This post is intended to clarify a framework for looking at morality and ethics in a religion-neutral way.  This framework is neither hostile toward nor reliant on religion and thus can facilitate a better understanding of right and wrong. To the extent that it is based on philosophy, it is hostile to the concept that these areas can simply be taken for granted in the source materials of any religious tradition although these naturally could provide much material for reflection.

First some definitions.  In general, when people think of "ethics" they think of a code of rules which are to be followed in a legalistic way.  This is not what I mean at all.  Here I refer to Ethics as the branch of systematic philosophy which attempts to define what is good and how we avoid the bad or evil influences.  Law for example, is in our society (in both the legislatures and the courts), a subset of ethics in that both the legislative bodies and the courts, in different ways, seek to define the good.  The courts have a more advanced methodology, while they also are much more constrained by their methodology and role.  However, of course ethics goes well beyond merely matters of law.  It is a deeply intellectual excersize which attempts to put forth a framework for answering these sorts of questions.  Ethics is derived from the Greek "Ethos" of "custom" via Aristotle's work entited "Ethic" (relating to this central question).  There is no reason why something might not be ethical for a person to do but at the same time might not be ethical for a society to ban (I would argue that hate speech is one of those cases).  The word further derives from Indo-European roots meaning "to make one's own."

Morality is subtly different.  The word dervives from moralis which appears to have been coined by Cicero in order to translate the Greek word "Ethic" into Latin.  "Moralis" originally meant "manners" but has been extended to mean everything from confidence (morale, moral support), to fitness of character.  In part due to the religious usage, these matters are connected with the idea that moral action elevates the spirit.  Therefore the goal of morality isn't to do what is right in an abstract or interpersonal sense but rather to elevate one's own spirit.  There is a component of this which is built on ethics and the question of what is good.  But there is another aspect of it which is deeply personal and is built on a spiritual and aesthetic response to a situation.   The sense of horror we feel when we hear about a child falling down a well is a response that is related to this aspect of morality, as is the satisfaction we get out of helping others out.  Many things can be personally immoral while at the same time not violate any ethical principles (for example, keeping a job you hate every day instead of taking a modest pay cut to get a job you love).

It seems that nobody was happy with the ISG report.  Many right-wing columnists decried it as tantamount to surrender despite the nuanced language that the report used, while many left-wing columnists took substantive objections to many of the recommendations as just simply bad ideas (for example, the idea that US servicemen should be embedded in Iraqi units was argued to be "creating thousands of American hostages."

In general, with the exception of the members of the ISG, it seems hard to find anyone who has a high regard for the report they produced.  Not on the left, not on the right, not in the center.  I would suggest that the problems were due both to a lack of military input on the ideas and a lack of adequate field research on the part of the American intelligence community.  The perpetual lack of intelligence seems very troubling indeed.

If the current Iraq conflict is ours to loose, the Bush Administration are doing a pretty darn good job of losing it.  Yet, I agree with Robert Gates in his assessment of the risks of failure in Iraq.  Our main problems are not easy to overcome and include:

1. A relatively undisciplined Iraqi army not well suited to counter-insurgency roles.
2. A highly corrupt Iraqi police force.  It appears that a police unit maybe behind the kidnapping of thirty Red Crescent employees.
3. Government officials who rely on private sectarian militias and death squads for their own protection.
4. A general lack of credibility for the current government due to the above factors and the fact that we are the only ones propping them up even as they undermine us.

Our first important task is to clean up the Iraqi government.  This means that we recognize that they only survive because we are there and thus we have some control over the ways in which they undermine themselves and us.  We should suggest that there are clear groundrules for continued US involvement on their behalf (otherwise we withdraw for a while, come back in, and start over after the government falls). This means that :

1. Government ministers may not continue to retain private militias and the existing miliatias controlled by government officers must be integrated into the army in multi-ethnic units. 
2. Extrajudicial killings must be investigated and prosecuted.
3. Other crimes by government agents must be investigated and prosecuted.
4. No official can serve in the government and have people under him or her fomenting sectarian violence.

If they refuse, we resciend our protection to the current Iraqi government.

Our second task is to reframe the debate as one of democracy vs. anarchy.  This means that we have to work very hard to show that we are in service to the Iraqi people.  We need to openly declare that we will not remain in Iraq any longer than the democratically elected government seeks our presence.  We are there at their service, and not to impose our presence on the nation.

Third, we need a lot more troops.  And we need to shift their role from combat to police and peacekeeping.  Large numbers of small, agile, and lethal units need to be patrolling as much of the country as we can with a support network that can respond quickly to incidents.  Our troops need to participate in a support network that includes similarly structured Iraqi police and army units.

