The Conservative Reader

Art Smith November 18th, 2007

So at about the same time I voice my (current) support for Mike Huckabee, DavidL at BitsBlog calls him an idiot.  I agree.

What’s really bad is that Huckabee lacks both the basic Constitutional knowledge and historical knowledge. 

As DavidL states, the Constitution does not speak to “morality”, and did not speak to slavery until after the 13th amendment was ratified in 1865 did slavery become a federal issue… until then it was each state’s issue to address.  That’s the Constitutional knowledge.

The historical part of this is, slavery was an economic issue, not a moral issue.  It doesn’t matter how people try to position the matter today, this country’s Civil War was about money.  There were certainly people who believed in eliminating slavery on moral grounds, but predominately people the Northern states, where slavery was outlawed (by the states themselves), were concerned about having to continue to compete with businesses from the South (and concern rang regarding slavery in the about to be formed Western states) that were benefiting from cheap labor.

What’s really sad is that Britain outlawed slavery long before the US every did.  The Emancipation Act was passed in Parliament in 1833, and all slaves were eventually freed by 1838.  Slavery will always be a moral issue in my mind, but the Civil War just was not about morality.

Abortion is only a moral issue.  There is little in the way of economic basis for allowing abortions (except for keeping abortionists rich).  Along with the basic moral issue of murder (which is a topic owned by the states except for a few key situations like Presidential assassinations) is the rarely openly discussed issue of holding down the African American population (the most consistent users of abortion, and most readily recommended group to do so).  For the rest of those that receive abortions, it is an issue of convenience or fear (of parental discipline). 

So, some key questions about abortion:

    1) Since this is a state issue (without doubt at this time), what was the basis for the Supreme Court to rule as it did in Roe v. Wade?  I’m not a lawyer nor a constitutional expert, but it seems to me that this case should not have even been presented let alone used as a tool for creating judicially based law.
    2) Since the freedom to have an abortion has been made the “law of the land”, it has risen to Constitutional level without the required amendment process (since the Supreme Court has essentially “interpreted” the Constitution to imply that abortion is a right? ).  The states’ rights have been stolen.
    3) Since a Constitutional Amendment requires
         a) a proposal by 2/3 of the states or 2/3 of both houses of Congress and then
         b) 3/4 of the states (that would be 38 states right now)
        wouldn’t both steps be contrary to the ruling of Roe v. Wade and therefor themselves perceived as illegal?  I mean, if Roe v. Wade is elevated to the level of the constitution, then this feels like a Catch-22.

What I’m really trying to get to here is that Abortion may NEVER get resolved.  If it was as important to the nation as Slavery, we’d be in our 2nd civil war by now.  But frankly, not enough people really care enough about it to fight over it.  Sad.  Unfortunate. 

Huckabee needs a rewrite on this talking point for sure.

I don’t support anyone for President right now.  No one.

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Art Smith November 18th, 2007

USA Today has been kind enough to boil the whole election down to 11 questions, and provided a tool so you can answer the questions, and then get USA Today to tell you which candidates align most with you.  I took the quiz, and the candidates that supposedly would be most aligned with my thinking are (in order):

    1) Mitt Romney
    2) Tom Tancredo
    3) Mike Huckabee

Of the three, I think Mike is most likely (right now) to get my vote.  Still have time (45 days to the Iowa Caucus as of this writing).

That said, I really am dreadfully afraid of a country that would actually think USA Today can tell them who their candidate is based on something as simple as 11 questions… worse yet, I know people like that (and yes, they also scare me because they have driver’s licenses too).  The questions themselves are very telling about how shallow we have become… according to USAT, these are the questions that matter most to people. The categories they covered include:

• Iraq
• Health Care
• Immigration
• Global Warming
• Same sex marriage
• Tax Reform
• Experience

Of this list, I do care about:

• Iraq,
• Immigration
• Tax Reform 

I would add to this list:

• Overall US Security (War on Terror and all)
• Economic Stability (within the US markets and International markets… Tax Reform is part of this, and the most concerning indicators in my opinion are the value of the US Dollar, and the performance of US markets as compared to international markets… okay, off soapbox for now)
• stability of foreign powers with nuclear arsenals (and those that are working on it as well)
• long-term programs for improving the lives of the impoverished (such as micro-lending)
• how to deal with genocide
• how to help new governments build workable societies

Oh yeah, political accountability, particularly in dealing with bribery, abuses of power, misuse of government and election funds, and of course, being really stupid.

