Americans are still behind in their understanding of modern China. China is growing at an astounding pace and may pass the United States as the world's leading economic power by the year 2016, and some people believe that it is already there. The Obama administration's insane anti-growth policies, which provoke ridicule, not admiration, among educated Chinese when they aren't being too polite to let on, are making American politicians, the media, Hollywood, and academia, delusional. The Chinese make mistakes like anyone else, of course. China is becoming too urbanized for the good of the country. Many rural areas of mainland China remain backward. In other words, China has its growing pains. But those who underrate China should beware, and consider a visit to Hainan before becoming too smug. The pictures above are of downtown Haikou.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Hainan is a tropical island, 31,100 sq. miles. and the southernmost province of China, located just south of the mainland and below the tropic of cancer. The capital is Haikou, an extraordinarily lovely city, also known as the 'Coconut City' or jokingly 'Eastern Hawaii'. It is thoroughly modern, with excellent restaurants and hotels, a well-designed and engineered airport and all the other facilities of modern life. and very friendly and hospitable to tourists. The people are generally well educated and many of them speak English and other western languages. Hainan, including Haikou, is an example of a place few westerners have heard of without having traveled the far east. On a map it looks as if it is way off the beaten path, rural, remote and probably backward, but it is none of those things.
Monday, October 29, 2012
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Cruelty in the Comics
The comics page in a recent local urban newspaper has Sgt. Snorkel choking Beetle Bailey and Lucy is frequently seen grabbing Linus' security blanket much to his consternation. In both cases cruelty is represented as something funny. It isn't. Cruelty in a "comic" strip is cruelty. Of course that must make me a poor sport, but the point is this. Cruelty in a serious news story or in a movie is unlikely to make a reader or viewer cruel. They see it for what it is. If they have that bent they are probably at least somewhat that way already. Children, however, can be impressed with anything which is supposedly funny and they are likely to think that anything funny is OK. When 'Abbot and Costello' had a movie series some decades ago they or their adversaries were constantly doing 'funny' things that killed or maimed people. In an animated cartoon Bugs Bunny (and I am a Bugs Bunny fan) fiddled until some snaggle-toothed mountaineers, not paying attention to where they were stepping, stepped off a cliff.
I am also a 'Peanuts' fan, but I do not like to see Charlie Brown sitting by himself on a playground bench bemoaning the fact that 'nobody likes' him. (In fact they do. They tease him, which is not the same thing). A lonely little boy or girl suffering feelings of rejection can hit too close to home for a lot of people. It isn't funny. And more recently, the bases are loaded and Charlie Brown steps up to bat and strikes out, thereby frustrating what must have been his passionate ambition to hit a grand slam home run. What on earth is funny about that? Again, I am a Peanuts fan and have been for decades. But folks can be treated a little nicer, even in the comics.
I am also a 'Peanuts' fan, but I do not like to see Charlie Brown sitting by himself on a playground bench bemoaning the fact that 'nobody likes' him. (In fact they do. They tease him, which is not the same thing). A lonely little boy or girl suffering feelings of rejection can hit too close to home for a lot of people. It isn't funny. And more recently, the bases are loaded and Charlie Brown steps up to bat and strikes out, thereby frustrating what must have been his passionate ambition to hit a grand slam home run. What on earth is funny about that? Again, I am a Peanuts fan and have been for decades. But folks can be treated a little nicer, even in the comics.
Christian Theology --- Right, Wrong and Command
A few years ago I wrote something titled Does God Decree What is Right or is it Right Because God Decrees it? I deleted it because I thought it said too much, more than my understanding of the subject justified. Nonetheless I was a bit hasty in abandoning the subject altogether . What I was tying to establish was that while God creates all things, judgments of Good (right) and Evil (wrong) are not judgments of things; they are, simply, value judgments. God has created a mind in the human species which understands what is good and what is not.
