Open Hatch

This article at the L.A. times came to my attention.

My thoughts:

First, I didn’t find FALLING to be “spiritually disquieting” (or causing unease or anxiety). It opened some very probing questions, which, personally, only led to very assuring answers for me. And the film as a whole moved me.

Second, I don’t buy the line that Mormons are embargoed from seeing R-rated films. Bleh. Can this myth please die?

And thirdly and waxing philosophical, as for this quote of Dutcher wondering “what if it’s not true?” -

That surprises me. I don’t expect religion to leave me doubt-free. It’s clear the Savior had his profound doubts just before enacting the atonement. In my book, doubt and questioning, looking for answers - that’s the soil for faith and belief. It was certainly where Joseph Smith began his journey. Proof isn’t the point. You can no more disprove any point of religion (for example the existence of God) than anyone can prove it.

The results of living your religion are the proof. Meetings, taking the sacrament, service, study, testing the word of God. You try the experiments; and do the results make you unhappy or happy?

If you’re not trying the word of God - if you aren’t going to church, if you isolate yourself from your religious community, for starters - you won’t get results. It’s easy to conjecture there’s no merit to a theory you aren’t testing.

And much of the test is what my service or involvement can contribute. As a Bishop put it to me, he never found any ward (Mormon congregation) he liked until he stopped focusing on what others were (or weren’t) doing for him, and started focusing on what he can give.

I see friends who begin expressing doubt, mere luke-warm feelings, or even disenfranchisement, with the church, the people in their ward and the things they believe and say, and this all happens at the same time they’ve stopped attending church. Guess what? What these misguided people around you need is for you to go to church and present your take on things in a positive, non-threatening way. (And I know these friends have good and enlightening things to say.)

If others may not be seeing the light, how about shedding some of your own? The Mormon church is designed to informally acquaint us with each other’s insights. If there sometimes isn’t much insight, there’s even less if people nonplussed with that fact keep on waiting for the situation to change - without realizing they can change it. Without realizing they can never know how they positively impact others. There are many people in the LDS religious community who have no idea how they’ve positively impacted me.

Did Jesus walk the streets during his ministry visiting the sick, the poor, the social outcasts, the odd ones, the unwanted, all the while asking himself “What am I getting from these weirdos, what’s in this for me?”

Religion may not be thrilling very often, ergo the command to “endure to the end”. I’ve found that any time I give up the endurance test, again, I feel empty.

Never mind I’d tell you like many a Mormon I know it’s all true. Which I do. My doubts are about what this religion can actually do for me (the acknowledged paradox being that I shouldn’t just be in it for me). I’ll always be figuring that out - and those doubts are exactly what lead me to keep trying things out.

Referring to the previous entry, good luck with the truth anyway if the internets are against you.

Wow.  Bizarre twists on meaning become dominant and obliterate everything else.

(Except for one brilliant article pointed it out, and I’m posting about it, and you’re reading it.  Maybe it is always free or bound to be free.)

My pappy wrote this excellent editorial (funny also, I think) published in the Roanoke Times.

At BYU’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Symposium this January (which I was very delighted to attend), Orson Scott Card gave two addresses. The first was a main address seeking to answer this question:

“Why are Mormons over represented among emerging Science Fiction and Fantasy writers?”

That phenomenon has relatively recently emerged in the history of Science Fiction and Fantasy writing - this has been going on long before Stephanie Meyer’s now great fame (and her work certainly counts as fantasy and science fiction). As an example, the Writers of the Future Contest is a blind contest (I’ve personally dreamed of entering since a teenager - and gee golly, I’m a Mormon! - but I’m still sitting on the seeds of ideas which are germinating) - none of the judges know the identities of entrants, and every year a disproportionate number of winners of the contest happen to be Mormons.

Card’s second address was entitled “Science Fiction as a Valid Literary Genre”. To introduce it he said that every year, articles come out in either Atlantic, or Harper’s, or New Yorker about, as he puts it, “.. why Science Fiction sucks.” In this speech Card completely shredded (in my opinion) the snotty, self-absorbed triteness (my words) of literary fiction and most of all literary fiction writers which the aforementioned magazines (and also elitist literature programs at universities) apparently encourage. I have audio recordings of both speeches, which are both very enlightening, entertaining and to me even moving - but unfortunately my recording of the latter is cut off too soon. However I have a full, cleaned up recording of the former speech, which I here present. Strictly I may not have any authorization to do this, so I’m not giving a download link for this recording, and I want to seriously advertise the symposium and the proceedings; if you like this, you’ll probably like Card’s other address and anything and everything else at the symposium, so please: watch BYU’s web site for news on next year’s symposium, and releases of the proceedings from previous years. Email them via the “contact” link at that page and ask them what’s up and when the proceedings will be published.

Meanwhile, here’s my audio recording of Card’s main address. This is just over 47 minutes.

I just wrote the following in a forum for reasons originally completely unrelated to any argument favoring religion.  I’m sure this argument has been made by many who favor religion (though I don’t know that I’ve actually read it anywhere, it has to have been written before), but I like to put it in my own words.

