House of Eratosthenes

1. I disagree with the Republican party’s pro-business stance when it goes too far afield, when it gets into the “businesses can’t do anything wrong” territory. When the businesses are doing things that are against the law, for example. Like hiring illegal aliens.
2. I think Barack Obama and Bill Clinton are pretty smart guys, at some things. The problem is that these things aren’t terribly useful to us. Lying, equivocating, obfuscating, making planted whores faint at their speeches, inventing an “Office of the President Elect,” etc.
3. I further agree that George W. Bush and Sarah Palin are unsophisticated at some things. Of course, we can probably use some leadership that is unsophisticated and unskilled at lying, equivocating, obfuscating, et al.
4. I acknowledge that carbon, in sufficient quantities, has an insulatory effect in our atmosphere.
5. I’m a little bit gun-shy about sending people to jail for cheating on their spouses. I don’t think they should go to Hell for it, either. Purgatory maybe, but not Hell.
6. I believe it is possible to live according to a moral code, that will endure over time, without believing in God. I just haven’t personally seen a lot of people doing that, is all.
7. I don’t want anything to happen to convicted murderers that’s any worse than what they did to their victims. For example, if you shoot some guy in the head, I don’t think it’s right that we burn you at the stake. We should save that for the guy who burned his victim at the stake. If you shot your victim in the head we should stop at shooting you in the head.
8. I think any issue involving controlled substances is purely a states’-rights issue. In fact I think states are too big for this. If you can legalize it in your city block or township, then by all means shoot up.
9. I don’t want to see a cross erected on any government facility or property.
10. I don’t think people should be denied an opportunity to make a living just because they didn’t go to college.
11. I don’t approve of woman/minority “set-asides” in college enrollment, government hiring, promotions or contracting.
12. I’m concerned about the environment being poisoned by human activity, it’s just that I’m concerned about the human activity nobody seems to want to talk about. Kids being rude and grabby. Gum being left on sidewalks. Little kids with shopper-in-training grocery carts. Convertibles with boom-boom-chicka-boom music. These are all pollution.
13. I am a champion of unions organizing to bargain collectively with management, but the unions I have in mind are the Tea Parties, and the management I have in mind is the government.
14. I’m a staunch defender of a woman’s right to choose. If she chooses to work at Hooter’s, and she’s got the legs for it, then let her work.
15. The public debt that is being taken out, through our government, is another form of pollution since it has the potential to degrade the quality of life for future generations. I am much more concerned about this than I’ve ever been about any spotted owl. It is an “environmental” catastrophe waiting to happen, one crying out for a bunch of new laws that I would fully support if they were submitted for a hearing.
16. I want to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. I would like to see Congress treated as “Agent Zero” for any & all new laws that would apply to businesses in the private sector — I think Congress should be regulated by these laws for a whole year before they apply to anybody else. Maybe two years.
17. I think the little people deserve to have someone fighting on their side for a change. You know who I mean: The people who don’t work in Washington.
18. I am opposed to corporate welfare, and that includes bailouts for businesses deemed “Too Big To Fail.”
19. I am concerned about the ability people have to think independently. When tens of millions of my countrymen think radical Islamic terrorism is not a threat, and those very same millions think the planet is in danger when I make a pot of coffee and don’t bother to unplug the pot when it’s done, there is something terribly, terribly wrong.
20. Men being forced to marry women before they can have sex? Whatever this rule is supposed to be doing to build up civilization, it’s tearing down a lot more than it’s building up. Tell you what, church people: Stop marriage from being a modern form of legalized theft, and then we’ll talk. Until then, I’ll oppose you like any good liberal should.

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- House of Eratosthenes | 04/27/2010 @ 18:48
5. I’m a little bit gun-shy about sending people to jail for cheating on their spouses. I don’t think they should go to Hell for it, either. Purgatory maybe, but not Hell.

Who in the “hell” is proposing this? Besides, only Catholics believe in Purgatory…

9. I don’t want to see a cross erected on any government facility or property.

Horseshit. For over two centuries nobody saw anything controversial about crosses. I’m having trouble figuring out what has changed in the last fifty years, except that now we have a lot of people walking around who don’t want to be “judged.”

8. I think any issue involving controlled substances is purely a states’-rights issue. In fact I think states are too big for this. If you can legalize it in your city block or township, then by all means shoot up.

Whatever the merits of this (or lack thereof), it’s remarkable that nobody ever considers applying the same logic to guns and ammunition. Whatever happened to “people are going do it anyway no matter what the law says?”

