Why I Just Got Out of the Market Completely

America On the Threshold of a Second Recession

I just moved every single dime of my entire retirement portfolio, including 401k, out of all market-linked mutual funds and into no or low risk bond funds. I believe the stock market is severely over-valued presently, and that a nasty market correction is imminent. Economic growth is weak and stimulus-driven, unemployment is not improving, and I believe we are on the precipice of sliding perilously down the second jagged dip of a double-dip recession. Read on if you need convincing.

All of the rosy economic news we’ve heard over the past couple of months is déjà vu. Yes; we’ve been down this road before. During the Great Depression, things had started to look up around ’37. By then, unemployment had fallen to 14% from its high of 25% in ’33. GNP grew by 14% from 1935 to 1936. The stock market had regained 50% of its losses borne during the crash of 1929, but fell again in 1937, and remained bearish until the beginning of World War II. The mini-collapse of 1937 and the relative sluggishness of the economy thereafter snuffed out the light at the end of the economic tunnel for a nation struggling to regain a solid footing on its financial future.

In many ways, we are at the same point in the course of this so called “Great Recession.” It is important to point out that the present economic situation is in no way near the size, breadth, and scope of the Great Depression. The economic indicators underlying the 2008 recession are worlds away from those that followed in the years post-crash-1929. (Despite the emotional and sensationalized rhetoric and scare tactics that are carelessly thrown around by politicians and pundits, which draw comparisons of the present slowdown to the Great Depression, the 2008 recession is actually a stroll in the park, economically speaking, when compared to the Great Depression.) Despite these differences in scope and size, the two events do share structural similarities. Both are the bust side of boom and bust business cycles, both involved prodigious government spending, both have stubbornly high unemployment, and both appear to be protracted relative to other recessions, such as those of 1981, 1990 and 2001.

Second quarter 2010 GDP data showed that the economy has regained substantial momentum, and has surpassed GDP volume of the quarter just prior to the recession that took hold in the third quarter of 2008. The stock market has regained 80% of its pre-recession losses, and unemployment has finally budged a bit. While many may see all of these signs as tremendously positive, they are frankly frightening to me, and it feels eerily reminiscent of the fiscal environment of 1936.

The recovery we have seen over the past few months has just been too much too fast. The great economist John Maynard Keynes, who died in 1946, has been resurrected by both the Bush and Obama administrations. We don’t really understand how much of the gains in GDP are a function of Keynesian policy and stimulus spending rather than true organic economic activity and private investment: the engines that will take us once again into future prosperity. With 10% of the workforce remaining on unemployment benefits for the foreseeable future, it is difficult to believe that the recent vigor of key leading indicators, the markets in particular, are not swollen and overly inflated. Also, we mustn’t forget that the volumes of recent legislation has created new bureaucracy and added significant costs to doing business, which in turn has spooked private enterprise into freezing its hiring and expansion plans. People often forget that business does not have a mandate to hire and grow, and will simply choose not do so in the face of uncertain employee health care, regulatory, and tax costs. The volatility of the market since April, where swings by as much as 10% have been observed, is yet another sign pointing to the presence of another Wall Street bubble. Such volatility is indicative of investor tension and nervousness as they struggle to decide whether to stay in, or get out. When investors are confident, they get in and stay in, and such erratic fluctuations are seldom observed when confidence pervades.

If you want another reason to support a get-out-now investment strategy, then Google the term “Hindenburg Omen,” which is a set of technical criteria that has reliably predicted market declines 23 out of the past 25 times it has been triggered. The Hindenburg Omen was officially declared to be triggered, and confirmed by the Wall Street Journal on August 20, 2010. Red flags are flying everywhere.

When the bubble bursts—I believe the correction, perhaps even a mini-crash, will occur in late August or early to mid-September of 2011—I don’t want my money to be anywhere near the stock market. My advice is to get out now with some modest gains, and then get back in after the markets bottom out. Once it bottoms out, you can immediately jump right back in once a degree of equilibrium is attained. If you don’t know what to do, then pick up the phone, call your brokerage firm, and ask for the most conservative investment option available. Most good firms allow customers to make unlimited changes to their portfolios, and most will not charge fees for moving money from mutual funds to other types of investments such as bond funds. Make sure that your new accounts do not have any new fees associated with them and that the destination fund is compliant with all IRS guidelines governing employer-sponsored 401k plans.



DISCLAIMER: I am not a financial advisor, but just a regular Joe who is trying to hang on to his hard-earned money. So, please consult a professional before making any financial decisions. I could be wrong, and I don’t want any of you blaming me if by chance the market continues to rally.