The pure irrationality of religion would be an example of a right-brained or intuitive thing that the left has to accept.  There is no way to logically prove that the dictates of any religion are truthful or valuable, but the fact is that there is an observable cause and effect, manifesting its own reason, in following those dictates.  People do good things based on the irrational dictates of their religion, which cause them to feel good, and live more abundant lives, and, since the dictates of religion can neither be logically proved or disproved, it is worth it to risk that the reasons of religion may be true, not false - because _if_ they are true, then there is something real and valid behind the observable happiness in following the ultimately purely irrational dictates of a religion.  And if they are false, why not follow religious dictates anyway?  What would it hurt humanity, if religion is false, to live lives deluded by the happy imaginations of heaven, if we’re all going to die and obliterate into an unknown nothingness anyway?  An unknown nothingness would be the ultimate hurt; delusions of a happy heaven would be no hurt at all compared to that hurt.  That the thought of an unknown nothingness fills man with fear is proof itself that the makeup of man longs for something beyond this life.  Given that none of it can be proved, and it could be either way, I’d pick a life of either delusions about heaven or experienced knowledge of heaven - I’d pick that over nothing at all, risking that heaven could be real.

It was an odd coincidence, after watching so many episodes of the new BattleStar Galactica on DVD, that after I penned that essay yesterday I watched an episode where the abortion debate was raised.

(By the way, I waited five weeks checking three different Blockbuster video stores for the right disc of the right season of BattleStar Galactica to be checked in - there was a conspiracy to keep me from checking out that disc - and then one day my wife brought home the entire season of the show, checked out for far less a price, from the Orem Public Library. Now, as well as for the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum, I have a testimony that the Orem Public Library is true.)

The premise of the show is that the Cylons, robots created by humanity but which betray humanity, wipe out all the planetary colonies and drive and hunt the very small remainder of humanity into space. The entire show is humanity outsmarting, outmaneuvering, thwarting, and seeking to destroy the malevolent forces which they themselves created - while the evolved Cylons who are indistinguishable from humans fool people into David/Bathseba fiascoes.

In this episode (Season 2.5, “The Captain’s Hand”) President Rosylin is presented with a young pregnant woman who stowed away on the fleet command ship (Galactica), seeking asylum from her evil, fanatic, controlling parents to abort a child she apparently doesn’t want and/or can’t support. Rosylin has begun campaigning for re-election to office (she became President de facto as the highest ranking surviving political officer of the human race), and apparently the majority of the fleet is “pro-choice”, and her whole life Rosylin has fought to support the right, as she puts it, for a woman to control her own body. But General Adama reminds her that after the Cylon struck and nearly destroyed humanity, one of the first things she said to him was that “..if humanity is to survive we need to start having babies now.” Adama points to the number of humans still alive which Rosylin has kept on a whiteboard behind her desk since being sworn into office - around 54,000 - and says “That number hasn’t gone up for a long time.” Despite her position on abortion, Rosylin issues an executive order declaring any interference with the birth of a child as subject to criminal penalty - she makes abortion illegal. At the same time, since the executive order occurred after the young woman’s abortion, and the woman had already claimed asylum, Rosylin does not hold the woman subject to criminal penalty, which outrages the religious, fanatical representative from Gemenon. This principled compromise also outrages the eleven of the twelve colonies who support abortion (uh, how reflective of America or humanity would that be in real life - not very - the issue is very divided, and pretty equally). It also opens the way for a former political ally to come out in opposition and betray her in a factioning bid for the Presidency. Not bending to either extreme, Rosylin outrages everyone. Huh. Sounds like prexy Bush, dudn’t it?
The episode, in my opinion, underscored what Orson Scott Card said of the Science Fiction genre, in his main address at Life, the Universe, and Everything XVII (which symposium I very much enjoyed attending). Card sought to answer the question of why so many prominent writers of Sci-Fi and Fantasy happen to be Mormon. Apparently Mormons have been heavily dominating winners in the Writers of the Future contest for many years - and the contest is run blind. None of the judges know the names of any of the writers who submit, as the names are stripped from the entries before judging. Card argued that Science Fiction often embodies both the American plain narrative style and the American pragmatic hero - the hero who tests and tries things for himself until he finds the best solution - and, Card argues, Mormonism is also an embodiment of both of those, or more specifically, of the Scientific Method in harmony with religion. Mormonism does not ask its followers to simply blindly accept the religion, but to try it out.

“Prove me now herewith“,

- echoes the Mormon God in the Book of Mormon,

“..if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it.“

And again in Moroni:

“..And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.“

If you are showing faith in Christ, if you are sincerely seeking Him, if you have changed your life already, if you are experimenting on the word (Card didn’t mention the verses that say that), and you have a sincere desire to follow these things if they are true, God Himself will manifest the truth to you by the power of the Holy Ghost. If you sincerely try Mormon principles and doctrine in your life, Mormonism promises, you will know for yourself whether the doctrines are true. That, Card argues, is the Scientific Method - run tests, try things out for yourself, experiment on a hypothesis until you have an idea whether it seems true or false - that is the Scientific Method in complete harmony with the Mormon religion.

In summary then, Mormons who are raised with these values of pragmatic experimentation find themselves very easily at home in a body of literature where pragmatic experimentation is the norm.

