In evaluating the utterance of any politician, I always make a mental comparison with the policies I believe would benefit of the world in the long run. Right away, you can see where this widens a certain gap, because politicians always cast this as a question of "what's right for the country." Apparently, they haven't learned that we don't exist in a vacuum and the world will have its way with us eventually, no matter how much we love the colors.
For one thing, the population of the earth is about 30 times that of the U.S. This is the sort of statistic that should give rise to some humility, but hasn't seemed to faze the Prez.
So, I should first state briefly what I think is in the long-term best interests of the world, which isn't really so different from what we would want for the U.S. or our state or even ourselves.
Our policy should be to address the big problems facing the human race. Our government should take on things that won't get solved any other way and it should take the lead among nations in addressing them.
Here is my list of Big Problems. I've listed a general area and the broadest statement of the problem we face in that area. I've confined this list to things that will destroy life as we know it if we let the problem get out of hand:
- Overpopulation: Can we keep population from growing to the point where our combined resource requirements destroy the Earth?
- Health: Can we to prevent and treat lethal diseases?
- War and Peace: Can we prevent the use of weapon of mass destruction, which in their runaway form would wipe out all humans?
- Space: Can we protect the earth from collision with any large body that would significantly alter the environment or cause widespread death among humans?
- Quality of Life: Can we provide the ability for all people to earn a living that gives them a functional life from start to finish?
- Freedom: Can we maintain the ability to function without interference in our lives not reasonably related to reciprocal respect for others?
- Environment: Can we maintain the environment free of clutter and toxins that would materially impact the quality of our lives?
The criteria for success on each of these items is to operate in such a way that we can reasonably foresee that the human race will survive indefinitely and not succumb to that challenge.
I'm not suggesting that other goals fall short of the proper scope of the Federal government, but these are the ones that are really in our "vital interests," where that phrase actually means what it says. For example, if we don't get population under control, nothing else will matter because there is a definite limit to the number of people we can support on Earth and we are within two or three generations of reaching that limit. (I could give you numerous examples of why this is true, but if you don't get this from your own experience I don't think you will be open to my views anyway.)
Now, let's just see how President Bush's speech stacks up.
"By bringing hope to the oppressed, and delivering justice to the violent, they [U.S. armed forces] are making America more secure."
Yes, if only. If only we were bringing hope to the oppressed and delivering justice to the violent, we would be making America (all the way from Argentina to the North Slope) more secure. But the jury is certainly out on this one. It will likely be a couple of decades before we know whether our efforts have done this. It doesn't look like there's been any change for the better in Iraq or Afghanistan, the places we have taken on as our Muslim little brothers.
For a glimpse of Iraq, try Sean Penn's brief visit detailed in http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/01/20/national1958EST0764.DTL. For a glimpse of Afghanistan, try http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/7700448.htm, where one of Afghanistan's deputy supreme court justices (Fazel Ahmed Manawi) said of a woman dancing on TV: "This mistake should not be repeated. In the constitution there is an article that says things that go against Islam are not allowed."
I'd put this under item number six (Freedom). Afghanistan is still a region that pretends to be a country. Iraq is under martial law. At best, they have the potential to have freedom and justice. To get it, they will need to do what we have done, borrow from other cultures the elements of freedom and justice. For example, the European settlers in North America noticed that the natives had very egalitarian societies in which a tribal council took many decisions. The collision of the largely English settlers with the natives gave birth to a new kind of democracy, one that consciously reached back to ancient Greek traditions for guidance. The Muslim world must absorb these elements and incorporate them into its own traditions to evolve their sense of freedom and justice.
So, call me a hopeless realist, but the way these people will get freedom is if it comes from within their own countries by intelligently interacting with others. We can most help them by not exploiting them for their resources (oil, opium) and by shutting down the international arms trade. Right, if only.
Next: "Americans are proving once again to be the hardest working people in the world."
