An American Heretic

America is becoming more and more besieged by the call for alleged, “family values.” At first glance, these values seem a good and wholesome thing; highlighting the importance of a strong family relationship and a set of morals that most major religions (and hence, most people) live by. However, politicians are increasingly using the term, “family values,” to mean orthodox Christian values. In my opinion, that runs contrary to the foundation of our country’s institution of separation of church and state.

So it is with a certain degree of sadness that I read today the recent comments by Katherine Harris of Florida.

Ms. Harris stated, “If you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin.” She also said that the idea of the separation of church and state is “a lie we have been told.”

I will take these points one at a time.

First, Ms. Harris talks about legislating sin by electing non-Christians to public office. In fact, she is correct in saying that, because from a specifically orthodox Christian point of view, any non-Christian is more likely to ignore Christian religious law when voting on a bill. However, it is only a sin to Christians, not everyone. The sad truth of her statement is that she is so certain that her religion is the “right” one, that she is willing to turn her back on true American values (equality and fairness). I say that Ms. Harris would be better placed in a church government than in American government.

Second, Ms. Harris says that the idea that the founding fathers really wanted the separation of church and state is a “lie.” The 1st Amendment in the Bill of Rights clearly states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This is a sure sign that the founding fathers knew full well what they and their ancestors had suffered in Europe. Many of them had been called religious heretics and gone against the mainstream religious teachings of the time. For that heresy, they had been castigated and had eventually ended up in the New World as a means of escaping persecution. By leaving religion out of the equation when considering laws, Congress could be free to make the best secular decision for all concerned and not the best law for a privileged religious majority.

That is not to say that religious beliefs or morals would be excluded from the minds of the lawmakers. Indeed, it would be ridiculous to imagine that congressmen would simply wipe away their own beliefs when voting. In fact, I am certain it was never the intention or desire of the founding fathers to do so. I am only saying that it is the duty of any lawmaker to create laws that do not prejudice or otherwise persecute anyone of any given religious belief. For example, it is entirely possible for a senator to publicly vote in favor of a citizen’s right to curse God while simultaneously condemning the act on a personal level.

Also, it is fair to say that our country is much more diverse today than it was at the time of the drafting and signing of the Constitution, and that diversity can only be dealt with fairly by separating religion as best we can from the issues at hand.

Until holier-than-thou fanatics like Ms. Harris can put aside their certainty and pabulum, America will continue to suffer as the non-Christian minority is further oppressed. With so much terror and hatred in the world, I believe it is time to listen to voices of calm and reason rather than those of radicalism and emotion. The sooner people like Katherine Harris disappear from the public view, the sooner the world will be a safer and better place in which to live.

Innocence Lost

With the recent hubbub about John Mark Karr (his middle name has already been included to imply his guilt), I have a new gripe with the American justice system. It is a very simple complaint, but serious nonetheless.

Here it is: we are convicting people before they have even had a trial.

In America, a person is innocent until proven guilty. That is a premise that we have heard since we were kids. It is a part of the basic foundation of law in the U.S. However, this is not really the case today. The media, with the help of the justice system, judges people far before they ever get into the courtroom. That is just plain wrong and should be stopped.

There are numerous examples of this miscarriage of justice throughout history. Raymond Donovan and Richard Jewell are two names that immediately come to mind.

Raymond Donovan was implicated in a political scandal in the 1980s. After being skewered in the media, he was totally cleared later on by the justice system. Upon being vindicated he said, "Where do I go to get my reputation back? Who do I see about that?"

Richard Jewell was held in connection with the bombing at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. His name and picture were divulged and dragged through the mud. It was huge news. Later, he was cleared and charges were never even brought on him during the investigation. He was simply a suspect for a time. He has subsequently sued NBC (reportedly getting $500k in a settlement). He plans on suing other news outlets, but the chances he will succeed in getting more are slim.

Both of these men had their reputations ruined by the media. Of course, we can simply say that the media is doing its job and reporting the truth. I agree that is the case 99% of the time. But when the local anchor says, “alleged killer,” what we all really here is, “killer.” That is not fair.

Don’t get me wrong. This post is not about what the media is doing wrong. The media is breaking the law. The problem is that the law allows the names of people who are STILL presumed innocent to be splattered all over the place along with their pictures and personal data.

When you see the lives that have been demolished by the attention suspects get in the media, it is obvious that this is providing no service to our nation other than to satisfy the John Q. Public’s curiosity. In fact, the disservice to the accused is infinitely more significant than the right of people simply to know who is being accused.

We can say that our founding fathers had many things in mind when they wrote the Constitution – freedom, liberty, and justice are principal among them. But they certainly could not have foreseen a time where the media was so omnipresent and immediate. Had our nation’s founders envisioned our modern world, they surely would have acted on behalf of the innocent.

I would argue that suspects have the inalienable right to privacy until such time that they are found guilty. Until that judge or jury delivers the verdict, no names or pictures, or images should be allowed in the media or be made public in any way.