Though philosophers have wrestled with the question whether God decides arbitrarily what is good, and something which He now calls good He might just as well have called bad, or whether something is good simply because it obviously is good. Can any rational being believe that gratuitous cruelty is 'good' or that kindness and a charitable disposition are 'bad'? Even if you can argue that under some circumstnce theft may be justified, the concept itself always denotes something which is bad, simply by definition, not because it is a bad thing, but because it is, simply, bad. Period.
If gratuitous violence could be rendered a good thing, or at least morally acceptable, because God so decrees, our religion would be based solely on command. There would be no concepts of honour or decency, kindness or charity, right or wrong, only arbitrary commands. That is apparently the view of political extremists and jihadists. However, they are wrong. God is the Creator and Ruler of the Universe who has given man free will while informing him through the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Christ that He wants His creatures to be conform to the pre-established standard of good. He is not telling us what is good because we already know that, the knowledge having been built in us, so to speak. So if we do not do good we "have no excuse" as Paul wrote. As the ability to understand the difference between good and evil is embedded in the human mind, there is a basis for judging the atrocities of Nazis and radical Moslem jihadist to be evil --- actually evil in fact, not just contrary to someone's commands or whims. In other words, the Nazis and Jihadist extremists "have no excuse".
I did not, however, set out to write a library full of words, nor will I attempt it now. There are many subjects which this analysis does not cover --- definitions, moral dilemas, "what is the good life" and on and on. I leave that to another time, or to others.
Though philosophers have wrestled with the question whether God decides arbitrarily what is good, and something which He now calls good He might just as well have called bad, or whether something is good simply because it obviously is good. Can any rational being believe that gratuitous cruelty is 'good' or that kindness and a charitable disposition are 'bad'? Even if you can argue that under some circumstnce theft may be justified, the concept itself always denotes something which is bad, simply by definition, not because it is a bad thing, but because it is, simply, bad. Period.
If gratuitous violence could be rendered a good thing, or at least morally acceptable, because God so decrees, our religion would be based solely on command. There would be no concepts of honour or decency, kindness or charity, right or wrong, only arbitrary commands. That is apparently the view of political extremists and jihadists. However, they are wrong. God is the Creator and Ruler of the Universe who has given man free will while informing him through the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Christ that He wants His creatures to be conform to the pre-established standard of good. He is not telling us what is good because we already know that, the knowledge having been built in us, so to speak. So if we do not do good we "have no excuse" as Paul wrote. As the ability to understand the difference between good and evil is embedded in the human mind, there is a basis for judging the atrocities of Nazis and radical Moslem jihadist to be evil --- actually evil in fact, not just contrary to someone's commands or whims. In other words, the Nazis and Jihadist extremists "have no excuse".
I did not, however, set out to write a library full of words, nor will I attempt it now. There are many subjects which this analysis does not cover --- definitions, moral dilemas, "what is the good life" and on and on. I leave that to another time, or to others.
Monday, October 22, 2012
Liberal Judges and the Constitution
Liberal judges have gone so far toward ignoring the Constitution and substituting their own preferences and ideolgical predilections for it that they are nearing the point where Congress will either have to rein in the courts or concede that America is a Platonic oligarchy of philosopher kings in the form of judges wearing black robes.
A recent judicial outrage is the decision of a federal judge that California's ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional. To reach that result the judge had to read the Constitution and find something somewhere in its wording which was intended to vindicate gay marriage against the will of the people to invalidate it. There is no such thing, not a single article, section, phrase, sentence or word. It is not there. Furthermore, the result prescribed by the judge could not possibly have been intended by the drafters or ratifyers of the Constitution or have been understood by them to be the consequence of their work. And the judge knew this, so he violated his oath of office. In over thirty states the people have rejected gay marriage. The Constitution of Massachusetts, where a right of gay marriage was decreed by judicial fiat, was drafted by John Adams, and anyone with even a passing acquaintence with the life and work of John Adams, and the times in which he lived, knows perfectly well that had the subject of gay marriage even occurred to him he would have written into that constitution a most emphatic prohibition. Yet the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts decided that somewhere within the words of the state constitution is a validation of gay marriage. No there isn't. It was not intended by the drafters or ratifyers, or by the state legislature, or the governor, or the people of Massachusetts, who attempted to reverse the pro gay marriage ruling. Only a group of arrogant "philosopher kings" in black robes wanted it. In fact, not all gay people want it.