Fourth, we need to start talking with Iran and Syria.  This one of only a couple of good suggestions the ISG Report had.  But we need to start talking now while we are growing our presence in the region because we will have more leverage in negotiations.  If we wait until popular opinion requires that we pull out, then they have all the power at the negotiating table and we will need their help.  If we get their help now, then the cost will be far lower.

Fifth, we need to suppress other regional hotspots.  The ISG noted that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict was a major source of animosity towards the US presence in Iraq.  However, I think that they inflated the importance of that conflict.  Certainly it is a source of problems but it is not the only one.  Chechnya and Afghanistan are also major sources of anger towards the European and American powers.  This means we must be prepared to do what it will take to really win in Afghanistan (which is probably an even bigger mess than Iraq at the moment), and start working hard to create a solution to the Chechnya conflict.  We also need to work hard on a solution for Sudan's Darfur crisis, and help try to keep peace talks on track in the Aceh conflict in Indonesia. 

I sincerely hope that this post is helpful in in shifting the debate.     

How an ancient Pagan celebration can still shed light on a modern world:

The modern celebration of Christmas has elements both of Christianity and of older pagan traditions both among the Romans (Saturnalia) and Germanics (Yule).  In both cases, it represents the point in time, just after the solstace when the sun can be seen to move again northward and bring a renewal of light to the world.  This celebration is clearly also the reason why in the 5th century, Christmas became standardized on top of such pagan celebrations (there is no reason to think that Jesus was born in the middle of winter and plenty of reason to think otherwise).

Traditional Indo-European religions in general tended to worship what I refer to as the "architecture of human activity."  Rather than being simple nature worshipers, the mythology forms a very sophisticated model of society,   To the extent that nature features into the myths and celebrations, it is either accidental (Lightening is Thorr fighting the giants) or the consequence of human activity (as in the fertile fields).  Raw, untamed nature was generally feared.  Indeed suggesting that the Indo-Europeans were nature worshipers would be no more well founded than to suggest that Jews are fire or shrub worshippers because of the burning bush.  In fact both Jewish and traditional Indo-European religions have in common a tradition-centric and sophisticated social component even though the traditions may be completely different (interestingly both the Semetic and Indo-European traditions have had profound impacts on modern society both at its best and worst).

The Germanic and Celtic peoples organized their world around a duality of human order and primordial power.  The year was thus divided into a light half (summer) and a dark half (winter).  As time went on, the end of winter was made a distinct planting season while the end of summer became the harvest season.  But in general, the summer was the season of outward human activity, particularly farming, while the winter was the inward and social time, when the society would draw around together listen to traditional tales, and so forth.  The main winters celebrations were Winters Nights, Yule, and the Feast of the Disir.  The Feast of the Fallen Warriors was another minor celebration.  These holidays are all social occasions, and all except Yule are connected to reflecting on one's ancestors and those who have come before.  Yule different.  As the beginning of the new year, it celebrated the seeds of light that were sown in the beginning of the return of the sun.

The Christmas Tree is almost certainly a Pagan Germanic appropriation.  In Germanic myth, humans were created when the Gods gave gifts of breath, inspiration, and countinence to two trees (which became the first man and woman).  The tree is a symbol thus not only of the world (as in the World Tree) but also the society and the soul of the individual.  As I put it elsewhere, when Odin hangs himself in sacrifice on the Tree, he and the tree are not conceptually separate.   In Voluspa, Yggdrassil (most often considered to be the World Tree, though I point out that it is contextually more likely to be the Tree of Man-- the name actually means "Steed of the Terrifying One") is referred to as an evergreen.  Thus the evergreen trees, in the dark of winter, remind us that even when all seems desolate and dead, that the soul survives.  It is thus a symbol of the immortality of the soul.

Note that in the Volsung Saga, Odin places a sword (a symbol of sovereingty and clear vision) into a tree growing inside a hall (Barnstok), and it is Sigmund, the eldest son of Volsung who pulls the sword from the tree thus sparking a bloody war and sets events in motion that eventually lead to him becoming a great king, and his son, Sigurd, becoming probably the best known of the mythic heroes of the Norse  (Yes, there is evidence that the original story had no difference between Sigurd and Sigmund, but none of these stories survived in any complete version-- we only have a four-line summary in Beowulf).

Yule is thus a time to reflect upon another year and the fact that light is returning.  The tree is there to remind us that life continue through the time when the dangerous primordial does indeed prevail.

