Fault Lines Through our Religion and Our Society!

Most of us sense that there are dangerous divisions developing in our America—even among our churches. Morals and ethics of the society are changing; and those changes are seeping into our religious lives and our basic beliefs. Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever; but…ideas and mores of the society, as a whole are changing.

Our attention has been drawn to these changes by a recent book by Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America. R. R. Reno has also pointed out the same thing in an opening article in First Things for August/September 2013, which he titled War on the Weak.

These writers and others are pointing out to us that there is a developing division among our people between the educated, socially prominent, administratively powerful, and (resultantly) wealthy on the one hand. And…on the other hand are the uneducated, the working class disenfranchised, the socially weak and administratively impotent. The first group is becoming richer while being able to avoid the pitfalls of social deterioration. The second group is falling victim to high-school dropout, single-parent homes, drugs, smoking, crime, and poverty. The first group lives in gated communities; the second group lives in inner-city ghettos and run down housing projects. The first group includes the politicians, university professors, and the media programmers. The second group can hardly find any kind of work.

The second class of people, whom I will call the underclass, used to be able to keep their life in order because of fixed social norms that told them how to behave. Examples: Boys play with toy guns; girls play with dolls. Clean up your plate. Don’t spend more money than you have in the bank. Always tell the truth. Working hard will get you ahead in life. Boys open doors for girls—etc., etc. Those simple rules have given way to relativeness, inclusiveness, diversity, affirmative action, and other varieties of political correctness.

The more fortunate, whom I will call the upper-class, have been able to keep these norms intact for the most part in their social lives; but they have come to espouse liberalized, “progressive,” allowances that disavow the old-fashioned admonitions. Now, so they say, “anything goes;” but…they still teach their own children to avoid these destructive ways of thinking and living. Out-of-wedlock pregnancies are rare in the upper-class; drug use is slight; and dropping out of high school is anathema.

This upper-class of citizens is the one that determines the mores of the society via their control of the media, the universities, and the judiciary. This class has developed an “enhanced morality” that can promulgate a free-living life style for anyone who wants it while, at the same time, preserving a chaste and self-controlled mystique for themselves. This class is the “strong,” as named by Reno.

The underclass, i.e., the “weak,” in the words of Reno, needs social and moral structure in order to avoid chaos in their personal and social lives. But…that structure is missing from our politically correct society. Our dominant culture refuses to meet this need. Indeed, it rejects it root-and-branch, consistently treating clear moral strictures with suspicion, seeing them as dangerous regressions back into Middle Ages morality.

I believe we will never get out of this conundrum until we get back to Christian principles as a society. Only Christ has the answer. Other religions fail to produce the goods that Christ can offer. Islam produces violence. Eastern religions fail the give personal significance, which is the source of human dignity. Atheism and western-style philosophy only lead to nihilism and its complete lack of human fulfillment. Christ is the answer.

Our way out of this morass of cultural relativeness is not better politicians, academics, economists, and other people planners. Our only hope is that our people (and especially our young people) will not retreat into a materialistic, self-seeking, behavior pattern, that idolizes sex and selfishness. We need real cultural and religious leaders who put Christ at the forefront of their life efforts. These kinds of people will never come out of our present “progressive” culture that only sees quick fixes to our social and cultural problems. We must get at the root causes of our social deterioration before any lasting correction can be obtained. The cure can only be found in Christ.

It must be noted that there is a subset of young people in America who come from the upper-class, but who have co-opted the morals and values of the under-class. You can read about these young people in an article in Imprimis about Sex at Harvard and in a book by Christian Smith, Souls in Transition. I wrote a review of this book on 4/10/2012; and if you are interested in this subject, you can access that review in the list of my blog posts.

Tax-Payers Now Subsidizing Liars!!

According to the Affordable Care Act, in order for a person to qualify for a taxpayer subsidized health insurance policy, he needs two things: The first is an affidavit stating that his employer does not supply adequate health insurance. The second is that he must show that he has a sufficiently low income that he cannot afford to buy health insurance on his own.