I am not concerned here with the merits of gay marriage, if any. I am concerned with what is happening when the majority of the people from coast to coast cannot prevail with democratic methods in the establishment of law. Here are the judges and here is the institution of gay marriage, unknown to every society, every culture, every religion, every legal system for all the thousands and thousands of years of recorded human history and disapproved by the people virtually wherever it has appeared; yet the people are said to have nothing to say about the form, character and core values of their society, not simply incidental attributes, when a handfull of judges disagree.
But isn't there some argument offered by the judges in defense of what they do? Yes, and while it takes somewhat different form with different words it can be reduced to the following views. There is contained in the fourteenth amendment to the United States Constitution, and elsewhere in the Constitution and in the various state constitutions, the requirement of equal rights and equal treatment under the laws, federal and state. No one quarrels with that. And everyone knows the purpose for which that principle became so endemic to the laws, the culture, and the sometimes turbulent history of the United States, wherein it was once disputed. It was intended to remove the disgrace of slavery from the national landscape. The thirteenth amendment abolished slavery directly, de jure, but the drafters knew how cleverly an intended result can be thwarted by those who may be intent on manipulation of words and evasion of principles. Left alone, the thirteenth amendment would not have been sufficient to achieve its intended result because de facto slavery would have replaced the de jure slavery which had been abolished. To head off and prevent such evasion equal protection clauses were placed in the federal constitution and those state consitutions in states where slavery had existed or was thought still threatened.
As time went on the principle of equal protection was extended to other classes of people; women, for example, in cases of sex discrimination. It was extended in other ways, usually producing benign results generally accepted by the people. Questions of meaning do arise and some of them are complex and difficult; yet however we may resolve constitutional questions at the margins of uncertainty it is perfectly clear that while judges have some latitude in matters of interpretation, construction and application of laws and constitutions they have no moral or legal authority to transform, by judicial fiat, the fundamental nature of the society they are supposed to serve in accordance with the oath they have taken.
These liberal judges habitually find a principle to exist in the constitution which is not there and never was and is not even implied or hinted at. The judge will opine that there exists no "rational" basis for banning gay marriage and that such a ban does not promote any "compelling state interest". He or she will decide what is a "compelling state interest" and that will determine the outcome of the case even though neither the words "compelling state interest" nor the concept is contained anywhere in the constitution. Let us be clear. When the people desire some result by direct vote or through their representatives they have, by the expression of that desire in the form of legislation, themselves decided what is a sufficient state interest to warrant state action and the word "compelling" adds nothing to the matter in most cases. A "state interest" is any interest which the people wish to advance unless it is incompatible with the constitution. In a narrow range of cases it might be true that something which would ordinarily be unconstitutional may pass muster because of extreme necessity, although even that principle is not found in the Constitution except in the case of the suspension of habeus corpus. If, for the sake of argument, we posit that extreme necessity can justify going around a principle which would ordinarily be a constitutional bar to some course of action (a view which I believe is acceptable) resort to to the concept of a "compelling state interest" might make sense, though reliance on a validating exception in extremis would make more sense. But in the ordinary course of events the mere fact that the people want something to be done or not done, without anything more than that, should be enough to protect it from having to show any "compelling state interest". In other words, although perhaps the government can legitimately silence dissent during a violent revolution by a showing of a "compelling state interest" there should be no need to show it in the case of a bar against gay marriage because the courts are not in that case presented with a crisis or a measure which is clearly unconstitutional. And certainly an institution as sacrosanct as marriage over such a long period of time in so many regions, nations and cultures of the world can be protected against any charge of irrationality. Added to all the above, the liberal judge will frequently opine that gay marriage is a "fundamental" right. Really? If it is "fundamental" why did no one know about it prior to when the Supreme Court of Hawaii propounded the principle circa 1990? How can a right so "fundamental" have escaped the attention of all of the constitution's drafters and ratifyers and every recoginzed philosopher and religious leader in the history of the world from Plato and Moses to the present? When someone has to resort to such silliness to make his case, that case is not terribly solid.