That is the only way that we can protect ourselves from the overzealous nature of both ambitious prosecutors and journalists.

Innocent until proven guilty and not innocent until accused. It is the true American way.

The Melting Pot is Melting Down

Immigration in the U.S. is a hot topic right now. The truth is that immigration has been a subject of concern and controversy for over 200 years and that will not likely change soon.

I am not going to include those who enter the country simply to reap the benefits of our welfare or social system. In fact, I agree that something must be done to control the immigrants who enter the country. It is stupid to have millions of people wandering about the country illegally and not know their whereabouts or intentions. But I believe that is a large issue that requires another post altogether.

So, for the purpose of this post, let’s deal only with the job factor. You know, the complaint you hear about how these immigrants are coming in and taking good jobs from American citizens.

I have to admit that I can see why people would want to cut or slow immigration to the States to keep the jobs to themselves. I mean, Americans are currently sitting on the largest pile of wealth ever assembled in human history. Why share it? For every Mexican that crosses the border and for every Indian programmer who is hired by big software firms, Americans see jobs lost and money disappearing. On the surface, it is logical to assume that if you have a pie and you split it with 10 people you will get a piece that is bigger than if you split it with 11. So I get it, I really do.

However, these folks who are railing against immigration are up to their necks in hypocrisy and faulty logic.

Let’s start with the hypocrisy. There are roughly 300 million people in the U.S. today. About 3 million of these are Native Americans. So unless you are a Native American, you have no right to be “against” immigration. Most people living in the U.S. right now probably have at least one or two great-grandparents who were immigrants. Please, tone down the, “We were here first,” bullshit because your forefathers came here and took someone else’s job or money away first.

Now for the logic problem in this scenario of cutting off immigration…

I was a small business owner in college. We hired out cleaning and kitchen labor to hotels and restaurants. We soon saw that very few people wanted to be dishwashers and kitchen cleaners. At the time, we were paying more than twice the minimum wage and still had trouble hanging on to staff. Then we started hiring illegal immigrants. Suddenly our labor problems got much better. Sure, we still had some problems finding the right people, but the number of choices we had were suddenly much higher. So the argument that immigrants take away jobs is mostly crap because most of the jobs they fill are not even wanted by Americans.

For another take on this, let’s look at a more educated immigrant. Now this guy could take a high-paying job away, right? Of course he could. But he would not if we were properly educating and training our young people. Trying to mask the failings of our educational system by banning highly-skilled foreign labor is a big mistake. Not only can we improve our companies by bringing in the best the world has to offer, we can also improve our cultural awareness. If we just worked on truly preparing young people for the work force, we would not be afraid of immigrants “taking” our jobs.

So here is the hook: when you look at the whole picture from top to bottom, immigrants are making the U.S a richer country, not a poorer one. And if you just do the math, you will see that it is much better to have 1/11 of a big pie than 1/10 of a smaller pie.

The Root of the Matter

Tonight I watched a very good BBC documentary on the Discovery Channel about the profile of terrorists and, more specifically, suicide bombers. It was as revealing an hour of television as I have seen in some time.

Basically, the bottom line was this – the profile for a suicide bomber is not what most people might think. The profile is not that of a radical, overly-religious sociopath. It is rather, an apparently normal, somewhat displaced person who fits into society in a scarily comfortable fashion. The average suicide bomber is more like your next-door neighbor than like Osama Bin Laden.

The true suicide bombers grow out of small groups and are not necessarily connected to a larger organization. That means that finding a true terrorist is not as easy as many of us think. It is not just about picking out some groups of extremists that hang out on the periphery of culture. It is about destroying the root of terrorism by attacking the seed and not the weed.

This made me think about what we are doing right now in the world to combat terror. The strategy used today is one of military and financial war to inflict as much damage as possible on known terror organizations. While that may be somewhat effective in taking down rather large networks like Al Qaeda or Hezbollah, it will ultimately not work against the true nature of suicide bombers and the profile they fit. In fact, in my opinion, all we are truly accomplishing by disabling the larger terror groups is creating innumerous smaller ones. I would liken it to trying to put out a large fire by hitting it with a broom – you may succeed in eliminating the larger fire initially, but you are spreading the sparks and embers so that you will soon face 10 fires in 10 different places that are as bad as the first one you tried to put out.

I would argue that we just making things worse right now, and that this war on terror is ironically facilitating the very thing it has set out to eradicate.

As soon as we start to look at the true nature of WHY these people are doing these horrible things to other people, we will start to understand how to eliminate these acts of extremism.

Until we really sit down and think this out and consider what the long-term effects of our current policy will be, we will just be pissing in the wind.

A Generation of Winners

It seems to me that we are raising a generation of winners. However, these winners will not be winners in the sense that you and I imagine. There is a growing trend toward protecting young children from competitive tasks in order to include all and leave no one out. But I see that this protection is putting an entire generation of our culture on a collision course with failure of the worst kind.

