The Jason Chaffetz Show

I like having Jason Chaffetz around. He is fun to follow. He has kooky ideas, a weird personality, boyish enthusiasm, and really kooky ideas. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather have a liberal representing that district, but since it is arguably the most conservative district in the nation, and any representative they elect is going to be an extreme right-winger anyway, we might as well be able to sit back and enjoy the show.

Chaffetz, remember, won his seat by ousting Chris Cannon, the 16th most conservative representative out of 435 by one measure, by running to Cannon's right. I still find that fact horrifying and entertaining, like watching the audition stage of American Idol.

Interestingly, however, sometimes there are bizarre issues that Chaffetz latches onto where I can kind of see his point. For instance, Chaffetz recently had a vendetta against TSA whole body imaging devices at airports. This is a device that creates something like a 3D image of the persons body for security purposes. Chaffetz's money quote is that "Nobody needs to see my wife and kids naked to secure an airplane."

I have got to say, I kind of agree with him. The images are not like photographs by any stretch of the imagination, but they kind of do look like a human body naked, kind of, and it seems maybe a little too far. And what is wrong with all the other security measures we have at the airports that we need this new thing? Does our right to privacy have some bounds that this maybe encroaches? I get where he's coming from.

But don't forget that he is still Jason Chaffetz. He recently went to the airport, purposefully got in line for one of these machines, and then reportedly went berserk and made a big scene about them and caused a ruckus and claimed he was being harassed because he was the Congressman that introduced the bill to get the things banned. Again, weird dude.

He went to Congress with this real absolute personal quest to end all earmarks. Again, there is something to that. Earmarks, while just a fraction of the federal budget, are a place where a lot of money gets wasted on pet projects, like the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere." He was incredibly adamant about this and used it as a major campaign issue. Remember he is still Jason Chaffetz, though, and now has a set of rules where it will be okay for him to get some of his own earmarks.

Which brings us to the latest Jason Chaffetz issue. He wants the census going out next year to require people to mark if they are legal U.S. citizens. Okay, so I understand the problem. The House of Representatives is configured by the number of citizens in each state and in each district. There are 435 seats which can get switched around from state to state as populations shift. We should make sure we have a pretty good idea of where U.S. citizens are before we move around seats. For instance, Utah is going to get a new seat, probably at the expense of South Carolina, with the new census. That should not be done willy-nilly.

But it is such a horrible idea to make people check a box if they are legal citizens in the census questionnaire. First, it would obviously depress responses. If I was not a citizen I wouldn't mark it and send it back in. I would be afraid that would be used against me, even if I was in the country legally. Second, the census is used for more than just redistricting, it is used to track population trends, income trends, gender trends, and the like. It is more important to get as many accurate responses as possible than to use it as what looks like an attempt to further his extremely offensive immigration stances.

Anyway, since we are going to get an extreme conservative out of Utah's Third District no matter what, we might as well get one that is entertaining (again, in an American Idol audition kind of way) and harmless.

Utah's Red Rock Wilderness Bill

The Red Rock Wilderness Act to protect, as wilderness, about 9 million acres of federal land in Utah raises several interesting issues.

1. What is the best use of wild lands? Resource extraction? Tourism? Motorized recreation? Non-motorized recreation? Conservation in a pristine state? Development?

2. Who has the most valid claim to making decisions about the use of federal lands in Utah? Utahns? Utah's Congresspeople? Counties? Congress at large? Americans at large?

3. Why, again, do we consider Jim Matheson a Democrat?

The primary conservative argument against the Red Rock Wilderness bill is best summed up by Rep. Rob Bishop in his editorial to the Deseret News. It is that the the bill would foreclose a large portion of Utah to economic activity. First, we should make clear that these are lands that are not suitable for commercial or residential development, nor are they anywhere near where any serious development is likely to occur in the foreseeable future. So really we are talking about extraction: oil and gas wells, hardrock mining, and logging.

The assumption is that Utah's economy will benefit more from extractive industries than what is termed as "ecosystem services," which includes such things as:

provisioning, such as the production of food and water; regulating, such as the control of climate and disease; supporting, such as nutrient cycles and crop pollination; and cultural, such as spiritual and recreational benefits.

