So what happens to the extra money if you make more than $100 million?  You donate it or it is forfeited to the US government.  You get to look like a mensch even if you aren’t one.

My reasoning for this is that pooling resources doesn’t do society any good.  You can’t take it with you when you die, so it should go back into society.  Also, there are ancillary costs to society caused by people in pursuit of lucre.  For example, there are many environmental messes that have been caused by people and corporations, and the mess exists long after the money is gone.

There should also be a cap on net worth of around 10 times the annual cap.  Accumulating wealth that is equivalent to 20,000 times the salary of an average person seems like enough for one life.

Please pardon my delay in responding to you.  I have been busy, and I suppose you have been also.  I hope this finds you in good health.

One of the acknowledged problems with twitter is the 140 character limit, which makes meaningful communication difficult.  I will use this as a way to better answer your questions and respond to your tweets.

We arrived here by my comments with regard to the use of the word ‘sexist’.  I wrote a longer piece about it and sent you a link and you responded with the tweets below.  I didn’t respond to your tweets as they happened, so allow me now.

With regard to your assertion that ‘as a man, you don’t get to be the final arbiter on what is sexist or not”.  My initial reaction to this was going to be, “What are you, a chick?”, but I didn’t post that.  But seriously, you should go down to the store and buy some balls, because someone has ripped yours off.  There is no way that I will agree to your axiomatic statement that being of the male gender abrogates my use of the word.  It is my right to use whatever word I want in my search for communication.  It is my responsibility to make sure, to the best of my ability, that the signifiers I use approximate the signified of the recipient.  (I don’t know if you have read anything in the area of semiotics or ethics, but there are some code words there that you would recognize if you had.)

Somehow, the point was lost that the word being used as a cudgel was ‘sexist’, not ‘lady’.  This persisted after you read my explanation of it in a post titled “On using the word ‘sexist’”.

Your point about humor is well taken.  Context is everything.  Many is the comedian who has made a bad joke soon after some event and had to follow it up with “Oh, too soon?”

Which brings us to your comments with regard to your religion.  You seem to have conflated my responsibility to respect your rights with regard to religious preference with a respect for the religion itself.  Respect for your rights to practice a religion does not equate to respect for the religion you happen to practice.  Lest you think that I am in the habit of mocking religion, let me reassure you that I am not.  Unlike belief or faith in other things not seen or testable, I have seen religion help people live better lives.  Some of these people credit a religion for allowing them to break the hold of addiction, so to me it doesn’t matter if there are thousands of self-righteous hypocrites who are deserving of whatever scorn is heaped on them.  That one who needs religion to not slide into a hell of addiction is reason enough to put down the shovel and walk away from the scorn pile.

But if you want to talk about your religion, I am happy to oblige.  You gave up a Protestant religion to adopt the religion that conforms to a desert patriarchy?  This doesn’t seem to square with your observed tendency  (if I am not mistaken) to support women.  You gave up the New Testament to adopt Old Testamentish doctrine?  There is too much to the New Testament that I can not give up.  Just this week, I encountered a situation that tried me in ways that I did not anticipate.  The words from John 8 comforted me.  ”For he that is among you that is without sin, let him cast the first stone.”  I haven’t read extensively in your holy books, but from what I have seen by those who try to be strict adherents of those texts, stoning is the first option.

Perhaps, like comedy, religion is context oriented.  I note from your brief biography that you live in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of New York City.  I have never visited there.  I have been to the city on business, but have not had to opportunity to explore.  I subscribe to the New York Times and it affords me a window into the region.  I did read “The Color of Water” and I have wondered why it has not been made into a major motion picture.  I picked it up in the airport at Las Vegas on a business trip.  It kind of stood out among the literary detritus and soft porn in the book store.

From what I understand, the Red Hook neighborhood is not part of Bedford-Stuyvesant and my reference to that very good book is not an example of “they all look alike”.  Since I don’t live in your city, my understanding of it is discrete, not continuous. (yeah, that’s an engineering reference).   But it is also a point in the continuum of trying to understand religion.  I don’t know if you have read the book, but the title is part of an answer to a question by the author.  He had asked his mother, “What color is God?” and she responded, “God is the color of water.”  The story of this woman’s search for love and meaning in life touched me, as did the story of the author who also tried to find that love and meaning in life.

