. “Christianity is under attack in America,” he cried. “It seems our government officials are afraid of Muslims and yet they capitulate to them and any other religious group. But when it comes to Christians – they are completely intolerant of Christians.”

No, I’m afraid that this has nothing to do with any hostility against religion or Christianity or Gideon Bible thumpers like teacher Walter Tutka.  The School District has not told God to go to hell or that He is not wanted at the school. There is no war on Christianity nor is that religion under attack anywhere except in that angry pastor’s fertile imagination.

It’s just another rare case in which a government public School District finally had the guts to stand up to the unreasonable demands of the Christian religious fundamentalists and enforce the First Amendment Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution.

After all, public school teachers are government agents.

Will the Real Traitors Please Stand Up?

The United States government has revoked Edward Snowden's passport after he left Hong Kong reportedly seeking asylum elsewhere, perhaps in the nation of Ecuador, with some help from another courageous whistle blower, Julian Assange, founder of the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.

Uncle Sam’s thugs are in hot pursuit. They’re determined to get this guy no matter what it takes. He’s been branded a traitor, charged with high crimes under the U.S. Espionage Act, and now he’s a fugitive on the run, a man without a country.

First stop, Moscow, then on to Cuba, Caracas, Venezuela, and finally Ecuador, where Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said his government received an asylum request.

"He goes to the very countries that have, at best, very tense relationships with the United States," whined Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla. "This is not going to play out well for the national security interests of the United States."

Some U.S. lawmakers are scoffing. They want to put big pressure on any foreign country that accepts Snowden. "The freedom trail is not exactly China-Russia-Cuba-Venezuela, so I hope we'll chase him to the ends of the earth, bring him to justice and let the Russians know there'll be consequences if they harbor this guy," bellowed Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. “They should hold this villain.”

"The United States has been in touch via diplomatic and law enforcement channels with countries in the Western Hemisphere through which Snowden might transit or that could serve as final destinations," admits the U.S. State Department. "The U.S. is advising these governments that Snowden is wanted on felony charges, and as such should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel, other than is necessary to return him to the United States."

Hong Kong officials had already rebuffed attempts by the U.S. to extradite Snowden explaining that the U.S. request did not fully comply with their laws. The DOJ claims it did comply with all the requirements.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is "aiding and abetting Snowden's escape," cried Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. "Allies are supposed to treat each other in decent ways, and Putin always seems almost eager to put a finger in the eye of the United States ... That's not how allies should treat one another, and I think it will have serious consequences for the United States-Russia relationship." 

Hong Kong officials allowing Snowden to leave, after being asked to hold him for extradition, was “very disappointing,” he added.

I think perhaps that the powers that be in all these nations assisting Snowden know something about the situation here that the United States government power brokers have refused to admit. They know that Edward Snowden is not quite the traitorous villain he is made out to be.  

So, who are the real traitors here?

Will the real traitor’s please stand up?

When Edward Snowden went to work for the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), he took two oaths; one was to keep the U.S. government’s secrets; and the other was to preserve, protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. If he violated his oath of secrecy it was only because he felt compelled to honor his primary oath to uphold the Constitution.

So Edward Snowden is not the traitor to the people of the United States that our government says he is. He’s a true patriot.

If the secrets he swore an oath to keep involved violations of the Constitution, violations of the sacred trust of the people of the United States, conduct for which the government has no authority to commit, then he was no longer bound to honor that oath as it thereby became a nullity.

The real traitor’s here are all the agents of the U.S. government who have been systematically violating the United States Constitution in the name of national security and getting away with it for decades because they believe that they have the right to cloak their traitorous activities in secrecy.

The traitors are politicians like Sens. Lindsey Graham, Charles Schumer and others, who willfully encourage the government to shred the Constitution they themselves have sworn to preserve, protect and uphold, and then scream for the blood of the true patriot, Edward Snowden, because he had the courage to honor his constitutional oath.

Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper has gotten away scot free with committing perjury before Congress when he was asked whether this government spying Snowden has revealed was going on and he said “no.”  

Why isn’t that traitor along with all the rest of them being pursued to the ends of the Earth instead of the true patriot, Edward Snowden?

Stand up all you criminal agents and operatives of the United States government – the whole world knows now that you are the true traitor’s here.

Week Long Family Holiday: Only $100 Million

The Obama family is going on a well deserved one week holiday vacation to Africa next week at the bargain basement price of only $100 million dollars.

Of course the family needs a modicum of protection from the legions of enemies of the United States out there on the savanna, so their government handlers decided to bring along, among other things, a squadron of military fighter jets; a Navy ship with a full hospital trauma center; enough military cargo planes to bring 56 vehicles, including 14 limousines and three trucks loaded with sheets of bullet­proof glass to cover the windows of the hotels where the first family will stay; and hundreds of Secret Service agents.