The Liberating Effect of Forgiveness

The Remarkable Story of Corrie ten Boom

In a Church in Munich, Germany in 1947, a fat balding man in a gray overcoat clutched a brown felt hat as he walked down the aisle to the front of the sanctuary where an unassuming Dutch woman stood. He stretched out his hand toward her. She froze, caught off guard and stunned by the flood of emotions that momentarily drowned her sense of piety, as a wave of silent suspense swept over the room. Her heart was cold, iced over with a hatred few had ever known. Her eyes were glassy, and reflected rays of anger and resentment that pierced his soul as he stood exposed and vulnerable in an unenviable act of contrition. He had borne witness to fear many times before: the image of a mother’s eyes as she watched her infant daughter flail in pain while goons brutally took her life; of a husband’s face as he watched his wife and child herded to their deaths in the gas chambers; and the decrescendo of a girl’s cry as she succumbed to the soldiers’ animalistic acts of violation. But this time it was he who was gripped tenaciously with an all consuming fear, and he reasoned that he would rather be suffocating in a death chamber than looking into this woman’s eyes. As he stood there, he mustered the strength to push aside a wall of emotions and follow through with his purpose for being there. “Will you forgive me?” he asked as a tear welled up in his eye.

When Dr. Craig E Johnson wrote, “The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 reintroduced the word evil back into the national vocabulary.” he captured a social phenomenon that I have often pondered through the years since 9/11 (Johnson, pg. 105). Children of the seventies, like me, had never before experienced a generation defining tragedy. That is, an event so spectacularly heinous that it doesn’t just merely darken the moods of a few individuals, but rather provocatively arouses within the national consciousness an irrefutable, astounding and penetrating awareness that evil is real, ubiquitous, and intrinsic to the existence of humanity. It is an event with psychological and emotional effects that persist throughout the lives of those who witnessed it. It is a collective turning-point, and a milestone used to chronicle one’s life events by categorizing them before it and after it. For the children of the seventies, certainly 9/11 was one such event. Others had the assassination of President Kennedy, and still others before that had the bombing of Pearl Harbor. We don’t just stand from afar and bear witness to a catastrophe, as with the Challenger disaster or the Asian tsunami. Certainly, the generation defining tragedy is different because we transcend mere acts of observation to place ourselves in their shoes and vicariously live a moment of incomprehensible horror through them. Though our death is not physical, our Romantic views of mankind’s nature, that humanity is innately good, die a terribly painful death. In that respect, we all jumped to our deaths from the burning buildings on 9/11; all lay unconscious in the backseat of a Lincoln convertible speeding through Dallas; and all felt the piercing pain of shrapnel from hundreds of Japanese bombs.

From this context, we can clearly see how prejudices, grudges and hatred easily grow, replicate, and consume generations. Consider these examples: the Americans who hate the Japanese for Pearl Harbor; the Japanese who hate the Americans for Nagasaki and Hiroshima; the Jews who hate the Germans for the holocaust; the Christians who hate the Jews for the death of Jesus; the Americans who hate the Arabs for 9/11; the Arabs who hate the Americans for defending the State of Israel. A quick glance at the current condition of diplomatic relations around the world proves that hatred is cyclical (Johnson, pg. 111). In fact, we could all find one reason or another to hate someone if we looked hard enough, but the consequences of harboring hatred are beyond most people’s ability to comprehend. The only possible product or outcome of deeply held feelings of hatred and prejudice is more hatred and prejudice. Breaking the cycle of hatred is crucial for long-term peace and happiness, and forgiveness is the only path to complete restoration.

The generation defining tragedy that is perhaps the most egregious act of evil in the history of humanity is the genocide of Jewish peoples in Western Europe during Nazi rule. Dr. Johnson points out that the National Socialist (Nazi) Party, which was responsible for the Holocaust, is an example “Evil as a Bureaucracy,” as described by Drs. Adams and Balfour (Johnson, pg. 107). Prior to the twentieth century, genocide on the scale of that committed by Hitler would have been an onerous task to say the least, and the emergence and rapid evolution of technology made everything, including the act of mass murder, much faster, easier, and more efficient (Johnson, pg. 107). Government acquired technology for good and rational purposes, such as national defense, transportation, and law enforcement, until those with perverted views commandeered honorable governments and redirected the state’s technological resources from legitimate to base, wicked and self-serving purposes (Johnson, pg. 107). The evil bureaucracy that had burgeoned under the fascist and despotic rule of Adolph Hitler would go on to mercilessly and brutally murder eleven million human beings. The atrocities committed by Hitler and his henchmen are so large, abominable and ghastly that they defy our ability to comprehend the human capacity to act with malevolence. There is evil, and then there is the Nazi of the 1940’s whose depravity far supersedes any preexisting notion of evil that man might have possessed. Who can blame the Jew, the Pole, the disabled, the gay man, or any other target of Hitler’s near supernatural deviance, for hating a German? If a holocaust survivor, who watched a beloved family member die in a Nazi gulag, were to express hatred toward their former captors, would we not find such hatred perfectly justifiable—a normal response to an unfathomable and barbaric crime?