You can see it everywhere if you have a child under the age of 10. Ball games where the score is not kept and where, at the end, the kids are told it was a tie. At the "championship," all the kids get trophies, regardless of how well they played. At school, kids cannot talk about their birthday parties unless all of the children are invited. They don't want anyone to fell left out. Maybe Little Johnny will go postal on everyone when he turns 15 because he didn't get to go to Susie's party in the 1st grade. Yeah, right.

Not long ago, I saw a report on TV that talked about the latest college grads and how they were doing in the workplace. During the show, the bosses of these young professionals were interviewed to talk about some of the differences they saw between this generation of workers and the last few generations. One common observation was very clear – the sensitivity the young people had when confronted with negativity or criticism. All the managers noticed it. They said the new workers worked well in groups and were generally happy people, but that they needed far more positive feedback and encouragement than older workers.

Now I know that there is a tendency to look at young people and compare them unfavorably with "the good old days." But that is not the case here. Normally, older people talk about how lazy the younger generation is or how radical they are. I think those criticisms have been around forever. I am certain, for example, that a father in Nazareth once said, "Oh, my boy Jesus just does not take an interest in carpentry the way he should. What is he going to do with himself?"
No, what we are seeing here is more parts child rearing than human nature. I see that as a big disservice to our children.

If you always keep your child from falling, he will not learn what a painful experience it can be. Later on, he will end up taking foolish risks that he would not have taken if he had been exposed to the real world earlier on.

Of course, I do not mean that we should throw our kids into mini boot camps at 3 years of age. But I do think it would be better just to let the kids learn for themselves what winning and losing or succeeding and failing mean to them as individuals.

If we continue things this way, we will have an entire series of generations of kids who will be crushed by the real-world way of doing business and the real-world harshness of life in general. We need to give our children the tools they need to become effective and competent human beings. Right now, that is not happening.

"Have you no shame?"

There are many things you notice when you leave your own country for the first time. If, like me, you end up living abroad for a long period, you will start to see more and more interesting differences between where you were born and where you currently live. Because we are human, we tend to put these differences into positives and negatives.

The other day, I read an article on CNN.com - http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/07/27/nursing.cover.ap/index.html - that sums up one thing that is truly wrong with American thinking and culture. The article is specifically about the cover of a parenting magazine that has a close-up picture of a baby suckling its mother's breast. The article also covers, in a more general sense, the way Americans (mostly women) feel about breastfeeding in public. There seems to be a large number of people in the U.S. who feel that seeing someone breastfeeding her child is "gross," and "inappropriate."

I showed the article around to some of my Brazilian friends (both men and women), and they thought nothing of the picture. Regarding breastfeeding in public, there is simply no issue with it at all.

I must say, that, as an American, the first time I saw how nonchalant women are down here in breastfeeding in front of others, I was a bit shocked. After all, I had had very few experiences with seeing a woman breastfeed in the U.S. But after thinking about it for a time, I began to see the truth. It is not the Americans who are right in this, it is the Brazilians.

Let's get to the point here.

The point is not that breastfeeding is bad. Numerous studies have shown that children who are breastfed have a variety of advantages over those who are only bottle fed.

The point is that Americans' puritan beliefs, ingrained in us from times long ago, tell us that "seeing" a woman' breast is sexual and that sex is bad.

Just take a look at what one mother in the article said…

One mother who didn't like the cover explains she was concerned about her 13-year-old son seeing it.

"I shredded it," said Gayle Ash, of Belton, Texas, in a telephone interview. "A breast is a breast -- it's a sexual thing. He didn't need to see that."

Think about that statement for a second. Think about the sheer ignorance of it. This woman "shredded" the cover of a magazine that had a picture of one of the most basic, loving, and natural human exchanges on it because she thought her 13-year-old son did not need to see it.

Honey, I got news for you. In today's world, while you are shredding that cover of a partially exposed breast, your "little boy" is on the Web downloading a video of some woman doing ass to mouth and getting cum splattered all over her completely bare breasts.

Jeez! Wake up and smell the coffee!

Did it ever occur to Americans that it is exactly the suppression of sexually charged information that leads to so many pregnant teens and sexually active youths? What is wrong with us when we say that seeing a woman's naked breast is a bad thing at all?

I remember once I saw a news program like 20/20 and there was a shot of a woman at the doctor for a mammogram. Because her breast was exposed to the camera, the FX people pixilated the nipples so that we would not be burdened with that horrible image. Shit… a 5-year-old boy can walk into the bathroom, lift up his shirt, and look in the mirror to see what nipples look like. What the hell is getting covered up? Why?

I would love to know if anyone out there knows of any studies that show the relationship between healthy sexuality and repression of sexuality in the pre-teen years.

For now, I will sit in not-so-silent judgment of all those who would suppress what is natural and good in sex and still not raise an eyebrow at the blood and gore violence so prevalent in the public media.

Little Johnny can't see that woman's nipples because it might fuck him up for life. But watching that cop show that shows blood spurting out of the bullet wound in the criminal's chest is nothing. What is wrong with this picture?