Global Peace? Are We In America Seeking It?

Henry Kissinger once said, "The attainment of peace is not as easy as the desire for it. Those ages, which in retrospect seem most peaceful, were least in search of peace. Those whose quest for it seems unending appear least able to achieve tranquility. Whenever peace—conceived as the avoidance of war—has been the primary objective . . . the international system has been at the mercy of [its] most ruthless member."

Crimea has been ceded to Russia without a shot being fired.  Syria is a killing field. The result of this U.S. inaction is a disaster. At a minimum, 130,000 Syrian civilians have been killed and nine million driven from their homes by forces loyal to the tyrant. At least 11,000 Syrians have been tortured to death. Hundreds of thousands are besieged, their supplies of food and medicine cut off, as bombs and shells rain down. The Iranian mullahs aren’t giving up their nuclear weapons capability, and other regimes in the middle East are preparing to acquire their own. Al Qaeda is making gains and is probably stronger than ever. China and Russia throw their weight around while our allies shudder and squabble. Meanwhile, the U.S. missile defense plans were scaled back, Allies in Eastern Europe and Georgia were undercut, NATO enlargement was tabled, and a new strategic arms reduction treaty required significant cuts by the U.S. but not by Russia. All this, because of the President’s policy of “leading from behind”—stupid? I’d say so!

America’s foreign policy is in a shambles. Confusion abounds and the President is its author. If you do not think so, I would refer you to “America’s Global Retreat” by Niall Ferguson in the Wall Street Journal of 2/21/14.

Part of the reason for the ineffective foreign policy is that the American people are still suffering from the slowest and most unbelievable “recovery” from recession in American history. Americans believe, and with good reason, that the economic recession is still going on. There is another reason so few Americans believe that the recession has ended: The standard of living for most people has eroded. Median household income declined by 1.6% in 2008 and 2.6% in 2009. But after the official end of the recession, it continued to fall—by 2.3% in 2010 and 2.5% in 2011—before stabilizing in 2012. Analysis of more recent data by Sentier Research indicates that median household income grew only marginally in 2013. The bottom line: As of the end of 2013, median household income was 4.7% lower than in June 2009, the official end of the recession; 6.2% lower than in December 2007, the official beginning of the recession; and 7.5% lower than in January 2000. Median household income today is barely higher than it was a quarter-century ago, in 1989.

If the people do not believe we are strong at home, they will be reluctant to support a policy of strength abroad, reducing the ability of the U.S. to serve as the guarantor of global security.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that America needs a President and an executive branch that will quit regulating businesses out of business, observe the rule of law concerning the Constitution, quit pandering to his environmental political supporters, and lead the American people into their former position of leader of the free world. People are dying because of American presidential weakness.

A nation of free men needs at times like this leaders who step forward to “sound forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat.”

(References from which this blog post was gleaned are “Obama Calls Retreat” Weekly Standard 3/3/14 and “The Economic Roots of American Retreat” by Wm. Galston in the Wall Street Journal 3/18/14.)

Appeasement—History Repeats Itself

The following quote by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn from his 1970 Nobel lecture indicates that history is, indeed, repeating itself in foreign affairs.

Before reading the quote, it is necessary to review the results of the Munich Conference of March 1938. At that conference, France, the U.K., and Italy ceded the western part of Czechoslovakia to Germany before the outbreak of World War II without a shot being fired. It was done, supposedly because there were many ethnic Germans in that part of Czechoslovakia—German speakers. Czechoslovakia was not invited to the conference. In October 1938, in violation of the Conference’s agreements, German armies occupied Czechoslovakia. World War II was underway!

Today, we are watching as Russia plans a take-over of the Crimea, with the free world looking on. Russia's claim to the Crimea is that there are many ethnic Russians living there that speak Russian. The belief of liberal politicians led by President Obama is that Russia is so good-hearted that they will do nothing like the Germans of 1938. We’ll see.

I invite you to look at this prescient quote and make up your own mind: “The spirit of Munich has by no means retreated into the past; it was not merely a brief episode. I even venture to say that the spirit of Munich prevails in the 20th century. The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles. The spirit of Munich is a sickness of the will of successful people, it is the daily condition of those who have given themselves up to the thirst after prosperity at any price, to material well-being as the chief goal of earthly existence. Such people—and there are many in today's world—elect passivity and retreat, just so as their accustomed life might drag on a bit longer, just so as not to step over the threshold of hardship today—and tomorrow, you'll see, it will all be all right. (But it will never be all right! The price of cowardice will only be evil; we shall reap courage and victory only when we dare to make sacrifices.)”