Economists have estimated that ecosystem services contribute about $5 trillion each year to the global economy. Really, though, ecosystem services are impossible to quantify because they are irreplaceable. You cannot create through artificial means the natural process that moderates our weather, mitigates droughts and floods, cycles nutrients, controls agricultural pests, purifies the air and water, and more.

Utah, and most of the West, has been beholden to the extractive industries for our entire American existence. Just a fraction of pristine, untouched land remains. It is time we shift our focus from consumption to conservation.

And that is exactly what is happening. A recent Dan Jones & Associates poll, commissioned by SUWA, shows that over 60% of Utahns think that those 9 million acres should be protected as wilderness. SUWA, of course, is biased, but Dan Jones is not, and that is who makes sure the poll is unbiased and objective. More polling should always be done, but that is a pretty good indicator of where Utahns stand on the wilderness issue. Utahns want their undeveloped land to be protected as wilderness.

But Utahns are not the only people with a stake in this issue. These are federal lands, they always have been. They belong to America, and that includes every American. There is a legal doctrine that says that states are in this together and that one state can't discriminate against another. For instance, New York cannot deny landfill space to New Jersey just to make sure there is enough for New York. We have to pool together as a nation.

Americans from Maine to California, from Florida to Alaska, pay taxes that support our federal lands. People from all over the nation come to Utah to experience wilderness. These lands belong to us all. Just as much as the Statue of Liberty, Everglades National Park, and Denali National Park belong to Utahns as much as the residents of the states where they are located. We are in this together as Americans, and all Americans have a right to protect the last vestiges of pristine wilderness in Utah.

So is it really important, as Rep. Bishop wrote, that no Utah Congressperson supports this bill? No. The only thing noteworthy about that is that Jim Matheson continues to win reelection by 10-20 points every year and never takes a stand as a Democrat. He has political capital to stand up for liberals in Utah as our only Democratic representative in Washington, but he never uses it. Like most members of Congress, he appears to make decisions based on maintaining his power and authority than on doing what is right and representing his constituents. It would be a shame if this bill did not pass just because no Utah Congressperson stood up for it, including the perpetually spineless "Democrat" Jim Matheson.

The Red Rock Wilderness bill is good for Utah, economically, ethically, and as a practical matter. It should pass, Utahns want it to pass, Americans want it to pass. We deserve to have our natural, untouched land protected as wilderness both for ourselves and for future generations.

The Flubs of August

When people look back on August (about my post title, fyi) I think they'll realize it was a pivotal point in the healthcare debate, and possibly in national politics. It is the first time that I'm aware of where the Noise Machine that is the media totally failed to "move the needle".

Despite ballyhooing about raucous town hall meetings and endless hours of airtime for any health care reform opponent, nobody really changed their minds. In fact, public opinion may now swing more strongly in favor of reform. Solid majorities support the idea of a public option, even though they're uneasy about health care reform in general. Now, however, I think we're seeing those two lines starting to converge. People are getting the message that current reform efforts (generally) include support for a strong public option. The Finance Committee bill is only one of several bills that need to be reconciled before this thing is over, and it looks more and more like the Finance Committee's efforts are more of a sideshow to the main attraction. While the Senate is being a bit of a wet noodle, the House is much more strongly behind a public option, so there are many opportunities to get it into a bill. Perhaps the Finance Committee efforts will fail completely and no bill will come out. If that happens, then the other bills which include a public option are in a much better position to lend their language to the final version.

The bigger story for me, though, is the failure of the aforementioned noise machine. In the past it's been terribly effective, and Republicans have pumped their talking points through it, with the result being that people believed them. This time, however, it failed in a big way. Even though all the parts are working fine (and Fox/Beck continue to gain viewership relative to other cable news channels), nobody outside of their base is listening, or they just don't care. It's instructive that Frank Luntz, a Republican messaging specialist, warned Republicans not to oppose health care reform. The party, however, has a new set of leaders who don't stay "on message" (Beck, Limbaugh, Palin, et. al.) and as a result the whole apparatus has lost its power to affect the public debate for longer than a week or two.