As for gift giving, I would expect that this is a manifestation of modern commercialism, but given the proper intent and context, it too can be used as a way to reflect upon the social bonds that bring us together.  Traditionally, giving of gifts was expected to both be reciprocal and demand that social ties between the givers be strengthened.  My suggestion is that rather than spending a lot of money on luxuries, give gifts of personal value to those you care about most.  The goal is not to give someone a gift that they will delight in so much as to give a reflection of the social bond, something to draw you together.  Lat year, for example, I gave my mother and my sisters the first jewely I had ever fabricated using faceted gems (in this case, garnets).  The jewelry was unique, and involved many hours work on my part (probably 2 per pendant, since I didn't have any power tools to work the metal and had to use jeweler's files).

In general we in the US tend to see our pro-choice v. pro-life political arguments in the starkest of terms.  Either this or that.  Either there is a right to an abortion or there isn't.  Either abortion is evil or it isn't.  These arguments are at best unproductive and at worst (and most likely) intellectually dishonest.  In fact, although there are serious values differences between the two camps that I don't dismiss, the actual disagreement is pretty limited.

Is there a right under certain circumstances to an abortion?  I think we can all agree the answer is yes.

Does this right extend to a women, for reasons of mere inconvenience, decides to abort a pregnancy in its final weeks?  I think we can all agree the answer is no.

So it is not a matter of "is there a right" or "is there not a right" but rather how far does this extend.

Before anyone argues with me on the above points, let me state the largely uncontroversial positions in more detail.  The 4th and 14th amendments of the US Constitution suggest that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.  It is within this framework that the legal side of the abortion debate occurs.  Certainly we can all agree that if a woman is likely to die if the pregnancy is not aborted, and this is denied by law (perhaps even a law targetting the woman by name) then this is an unconstitutional death sentence.  Hence there is a right to choose to have an abortion at least in the case of risk to the life of the mother.  I would certainly hope that nobody would seriously argue that one.  Thus one is largely compelled to buy the argument that these amendments apply not only to the executive but also the legislative branches as well.

However, in the liberty guarantee, things get more murky.  Every legal restriction passed, from speed limits to homicide laws are restrictions on liberty.  This raises ultimate questions about what due process means in this case.  IANAL, but my reading of case law suggests that in most cases a rational basis approach is used, which simply suggests that the government can't pass arbitrary restrictions and then make up excuses when before court.  Usually this requires that there is an argument that there is a compelling interest an dthat the government is normally acting on that interest.  However, one of the aspects of the abortion case law is the question of whether additional scrutiny is required when the government tells us how or when to have children.  Whether there are certain innately personal decisions that the government must be held to a higher scrutiny when addressing.  Currently matters of sexuality (where not predatory), reproduction (generally), religious practice (oddly enough by statute rather than Constitutional matters), and so forth are held to higher levels of scrutiny. Personal autonomy is a value which is held to be synonymous with liberty and hence is such deeply personal decisions are considered to be subject to greater protection.

However, even if you agree with the paragraph above, it is not always possible to get to the point where you agree that abortion in particular is protected.  Heck even if you get to that point doesn't mean you can circumscribe what abortion means.  For example, SPUC claims that because contraceptive pills often work by preventing the fertilized egg from adhering to the uterous wall (or so they claim-- they may be exadurating the numbers), that birth control pills are essentially abortifaceants.

The only thing I ask is that before we get into what we disagree about, let's consider how much we actually agree.  Maybe then we can have a real conversation on the matter.   

Ehud Olmert's comments perceived as an Israeli admission to the nation's posession of Nuclear weapons has not received the justification it deserves.  Not only is the cat out of the bag but we now have to publically contend with the fact that one of the most potentially unstable government in the world could become, in a few decades, a Muslim-dominated nation that is also the sixth largest nuclear power in the world.

Many Israelis including most modern Prime Ministers (at least since Barak), and indeed the Israeli National Security Council, have acknowledged that Israel has a growing demographic delimma on their hands.  On one hand, they derive much of their legitimacy in the region from being one of the only nations with a functioning democracy.  At the same time, within a few years, it is expected that Jews will be a minority west of the Jordan River, and that within fourty years, Jews may be a minority within the 1967 borders themselves.  Such realities have prompted Ehud Barak (a center-left politican) to try to exchange Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem (where Iraeli citizenship of the residents was an option).   When this was leaked, the political response was immediate:  The Jews of Israel, themselves having been the subject of ethnic clensing (as well as extremists who didn't want to see land given away) revolted and Barak found himself unable to continue the negotiations (source:  Ha'aretz).

Israeli Arabs including the Muslim Beduin of the Negev desert and the Muslim residents of East Jerusalem have among the highest birth rates in the world.  In 2000, the Arabs as a whole (including the Druze, and other groups) made up about 20% of the population.  In 2006, it is closer to 26% (source:  CIA World Fact Book).  Furthermore, the ultra-Orthodox Jews (often who do not feel that the Israeli state should exist because the Messiah has not come yet-- these are theologically related to the same Jews who went to the Iranian conference to thank Ahmedinejad) are the leaders in Israeli Jewish births.  Indeed, Israel is already a bilingual Hebrew/Arabic state (source:  CIA World Fact Book).