The reference I made earlier, to ethics, was to my use of the words, “rights” and “responsibility”.  Those are the two sides of the ethics balance and we need to evaluate them as we make our way in life.  There are those who seem to think that by merely examining rights can situations be resolved.  Politicians are at the forefront of this method.  They find an appeal to rights wins more attention than an appeal to responsibilities.  One of the weaknesses of our Constitution is that it has a Bill of Rights, but not a countervailing Bill of Responsibilities.  It should be noted that there is one class of citizens that seems to think that things can be settled by examination of rights only.  Toddlers.  Anyone who has parented a toddler is well acquainted with the Toddler Rules of Ownership.  This is one version.

1. If I like it, it’s mine.
2. If it’s in my hand, it’s mine.
3. If I can take it from you, it’s mine.
4. If I had it a little while ago, it’s mine.
5. If it’s mine, it must never appear to be yours in any way.
6. If I’m doing or building something, all the pieces are mine.
7. If it looks just like mine, it is mine.
8. If I saw it first, it’s mine.
9. If you are playing with something and you put it down, it automatically becomes mine.
10. If it’s broken, it’s yours.
11. If it’s broken, but you are having fun playing with the pieces, it’s mine again.
12. If there is ANY doubt, it’s mine.

I bring this up, because our concept of human rights, in the Western world, does not spring directly from any religion.  To the best of my knowledge, the concept of human rights is not addressed in the Bible.  Being a Muslim, you can answer better for your religion.  It is my position that our concept of human rights derives from the idea of property rights.  In the Western tradition, that is anchored by the Magna Carta which secured property rights and limited the rights of the king.  The line of derivation continues through the Reformation, which broke the power of the Catholic theocracy and led to Locke and “consent of the governed”.  In my readings of commentary on Islam, I don’t see any such parallel.  From my perspective, Islam offers no path to any continuation of our moral betterment.

I do see we pitiful humans as being on a path of moral betterment.  In the world of things that can be measured, that should be our goal.  I have used the word “measure” several times, and I am using in the context of my epistemological journey.  I have started a taxonomy of truth and have identified the two major types of truth: things that are defined to be true and things that are determined to be true.  In the latter, there are things that are determined to be true by measurement.  Religion lives within the realm of things defined to be true.  But in the world of things that are true by measurement, religion can help us toward a goal of moral betterment.

Moral betterment is only possible through a belief in free will.  Kathleen Vohs and Jonathan Schooler write in this paper(PDF) that encouraging a belief in determinism increases cheating.  I have never been comfortable with the expression, “everything happens for a reason”.  That belief precludes random events in the universe and I will not accept that axiomatically.  Accepting that assertion precludes reason.

And that is where I part with religion.  If you rejected being a Baptist as being part of a White culture, I can understand that.  If you note that John Newton was converted and still served on slaving ships, yeah, there seems to be some hypocrisy there.  For my part, if I were to ever return to Christianity, it would be as a Mennonite, if only because of their pacifism.  Baptists gave up pacifism and sided with Oliver Cromwell, but you probably knew that.

I have written before about religion and ethnic divide.  In my hometown of Holland, Michigan, there were extended families in Reformed and Christian Reformed churches.  For those families without two Dutch parents, there were other churches.  The point is this: in a town that was homogeneously white, there were still divisions along clan and family lines.  A cursory look at Islam shows that much of Islam is divided on ethnic lines.  The major division between Sunni and Shia was along ethnic lines.

The story of America is the story of its underclasses.  America has had rich and powerful men, but the dream of America is the dream of betterment, and that dream is most alive in its underclasses.  And the biggest underclass in America are those people of African heritage who have been brought to our shores.   The language that we have adopted accepts this as a characteristic.  The norm is to use the expression, “light skinned Black”, for someone who is nearly as white as the side of my house yet bearing however noticeable Negroid features.  We should weep with joy that there are people of African heritage who would say “I am American” because it is the triumph of an idea over all too observable circumstance.

