Back in the early 70’s, John Lennon released the popular song ‘Imagine’. The first two verses are as follows:

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace

I’ve never liked the song much, because it seemed like the anthem for all those utopian, magical thinking, flying unicorn types that end up creating such messes.

On New Years at Time Square, a fellow by the name of Cee Lo Green sang the song, but changed the ‘And no religion too’ line in the second verse to: ‘and all religion is true’

This created a bit of a stir. The atheists were upset because they were just fine with imagining no heaven. The multi-culturists liked the change, since they are all for the idea of all religions and cultures being equal or true.

It did bring up a very valid question though. Can all religions be true? It turns out that they can, as long as they all belong to the one true religion (kind of paradoxical I know, but hear me out).

The one true religion is all inclusive. It does not care about race, tribe, skin color, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, economic status or any of the other buckets we divide people into.

Best of all it has only one creed or commandment:

Thou shalt not use force or fraud on your fellow man.

That’s it. Any belief system, religion, or culture that belongs to the one true religion (no matter what else they believe) is true, and any that doesn’t belong is false.

There are some very nice features in this one world religion.

First, you notice that it doesn’t try to tell us how we should go about solving the very real problems of poverty, death, illness, or natural disasters. It just tells us what we can’t do in trying to solve them. The actual solutions will depend on our creativity and will power.

Second, it does no dictate a belief in any particular god, nor does it mandate any specific economic system.

If everybody in the world joined the one true religion and zealously kept its one single commandment, we would see an end to war, slavery, murder, robbery, adultery, and reality TV, which would in and of itself lead to an end in poverty with time.

Lennon was barking up the wrong tree. We don’t have to get rid of heaven, hell, religion, and country to live in harmony. We just have to give up trying to force our version of them on others.

I’m with Cee Lo. Imagine that all religions were true. What a wonderful world it would be.

Unions

When employers start looking to hire employees to build their brand new, ‘this will change the world’ product, they look at three things: How much do they cost, how fast do they work, and what quality of product do they turn out.

To stay in business, employers desire to minimize the cost, minimize the time, and maximize the quality. There are tradeoffs with all these that they continually try to balance.

Unionism in our country has been dropping for years (and would have completely disappeared if the government weren’t artificially propping it up) because currently they are expensive, slow and do poor quality work (relative to how expensive and slow they are).

If unions want to survive they need to become more competitive. When a union boss can go to a company and say, “we have the best trained, hardest working, most flexible workers in the industry. We are more expensive than our counter parts in China, but we do the best quality work at the quickest rate, plus you eliminate all the hassles of corrupt Chinese government, intellectual property theft, and the general quisiness of propping up a communist government” is the day when unions will start to grow and prosper in American again, and we will start pulling those manufacturing jobs back here where they belong.

Occupy movements, mobs and Abe Lincoln

Back in 1838 at the age of 28, Abraham Lincoln gave one of the best speeches ever given on the rule of law. It was prompted by a series of mobs throughout the nation who had taken the law into their own hands to kill people they thought guilty of some crime or other. The government was largely not punishing the mobs. Of all the threats facing the country at the time, he felt mobocracy was the biggest threat. Here are some exerpts, but you can read the whole thing at http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/lyceum.htm

“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected?” I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

“What .. do mobs.. have to do with the perpetuation of our political institutions?” I answer, it has much to do with it.

When men take it in their heads today, to hang gamblers, or burn murderers, they should recollect, that, in the confusion usually attending such transactions, they will be as likely to hang or burn some one who is neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is; and that, acting upon the example they set, the mob of to-morrow, may, and probably will, hang or burn some of them by the very same mistake.

By instances of the perpetrators of such acts going unpunished, the lawless in spirit, are encouraged to become lawless in practice; and having been used to no restraint, but dread of punishment, they thus become, absolutely unrestrained.–Having ever regarded Government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much, as its total annihilation.

While, on the other hand, good men, men who love tranquility, who desire to abide by the laws, and enjoy their benefits, who would gladly spill their blood in the defense of their country; seeing their property destroyed; their families insulted, and their lives endangered; their persons injured; and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better; become tired of, and disgusted with a Government that offers them no protection; and are not much averse to a change.

