Separation of Church and State

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html



Above is a link to a rather long article about the Texas State Board of Education and its' influence on the nation's textbooks. It turns out that the TSBE produces a set of guidelines for it's textbooks that, because of the size of the Texas school system, are widely adopted by almost all of the other school systems around the country. The problem, at least to my way of thinking, is that the TSBE has been over represented by Conservative Christian members, who are pushing their agenda, particularly in the areas of science, political science, and history. Their number one goal is to undermine the concept of separation of church and state.

Granted, we are, and have always been a predominately Christian nation, and our founding fathers who wrote the constitution were also Christian. That's all well and good, but the founding fathers also recognized that that religion and government should remain apart. The First Amendment to the Constitution reads as follows: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" The founding fathers recognized the danger of the tyranny of the majority in this instance, just as they did by establishing a republic instead of a democracy.

What people in this country need to understand, particularly Christians, is that there are thousands of powerful and vocal Conservative Christians out there, who are intent upon turning our country into a theocracy, with the Conservative Christians in control. What better way to achieve this, than to control what our children are taught in school.

The article linked above goes into this in great detail, and I urge you to read it.

Intellectual apartheid.doc

Intellectual apartheid

In Huxley’s Brave New World, class was predetermined by the needs of society and based upon the genetically engineered intellect of the population. Alphas ruled the world, Betas managed it, and Epsilons operated the elevators. Today’s technology driven society has created a similar, yet even more sinister class structure. The work performed by the less than intellectually gifted is increasingly devalued, and the workers are reduced to the status of the populations of third world nations.

Historically, a worker in the United States could earn a living based solely on his willingness to perform a hard day’s work. Plow the fields, work in the factories, clean the streets, generally, the worker earned living wages. Not that the intellectually blessed worker did not fare better. The best jobs and most responsible positions generally went to the most qualified individuals. These higher status, and higher demand jobs also provided higher pay for the intellectually superior worker. Although a premium was placed upon these exceptional workers, the creation of a strong manufacturing base created a huge and relatively affluent middle class unlike any other in the world. Now our advancing technology is about to demote at least half of America’s workforce to third world status.

The technocrats needed to run our increasingly advanced society are not coming from the left half of the intelligence bell curve. In fact, our advancing technology is becoming beyond the reach of an increasing larger percentage of the population. If it takes a person with an IQ of 110 to perform the average technology based job today, then it may require a person with an IQ of 120 to take this technology to the next level. The higher the IQ required, the smaller the pool of perspective employees. By way of example note how our country’s immigration policy favors foreigners with special skills (intellectual skill) such as engineering and computer science. Our increased focus on education may enlarge our intellectual pool slightly, but the best of schooling can only make people less ignorant, not smarter. In fact, performance based testing in the schools has lead to an increased dropout rate among the less gifted.

Meanwhile, thanks to a globalized economy, the manufacturing base which created America’s vast and affluent middle class is slipping away, and being replaced by a technology based economy in which, for reasons stated above, the majority of our citizens will not be able to participate. We have seen average real wages decline in this country over the last 30 years. Increased affluence has come only to the intellectual elite. As this trend continues, our economy will not evolve to the “service economy” espoused by former president George H. Bush. Instead, our economy will devolve to a servant economy preferred by our current leaders. Under this economy, the intellectually underprivileged will compete for fewer and fewer available menial jobs at what will become increasingly third world wages.

Unfortunately the intellectual “masters of the Universe” don’t for the most part, seem to give a whit what happens to their intellectually inferior country men. They can hire out the making of their shoes, towels, shirts, TV’s, and almost every other consumer item to some third world peasant who does not have enough clout to demand a decent wage. Then they can use their own domestic peasants to flip their burgers, mow their grass, and park their cars. And, if their fellow citizens are not willing to do their fetch and carry at bargain basement wages, then there are over a hundred million Latin Americans waiting just over the border to do their bidding.

The catch 22 in all of this is that the half of the population that is becoming obsolete is not smart enough to even know what’s happening to them. The ones that still have decent jobs are taken in by the availability of cheap consumer goods, and even cheaper political rhetoric. They hear that America has the best health care system in the world. They don’t realize that more and more people can’t afford to participate in it. They hear the politicians espouse changing welfare to workfare, but how well will they be when there is no work. They hear tax cuts for economic stimulus, but whose economy is stimulated.

