It's Probably Time For A Little More Optimism Around Here

In the latest iteration of how we treat our planet, we have now released probably between 50 to 100 million gallons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, and we're probably only about halfway through the the release.

It is the sort of disaster that just makes you sick.  Birds and dolphins and fish are dying and people are losing their livelihoods.  We care so much about cheap energy that we are willing to downplay or ignore even the most heinous risks to get it.  Doing the hard things and making the hard decisions for our long-term good is not a particularly strong attribute for us, and the gulf oil spill is the perfect reminder of that fact.

And this applies to more than just the environment.  Israel and Palestine won't make the hard decisions in order to come to peace.  The same goes for many other nations, including America, which value short-term benefits and military force over long-term solutions and true and lasting peace. 

It's Time to Condemn Israel and Require More Concessions for Peace

What came first, the Palestinian terrorism, targeting of civilians, and suicide attacks on Israel chicken or the Israeli targeting of civilians and brutal oppression of Palestinians egg?

The latest escalation of the problem occurred over the weekend when Israeli commandos stormed a humanitarian aid ship headed for Palestine and killed at least ten civilians.  The ship was attempting to violate an Israeli embargo of Gaza.  This horrendous act is just Israel following the script, though.  The next few scenes will inevitably go something like this:  Palestinians will react to the killings at sea with protests and violence; Israel will react to Palestinian protests and violence by entrenching further, demolishing a few buildings, tightening their grip on Palestine and the decades-long embargo leading to even more soul-crushing poverty and desperation; Palestinians will resort to suicide bombings and terror; Israel will crush a Palestinian uprising.  The rest of the world will have some harsh critiques for the script but allow the play to go on.

* For some reason I'm having difficulties embedding the video, so go watch it on Youtube here.

Glenn Greenwald, of course, does a masterful job outlined just why this latest attack is so repulsive, and the inept handling of the situation by the Obama administration, which refuses to join countries like Russia, Turkey, Brazil, France, Spain, and China in condemning the attack.  This was a boat in international waters delivering badly needed food, medicine, and building materials to Palestinian civilians who live in abject poverty and under dictatorial oppression.  The United States must send a strong message that human rights and basic human decency are of paramount importance, more important than Israel's right to oppress the Palestinians, and condemn this act.

The Great Mormon Novel

I am going to wade into a conversation that occurred about a year ago but which was rekindled recently by an article in Slate that asked the question:  "Where is the Great Mormon Novel?"  The article was written as a critique of the new novel by Mormon Brady Udall called The Lonely Polygamist.

This article lead back to an article in the Mormon Times that stated that the Great Mormon Novel is impossible for impossibly shallow reasons thoroughly discredited here and here.  The gist was that Mormons are not self-critical enough and not willing to question beliefs enough to write great literature.  The discussion then turned a bit more meta with the proposition that we shouldn't even be worried about creating the Great Mormon Novel because the concept itself is outdated and unworthy of our attention.  This is my incredibly glib recap of the discussion and I encourage you to read through those links and flesh out the arguments for yourselves.  (As a side note, if you haven't spent some time exploring Mormon artistic endeavors at A Motley Vision and Dialogue, it is worth your time to do so.)

I think transcendent literature is something that is universal to our shared human experience.  What makes a piece of literature timeless is that it speaks to people from different backgrounds, cultures, eras, and genders, and can reveal something new to each.  My initial reaction, then, was that a Great Mormon Novel is not very likely, not because we aren't able or willing to question faith and authority and embrace ambiguity and conflict, but because we are pretty weird.  Pres. Hinckley, on several occasions, reiterated the words of the apostle Peter in referring to us as a "peculiar people."  We have always been encouraged to live apart from the world and embrace our peculiarity.

A Lean To The Right?

Bennett is out.

“When it was announced that Bennett had been eliminated from the race, a huge ovation swept through the convention hall and there were hoots and shouts of 'He's gone! He's gone!' Other delegates hugged and tea party members waved their yellow 'Do Not Tread On Me' flags.”

I am exceptionally curious about what, specifically, Bennett did that resulted in this level of vitriol. Even more, I am interested in what the Republican delegates see in Tim Bridgewater that has him as their nominee. If anybody out there has an answer better than “Bob Bennett was too liberal to represent Utah,” I would love to hear it.

My greatest fear is that democracy is slowly being smothered by popular media. Do “democrats” understand “liberal” policy? Do “republicans” truly agree with “conservative” ideology? Are “independents” and party swappers (and everyone else for that matter) simply opportunistic snakes, waiting for the chance to strike?