10. I don’t think people should be denied an opportunity to make a living just because they didn’t go to college.

Who is being “denied?” We all know plenty of people who are doing just fine with a vocational certificate, or sometimes even just a diploma & some job training.

17. I think the little people deserve to have someone fighting on their side for a change. You know who I mean: The people who don’t work in Washington.

Fine, but the Democrats have been insisting for generations that they’re that champion. How are you going to refute that contention other than what we’ve been doing – point out the lies in their propaganda?

20. Men being forced to marry women before they can have sex? Whatever this rule is supposed to be doing to build up civilization, it’s tearing down a lot more than it’s building up. Tell you what, church people: Stop marriage from being a modern form of legalized theft, and then we’ll talk. Until then, I’ll oppose you like any good liberal should.

What on God’s green Earth are you on about with this one? Marriage = “legalized theft?” Of what? From whom? What “tearing down” are you referring to? Marriage and the conventional nuclear family have been a cornerstone of civilized society for the entirety of Western Civilization. Like with the crosses, it’s interesting that this idea wasn’t controversial until fairly recently, and coincidentally (hah!) that is when most of the troubles began.

I’m a “church person”, and here’s my response – if people kept their legs together before marriage, this nation would avoid 90% of the social problems it has. Drug abuse, gang violence, unplanned pregnancies, and a host of other problems are brought on by fatherlessness more than any other single factor. I’ll be more than happy to cross swords with anyone who dares dispute this contention.

The rest of what you wrote is fine, but with the ones I’ve quoted……sheesh. All I can say is that I’m disappointed in you if you’re serious.
- cylarz | 04/27/2010 @ 23:48
Faithlessness, in any committed relationship, is partial-murder. The way I see it you’re taking whatever section of the other person’s life rolls on by before they can figure out what you’re doing & make an informed decision about it, and throwing it away. I’m sure there may be some real murderers who make it into heaven if they repent, and so it follows that Hell is a bit excessive for a partial-murder. But that’s up to God to figure out, not me.

Nevertheless, it is a partial-murder. People shouldn’t be getting away with it.

A cross is a denominational symbol. I agree with you, the “separation” argument rising up to confront us when someone of another denomination has to — gasp! — look at something is a bit of a stretch, especially when we’re talking about the Ten Commandments at a courthouse. You’ll notice I didn’t say anything about that. But the T.C. have been found repeatedly to possess historical meaning and therefore have a purpose there. The same cannot be said of a cross, which is denominational. The irony is, with an unusually secular executive at its helm, our government is as perilously close to getting into the soul-saving business as it ever has been in my lifetime. And that’s really where I’m going with it, I think that’s what Jefferson was trying to say in the Danbury letter. Government shouldn’t be getting into looking after the spiritual welfare of the citizenry — and his concern had to do with limiting government, not making it atheist-friendly.

#5 deals with the tenth amendment concerns about our “War on Drugs.” Now, the attacks on the WoD I consider to be pretty strong, although they rely on the “Just take my word for it, if we were on an alternative path life would be wonderful, we’d be walking on streets of gold and farting sunbeams” offense. But what goes neglected too often is the abuse the WoD heaps on the tenth amendment. It really is indefensible here. The federal government has absolutely no authority here at all.

The democrat party is working very hard to make sure higher education is a requirement for breathing air. Just look around. They have all these plans to “educate future generations” so that the country can “be made ready for the challenges of the 21st century” — then once the parents take out a second mortgage to send their sweeties into college, all they’re taught is that white Christian males are at fault for everything that’s wrong. They graduate, and they can’t follow instructions, can’t put together a report about something, can’t even type. Just spew a lot of feminist bile oh so articulately, abuse drugs, paint their bodies and fuck. Meanwhile, thanks to all the connections to the Ivy League set, the businesses are dumbing down the jobs but ratcheting up the requirements for the jobs. There are just a few set-aside jobs that will never require anything but manual labor, and those are for the illegal aliens. Everything else either requires a four-year degree, or is about to.

Next up. How am I going to refute the democrats statement that they represent “little people”…well, for starters, I’m willing to specify what I mean by “little people.” When’s the last time you heard a democrat lay out a specific level of annual income, as a minimum and a maximum, to qualify an individual or household as “middle class”? It rarely happens. Middle class is a gimmick that is supposed to mean…whoever they’re talking to.