Notes from the Common Man

News flash! I am abandoning the blog site Concord Coffee Talk, but I'm not going to quit blogging. Here's the story. When I started the blog, I made two incorrect assumptions. One was that my coffee klatch members would be interested enough to contribute, and comment. This has not been the case; everyone has his own personal interests, and writing blog posts are not high on the priority list of any of my friends. Secondly, I believed that our day to day discussions would be enough to fuel the blog. Although we continue to have interesting conversations, there is not enough repeatable content to feed the blog. In addition, and most importantly, the opinions expressed in the blog have for the most part been my own, and while I am willing to take the credit and the blame for these opinions, it is not fair to my friends to be guilty by association with me and my opinions.



In a few days, you will be redirected to my new blog titled Notes from the Common Man. I have obtained my own domain name, and you will be able to find me at http://www.notesfromthecommonman.com/. I will also post a link on my face book account. I hope that you will continue to read my blog, and I appreciate the comments you send me, even the particularly unflattering ones from several anonymous sources. Please pass my site along to your friends if you find it worthwhile.



The title Notes from the Common Man is an idea I had several years ago. I've had a folder with that title on my computer for at least five years, and I occasionally would write an essay or story and place it there for my own entertainment. I will be posting some of these older essays on my new blog as time goes by. I will not post every day, I have so many thoughts and opinions, and so little time. I've got some things to say that require more than a few hours to compose, so sometimes a few days may go by without a post. I think there is a way to notify people of new posts, if they sign up as followers of the blog.

Random Ideas

Here are some quick calculations leading up to my first big idea. All these numbers are very approximate. Their are about three hundred million people in the USA. If you figure a life span of about eighty years, that means about four million die each year. Allowing fifty square feet of ground space for each corpse to bury all of these people, (I'm ignoring cremation, people lost at sea, and others that just go missing.) this works out to be about seven square miles of new burial space needed each year. There's about three million five hundred and thirty seven thousand square miles of land in the United States, so you would think that we have plenty of space for our deceased for at least the near future, but, when you plant a field full of people, it becomes pretty much useless for any other purpose.

So here's my idea for making multi purpose use of our burial sites. The memorial garden people should go into the golf course business. They could ban the use of those plastic floral arrangements that really aren't fooling anybody anyway. If a ball ends up on top of one of those plaques, a drop would be in order. When someone is buried, the grounds people could erect a net between the tent and the tee, to protect the unsuspecting mourners from the errant ball. (Again, a drop would be allowed to give the golfer a straight shot at the green.) There would finally be an excuse for all that whispering.

The owners of the garden/golf course could charge a premium for the best burial spots. Around the greens would be popular, as would anything around the eighteenth hole. The sand traps would not be great places to rest in eternity, but they do have a certain ironic appeal. The phrase, gone but not forgotten, might even become true. As the golfers are waiting their turns, or lining up a shot, they might notice the plaque of a long dead relative or friend. I expect that there might be incentive for people to leave more succinct messages on their plaques.

I've even got a theme song for the course, and a name.

There's a golfer I know
And his bones are all cold
And he's lying in the Fair Way To Heaven (That's the name I had in mind.)

Do You Know A Psychopath?

A couple of years ago, I read a crime novel about a murderer or serial killer of something like that. I don't even remember the name of the book or the author's name, but I do remember one statement the author made in the book. The author stated that one person out of one hundred people is a psychopath. I didn't think too much about it at the time, but later on I had a conversation with a friend who is a psychologist, and he confirmed to me that about one percent of the population exhibits the traits of a psychopath.

This doesn't mean that one out of a hundred of us is running around killing and eating his victims, it simply means that one percent of the population, to a greater or lesser degree, lacks a conscience. There is actually a test (The PCL-R) developed by psychiatrist, Robert Hare, which rates the antisocial behavior of people on a one to forty scale. I read that about twenty percent of the prison population exhibits these traits, with an average score of about 23. Here's the scary part, I also read that a survey of CEO's produced about the same result.

There are about eight specific traits that indicate whether or not someone in the business world might be a psychopath. They are, briefly, a combination of several or all of the following traits.

1. Glib/charming
2. grandiose
3. pathological liar
4. manipulator
5. lack of remorse or guilt
6. cold and detached
7. lack of empathy
8. fails to accept responsibility

Does this sound like any employer you've ever had? Does this sound like anyone you've heard of who is the CEO of a large company, or someone who has ripped off his clients for his personal gain?

Here are two more characteristics of psychopaths. They tend to be highly intelligent and strongly motivated. Do you see what I'm saying here, the inmates are running the asylum.