And what pragmatic truth does this episode of BattleStar Galactica unfold to our view? (By the way - I heard asides from Card that he doesn’t like the overt references to Mormonism made in BattleStar Galactica - because the leaders of the 12 colonies are more like the 12 idiots.) When the human race is driven to near extinction by evil robots, abortion is not a good idea

I’ve read an argument from a Democrat-voting Mormon defending Barack Obama’s stance on abortion (I won’t link to it). This argument seems to present Barack Obama’s reasoning on the issue as similar or identical to the LDS (Mormon) church’s reasoning. I don’t think that is so, and I’m posting my arguments against it. I want to seriously qualify that if Obama’s reasoning doesn’t harmonize with church policy (in my opinion) on this point, there are many other questions surrounding the political position about which the church is neutral (otherwise the church would instruct its members to oppose the Democratic party, which it most certainly does not - the Church is party neutral). But this is what I respond to:

Frequently we generalize and think the church is completely against abortion with no exceptions, but that is not the case. There needs to be an allowance for these times and conditions and Obama’s platform makes concession for these times too. In fact he says, “I think that most Americans recognize that this is a profoundly difficult issue for the women and families who make these decisions. They don’t make them casually. And I trust women to make these decisions in conjunction with their doctors and their families and their clergy.” Which is what the church encourages. If abortions were made completely illegal there would be no allowance for these rare but serious circumstances.

I checked for a reliable attribution of that statement to Obama, and I believe I found at least one (here). (And as for the banner in that web site - just erase the baby brother from the picture. Oh wait, he’s not there. They aborted him.)

Now, here’s my argument. This paragraph pulls Obama’s statement out of context. I do not personally know any “pro-life” person who has said they would oppose abortion in such extreme situations where the life of the mother is endangered or the pregnancy is the result of rape (or incest, or similar extreme situations). So to present this argument as opposing a reasonable “pro-life” position is at best uninformed. On that point, a reasonable (in my opinion) “pro-lifer” of course agrees. It is misrepresentative to argue this as opposing a “pro-life” position. Unfortunately, building up that argument and throwing it down - it is an obvious candidate for a weak argument and can easily be thrown down - leads to the idea that a pro-lifer opposes abortion in extreme cases such as a mother’s life endangered, or pregnancy by rape.  As I said I’ve never known a pro-lifer who makes such extreme arguments (and if I did, I’d disagree with them). So I would ask the person making this argument which of their far too liberal friends they have not adequately challenged, to not only swallow but regurgitate such a distortion. Professors at a University? Yo. A University often an unhinged liberal maketh. Watch out.

What’s really baffling - and had me confused for a while - is that Obama’s language does not address those situations at all. Reading this link I found where the quote is cited, the only thing Obama says that could unreasonably be construed as touching on maternal life endangerment or rape is the phrase “..a woman’s medical concerns..” - in this wider context:

“..As Justice Ginsburg emphasized in her dissenting opinion, this ruling signals an alarming willingness on the part of the conservative majority to disregard its prior rulings respecting a woman’s medical concerns and the very personal decisions between a doctor and patient.”

May I point out that he does not mention endangerment of a mother’s life and does not either mention rape etc., but that he does say “a woman’s medical concerns and the very personal decisions between a doctor and patient.” I place emphasis on the word “and” because it clearly links “medical concerns” to “personal decisions between a doctor and patient.”

The hysterical brouhaha around reproductive activities and the virtual right to pursue them at all expenses - including the new lives they often create (and then summarily destroy by “abortion”) has often, in what I have read of our nation’s history of any legislation even peripherally having to do with sex - has often linked sex with “privacy” or a “right” of privacy which no court or legislation should invade. Never mind how much the Playboy channel proves that sex can often be regarded as anything but a private affair, and the obvious counterpoint that the children produced by sex don’t only belong to a parent - they have a life ahead of them where they will leave their parents and contribute to society and, hopefully, produce more children of their own - a child is not a woman’s only: a child is a gift to a nation and to the world. To characterize birthing concerns as concerns only belonging to the woman herself is utterly mislead and selfish. Getting back to my point now.. this is clearly rhetoric falling in the line of reasoning where a mother’s right to have a baby or not is her own personal “choice” - for which she also apparently has doctor-patient privileges to discuss whether or how do “abort” her own child. Reagan comes back to mind. Where is the child’s right? As he said, the only folks arguing for a “right” to abort were not themselves aborted.

Obama’s statements clearly play into reasoning that a woman has a “choice” to abort a child for any reason - which does not address the true moral question Obama’s (or Clinton’s or any other “pro-choice” person’s) position raises. Obama is clearly not speaking of extreme cases where abortion may be necessary. He’s simply saying it’s a difficult decision for many women.

Understatement of the year: the decision to end a life is a difficult one. Well, unless you are an islamofascist or a soldier in Iraq trying to stop islomofascists from campaigning anymore to send airplanes turned into bombs through American skies. What does Iraq have to do with Al-Qaeda? May I draw your attention to the fact that an organization calling themselves Al-Qaeda in Iraq is still alive and kicking in Iraq, although thankfully our brave soldiers are frustrating them. How does the name this organization gives itself not have to do with Al-Qaeda? (Anyone who buys this “we toppled the towers” hysteria, I will point blank tell them they are not thinking rationally.) The Al-Qaeda trainees who made the decision to crash the planes - they were indoctrinated with an entrenched hatred of Americans, brainwashed into thinking of Americans as amoral, unworthy creatures who have no right to live. Throw in the promise of an unending sex romp with a few dozen hot soon-to-be former virgins in the afterlife, and it’s an easy sell. Also relating to a decision to kill: what do the American soldiers who are out to prevent Al-Qaeda and other islamofascists from destroying American lives and freedom go through? Easy. Pull the trigger on all of them - fight them, or in ten years 9/11 will look like child’s play. Every faithful soldier knows this. Is it traumatic to kill any human, even when they clearly are part of an army out to destroy America - and the democracy America is slowly encouraging in Iraq? Absolutely. A great many soldiers suffer post-tramatic stress disorder (and, gratefully, I’ve heard, our nation is waking up more to that fact and getting returned soldiers the help they need to cope with it).