You will also hear the argument that we have a "living constitution", the meaning of which will change from time to time. No, we do not, not in that sense. The application of the constitution can sometimes change through changes in circumstances but never through the mere passage of time. When each state is allocated two senators it will not become three or six senators through the passage of time. What can change is the application of certain principles, though not the spirit or intent. For example, the Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. At one time confinement to bread and water might not have been considered "cruel and unusual". It has long since become at least unusual. Furthermore, someone has to decide what is "cruel". Obviously the drafters left that to the reasonable discretion of judges and legislatures. As Abraham Lincoln pointed out in his first inaugural address, March 4, 1865, no document of reasonable length can anticipate in detail every question which will arise under it. Judges are not encyclopedias or dictionaries. There were expected to be reasonable people who truly intended to vindicate not what they wanted to be the law, but the law as it came to them under circumstances then existing.
Why are appellate courts even permitted, ever, to invalidate a federal or state law duly enacted? There are two reasons. First, Americans do not want a temporary majority animated by mass hysteria or thoughtless excitement to trample on rights plainly protected by the constitution and intended to be protected by the drafters and ratifiers thereof. The slow and ponderous rejection of gay marriage by a majority of the people in state after state hardly amounts to the sort of mass hyesteria and overreaction which judicial revue was intended to head off and obviate. Second, there are genuine gray areas in the application of some constitutional provisions. For example, although the constitution does guarantee access to legal counsel for anyone accused of a crime, it does not expressly require government to locate and pay for counsel when the defendant can do neither. That question invited a legitimate difference of opinion which was fortunately resolved in a positive way by the Supreme Court in Gideon vs. Wainright and legal counsel are now provided gratis to those unable to afford counsel with their own resources. But it should be clearly understood that if there is ever to be gay marriage in this country there must either be a massive and radical shift in the people's core values or a constitutional amendment to achieve it. Otherwise the imposition of gay marriage on an unwilling populace represents a usurpation of power by tyrants.
A recent judicial outrage is the decision of a federal judge that California's ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional. To reach that result the judge had to read the Constitution and find something somewhere in its wording which was intended to vindicate gay marriage against the will of the people to invalidate it. There is no such thing, not a single article, section, phrase, sentence or word. It is not there. Furthermore, the result prescribed by the judge could not possibly have been intended by the drafters or ratifyers of the Constitution or have been understood by them to be the consequence of their work. And the judge knew this, so he violated his oath of office. In over thirty states the people have rejected gay marriage. The Constitution of Massachusetts, where a right of gay marriage was decreed by judicial fiat, was drafted by John Adams, and anyone with even a passing acquaintence with the life and work of John Adams, and the times in which he lived, knows perfectly well that had the subject of gay marriage even occurred to him he would have written into that constitution a most emphatic prohibition. Yet the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts decided that somewhere within the words of the state constitution is a validation of gay marriage. No there isn't. It was not intended by the drafters or ratifyers, or by the state legislature, or the governor, or the people of Massachusetts, who attempted to reverse the pro gay marriage ruling. Only a group of arrogant "philosopher kings" in black robes wanted it. In fact, not all gay people want it.
I am not concerned here with the merits of gay marriage, if any. I am concerned with what is happening when the majority of the people from coast to coast cannot prevail with democratic methods in the establishment of law. Here are the judges and here is the institution of gay marriage, unknown to every society, every culture, every religion, every legal system for all the thousands and thousands of years of recorded human history and disapproved by the people virtually wherever it has appeared; yet the people are said to have nothing to say about the form, character and core values of their society, not simply incidental attributes, when a handfull of judges disagree.