I'm going to go one step further. I have no scientific basis for this belief, but I suspect that a type of Social Darwinism has been created which actually favors the behavior of a psychopath. If you look at not only the current corporate world, but also think about the examples of history where psychopaths came into power, you see that not only the leader himself, but also his underlings are also cut from the same cloth. Hitler and Saddam Hussein are prime examples. Had Hitler been assassinated early in the Second World War, would Germany, under Goebbels, Goering, or Himmler, have changed course?

The Campaign Lottery

This past week, the right leaning Supreme court essentially threw out most restraints on campaign contributions by individuals, corporations, and Unions. This will lead to outright bribery and extortion of our nation's politicians. The corporate ability to influence individual politicians is particularly troubling. The banking, insurance, and other corporate lobbies will be able to threaten and coerce individual politicians into voting against the public good. If you God fearing, gun toting, queer hating republicans are wondering why I'm not happy that the unions have the same ability; I'll tell you. it's simply because the unions do not have enough cash to directly influence very many local elections, especially in states where union representation is low. As Jon Stewart said on the Daily Show the other night: "My banker, Morgan Stanley, and my Barber, Stanley Morgan, are now equally allowed to contribute millions of dollars to the candidate of their choice."

Here's a related personal story. I was at a party last week, where I got into a discussion with a member of Larry Kissells' staff about Kissells' vote on health care. I believe that he made a huge mistake in voting against the house version of the bill under the guise of protecting medicare, and I think that he might lose the next election partially because of his vote. Anyway, I'm having this friendly, but some what loud give and take with Kissells' staff member, when someone else joins the discussion and immediately raises my hackles by saying that federally mandated health care is not mentioned in the Constitution, and therefore, like social security, and medicare should not be the law of the land.

Now, here's my take on this. This view of our founding father's intent is analogous to the Bible thumpers view that the Bible is the absolute word of God, and that the Earth was created in a week and is 6000 years old, and fossil remains of sea creatures were created and placed on mountain tops by God to confuse us. Our founding fathers lived in a time when, as Stephen Ambrose said about Thomas Jefferson, it was possible for an educated man to know everything. But, it was not possible that the framers of the constitution could anticipate the trajectory and every vector of modern society. While the basic framework of the constitution should remain intact, it is the responsibility of modern lawmakers, and the courts to determine the best course of action to insure that the goals stated in the Preamble to the United States Constitution are met. I don't think that our founding fathers would have approved of interpretations of the law which stack the deck against the majority of the citizens of the country.

Let me come up for air, take a deep breath, and get back to were the title of this blog leads. Had the Supreme court not struck down most campaign finance law, here is my idea of how to finance federal election campaigns. There is a widely ignored section at the end of your Federal tax return where you can contribute two bucks toward Presidential election campaigns. Why not change this number to twenty dollars, with half the money going to the financing of campaigns, and the other half going to a national lottery pool which would be allocated to the States by population, and meted out as prizes in million dollar increments. With nearly eighty million tax returns filed annually (I looked it up), and the vast majority of those returns calling for a refund, there is potential for 1.6 billion dollars in donations, with eight hundred million each going to campaign financing and lottery winning. This works out to an average of sixteen, one million dollar prizes for each state. Compared to Power Ball or Lotto, I think that's a pretty good return on your gambling dollar.

Paper Clips

A secretary is asked by her boss to stay and work over time. She's a competent and reliable worker who always goes the extra mile to get things done just as her employer requires. So, here is this woman, working overtime, her boss has already left the office, she's going to be late starting supper, and she also had planned to stop by Office Max to pick up a box of paperclips. She thinks to herself: "I really need those paper clips so that I can start working on the paper work for the church. I'll just take a box from the office supply room here at work. They won't be missed, I work really hard for this company, I deserve this box of paperclips for all the extra things I do, and besides, it's for the church."

This, in a nutshell, is why so many politicians become involved in financial scandals while they are in office. It's not that they are crooks, (though some are) it's because they rationalize that they deserve special rewards for the fine jobs that they do. They look at the sometimes billions of dollars in federal spending they bring home to their constituents. They look at executives of major corporations that make millions in salaries and bonuses. They look at the cost to finance their election campaigns, and believe that it is vitally important to their city, county, state, or nation, that they be reelected. And, it's true, many politicians make huge financial and personal sacrifices, and they are often very effective and respected politicians. So, they cheat on their franking privileges, they take a special financing deal on their new house, they accept campaign contributions from people whose agendas they would rather not support, but they feel that, in order for them to be reelected, it is better to support the contributor's agenda so that, as politicians, they can continue their good work. Unfortunately, like the woman who takes the paperclips, or later on, twenty dollars from petty cash, or cooks the books at her church, politicians often use the paper clip rationalization over and over again until they become totally corrupt.