On May 10, 1940, the Nazis invaded the Netherlands and the Dutch army surrendered just five days later. Over the next 7 years, thousands of Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Poles, disabled people and homosexuals were sent to die in the concentration camps that dotted the landscape of Germanic Europe during the Nazi occupation (tlogical.net, 2010). In the heart of Haarlem, Amsterdam’s Jewish ghetto, a well-loved watch repairman by the name Casper ten Boom owned a row house from which he operated his jewelry store and watch repair shop on the street level (tlogical.net, 2010). Several members of Ten Boom’s immediate and extended family lived in the upper levels of the row house at Barteljorisstraat 19, including his daughters Corrie, and Betsie and son Wilhelm (tlogical.net, 2010). Even though the ten Booms were devout Christians, they had grown to love the Jewish people, and often prepared kosher meals for and even studied the Old Testament with their beloved Jewish neighbors and friends (tlogical.net, 2010). During the Nazi occupation, the ten Booms sheltered countless Jews who were attempting to avoid detection by the Gestapo, and Corrie became a major ringleader of the underground system of safe houses that existed throughout Holland. At any given time, as many as seven Jews were sheltered inside the Boom’s home (tlogical.net, 2010). To aid in their hiding, the ten Booms built a safe room in Corrie’s bedroom by erecting a false wall with the only opening into the secret space cleverly concealed in a small cupboard. The room became known as simply the “hiding place (tlogical.net, 2010)..”

In February of 1944, a Gestapo agent disguised as a member of the Jewish advocacy and underground approached Corrie ten Boom in the family’s jewelry store with a contrived request for Corrie’s assistance in aiding some Jews who had avoided apprehension in the underground (tlogical.net, 2010). Corrie readily agreed to help the man, and in doing so exposed the family’s top secret operation in the rooms above the jewelry shop (tlogical.net, 2010). The ten Boom’s home was subsequently raided, and Corrie, her sister Betsie, and her father Casper were all arrested and imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps (tlogical.net, 2010). Casper, who was 84 at the time of his imprisonment, died ten days after his arrest (tlogical.net, 2010). Corrie and Betsie were eventually transferred to the infamous Ravensbruck concentration camp just outside of Berlin (tlogical.net, 2010). The guards of Ravensbruck were notoriously brutal, and one guard stood out as particularly opprobrious and barbarous, earning himself a reputation among the prisoners as a guard that should be avoided at all costs if one was to escape broken bones, bruises, and possibly even a slow and painful death—he was the most brutal guard in Ravensbruck (tlogical.net, 2010). Corrie often talked about the resentment she had toward the guards and the man who reported her family to the Gestapo, and how she struggled to overcome feelings of intense hatred while imprisoned in barrack 28 (tlogical.net, 2010). Corrie and her sister Betsie shared their experiences with their fellow prisoners, and their emotional and spiritual journey to absolution of the informant’s iniquitous actions. The women began to quietly hold spiritual meetings in the prison barracks and frequently read quietly from a forbidden Bible that Corrie had miraculously smuggled into the prison (tlogical.net, 2010). Their work among the prisoners helped many to find hope and encouragement in their pitiful circumstances, and inspired many to release their hate and anger toward their barbaric captors.

This catharsis that swept through barrack 28 is a remarkable story of forgiveness in progress. Conventional wisdom tells us that there are four stages of forgiveness: uncovering, decision, work, and deepening (Johnson, pg. 116). In the uncovering stage, the victim grapples with the nature of the offense, assigns blame, and then cultivates anger and resentment over the unfairness of the situation. In the decision stage, one realizes that he is suffering emotionally and psychologically as a result of harboring such intense anger, and commits to forgiveness. In the work stage, the victim takes the perpetrator’s social, familial, and personal contexts into consideration, may even feel pity for them, and chooses suffering over retaliation and perpetuation of the cycle of evil. In the deepening stage, the victim finds purpose and meaning in their suffering and may even find new goals and objectives in life as a result of the offense, the suffering, and the resolution achieved through the act of forgiveness. Without question, the concentration camps were pressure cookers of hate toward the German occupiers who were perpetrating unfathomable crimes. Certainly many of the prisoners who were emaciated, frail, and a bread crumb away from death were not just dying a physical death, but also an emotional and psychological death fueled by the anger they concealed in their hearts. Corrie and her sister were able to help the other prisoners triumph over the self-consuming resentment because they had already traveled the road to forgiveness and knew the milestones along the way (tlogical.net, 2010). It is fascinating to consider that Corrie and Betsie’s work was a part of the deepening stage, and that through their efforts to help others overcome hate, they were consummating their own healings (tlogical.net, 2010).

On December 16, 1944, after Corrie had watched her little sister grow gradually weaker day by day, Betsie passed away (tlogical.net, 2010). Among her dying words were, “we must tell them what we have learned here (tlogical.net, 2010). We must tell them that there is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still (tlogical.net, 2010). They will listen to us, Corrie, because we have been here (tlogical.net, 2010)." Corrie often thought of her sister’s final wishes, and dreamed of honoring her by carrying their remarkable story to the world, just as her sister had asked. But she knew that, apart from a miracle of divine intervention, she would likely never again walk freely among liberated a people, as her own death was imminent, if not from starvation or illness, then certainly from the gas chamber. Not long after Betsie’s death, just as she had decided her life could produce no circumstances of greater fortuitousness, Divine Providence in fact intervened, and Corrie was unexpectedly and mysteriously released from Ravensbruck on New Year’s Eve of 1944 (tlogical.net, 2010). She would later learn that a clerical error had been made, and that her emancipation was completely inadvertent (tlogical.net, 2010).