Yes, it's true. Americans are working harder than ever. And on item number five (Quality of Life) we can see a very considerable lack of progress. According to the U.S. Census Bureau there were 34.6 million people in the U.S. alone below the official poverty line in 2002. (See http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty02.html and look for Poverty in the United States: 2002.)
When we consider that the poverty level implies a wage around $4.50/hour and the living wage in most communities is closer to $12/hour, this means that many millions more are struggling to meet the quality of life "objective" of living until they die (of natural causes at the end of a healthy and rewarding life).
So, for Quality of Life, chances for success if pursued to conclusion are zero. Taking money from the working class to give it to the rich will not bring success. The long-term implications of millions of people living below the true living wage is eventual dissolution into chaos.
Where is this trend headed? Let's go back to the 30:1 multiplier I noted up front. For every worker in the U.S. there are about 29 elsewhere. After globalization, each worker here is competing with 29 times as many competitors as before globalization (roughly speaking). Did you ever wonder where your wages went? Well, in a pure capitalist market, salary is driven entirely by supply and demand. If the supply suddenly increases enormously, the price point drops through the floor. The U.S. cannot maintain its current minimum wage in the face of this competition. Where we are headed is third-world wages and first-world prices. This is where the cream will rise to the top and the cow juice sink to the bottom, which is especially rich if you are born that way. (Rich, that is.)
"For the sake of job growth, the tax cuts you passed should be permanent."
Because we know that if wages are going down, the only way we can avoid paying higher taxes, as superrich folk, is to make sure that tax cuts are made permanent. You have to stay ahead of the curve.
World population is also growing at the equivalent rate of adding another United States about every four years. This is like saying that the world needs to create a couple hundred million new jobs every four years. Our businesses cannot create that many jobs, let alone well-paying "meaningful" jobs. The abundance of high-tech jobs in the 1990's was an aberration related to the double-bubble of the personal computer expansion fueled by the Internet expansion. It is not repeatable on demand and may not be repeatable at all. So, we can see that population growth is starting to impact the economy and seriously deteriorate Quality of Life.
What does this mean to immigration policy? Well, if we suddenly sponsor in a whole class of low-wage workers we will further deteriorate wages in the U.S. The proper policy is to do everything in our power to reduce population pressure. A good policy would be to remove the global gag rule and start spending liberally on family planning and related services in other countries. The goal should be to bring wages up to living wage standards in the developed world and help the developing world achieve sustainable levels of population and industry.
The standard of living is influenced at the gross level by two things: population and technology. Increases in population depress the standard of living by creating competition for jobs that drives down wages. Technology lifts the standard of living by increasing productivity. The way to wealth is to drive population down to a sustainable level and increase technology to the highest levels possible. Dispatching jobs to developing and forth-world countries reduces capital while subsidizing population growth. The predicted result is that companies and societies will be impoverished.
The correct policy is to remove all subsidies that favor population growth and fund pure research at the government level while encouraging technological development with favorable tax structures. This means eliminating the EIC and other "child-friendly" tax loopholes, removing any sponsorship of "marriage" of any kind from the tax system, and putting more of the burden of having and raising kids on the parents. In particular, we should require parents to donate significant time every quarter to their school systems or local libraries so that this relieves society of some of the financial burdens of providing this supplement. We can see from the State of the Union that the Union is moving in the opposite direction.
Next: "Key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire next year. The terrorist threat will not expire on that schedule."
Let's review item six (Freedom). Why is freedom vital? After all, plenty of people have lived in slavery. Couldn't we? Anyone who wants to answer in the affirmative should contact me immediately so that I can start to exploit them. Technically, you wouldn't cease to live without freedom; you'd just wish you had. So, I got it on the list and you can make your own judgments whether it belongs there. But I say it stays.
In order for an "act" (of Congress) to be a "law" in the U.S. it must be supported by the Constitution of the United States. Any act that doesn't conform to the Constitution (that is, in some way contradicts what the Constitution says) is not a law.