I was thinking of two guys I knew in the Army in 1973.  Sp4 (later Sgt.) Terry and Sgt. Willie Broadnax.  Sgt. Terry was drafted, served in Vietnam, got out, and came back in.  Sgt. Terry talked about hating the Army and various things that had gone on in Vietnam.  He left he Army and travelled to Africa.  He said that people there told him he smelled funny.  And to my nose, the Black soldiers I knew in the Army did smell different.  I have no doubt that pheromone production, along with appearance, is a matter of genetic expression.  Sgt. Terry went to Africa because he wanted to be African.  But he came back and was wont to say, “Fuck that shit.  I’m an American.”  Sgt. Broadnax liked to say that “Uncle Sam tried to kill my Black ass.  He sent me to Vietnam to get killed, but I fooled him.  He couldn’t kill me, can’t kill me.”  I think Sgt. Broadnax had a lot of issues, probably well founded issues, to work through.  His wife seemed like a gracious woman and his kids seemed well balanced.

And the kids are what it is about.  I was raised to see color of skin.  I have tried to not raise my kids that way.  I remember being in the video store one time in Seattle  and another guy was with his kid.  Bookzilla noted how he and I were a lot alike, not how we were different.  I hope our kids can continue to strive toward that goal of moral betterment.

I remember being on Rainer Avenue, near MLK Way some years ago.  I lived about a mile from there and went down to get gas.  As I was fueling, a guy rode up on his motorcycle.  It was an impressive machine.  It was a Harley, white and turquoise with chrome and gold accents.  I have never been a Harley person, but that was a nice looking bike.  The rider was a Black guy, about my size, 6’4″, 230.  The way he rode up was like out of a movie and he could have been out of Central Casting.  Jeans, boots, vest, beanie helmet; he looked like he was ready for a print advert shoot.  He put his bike on the side stand, got off  and turned around in time to see the Chinese guy following him pop the clutch on his sedan, lurch forward and bump into the prized motorcycle.  And it dumped.  Bang.  The Chinese guy was about 5’4″, 120 lbs.  The rider was pissed.  He could have snapped the Chinese guy in half.  After a bit, the Chinese guy got out to help the owner pick the bike up  by lifting on the rear wheel.  But all he managed to do is unleverage the pivot point and slide the motorcycle along the ground.  The rider motioned for the driver (who didn’t seem to speak much English) to back off and he got the bike up and onto its side stand, and started collecting insurance information.

I tell this story because at no point did the bike rider go ethnic on the car driver.  I drove away thinking that the bike rider was a better man than me.  I would have at least made some comments about the driver’s poor driving skills, probably while staring him down.  I also thought that maybe we were becoming better, bit by bit.

I close with an apology for making a reference to your testicles and going shopping.  That was out of line.  If you have read this far, really, I’m sorry.  But I won’t apologize for looking at two things in your bio: “Astrologer. Thinker.” and saying “Really?  Doesn’t one preclude the other?”  Rationality should preclude belief in things like astrology.  Or vice versa.  You should read the paper I linked to above with regard to believing in Fate.

With warmest regards,

Dan

Let’s talk, in particular, about what’s happening in Europe — not because all is well with America, but because the gravity of European political developments isn’t widely understood.  First of all, the crisis of the euro is killing the European dream. The shared currency, which was supposed to bind nations together, has instead created an atmosphere of bitter acrimony.  Specifically, demands for ever-harsher austerity, with no offsetting effort to foster growth, have done double damage. They have failed as economic policy, worsening unemployment without restoring confidence; a Europe-wide recession now looks likely even if the immediate threat of financial crisis is contained.

Krugman goes on in depth about Hungary, and you should read it.

Read it here.

I was an Army combat correspondent with the First Air Cavalry Division in 1965-66.  One day in December 1966 I accompanied a group of Army doctors and dentists to a remote hamlet in Binh Dinh Province. As we approached the village we took sniper fire, but nobody was hit. In this hamlet we held a sick call, passed out soap, toothpaste and toothbrushes, Band-Aids and antibiotic gel. We treated minor cuts, scrapes and infections and filled or pulled several teeth. In the process we found about 30y boys and men with cleft palates. These individuals were all related to each other; one doctor thought the condition might be genetic. A few weeks later we returned, set up a large tent and turned it into a sterile operating theater. I scrubbed in and used a waterproof camera that I immersed in an antibacterial solution. The doctors repaired every cleft palate, and returned twice for followups. They took sniper fire every time. The patient in this photo was the village headman.