But isn't there some argument offered by the judges in defense of what they do? Yes, and while it takes somewhat different form with different words it can be reduced to the following views. There is contained in the fourteenth amendment to the United States Constitution, and elsewhere in the Constitution and in the various state constitutions, the requirement of equal rights and equal treatment under the laws, federal and state. No one quarrels with that. And everyone knows the purpose for which that principle became so endemic to the laws, the culture, and the sometimes turbulent history of the United States, wherein it was once disputed. It was intended to remove the disgrace of slavery from the national landscape. The thirteenth amendment abolished slavery directly, de jure, but the drafters knew how cleverly an intended result can be thwarted by those who may be intent on manipulation of words and evasion of principles. Left alone, the thirteenth amendment would not have been sufficient to achieve its intended result because de facto slavery would have replaced the de jure slavery which had been abolished. To head off and prevent such evasion equal protection clauses were placed in the federal constitution and those state consitutions in states where slavery had existed or was thought still threatened.
As time went on the principle of equal protection was extended to other classes of people; women, for example, in cases of sex discrimination. It was extended in other ways, usually producing benign results generally accepted by the people. Questions of meaning do arise and some of them are complex and difficult; yet however we may resolve constitutional questions at the margins of uncertainty it is perfectly clear that while judges have some latitude in matters of interpretation, construction and application of laws and constitutions they have no moral or legal authority to transform, by judicial fiat, the fundamental nature of the society they are supposed to serve in accordance with the oath they have taken.
These liberal judges habitually find a principle to exist in the constitution which is not there and never was and is not even implied or hinted at. The judge will opine that there exists no "rational" basis for banning gay marriage and that such a ban does not promote any "compelling state interest". He or she will decide what is a "compelling state interest" and that will determine the outcome of the case even though neither the words "compelling state interest" nor the concept is contained anywhere in the constitution. Let us be clear. When the people desire some result by direct vote or through their representatives they have, by the expression of that desire in the form of legislation, themselves decided what is a sufficient state interest to warrant state action and the word "compelling" adds nothing to the matter in most cases. A "state interest" is any interest which the people wish to advance unless it is incompatible with the constitution. In a narrow range of cases it might be true that something which would ordinarily be unconstitutional may pass muster because of extreme necessity, although even that principle is not found in the Constitution except in the case of the suspension of habeus corpus. If, for the sake of argument, we posit that extreme necessity can justify going around a principle which would ordinarily be a constitutional bar to some course of action (a view which I believe is acceptable) resort to to the concept of a "compelling state interest" might make sense, though reliance on a validating exception in extremis would make more sense. But in the ordinary course of events the mere fact that the people want something to be done or not done, without anything more than that, should be enough to protect it from having to show any "compelling state interest". In other words, although perhaps the government can legitimately silence dissent during a violent revolution by a showing of a "compelling state interest" there should be no need to show it in the case of a bar against gay marriage because the courts are not in that case presented with a crisis or a measure which is clearly unconstitutional. And certainly an institution as sacrosanct as marriage over such a long period of time in so many regions, nations and cultures of the world can be protected against any charge of irrationality. Added to all the above, the liberal judge will frequently opine that gay marriage is a "fundamental" right. Really? If it is "fundamental" why did no one know about it prior to when the Supreme Court of Hawaii propounded the principle circa 1990? How can a right so "fundamental" have escaped the attention of all of the constitution's drafters and ratifyers and every recoginzed philosopher and religious leader in the history of the world from Plato and Moses to the present? When someone has to resort to such silliness to make his case, that case is not terribly solid.
You will also hear the argument that we have a "living constitution", the meaning of which will change from time to time. No, we do not, not in that sense. The application of the constitution can sometimes change through changes in circumstances but never through the mere passage of time. When each state is allocated two senators it will not become three or six senators through the passage of time. What can change is the application of certain principles, though not the spirit or intent. For example, the Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. At one time confinement to bread and water might not have been considered "cruel and unusual". It has long since become at least unusual. Furthermore, someone has to decide what is "cruel". Obviously the drafters left that to the reasonable discretion of judges and legislatures. As Abraham Lincoln pointed out in his first inaugural address, March 4, 1865, no document of reasonable length can anticipate in detail every question which will arise under it. Judges are not encyclopedias or dictionaries. There were expected to be reasonable people who truly intended to vindicate not what they wanted to be the law, but the law as it came to them under circumstances then existing.
