Positive Liberty

I can’t say I agree with everything they write in this issue (for instance, I don’t think it’s proper to associate Marvin Olasky with Christian Reconstructionism), but it’s certainly interesting to see Mother Jones’s critical take on the religious right, to which they devote their entire December issue.

The best part of their issue is the lead article by Susan Jacoby on the secular origins of the US Constitution. She basically summarizes passages in her book Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, about the secularism of founding era America and its impact on our Constitution. Although her thesis, that the Constitution was revolutionary for the time in leaving God out of it, and in having entirely secular aims, is quite correct, it was originally put forth a few years earlier by two Cornell scholars in their book entitled The Godless Constitution.

In a victory for free speech, a Swedish minister who was charged and convicted under that nation’s “hate speech” laws has had that conviction overturned by the Supreme Court of Sweden in a unanimous ruling. The Ake Green case is similar in some ways to the Stephen Boissoin case in Canada, but in Green’s case he was actually convicted in a criminal trial for things he said during a sermon at his Pentecostal church and was sent to prison:

The Swedish Supreme Court has acquitted a pentecostal minister of charges he violated the nation’s hate-speech laws when he labeled homosexuality a “deep cancer tumor” on society during a sermon two years ago.

The court ruled Ake Green was free to espouse his religious views even if they were deemed offensive by some, though prosecutors said the high court’s decision will not lead to acceptance of “gay bashing.”

They noted the court recognized Green’s comments were made during a religious sermon and did not incite others to take harmful actions against homosexuals.

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In Novi, Michigan, there’s a big battle kicking up over a family’s nativity scene in their front yard. The problem is that they live in a neighborhood with a neighborhood association that has rules against such displays:

The Samonas’ neighborhood association has ordered the Novi family to remove its seven-piece plastic display or face possible fines of $25 to $100 per week.

The family isn’t budging and neither are its three wise men. The Samonas have vowed not only to keep the display, but also are threatening to enhance it.”If you take this out, it’s not Christmas anymore,” said Joe Samona, 16, as he reached down and scooped baby Jesus from the creche on his parents’ front lawn.

A letter sent by the association to the Samonas has brought to their front yard the nation’s latest skirmish over just how and where the Christianity of Christmas should be on display.

Last week, Joe’s parents, Betty and Frank Samona, received a notice from the community association that sets regulations in their upscale Tollgate Woods subdivision. It said the family may be violating rules that prohibit lawn ornaments, statues or outdoor art from being placed on the lot without prior approval of the board of directors.

Then it simply says: “Please remove the nativity scene display from your front yard.”…

Dean Williams, the community association manager and author of the letter, said according to association rules in place since 2000 and signed by the Samonas when they bought the home in 2002, homeowners must request permission to place statues or lawn ornaments outside their home. The Samonas say they never signed any such document.

I have mixed feelings on this one. On the one hand, I wouldn’t live in a neighborhood with a neighborhood assocation if you put a gun to my head. Not for a millisecond am I going to tolerate being told that my mailbox is too big, or my wreath is too wide, or that I can’t park my car where I want to because some busybody with nothing better to do than stare out their window can’t keep their mouth shut. On the other hand, if you’re stupid enough to buy a house with such an association as a condition of ownership (achieved through covenants in the master deed), then you’re legally bound to follow the rules even if you don’t like them. And I’ll guarantee that they did sign such papers when they bought the house, even if they don’t know they did. And if they signed the papers without first knowing what the HOA agreement said, they deserve everything they get.

What could I write to comfort my gay Catholic friends at a time like this? Not much, I’m afraid. As homosexuals are barred from the priesthood, I can’t help but wonder when the remaining gay Catholic faithful will finally declare that enough is enough.

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I recently finished listening to Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton. Since it was abridged, I won’t try to give a serious review here. Just a few thoughts.

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The Chicago Tribune has an article up about a new IDEA (Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness) club at Cornell University, where the president recently delivered a scathing critique of intelligent design in his annual address to the school. The article includes many misconceptions and falsehoods, beginning with the first premise uttered by the new chapter’s founder:

The national spotlight recently has focused on school boards in Kansas, Pennsylvania and elsewhere that are grappling with calls for including intelligent design, a concept critical of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, in science curricula. But a significant new front in this cultural conflict is opening in the halls of American higher education, spearheaded by science students skeptical of evolution and intrigued by intelligent design.