Barack Obama is okay with aborting a child for any reason any woman would do so. That includes reasons as stupid as the mother being impoverished and living in a cardboard box. I’m serious. That’s not a reason to end a human life, but it is a scenario that modern reasoning often finds justifiable to terminate a human life. Okay, and.. what about adoption? What about the many thousands (millions?) of children born throughout the world in any given year in equally desperate situations but who live good lives? (It comes as a revelation to so much of modernity that a life can be worthwile even without wealth or even basic shelter.) I love the reply Ann Coulter witnesses her father gave her when, as a kid, she related that scenario in asking her father if that would justify an abortion. His reply: “I don’t care. A life’s a life.” Amen. There is no more concise and accurate rebuttal than that.

Look wider at the “pro-choice” cause. More than 34,000,000 million Americans have been reported as “aborted” since 1972 (add up the numbers on that page) - which is far more than the number of Americans lost in all previous American wars combined, while pro-lifers endlessly puppet these illogical lines about “choice”. The “pro-choice” movement is not properly identified as toleration of silent infanticide - standing by while the class of “babies” is unendingly slaughtered. Nobody should be at war over it - killing abortion clinic doctors is a seriously bad and misled thing to do - but the legislative war against the “pro-choice” movement should be far, far more intense and broad than it is. Abortion is doing a far better job destroying American life than Al-Qaeda has reasonable hope to - but Al-qaeda surely would destroy all American lives, given the chance. I realize this comparison may distort pro-lifers as just out to kill babies. That’s stupid. They mean none of that. But unfortunately, their collective means of misled tolerance have in very fact meant more cost of American life than all other American battles combined. Heaven shudders at the bloodbath, my friends.

But the question of abortion is more complicated than that. There are arguments it should be decided per State by State constitutions. I know Democrats who happen also to be Mormons who think it is and should be so. I disagree with them. The first lines of the Constitution of the United States declare “..Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” as inalienable rights. Arguably, the right of life is not universally protected under the United States federal government.

There are arguments that would seem to refute this - or maybe they actually do - but as far as proposing legislation I don’t care. If those arguments hold up, we need to change the legislation that allows them to hold up, in my opinion. Whatever litigious mess got it through our heads that it’s okay for a State to approve killing a fetus in any circumstance - we need to reverse that mess. Because it is not okay, morally, in most of the situations where States in our nation allow it. And in my own opinion, any candidate with a “pro-choice” position offers no hope of overturning that litigious mess.

Because I believe extremist Islam poses a far greater danger, I could vote for a strong pro-war candidate who was also “pro-choice”. I’m fortunate in that regard that McCain is both pro-life and pro-war. And as I’ve said before, Obama and Clinton both speak of “withdrawal” - but that is a euphamism for surrender to an enemy who, if not stopped, would do everything within their then expanding means to literally destroy the United States of America.

And Obama and Clinton both know that, whatever else they say. They can promise immediate withdrawal, but they know they can’t really offer that. One meeting with a war cabinet would scare them silly out of the decision. McCain not only knows that, but he says it, too.

I’ve been holding off recommending this film, because ai-ai-ai, will it make a Mormon audience composed of your typical Mormon culture uncomfortable. It is ridiculous how fully Dutcher has taken on the role of The Artist Who Challenges You. If Dutcher is going around touting in his advertisements that the thing is R-rated - one of the hot-button topics in Mormon culture - I cannot see otherwise but that he has taken it upon himself to challenge culture. If that gives you brownie points among crowds that think that’s the mission of an artist (*ahem*AML-list*hem), okay. But I don’t think there’s any chart in heaven detailing how much any artist challenged culture. It’s not about that.

According to Michael Medved - who has given Dutcher some of his best reviews! - the artist as cultural or religious challenger is a mythical role that has emerged only in this last century. Medved argues that most of the artists who created our “classics” through the centuries found plenty to do - under every kind of label or adjective you could conjure: disturbed, glorious, funny, tragic - whatever- without heckling their host culture, as so many artists in our day have been taught to believe they should. It is a point given in Dutcher’s biography at his own web page that one of his teachers while in film school at BYU prophesied that the first great Mormon writer will be excommunicated. Richard, that teacher was full of crap! Without a mass of knowledge to back up my agreement with Medved, I only say that Medved’s take on artists and culture sounds to me a whole lot better than advertising your film as “The first R-Rated Mormon film!” Why don’t we just change the billboard to say “This film will shock and offend you!” What of the dopes in the narrative of this very film who claim the only way an artist will get ahead is by shocking and offending? We’re supposed to think those guys are dopes, right? They’re part of the culture that led to the lead character’s fall. So let’s not listen to them.