And marriage has been a license for legalized theft for awhile now. I don’t bitch about it much anymore because (as the lawyers told me over and over again) the theft was done to me with my consent, at least at the outset of it…that made it alright. That was my legal advice when she was taking out obligations, during our separation, for which I was liable — you say “I Do” and all bets are off. I was young and put my trust in a bad place. She had carved out a livelihood for herself by marrying men and getting divorced from them again. What I failed to see then, that I think you’re lucky enough not to see now, is that this is actually a pretty common practice. I hope you never have occasion to find out what the law says about a divorce. It’s all worded so precisely, to avoid mentioning either sex. But it’s all about sex. The man has had the responsibility of taking care of the woman…the feminists didn’t like the stature that was involved in that so they got rid of the stature. But the responsibility they left untouched. So in the eyes of the law, a husband is something kind of like a barnyard animal. It’s up to the household to decide how the patriarch is seen culturally, but legally, he’s just like an oxen. Except, the oxen doesn’t have a responsibility to make sure his owner is always happy all the time. Your wife can just wake up one morning, decide she isn’t happy and you lose everything. She can make friends you’ll never meet, who will decide on her behalf that she isn’t happy.

It’s just like, the power to tax is the power to destroy. Nobody ever seems to figure this out: The power to come up with an arbitrary number for alimony or child support, is the power to destroy. And those numbers are arbitrary. Nobody who arrives at them, has any real responsibility for making sure they’re the right ones. As far as dividing the household, if she makes less than you, she’s going to get all the assets and you get all the debts. There isn’t a court in the land that will decide it any other way. The institution has been made into a target-rich environment for professional grifters. It’s better than it used to be now, but it would be nice to see a concentrated, unapologetic and determined cleansing take place.
- mkfreeberg | 04/28/2010 @ 07:02
# 6 : Wodin,Zeus,or Jehovah ?All the same to me.Hello? Ayn Rand was atheist and firmly moral by well thought out standards.If you need belief to focus your morals,that’s fine for you,but it’s not true for everyone.There is a huge number of people,honorable,decent and moral;who don’t murder ,rape,rob,or defraud anyone without heavenly influence.And the prisons are full of reported christians.On the subject of religion;not that your wrong,but that your speaking for yourself,not as a general rule.
- kermitt | 04/28/2010 @ 07:13
Rand fucked around on her husband and then wrote the affair into her book.

She really had the right idea insofar as her legacy is concerned, but the woman had huge, gaping flaws especially in the morals department. In fact, I would say she illustrated the perils that are involved in making up right-and-wrong as you go, without acknowledging a Higher Power. Right+Wrong ultimately become all about your own preferences. They must. There isn’t anything else. Without some sense of obligation to something outside yourself, morality becomes nothing more than a product of circumstances. It’s “right” for a shark to eat a seal, but “wrong” for you to similarly prey on someone weaker who has money in his wallet…because…well, you don’t happen to need the money, and if you do it the cop will arrest you. What else? What if you really need it and you’re out in the middle of nowhere with no cops around? What if something happens to suspend The Golden Rule, like the guy is acting like a jerk? For example, if he knows you need food or money and has refused to give them to you, perhaps laughed at you for your misfortune. Aren’t we then coming uncomfortably close to the point where all the barriers are removed?

Seems to me — and this is only supported further by what I know of Ayn Rand — a secularist view of life ultimately turns the constable into a sort of replacement deity. He becomes our last line of defense, when we’re being “tempted,” when our own moral code is made temporarily shaky. Much of the scripture is concerned with this particular issue; how our view of Creation, and our purpose within it, is linked to the outcome of these encounters when evil brushes up against our own psyche. What is written proffers that we cannot come out of this whole by relying on ourselves, and I would argue history supports that.
- mkfreeberg | 04/28/2010 @ 07:26
I’m a bit ashamed to admit this, but I have never read any of Rand’s work for myself, only what others have said about it. The upshot is that I can’t comment on the “morals” bit that you touch on. Will have to take your word for it for the time being.

I’m just a bit tired of hearing people whine about crosses on public property. It seems like the American public has to have this conversation with itself every year, usually around Christmas. Haven’t we settled it by now?
- cylarz | 04/28/2010 @ 08:19
I brought up Rand as an example of hard headed firm morality without a god.Her marriage was to legalize her immigration,tho not without affection;when she did find love and romance,she didn’t sneak,he knew about it.Cylarz the problem isn’t the sight of a cross,it’s the people with police,jails,guns,and taxes promoting any particular religion.
#7: Heinlein called that”balancing” that the punishment should copy the crime,good idea I like it alot.
Good list Morgan!Well said wish I could write as well as you do.
- kermitt | 04/28/2010 @ 09:31
It strikes me that it’s not strictly the church’s fault that marriage has been turned into legalized robbery. I think that’s more Satan’s doing.
- Rich Fader | 04/28/2010 @ 09:53
Ah, Morgan. Shame on you for rilin’ up the Elmer Gantrys here at the House o’ E. You’ll burn in Hell… ya know that, dontcha? 😉
- bpenni | 04/28/2010 @ 10:44
Thanks for the compliment, kermitt. Great point, Rich. Personally I think it’s the fault of government, which shouldn’t even be involved; they are the Satan. Of course it’s complicated because the government never was inserted into the institution of marriage, they were always there.