The Obama Administration has set aside the first requirement for one year, because it says that it is too onerous to enforce. Now, it is setting aside the second —because it is too difficult to verify at the present time. WOW! Of course, government health insurance is slated to take place on 1 October, right on schedule. The way that is going to happen is that the government is just going to accept the word of the buyer of insurance that his income is low—no verification needed, apparently. The government will dispense the insurance through the national health insurance exchanges.

IRS experience tells that 21%-25% of earned income tax credits go to people who are not eligible for those credits.  If that level of fraud is predictive of the amount of fraud anticipated by asking people to designate their financial qualifications for ObamaCare health insurance through the exchanges, then tax-payers will be picking up $250 billion in fraudulent insurance payments over the next 10 years.

This waiving of verification procedures seems like a transparent attempt to get many people to sign up for insurance through the exchanges; there by showing that government health insurance is the preferred vehicle for coverage. Of course, this will be done at the expense of the taxpayers. As usual, President Obama expects taxpayers to cough up the money.  

As you might expect, this arrangement is in violation of the Affordable Care Act’s specifications. President Obama just does not seem worried about enforcing the features of his own legislative measures.

(This blog post was redacted from the Wall Street Journal of 8 July 2013 page A16.)

The Cause of Homosexuality

There is often a question in the minds of Americans about the causes of homosexuality. In this blog post, I will attempt to give two theories about this abnormal sexual orientation. I am particularly interested in this matter because of the recent change of policy in the Boy Scouts of America. That organization previously would not admit homosexuals into the organization as members or as leaders. Lately, the BSA has decided to allow openly homosexual boys to become members.

I believe that homosexuality is a moral mistake. Of course, homosexuals have long strived to establish their life style as a normal variant, caused by a genetic difference between them and heterosexual individuals. Intense study of the human genome has failed to find any correlation between homosexuality and any particular pattern of human genes or chromosomes. In other words, there has been found no genetic correlate for homosexuality. That leaves only environmental and social causes as viable explanations for homosexuality.

So…what does cause homosexuality? This is a question that probably has several answers in different cases. But whatever the causes may be, you can be pretty sure that they are complex. Sigmund Freud in the late 19^th Century pointed out that establishing sexual identity is a major and sometimes difficult task for the human being. He thought the task of sexual identification in males is more difficult than that of females. Of course, I think that Freud was a bit too ready to ascribe every psychiatric malady to something sexual—but nevertheless, his observation has some credence.

It is my opinion and that of many others that homosexuality has two common origins. The first is that in very early childhood, certainly before the age of 5, a conflictual relationship develops between the child and the parent of the same sex. We will discuss the pathway to homosexuality in boys because homosexuality is more common in the male; but the principle can be reflexly applied to girls, also. Both little boys and little girls are very attached to their mothers during infancy.  As a boy grows up, however, he becomes more and more interested in his father. He sees his father as a model for his life; and he seeks to identify with the father. He notices that his father is sexually attracted to females, and he, thus, identifies that as a model for his life, too. He then normally becomes a heterosexual person, attracted to the female.

However, when a conflictual relationship becomes obvious to a little boy, he becomes afraid of his father. Or…he may disengage emotionally from his father who is authoritarian, hostile, distant, or otherwise offensive. This conflict drives the little boy to develop a pathological (abnormal) relationship with his mother. The boy notices that the mother is sexually attracted to males; and the boy, then develops an attraction to males. Thus…you have a homosexual male as he grows up. This early conflict with the father causes very early onset homosexual affinities; and I have heard these early age homosexuals tell me on several occasions that their earliest memories are of their attraction to males as sexual goals. This early attraction to males is the thing that makes homosexuals believe that there is something genetic about their homosexuality; they cannot imagine how their sexual affinity can come from any other source.

The second kind of sexual development into homosexuality occurs in teen-age years; and this is what I think is particularly hazardous in the Boy Scouts. There is a well-known tendency for teenagers to rebel against their parents and other authorities in their lives—they are trying to find their own identities. The teenager seeks venues in which he can rebel. In the course of this rebellion, some of them decide to “walk on the wild side,” so to speak, and find the most blatant issue against which he can rebel. He soon sees that one of the most powerful recommendations that is put upon him is that he become heterosexual. This provides the teenager with the opportunity to rebel in grand fashion. He may decide to experiment with the gay lifestyle. Sometimes this results in a lifetime commitment to homosexuality. Sometimes, however, it is only a temporary situation that is nothing more than a brief experimentation in an otherwise normal developmental model. There are many teenagers who have had brief encounters with homosexuality; and their subsequent development does not seem to be harmed.