Opponents of reform like to think that time is against the reformers, but in this case it appears that the opposite is true. Indeed, as time goes on the public opinion trends and the politics on the ground are swinging in the favor of a public option. And I'm fairly optimistic that, until the Republicans figure out how to be relevant in the health care debate, those trends will continue.

Glenn Beck, Cleon Skousen, Secret Combinations, and Conspiracy Theories

It's well known by now that Glenn Beck loves W. Cleon Skousen. If you are a Beck follower, Skousen's The 5,000 Year Leap is practically required reading. I won't go into a history of Skousen, but you can find some good information here.

In brief, Skousen is a member of the church, sometime FBI employee, BYU professor, Salt Lake City Police Chief, author, and lecturer. He devolved from conservative to right-wing conspiracy theorist. He was denounced by conservatives of the 50s and 60s after finally getting to the point where he called President Eisenhower a communist agent and warning against a New World Order. President Kimball and the church leadership issued a statement in which local leaders were not to support or advertise for Skousen's groups. The 5,000 Year Leap and other Skousen writings flit about from American history in religious terms to worldwide conspiracy theories linking fascists, communists, rich people, and anyone else opposed to the Skousen world view.

This is the man Glenn Beck is putting forth as the foundational thinker for his 912 Project. Now, there is enough take-down material on Skousen out there that I do not want to rehash it all. But are we not alarmed that the man too conservative and radically right-wing for McCarthy-era Republicans has become the new touchstone for the tea-baggers and birthers of today?

I cannot read Beck's mind, but after reading this article from the Dallas Morning News I have a theory for what might be going on. Beck, like Skousen before him, is trying to identify secret combinations like those chronicled in the Book of Mormon. Since there is no proof of anything of the sort he has been reduced to groping about for any little perceived evidence that crosses his consciousness. The now-famous communo-fascist art history lesson Beck put on a few weeks back stands as the perfect example.

I think we are all susceptible to a conspiracy theory or two. For instance, there was a time when I could be convinced that the moon landing was a hoax (A moon rock with a letter "C" on it?! Come on!). It's just in our nature to tend to believe some of these. Most of us don't think President Obama is the Manchurian candidate or that President Bush was behind the 9/11 attacks, but we've all got something.

But what happens if you take a particularly sinister conspiracy theory and link it your religion? Then it gets a little dangerous. Then you stop thinking objectively and critically and start seeing the the hand and will of God in your nutty theories. Then what happens when you a take an ascending figure in American T.V. and radio, a prominent Mormon who happens to be incredibly charismatic and has tapped into an angry segment of American society that feels disenfranchised, and really convince him of a grand conspiracy theory and link it to secret combinations that were prophesied by his religion? Could anything possibly go awry there?

Losing the Public Option

Americans probably won't get the public option that we want, at least any time soon. The Senate Finance Committee rejected the public option. This comes after Speaker Pelosi assured us that the House bill would include a public option. The only hope, then, in the near future for a public option is during the reconciliation phase with the House and Senate, but that appears unlikely.

The latest poll, from the NY Times/CBS News, shows strong support for the public option. About 65% said that they would favor a government plan like Medicare that competed with the insurance companies. This is the latest in a string of polls that show either strong support for a public plan or, at the very least, a nation evenly divided.

We have a Democratic president, sixty Democrats in the Senate, and 256 Democratic Representatives to 177 Republicans. So what is going on here? Why have we lost the public option? The initial blame, of course, goes to the Senate. I understand that the reason Democrats have such a strong majority in Congress is because there are quite a few Democrats elected from conservative states and districts and that those members of Congress are concerned about getting pegged as "liberal" and losing their seats. But, as is mentioned in that latest poll, even more Republicans support a public option than oppose it, 47-42%.

It seems to me, then, that this is a failure of messaging and also the inherent difficulty of being the party in majority. It is always much easier and much clearer to be the one to say no, as opposed to being the one introducing complex reform. It is much more difficult to explain what a public option is, which we've never seen before in America, how it will improve the lives of individual Americans, and what problems it is going to ameliorate, than it is to be the minority party and simply set up an opposition.

