I, Anarchy

Politics among nations is radically different from politics within a democracy like the United States. The difference is almost like night and day due to one reason: anarchy.

In a democracy, we have a social structure designed to keep the peace. When we have disputes, we have a judicial system, and when the individuals of this judicial system make decisions, we have police officers to enforce the decisions. In some cases the police are called on to prevent individuals or groups from harming each other.

In a democracy, we respect the rule-of-law. We have a complex system of government that (more or less) responds to the needs of the people, and the people use this government to lobby for change. Things get done, and things get done peacefully. Our society has an economy based on competition, supply and demand. This economy mostly allows Americans to meet all their material needs and then some, without having to fight one another for these material things.

All these mechanisms in place in a democratic society, designed to promote peace and prosperity, simply do not exist on the international scene because there is no higher authority than national governments.

When nations have disputes there is no definitive international judicial system that can settle the fight. There is no international police force that can prevent states from resorting to violence. There is also no international government that can pass laws and address problems peacefully. Organizations such as the United Nations have no binding power, just look at the United States’ 2003 invasion of Iraq over the UN’s disapproval. “International Law” as we call it, is little more than commonly agreed upon codes-of-conduct that can be broken at any time. In fact, they are broken all the time. In short, the nations of the world are in a state of anarchy.

This is an indisputable fact. Accepting this truth is the beginning of understanding why international activities work as they do.

When In Rome...

Well, it isn’t too often that you hear about Catholic priest scandals involving sex with adults. Ever since the Italian magazine “Panorama” published an expose revealing the numerous homosexual activities within the Priesthood of Rome, the Vatican and its allies have had no choice but to push back hard-yet again. One of them is Bill Donohue, the president of the so-called “Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.” He has been defending the Church during this year’s wave sex scandals and his explanation of the underlying cause is broad indeed: homosexuality. Yet his analysis is as ignorant as it is broad. The underlying problem is homophobia within Catholicism, not homosexuality itself.

He claims that there is a statistically “overwhelming” link between “homosexuality and the sexual abuse of minors." He further commented, “As I have said many times, most gay priests are not molesters, but most of the molesters have been gay." His conclusion is that the root of the problem with the abuse scandals is caused by homosexuality within the priesthood.

However absurd his claim is, he backs it up with sound evidence. It is true that many studies have found that the overwhelming majority of priestly abuses involved the same sex. However, to blame the gays is an incorrect analysis of the available data. After putting aside the cases that are genuinely pedophiliac (that is a completely different issue) this situation just begs the next logical question: why are homosexuals becoming Catholic priests only to covertly act on their desires?

The answer to me is clearly homophobia, the true cause of this crisis. For a homosexual to join the Roman Catholic Priesthood and then clandestinely have affairs with men belies a deep-rooted conflict within the priest regarding his homosexuality. If a man cannot and will not accept his own sexuality, then it is probable that such actions become logical consequences of his denial. The “Panorama” expose describes the guilt and shame the priests would experience during and immediately after their encounters. Things would be different if the priests didn’t belong to an organization that forces them to consider themselves disordered and their sexual behavior loathsome. The organization and its attitude towards homosexuality is really to blame, the behavior of the gay priests are simply tragic symptoms of the larger problem.

It is not homosexuality that drives these priests to act dishonorably, but rather it is the denial, hatred and fear of their homosexuality that causes them to act in such ways.

The issue is not the status of homosexuality within the Church, but the status of homophobia in the Church. If the church was not so homophobic, perhaps its priests would act better than they do today.

Still, the Vatican did get something right for once when it urged that these people should no longer be priests.

You can read the “Panorama” expose here (If you know Italian).

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Forward

"...And No Religion Too"

Religion should not be opposed, but when the religious take the rights of others, they must be opposed.

Many within the LGBT community have profound issues with religion. They look at most religions with disdain and view adherents with disgust. They voice their opposition to religions that have been traditionally active in public discourse. Not only are they opposed to religion, but they also alienate the believers through insults. They could not be more wrong in handling oppressive religions.

However, the way to do it is not by overtly hurling insults at people of faith or attacking their church head on. While this may be a temporary emotional outlet, it is overall not an effective approach in actually combating religious ignorance. Religion can’t be destroyed, only reduced and controlled.