With that in mind, I refer you to Article IV of the Amendments to the Constitution:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
What this would mean is that, for example, if you were traveling with your papers and effects and someone wanted to stop and search you then they would need to have a reason to pick you (as opposed to anyone else who might be around) and that they would present you with a warrant that particularly described where they were going to search (your brief case or your briefs or whatever) and what they intended to seize. That is, they would tell you why they suspected you of a crime and show you an official government document from the courts giving them permission to search specific areas for specific things (areas and things that the court had pre-approved). Then the guys with the guns would go through what you have and get the evidence.
Again, what it would mean is that if you sent e-mail to your friend and the government wanted to examine it and search for something then some official would present you with a warrant and let you know the particular e-mail message they wanted to look at and what they were looking for.
Anything that doesn't measure up to this standard isn't a law; it's just an act. (A bad act, in my opinion.)
Something that's an act and not a law will eventually be thrown out by an independent court, although it may take a long time for the court to gain its independence enough to through it out.
So, how are we doing with the Patriot Act? Take a look at the Electronic Frontier Foundation's "EFF Analysis Of The Provisions Of The USA PATRIOT Act" (http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/Terrorism/20011031_eff_usa_patriot_analysis.php). According to this analysis "The civil liberties of ordinary Americans have taken a tremendous blow with this law, especially the right to privacy in our online communications and activities."
This doesn't sound like progress in freedom.
The biggest problem with the Patriot Act is not what it immediately does to our civil liberties, though we can imagine that is bad enough. The main problem is that it doesn't allow the people (remember them) to control the government. How can you when you don't even know that you are being snooped? Take any petty dictator, put them in the Oval Office with the Patriot Act and suddenly you have Richard Nixon. Well, maybe not, but what you'd have would be more like the joint reincarnation of Stalin, Lenin, Saddam Hussein, Chairman Mao and any hundred other bad guys rolled into one. Makes me nostalgic for Tricky and his double peace symbol.
So, here's the key question about the Patriot Act? How do you get your freedom back?
You can't. Freedom zero.
As it is getting late while I write this, I'm going to confine myself to just one other item, although I'm tempted to lampoon twenty more.
I'm picking this item even though it is another about freedom and I know that freedom isn't essential to life, only to human life. But this item underpins the whole house of cards that puffs up the abuse of power we've adjusted to as "normal" in this country, so it is important to understand this item for its relationship to many other issues. This item is the War on Drugs.
"In my budget, I proposed new funding to continue our aggressive, community-based strategy to reduce demand for illegal drugs. Drug testing in our schools has proven to be an effective part of this effort."
This is where we have to talk about something that has been a dirty little secret on the liberal side for a long time. Liberals have signed up to support the WoD (War on Drugs). This is inexcusable.
And we can see where this has led. We are now testing children for drugs. In other words, we are now training kids to be used to having the government break its own laws and violate their right to privacy. (You did read the above quote of the Forth Amendment, right?)
Let me further call your attention to a phrase the President used: "illegal drugs." How does a drug get to be illegal? Where does the Constitution give the power to the government to make a drug illegal? I've heard some people erroneously argue that this comes from the part about regulating interstate trade (Section 8, Clause 3); but regulate is different from prohibit, even if we grant the fiction that this is somehow about interstate trade.
No one would argue that children should be given these kinds of drugs. That is an evil that we really need to address and it is a matter of life and death for those involved. This is not about whether we want drugs in our schools.
It's about the law.
It's about teaching kids respect for the law.
It's about right and wrong.
It's ultimately about success.
When you do something wrong you get a bad result. When you invade someone's privacy, you are doing something wrong. The premise of the WoD is that it is okay for me to control what you ingest, inject or inhale. It isn't. That's your right because it's your body.