Thus, then, by the operation of this mobocractic spirit, which all must admit, is now abroad in the land, the strongest bulwark of any Government, and particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectually be broken down and destroyed

Whenever this effect shall be produced among us; whenever the vicious portion of population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands, and burn churches, ravage and rob provision-stores, throw printing presses into rivers, shoot editors, and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure, and with impunity; depend on it, this Government cannot last.

The question recurs, “how shall we fortify against it?” The answer is simple. Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others.

Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap–let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs;–let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.
While ever a state of feeling, such as this, shall universally, or even, very generally prevail throughout the nation, vain will be every effort, and fruitless every attempt, to subvert our national freedom.

When I so pressingly urge a strict observance of all the laws, let me not be understood as saying there are no bad laws, nor that grievances may not arise, for the redress of which, no legal provisions have been made.–I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say, that, although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still while they continue in force, for the sake of example, they should be religiously observed.

There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.”

Lines of guilt

I’ve been doing a lot of posting on various online forums, blogs, opinion pieces etc. Joining in on the war of words as it were. Here is a response I gave to somebody’s rant about how it is all the ‘Chrony Capitilists’ fault that we are in this big mess.

When trying to diagnose the causes of our pain, it is important to trace the lines of guilt back to its source, instead of stopping at the symptoms. Businesses/corporations/banks are not the source of our problems.

Businesses can only buy political favors from politicians if those favors are for sell in the first place, thus the first line of guilt traces back from businesses to politicians.

Politicians are in the business of buying and selling favors because we the people have elected them to do so. We all want our politicians to promote, pay for, subsidize, or monopolize our favorite causes. Thus the second line of guilt traces back from the politicians to those of us who elected them.

You notice in all of our tea partying, occupying or bickering, nobody is arguing that government get out of the favoring business. Instead we are complaining that all the money is going to favor causes we don’t agree with and not to the causes we support.

Once we decided to get our government in the game of handing out favors, we should’ve realized we ran the risk of somebody else beating us to those favors.

It’s like a coach who decides to pay off the ref to win the game complaining of corruption when he finds out the opposing coach paid more.

There is no hope of solving the problems we are facing politically until all of us are willing to give up our favors.

Hobbes

Here I am talking of the great philosopher Thomas, not Calvin’s buddy.

Hobbes famously said that without government to maintain order, the life of man is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

Recently a liberal and a conservative were doing verbal battle in the comments section of a prominent online news outlet that had posted a liberal leaning opinion piece on the proper roll of government in the modern era.

The conservative piped in that we needed less government and more personal responsibility instead of the opposite.

The liberal shot back that having less government would cause us to return to a ‘Hobbesian world’.

I felt compelled to jump in on the side of my unknown conservative mate as follows:

Hobbes pokes his head up whenever there is either essentially no government (think Africa) or there is too much government (think China, or the USSR before the fall).

Government’s job is to protect people, not to take care of them. When government fails to protect them, you get Africa. When it starts trying to take care of them, you get the USSR.

It’s the Goldilocks principle:
This government is too small (anarchy).

This government is too big (government enforced collectivism, crony capitalism).

This government is just right (Constitutionally limited. Rule of law. Property rights. Contract enforcement. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness)

We need ‘just right’ government. Our current government was formed because we were suffering from ‘too small’ government. The Constitution was the result and an attempt to create ‘just right’ government. Over the years we have allowed it to move into the ‘too big’ category. Moving it back will not unleash Hobbes. It will make sure he stays in his cage.

Demi and what’s his face

You’ve probably heard the news now about Demi and that guy she is married to. Or perhaps it’s Ashton and that girl he is married to (depending on your generation). Their marriage is in trouble. Apparently he cheated on her.

As I’ve watched Hollywood over the years, I can’t help but think that the whole industry is involved in some warped competitive race to the bottom.

They don’t call it ‘race to the bottom’, so maybe you hadn’t noticed. They prefer to call it ‘edgy’, ‘pushing the envelope’ or something like that.

The stars and the media seem to have a symbiotic relationship. It reminds me of that old military saying: “his men will follow him anywhere, but only out of morbid curiosity”.

Out of morbid curiosity and the desire to make a buck, the press follows them down, trying somehow to make it all sound newsworthy.

I thought for something to be newsworthy, it had to be out of the ordinary in some way.