Corrie returned to Amsterdam and attempted to reestablish a career in the watch and jewelry repair business, but Betsie’s dying words haunted her day and night (tlogical.net, 2010). With time, Corrie abandoned her career and began traveling, telling anyone who would listen what she had learned in the Ravensbruck concentration camp (tlogical.net, 2010). Corrie’s message resonated with the masses, and she began to receive invitations for speaking engagements from organizations all over the world (tlogical.net, 2010). For the last 30 years of her life, Corrie traveled the globe, wrote many books, and helped untold thousands to realize the power of forgiveness (tlogical.net, 2010).

To the world, and even to herself, it seemed as though she had beat her personal demons, that she had overcome resentment, and that she was prepared to stand as a shining example of the redeeming power of forgiveness. That is, until the day she faced her former captor in a church in Munich, after she had concluded a public speaking engagement on the merits of forgiveness. The fat balding man in the gray trench coat that stood before her, with his hand outstretched and shivering with fear, was the same notoriously brutal Ravensbruck guard that had tormented hundreds of starving human beings without mercy, even as they stood on the threshold of death’s door (tlogical.net, 2010).

“But forgiveness is not an emotion,” she reasoned to herself (tlogical.net, 2010). “Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart,” she thought to herself as she closed her eyes, stretched out her hand, and forgave the most brutal guard at Ravensbruck (tlogical.net, 2010).

References

Johnson, C.E. (2009). Meeting the ethical challenges of leadership (third edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Inc.

tlogical.net. (August 1, 2009). Biography of Corrie ten Boom. Retrieved from http://www.tlogical.net/bioboom.htm

Casting The Shadow of Power

Thoughts on Political Ethics and Wealth Redistribution

Whether it is coercive, reward, legitimate, expert, or referent, we all know that power can easily lead to unethical behavior. Typically, we're told that leaders fail when they use power vested for the purpose of achieving collective goals to promote some personal interest. This is true to some extent. The number of politicians who have recently abused their power to selfishly gain is staggering: Rangel, Blagojevich, Burris, Dodd, Conrad, and Domenici. The list could go on. But what is more frightening than the ad hoc and isolated instances of unethical conduct is the way that the very institutions of governance in this country have quietly evolved into centers of perpetual corruption. Presently underway is a colossal fleecing of the nation’s privately owned resources at the hands of willing politicians and arrogating contingencies, while the balance of the masses sit motionless, bullied into compliance. Contemporary society immediately exonerates the majority. But can it not be said that the recent past suggests the majority’s culpability is equal to, if not greater than that of any single corrupt leader?

In months leading up to the 2008 presidential election, an event that captured the attention of the nation was widely reported by the news media and fervently debated by people of all political persuasions. The question came from a middle-class plumber who was about to purchase a plumbing company with revenues greater than $250,000. Joe Wurzelbacher, since affectionately dubbed “Joe the Plumber,” asked Obama if his tax plan would increase the tax burden borne by Wurzelbacher after the purchase of the company was finalized. Obama’s answer acknowledged that his taxes on revenues greater than $250, 000 would increase from 36% to 39%, and that he believed, “when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

The state of the political establishment in this country has evolved into an institution that is rife with unethical behavior, and this event clarified in a profound way the nature of the ethical degeneration that threatens the foundations of our free republic. Private property rights, though guaranteed by the constitution, have, in many aspects, ceased to exist in this country. Political elites have convinced a nation that taking the wealth of one individual and giving it to another is perfectly conventional, rational, honorable and virtuous. The politicians take from the minority, and hand it over to the factions—an act of remuneration for their vote. It would be disingenuous to blame only the politicians, because this unethical relationship is symbiotic. “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” That is, the power bestowed upon the elected, and the power of the electorate to bestow. Those who demand that the politician confiscate the bounty, and then apportion it to his comrades, are equally unethical in my view.

Indeed, it still takes two to tango.

Falling Families, Rising Deviance

Reversing Postmodernism's Devaluation of Traditional Marriage and Family

The traditional family is the social institution that holds the most promise in guaranteeing the continuity and longevity of our free republic. The body of evidence that supports the traditional family as the greatest insulator against poverty, child abuse, and criminal proclivity is large and compelling. Without doubt, the emergence of alternative families has created significant disadvantages for children of such families, as well as a frightening risk to the overall welfare and continuity of a free society. As of 2004, 12.9 million children under eighteen, or 17.6 percent of all children, live in poverty. (Strober, pg 524) Social sciences data tell us that 33.4 percent of single-parent families live in poverty compared to 5.4 percent of traditional families. (Rauchut, pg 179) Children born out of wedlock or children of divorced parents score worse on several measure of well-being than do the children of tradition families. (Rauchut, pg 181) Children of single parent families are six times more likely to live in poverty than children of intact families. (Rauchut, pg 181) Equally alarming, 75 percent of children living in homes without a father will experience poverty by age eleven. (Horn, pg 580) Further, children who grow up with only one parent are likely to remain impoverished much longer than children who grow up with both biological parents in the home. (Rauchut, pg 181) Children living with two parents are 44 percent less likely to be physically abused, 47 percent less likely to be physically neglected, 43 percent less likely to be emotionally neglected, and 55 percent less likely be subjected to any form of child abuse. (Santorum, pg 571) The evidence leaves little room to question Dan Quayle’s frank assessment of the traditional family in his now famous “Murphy Brown Speech.” “We cannot be embarrassed out of our belief that two parents, married to each other,” Quayle proclaimed, “are better for children in most cases than one.” (Rauchut, pg 179)