My Answer to the Poverty Problem

The answer to poverty heard so frequently from liberals and other Democrats is that poverty must be solved by more government give-away programs, usually in the form of more unemployment insurance, Medicaid, food stamps, earned income tax credit, etc., etc. Anyone who opposes this idea is considered heartless and downright cruel. The War On Poverty has, indeed brought a lot of material goods such as TVs, microwave ovens, and automobiles into the homes of the poor; but it has not given them dignity and a feeling of pride in having produced a living for themselves. Liberals with these solutions to poverty are not seeing the long view—they are only looking at the short-term answers. Dependency  on government may solve a financial problem in the short term, but it doesn’t give people an opportunity to work through and create a meaningful life for themselves.

The following is a true story.

In the early 1990’s, Nancy and I were living in Detroit. We attended a church in the warehouse district populated by the poor of the city—homeless, alcoholics, drug addicted, general vagabonds. In those days, Michigan had had a series of Democrat governors; and the poverty problem in Detroit was being answered by a government program called General Assistance. The program had awarded money to thousands of healthy, young adults without requiring anything of them.

One particular man came to our church and continually requested prayer so he might get a job. We prayed for him week after week. Finally, I suggested to Nancy, “Let’s quit praying for him and go get him a job.” We went to the county employment office with him to help him through the government red tape and get him a job. He found a job and was about to take it until he realized General Assistance would pay him more.

Finally, a Republican was elected to the state house. The General Assistance program was discontinued over a period of four months, during which time, the income of the money recipients was gradually tapered. Many healthy young men were turned off welfare payments and had to look for work.

One month after the money had quit, the man in the church came to us on a Sunday morning with a smile on his lips. He wanted to show Nancy and me something—his first pay check! He had found a job and was proud of himself. Dignity had been returned to him; and he was no longer dependent on government hand-outs.

Any government program that does not encourage the making of one’s own living, and discourages an economy that supplies those jobs is damaging. More money for handouts is NOT the answer. Government give-away money in the form of health care, food, unemployment payments only increases and prolongs dependency and robs poor people of their dignity and a sense that they can take care of themselves.

Does Same-Sex Marriage Damage Culture?

Or, does it damage anyone else’s marriage? I’ve often heard that intelligent, liberal people do not think government should intervene to maintain any of the old norms of marriage—just let people marry as they see fit. If same-sex couples want to live together in a marriage relationship, what difference does that make to me?

But…government does claim to have an interest in defining (or un-defining) marriage.  Advocates for same-sex marriage use the 14^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (the equal protection amendment) to justify a marriage redefinition. So, why, we must ask, does and should government take such an interest in defining the marriage relationship. There are several reasons. On the face of it, there seems to be some rationale for redefining the marriage relationship because of the 14^th Amendment; but we need to take a closer look at this social move.

Could it be that government is interested in who loves whom or to whom one person is attracted. That seems unlikely. After all, people can live together and cooperate in any way they wish in America. And…nobody goes around snooping into bedrooms to see what kind of sex is being practiced. I do not believe that government is interested in advocating any kind of romantic norm. The government’s job should be to assure everyone that under the 14^th Amendment that all MARRIED people have equal protection under the law.

The question under consideration is first of all, what is marriage? If the thing the courts are protecting is not marriage, at all, then it should not be calling it marriage and imposing some arbitrary privilege or obligation on that entity. I will argue that same-sex hook-ups are not marriages at all, regardless of the fact that the members of the dyads might love one another.

I must digress for a moment and talk about a closely related idea; below, I will get back to the central idea of this essay. For now, let us discuss the outcomes of single parent families. At one point in America, virtually every child was given the gift of a married mother and father. Today, 40 percent of all Americans, including 50 percent of Hispanics, and 70 percent of African Americans are born to single moms—and the consequences for those children are quite serious. Single parenting is dangerous to kids and it is damaging to society.  

President Obama has stated: “We know the statistics: that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime, nine times more likely to drop out of school, and twenty times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems or run away from home, or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.” As the marriage culture collapses, child poverty rises. Crime rises. Social mobility decreases. And welfare spending—which bankrupts so many states and the federal government—takes off. These are the reasons that governments should be interested in the state of marriage in America.

When a baby is born, the mother almost always remains nearby; but in present-day America, fathers are not nearly so much of a permanent fixture—they disappear from the scene. This leaves little boys bereft of a role model to show them how to constructively express their aggressive instincts while avoiding doing actual damage to others. Thus…boys grow up and perpetrate violence in society.