One of them is Hannah Maxson. A math and chemistry major at Cornell University, she founded an Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA) Club here this fall.

“In my opinion, both intelligent design and Darwinian evolution are science. Both have philosophical implications. Intelligent design implies the universe is somewhat directed. Darwinian evolution implies a naturalistic worldview,” Maxson, 21, said.

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As my husband and I work on our stock portfolio, I’m envisioning a number of posts on personal finance. As usual, the comments are open, and I look forward to hearing from you. Do you want more posts like this one? Fewer? None? Be sure to let me know if you have an opinion. (Note that nothing you read here should be mistaken for professional advice, either. I am doing this quite by the seat of my pants, and for the purpose of self-education as much as anything else. Feel free to tell me that I’m all wet if you want, and, if you explain yourself, perhaps I’ll learn something.)

Today I particularly enjoyed this article from The Motley Fool, and I think that absolutely everyone should read it. Here is just a taste; the article overflows with similar insights:

Socially responsible investing falls closest to my heart concerning environmental issues. (I am an environmental engineer by trade, holding a master’s degree in the discipline, and I have nearly a decade of industrial practice.) In the interests of being somewhat provocative, if all investors were to adhere to rigid environmental protection criteria as a screening tool, then there are no companies that would be worthy of our investment dollars. The reason: Commerce always affects (read: harms) the environment. Of course, environmental harm is a bit of a slippery slope, and experts rarely agree on what is harmful…

Perhaps I’ll come off as an unabashed capitalist and proponent of a “let the market decide” line of thinking, but the most environmentally friendly solution may also be the most business-friendly. My former employer was an emitter (a nicer word than “polluter”) of a particular carcinogenic degreasing solvent. It was the second-largest polluter … err emitter … of this substance in Canada in the late 1990s. As the lead engineer on the project, my team and I developed a new process that completely eliminated the use of the chemical from our facility. Quantifying only the savings from chemical purchases and hazardous waste disposal (and there were also productivity and health and safety gains), the project paid for itself in just about four years.

Were our emissions causing environmental harm? Yes, in my opinion. Yet the government regulation in force at the time allowed for 10 times the emissions we were pumping into the air. But it was in our self-interest to implement the project. You see, pollution indicates an inefficient process. That inefficiency has a cost. Competitive businesses profit by driving down costs and earning greater returns on capital.

Of course, the inefficiencies inherent in spilling valuable chemicals around may still be outweighed by the benefits to the polluter, a phenomenon known as a negative externality. Still, the underlying point is correct: It’s not as though companies ever want to be wasteful. The proper way to care for the environment, then, is to make certain that property rights claims are enforceable and that transaction costs in pursuing them are low (for more on this, see the Coase Theorem).

Another paradox of ethical investing emerges when we look at companies that many people consider unethical. Take cigarette maker Altria (formerly Philip Morris). Quite often, investors avoid this stock not for fear of future lawsuits — but because they simply do not wish to be associated with the evil trade in cigarettes.

Yet the market consequences are quite the opposite of what these non-investors probably intend. Rather than punishing the unscrupulous buyers of Altria stock, the large numbers of people staying away from it over the long term means that Altria is a great bargain. Avoiding the company’s stock actually rewards those who buy it.

To understand why, it’s important to recall that stocks generally make invstors money in one of two ways, through share price increases and the payment of dividends. If the share price goes too high, too small an expected dividend return can often drag it back down to earth; conversely, if the share price is too low, more investors will snap up the stock with the intent of gaining a relatively larger dividend, driving the price back up. This equilibrium is a bit depressed in Altria’s case, since a number of investors view accepting its dividend money as unethical. As a result, Altria’s current dividend payment is 4.4% per year, which all by itself compares quite favorably with money market funds. The picture is even brighter for the long-term investor: Over the last twenty years, annual return has been a hefty 21.5%. With enemies like these, who needs friends?

The article’s conclusion speaks to this point as well:

Perhaps it’s cold-hearted, but the purpose of investing is to make as much money as possible. Shunning a particular company’s shares arguably has little effect on the ethical stance of that company, because the money paid for shares doesn’t land in their coffers anyway, but rather into the pocket of the person you bought them from. It may just be more effective to use your ethical discretionary dollars in your direct purchases of cars, food, or other leisure good and activities. So-called distasteful businesses like online gaming, debt collection, or death care are doing well because there is strong end-user demand. Directly affecting that demand will do more to put your own personal ethics into action than buying or selling a stock.