The causes are changes in social norms and changes in government policy, both of which continue to threaten our nation’s sacred institutions of marriage and family. Postmodernists view traditional institutions, such as marriage and family, as merely social constructs that must be torn down and reconstructed, with the new model forcing conformance to some leftist idea of egalitarianism. The social revolution of the 1960’s, and the second wave gender feminist movement in particular, brought about a fierce assault on the traditional family structure and an affirmation that the institutions of family and marriage were inhibitors to gender equality that must be annihilated. (Rauchut, pg 189) In other words, the acknowledged interdependencies of the sexes that characterized traditional ideals of marriage, wherein male weaknesses were supplemented by female strengths and vice versa, were the adhesives that cohered two individuals to form the family unit. The feminist movement rejected the belief that the sexes were necessarily interdependent, which was effectively a rejection of the belief that woman and men were bound into a single unit by mutual dependencies. Feminists fervently asserted that woman could only find happiness in a career. (Graglia, pg 540) In the words of the influential and well-known feminist activist Gloria Steinem, “A woman needs a man about as much as a fish needs a bicycle.” (Rauchut, pg 189) The culture of the 1950’s, which was epitomized by the decade’s most popular television shows “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” and “Leave it to Beaver,” gave way to a phenomenon of marriage and family devaluation. By the 1960’s, the view that marriage and childrearing were two completely separate and unrelated life events had firmly taken hold. (Hymowitz, pg 562) By the 1970’s, it was not unusual to find a single parent, most typically the mother, to be raising children alone. The trend quickened throughout the 1980’s, and by the 1990’s, single-motherhood was conventional, even glamorized, as Dan Quayle pointed out in his controversial assessment of the television show “Murphy Brown.” (Skolnick, pg 518)

The consequences of changing social norms have been, and continue to be, exacerbated by government policy that encourages family disintegration and the devaluation of marriage. The negative income tax (NIC), an organized system of wealth redistribution through which cash payments are channeled to households below the poverty line, was proven in the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiments of the 1970’s to induce separation rather than to preserve marital relationships. (Lerman, pg 531) Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) promised single parents with children an infinite cash subsidy for as long as the recipient did not work or marry someone who worked. (Horn, pg 533) Welfare programs such as the NIC and AFDC increase the economic independence of individuals and encourage the abandonment of marriage. (Lerman, pg 531) Social welfare programs are progressive and designed to provide the largest benefit to the poorest individuals. (Lerman, pg 531) Consequently, due to the nature of the progressively administered welfare model, one whose economic status improves will experience a reduction in benefits that is relatively proportionate to their increase in income. (Lerman, pg 531) One who falls into this category will correctly reason that marriage will significantly improve their economic standing, thus reducing or altogether erasing the welfare eligibility status held while still single. (Lerman, pg 531) The end result is the perpetuation of cyclical poverty in which children are reared in single parent homes, and who ultimately go on to become single parents to yet another generation of future single parents, and so forth. Government welfare policies have therefore created a social condition of generational poverty recidivism, an unintended consequence of income subsidization and other government entitlements.

There are benefits associated with being a working mother, and to suggest that working mothers gain nothing from their lifestyle choice would be disingenuous. For example, studies show that children of working woman have more positive views of woman and less rigid views of sex roles, and that woman who work have a lower risk of heart disease. (Parker, pg 573 & 574) Regardless, the benefits seem comparatively few when recited in juxtaposition to the litany of statistical facts that expose the deviance that has grown out of the devaluation of traditional marriage and family values. Overcoming such disheartening realities conveyed in the statistics appears an overwhelming task. To secure our health as a nation, however, many are beginning to express a sense of urgency for the implementation of counter-measures designed to halt and reverse the disintegration of the traditional family. (Santorum pg 572) The yearn of woman, as many as 70 percent based on a 1991 Canadian survey, to rear their children at home as full-time mothers is compelling both woman and men to question, as evidenced in the emergence of the “pro-family movement,” the feminist view that woman can only find fulfillment in the marketplace. (Crittenden, pg 568 & Horn, pg 582) Government policy, particularly the creation of the welfare state, has played a critical role in the disintegration of the family unit. Does it not stand to reason then that reverse-engineering the postmodernist experiment that deemphasized family and marriage will also require government involvement? The erosion of the traditional family has inarguably given us increased child abuse, higher divorce rates, an increase in emotional problems among children, and rising crime rates. There is little to suggest any meaningful break in the upward trend of family devaluation, disintegration and their resulting incarnations of deviance. What are the long-term impacts to liberty of this escalating deterioration of family and marriage? Does such a trajectory lead to incremental government controls, and more bureaucratic encroachments, all of which ultimately culminate in the loss of personal liberty and possibly even the demise of our republic?