I’d like to know what you think.  What are the topics you care about most in this election?  Please leave a comment or email me at reader@conservativereader.net.  I will collect responses for a couple of weeks (I’ll leave a link to this post in my sidebar) and post the results at the end of that time (plan on the evening of December 2.

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Art Smith November 17th, 2007

I only caught this story today, although it’s been brewing for over a week and a half.  It’s front-page news today in the Des Moines Register print edition (and consequently on their all new web/blog site) authored by Jane Norman.  I suspect the Register went Front-Page AND above-the-fold mostly because the instigator of this inquiry is none other than Iowa Senator Charles Grassley (R).  You may already know that Grassley is an advocate for clean living and fiscal responsibility, and his target is millions of dollars in un-taxed moneys that are protected by non-profit status.  Of course, the preachers are complaining that their Religious Freedom is being redacted (okay, they didn’t use that word, but I’m trying to get the reading level up to High School here… the article said “meddling”).  Bishop Eddie Long from Lithonia, Georgia, is one of Grassley’s targets, and he has been extremely outspoken about how Grassley is attacking his church’s First Amendment rights. 

According the the Jane Norman story:

Religion
has nothing to do with it, Grassley says. “This is a tax issue,” he
says. “It’s not a First Amendment issue. We’re not interested in
doctrine or anything. In fact it would be wrong for me to be involved
in those sorts of things.”

Duh. 
My point being that if Grassley were trying to mess with their
Religious Freedom, he’d 1) actually pick on just one of these groups or
2) use some aspect of their faith as a reason to say their not exempt
and 3) be a complete idiot (which, frankly, would scare me since I
happen to consider him to be one of the smartest politicians in office
today).  Grassley and his office have collected specific information
that looks extremely questionable, and he appears to be concerned about
the credibility of our tax laws.

According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, “Because the groups have tax status as churches, they are not required to file tax forms open to public inspection.”.  Nice. 

So, what would these God-fearing people have to hide anyway, you ask?  How about over $3,000,000 in compensation to Bishop Long over 4 years (1997 to 2000, so that would be in 1999 dollars more or less)?  This guy has been in the ministry building and bilking business for years, it seems, having founded at least 20 nonprofit and for-profit corporations over the past 20 years.  The Atlanta Journal Constitution published a nice little in-depth story when the Grassley investigation was announced on November 6.  I think the best part was this quote from the Bishop:

“We’re not just a church, we’re an international corporation, ” Long said. “We’re not just a bumbling bunch of preachers who can’t talk and all we’re doing is baptizing babies. I deal with the White House. I deal with Tony Blair. I deal with presidents around this world. I pastor a multimillion-dollar congregation.

“You’ve got to put me on a different scale than the little black preacher sitting over there that’s supposed to be just getting by because the people are suffering.”

Ouch!  Nice.  We can hold the “little black preacher” accountable, but not Eddie.  Eddie’s bigger, better, more important, he talks to really important people, and so he deserves to be paid lots more money! 

I don’t want to use this blog site as my faith pulpit (I’m working on a separate site for that), but I think this is incredibly relevant here.  One of the biggest issues I will raise (as will many others) when talking about the election process is integrity and accountability (okay, maybe you think that’s two issues, whatever).  We spent a tremendous amount of time talking about why Hillary Clinton’s husband was worthy of impeachment because he lied to America about his tryst with Monica Lewinsky.  Reagan and GW have been harassed because it’s believed they were not honest about what they knew about covert military activities and questionable intelligence used to support initiating the Iraq War. 

A great deal of the commentary on integrity and accountability will come from the so-called Religious Right, or Conservative Christians.  There will be no moral high-ground available if groups like Eddie’s are allowed to deceive the government, their own constituency, and mis-represent the cause of the Christian faith by hiding the use of money.  Some of the groups in question may be sincere in their faith, mission, and internal accountability, but they need to be held to the same level of external accountability as other non-profits if they are going to keep their non-profit status and if they hope to avoid the appearance of impropriety.  People are people, and if there are not appropriate measures in place, people will sometimes do the wrong thing… money and power are both strong motivators to do wrong.  I have always been an advocate of accountability, separation of duties and regular open audits to protect both the organization from inappropriate actions, and to protect those who have control of the money from accusations.

There are organizations that provide great external auditing for faith-based organizations (the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, or ECFA, is one) that can help. 

I’m glad to see Senator Grassley addressing this.  I hope to see changes in the law to enforce open accountability for churches. 