When it comes to the safety, convenience, comfort and peace of mind of the President of the United States and his family on holiday, the nation simply cannot afford to take any chances. No reasonable expense must be spared.

The Obama’s have magnanimously agreed, however, to cancel their original plans to go on a safari because it would have required the additional expense of a full military sharp-shooting sniper team to protect them against the likely possibility of cheetah’s, lions or other wild animals wanting to eat them for breakfast.

A similar Africa excursion for President Clinton in 1998 cost the American taxpayers only $42.7 million – not including Secret Service expenses, so apparently inflation is responsible for more than doubling the price for presidential Africa trips in just 15 years. That’s alright. We can afford it.

You see, we have to look at these trips as an investment in diplomacy and long term good will toward Americans which clearly outweighs the trivial expenses involved. It will make the African people love us. That alone is worth more than $100 million, isn’t it?

“When you travel to regions like Africa that don’t get a lot of presidential attention, you tend to have very long-standing and long-running impact from the visit,” explains Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communications.

While the First Family is enjoying their week long holiday, the president’s Internal Revenue Service will be paying its National Treasury Employees union members well deserved bonuses totaling roughly $70 million dollars, another bargain for the American taxpayers who appreciate all the hard work the IRS agents do for us.

That’s what the Obama administration does best: saving the American taxpayers money.

Lock ‘em Up: Throw Away the Key

The United States government’s War on Terror has been ongoing now since September 11, 2001, and for the last 11 ½ years 779 of the so-called “terrorist” prisoners have been held indefinitely without due process of law at the infamous War on Terror prison, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, since it opened in January 2002.

Now the U.S. military sheepishly admits for the first time that only about 2.5 % of those 779 prisoners will ever be tried in a court of law for any alleged crimes. Only 20 of them will be prosecuted.

This means that 97.5 % of the evil “terrorist” prisoners have so far been held for more than a decade without the benefit of due process and without sufficient evidence that they are indeed terrorists or that they committed any crimes whatsoever against the United States.

President Obama, in January 2010, appointed an interagency task force to review the cases of Guantánamo prisoners. It recommended then that only 36 of them be tried. Now that number is down to only 20. And incidentally, a majority of the prisoners who actually were tired were either acquitted or had their convictions overturned by appellate courts.

That begs the question: Why weren’t the rest of these prisoners released long ago?

Obviously, there is not enough evidence against them. They’ve simply been detained indefinitely without probable cause, or whatever evidence there was against them was obtained by means CIA “black site” torture methods which would make it inadmissible in court.

The U.S. government recently released a list of 48 Guantánamo Bay prisoners who have never been charged with any crimes but now are designated as too dangerous to release even though they will never be prosecuted. They’ll just be imprisoned indefinitely without due process of law.

This is certainly not the first time that the United States government has simply swept aside the Constitution and the Bill of Rights by detaining large numbers of innocent people indefinitely without probable cause and due process of law.

President Roosevelt did it without any qualms to 110,000 entirely innocent Japanese American citizens by executive order in early 1942. He imprisoned them inside concentration internment camps, after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, without the benefit of due process, just like Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin did to their people.

And just like with Adolph Hitler, Roosevelt’s action was entirely racist motivated because he did it to thousands of Japanese Americans but not to any German or Italian Americans whose governments had declared war upon the United States.

I think it goes without saying then that if the U.S. government War on Terror prisoners were Christians instead of Muslims there would never have been any prison at Guantánamo Bay to begin with, and if the evidence against any Christian prisoner were insufficient to charge them with crimes, they would have been released and allowed to go home from the get go.

But when we’re talking about radical Islamic prisoners, our Constitution doesn’t apply.

The policy is to lock ‘em up and throw away the key.

The Thief, the Sucker & the Chicken

Former Soviet Union KGB thug, and current Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, managed to distinguish himself as a typical criminal parasitical politician when he brazenly robbed New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, in person and in broad daylight, of his $25,000 personalized 4.94-carat diamond-encrusted Super Bowl ring, then calmly walked away surrounded by his entourage of KGB goons.

It was during a 2005 meeting with the thief in Saint Petersburg Russia when Putin became enamored with the ring. As Kraft, the sucker remembers it: "I took out the ring and showed it to [him], and he put it on and he goes, ‘I can kill someone with this ring.’ I put my hand out and he put it in his pocket, and three KGB guys got around him and walked out."

So Putin, the thief, stole Kraft, the sucker’s, super bowl ring.

