This is in response to being assumed to be a liberal, which is used by many as a perjorative:

First let’s be clear, President Obama is not a liberal, and I am not a fan. I wanted single payer healthcare, decriminalization (not legalization) of drugs (I have never used any illegal drugs at all, ever, but don’t think anyone should EVER go to jail for using) campaign reform, bank reform…the end of corporate welfare…..you know….things progressives, aka, people unhappy with the status quo want. I didn’t get any of it, which always makes me wonder why conservatives hate him so much!

Conservatives tend to self-identify as Christian in this country, right? Followers of Jesus, right? Show me where in the Good Book it says greed is good. Show me where the idea of amassing great earthly wealth at others expense is enshrined as a core value of Christianity. Mitt Romney comes to mind at this point with his famous line:  “I love to fire people”. Looting companies and putting people out of work for personal gain can’t be a hallmark of conservatism, can it? What happens to “job creation” when other similarly minded vultures are doing the same thing all over the US? Where, exactly are the workers supposed to find similar employment? Oddly, they often don’t. I have a hard time believing that someone who used to make around $50K a year would rather be on unemployment and food stamps….I think they’d rather be working with the possibility of advancement!

Now, if the crash of 2008 had been primarily promulgated by lazy people who just quit working, and thus brought corporations to their knees, I might be prepared to grant a point or two to the conservatives who cry that our current problems are due to lazy people who would rather collect unemployment than work. But that isn’t what happened is it? And has anyone responsible for the poor decision making on Wall Street that devalued the investments and retirement savings of millions of people suffered any palpable consequences? No. So is avoiding accountability now a conservative tenet? The economy has been looted, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t poor people that did it, or profited from it.

Is the DOW at record levels or not? Are the supposed job creators doing better than ever or not? Are banks in possession of more liquid assets than ever? Eisenhower said the best thing for the economy is a well paid worker. Businesses are in trouble not because of lazy people, but because the job creators aren’t creating jobs, at least not in the US. Banks, freed of the provisions of the Glass-Steagal Act no longer need to loan to small businesses to make money, so they don’t. I can’t grow when my access to capital is curtailed. No growth means no hiring. The banks and the “job creators” would rather possess more money, to hell with the social contract! If they can find someone in Bangladesh or where ever willing to do something for less, they do…..and so dispense with contributing to a stronger, better America. The race to the bottom has few winners! And look at the result: Many businesses that used to employ people in the service of the middle class are in trouble because there really isn’t a middle class anymore. The squeeze is on.

Now, an anecdote that informs my politics:

My father worked for Delta Air Lines in the regulated years when air travel wasn’t subject to much price competitiveness, but airlines prospered as did he because revenues and profits were higher. It cost more to fly then than now. He was making almost $34K in the ’80’s, as a mechanic, which would be near $100K today. His wife didn’t need to work a second job, much less a first one! He had plenty of vacation, a nice pension, standby privileges for the immediate family and a great healthcare package. In those days the CEO took home a lot less, too, and during the recession of the early ’80’s the leadership chose to take a 25% pay reduction and vowed to not resort to layoffs or down-sizings. The recession passed and the employees, through voluntary payroll deduction, bought the airline a new Boeing 767. Can you imagine Romney ever doing anything like that, or inspiring such action? Rather Romney and Ryan campaigned on chopping Federal worker’s salaries (but not their own, of course).

Conservatives used to care about making things better. Now, it seems, quite a few, but especially the wealthy ones, only care about making things better for themselves. It is a pervasive myth that by making things better for them, things will be better for the rest of us. Capitalism is based on the upward movement of money, but when there isn’t enough extra among those at the bottom, rather than pay more, so more can afford their products, many of these vulture capitalists simply drive their employees into the arms of the government. The current business model at Walmart, and others who rely on public subsidization of their employee costs would collapse if welfare and food stamps vanished!

As someone who would consider myself more liberal, even libertarian in terms of social contract and a desire to see government not turned in a plutocracy, I object to characterizations of liberals as somehow wanting “free everything”. I don’t know any that do, but we do value a sense of fair play and I don’t think even the most staunch conservative could say the political system we now have serves the people first. It has been bought and paid for, and legislation that doesn’t have corporate money behind it seldom passes. We waste billions….the Tea Party doesn’t want defense cuts, even though the Pentagon misplaces trillions but is not subject to audit. Conservatives decry people on welfare, but won’t hold giants like Walmart accountable for paying so little while actively sending people to apply for government assistance. Pro sports teams enjoy vast public subsidization. Let them build their own stadiums the way they want them, pay for the upkeep, the salaries, the advertising, taxes, etc, and then let them keep what’s left at the end. In other words, run them like a business!

As a fiscal conservative, I object to all forms of corporate welfare and believe if a for-profit company can’t stand up without taxpayer assistance, then it needs to fail. I also believe corporations should be allowed to exist so long as they enrich everyone involved with them, not just the guys in suits. I believe businesses should never ever be bailed out by a government. To do so is anti- capitalistic.