Now I know I’ve gone and abrasively criticized marketing. Sometime last year I abrasively criticized a marketing effort coming from Dutcher’s Main Street Movie Co. and shortly thereafter found a comment at my film blog from Dutcher’s marketing guy, abrasively criticizing my (retrospectively) amateurish concept trailer. Tit-for-tat cannon blasts among the artists in Zion. I don’t think it’s easy for artists to separate the line of personal criticism from artistic criticism. And too often we merge them - but that’s an essay for another day.

I believe Dutcher could have told the exact same story of FALLING with just slightly different directing decisions that wouldn’t ensure he turns a lot of his audience away. And his marketing of this film is way off-base. (I know, I hear the cannons blasting still.) If you don’t care about ratings (as I believe Dutcher claims not to), you don’t advertise them. If many Mormons think it wrong to ever see an R-rated film (and that thinking is in error, in my opinion), period, that’s fine for them - it is their right to risk missing out, and frankly, too many who argue against the point would seek to deny Mormons so inclined of that right, or deny them their freedom of conscience to avoid whatever they want - but the inevitable message behind “The first R-rated Mormon film!” is ironically as narrow in a different way. It actually seeks to drive the question of the appropriate to the utmost limits of tolerance - and I would argue that very approach will only produce intolerance - it isn’t going to make anyone think. Nobody thinks when they feel threatened. All they think about is either raising their fists to pummel the hell out of you or getting the hell away from the situation (Dutcher has experienced far more than his share of both, on emotional terms). Fight or Flight. It reduces us to cavemen. Where’s the love in that? Philosophical battles are one thing, but you’ve gotta know that even though there may not be a rational basis for Mormons to do so, they’re simply going to read it as an attack on their religion.

Art isn’t a culture or religion test. Life is a culture and religion test - the way we live. Art is a huge part of life (and for artists, it is literally the subsistence of their life - how they get by) - but as the Indigo Girls penned, “..there’s just no medium for life”. Life is life, art is story (where this film is concerned). And this story should be advertised for what it is - a very powerful morality tale - not for what it isn’t (G-rated).

The unfortunate irony of that advertising is that the film is, in my opinion, powerfully Mormon, but while the advertising raises a question entirely irrelevant to the film, it only invites those whose minds are closed to the question - and I have tried opening many minds to the question, and the steel trap set on that question does not respond to crow bars - it only invites them to keep the trap shut, indeed the trap may only close tighter.

I had to decide whether I think Dutcher himself or his actors went against good principle in their performances. I’ve decided I don’t think they did. The directing decisions over that question are so distracting it could not only tear down the proscenium for many (it nearly did for me, but I’d gone into the film with a lot of forethought and preparation) - it could make them want to burn down the theater. Nevertheless, to those willing to explore them, the questions are so gripping it may not matter. The context and the story, the presentation, the direction, what happens - it all very clearly paints the disturbances the film explores as just that: disturbances which are not wanted in a good life. The obvious implication is that we like good, not evil. Hallejuhah. One more film striking against evil.

This also may not be a film for the squeamish.

This film wallops the bloodthirsty with divine guilt.

Last of all, this film probes deeper into the mystery of the Atonement than any work of art I have encountered. If the story it presents is deeply disturbed, the power is in the questions the story poses of whether those disturbances could be overcome. The ending presents situations on questions of innocence and very powerful symbolic reversals - leading to Christ - which I found deeply affecting.

Dear Richard,

I will give this film a shot. It may surprise you to hear me speaking of going to this film as taking a risk, and you deserve the respect of hearing why I do.

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CALLER: When a man of your wealth — yes, your wealth — no matter what happens, you can afford it. What about guys like me out there? I’ve had years where I’ve made big six figure and years that I haven’t, and all in all me and my wife are fairly financially stable, but do you know how expensive life is, or how much it costs to pay for health care, and why…?

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Spotted at NRO’s Corner

[Update 02/12/08: An essay by Orson Scott Card may have changed my mind about immigration.  Things I say in this entry about that I now think are probably erroneous or worse.]

There are various/ reasons I support Mitt Romney’s run for the Presidency.

[Update: I have moved paragraphs of fading relevance - since they concern /candidates who are either fading or have dropped out of the race - to the end of this entry. I’ve also added a bit more against McCain and for Romney.]

First I’ll say why I don’t support McCain. McCain’s campaign finance reform bill had loop-holes in it which, as had been predicted by many critics, opened the way for parties to receive far and away more exorbitant financing to a degree where private interests can virtually pocket a party. Thanks to McCain’s bill, private radically liberal institutions have been able to gain great control over the Democratic party (so, by the way, unless you intend on casting a surrogate vote for George Soros, don’t vote for Hillary Clinton). (I confess not knowing whether the measure has had a similar corroding effect on the Republican Party). McCain’s position on cutting taxes is to cut them after cutting back government, which is like asking a drunkard to cut back on whiskey after he has stopped drinking. No fat government gets lean before giving money back to citizens (and citizens who retain more of their money produce more money and taxes besides). McCain’s amnesty position on immigration is a threat to the right of sovereign rule of law. When a foreign national is made a citizen – or not even made a citizen - without paying the price, we import a citizen who gives nothing back for the price of import (and the price of import is paid against our will, besides). The protections and benefits of citizenship come with a price - freedom is not free. When freedom is given without a price, freedom is bound, and in this case, bound to the exports, apathy, and eventual controls of other nations. We want immigrants, but we want them to pay the price for American citizenship.