Organizations that are under Grassley’s scrutiny are:

Joyce Meyer Ministries - Joyce Meyer
New Birth Missionary Baptist Church - Bishop Eddie Long
Kenneth Copeland Ministries - Kenneth Copeland
Without Walls International Church - Randy and Paula White
Benny Hinn Ministries - Benny Hinn
World Changers Church International - Creflo and Taffi Dollar

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Art Smith November 17th, 2007

I apologize for the outage, and I’m afraid I’m going to have to either purchase a new PC (or Mac, not sure yet), but I will at least try to get some content flowing today from my Ubuntu Linux laptop.
If you don’t care about technical gobbledy-goop, you can go ahead and move along to something else.
So for the past few days, the poor thing has been dying from what appears (but cannot yet be confirmed as) a Video card problem.  I am going to try swapping some things around today to see what happens, but I’m not hopeful.  The worst part is that the problem is not immediate… sometimes the system appears to crash immediately, sometimes it waits for minutes or hours.  And I’m not always getting a dump.  The first time it happened, Microsloth reported to me that it was a video driver problem… mind you, the only things that have changed in the past 2 weeks are that 1) I added the Google Desktop Sidebar and 2) Microsloth came out with a critical security update.  That, of course, doesn’t mean the problem isn’t with the hardware itself, but this started within 24 hours of the MS update.  The interesting part is that I installed the most recent drivers from ATI about 6 months ago, and after all this started I did a Windows Update (like a good little child) and there on the list was the “most current” ATI driver, dated 2004.  I haven’t had a chance to check into that with ATI yet (it has been a little busy here in Readerville lately).
Anyhow, we’ll swap video cards around first, and if that doesn’t solve it (it really should, considering I’ll use a different driver and all) then I’ll probably be running out and making a new purchase (argh!).  The best part is that the current equipment just fell off of warranty, and frankly I’m not in the mood to learn ANY new OS, whether it’s Mac’s or Vista.  Just not right now (did I mention it’s busy around here?).

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Art Smith November 16th, 2007

Microsloth’s new security update has apparently caused some kind of havoc with my video driver, and I’m spending my evening trying to resolve the problem.  I’ve also got a big event at church Friday, so I’m probably offline until Saturday.  Sorry about that, folks.  See you then.

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Art Smith November 15th, 2007

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Art Smith November 10th, 2007

Norman Mailer passed away of acute renal failure early Saturday morning at the age of 84.  He is well know as a writer of both fiction and non-fiction, as well as having been a journalist, script-writer, and essayist.  Much of his writing was left-leaning, and he tended to take an anti-establishment position, but regardless he deserves respect for this: he served in WWII with honor, and wanted to be part of the first wave of invasion troops to go to Europe… he was however sent to the South Pacific theatre instead.  Some of writings, such as “The Naked and the Dead”, were drawn from that experience.  Mailer was also a supporter of U.S. involvement in the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

There is quite a bit more to be said about this man, whether you liked him or not, and here are some places to read more about him: Wikipedia article, AP Obituatry, Pagasos Article.

(Photo: Bob Daemmrich/Corbis)

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Art Smith November 8th, 2007

Well, BitsBlog site is written at a High School level, according to the test.  Naturally, I wanted to see about our site.  It was unexpected, but we’re at:

Wow.  Well, we’ll work on that. 

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Art Smith November 8th, 2007

Worth going here to see local comments. Hat tip to fellow Stompers Sister Toldjah, Blue Crab Boulevard, and Dread Pundit Blute.

Update: BitHead has some great comments that I completely agree with.

Update with Photo… Thanks to Michael Yon for granting permission. 

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Art Smith November 8th, 2007

Wednesday’s WSJ had a blurb to this effect… one of those one sentence things that doesn’t say who did the study, or any real details, just that such “programs fail to affect teenage sexual behavior”.  I am convinced that such programs can work, but ONLY if they have consistent support from parents, including teach, reinforcing and, demonstrating the behavior.  I believe that the trends in teenage sexual activity and pregnancy are the direct result of parents who 1) don’t provide adequate time to their children, 2) don’t teach them correct relationship and behavior mores, 3) don’t themselves believe in those mores, and 4) don’t (or didn’t) practice those mores themselves.  I’ve seen it happen in my own family and others over the years, and no program, none, can alone solve any problem especially with children.  Parents HAVE to be primary drivers to help children develop effectively and make good decisions during their teenage years.

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