When we as liberals caved in on using the government to criminalize drug use rather than treating it as a medical problem, then we sewed the seeds of the Patriot Act and all the evils of the War on Terrorism. This was a liberal battle to fight and a liberal battle to win. We didn't stand up sufficiently at the start of this slide and now we are paying the piper.
Why is there war? In particularly, why is there a WoT (War on Terror) rather than a government policy of domestic protection. Let me quote you Mr. Bush:
"I know that some people question if America is really in a war at all. They view terrorism more as a crime, a problem to be solved mainly with law enforcement and indictments."
In other words, True Believers, don't be fooled by anyone who tells you that this isn't a real war and that we could get by with using real police work to track down criminals and put them in jail. Don't give in to the liberal siren song of returning to normalcy in civil rights and pulling our troops out of Iraq. You can't fight this "war" with a warrant.
Except, why is this a war? It's a war because our system, the Federal Government of the U.S., needs a war. It is hooked on wars the way whores are hooked on heroine. It got a taste of the rush of war in our Civil War, when it found it was okay to violate real laws to save itself in an "emergency". It went strait for a while, but then it got another taste when Flanders fields called and it got a little economic boost and a little extra legal juice. It was on the wagon for a few years, and then it got the real thing, WWII. Just like crack is not just a little cocaine, the big bucks and big power of that war got into the veins in Washington and it wouldn't let go.
Then it had a couple of bad trips. Korea was drudgery without much to show for it and didn't give you that real jolt you were used to. Vietnam was even worse, whole years going by like a bad dream and the life force started to weaken. Rehab was real bad after that, people trying to wean you away from years of sucking up money.
But then, you found a new supplier. If you couldn't go outside to get a good war, you found out that the dealers on the insider were just as good and had a great source. They gave you a new drug called the "War on Drugs." It was perfect. You could suck up all the money you wanted and take all the power you wanted from anyone. No one could stop you. If they tried, you would label them "soft on drugs!" You had protection!
And now you are on to the big stuff, the War on Terror. With that, you got it all. It makes you feel omnipotent. You have your hands in everyone's pockets and you can pull out whatever you want. You can try out all the neat phallic missile things you've been stockpiling and now you can justify a foreign war. You haven't given up your old habit of smoking a little WoD, but now you hardly care because you got WoT.
This is a war because Washington needs wars. Wars are where the power is. Once you've tasted true power, you have to have it again. It's an addiction. We have the War on Terror because Washington needs wars.
Otherwise, they'd do the police work and serve the warrants and get the indictments and put the criminals in jail. But that doesn't take nearly as much money and it doesn't put any real limits on your rights. It doesn't give the people in power the juice. It's boring. It's too much like real life. No thrills. No highs. Just plain old ordinary work that probably pays minimum wage.
The problem is that we, the people, need to be frugal and we need our servants to do real police work. If they don't, they won't find the one terrorist with the dirty bomb or the one extremist with the plutonium. We can't afford to put a hundred thousand troops in Iraq if we could spend a fraction of that sum on CIA operatives with good language skills who might locate the real problems.
So, now we find that freedom isn't just about living the good life. It's about living, period. It's about good judgment and putting our resources where they belong.
I think this is why Senator Kennedy was shaking his head when he heard Mr. Bush talk. He was thinking about how the liberals had caved in to the Administration on so much and where that has taken us as a country and us as a world. I think he regretted some of his decisions.
We cannot continue like this. We must insist that our liberal democracy be run by us liberals. We must put Washington, D.C., into rehab for good and squeeze all of the toxins out of the system. We must do this because we don't have much time and we don't have much space. If we don't kill the Patriot Act and shut down the WoT and the WoD and go back to a government by and for the people we will have lost everything that ten generations have built.
The State of the Union speech tonight was an unvarnished look at where we are headed if we don't change. It was a swaggering walk of someone who is proud of his achievements and doesn't even think he needs to put a political polish on them any more. Is this what the future holds for the greatest nation on Earth: Uncle Sam in a drunken stupor?