America isn’t a perfect place, and we aren’t perfect.  But we should remember the legacy we bear.

In this quiet academic, John Bigelow found a resonating French voice for the American cause of Union and liberty. And in “la question amércaine,” Laboulaye and French liberals found a way of reawakening the debate over the future of democracy in France, America and the rest of the world.

Read it.

It was fairly easy to find the circular logic in claims of capital punishment being immoral, because they too often consisted of “Capital punishment is immoral!  So there!” kinds of arguments.  Not that it is easy to find an argument to state that capital punishment is moral, it is just easy to obviate the reverse.

Until now.

It is immoral to execute people for crimes when the criminal justice system rests on a failed system of equivalent advocacy.  The criminal justice system as it is currently composed does not exist to find the truth.  The premise is that the two parties are equal before the bar, that the rights of the accused are protected and that the prosecution works in the best interest of the People to redress wrongs.  And this is not true.

Aeschylus wrote in the Oresteia that the move from a system of clan based vengeance to a system of laws is one of the things that marked societal advancement.  But we have not given up capital punishment, this vestige of tribal revenge based justice.  Furthermore, it is clear that we seem incapable of administering it without mistake.

It has been clear for a long time that the criminal justice system tilts against the poor.  Perhaps the poor commit more crimes, I don’t know.  But it is clear that once a poor man has an encounter with the criminal justice system, the outcome is usually more convictions and stiffer sentences.  There are those that say that the criminal justice system is biased against people of color.  It is not clear that the data supports that position.  But it is a national tragedy that such a large percentage of certain ethnic groups has a much higher felony conviction rate than others and that should be addressed.

In discussing capital punishment, I would point out serious problems with the system as it currently exists.

• The criminal justice system doesn’t have a national standard for evidence.
• Capital cases before the bar are many times driven by the political aspirations of the prosecutor.
• Capital punishment is not pursued evenly.

The standard for evidence is scattered through case law, code law and textbooks.  Investigating officers sometimes take notes, sometimes video tape, sometimes reconstruct conversations.  Witnesses can be coerced and it never enters the body of evidence.  ”Tough on crime”.  There is a sitting congressman who claims to have been the man who brought the Green River Killer to justice.  This is not true, but he got a lot of media attention and used it as a springboard for his political aspirations.  The Green River Killer, Gary Ridgway, preyed on prostitues.  He is believed to have killed 71 women.  He may have killed more.  But he is still alive, having bartered knowledge of his crimes in exchange for a release from the death penalty.

It is patently clear that Texas executed an innocent man in Cameron Todd Willingham.  The  legal system did not protect the accused in this case, but bent the system to seek a conviction and execution.  The governor impeded the investigation into the case and his handling of it, and there were no repercussions.  In fact, in a focus group, one of his political supporters said, “It takes balls to execute an innocent man.”

In the past, I have not associated myself with capital punishment opponents in part because there were a lot of people in that camp who were against anything that the government did that was not in their particular world view.  They were vocal, impractical, too willing to try to win arguments by volume and repetition, not rational thought.  I try to keep distance between myself and people of that ilk.

Troy Davis was executed last night and he should not have been.

Enough.  I have had enough.  I am now firmly in the anti-capital punishment camp along with all the unlearned vituperative types who also rant against a broad spectrum of wrongs, as they imagine them.

Capital punishment is a vestige of a justice system that was based on revenge.  It is time for us to leave it behind.

Capital punishment is wrong, it is immoral as it is currently practiced.

We should stop it and try to recover the moral position that we imagine ourselves to hold.

And this is a public relations campaign.  But I don’t know what the goals are.  Remind people of religion?  Win new converts?  I don’t know.  Do you remember “WWJD”?  What would Jesus do?  That was a public relations campaign intended to establish the belief in Jesus as an aid to a moral life.  It gave wearers a touchstone facsimile for making moral decisions.  It identified wearers to each other as if they were part of a club.

There are those who say that organized religion is an unregulated tax-exempt business providing counseling and advice to an insular group.  I am not among them.  Most of those words could be easily defended, but I have known people for whom religion was the only thing that kept them from sliding into a life of bad choices, principally substance abuse.  I won’t disparage religion because if it helps one person stay on a good path and helps them be a responsible parent to their children, I’m okay with it.