The Democrats did this under the Bush administration and were very effective at it. So effective that we now have a Democratic president, Senate, and House. Holding onto a majority will always be more difficult than being the opposition party.

Given all of this, I can see why Pres. Obama wants to go out and make a lot of speeches. He is a great communicator and he probably believes that he can explain and sell Democratic ideas better than anyone else. He is probably right, and judging by the poll numbers he succeeded, but it hasn't translated to votes in the Senate.

So, what is the point of all this rambling? I am once again convinced that most Senators are more interested in maintaining power than being leaders. They are afraid of new ideas and taking risks because their primary motivation is serving themselves rather than the American public. I guess I'm a little disgusted right now, and maybe this is a rambling, cranky post, but I feel like Americans are losing out on something that could make our lives better.

Hopefully we can get some leadership on the climate change issue coming up next, but I don't have high hopes at this point.

To Everything There Is A Season?

I’ve been considering the phrase from Ecclesiastes 3 for a while, and wonder what exactly was meant by the term “everything.” Does it mean that there is a time and place for certain things to happen, or does it literally mean that everything has its time and place? I can understand the seasons of peace and the horrible reality of war, but what about the details? Does peace include complete abandonment of politics, religion, culture and the punishment of crimes? Does war include rape, pillage, torture, murder and the wanton destruction of cities?

A first thought would be that, in some cases, there are extenuating circumstances that define each situation. Worldwide peace likely consists of different components than national peace. Likewise, war likely consists of different mechanisms for religious conflicts and political battles. But does “everything” find a time and place to appear along the spectrum?

Admittedly, I have never been to war. I have never been a soldier. I do not understand the details of warfare from firsthand knowledge. Nevertheless, there is no part of me that can accept certain aspects of modern day warfare; namely rape, murder, and torture. I don’t care what information is gleamed from certain “tactics.” I don’t care how many lives were saved by information obtained by interrogation. I don't believe that the clause in Ecclesiastes is all inclusive.

On April 16, 2009 the Justice Department released memos that detailed the "interrogation techniques" used by the CIA, with the promise from President Obama that those involved would not be prosecuted. You can read the heinous documents for yourself. If you read nothing else, I encourage you to read the first 4-5 pages of the documents and come to your own conclusions. Some of the practices detailed and approved in the memos include: attention grasp, walling, facial hold, facial slap, cramped confinement, wall standing, stress positions, sleep deprivation, insects in a box, and water-boarding, mock executions, and sexual exploitation. Granted there is no Jack Bauer-like burning or electrocution, but they are truly inhuman and degrading and therefore in violation of international treaty. Also, there is a nice catch all that allows interrogators to "use these techniques in some combination" in an "escalating fashion." Luckily for the interrogators, one is not limited to one technique at a time, and isn't even limited to stopping at these methods.

Shortly after release of this information, two dissimilar ideologies began to emerge. From former Vice President Dick Cheney in an interview on Fox:

CHENEY: Chris, my sort of overwhelming view is that the enhanced interrogation techniques were absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives and preventing further attacks against the United States, and giving us the intelligence we needed to go find Al Qaeda, to find their camps, to find out how they were being financed. Those interrogations were involved in the arrest of nearly all the Al Qaeda members that we were able to bring to justice. I think they were directly responsible for the fact that for eight years, we had no further mass casualty attacks against the United States.

It was good policy. It was properly carried out. It worked very, very well.

WALLACE: So even these cases where they went beyond the specific legal authorization, you’re OK with it?

CHENEY: I am.

Cheney admitted to being aware of waterboarding, and other extreme measures, but instead of backing down he "stuck to his guns." Instead of concerning himself with humanity or dignity, he defends the policies of that Administration as essential and effective when there is in fact no scientific evidence to support it. In contrast, President Obama reflected:

This is a time for reflection, not retribution. I respect the strong views and emotions that these issues evoke. We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history. But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past. Our national greatness is embedded in America's ability to right its course in concert with our core values, and to move forward with confidence. That is why we must resist the forces that divide us, and instead come together on behalf of our common future.

The United States is a nation of laws. My administration will always act in accordance with those laws, and with an unshakeable commitment to our ideals. That is why we have released these memos, and that is why we have taken steps to ensure that the actions described within them never take place again.