Why are appellate courts even permitted, ever, to invalidate a federal or state law duly enacted? There are two reasons. First, Americans do not want a temporary majority animated by mass hysteria or thoughtless excitement to trample on rights plainly protected by the constitution and intended to be protected by the drafters and ratifiers thereof. The slow and ponderous rejection of gay marriage by a majority of the people in state after state hardly amounts to the sort of mass hyesteria and overreaction which judicial revue was intended to head off and obviate. Second, there are genuine gray areas in the application of some constitutional provisions. For example, although the constitution does guarantee access to legal counsel for anyone accused of a crime, it does not expressly require government to locate and pay for counsel when the defendant can do neither. That question invited a legitimate difference of opinion which was fortunately resolved in a positive way by the Supreme Court in Gideon vs. Wainright and legal counsel are now provided gratis to those unable to afford counsel with their own resources. But it should be clearly understood that if there is ever to be gay marriage in this country there must either be a massive and radical shift in the people's core values or a constitutional amendment to achieve it. Otherwise the imposition of gay marriage on an unwilling populace represents a usurpation of power by tyrants.
Fundamentalism and Fanaticism
Suppose you are taking a walk downtown and on a busy corner you see a "guru" with a long beard and a sign reading "Doom, the End is Near . . ." followed by various commands --- 'flee to the mountains', perhaps, or 'partake no more of demon rum'. It's all amusing. The guy is some kind of nut case, you surmise, and there are plenty of those around, some in Congress. Then you read further: 'kill all unbelievers. They are infidels'. Suddenly it's not funny any more. He may be a nut case but if he has followers he's a very dangerous and threatening nut case.
Then you discover that he does have followers --- a bunch of bearded weirdos with turbins running around yelling "DOOM, DOOM, DOOM" with guns blazing, BANG, BANG, BANG and bombs (appearing at first to be bowling balls) going BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. No it's certainly not funny any more. So you go up to one of these violent kooks who appears to be suffering from an attack of rational thought and ask "Why are you following this guru? Can't you see that he's a violent nut"? "No, no, no, this is the Great Gumbo Ya Ya, just in from the Louisiana swamp country, you infidel". Returning to normal he weaves away screaming something which sounds like "Off with his head" and "So sayeth the Great Gumbo Ya Ya whose every command must be followed". You run for shelter, just evading the three equally weird, turbin-wearing homocidal crazies, who are even more dangerous because they carry swords and appear for all the world to mean business. Each one is carrying the Mystical Book of Mumbo Jumbo, the authoritative mystical, magical book of commands which must not be violated or disobeyed on pain of death.
And that is where fundamentalism ultimately winds up when it isn't checked by rational thought. It may go from obstinate insistence on some set of doctrine to burning other peoples' holy books to shouting insults at soldiers' funerals because of a distaste for gay rights. In a society which is strong enough to resist its encroachments it doesn't go much further. Otherwise you get scenarios not so different from the foregoing tale. The essence of fundamentalism which leads into fanaticism and from there to madness and violence is that it is based entirely on command --- the commands of some priest, rabbi, ayatollah or holy man who scratched out some sacred book which can now be "interpreted" by other gurus who then write their own books --- and away we go, without any thought, or much thought, of honesty, personal integrity, honor, charity, kindness, forgiveness or even a forgiving spirit. All of that is swept away because we have THE BOOK.
That is what Christianity is up against, that and apathy which serves the purposes of fanatics.
Christianity is rational. In the New Testament we meet a Saviour who explains Himself to His followers. We have an historical bases for accepting it as fact and believing it as truth. When we understand His commands we find that they are reasonable, and that validates those which we may not understand. We know that if we hear a "voice" commanding us to go murder someone, it isn't His voice. We value tolerance while maintaining Christian principles (though we practice them imperfectly, something a fanatic will not admit about his own principles --- his sacred commands). As Daryl Donovan, the astute and widely respected preacher at the Sanibel Community Church in Florida, wrote recently "Tolerance is a virtue, and so is passion . . ." and the two strains of faith converge in Christianity.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
No comments: