Paul's Blog of Wisdom

I have mixed feelings about the death penalty, but here's an argument for it that I've never heard anyone use. I personally think it's a relatively good argument. Okay, let's imagine that our society didn't punish any criminals. So, we have this imaginary society in which someone can rape and murder a 7-year-old girl and the society didn't punish this guy. Everyone would agree that a society which tolerated this behavior like this is immoral, right? How could we possibly tolerate such awful actions? Basically everyone would agree that a society which didn't punish people who raped and murdered little girls was disgustingly immoral and uncivilized. Okay, now let's imagine that this society changed their laws so that this person who raped and murdered the 7-year-old girl would go to jail for a day. This would make our society a little more moral and civilized, right? That would show that we had some lack of tolerance for this horrendous behavior, if only a little bit. So, we moved a little bit in the right direction here. Now, let's imagine that we changed the law to have this person go to jail for a month. Now, we've moved even more in the right direction. Now, we as a society tolerate this awful behavior even less. Changing this to a year of jail would show we tolerate it even less and that we've become even more moral and civilized as a society. In other words, the more we punish the most awful of behaviors, the more we show that we don't tolerate them and the more moral and civilized we become, or so I would argue. Let's carry this out to it's logical conclusion. If having stronger and stronger punishments for the most vile crimes shows the degree of morality and civilization of a society, doesn't that mean that only a society that uses the strongest of possible punishments is a moral and civilized society? Let me put that another way. If we use the strongest punishment for the most horrible crimes, we as a society are saying that we do not in any way tolerate these awful crimes, so, therefore, we are civilized and moral. If we don't use the strongest possible punishment for someone who, for instance, goes out and rapes and murders children, aren't we basically saying that we, at least to some tiny extent, tolerate the systematic rape and murder of children?

This is something that has bothered me for a long time, but it was an article in The Economist that I read today that put it in the front of my mind. The article was about the idea of eliminating the estate tax. The article constantly talked about how much eliminating the estate tax would "cost." Over and over, the article said that eliminating the tax would "cost" so and so amount of money. I hate this terminology. What people so often forget is that that money isn't the government's in the first place. The Economist, and many other people, act like tax money is rightfully the government's and deciding to take less of it away is a horrible "cost" to the government. Let's think of it this way. If you're a schoolyard bully and you beat up another student and take $5 away from him every day for months, then all of a sudden you decide to start beating him up and only taking $4 away from him every day, is your new policy "costing" you $1 a day? Would it be right to deride your new policy as a horrible "cost" to you? Of course not, because the money wasn't rightfully yours in the first place. Why don't people get this? Whatever you personally think about the estate tax, I hate this terminology.

“Market forces are also driving down the cost of the program. McClellan noted in the same testimony that beneficiary premiums are expected to average $25 a month--down from the $37 projected last summer. And, ‘the overall cost to taxpayers for 2006 has dropped about 20 percent since the July 2005 estimate.’ Projected costs over a 10-year period have plummeted by about $130 billion. When was the last time you heard the government ‘overestimated’ costs of a program” (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/284fbndm.asp).

Had you heard about this? I’ll bet that you hadn’t. Yet, I’ll bet that you heard when the original estimate went up from $400 billion to $500 whatever billion. No media bias? Of course not.

I love that so many people still call George Bush a right-wing extremist. Let's look at some of the things that he's done. Federal government spending has increased under George Bush more rapidly than under any President since Lyndon Johnson. Medicare has expanded by hundreds of billions of dollars worth of spending. Social spending is now higher than it's ever been, even when adjusted for inflation. He pushed a huge increase in federal spending and control over education. He voted for the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill. He nominated Harriet Myers for the Supreme Court. He barely stood up for that Christian who was going to face a possible death sentence in Afghanistan for the "crime" of converting to Christianity. He barely stood up for freedom of speech during the cartoon jihad controversy. He favors allowing illegal immigrants to stay in the country and become legal. Do these sound like the actions of a right-wing extremist? Whatever you think of these individual things that I listed here, they are clearly not the actions of a right-wing extremist?

It looks like a bill could pass Congress as early as this month that would give “native Hawaiians” the same legal independence as “native Americans” (the “N” was not capitalized on purpose) and “native Alaskans” (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/270hjrvh.asp). What is wrong with people? It appears that every Democratic Senator will vote for this with several Republicans also voting for it. If that’s true, only a Presidential veto would stop it and I doubt that would happen because Bush has lately been trying to pander to minority votes to “expand the Republican base.” *Sigh* This will be a great liberal triumph and will cement current liberalism as the ideology of racial separation. When will liberals realize that things like this bring us farther from, not closer to, Martin Luther King’s dream of having people be judged by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skin? Apparently, liberals want nothing more than to segregate the entire country into racial zones and to judge every single person by the color of their skin. I guess it’s not enough to judge who should get a job or who should get into college based on the color of a person’s skin. Now, we are going to have “native American” racial zones and “native Alaskan” racial zones and “native Hawaiian” racial zones. What’s next, autonomy for Mexicans? Oh, you’d better believe that many Mexicans will be pushing for this if the Hawaii thing passes. The governor of Hawaii, who is unfortunately a Republican totally betraying conservative principles, ran with this as a major part of his/her platform. How long before someone runs for governor of a state with a high Hispanic population—say, California—with giving Mexicans political autonomy as a major part of their platform? You know that it’s their land land, after all, right, or so many of them think? How long after that before Congress, in the 2 parties’ attempts to be the bigger racial panderer, passes a law giving Hispanics political autonomy in the southwestern U.S.? If this Hawaii bill passes, I predict that California will have at least 1 gubernatorial candidate this year with political autonomy for Mexicans as a major part of his/her platform. It will start out as just a fringe candidate, but it will grow over time. You just watch. When will people realize that these are the logical results of the racial separation that liberals have been practicing for the last several decades? Liberals have been working systematically to divide our country along racial lines at least my whole life. There’s no such thing as someone simply being an American anymore. There are only African-Americans or Asian-Americans or Mexican-Americans. It’s time that we stop identifying our race on census forms. It’s time that we stop putting our race on applications for college. It’s time we get rid of “native American” and “native Alaskan” autonomous political zones. It’s time we got rid of affirmative action for specific races or groups of people. Can’t people see that all these things do is perpetuate the idea that race matters and that races of people are different and deserving of different treatment? Liberals used to stand for real principles. Now all they stand for is the principle that the white man is always wrong and everyone else is always right.