At this point, we must answer the real question - is torture acceptable under any circumstance? If the answer is yes, then one would agree with Cheney's assertion that it gave valuable information and there will be a time in the future that requires us to repeat the techniques. If the answer is no, then one would agree with Obama, and this dark page should be turned and only reviewed in order to prevent the action from being repeated.

Turning again to the scriptures gives insight into approach that we, as humans, and as Mormons, should take. There is not one instance of torture mentioned anywhere in the current set of scriptures that was used by godly people to obtain anything. Captain Moroni did not interrogate detainees for tactical information, he did require that they repent and change, but did so humanely. David didn't waterboard Goliath. Nephi didn't throw his brothers in a box and toss in a couple of spiders. In contrast, every mention of torture is related to "evil" people and their actions. From Alma and Amulek being beaten, starved, and forced to watch women and children burned alive; to Jeremiah being beaten and placed in stocks; to the abhorrent torture and crucifixion of our Savior.

I'm not claiming that the scriptures are short in violence. There are countless stories of warfare and bloodshed, but I would argue that these are the "seasons" of war that are necessary, and that none of these include documentation of torture. The scriptures show that the godly are always the victims, not the enforcers. As such, we must do everything we can to realign the actions of ourselves and the actions of our government to eliminate torture of any form as a "tactical" choice.

Reclaiming the Spiritual Through Wilderness

Wallace Stegner is the most important voice in the conservation community. His words, decades after they were written and years after he died, still resonate. One of his principle arguments for conservation, written in his beautiful prose, was that wilderness was necessary for us spiritually. He wrote, in his Wilderness Letter:

We need to demonstrate our acceptance of the natural world, including ourselves; we need the spiritual refreshment that being natural can produce. And one of the best places for us to get that is in the wilderness where the fun houses, the bulldozers, and the pavement of our civilization are shut out.

Stegner also quotes American writer Sherwood Anderson concerning the positive effects wilderness has on our nation's spirituality:

Is it not likely that when the country was new and men were often alone in the fields and the forest they got a sense of bigness outside themselves that has now in some way been lost.... Mystery whispered in the grass, played in the branches of trees overhead, was caught up and blown across the American line in clouds of dust at evening on the prairies.... I am old enough to remember tales that strengthen my belief in a deep semi-religious influence that was formerly at work among our people.

Wilderness gives us a sense that there is something greater than ourselves at work. Too many of us are born, live, and die in a world that is completely man-made. We live in fabricated houses, drive our silent-running cars on nicely smoothed roads, work in air-conditioned buildings, wear clothes made of synthetic threads, and eat processed food given to us in ready-to-eat form. How could we not think that we control the Earth, and our destinies? Why should any of us wonder whether there is something greater than us watching over the whole?

There is a lot of hand-wringing about the moral decay of society. We look at the deterioration of the family, the lewdness and filth that flows into our homes through the TV, radio, and internet, and the steadily declining belief in God and practice of religion. As we try to pass laws that reverse this trend we often ignore the fact that our declining wilderness areas and availability of natural settings may be as much to blame as any other thing. Maybe some of the cause of moral decay is that nothing in our environment inspires us to think outside of ourselves and contemplate God.

The destruction of our wilderness also provides a glimpse into what we, as a nation, treasure and honor most. We love technology. We love resources. We love the commercial. We love control and exploitation. We thrive off of the pride that results in taming and leveling and shaping. A road through a forest is much more than getting from point A to point B, it is about conquering the forest, and all the fears and myths that forests have always inspired. But what if we started to value something different? Stegner:

But the mere example that we can as a nation apply some other criteria than commercial and exploitative considerations would be heartening to many Americans.

Perhaps if we started valuing something more than simply what resources we can extract from our natural places, and how easily we can tame them, it would increase our collective spirituality. We could value the beauty of it, the vastness, the tranquility, our ability to go there and think and contemplate, our sense that there are some things we can't control, and in those things we can find something divine.

Shouldn't we as Mormons be leading the fight to protect our last remaining natural places? Shouldn't we be influencing the national environmental discussion to include terms like values and spirituality? I wish we could move past the partisan politics on issue, liberals want conservation and conservatives want exploitation, and agree that wilderness is good for our souls.