That’s what suckers get for hobnobbing with criminals.

Then, adding insult to injury, after returning to the states and demanding his ring back, President Obama, the chicken, at the behest of the American government, actually instructed Kraft, the sucker, to just chalk his loss up as a gift so as not to offend the thief and perhaps strain diplomatic relations with the Russian government.  

“It would really be in the best interest of US-Soviet relations if you meant to give the ring as a present,” the chicken advised the sucker. 

Thereafter, the sucker dutifully obeyed the chicken telling people all these years that he gave his super bowl ring to the thief as a gift, and it is still reportedly in the possession of the Russian people in the Kremlin library.

So Obama, the chicken, afraid of Putin, the thief, told Kraft, the sucker, to sacrifice his valuable property for the government good.

That’s what suckers get for hobnobbing with criminals.

And that’s the true story of the thief, the sucker and the chicken.

Libertarian America: The Impossible Dream

I’ve been a Libertarian long enough to know that the United States of America – a nation conceived in the concept of individual liberty and founded largely upon the principles of libertarian philosophy -- will probably never be anything close to a Libertarian nation again, at least not in my lifetime.

That’s an impossible dream now because, while libertarianism is a near perfect philosophical ideal, it’s a lousy practical political one.

Left leaning political columnist, E.J. Dionne recognizes and ponders this reality in his recent editorial piece entitled:  Utopian Libertarian Ideas Sound Nice, But They Don't Work.

Referencing an essay by Michael Lind, a supposedly independent scholar, Dionne observes that: “Libertarians have the virtue, in principle at least, of a clear creed: They believe in the smallest government possible… Anything government does beyond protecting people from violence or theft and enforcing contracts is seen as illegitimate.”

"If libertarians are correct in claiming that they understand how best to organize a modern society, how is it that not a single country in the world in the early 21st century is organized along libertarian lines?"

"Why are there no libertarian countries?"

“The ideas of the center-left — based on welfare states conjoined with market economies — have been deployed all over the democratic world, most extensively in the social democratic Scandinavian countries. We also had deadly experiments with communism, aka Marxism-Leninism,” he continues. "If socialism is discredited by the failure of communist regimes in the real world, why isn't libertarianism discredited by the absence of any libertarian regimes in the real world?"

“The answer,” concludes Dionne, “lies in a kind of circular logic: Libertarians can keep holding up their dream of perfection because, as a practical matter, it will never be tried in full.”

Sadly, I think Dionne is absolutely right that libertarianism will never be tried in full; not in the United States; not anywhere in the world any time soon.

But he’s absolutely wrong when he concludes that libertarianism wouldn’t work. Dishonest politicians and all the other parasitical criminals of society know that for them libertarianism would work too well. It would work against them. They’d lose their bacon. They’d have to start looking for honest ways of making a living.

That’s the simple reason why there are no libertarian countries today or at any other time in history. The closest civilization has ever come to a libertarian nation was right after the American Revolutionary war and the creation of the first constitutional republic. Every aspect of that new republic which was libertarian, however, has evaporated completely over the last 235 years.

Libertarianism won’t be tried again because the vast majority of people don’t want it. It offers no political advantage to those who wish to employ the powers of government for personal political gain. There are no political spoils to be gained by the adherents of liberty.  There is only liberty which is the greatest individual value of them all.

That is the crucial fact about libertarianism that Mr. Dionne, and most other people, overlook. Libertarianism works just fine for honest self reliant individuals. Statist politics, on the other hand, works for dishonest parasites that use the government to gain political advantages over others.

A libertarian political system would work with a majority of honest peace loving people; people who look to the government only as a means to secure and protect their natural rights. With a libertarian political philosophy the playing field is truly level. That’s why libertarianism is the near perfect philosophical ideal.

Mr. Dionne and the majority of statist thinking people know that. He admits it.

Most People join political parties, however, because they are seeking a political advantage over other people. The haves, for example, want to preserve their political advantages over the have-nots. The have-nots are seeking to gain political advantages from the haves.

All these people want the government to enact laws and policies which will tilt the political advantages in their favor. They don’t value individual liberty – especially not for others. They aren’t content with making the individual efforts to honestly use liberty to create their own individual business and social advantages.

They want the corrupt politicians to grease the skids for them. They want the spoils they can gain only with politics. And they are always willing to use theft, deception, dishonesty, force, fraud and coercion to have their way.

That’s the story of political human nature. That’s what all the battles are about in Congress. That’s the reason behind all of the political scandals. It never ends. Politicians and their followers see no political advantages with liberty.

And that is why a libertarian America is the impossible dream.