I don’t live in Utah, but I found a recent article from The Salt Lake Tribune that I felt brought up some excellent questions for conservatives. Naturally, one could make a similar, polarized list for “liberals”. What I struggle with is that the major gripe of the Tea Party movement is that the incumbents are not conservative enough, and as such, I thought it would be interesting to point out what “ultra-conservative” really means. Here are the ten questions from the recent article I cited above:

1. Do you oppose or support socialized medicine? If you answered "I oppose socialized medicine," will you introduce legislation to repeal Medicare for seniors -- socialized medicine brought to us by Great Society liberal Lyndon Johnson? If not, explain why you support socialized medicine for seniors and but do not support Obamacare for working families.

2. Will you introduce legislation to repeal all agriculture, grazing and mining subsidies? If not, please explain why you support socialized agriculture, grazing and mining.

3. Will you introduce legislation to sell off all federal lands in Utah to the highest bidder? If not, please explain why you think the big federal government, not the private sector and private landholders, should own Utah's lands. (Note, giving the land to the State of Utah just transfers the socialism to a different level of government, so that is not a valid answer).

4. A major criticism of Sen. Bennett was his support of the TARP in 2008. Will you pledge to oppose all government bailouts, even if that means a freezing of the credit markets and the failure of small businesses across the United States?

5. Which federal regulatory agencies will you eliminate? The Securities and Exchange Commission? The FDIC? The Consumer Product Safety Commission? The Federal Mine Safety Administration? The Environmental Protection Agency? The Agricultural Inspection Service? The Food and Drug Administration? If you support these agencies, please explain why we need big government in these areas, none of which are expressly provided for in the U.S. Constitution.

6. Do you support repealing the Small Business Administration? If not, please explain why you think big government bureaucrats know better than the free market which small businesses deserve help and support (and what a bureaucrat could possibly do to help a free market capitalist business person).

7. Do you support the National Weather Service? If so, please explain why big government can track the weather better than the private sector.

8. Will you oppose all appropriations earmarks for Utah?

9. Will you pledge to oppose government interventions to bring jobs to Utah? If not, please explain why you think you, and not the market, should determine where jobs are located in the United States.

10. Will you introduce legislation to repeal the Federal Communications Commission and the work of its nanny state, liberal, politically correct bureaucrats who regulate the words people can say on the television and radio and the images shown on TV? Or do you think bureaucrats, not the free market, should decide what is appropriate to air in America?

I’m sincerely curious about people’s responses to these questions. I will never suggest that a party member must adhere to all of said parties’ ideology; however, considering the cry that the GOP needs to be more conservative, I wonder how many people out there are ready for what that really means. Comments?

Moderation In A Crowded World

In 1800 just after the United States was formed and the Constitution ratified, the world population was about 978 million, just under 1 billion.  North America had about 7 million people.  If you had suggested to them at the time that they really should consider moderating consumption and conserving natural ecosystems, they probably would have laughed you to scorn.  "The world has more natural resources and available land than we ever could possibly develop," they would say to you with a condescending chuckle.  "Why on Earth should moderate anything?"

Today the world population is approaching 7 billion and North America has about 340 million people.  In a hundred years we'll be pushing 10 billion people.  It is a crowded world we live in now and it is not difficult to imagine running out of oil, chopping down the Amazon rain forest, and polluting our entire atmosphere and oceans to near sterility.  For thousands of years leading up to now humans have never had to moderate because the world was so big and we were so small.  So it is not altogether surprising, then, when so many people today, Americans in particular, continue to scoff at the idea of moderation, at the idea that we have to pull back in order to preserve what we have.

The oil gushing into the Gulf Coast at a rate of 210,000 gallons a day, which we are apparently powerless to stop any time soon, is a fitting example of how we are failing to be proper stewards of the Earth because we are not willing to moderate our thirst for oil.

But the idea of moderation in an ever more crowded world doesn't just pertain to the environment and consumption of goods.

Approaching Immigration With A "Spirit of Compassion"

Perhaps you heard that Arizona passed an immigration law that is controversial.  Most of the controversy centered around the following language from the bill (read it here in pdf), Article 8 paragraph B:

For any lawful contact made by a law enforcement official or a law enforcement agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person.

As for the legal side of the thing, first, "lawful contact" may be the most broad language ever written in the history of American legislation.  It encompasses almost anything apart from an explicitly illegal traffic stop (which almost doesn't exist anymore: one mph over the speed limit, faulty tail light, "you looked like you were swerving within you lane", you vaguely fit the description of an alleged malfeasor, etc.) or the police barging into your home without a warrant.  Basically, lawful contact is not a limitation at all, let alone a reasonable one.