 My concern with the Boy Scout matter centers on this second developmental pathway. I worry that exposing developing boys to homosexual influences may tempt them to adopt that lifestyle for themselves as a result of their normal rebellious tendencies. For that reason, I do not think the Boy Scouts is a proper venue for homosexual boys. I think that normal boys might possibly become homosexuals as a result of interaction with homosexuals during teenage years.

Homosexuality is a harmful lifestyle practiced by about 5% of human populations. The more it is tolerated and accepted as normal, the more prevalent it will become. It brings no happiness into the life of a boy and as time goes on his focus is on how attractive he can be to other males; he does not move on in life as a happily married  man. I do not believe that our government and our social institutions are doing anybody any favors by aiding and abetting this aberration of behavior.

 

An ObamaCare Board Answerable to No One

(This blog post was partly redacted from the Wall Street Journal 6/20/13 page A21.)

A huge objection to The Affordable Care Act has been raised by those who view that law’s inclusion of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, the IPAB. That board has been called the “death panel.” (That name is not warranted, in my opinion.)

Nevertheless, I think there is great danger in the function of the IPAB, as it is specified in the ACA (ObamaCare). As described in the Act, the IPAB will be a separate governmental organization with extreme power to specify where huge sums of money are to be spent. The Board will also  prescribe monstrous changes to our health care system. The ObamaCare law stipulates that there “shall be no administrative or judicial review” of the board’s decisions. Its members will be nearly untouchable, too. They will be presidentially nominated and Senate-confirmed, but after that, they can only be fired for “neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.” The crafters of the ACA designed the IPAB so that it would be immune to political pressure; but that effort is a futile one. The original appointees would be put there by an elected (and, therefore, political) president. It is impossible for the Board to be independent of politics.

Once the board acts, its decisions can be overruled only by Congress and only through unprecedented and constitutionally dubious legislative procedures—featuring restricted debate, short deadlines for actions by congressional committees and other steps of the process and supermajoritarian voting requirements. The law allows Congress to kill the otherwise inextirpable board only by a three-fifths supermajority, and only by a vote that takes place in 2017 between January 1 and August 15 If the board fails to implement cuts in expenses, all of its powers are to be exercised by the HHS Secretary Sebelius or her successor.

This new board is an invention of government that seeks to replace the system of checks and balances inherent in our form of government. It is dangerous; and Congress should act immediately to change the specifics of the board’s creation so that it will respond, at least to some degree, to the will of the people through our elected representatives.  

 

 

The Case for Rationing Medical/Surgical Care

I believe in medical care rationing, especially in end-of-life treatments. I believe in it for the following reason: I have seen doctors perform triple coronary artery by-pass operations on people over 90 years of age. I estimate that that operation at that age might increase life expectance by as much as 2 months. As you might expect, the operation probably costs more than $100,000 when all hospital costs are included in the calculation. The two months gained by surgery would probably be dominated by pain and disability, not to mention the hospital complications which might very well take the patient’s life by the onset of pneumonia or some other post-surgical complication. I have seen patients with terminal cancer or advanced dementia started on chronic hemodialysis (artificial kidney) with almost no hope of extending life or ameliorating suffering. The only benefit of these two kinds of treatment accrue to the doctor who makes a lot of money by doing them.

Medical and surgical treatments with negligible hope of extending life and decreasing suffering should not be entertained. It must be stated that decisions for the above kinds of extensive medical and surgical treatments are very often not recommended by the doctors involved. Frequently, these decisions are forced by strong-minded family members who do not understand the implications and complication rates of  such treatments.

It seems to me that the only way to eliminate these irrational and clinically bad decisions for treatment is to ration them out of consideration by categorically denying payment for them through Medicare rules.

The problem is that one often hears stories about patients who benefited significantly by the above type of interventions, and these stories are not insignificant. Our moral obligations are to preserve life and comfort and to do no harm. Anecdotes about aged and diseased patients who were benefited by heroic medical and surgical care are definitely exceptions to the rules. The large majority of the time, however, when old age and concurrent diseases are present, outcomes are not beneficial. Policies should not be made on the basis of anecdotal information such as these stories. Medical and surgical decisions should be made on the basis of realizing the most good for the most patients with the least amount of suffering and disability.