Carefully consider the following three steps that government could take to initiate a reversal of the damage caused by the abandonment of marriage and family values. First, we should consider the slow and ordered deconstruction of the bureaucratically administered welfare system, and the concomitant transition to a laissez faire model of social aid distribution that is managed and administered by private organizations. Second, changing the federal income tax code to more aggressively encourage marriage could precipitate a reduction in crime, child abuse, and other ills associated with single parent childrearing. Specifically, incrementally return the savings realized from the shrinking welfare state to married couples, and married couples with children through tax cuts. Further, provide additional tax incentives to single income families to further enable one parent to stay home with children. Third, we should assess whether or not an increase in tax breaks associated with the charitable contributions made by small and medium-sized businesses, large corporations and individuals, would sufficiently fund private charities and enable them to completely assume responsibility for the administration of assistance to the underprivileged.

A Critique of "White Privilege" Theory

How the Progressive Racial Blame Game is Perpetuating Hostility

Heckler on Race in America

During a recent discussion about race in America, I was challenged to read an essay by the feminist academic writer, Peggy McIntosh. The title of her essay is "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack". The basic idea of her essay is fairly simple. McIntosh believes that Caucasians hold power over people of color, and that white people are unable or unwilling to see or admit their position of advantage. She goes on to list twenty-six scenarios from her own personal life that she believes are examples of her privilege as a white person. In her view, whit e people must use their "unearned power" to weaken the social construct that keeps people of color oppressed by the system of white advantage. By the way, she also believes the exact same hidden power structure exists to subjugate woman to men. So, the really bad people, in her view, are white males, as they secretly repress both people of color and woman.

Now, there is no doubt in my mind that racism exists in this country, and anyone who says it doesn't needs to have their head examined. But what strikes me about McIntosh's article is that she attributes the problems of racism in America exclusively to whites, and she leaves the reader feeling that the only solution to the problem is for action on behalf of whites. But, think about it. Is the scope of racism really so broad that it is better labeled a conspiracy that secretly engages an entire race of people, or are racist acts isolated to the ignorant behavior of a few individuals?

In my opinion, it's the latter. The white privilege argument and its many variants are critically flawed, not to mention extremely divisive. One of the fundamental premises of McIntosh's argument is that white people deny, or are unable to see, their designation as an advantaged class. So, reflect for a moment on what she is truly saying about white people. That is, they either deny or are unable to recognize their status as an advantaged class.

In other words, the white people who know they are advantaged will deny it if asked. So, they are all deceitful - liars. If they're not being deceitful about it, then McIntosh says that whites cannot see their advantaged position, or that they have been taught not to recognize it. Does someone who is in a place of authority and advantage not know and recognize it as such? Frankly, to suggest that whites cannot see their advantage is to believe that whites are ignorant. It also asserts that elite academic liberals (like McIntosh) are the chosen ones, enlightened and capable of seeing white racism, since white people are too ignorant and unintelligent to see their position of advantage.

So, in short, McIntosh is saying three things: 1.) white people know they are advantaged, but lie and say they are not advantaged when confronted with their white racism, or 2.) they are too ignorant and closed-minded to see their position of dominance over people of other races, and 3.) only progressively-minded, liberal, elitist academics are brilliant and enlightened enough to perceive white power.

First of all, any theory that bases its argument on the assumption that an entire race of people are either deceitful or ignorant should immediately be discredited as fallacious, and most definitely has no place in a discussion on racism, especially when you consider the assumptions inherent in McIntosh's argument are themselves extremely racist. Saying that whites are too dumb or too deceitful to see their racist ways is egregiously racist and frankly deeply offensive to millions of good, ethical white people.

What would happen if someone put forth an argument, with the fundamental premise being that either most woman or people of color are ignorant, or are all liars? Would that person not be excoriated and permanently branded as an abhorrent bigot that is no better than a cross-burning kkk grand wizard? But since the target is white people, and the proponent is an elite academic, the theory is heralded inside the world of academia as genius! brilliant! - an intellectual discovery as momentous as the discovery of E=MCsq! The reality is that it's very wrong to assume such horrible things about any group of people. The hypocrisy buried in the white privilege theory is stunning.

The truth is, whites are fully aware that they have no special advantages in life, and if they did, the majority of them would admit it and not lie about it. Why? Because white people want to end racism as much as any other group in society. They are tired of the false accusations, the ongoing marginalization, the reverse discrimination, and the divisive rhetoric of the "white privilege" proponents. Do people not realize how demeaning it is to say that whites secretly oppress people of color? If all whites had to do to end racial tensions was to admit their secret hold on power, they would do it in a heartbeat.

The reason the white privilege theory has failed to solve anything, and has been completely ineffective in easing racial tensions is because its premises are false and unfounded. Further, you can't solve issues of racism by advocating more racism. If we are truly interested in improving racial tensions, people from all sides of the issue need to first understand that blaming all whites, or all blacks, or all men, and so forth, only exacerbate and deepen racial divides.