The result means that Israeli Zionism is emperiled by demographic trends which will amost certainly eventually force what will be a Zionist minority out of power within the next few decades.  This trend is the main reason why Olmert has (largely unsuccessfully) lobbied heavily for increased immigration to Israel (source:  Ha'aretz).  According to the CIA World Fact Book, however, there was not significant population changes due to immigration in Israel over the last year.

The real question is what happens after Muslims become a majority in Israel.  If they are continued to be marginalized, then the radical teachings similar to that of militant Salafism (bin Ladin's Islamic school of thought) could well win over.  One would hope, however, that civil rights and economic aspirations would make the Muslims in Israel more tolerant and pluralistic.

If the Salafists win in Israel, then the resulting nuclear-armed state would be far more menacing than the largely pluralistic (but still very Muslim) state of Iran.

At the same time, Israeli nuclear power has not provided any real measure of deterrent power.  Those who want to see Israel wiped off the map would like nothing more than for an Israeli nuke to hit a city like Beruit, for the resulting response from the rest of the world would destroy the Israeli economy to the point where the state would not be hard to take via conventional means.  One might well witness the temporary economic collapse that was caused by Operation Defensive Shield and an unofficial and impromptu boycott of Israeli defence goods by European countries.  If Hizbullah, Hammas, or Fatah can get Israel to be the Big Bad Guy to the point of launching a nuclear strike then they have won.

At the same time, Israel has been involved in a large number of wars since becoming a nuclear power.  Not once have nuclear weapons been a concern of Israel's enemies.

The US policy should, I think be two-fold.  The first is to use our military aid as leverage to force Israel to disarm their nuclear weapons and instead opt for a mutual defence treaty with the US which we will continue to honor as long as certain stated conditions are met.  We can offer the same to Iran, if we want.

The second area ought to be to encourage Israeli Arabs to be integrated into the society.  The segregation that exists in Israel today ought to be dismantled with our help.  The Beduin ought to be approached and asked to perform military service in the IDF just as the Druze do today (many Beduin do, in fact, already serve, but recruiting should be expanded, and the communities should be asked whether they want to adopt the Druze position of "equal responsibilities" including mandatory military service).  An then, with additional protections in place for religious and ethnic minorities, the Muslims can be asked to serve as well.  More efforts should be paid towards encouraging political involvement of the Muslims so as to discourage militant schools of thought.

Additionally, these focuses would be good for the Israeli Jews too.  A more affluent and integrated Arab population would likely have a lower birth rate.  And while the Jewish nature of the state would be lessened, it would have a chance to continue indefinitely.

I think it is clear that many Americans from across the political spectrum are concerned about the divorce rate and the prospects for making a marriage work for a lifetime in the US.  While this concern may less in the Democrat strongholds of New England and the Northeast, this is likely due not to a lack of priorities but a lower divorce rate.  In fact, Massacheussets has a divorce rate of around half that of the national average.

Rather than getting into party politics here, and who lives family values, I want to get into concrete solutions for reducing the divorce rate in America.  I have watched people go through divorces and seen what it does to otherwise reasonable people.  My wife and I have even been very close to divorce on a few occasions.  I think actually I probably have more insight into what the system does right and wrong than most people.

First some history:

Until the latter part of the last century, most divorce law was aimed at at-fault divorces.  This meant that in order to get a divorce, you had to sue for one, alleging that the other party had engaged in behavior that made you the victim.  These faults could be contested.  For example in New York, adultery was only grounds for divorce if certain conditions were met (the accuser could not have had an affair him/herself, could not have encouraged the affair, and could not have had any sexual contact with his/her spouse after learning of the affiar).

Then, in the 1970's, many states began passing no-fault divorce laws.  In other words, when these laws were in effect, one did not have to show that the other party was at fault for the breakdown of the marriage.  Like all drastic departures from tradition, this caused a very painful adjustment in society.  Divorce rates went up and the prospects for maintaining a marriage through a lifetime went down.  Interestingly enough, this change wasn't uniform, and Massacheussets, which has long had one of the lowest divorce rates in the country is strictly a no-fault state.

Proponents of no-fault divorce, of course,  cite domestic violence and intimidation (economic and physical) as major reasons why such laws are necessary.  In the end, however, I am unconvinced either that these reasons are valid, or that reversing no-fault divorce laws at the current time would be a good idea.