Now I’ll attack some of the attacks against Romney. His conservative social stances are erroneously slammed as flip-flopping by folks who seem to think that the only motivation any politician could have to change his mind is a buckle to peer pressure and not any genuine change of thought. This hard-line cynical criticism has the benefit of being both unprovable and seemingly reasonable. It is only logical if we assume from the outset that we should simply trust one group over another without even perusing the logic of what either has to say. Dismissing one man’s word simply because another man alleges he is lying is not a logical basis of ascertaining whether the man is telling the truth, but that is precisely what every liberal writer and speaker I have encountered does in regards to Romney. Yo. Truth test, folks. It may make a convincing smear, but we aren’t out to form our judgments around the most convincing smear. We like logic. I hope. Logic usually places more trust in the experience and belief of a person witnessing it - not in the witness of their enemy. Both these points are driven across much more strongly than I have put it by Ann Coulter, in this article which I recommend a read of. Coulter also raises the critical point that the Republican candidate the generally liberal MSM fawns over is precisely the candidate we should reject, and explores other fallacies behind the “flip-flopper” allegation against Romney. Amen to that. And is the MSM favoring McCain? Read this contrast of AP reporting of McCain vs. Romney. It’s jaw-dropping. Also recommended: this rallying cry for Romney from NRO’s Mark R. Levin, which among other things very clearly reports the facts of McCain’s very un-presidential contempt and personal verbal assaults on Romney. Romney has never attacked a political opponent’s person, only their position, which is perfectly fair and right to do - it is a contest of record and philosophy. McCain’s attacks make a hypocritical attempt to draw hatred against Romney as among the very wealthy classes - among whom reside McCain himself. No president would lead America well by encouraging class contempt (and by pretending he is not something which he is - rich). Also, McCain blatantly lies about his record and statements on several issues. Here’s a loosely abridged excerpt of Levin on it (click “show” to read it):

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McCain is an intemperate, stubborn individual.. I could see his personal contempt for Mitt Romney roiling under the surface.. why? Because Romney ran campaign ads that challenged McCain’s record? Is this the first campaign in which an opponent has run ads questioning another candidate’s record? That’s par for the course. To the best of my knowledge, Romney’s ads have not been personal.. the same cannot be said of McCain’s comments about Romney.

Last night McCain.. resorted to a barrage of personal assaults on Romney that reflect more on the man making them than the target of the attacks. McCain now has a habit of describing Romney as a “manager for profit” and someone who has “laid-off” people, implying that Romney is both unpatriotic and uncaring. Moreover, he complains that Romney is using his “millions” or “fortune” to underwrite his campaign. This is a crass appeal to class warfare. McCain is extremely wealthy through marriage. Romney has never denigrated McCain for his wealth or the manner in which he acquired it. Evidently Romney’s character doesn’t lend him to cross certain boundaries of decorum and decency, but McCain’s does. And what of managing for profit? When did free enterprise become evil? This is liberal pablum [or trite, meaningless platitude] which, once again, could have been uttered by Hillary Clinton.

And there is the open secret of McCain losing control of his temper and behaving in a highly inappropriate fashion with prominent Republicans, including Thad Cochran, John Cornyn, Strom Thurmond, Donald Rumsfeld, Bradley Smith, and a list of others. Does anyone honestly believe that the Clintons or the Democrat party would give McCain a pass on this kind of behavior?

.. how can anyone explain [McCain’s] abrupt about-face on two of his signature issues: immigration and tax cuts? .. [he] led the battle not once but twice against the border-security-first approach to illegal immigration.. He disparaged the motives of the millions of people who objected to his legislation. He fought all amendments that would limit the general amnesty provisions of the bill. This controversy raged for weeks. Only now he says he’s gotten the message. Yet, when asked last night if he would sign the [same bill] as president, he dissembles, arguing that it’s a hypothetical question. Last Sunday on Meet the Press, he said he would sign the bill. [Me: is that straight talk? One week he say’s he’s “gotten the message” against his bill, the next he says he’d sign it, the next he waffles on the question? No way. He’s clearly either hiding or undecided on his real position, or else he woudln’t change it every week]. There’s nothing straight about this talk. Now, I understand that politicians tap dance during the course of a campaign, but this was a defining moment for McCain. And another defining moment was his very public opposition to the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. He was the media’s favorite Republican in opposition to Bush. [My note: mainstream media is by and large liberal. Maybe that’s common knowledge, but..] At the time his primary reason for opposing the cuts was because they favored the rich (and, by the way, they did not). Now he says he opposed them because they weren’t accompanied by spending cuts. That’s simply not correct.

Even worse than denying his own record, McCain is flatly lying about Romney’s position on Iraq. As has been discussed for nearly a week now, Romney did not support a specific date to withdraw our forces from Iraq. The evidence is irrefutable. And it’s also irrefutable that McCain is abusing the English language (Romney’s statements) the way Bill Clinton did in front of a grand jury. The problem is that once called on it by everyone from the New York Times to me, he obstinately refuses to admit the truth. So, last night, he lied about it again. This isn’t open to interpretation. But it does give us a window into who he is. [Me: he’s someone capable of flat lying!]