What government should be doing, it seems to me, is protecting our society from the malignant effects of the incomplete homes caused by single parenting situations.

So now…let’s look at what marriage is. Marriage has several characteristics: monogamy/exclusivity, permanency, male/female complementarity, and biological reproductivity. The last quality is obvious to all and needs no further discussion. Same sex couples cannot reproduce children.

Monogamy/exclusivity has been a front page quality of marriage since the beginning of mankind. Married people do not like to have their spouse philandering around with outside sex contacts. But studies in the Netherlands have shown that “committed” homosexual couples have an average of eight sexual partners (outside of the relationship) per year. This is much more outside sex activity than is seen in heterosexual marriage relationships.

Likewise, same-sex marriages do not exhibit permanency of relationship. A high percentage of married couples remain married for up to 20 years or longer; many, for the rest of their lifetime. On the other hand, the above-mentioned study in the Netherlands showed that the average duration of a homosexual relationship to be 1½ years.

Complementarity in marriage between a man and a woman is obvious. However, in same-sex marriages, constructive fathers are often absent. Two mothers cannot show little boys how to grow up as constructive adult men.

There are social costs of redefining marriage to include same-sex couples. This is like adjudicating fist fights in the street and calling them “discussions,” then justifying them by calling them “freedom of speech,” thus, protecting persons’ rights to fist fights under the 1^st Amendment—freedom of speech. Of course, they are not speech, at all—they are something entirely different. Likewise, same-sex marriage is not marriage, either. I don’t know exactly what to call same-sex marriage, but that entity does not manifest the essential characteristics of marriage outlined above. Same-sex marriage is not marriage, and government has no business calling it such.

Same-sex “marriages” cannot be considered to be normal marriages—no matter what our politically correct government says. True marriage has certain qualities outlined above; and anything less cannot be considered to be a true marriage. Calling something a marriage that is not a true marriage damages real marriages; and they fail to protect and nurture children.

Anyone wanting to learn more about the farce government is perpetrating on the American people with its defense of supposed “same-sex marriage” should read the book, What is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense by Ryan T. Anderson.

Would Muslims in America Like to Be Treated Like This?

Christian leaders in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, captured by an organization formerly affiliated with al-Qaeda, have signed a submission document this week banning them from practicing Christianity in public in return for protection by their Islamist rulers.

Christian community in the province of Raqqa, captured last March by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), was recently given three options: to convert to Islam; to remain Christian but pledge submission to Islam; or to "face the sword." They opted for the second of those choices, known as dhimmitude.

The Christians of Raqqa chose to sign the dhimma treaty over war, the document stated, receiving a commitment by local ISIS commander Ibrahim Al-Badri, also known as Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, not to be subjected to physical harm or religious targeting.

In return, the Christians agreed to a list of conditions: to abstain from renovating churches or monasteries in Raqqa; not to display crosses or religious symbols in public or use loudspeakers in prayer; not to read scripture indoors loud enough for Muslims standing outside to hear; not to undertake subversive actions against Muslims; not to carry out any religious ceremonies outside the church; not to prevent any Christian wishing to convert to Islam from doing so; to respect Islam and Muslims and say nothing offensive about them; to pay the jizya tax worth four golden dinars for the rich, two for the average, and one for the poor, twice annually, for each adult Christian; to refrain from drinking alcohol in public; and to dress modestly.

(This article appeared in the Times of Israel 2-27-14.)

Socialism: Creeping or Sudden?

The showdown on socialism in Ukraine is showing the world just how popular socialism is among peoples who have actually experienced it. The Ukrainians are apparently sick and tired of a socialistic system, having recently experienced it in their dealings with the Soviet Union. Looking at that situation from the outside, we, as world citizens should take careful note. People in Ukraine are willing to fight and die, if necessary to deliver their country into a democratic regime where they have something practical to say about how they are managed by big government. For the time being, at least, the dissidents in Ukraine seem to be in control of Kiev—but…for how long, nobody knows. If the Russians move into Ukraine with their tanks as they did in Georgia several years ago, all could be lost for Ukraine and its freedom-loving people.

Ukraine is threatened by the prospect of having socialism imposed on them suddenly by outside military forces of the Russian Bear. This sudden imposition has motivated the Ukrainians to stand up and fight for their freedoms.

On the other hand, we, in America, are threatened by socialism coming to us in a creeping form—one government regulation after another. Of course, we are also experiencing a near-sudden attack on our free-enterprise system by soft socialists in government who would take over one sixth of our economy in a sudden power grab, Obamacare.