The Catholic Church, for example, survived the Romans, the early heresies, the Great Schism, the Reformation, the Age of Reason, and communism. Modern-day progressives won’t change this historical trend.

Yet it is without question that the Catholic Church has recently lost a significant amount of influence in the Western World. People simply stopped caring as much, yet they were actively prodded to care less.

From advertisers using sex to sell products, to the diminished position of the Lord’s Day in society, traditional religious thought was challenged indirectly. The result was a mass decline of ordinary Americans’ commitment to traditional religion. Advertisers and corporate bosses achieved what warlords and revolutionaries before them had not: the destruction or severe regulation of Christianity to the private sphere of life. Of course concepts built into our society, such as secularism, laid the groundwork for change.

Ordinary gays and lesbians themselves did much more to erode religiously-fueled hatred by simply becoming familiar with religious Americans than all the overtly anti-religious ever did. After all, it is much harder to use your religion as a weapon if you know the target of your prejudice personally.

That is the key to reducing religion: bleed it dry by attempting to form relationships with its mild/moderate adherents and treating them like human beings. The die-hards within each religious group must be approached in this way because they will not change, but without receptive ears they will lose relevance. The key is to win over people, not crush them. To make tomorrow better than today, acts of hate cannot be matched by acts hate. This probably doesn’t hold true for every situation, but for this one it does.

United States of Austerity?

I recently came across this article as I was making my internet news rounds this morning. I believe it is essential to get your news from a wide range of sources and media, even if the people putting out the story/editorial run counter to your beliefs. At the risk of being preachy I’m only going to add that it is a great failure when an individual believes that his or her perspective is the only right one.

Anyway, I believe this article is ghastly. Aside from the fact that is it is tragically confusing the Catholic faith with economic conservatism, the article raises the specter that is haunting Europe, the US and the rest of the Western world at the moment(no, not communism): austerity measures.

On the surface, excessive austerity is deceptively logical. It makes for a government to cut programs and other public funding it is in too much debt. After all, what do each of us do individually when our expenses exceed our earnings? We cut back. But it is not that simple when the whole picture is taken into account on a national level.

The greatest government expenditures like healthcare programs, relief to the poor and education are too essential to our society to just cut away. Too many people are riding on the success of these programs. Since our society has become so used to their benefits, we cannot cut into them too much and still expect an acceptable economic recovery. Austerity hurts the very people government is supposed to protect, unless of course it is not, in fact, in place to help the common people.

History has taught us-namely the Great Depression-that hands off policies not only can cause problems, but they can also make things so much worse. And, I know, the Great Depression arose out of different circumstances than the current crisis we are in, but the need for the Keynesian way of thinking is self-evident. When the economy is really threatened, the government must become more involved and, yes even spend more. If people need a more current example, I point to Greece as proof of what happens to ordinary citizens when the government embarks on severe austerity.

Extreme austerity may look good on a balance sheet-but only after you remove the human element completely. What is government here for, human beings or raw economics?

Will austerity really make tomorrow better than today?

First Post!!

For my first post I am going to make that same, tired argument. It's been said that politics is just about who gets what, when. That is a spot-on description but I would add "...to make tomorrow better than today." At least that's what it should be. It's really what we all want (for those of us with our feet planted here on Earth). To start, everyone needs to figure out where they stand on political and social issues. If people don't become more aware of political and social events then the pool of people who do care will be much smaller than it should. These people's voices would then take on a disproportionate amount of influence. What if those people are too narrow-minded in their opinions? Is this presently the case?

The most important thing to for a person who is invested in a political or social agenda is to simply make his or her opinion heard. This is even more important than voting in the US presidential election. Mathematically, the average voting citizen does not have a realistic effect on the outcome of this election. However, raising your opinion by doing something like calling your legislators is far better.

I won't make any other argument about the importance of participation. To me it's as simple as this: If you do not involve yourself, someone stupider than you will. The more we allow stupid people (perhaps "ignorant" is kinder) to make our decisions for us, well let me just say that the net intelligence of our nation does down. Now how can that make tomorrow better than today?

So figure things out for yourself, I hope your opinions aren't wrong. Here are some starting points:

• http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz -this is small and quick
  

• http://www.electoralcompass.com -cool presentation, kinda long
  

• http://www.ontheissues.org/default.htm -very good, comprehensive
  

• http://www.politicalcompass.org/ -not sure about this one, but does match you with political and historical people.