Second, the Constitution’s equal protection clause forbids the government from differentiating between anyone, including illegal immigrants, on the basis of race. Under the Arizona law no one has suggested any other potential grounds for the police to reasonably suspect someone is an illegal immigrant besides the fact that they have Latin American-colored skin.  What else could possibly fall under "reasonable suspicion"?  I can't think of anything.  Governmental racism is, bluntly, unconstitutional.

The Enumerated Powers

I wish I could be a libertarian.  I really do.  In fact, I think we all do.  Nobody loves paying taxes, nobody loves a big bloated government, nobody loves politicians who are almost universally slimy and packaged and plastic.  I think we all have our own certain ideal for a government-light society.  But there is where the problem comes in: everyone's ideal is different.  Not only that, but those with the most money tend to force their ideals upon the rest of us until we can't take it anymore and turn to government to try to inject some sort of counter-balance.  The rich and powerful then try to game the new system, and away we go.

That is a basic back and forth we have in America today.  We are presented with a choice of who we hate more: corporations or government.  Both are big and ugly and powerful and inhuman and seemingly untouchable and, to our horror, actually really so intertwined as to be almost the same thing.  The financial reform legislation process highlights this fact nicely.  On the one hand you have Democrats trying to reform the system and put some regulations on how Wall Street functions in order to avoid another Great Recession, on the other hand you have Wall Street there every step of the way trying, and succeeding, to make the new reform as painless to themselves as possible, and with as many loopholes as possible.  The majority of Americans could not possibly be more confused about who to hate more.

Those that hate the government more have tended recently to question the constitutionality of federal government action, particularly as big reforms are being enacted to rein in the the insurance and financial industries' excesses.

What Would the Founding Fathers Have Thought About Ebay?

So let's pretend that you discovered a new continent with seemingly limitless natural resources, fertile soil, and a varied climate.  It began to be populated by people from every nation, religion, and walk of life and was thus tolerant and dynamic.  Essentially, the potential for growth and progress was boundless.  And let's pretend that those people turned to you and your colleagues to establish a government that would endure and upon which they could rely for generations to come.  What would you do?

Remember that this Constitution could endure for hundreds of years and see changes in the world that you cannot possibly imagine. Would you write a short document that gave a basic framework and allowed for a variety of interpretations to fit the needs of future generations?  Would you write a document that that had some broad language but a strict interpretation to be followed by all future generations?  Would you create essentially a large volume of specific statutes to be followed for all time?  Would you be confident that your wisdom should be followed explicitly by the progeny of your generation hundreds of years down the line?  Or would you want them to be able to adapt to a changing world while holding on to a few key principles of freedom that you hold dear?

These are, in essence, the issues that America's Founding Fathers faced while creating our new nation and producing a Constitution.  For a little context, here's a real rough sketch of America in 1790, just a couple of years after the Constitutional Convention.  America had about four million inhabitants, including about 700,000 slaves.  New York City was the largest city with about 33,000 people, Philadelphia was next with about 28,000, which means that the nation was overwhelmingly rural.  Most people were self-sufficient to the extreme, meaning they produced their own food and made their own clothes and built their own houses and bred their own horses.

Earth Day

And behold, all things have their likeness, and all things are created and made to bear record of me, both things which are temporal, and things which are spiritual; things which are in the heavens above, and things which are on the earth, and things which are in the earth, and things which are under the earth, both above and beneath: all things bear record of me.  Moses 6:63

The scriptures are laid before thee, yea, and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator.  Alma 30:44

If all creation testifies of God, then perhaps we can utilize Earth Day as a sort of testimony meeting.  A chance to look around and remember that not only was the Earth created for the temporal benefit of man and woman but also for man and woman to gain a testimony of the Supreme Creator.  I think that this balance has been skewed far to the former at the expense of the latter, and Earth Day is a chance to try to reset our way of valuing creation.

As an example of this conflict, consider the sage grouse.  This little fella makes his home in, if you can believe it, sagebrush habitat.  It just so happens that much of the United States' sagebrush habitat is also oilman habitat, and the more oil wells we sink the less habitat the sage grouse can call home, and the more threatened it becomes.  The Interior Department was petitioned to protect the sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act and recently made its dissonant decision: the sage grouse deserves protection, but we aren't giving it.  Jason Chaffetz showed his lack of imagination in reaction to this decision--"The only good place for a sage grouse to be listed is on the menu of a French bistro"--a variation on a common theme among the anti-environmentalism crowd.  (Why would the French eat a bird native to the American West?  How about: "I get enough grouse at home from my wife and kids, I don't need it in my oil production facilities," or something?)