As a social liberal, I believe government should not be in the business of mandating behavior, so long as that behavior doesn’t infringe on others rights. The current obsession of the conservative Republicans over issues that affect a relatively small percentage of the population, like gay marriage and abortion, to the detriment of meaningful legislation on issues that affect everyone, is, to me, a huge problem. In the end, both sides are all, for the most part just politicians trying to kiss the right butt to keep their jobs. We need to get the money out of politics so our representatives represent ALL Americans, not just the ones that can buy politicians.

-D

I read something today that really put me in a lousy mood. It was the result of a poll that found that 58% of those who identify themselves politically as Republican refuse to accept the results of open scientific inquiry that state the age of Earth and the Universe, and the existence of observable evolution, among other things.

This is especially disturbing because these people likely don’t reject with equal fervor the convenience of their computer or smart-phone, or life-saving medical care which are present in their lives not through faith, but through science.

Why should the rest of us care? It’s simple. Some of these scientifically illiterate are in high offices. One need not look far to find a member of the Republican party, who also identifies himself or herself as a Christian, saying things that are simply outrageous distortions of established facts and then finding constituents, who, lacking critical thinking skills and having been taught to unconditionally accept any higher authority adopt them as truth. If you think that assertion may be hyperbole, check out the Texas GOP Platform  which specifically rejects the teaching of critical thinking skills because they are, in their opinion, anti-authoritarian.

I won’t list examples here, but this link will provide foundation.

It looks from my chair that there is a big disconnect here between the ideas, put forth by Republicans, of American Exceptionalism and a desire to be the technological leaders of the world, with what they say about science that challenges their religious ideologies. I have observed many of these political and religious leaders treat their Bible not as the infallible Word of God, but as some sort of spiritual buffet line. They scoop up that which they find palatable and self-justifying and leave behind the harder stuff. They’ll quote Leviticus when justifying anti-gay bigotry, but forget the other Leviticus verses that prohibits tattoos or eating shellfish. They’ll quote the Apostle Paul on marriage, but ignore him on how God says to treat women. (which is to prohibit them from teaching men, among other things).

So should it come as a surprise they apply the same methodology to science? We now live in a bizarre society where fundamentalists like Rep. Broun of Georgia, who dismayingly sits on the House Committee for Science, Space and Technology call scientists liars.  I wonder…..were his wife or child to face a difficult illness, would he still feel that way? Would he refuse to accept the best science has to offer and turn to his Bible, since he stated it was the “manufacturer’s handbook”? I’d bet not.  As I am fond of saying, science won the argument the first time a lightning rod was installed on a church.

The rest of it is evidence of an extinction burst. More on that later.

I think I really could sometimes. Quite a bit of the ideology lines up for me when I look at the big picture. Ideas of individual responsibility, small government and expanded freedoms are hallmarks of Republican thought. It looks pretty good, or at least, it used to.  Right now, it’s got one big hairy problem. Republicans were not typically a religious party, but they have moved further and further to the right. And as they have embraced religion, they have been eager to cast aspersions on the results of open scientific inquiry, and even intelligence itself. Rick Santorum famously said Obama was a snob because he wanted everyone to have access to higher education. Right now we have a man on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology who has publicly stated that “all that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, the Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell”.  He also maintains “I don’t believe that the Earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.”

We have several GOP members who have stated that women cannot become pregnant as the result of rape. They are serious.

We should not tolerate such men in positions of power. And there is ample historical evidence as to the reason. Fundamentalism is the rejection of any new information, coupled with the favoring of entrenched dogma without regard to its veracity. We have seen the horrors of the rise of Islamic fundamentalists with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and how even a brave 14 year old girl is not immune to a death sentence for daring to speak out. We are seeing a rejection of scientific inquiry from those on the right, cloaked in a suspicion of science, because they are not scientifically literate. We have more than 40% of the American population accepting that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old simply because they need the timeline they’ve extrapolated from the Bible to lend credence to their beliefs. I find this anti-science bent to be particularly troubling because these same people aren’t as willing to forsake science when it is convenient. When a loved one is sick, for example, with cancer or other difficult disease, they demand the best medical science has to offer. They happily bash science through social media platforms provided them by the results of scientific inquiry. They fly on planes made possible through advances in science, not faith.

The Founders left all references to God out of the Constitution for a reason. They made it so that religion was a personal matter that informed the person, not the government. They strove to prevent the installation of an official religion having witnessed the harm it caused in Europe and England. But the GOP is now trying to rewrite history to make it seem as though quite the opposite was desired:

The Texas Republican Party Platform 2002

“Our Party pledges to do everything within its power to dispel the myth of separation of church and state.”

And it hasn’t become any more moderate since. They now oppose teaching higher order thinking skills. Forbes has a commentary here.

I’d really like to think the Republican Party believes in American Exceptionalism, and in personal freedom but how can they, when they seek to deny American students the abilities to compete in an ever-more-global marketplace?

I want to know whatever happened to the Republican Party that freed the slaves. The one that believed in  “free soil, free labor, free speech, and free men.” That party was in favor of the expansion of human rights, and even suffrage. They were moral, without being overtly religious. I wonder, what ever happened to them?