Maybe I’m missing something, but what is out of the ordinary about a Hollywood couple breaking up because of infidelity?

Isn’t that just part of the normal cycle:
Hollywood stars get together.
Gushing news stories about how it is true love this time.
They have a couple of years together.
Drama starts
One of them cheats
They split
Repeat

I’m not trying to be cynical in asking these questions; it’s just that my inquiring mind wants to know.

Take a deep breath

I submitted this as a letter to the editor in our local paper in response to all the political railing going on in its opinion pieces.

Politics
As we enter a new election season, which surely will be as ugly and mean as any of them, we ought to keep a few things in perspective:

From the very beginning, we have figured our politicians were “evil, corrupt, self-serving, idiotic buffoons”, and that’s just to describe Abraham Lincoln, now considered to be the best of the lot.

We are an opinionated, freedom loving people, from every religion, political philosophy, and nationality on the planet. Yet for the past hundred and fifty years, we have managed to fight our internal wars the way all wars should be fought: with words, not bullets.

For all our faults, we have created the highest standard of living in history. Even the poor have access to comforts and technologies unavailable to the most powerful kings of the past.

This is not a plea for more civility. Not gonna happen.

It’s a plea for us to step back, take a deep breath, and ponder on the miraculousness of what we have going for us here…. and then to vigorously resume the war of words, because I totally agree, this time those guys on the other side really are “evil, corrupt, self-serving, idiotic buffoons”.

Uncertainty

There has been quite a lot of discussion about ‘uncertainty’ in the news lately. The debate is over whether or not it is having an affect on the current economic recovery (or lack there of).

Many on the politically left side of things say that uncertainty is not the culprit. It is lack of demand on the part of consumers. They say that uncertainty always exists, so can’t be the root cause.

Here’s my take:

In the game of life, businesses and consumers are supposed to be the players. Government is supposed to be the referee.

Businesses and individuals compete with each other in the buying and selling arena. Government makes and enforces the rules of fair play.

Anytime you step into the arena, there is uncertainty. Will the other side out compete me? Are they better at buying and selling than I am? Am I reading the market correctly and using my time and resources wisely?

You address this type of uncertainty by continually striving to make sure you are well informed and good at what you do. You do this by continually improving and adapting.

There is another kind of uncertainty in the arena: Will the ref be fair? Will he enforce the rules? Will he change them in the middle of the game? Has the other side paid him to throw the game? Is he biased in their favor?

How do you deal with such uncertainty? You can’t overcome it by being the best. That does not matter. You either have to stop playing the game or start putting your time and effort into making sure the ref is in your pocket instead of theirs.

The first type of uncertainty is part of the game. Every successful business or individual has become good at mastering it.

The second kind of uncertainty destroys the game.

It is this second kind of uncertainty that we need to get under control if we want to have a recovery. Democrats and Republicans can scream and point the blame finger at each other all day, but ultimately they are both guilty.

We need to make sure we have a reliable, unbiased referee, so we can get back to the game of life.

Israel

Israel announced recently that it had approved permits to build a thousand new homes in Jerusalem on land that is currently disputed.

Secretary of State Clinton came out and said that this action was not helpful for the peace process.

Have you ever noticed that nobody ever comes out and says, “The Arab world’s continued desire to annihilate Israel is not helpful to the peace process.”

Why is that?

Taxes

All this arguing over taxes is giving me a headache. “We need higher taxes”, say the liberals. “We need lower taxes”, say the conservatives.

I think we need to give them both what they want and be done with it.

Set up two tax brackets, a flat ten percent rate for the conservatives and a ninety percent rate for the liberals.

To be fair, since conservatives would no longer be paying into the welfare state (their money would be used for the things the government is supposed to be doing, like funding the military and justice system), they would need to take over responsibility for their own retirement and health care.

Also, to be fair, we would have to make it so only tax-paying liberals could qualify for welfare benefits from the state (if you don’t pay in, you don’t draw out).

There would be a lot of benefits from such an arrangement:
1. Both sides would get what they want.
2. We could finally run an unbiased experiment to see which group’s principles lead to the most prosperity.
3. Liberals can demonstrate their faithfulness to their principles (Putting their money where their mouth is, as they say).
4. The number of ‘conservatives’ would jump significantly.
5. The welfare state would go out of business pretty quickly.