So anyway, is the sage grouse just an annoyance to brush aside in our thirst for more fossil fuels, or is it possible that this quirky bird that attracts potential mates by making a rubber-ball-bouncing sound with its chest is something to be valued as bearing record of a Creator?  Is it fundamentally ridiculous to put so much emphasis on any single species, such as quirky bird which, seriously, attracts potential mates by making a rubber-ball-bouncing sound with its chest, which is, let's be honest, bizarre and a little gross?

Opposing Nuclear Weapons

In 1981 the First Presidency, in a statement opposing the storage of nuclear weapons in Utah and Nevada, made the following statement:

First, by way of general observation we repeat our warnings against the terrifying arms race in which the nations of the earth are presently engaged. We deplore in particular the building of vast arsenals of nuclear weaponry. We are advised that there is already enough such weaponry to destroy in large measure our civilization, with consequent suffering and misery of incalculable extent.

It is my feeling that nuclear weapons are evil, and that part of the responsibility of bearing the Gospel of Peace is speaking out against them.  I would love for members of the church to take the lead in opposing the proliferation of nuclear weapons and encouraging the nations of the world to disarm.  This goal can only be achieved through full international cooperation, and since the church is an international entity preaching peace we should have a strong and loud voice.

And there is a lot going on in the world of nuclear weapons these days.  President Obama recently signed a new START Treaty and Protocol with the Russians which will significantly reduce the number of weaponized nuclear warheads in both countries and increase monitoring of the progress of that reduction.

Urban Sprawl and the Utah Lake Bridge

A group of groups, led by the Sierra Club, recently offered their idea regarding a potential bridge that would span Utah Lake: Don't build it.  The Daily Herald, in typical fashion, offered a poorly thought-out rebuttal to the rebuttal, on which I would like to comment.

They were first offended that Marc Heileson of the Sierra Club called it a bridge to nowhere, saying:

Bridge to nowhere? That's quite a slam. Utah Valley is nowhere?  One end of the bridge would land near 800 North in Orem. That's not only at the heart of the valley, it's likely to be even more bustling in the future. Close by is the planned transportation hub for the Frontrunner train line and the Bus Rapid Transit project.

He didn't say a bridge from nowhere, he said a bridge to nowhere.  Clearly Orem is somewhere.  A lot of people live there.  The other side of the proposed bridge, however, is nowhere, and that is a good thing, and it should stay that way.  Unfortunately, there are developers eying the west side of the Utah Lake like Utah Republican lawmakers eye fifteen year old girls in hot tubs (too soon? low blow? I couldn't resist.  I take it back).

Re: Worth the read "I'm 63 and I'm Tired"

Following the lead of Jacob S., I decided to also post an e-mail that I received. The original e-mail has been circulating recently, but the responses come from a friend of mine who gave me permission to post it here:

I normally don't respond to these and I usually dislike getting political emails. But in light of all the lies and hatred going around these days, I took my lunch break to read and respond this time. For me, there was just a line or 2 that I DO agree with. Here are my rebuttals to the rest. My comments are in blue.

I'm 63. Except for one semester in college when jobs were scarce and a six-month period when I was between jobs, but job-hunting every day, I've worked, hard, since I was 18. Despite some health challenges, I still put in 50-hour weeks, and haven't called in sick in seven or eight years. I make a good salary, but I didn't inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, there's no retirement in sight, and I'm tired. Very tired.

I'm 43. Except for a period of time when I needed to leave a company and hadn't found a new job yet, I've worked, hard, since I was 13. I don't put in 50-hour weeks because my family is more important than spending time at an organization that doesn't value families. I don't make a good salary, but I make enough to provide for my family while still having time to spend with them. I'm hoping someday I can manage an early retirement, but that's not in the works yet.

I'm tired of being told that I have to "spread the wealth" to people who don't have my work ethic. I'm tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy to earn it.

I'm tired of greedy wealthy corporations controlling everything in this country. I'm tired of being forced to pay money to industries to enrich their shareholders, just so I can buy basic goods or provide basic services for my family. Corporations make hundreds of billions of dollars yet still pay their employees poor wages. These wealthy multinational corporations cringe whenever they're asked to stop polluting or have to pay to clean up messes they made that destroy our environment and kill our children.