The Provo Daily Herald Illustrates Irony

When I am in the mood to read something that combines terrible writing with bad ideas I often will turn to the Opinion page of the Provo Daily Herald. The latest beauty is ironically titled "You Really Can't Make This Up." They proceed to make up a bunch of ridiculous claims about health care reform and make analogies that make no sense. You know when just the title contains a healthy amount of cliches and colloquialisms that you are in for something magical.

The article starts off thusly:

It's sometimes charged that those of us who are skeptical of Democrat health care plans are relying on myths and outright lies.

That's because many of those that of skeptical of Democrat health care plans are relying on myths and outright lies. But let's avoid getting slowed down by facts and jump right into the meat of the article.

For instance, advocates of a wholesale health overhaul reject any idea that the government would meddle in the most intimate personal issues ... that is, until the government does just that.

Definition of "meddle": To intrude into other people's affairs or business; interfere. Now the example given in the article of how the government will meddle in our personal affairs if we pass health care reform:

Last month word leaked out that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were thinking of recommending circumcision for baby boys in the U.S. even though the American Academy of Pediatrics has held since 1999 that it's a personal matter, not a medical one.

Two things. First, how does a recommendation from a scientific body, based on facts and research, amount to meddling? Is there a hoard of rampaging CDC employees roaming the countryside circumcising baby boys? Is there any indication that the CDC will require, by law, circumcision? Or is this just a recommendation? This is a case of some paranoid conservative twisting any announcement or action by the government into a scary story about government control of our lives. Next time, look up words like "meddle" before using them.

Second, what does this have to do with the health care reform debate? The article states that it is appropriate because "It's a reminder that medical issues remain incredibly complex." So the article brought up a scary story about government circumcisions just to make the point that medical issues are complex? I believe they will continue to be complex with or without health care reform, so this analogy is moot, and ill-conceived.

The article is also interested in a book co-authored by a science adviser to President Obama, John Holdren, written in the 70s in which there is a section devoted to population control. Somehow, and I won't try to tease out the logic because I doubt it exists, we are supposed to be afraid of "mandatory sterilization or even forced abortion" from the health care reform because of this book. I believe this is what we refer to as a "scare tactic," only this is so laughably insane that it isn't so scary.

Next, the PDH wants us to know that government-run health care will treat people callously. This is because in England (which, as you know, will administer whatever health care reform Americans enact) there is something called the Liverpool Care Pathway. It is a set of recommendations for English physicians and care-workers to use during end-of-life scenarios. No matter how awful this seemingly benign program actually is, it has nothing to do with American health care reform. We are not enacting the Liverpool Care Pathway, despite the lies there is no death panel or anything even approaching it, government officials are in no way empowered to choose who dies and who lives. It's all just lies. Lies.

Yet the article ends darkly with conspiracy theories:

Instead what happens is that year after year the bureaucracies spew out regulations. Year after year bureaucrats accumulate power. There's no big announcement. Just thousands of pages of regulation, and government officials following orders. A casual comment here, some whispers there and maybe a few nods and meaningful glances. With all that, a program's goals slowly and subtly evolve.

I love the image of government bureaucrats passing each other in the halls of some scary looking secret government building giving furtive looks and nods, whispering things to each other that they suddenly cut off when a stranger approaches, plotting to use health care reform to kill sick people.

Sure, it is sold as a program to provide affordable health care to the tens of millions of Americans that can't afford it. It is sold as a program to end insurance company atrocities like charging more for women, withholding payment of blatantly covered procedures and medications, and denying coverage because of some vague notion of "pre-existing conditions." It is sold as a program to help average, everyday Americans live a higher quality of life. But we all know it is all just ruse to give power-hungry government bureaucrats power over our lives.

It turns out you can make this stuff up.

Morals and Ethics, Conservatives and Liberals

Even I can admit that conservatives have a few compelling arguments which they use to varying degrees of effectiveness. I've written before that in a world without prejudice and greed, and far less complex than our current world, I could be a small government supporter. No matter how much I support public welfare programs, government-sponsored health care, and unemployment benefits, I believe fundamentally that a person should do all he or she can to be self-sufficient.