But public relations campaigns by churches tend to get my attention.  A couple of years ago, it was the Catholics with “Catholics Come Home“.  Most people could see the Catholic Church as a welcoming place, it was just that uncle with the wandering hands who was a problem.  The Catholic Church did not do enough to dispel the spectre of centuries of sexual and other abuse at the hands of church officials.  Quite frankly, how could they?  They had painted themselves into a corner with the doctrine of church infallibility.  Since that campaign rolled out, there have been more reports of historical abuse in Ireland, which is practically a theocracy.  But I digress.

Jesus is what?  Fill in the blank.  I was riding with Bookzilla and pointed out the bumper sticker.  I told her that I wished I had a silver sharpie so I could write in “smokin’ hot”.  She cracked up, and laughed about as hard as I have ever seen her laugh.  A couple of days later, we were in back of a car bearing a “Jesus is” bumper sticker and the driver couldn’t seem to decide which direction to go.  After dodging right and left a few times, the driver pulled off the street.  ”Jesus is a bad driver” got a laugh from Bookzilla.

If Christians want to communicate something about Jesus, let it be by example, not by public relations.

9/11 Memorial app for iPad and iPhone is a free download today

Oh, stop already.  This digusts me.

The attacks could have been prevented if the Bush Administration had been focused on information readily available to them, rather than committed to a broad goal of revisiting the Cold War.  They never took responsibility for their actions and deployed the addage of “Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter accusations”.  If the attacks of 9/11 were such a seminal event, the victims deserved better than that.  If the attacks were not a seminal event, then why the big fuss about them?

Fetishizing the attacks of 9/11 make them into more than they were and elevates the people who attacked us.  We should treat the attackers for what they were: little narcissistic people bent on hurting people they don’t know or understand.  The correct response to the attacks of 9/11 was, “You call that an attack?  Never touched me.”  It was not a deep and grievous wound.  It did not harm us that much.  We are still here.  That should have been the message: You can’t hurt us because you don’t understand us and the principles we represent.

Ah, yes, principles.  Those were too easily discarded by Cheney et Co.  Torture became a modus operandi of first resort.  We should focus on the divisions in our society uncovered by these attacks.  It is troubling that a sizable portion of the society thinks that torture is acceptable.  It is despicable that some of them already hold high office and think they are suited for the highest office in the land.

We should also focus on the way that elections no longer work in their current formulation.  The central axiom of a representative democracy such as ours is that elected officials face an accounting on their actions via the ballot box.  In truth, Congressional districts are massaged to better ensure incumbents are re-elected, voter suppression is a primary electoral strategy by one party, and public relations wars are waged to keep people in office.  The central axiom is false, and should be addressed.

The attacks of 9/11 have significance, we are just not noticing it.

In response to a special education official who said there was “no such thing as an uneducatable person,” Shakir told a gym full of citizens: “I would dispute that fact. There are certainly individuals that are uneducateable. I am simply suggesting to you and everybody else that there should be a line drawn where the taxpayer is responsible to educate certain people.”

I watched the video and I think Shakir has a point.  We should be having a discussion about this.

1. Is the school system the place and method for dealing with those people who are so learning disabled that they may need care for the rest of their lives?
2. Who should pay for it?
3. What is the responsibility of society in this case?

I don’t know the answers for these questions, but we should be asking them and trying to answer them.  Shakir’s interlocutor/interrogator says the following in response.

You are physically making me sick. What you are saying, Mr. Shakir, is immoral, unethical, and illegal.

The guy was telling Shakir how he felt.  Why?  Why was that important.  You are sick?  Then puke.  Oh, you aren’t puking?  You are exaggerating?  Why?  Why exaggerate?  The guy then goes into statements that can not be true.  Immoral?  Why was it immoral?  Shakir was talking about public policy and it is a matter of discussion.  Unethical?  There was no talk of rights and responsibilities.  Only the statements meant to shame Shakir.  I don’t thing the guy in the vest really know anything about ethics.  I think he thinks he knows, but that does not convey knowledge.  Illegal?  I doubt it.

To be clear, Shakir has some weird ideas, but this clip is not the damning evidence that Amato thinks it is.