In other words, you do more good by urging your friends, as I do, that they ought not to smoke. Of course, it also doesn’t hurt — and could very well make you a bundle — to bet that they will ignore your advice.

The historical record is clear: George Washington was intimately connected with the Freemasons. He even prayed to the Mason’s “Great Architect of the Universe.” From his December 27, 1792 letter to Massachusetts Masons Grand Lodge, “I sincerely pray that the Great Architect of the Universe may bless you and receive you hereafter into his immortal Temple.”

Interestingly these anti-Masonic, Illuminati fearing religious lunatics existed back then as they do today (and probably held more social and legal power then as well). And they pestered George Washington about his involvement with the Freemasons, leading him to lie about it.

When George Washington received a conspiratorial letter from one George Washington Snyder warning him about the Freemasons and their connection with the Illuminati, instead of replying, [Clarence Beeks voice] “F*ck Off, Crackpot!” [/Clarence Beeks voice] Washington, ever conciliatory even to the point of lying, wrote:

I have heard much of the nefarious, and dangerous plan, and doctrines of the Illuminati, but never saw the Book until you were pleased to send it to me.9 The same causes which have prevented my acknowledging the receipt of your letter have prevented my reading the Book, hitherto; namely, the multiplicity of matters which pressed upon me before, and the debilitated state in which I was left after, a severe fever had been removed. And which allows me to add little more now, than thanks for your kind wishes and favourable sentiments, except to correct an error you have run into, of my Presiding over the English lodges in this Country. The fact is, I preside over none, nor have I been in one more than once or twice, within the last thirty years. I believe notwithstanding, that none of the Lodges in this Country are contaminated with the principles ascribed to the Society of the Illuminati. With respect I am &c.

But we know that Washington was far more involved with the Masons than “once or twice, within the last thirty years.” Washington was a Master Mason who, when he died, was buried with full-Masonic rites.

I discovered Downsize DC through a recent trackback to Positive Liberty. Apparently it is the sort of outfit that takes on impossible projects like the following:

We hold this truth to be self-evident, that those in Congress who vote on legislation they have not read, have not represented their constituents. They have misrepresented them.

And since Congress has repeatedly committed “legislation without representation,” strong measures to prohibit these Congressional misrepresentations are both justified and required.

To this end we have created the “Read the Bills Act of 2005 (RTBA).” RTBA requires that…

Each bill, and every amendment, must be read in its entirety before a quorum in both the House and Senate…

I am reminded of Swift’s Brobdingnagians, those giants whose laws could have no more words than their alphabet had letters, and whose alphabet was only twenty-two letters long. We need not go so far as Swift suggested, but I have to agree with DownsizeDC.org: Legislators who have not even read the bills on which they vote — and the system that creates such bills in the first place — are both doing the country a grave disservice.

The following is taken from the notes of Thomas Jefferson on February 1, 1800, and the subject is George Washington’s lack of belief in the Christian religion.

Dr. Rush tells me that he had it from Asa Green that when the clergy addressed Genl. Washington on his departure from the govmt, it was observed in their consultation that he had never on any occasion said a word to the public which showed a belief in the Xn religion and they thot they should so pen their address as to force him at length to declare publicly whether he was a Christian or not. They did so. However he observed the old fox was too cunning for them. He answered every article of their address particularly except that, which he passed over without notice. Rush observes he never did say a word on the subject in any of his public papers except in his valedictory letter to the Governors of the states when he resigned his commission in the army, wherein he speaks of the benign influence of the Christian religion.

I know that Gouverneur Morris, who pretended to be in his secrets & believed himself to be so, has often told me that Genl. Washington believed no more of that system than he himself did.

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I particularly liked today’s column by David Ignatius in the Washington Post. If you can take any time at all away from your post-Thanksgiving shopping spree, be sure to read this piece.

When I lived abroad, Thanksgiving was always my favorite holiday. It was a chance to scrounge up a turkey, gather foreign and American friends, and celebrate what America represented to the world. I liked to give a sentimental toast when the turkey arrived at the table, and more than once I had my foreign guests in tears. They loved the American dream as much as I did.

I don’t think Americans realize how much we have tarnished those ideals in the eyes of the rest of the world these past few years. The public opinion polls tell us that America isn’t just disliked or feared overseas — it is reviled. We are seen as hypocrites who boast of our democratic values but who behave lawlessly and with contempt for others. I hate this America-bashing, but when I try to defend the United States and its values in my travels abroad, I find foreigners increasingly are dismissive. How do you deny the reality of Abu Ghraib, they ask, when the vice president of the United States is actively lobbying against rules that would ban torture?