In these days of rising medical costs and limited money one must also consider the efficiency of money spending in an attempt to get the most “bang for the buck.” We should give consideration to the idea that for the cost of one triple coronary artery bypass procedure, one can buy thousands of doses of immunizations against shingles, measles, and other common diseases. This will prevent death and disability far more efficiently than heroic surgical and medical treatments on aged patients.

Readers should know that I speak for myself when I make the above points. I am 76 years old. I have lived a good life; I know my Savior and where I am eventually going; and I do not want anyone to apply the heroic measures so common today to my care. No thanks!

Governmental Deterioration Rises To New Levels

We, Americans, are learning each day to trust the government less and less. Many among us are unsettled by abuses that have become obvious in the IRS, the Justice Department, the Benghazi affair, and government surveillance programs run by the National Security Administration. We wonder—what is to be done about the mess in Washington!

Now, we are losing our ability to maintain our own privacy because of unheard of governmental surveillance programs. Many think that this loss flies in the face of the Fourth Amendment, which reads, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated….” I greatly fear that this loss of privacy will someday backfire on us and produce effects even worse and more ubiquitous than the terrorist actions our NSA is attempting to avoid by all this surveillance of phone and e-mail records.

There was a day when we, Americans could trust our government to consist of honest and moral men and women. We could trust them to uphold the principles of our Constitution and adhere to biblical standards. But…no more!

We have seen in our time a President elected to office who saw fit to hire burglars to raid the offices of the Democrat Party in the Watergate building in order to get the plans of his political opponents. We have seen a man elected to the Presidency who was caught seducing one of the office girls on the floor of the oval office. Now, we see a President who rejects the idea that truth can be realized or understood. President Obama has written in The Audacity of Hope, “Implicit…in the very idea of ordered liberty is a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology or ‘ism,’ any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single unalterable course….”

Unless America returns to its former state of proper moral consensus, we will never, again, realize a government we can trust. Electing presidents, senators, and congressional representatives who are womanizers, unfaithful husbands, tax cheaters, and draft dodgers will never recover for us a faithful and trustworthy government. The moral condition of our government leaders IS VERY IMPORTANT. Many have said that the personal morals of a president make no difference—the only thing that counts is his performance in his official position. That is simply wrong. We, Americans, need to examine carefully the morals of our leaders before we blindly elect them to office.

 

 

Organizations Follow the Leader

My wife, Nancy, has pointed out to me that people in about any organization adopt the attitudes and policies of the leader. This is especially true about the government where prominent people in executive positions are in those positions by political appointment—they are appointed because the absolutely agree with the views of the leader; and they frequently are where they are because they are “yes men.” They can be trusted not to make waves.

Such is the condition of the executive branch of our government. It seems perfectly obvious to anyone that the President’s attitudes toward conservative groups have filtered down to the lower level bureaucrats in the IRS, the EPA, the DHS, the Defense Department, and the Department of Health and Human Services.

President Obama has made precious little effort to take into consideration the views of his political adversaries; and he seems bent on castigating them at every opportunity. His henchmen in all the other government agencies are following suit. This policy began during the administration of Andrew Jackson; it took a brief respite in the administration of Abraham Lincoln; and it is now in full flower during the reign of Barack Obama. The policy of ignoring and disparaging political adversaries makes no room for constructive functioning of a loyal opposition.

The failure to listen to ideas from the right is bearing fruit in the widespread opposition to Obamacare. It now seems obvious that 27 states are not going to buy into the Medicaid bribe by the Federal Government offered by the “Affordable Care Act.”  In fact, House Republicans voted to repeal The Affordable Care Act two weeks ago.

In other areas such as gun control or immigration he either carries no weight or has a negative influence. Obama’s other forays into leadership, such as minimum wage and the common core curriculum are not popular either.  This is a president who has been unable to compromise, see other perspectives, and bring a cooperative group together to accomplish the needs of the nation. Hopefully, our next president will be able to lead our country into a bigger and better future.