The question is: How will we respond to this socialistic system. Just to show how significant is this threat to American free enterprise, let me tell you about a friend of mine.

His fictional name is Donald. He was a successful and highly trained physician in the U.K. when that country enacted the laws enshrining a socialistic system, the National Health Service, in that country. Donald and many of his colleagues soon after fled the country for greener pastures where they could practice medicine without government instructions on how to do it. He went to Canada. But…after two years, he found the situation in Canada with its socialized medicine system little better than that in the U.K. He then came to Cleveland, OH, where he lives now. He began to work in the Cleveland Clinic; and he was happy there for 20 years. He found the medical practice situation in the United States much more congenial to his work routines than he had found them in either the U.K. or in Canada. Donald is now retired and lives in the same retirement center where Nancy and I live.

In discussing this situation with Donald, he said to me, “Where can doctors migrate to now? There is no other place on earth where we can go to practice unimpeded medicine for our patients, which we know is right for them?”

Is there is nothing wrong with the freewheeling system of entrepreneurial medical delivery we have known in America? Yes, there is certainly something wrong. There have obviously been abuses of our system that need fixing; and some government regulation seems necessary; but it should be coordinated with the basic American system of free enterprise. The system of individual “mandate,” employer “mandate,” and other types of “mandates” is not welcome or workable in America. It is very interesting to me to see that of the huge amount paper it takes just to print up the ObamaCare law, not one word was spent in modifying the money-gobbling system of tort law that funnels millions of dollars into the legal system. This is not surprising in view of the fact that this law was crafted by a bunch of lawyers, all eager to protect their fat fees for prosecuting lawsuits against doctors.

Anyone who thinks there is nothing wrong with this ObamaCare law should ask themselves, “Why are Congress and the Senate, and all the aides to lawmakers exempt from using the law? Why is Big Labor exempt from using the law?” There is something wrong with ObamaCare. It should be completely rescinded and Congress should start over, making a workable and acceptable law. Amateur politicians and bureaucrats such as President Obama should not be allowed to completely ignore the other side of the aisle in crafting a good health care law.

How Big Government Drives Inequality

It is commonly known that in America, median incomes have been dropping while high end incomes have been increasing during the recession. Although many are not aware of this fact, big government has concentrated income and wealth in fewer hands—many of these hands have actually been in the government, itself. It costs money to run big government agencies and their spin-off supporters.

During the Reagan administration, government regulations were minimized; and taxes were lowered. The economy grew faster than 7% in real terms for five quarters in a row starting in the second quarter of 1983. Gross domestic product grew on average 4.6% per year in real terms during the 1983-88 expansion while real median incomes grew 2.1%

Since the Reagan years, growth in the economy has faded while the government has increased its control over the economy and national income. Top federal income tax rates have risen to 44% today from 28% in 1988. The dollar has weakened and consumer prices have doubled in the past 25 years. Federal nondefense spending has nearly quadrupled to $2.8 trillion in 2013 from $750 billion in 1988. This has caused a huge increase in national debt, because the population is not paying its way in the economic world.

New businesses are not being created at the usual rate according to the Labor Department’s Employment Dynamics report. Real GDP growth has averaged a weak 2.3% over the past three years, while real median incomes have fallen 0.6% per year.

Government expansions have harmed individuals with modest incomes while exempting or benefiting people with higher incomes. These include federal takeover of the mortgage industry, siphoning the profit from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac directly to the government, because the government has purchased housing-related bonds from those entities. Money to run the government has also come from money printed by the Federal Reserve, presently in the amount of $85 billion/month. These money windfalls are promptly used to further accumulate wealth and income for those people hired directly or indirectly by the government. The money certainly does not come to people hiring and running small businesses!

The Affordable Care Act is the latest huge government insult. Of course, the government knows how patently unfair the ACA is. This can be seen, because it carefully insulates Congress, government corporations, and unions from having to buy into that big program.

The recent budget deal cooked up by Congress and the Administration has divided up $1.1 trillion, much of which will benefit those with high incomes while the extra debt falls on the middle class.

Personally speaking, Nancy and I have some of our money invested in the equity market; and, as a result, the recession has not hurt us much. We have seen our net worth remain steady. But…the net worth of others in the economy who have less capital has not fared so well. We greatly fear that our children and grandchildren are going to suffer from this “progressive,” liberal, economy. It will take more than good luck for this economic situation to turn in their favor!

(Redacted from the Wall Street Journal opinion pages 1/17/14.)