…We must stop behaving as if we are in a permanent state of war, in which any practice is justified by the exigencies of the moment. That’s my biggest problem with Vice President Cheney’s anything-goes jeremiads against terrorism. They suggest we will always be at war, and so it doesn’t matter what the world thinks of our behavior. That’s a dangerously mistaken view. We are in a long war but not an endless one, and we need to begin rebuilding the bridges to normal life.

I have had much the same experiences in traveling abroad. It’s most emphatically not that the rest of the world hates us, or hates our values, or that they’ve surrendered to militant Islam. It simply drives Europeans crazy that we’ve ceased to be what we so recently were — or, at the very least, that we have so completely given up on the task of explaining our actions to those, like our allies, who deserve decent explanations.

The typical European no doubt holds political views to the left of the American mainstream, but given what other alternatives exist in the world, such differences are minor. The same Europeans who chide us for lacking a fully socialized medical system (still a terrible idea, in my opinion), all the same see the United States as firmly on their side, socialized medicine or no: Both defend religious tolerance, rights and opportunities for women, freedom of expression, a decent regard for the accused, humane treatment of prisoners of war, and so forth. The real complaints begin — and, in sane circles, end — when America fails to live up to what it ought to be.

Rowe’s post about the blue laws reminds me of an interesting passage in Charles Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol. Dickens, whose writings generally betray an absolute ignorance of the Invisible Hand effect, takes time out of the Carol to attack blue laws in part because they restrict free trade and thus harm the poor:

“Spirit,” said Scrooge, after a moment’s thought, “I wonder you, of all the beings in the many worlds about us, should desire to cramp these [poor] people’s opportunities of innocent enjoyment.”

“I!” cried the Spirit.

“You would deprive them of their means of dining every seventh day, often the only day on which they can be said to dine at all,” said Scrooge. “Wouldn’t you?”

“I!” cried the Spirit.

“You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day?” said Scrooge. “And it comes to the same thing.”

“I seek!” exclaimed the Spirit.

“Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your name, or at least in that of your family,” said Scrooge.

“There are some upon this earth of yours,” returned the Spirit, “who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all out kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.”

Scrooge promised that he would; and they went on….

Check out this article by Jeff Jacoby on our Puritan origins. Jacoby’s article features the history of blue laws in Massachusetts and illustrates, in many ways, how deeply flawed and tyrannical the Puritan’s system was and how it represented the antithesis of the ideals of liberty and equality on which we were founded in 1776. Continue Reading »

Consider VoteOnMarriage.org. The organization seeks a repeal of same-sex marriages in Massachusetts.

Consider its website — and ponder whether, at least in the last ten years of the web, you have ever seen any design that was quite so poor.

Without a doubt, the blinking text grabs the eye. Most browsers disable the blink tag automatically, and most HTML writing tools that I’ve used flag it with a warning that the tag is often neither supported by browsers nor welcome by readers. But somewhere within the movement to save heterosexual marriage from the likes of me, someone must have felt that it was terribly important to make the words “signature drive” blink.

A solution was found.

“I know what’ll show ‘em! We’ll use an animated graphic!”

“Yeah, and make it change colors, too. That way we can work six, maybe seven different colors into the front page.”

And so it was done. Not only does the graphic blink, but it also depicts a weird, preternaturally happy, preternaturally yellow traditional family.

They’re not just a little jaundiced, either. If VoteOnMarriage.org wanted to make heterosexual marriage look natural, they failed — unless by “nature” we’re talking dandelions.

Now for the text: In it we find “activists judges” [sic], a comma splice near the end of the second paragraph, and, as a final treat, there comes the following argument, one that took considerable guts to put on the front page:

Any two persons who are dependent on one another deserve basic benefits, but to award these benefits based on sexual orientation is discriminatory.

Bingo. I could hardly have said it better myself… Now let me introduce you to my husband.

That’s all for now. I’m spending the holiday with the best bunch of in-laws a man could ever have, and I’m not likely to post much until Monday.

I don’t read the comics much, but my husband pointed out Monday’s Frazz and said I might like it. I did.

(And is it just me, or do all the new comic strips look like they’re imitating Calvin & Hobbes?)