An Argument for Moral Absolutism

How Moral Relativism Has Led to an Explosion of Deviance

Heckler - On Moral Relativism

Moral relativism is the idea that morality is not absolute. It holds that a standard of morality in one culture may not be the same in another culture, and that, similarly, moral standards differ from person to person. The former is said to be cultural relativism and the latter ethical subjectivism. Proponents of moral relativism contend that morality is situational, and that virtually all actions deemed as immoral can be changed and relabeled as moral in the right circumstance. It is conceited to think, so they say, that one culture has reached a level of higher morality than another since cultures arise from fundamentally different circumstances, historical contexts and backgrounds, which naturally yield diverse and inconsistent standards of morality. In the view of the relativist, it is therefore incorrect to say that morality is absolute, but is instead relative to the situation. (Moral Relativism, no author)

But, is it misguided to say that the dangerous and even barbaric actions of another culture could somehow be rationalized as moral?

Let’s examine some cultures that moral relativists would be disinclined to label as immoral. There are Aboriginal tribes in Australia, for example, who peel the skin from the male child’s penis and cut a piece of tissue from underneath as part of a ritualistic celebration of his maturity. There are various African tribes that ritualistically cut the forehead and face of initiates with the intent of leaving deep lasting scars. In yet another example, older males of the African Maasai tribe ridicule and deject boys who make any sound, groan, or even the slightest painful grimace during ritualistic circumcisions. (Lewis) There are no grounds for the moral justification of such barbaric acts. Ritualistic mutilation is culturally endemic to the tribes who practice such cruelty, and are not in any way isolated or anecdotal.

Contrast this with an incident that occurred in the Canadian Arctic that involved the death of an elderly Inuit woman who was left to freeze to death by her son, during a difficult trek across the frozen tundra. At first, the act seems heinous. But, then we learn that the elderly woman was hardly mobile and nearly blind, and was slowing the whole convoy significantly, which was jeopardizing the lives of all the travelers. He could let his mother die, and save the clan, or keep his mother alive, and let everyone freeze to death. He made an ethical choice to save the larger family by killing his mother. (Irvine) It was a choice that any rational absolutist would agree was moral, unlike the gruesome and inhumane rituals of the African and Australian tribal cultures discussed previously.

Moral relativists will point out, in their own defense, that moral relativism is present, actually prolific, in Christian faith. For example, no Christian believes that one should be put to death for working on Sunday, as dictated in the Old Testament, or that cursing one’s parents is to be punished by death, as provisioned in the New Testament. So, in this respect, the Christian is a moral relativist if he concurrently believes the Bible to be the Infallible Word of God, and parent cursing teenagers to be unworthy of lethal injection. Similarly, relativists point out the hundreds of divisions and splinter groups that exist within organized Christianity. So, is the self-proclaimed absolutist not, after all, a bit more relativist than she would have hoped to be? (Hammerlinck) In fact, these perceived inconsistencies do not point to moral relativism at all. The death penalty is just that: a penalty. It is not morality, nor is the various interpretations of doctrine that exist between denominations. The critical distinguisher is to understand that differences of opinion with regard to how Christians arrive at moral decisions do not necessarily mean differences in moral standards themselves exist. Moral standards are virtually the same across all Christian sects, though different interpretations of morally neutral subjects do exist.

What are the consequences of moral relativism? Deviance.

The exponential increase in the number of crimes, the break-down and devaluation of the family unit, and the relabeling of mental illness are all examples of how society has grown increasingly tolerant of deviant behavior since the social revolution of the 1960’s. As crime and single-parent families have increased substantially, society has continued to lower the standard for defining acceptable behavior, so as to preclude behaviors previously labeled as deviant from the dynamic, newly revised definition of deviance. In much the same way, mental illness has continually been redefined, and the consequences have been an incrementally smaller population with the designation of “mentally ill.” As a result, society is speckled with profoundly ill people living atrociously and inhumanely in gutters, cardboard boxes, and boxcars – people who would have been institutionalized just sixty years ago. (Krauthammer, pg 384)

We arrived at this point by indoctrinating generation after generation to believe that truth and morality are subjective. Today’s youth view knowledge through the lens of post-modernism, and consider Western morality, which has evolved over thousands of years, to be merely a social construct. There is no objective truth; knowledge is just a social construct. Some have even gone so far as to question the truth of the holocaust as a “conceptual hallucination.” An alarming number of students are afraid, or are unable to judge Hitler’s fascist and barbaric deeds as right or wrong, or to objectively state whether or not America was on the right side of World War II. In fact, some even question whether the historical facts of the war actually occurred. (Sommers, pg 391)

Personal morality, such as honesty, truthfulness, philanthropy, etc., is rarely, if ever discussed in ethics classes. The focus on and study of social morality has displaced the focus on individual morality. This one-sided approach has cast upon generations of students the impression that social morality comprises the whole of morality by deemphasizing and neglecting personal morality, which is, in fact, the other half of ethics. Ethics teachers often throw out specific moral dilemmas, to which the students are required to argue for or against the morality of the given prompt. This exercise, though beneficial in many, does have an unintended consequence and byproduct. That is, students are left with the impression that all ethical issues are open for debate, and that ethics has no basis, no foundational truths, and no absolutes. (Sommers, pgs 394 & 395)