Like I said, feminism never was about equality. It was about knocking the man off the patriarchal pedestal; and with regard to that they’ve always been much more enthused about rearranging stature than about rearranging responsibilities. So here we are — a “happily” married guy can go home, tonight, to find all the furniture gone and his financial life ended. Legally, it can happen. Even if he’s wise, he can be put right back in the position I was in when I was young and stupid: “Yes, you’re just a bum from here on out, not a single thing will ever be under your control again, and you said it was okay so you have no rights.”
- mkfreeberg | 04/28/2010 @ 10:44
bpenni: Shame on you for rilin’ up the Elmer Gantrys here at the House o’ E.

Ah, that would be a twenty-first item: I feel an obligation to the larger community to keep the blood pumpin’.
- mkfreeberg | 04/28/2010 @ 11:24
And for the record, I agree with this.

Marble cross, Star of David, or Crescent Moon carved into a federal building? No can do. The same items painted onto the side of a rock at Yellowstone? Not a problem.

The Constitution disallows the government from establishing a state religion, it doesn’t oblige the government to paint over things.
- mkfreeberg | 04/28/2010 @ 20:35
Morgan, I’m sorry you got screwed on your divorce settlement. If even half of what you say is true, it sounds like you were unlucky enough to marry a vindictive shrew. I’ll also concede that the family law system is pretty unfair to men, as I have a friend (who reminds me a lot of you, actually) who has said much the same thing. His ex took him for nearly all he had.

That having been said, it’s rather high-handed of you to call for the abolition of the institution. As with so many others, it’s not the institution that is the issue, it’s the people who make it up. Lots of people are in happy, healthy, secure marriages; many others whose relationships failed, still managed to part amicably and without either of the partners being unfairly treated by the court system.

Marriage is a built-in mechanism designed to keep fathers around where they are needed – around the house, setting a good example of a what a man should be, for any kids involved. Yeah yeah, I know there are bad fathers who stay married, but the worst of the lot tend to be the ones who simply took off when the kids were little. Again, nearly all our social problems can be traced to poverty and low self esteem, and both of those are blunted by the presence of dads. Ask yourself how many of these gang-bangers were raised by single moms who weren’t able to bring in enough dough (much less teach a boy to become a man), and you’ll see my point.

And I’m sorry, but a government check is not an acceptable substitute for a dad. The state cannot fill that role. (And no, this isn’t a slam on single motherhood, simply an observation that the two-parent nuclear family has always been superior to any other model.) You ask yourself – when the out-of-wedlock birth rate was half what is is now, did we have 13-year-old kids dealing crack in inner cities and knocking over liquor stores like we’ve got now?

I also reject the many calls I’ve heard in the last few years about “getting government out of the marriage business.” Most of this has revolved around the gay marriage issue, as if it were some neat and tidy way of disposing of the entire controversy. Hogwash and horse shit. Society has a compelling interest in defining unions between couples, for reasons ranging from inheritance issues and on down the list. I’d be happy to elaborate if you’re not convinced.

Your sour experience with the institution doesn’t mean you get to ruin it for everyone else, Morgan.

Finally, as I said, I’ve grown weary of the ceaseless controversy over crosses and other “overt” religious symbols. I ran out of time this morning and couldn’t finish my thought, but here are some things going on in our society now that I am blisteringly, beyond-words, absolutely sick and tired of:

– The refusal by secular types, to distinguish between overt state sponsorship of a particular religion (or denomination thereof)…and a governmental body which sits in the middle of that religious culture and therefore ought to reflect the community’s values

– The notion that overt symbols constitute a “cramming” of some faith down someone else’s throat, or that said symbolism is tantamount to an intolerance of those who believe differently

– The allowance made that Poland is Catholic, India is Hindu, Israel is Jewish, Turkey is Muslim, North Korea is atheist, and Thailand is Buddhist…but no allowance being made that the United States is a Christian country. (Somehow all those other countries avoid being called a “theocracy,” yet we had to hear that every other day during the Bush years.)

– The old fashioned bigotry aimed at people of faith (especially Christians) and the countless snide comments made about our “sky fairy” or “old man in the clouds” or other ignorant twaddle.

– The lumping-in of Christianity, by secular types, with other faiths (especially radical Islam) under the banner “organized religion.”