Of course, it’s one thing to overlook one or two issues where a candidate seeking the Republican nomination as a conservative might depart from conservative orthodoxy. But in McCain’s case, adherence is the exception to the rule — McCain-Feingold (restrictions on political speech), McCain-Kennedy (amnesty for illegal aliens), McCain-Kennedy-Edwards (trial lawyers’ bill of rights), McCain-Lieberman (global warming legislation), Gang of 14 (obstructing change to the filibuster rule for judicial nominations), the Bush tax cuts, and so forth. This is a record any liberal Democrat would proudly run on. Are we to overlook this record when selecting a Republican nominee to carry our message in the general election?

But what about his national security record? It’s a mixed bag. McCain is rightly credited with being an early voice for changing tactics in Iraq. He was a vocal supporter of the surge, even when many were not. But he does not have a record of being a vocal advocate for defense spending when Bill Clinton was slashing it. And he has been on the wrong side of the debate on homeland security. He supports closing Guantanamo Bay, which would result in granting an array of constitutional protections to al-Qaeda detainees, and limiting legitimate interrogation techniques that have, in fact, saved American lives. Combined with his (past) de-emphasis on border-security, I think it’s fair to say that McCain’s positions are more in line with the ACLU than most conservatives.

Why recite this record? Well, if conservatives don’t act now to stop McCain, he will become the Republican nominee and he will lose the general election. He is simply flawed on too many levels. He is a Republican Hillary Clinton in many ways. Many McCain supporters insist he is the only Republican who can beat Hillary Clinton or Barak Obama. And they point to certain polls. The polls are meaningless this far from November. Six months ago, the polls had Rudy winning the Republican nomination. In October 1980, the polls had Jimmy Carter defeating Ronald Reagan. This is no more than spin.

Romney has the right idea on the separation of church and state with encouragement of religion in general in the public square. (If you missed it or would like reminding, read the transcript of his speech on the topic over at NPR.) He has a very good track record in fiscal reform - he turned both the bankrupt Salt Lake City Olympics and the government of Massechusets around to great surplusses - and reason of hope to reign in our massively burgeoned government. He has the practical approach to foreign policy required to secure our nation by stamping out militant extremism abroad. Romney is the real deal and I choose to trust the position he states he has on various social issues. I am impressed, actually, when a man is capable of changing his mind and saying why he did so. It assures me that he thinks for himself and does not just blindly follow or rigidly adhere to any dogma without thought. Lastly, Romney’s position on immigration is naturalization, not amnesty, and naturalization bears a price for citizenship. Citizens obtained through amnesty draw on the resources of a nation without paying the same price as other citizens. But naturalized citizens do pay the price, and in turn contribute to the society they join.

If your mind is made up not to support Huckabee, you may not need to read these next paragraphs, which blast Huckabee’s utterly despicable tactics and frightening thinking. If you want to read them, click “show”.

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These next expired paragraphs rail against Giuliani and speculate on Thompson, neither any longer relevant to the race. Again, click “show” if you want to read them.

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(as they moderate comments)

This was my comment responding to a comment in this CNN article.

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Just beautiful.

A cross raised over a church in Iraq. Religious liberty arriving. Just beautiful.

[This is written in response to the second comment at this report at brietbart.com]

I have no respect for that comment, Cindy.

First, all of the questions center on religion or aspects of personal history which are implicitly assumed to be bad (else why ask about them - what can they have, minus such assumptions, logically, to do with a politician’s values, platforms, etc? - never mind that even “logically” they don’t?) Here’s a comparison: back in Kennedy’s day if anyone asked “Did you know he’s a Catholic?” - to answer either “Yes” or “No” would admit, unchallenged, the unstated but assumed position of “No Catholic could be a good president” - itself carrying yet another nasty layer of an assumed “Every Catholic tarnishes politics.” (or is or does X or Y bad thing) Even in Kennedy’s day the United States hadn’t much unshackled itself from bigotry against Catholics and/or Irish people - during the surge of Irish immigrants late in the 19th and early 20th century, it was common for hiring businesses to post signs that read IRISH NEED NOT APPLY; that social segregation broke down later but strains of prejudice still ran strong - and still do, against many religions and many ethnicities. To buy into such unfounded assumptions, unchallenged, that any such matters probed so nefariously in such cartoonish, distorted, vastly oversimplified and unrealistic caricatures - to suppose these hold any validity against the good of people or their abilities is to follow in the path of hasty, bigoted foolishness. Learn about the people you may vote for. Don’t take oversimplified sound bytes and questions as valid inquisitions into truth. For heaven’s sake, have we not seen enough in this nation of the potential for misleading information and bigotry to tarnish and corrupt?

Some proper responses to either the question “Did you know Kennedy is a Catholic?” or “Did you know Romney is a Mormon?” are these: “Did you know our constitution forbids any test of religion for Presidential Candidates?” - or “It is very sad that after so many turmoils our nation has suffered at the hands of bigotry that it continues to run so strong.”

Religion is nothing to a candidate’s eligibility. Where religion informs values, that may be the only area of concern. Mormonism’s values are by and large square with the traditional and mainstream values of historical and conservative America. Period. End of that discussion.