Over time, the divorce rates have been slowly coming down.  But in the end, more could be done to help make the transition to the new system easier.

Also divorce has bad economic reprecussions for those who go through it.  Often not only is the divorce costly itself, but couples (especially those with children) often find themselves back in court again and again (and again) arguing over technical details of child custody.  In these cases, the children are the main victims, and the attourneys are the only ones who benefit.  And the adversarial nature of our court system is not helpful in helping end the bitter fighting.

Concrete suggestions:

Unlike most proponents of divorce reform, I tent do suggest that divorce law ought to be structured in such a way as to support the natural or social impulse of couples to reconcile.  Forcing reconcilliation is not likely to work.  But neither does the current system, where things often spin out of control so fast that reconcilliation is often impossible without special assistance.

The first suggestion is to take as much out of the courts as possible.  All divorces should be no-fault.  Community property laws should be used to make the division of assets simple.  Default schedules for child support and other issues should also be used.  THis helps make the system predictable, reduces the level of distrust, and helps take the lawyers out of as many issues as possible.

However, waiting periods to get a divorce ought to be longer.  My own preference is a one-year mandatory separation period unless the couple settles all the issues among themselves in which case it might be reduced to 2-3 months.  Encouraging divorcing couples to try to work out the details is expected (and even shown) to reduce divorce rates.  Presumably this is because often when divorcing couples start treating eachother as reasonable human beings, reconcilliation often becomes not only possible but desired.  Even if reconcilliation doesn't happen to the extent that the marriage gets another chance, one would hope that such practice encourages the couple to stay out of court over minor issues and encouraging each of them to work together in areas such as raising the children.

The third suggestion I have is to *require* that both parties to the divorce attend counselling during the process.  This counselling ought not to be aimed at restoring the marriage, but rather at helping the individual interact with the other.  This counselling need not be joint (and if there are threats of violence ought not to be), but is really aimed at helping resolve a lot of the emotional issues that go with a divorce so that either a)  the couple restores their marriage or b) the couple continues to work together on ties that continue to bind them (joint debts, children, etc).

The last suggestion I have is to require most divorce disputes to go through a mediator before coming to court.  THis would be true both during and after the initial divorce process.

The goals here are to take the adversarial nature of the court system out of the case as much as possible, so that attourneys (who are more interested in winning their cases than in helping their cients learn to live with eachother) are reserved only for those issues that cannot otherwise be solved.  They are aimed at creating an environment where trust can be built and where reconcilliation can occur.  They say you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.  Lets put out water all around divorcing couples and see if they drink it or not.

I just finished reading a very interesting paper entitled "Understanding Islamism" by the International Crisis Group.  This is a very fascinating look at Islam, activism, and the role of the religion in the society.  This 35-page report is meticulously researched, and documents the many ways that the inherently political nature of Islam manifests among different groups.  I am not a Muslim (I am a pagan), and I strongly disagree with the social blueprint aspect of the Muslim religion.

I have long argued that the image that Western leaders have invoked of a "moderate" Islam which embraced Western values was fundamentally un-Muslim, and this report has helped to clarify my thoughts on why.  It is certainly true that in any group, there are those who are more moderate than others, and Muslims are no different.  However, in this post, I use a quoted "moderate" to indicate a false image of moderation and an unquoted one to indicate a more objectively verifiable image.  One might well ask why Iran is said to typify "radical" Islam, while the far more conservative (and Wahhabist) Saudi Arabia is labled "Moderate."  Especially when the ideology of the Wahhabi movement is closer to that of Al'Qaeda than that of the Shiite-dominated Islamic Republic of Iran (which oddly is much closer to a Western society both in terms of values and governmental structure).  Looking at this dichotomy, the truth becomes evident:  moderates are those we want to do business with and radicals are those we don't.  There is no ideological correlation between such a categorization.

First, as many have pointed out, Islam isn't really a religion of peace.  THe Koran and indeed Muslim history shows that the religion does not shrink from war nor does it idealize peace in a way that discourages many types of war.  However, the other characterization of Islam as a bloodthirsty and violent religion is also inaccurate  Islam is in fact neither a religion of peace or war.  The truth becomes evident on even a cursory (though complete) reading of the Koran:  Islam is a religion of law and is therefore inherently political.  The Koran itself is mostly composed of social rules interspersed with invocations of the divine.

The inherently political nature of the religion means that the Islamic community is always somewhat receptive to the idea that  the government and legal traditions of the countries in which Muslims live ought to reflect Islamic pinciples, and in some cases, legal traditions.  Many Muslims may not worry too much about this as a minority religion at least in the US, but the structure of the tradition is such that devout Muslims will always be receptive to this issue.  Islam, therefore, does not support a separation of Church or Mosque and State.