– The accusations of backwardness, superstition, repression, sexism, etc etc etc, thrown at us every time we attempt to take a stand against immorality, and/or make the mild suggestion that our society was better off before it lost its moral compass.

Marble cross, Star of David, or Crescent Moon carved into a federal building? No can do.

Can do, will do, should do. Like I said before, nobody had a problem with this stuff until the 1960’s, and we’d had ol’ Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists in hand for a long time before then. It’s only been in the last five decades or so that things went to pot and suddenly the crosses were verboten. When the idea suddenly arose that we had no business imposing our morality on other people. That’s the heart of the matter, not two planks nailed together or a Nativity scene on the City Hall lawn.
- cylarz | 04/29/2010 @ 00:27
Cylarz,

When we start discussing the matters on which I might be called a liberal, it goes without saying we’re going to be sifting through some really fine hairs. I’m not in favor of the abolition of marriage, I haven’t called for that anywhere. But it’s a religious institution. When government goes chasing off after deadbeat dads, it’s chasing off after men who have fathered children, which is a different thing from chasing after divorced husbands. The legal obligations of a man who’s gotten married, are relics from the past before feminism got involved and messed everything up with their “a woman should choose, provided she chooses what we want her to choose” nonsense. Properly, if feminists really were going to have everything their way and we’d all roll over and play dead for them, for decades, right up until Bill Clinton embarrassed them, marriage should have ceased to be a legal issue right then. That isn’t what happened because the feminists were really all about “choices” without the responsibility that goes with the choices.

Some fathers don’t get married and hang around anyway. They take considerable trouble to do their fathering. So I’m told, anyway…

Frankly, your whole deal about marriage looks kinda like the classic “Not All Women Are Like That” routine followed by a lot of preaching to the choir. My point is simply this: When we insist men have to get married before they can go all the way, what we are then insisting on is male naivete. It has to be there in order for us to be satisfied; a man is simply not going to know what’s going on in a forest if he’s never been in it. Well, if you have to have male naivete in order for us to be satisfied — then it really doesn’t matter that Not All Women Are Like That. In 2010, marriage is still a form of livelihood for a large chunk of the female population, and sadly, some of them view serial marriage as their form of livelihood.

At least as many women do that, as there are men who contract prostate cancer — now, how many times a year do you hear on the radio that you need to get to the doctor RIGHT NOW and get that finger stuck up your butt? How many times a week? And yet, the serial-wives who are gaming the system, never get mentioned. Even though it is a huge social issue. My anger at having been made into a legal/financial non-entity through my own foolishness receded quite a while ago; my resentment about being allowed to wander into it, knowing so little about what was going on at the time, flares up again every time I realize this stuff is still going on, we’re accustomed to it, and the men-boys are still being allowed to wander into the minefield.

If our girls were being let down the same way, we’d act on it toot-sweet. A woman’s livelihood! Oh no! Must act! But our dudes are getting the shaft…eh, that’s alright. It’s their decision, they picked it.

If the woman can’t have children, there’s no reason for the legal Trojan Horse. If she’s spending the entire marriage pulling the “With Both Our Incomes We Can Afford It” line (and it cracks me up, there’s one younger guy at work who had exactly the same story to tell), then the marriage’s existence as a legal contract ends up being just a form of fraud against the creditor and against the husband. So my point, here, is that the law should at least be making the effort to keep up with the gamers of the system. Maybe it can’t, but it should try. And the serial-wife gaming the system, a very long time ago became a cottage industry. It’s kind of like the Mafia — doesn’t exist in any form recognized by the law, but operating under the surface, out of sight, and very, very, very old.

On the federal building, I agree with you that the symbols are given way too much weight. It’s a phony issue anyhow. But I do think it’s a valid argument to make that things have to change when there are more denominations to be considered, when Hindus become a part of the population, Buddhists, atheists, Wicca. If we were around at the time of the Revolution it would be quite reasonable to say “We’re going to leave the issue of Calvinist versus Quaker out of it, but let us agree this is a Christian Building.” It would also be reasonable to say, as the generations roll by, that although the abuses of which you speak did take place, this nevertheless ceases to be a reasonable arrangement. We do want the Muslims and the Wiccans and the Buddhists to pay their taxes, so…fair’s fair.

I draw the line, though, at saying when you see some mention of God, within proximity of something government related, that’s shenanigans and something must be done. I’m on your side calling bullshit on that, and the Supreme Court decision I linked above seems to agree with us.
- mkfreeberg | 04/29/2010 @ 05:17

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Morgan the Liberal!Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

Morgan the Liberal!
Tuesday, April 27th, 2010