And (at last) second, the question “why is Mitt whining” is simply nasty. First, it’s quite inaccurate to assert he whines. Second, sadness or disappointment is an appropriate response to bigotry; and the mature response is, rather, to ask How has our nation not learned, after so many wars that hinged on questions of bigotry (The Civil War won in defense of Blacks, and the Second World War in defense of Jews and many others - both wars also in defense of our own citizens), that bigotry is one of the primary destroyers of civilization - or How does our nation still tolerate bigotry - even so glibly unsubtle, rampant, and shameless? Down with bigotry! Judge a man by his values and the content of his character, not by his religion, his race, or any other ethnic concern. Bigotry is a favorite tool of the Devil. Wake up to it! Snap out of it, America!

Derek Bambauer at the INFO/LAW blog concludes against the CP80 Initiative, which proposes a means of regulating internet pornography.  This is what I have to say of his post, in summary: he glibly dismisses the harm of pornography while discouraging an arguably Constitutional measure which could very well effectively regulate it, which measure in my opinion he very hastily (never mind erroneously) labels "Unconstitutional", while he does not even accurately reflect the measure's presentation, and responds to problems which the measure does not pose.  Further he does not either seek out or propose an effective alternative to what he believes would be ineffective.  He is of course not obligated to do that last (or to take the measure seriously, for that matter), but it would be more helpful than his misled, prolonged "No."

I would not write as extensively as I have here if Bambauer's arguments were not taken seriously, but they are.  At the moment two trackbacks to Bambaeur's blog (say that ten times fast!) - [here's one] - [here's another] express sympathy with them, and my own well-liked visitor Hydralisk previously seemed to express sympathy with the arguments.  A quick 'net search reveals others who would disagree with them - [here] - [here] - [here] - [here].  I'd like to note that several of these seem to link support of CP80 with a necessity of religious action (specifically, Mormon or Latter-Day-Saint religious action), and I'm uncomfortable with that.  The Mormon church does not tell its members which political or legislative measures (or parties) they should support, but advises members to support whatever they individually believe is best; which admits and expects the possibility of variance in legislative and political preferences - so Mormons should not presume or imply that we should support any political effort as a religious matter.  Unfortunately, doing so is an exceedingly common (and irritating) mistake that Mormons make.

Now, as contrasting with Bambauer's post and the apparent agreements with it, I very much think we need an entirely different vantage on CP80.

My arguments go into (very great) detail, but I'll start by summarizing some of the reasons I think CP80 could do wonderful things for the United States of America.

1. It is an arguably Constitutional proposal which could effectively regulate internet pornography (where current regulations virtually do not exist).
2. As a visitor to Bambaeur's blog pointed out, there is a longstanding and sizable amount of research indicating that pornography damages people; here only in summary I might suggest that legally and effectively upholding the possibility that pornography is detrimental to people's Pursuit of Happiness could only do so many good things, because in general, when people are given the option to have their Pursuit of Happiness protected (here, by being given a choice to have their right to avoid pornography enforced), they tend to choose the Happy path, and Happy people do wonderful things for our nation among those things being more productive and contributing to our nation's economic growth (or "General Welfare"), which leads to the next point.
3. Pornography overwhelms the internet in terms of page usage (what people access on the internet), and very possibly overwhelms high technology commerce; while there are virtually no effective safeguards against it for people who do not wish to access it. If CP80 would effectively keep pornography out of the workplaces and homes of citizens who do not desire it - where otherwise that is something quite difficult to do (the most cautious people run across internet pornography accidentally) - and pornography is a very substantial economic hindrance where workers who are hooked on it can waste great amounts of work time and resources on it - by enforcing means of voluntarily removing a very sizable obstacle to economic growth, it could prove a very sizable economic boon.
4. CP80 could much more effectively protect one of the rights of children in an area where that right is virtually unprotected; that right being to not be molested: for when a child is exposed to sexually illicit material it is a form of molestation.  On "virtually unprotected", effective safeguards are difficult for consumers to access, existing safeguards are paltry and easy to go around, and there is substantial data that very large numbers of youth and children are being exposed to pornography - in private and in public places.

According to the "about" page at his blog, Bambauer is an assistant professor of Law at Wayne State University Law School in Michigan (but I do not wish my first advertisment for his reasoning on this topic to imply that his reasoning is always so, nor that his school is so).  Two other lawyers also write at the blog, both of them respectively Assistant and Associate professors of Law elsewhere, and the blog is hosted at their former Law school, Harvard.

I've been working at this entry on-and-off since Hydralisk left a comment at my previous post on the CP80 initiative - quite a while ago, but as these are unresolved very democratic questions the debate remains very relevant. Last entry on the topic I didn't much say what the CP80 initiative proposes to do. The larger abstract concept is to break the Internet in the United States into two separate "Channels" - one channel where pornography is allowed, and another channel dubbed the "Community Channel" or "Community Port 80", hence "CP80", where such things are banned. I think this is a fantastic idea for the reasons I summarized above, and there may be other reasons you'll see throughout this post (in addition to the details of my reasons).  Before responding to Bambauer's post in detail I'll respond to Hydralisks' previous comment.

[Click "show" to unfold the rest of this post.]

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