But before I go foreward I want to clear up a few things:

There is often a disagreement in the US among non-Muslims as to whether Christians and Jews are considered "infadels" or "people of the book."  Through most of their history, most Muslims have taken the latter approach.  However, the Wahhabists differ and treat all non-Muslims as "infadels" to be struggled against.  They also consider the Shiah to be heretics because of a number of reasons I won't get into here.  Fortunately, Wahhabism appears to be declining in the Islamic world including even the Arabian peninsula.

Just because Islam is an inherently political religion does not mean that every Muslim is a potential suicide bomber.  There is a lot of diversity of thought in the Islamic world regarding the political aims and the means used to attain them.  One cannot simply talk of a homogeneous Islamist movement, though I would argue that Islam intrinsically sponsors political activism in furtherance of the social blueprint of Islam.

Ok.  Now, what does that mean for us?

There is certainly a great deal of discussion in the Islamic world about the rightful place of democratic institutions.  Khomeini's "government by Jurist" has largely proven to be a failure in part because of controversy surrounding his succession by Khamene'i.   Because Khamene'i lacks the credibility with the religious scholar community, he serves just as the voice of the clergy rather than the independant, wise dictator that Khomeini envisioned.  In part for this reason, even at the present moment, democractic institutions are gaining strength in Iran.    And in Iraq, the only major Shiite figure to favor a Khomeini-style governemnt-by-jurist is Al-Sadr.

In the Sunni world, there seems to be a deep divide between three camps.  One espouses a decentralized effort to just make Muslims behave (in all actualitiy this usually involves intimidation, vigilantism, and the like).  This appears to be the political philosophy of the Sunni insurgents in Iraq, and is known as Salafism.

Other groups seek democratic institutions and laws in accordance with Islamic tradition.

However, most or all groups generally seek in their long-term vision to make the society more in line with Muslim legal traditions.

How should we react as a nation?

I think it would be a very serious mistake to let Muslim communities in the US label themselves as opporessed minority, or second class citizens in a country that supposedly offers them Constitutional protections for their religion.  Comments like Prager's suggesting that Muslims should swear on the Bible are thus deeply counterproductive and help foster the idea that Muslims need to struggle against our society and governemnt to address real grievances.

Instead, I think we need to do more to bolster the religion-independant nature of our government, enuring that all minority religions are protected and treated as equals by the law.  While the courts are leaning this way already, I think we need more prominant politicians to suggest that although religion is not absent from the public square, there is no preference to given to dominant religious groups.  I.e. we aren't going to go ahead and ban the Hijab from public schools (or even try to).

Finally, I think we need to do something that is more likely to be controversial but in the end is, I think, to everyone's interest.  We need to re-interate the fact that many of the references to "God" in our national documents, pledges, etc. are listed along-side references to Roman pagan goddesses (Liberty and Justice, for example).  Therefore, I would suggest that we change our money from saying "In God we Trust" (a clearly Christian reference) to "One nation, under God, with Liberty and Justice for all" and go on to suggest that the inclusion of pagan diety names here is an expression not of defference to Roman religious traditions but a way of including other structures of religious thought.

What do I think "Conservatism" means?  I don't think it is an agenda.  I don't think it is even a philosophy.  I think it is an approach to change that can be applied to any political requirement.  It is simply based on sound methodological principles.

My main influences in this area have been my study of the disciplines of linguistics and philology, and my work experience as a software engineer.  These principles are applicable to any human endeavor and are not limited to politics.

1. Minimize Change
   The corrolation between the amount of pain caused by a change goes up exponentially as the change becomes bigger.  This is simply because society is complex enough to defy simple engineering.  We are still working the bugs out of the 14th Amendment (which was passed at the end of the Civil War).  And I won't get into how much reworking the courts had to do with Roe v. Wade, or how the New Deal programs are still buggy.
   
   
2. Look to past models
   There is a saying in the software world:  Those who do not understand UNIX are destined to reinvent it-- badly.  You can substitute any other commonly used past model in that saying for UNIX if you want.  When change is necessary, one should be aware of past models, what worked and what didn't.  Often it is easier to reate a variation on something has previously been known to mostly work that try to create something altogether new.
   
   It is often tempting for people (progressives or conservatives) to assume that we have new problems today.  Yet it is informative to look to the past and find that many of these same issues have been answered different ways by different cultures and that many of these solutions have proved mostly workable.
   