One aspect of modern conservatism that I cannot find compelling in any way, the very one that draws many religious people to the movement, is its overt morality.

I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out just why I find morality and politics such a distasteful combination, when separately I place great value on both. I tried to suss it out here and here. I recently came across a little article from a source I am unfamiliar with, but which caused me to think about this subject again. The author tried to explain the difference between morals and ethics:

The difference between ethics and morals can seem somewhat arbitrary to many, but there is a basic, albeit subtle, difference. Morals define personal character, while ethics stress a social system in which those morals are applied. In other words, ethics point to standards or codes of behavior expected by the group to which the individual belongs. This could be national ethics, social ethics, company ethics, professional ethics, or even family ethics. So while a person’s moral code is usually unchanging, the ethics he or she practices can be other-dependent.

I think the example of the environment illustrates this concept. We don't have a very strong sense of morality when it comes to environmentalism. Most moral codes, religious or otherwise, haven't historically included the individual's relationship with the environment. On an ethical level, we can see that it is in our best interests as a society to protect the environment for our physical and mental health, economically, and scientifically. I think conservatives tend to either ignore or openly fight against environmental issues because it doesn't fit neatly into politics of morality. For liberals, however, environmentalism does fit into our ethic and thus we add it to our politics.

It's probably too simply to say that liberals stress ethics in politics and conservatives stress morality, but I think that is the trend. Liberals stress government action that strengthens the social system directly. We favor universal health care, strong environmental protection, and a progressive tax structure. We look at the overriding social structures and attempt to make improvements on that level. We, perhaps, focus on societal ethics.

Conservatives, perhaps, focus on individual morals. They stress moral issues such as abortion and homosexuality. The focus seems to be on me, the individual, as opposed to us, the collective. If the individual is moral, then the society will be strong. They believe that government should support what they feel is a common morality, or a majority morality.

My problem is that I get my morals from my bishop and prophet, so I don't need it again from my governor and president. When I get my morals at church I am with a group of people that have voluntarily chosen the same beliefs and religious structure. But on a national level there is so much more diversity of thought and belief, that legislating morality seems to regularly fail.

We have much less a choice when it comes to countrymen than we do when it comes to fellow worshipers. So I would rather focus our collective efforts on societal ethics than individual morality and leave the latter to the individual. I get my morals from my religion, you may get yours from your parents, or a philosopher, or MTV, or whatever. As long as you don't harm society, you keep your morals and I'll keep mine. And we'll both keep our ability to influence morals on the personal level, and our ability to influence ethics can take the public forum.

And I don't think you can avoid a moral decay of society by legislating it. Morals are dictated beliefs and values, and you can never force a person to believe or value one thing above another. Ethics, however, are dictated by a sense of community and the collective, and as such can be legislated. If we can show how certain actions affect not just ourselves and our relationship with God, but our community and nation, then we can change the way people act. I can't force a person to believe it is intrinsically wrong to pollute the air and water, but I can show that person the health and economic effects of that action.

I think conservatives try too hard to make people believe something is morally right or wrong and not enough time explaining how certain actions play out on the community and national level. I don't want to believe in politics and a political party, I save that for my religion. When it comes to politics I want rational arguments about ethics, not morality.

Gross National Happiness

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is proposing that nations drop their fixation on gross domestic product as the leading indicator of economic progress and instead try to measure quality of life aspects such as availability of health care and education, protection of natural resources, and amount of leisure time.

The idea is that by fixating on GDP we are encouraging nations to engage in overly-risky behavior and to degrade the environment, which destroy the quality of life of the people and work to their detriment. The counter argument is a happiness index will not help countries decide how to allocate their resources and that, while it is important to attempt to track something subjective like happiness, it is not in order to replace a purely economic standard like GDP.

GDP is the total value of goods and service produced in a nation during a year. I won't pretend to understand it much deeper than that, but it is basically the standard measure of a nation's economic strength and, therefore, of its population's standard of living.