   As an example of how little has changed in the last few hundred years with regard to social issues (effects of music, views on abortion, etc), I would bring up the 13th century ballad "Tom Lin."  In this ballad, a young woman elects not to follow advice given to her and goes to the woods where she meets an elf who seduces her and she becomes pregnant.  She attempts to abort the pregnancy but the elf talks her out of it and mentions that he is apparently scheduled to be a human sacrifice.  He shares with her secrets that allow her to rescue him from the elf-lands, and they are married.  The elf-queen, however, curses her for taking away the fairest of her company.
   
   Indeed, premarital sex, occultism, births out of wedlock, and even incest, murder of one's own children or other relatives, etc. are common themes in older ballads including not only the afore-mentioned one but also "Sheath and Knife" about an incestuous relationship that leads to murder, "Childe Waters" about a lord who gets a woman pregnant, tries to rid himself of her, misteats her, but eventually marries her, and "Famous Flower of Serving Men" which, like Childe Waters, also includes a good dose of cross-dressing as well.  The latter ballad is abut a lady whose mother arrainges the death of her husband and her child.  She cross-dresses as a man and enters the service of a king.  Eventually (usually by being visited by the spirit of the slain knight in the form of a dove), the king discovers what happened, had the mother put to death, and marries the cross-dresser.
   
   In all of these areas, one should only propose new solutions after justifying why the old solutions are fundamentally inadequate.
   
   
3. Occam's Razor
   
   When confronted with the question of how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, William of Occam reportedly answered, "One should not needlessly multiply entities."  The same holds true for any investigative, engineering, or social discipline.  This isn't to say one might not need to have duplication of effort in some cases, but this should be minimized and each area should be justified.
   
   An important corollary to this principle is that simplicity is to be preferred over complexity.  Where we make changes, they should be aimed at simplifying things rather than building up an immense, crufty organization (as we have currently with the government, I'm afraid).

These principles don't tell anyone what side of an issue to take.  People can apply them to both sides of most issues.  However, they form a disciplined framewor which, if followed, can hopefully lead to intelligent dialog on issues.  Additionally, I think public policy would be benefitted by following these principles and pushing for slow, incrimental change over various views (right or left) of social progress.     

Since it seems that my last piece could be seen as Antiamerican somehow, I wanted to write about what I think America does right.  Liberty and Justice are the words that come to mind.  We have a surprisingly fair court system.  But in the end, we hope never to have to worry about that.

That brings me to Liberty, or Freedom.  In this post, I will cover freedom of speech and religion.

In Brandenburg v. Ohio, the US Suprepe Court determined that even the most viscious racist statements by members of the KKK were protected speech so long as they were not likely and intended to cause imminant lawless action. This expanded upon previous rulings upholding the right of branches of the Communist Party to discuss their views including even the abstract principle of the necessity for overthrow of the current government (provided that this was not done in concert with concrete steps to make this happen). See Yates v. United States.

THe idea that we should seek to prevent any groups from competing in the marketplace of ideas by using government interference goes against at least the last 50 years of legal tradition.

We are very fortunate to live in a country which takes the freedom of speech to a level almost unheard of elsewhere in the world. If you don't believe me do research into hate speech laws in Europe, blasphemy laws in Europe and South-East Asia, and so forth. Freedom of speech is one of the things my country (the USA) does very well and I am very proud of it.

Freedom of religion is another. Few if any other countries in the world have the freedom of religious belief that we do in this nation. Religious groups don't have to seek official sanction of our government except for tax status (note that LeVey's Church of Satan is a *for profit* corporation and does not fall under these tax benefits we give churches, so it is possibly best seen as a great expression of American entrepreneurialism).

Freedom of religion in our Constitution is guaranteed by two clauses in our First Amendment: The Establishment Clause and the Free Excersize Clause. I would argue that forbidding any individual from having a reasonably simple symbol on his or her headstone in a military funeral is a violation of at least one of these clauses.

In the debate over Dennis Prager's comments, I hear many people suggest that Prager is right because we are a so-called Christian nation.  They suggest that all or most of the Founding Fathers were Christian, and that Christianity has been the foundation of the moral values of our society.

Instead I contend that the Founding Fathers were a fairly diverse group ranging from Jefferson who was only as Christian as he felt he had to be politically, to people like Washington (an open Freemason), and others.  What united them was an inspired vision of a nation which protected the rights of religious and political minorities, and was based on a pluralism that is at its heart inconsistant with any monotheistic religion.  To the extent that our Founding Fathers were Christian (and I don't doubt that many were in their personal lives), they did not seem to fear the influence of other religions.

Hence we have the clause in the Constitution that forbids religious tests for any who hold office.

Furthermore, I contend that our government is run along Classical (and Pagan) as opposed to Christian principles.  Let us look at a few examples.  I will start with the 10 Commandments and see how well these are followed:

1:  You shall have no other gods before Me.