The question the French are asking, I think, is whether or not we should even be focusing on raw economic data, as opposed to focusing on the happiness and contentment of the people. Which nation is better off, the one with a high GDP but a demoralized and unhappy citizenry, or the nation with a moderate GDP but a happy and optimistic citizenry? The former conjures up images of a coldly efficient industrial nation-complex where management lords over labor. The latter conjures up, well, France. A nation of sidewalk cafes, 35-hour work weeks, and a lot of college graduates with degrees in philos0phy.

Joseph Smith said that:

Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it; and this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God.

So are we focusing on the wrong priorities? Shouldn't we really be living our lives in order to find happiness and security, as opposed to finding the highest paying job and accumulating the most stuff at the expense of our happiness and the happiness of our families. I am about to find out on a personal level. I am taking a massive pay cut to take a job that I think I will like a whole lot more than my current job. This isn't entirely voluntary or premeditated, but I'm kind of excited to find out how we deal with it. I will work fewer hours, make less money, work towards a cause I believe in, make less money, and spend more time with my family. And make a lot less money. We'll see how we handle it.

Now, I've spent quite a bit of time in France and I know what their quality of life is like. I know what their pace of life is like. Frankly (no pun), I find it appealing. I understand that not everyone in France is happy, but I would say that the French are generally happier and live a better quality of life than Americans. Perhaps I am going to channel a little of that French in me.

But here in America we look down our noses on the French as lazy and socialist, we scoff at their work habits and high unemployment. But shouldn't be also be envious of their quality of life? Should we strive to be a more happy nation as opposed to a more efficient nation? I don't even think those two ideas are mutually exclusive, but perhaps one follows the other.

I believe that we would be a more optimistic and happy nation if we cut down on our pollution, grant access to affordable health care to every citizen, give every citizen a free, world-class education, all while providing physical and economic security. I think this is what the French are trying to emphasize, what I am going to attempt to live with my new career, and that this is the hope that President Obama sold us.

9/11/09

On September 11, 2001 I was a junior at the University of Utah. I had been married just a few months. My wife was already at work on campus and, as I recall, called me as I was getting ready for class and told me to turn on the TV because something was going on. I turned on CNN and sat there aghast and confused. They kept saying that America is under attack. I guess we really had no idea what was going on at the time, but that phrase never sat well with me.

I remember watching live as the first tower collapsed. I was so disoriented. I had no frame of reference to understand what was going on. Pearl Harbor was way to long ago and Desert Storm was just a cool TV show for me when I was 12 years old. Seeing such a massive structure collapse and seemingly being at war on US soil was outside of every paradigm I had ever known. We grew up thinking that America was impenetrable to our enemies, that we were apart from and above the rest of the world.

I went on campus and joined the group that quietly watched the news coverage on the TV's that had been set up in the library. My work told me not to bother going in that day. It is not often that we know something will change the way we look at the world and the course of history itself, usually we can look back and identify moments in hindsight but not as they are happening, but of course this was different. Everything would be different, even when we didn't know who was doing this to us.

I'm not sure it's helpful to rehash 9/11 stories every year. Some of the legacy of 9/11 is ugly. Some people, from everywhere on the political spectrum, used it to advance political ideology and goals. We wouldn't have gone into Iraq, we wouldn't be a country that tortured, but we also would have still thought that America was impenetrable and isolated. We have been forced to become a leader on the world stage in more ways than just economic or cultural. We haven't always been the world's moral compass since then, but I still believe that America is the greatest nation on Earth.

So I guess, partly, for me, 9/11 is just as much about looking back at our failures and successes since then and committing to being better, as a nation, than it is to just rehash those awful feelings we felt as the towers fell.

Democracy is Action, pt. 2

Scoreboard!

Rob Miller's Act Blue Page

Check that out; Rob Miller has raised a couple hundred thousand dollars since last night. Joe Wilson's little comment might have literally cost him his seat in Congress. Stuff like this makes my day. Not just for the comeuppance (although I admit to getting some joy out of that), it's also a real demonstration of how small contributions can combine to send an obvious, powerful, and real message. Joe's take?

Joe Wilson's Slatecard Page

This guy was probably bought and paid for by insurance companies, so I guess he doesn't need to worry about whether or not normal people will donate to his campaign.