I suppose this is why our legislative building was named after the head Roman temple to Jupiter and why the statue of the Pagan Goddess Libertas stands atop the dome.  The Capitolus was litterally the "head temple" in ancient Rome.  Seems like we fail this one if the government is a Christian entity.

I suppose the legalistic theologians representing this matter decided that it would meet the letter of the Law if, in our Pledge of Allegiance we put the Judeo-Christian God before all others by putting the words "under God" before the names of the pagan goddesses "Liberty and Justice."  While this might meet the letter of the 1st Commandment, it hardly is in line with most interpretations.

2:  No graven images.

Even by the most legalistic standards, I would think that putting the Eye of Providence on our 1 dollar bill (the eye in the triangle atop the pyramid) on the graving plates of our national mints would violate this one.

3:  Wrongful use of the name of God.

Printing "In God We Trust" on Money?  Certainly from a Christian perspective one cannot serve both Mammon and God, so why confuse the two?  Why not give unto Caesar what is Caesars?

4:  Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

I suppose that the government really has little to do with this one way or the other.

5:  Honor your father and mother.

I suppose our Governement really doesnt have a way to do this...

6:  Do not murder.

It is on the basis of this that many Christian denominations, from the Catholics to the Quakers oppose the death penalty.

7:  Do not commit adultery.

Not sure what it would mean for a governmental body to commit adultery.  Certainly enough presidents have been womanizers though.  And probably congressmen too....

8:  You Shall Not Steal.

Ok, I am going to say something fairly controversial here.  But the Spanish-American war seems to be a gross violation of that one.

9:  No false witness.

Does anyone actually think at this point that false witness wasn't born in the run-up to the Iraq war?

10:  Do not covet neighbor's wife or posessions:

Our government certainly has done a fair bit of that (overthrowing Arbenz in Guatamala is one example).


Please note:  On the whole, I still think that America is a good thing.  Even the American government is a good thing.  To those who insist on hating America, I can suggest that you go live somewhere else for a few months and come back.  You will see things differently.

My point is simply that we are not a nation built and run on Christian principles.  We have other strengths including a commitment to diversity, democracy, Liberty, and Justice which is hard to find in the rest of the world.  And the generosity, goodwill, and determination of the American people know no bounds.  Many people throughout the world and here at home may hate the American government but that is different from hating the nation or hating our people.  I have never found anyone to hate me as an American for example and I have met people from many, many parts of the world.  Our nation is indeed great regardless of what principles our republic rests upon.     

I think people should actually look into the Iranian system of government sometime. On the surface and on paper, it seems like it should be a great system. It has democratic institutions, a democratically elected legislative body, a democratically elected presidency, a judicial system, protection for religious minorities (including guaranteed positions in the parliament), and so forth.

However, for some time, Iran has been hopelessly at odds with itself. The reason is that Iran is constitutionally an Islamic republic, and it falls upon the Council of Guardians to ensure that the country continues to operate in accordance with the principles of Islam. In order to do this, the CoG has at their disposal their own army and police force, the right to throw members of parliament in jail for speaking out against them, and veto power in matters of legislation and foreign policy.

Iran stands as a testament to what is required to establish a national religion and the detrimental effects that has on democracy. What is worse, as far as relations between Muslims and non-Muslims, Iran does quite well in the Muslim world (which gives you an idea of how bad it is in places like Indonesia).

The issue of theocracy in America would not come about in the way it did in Iran, with appropriate safeguards to protect minority religions, but in the way it came about in Indonesia. Indonesia also has a French-style parliamentary system but an American-style directly-elected president. The nation is 80% at least nominally Muslim with the only other recognized religions being Evangelical Protestantism (they call it Christianity), Catholicism, Hinduism, and Buddhism.

In Indonesia, the Muslim majority use their position to try to find ways of forcing their social and religious views on everyone else. Mobs using Ramadan as an excuse to vandalize bars and night clubs are relatively frequent. Also recently there was a law passed to require non-Muslim private schools to have a Mosque on campus and pay an Imam to teach the students about Islam. When a high-ranking member of the Roman Catholic priesthood objected on the air, he was attacked as he left the studio.

I don't really see a difference between the situation in Indonesia and the attempt of a small portion of Christians in this country trying to legislate based on religion. WHether the issue is abortion, gay marriage, animal sacrifice by Yoruba religions, or any other hot topic, the debate really ought to center around social issues and not religious texts or biases. So what if Voodoo practitioners want to sacrifice a chicken, or if a Brazilian church (the UVD) wants to use halucinogens in their services (the Supreme Court wisely and unanimously upheld their right to do so)? So what if a gay couple wants the same legal protections as a straight couple? Why do we have to use religion as the primary issue in these things?