The emergence of moral relativism has ushered in a new era of moral decay. Before a problem can be controlled, must it not first be identified and named? The unwillingness to recognize and identify immorality has led to an explosion of deviance, as the majority blindly embraces moral relativism. The mother who has taught her child to be non-judgmental, but then learns her daughter is incessantly judgmental toward her peers should cast of moral relativism to boldly address the child’s negative behavior. (Rauchut, pg 118) Our society needs a counterforce of independent thinkers to do as Emerson did, which was to refuse conforming blindly to societal trends. (Emerson, 374 – 383) As Aristotle described, the ultimate purpose of the human race is to hone and shape the rational soul. (Aristotle, pg 370) Unfortunately, most who embrace moral relativism did not obtain such a belief through the exercise of reason, but through peer pressure. The very survival of our society hinges on whether or not we go back into the cave, and free those inside from the shadows of moral relativism and the shackles of a disintegrating society. (Plato, pg 363 – 365)

Thomas Jefferson's Misunderstood Metaphor

How Liberty has Been Trampled Over by the Separation of Church and State

Heckler - On the Separation of Church and State

Whether they agree with the notion of ‘the separation of church and state’ or not, most Americans accept that religion has been effectively stripped from the public realm.

But, has it really?

I say it has not. In fact, government has, through supreme judicial perversion of Jefferson’s famous metaphor, the wall of separation, actually endorsed and provided preferential treatment to religions, religions with tenants that permeate all aspects of the public sphere. The wall of separation has separated all religion from government except the designated national religions that comprise the core of governance in America today. On one side of the wall are the majority of mainstream religions, alienated and repressed, banished from public discourse, policy and institutions. On the other side of the wall are the government-sponsored religions, extolled and embraced, pervaded abundantly in public dialogue, administration, and organizations. The erection of the wall, “one that must be kept high and impregnable,” has resulted in the formation of a persecutory state-sponsored religion that impedes religious liberty in contravention of the first amendment. (Rachut, pg 106 [quoting Justice Hugo Black]) The wall commits egregiously what its builders were supposedly trying to prevent. That is, government sponsorship of religion.

Religion is “a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects.” Another definition is “a cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.”1 Religion is often erroneously thought to have as its defining element a belief in the supernatural, and the existence of a deity. However, such beliefs are not mandated under the definition of religion. Religion is any commonly shared belief structure or practice that is present within a society, regardless of whether or not the belief structure or practice integrates belief in supernatural events, multiple deities, or a single deity. Christianity is a religion, because of its system of beliefs, which happens to include the belief in God. Similarly, Islam is a religion, a structured belief system, with the belief in God as a central theme. It should be noted that if either of the aforementioned religions did not hold the belief in a supreme being as a tenant, it would nonetheless still be a religion, because of the remaining system of beliefs that would still exist in the absence of divinity. The same could be said about Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism, or any other world religion for that matter.

Why is this distinction important? It is critical that Americans understand precisely what it is that they were deprived of by Justice Black’s interpretation, (or misinterpretation more appropriately), of Jefferson’s metaphorical wall in his letter to the Danbury Baptists. (Dreiscach pg 317 – 318) Perhaps more important than understanding the deprivation that has occurred is to obtain an understanding of the coercive nature of the new government-sponsored religion in America. But first, it is vital to understand the truth underlying Jefferson’s metaphor, the founders’ views on religion and government, as well as the prevailing 19th century opinion of the interrelationship between religion and the state.

The wall was intended to be a one-way bastion of protection from the persecution that inherently exists in state-sponsored religion. (Patton, pg 331) They did not seek to protect government from religion, but rather to protect religion, and the free exercise thereof, from government. The founders sought to be free of the religious persecution to which they had been subjected in the Old World, and to create a nation without the bloody religious wars that had plagued Europe for centuries, by disempowering government of all control and influence over religion. (Spaulding, pg 312) They expressed disdain and contempt for government-endorsed religion, or “forced worship,” of which the radical 17th century theologian Roger Williams said, “stinks in God’s nostrils.” (Loconte, pg 359 [quoting Roger Williams])

The founders believed that liberty in the republic was only possible if virtue was present, and virtue and morality could only flourish in the presence of religion. Novak articulates it succinctly, “No republic without liberty; no liberty without virtue; no virtue without religion.” (Novak, pg 310) In his Farewell Address, George Washington declared healthy political debate to be supported by “religion and morality”, and, “that virtue and morality is a necessary spring of popular government.” (Washington, pg 311) Even the transient French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville recognized the power and necessity of religion within society. During his observations of America, the summaries of which were published in his 1835 work “Democracy in America,” Tocqueville describes religion as essential to the longevity of the American republic. He posits that people will relinquish their liberty to dictators in their search for the elusive answers to life’s most multifarious inquiries. (Tocqueville, pg 327) There is not doubt that religion, the Judeo Christian tradition in particular, was a foundational and integral component in the public sphere up to the 1947 ruling in Emerson v. Board of Education. (Novak, pg 310)

The religions that Justice Black elevated to state-sponsored status are the religions of Secularism, Atheism, and Nietzscheism. These Godless religions are faith-based, as is Christianity, Islam, or Buddhism. Christians exercise faith to believe in God, whereas the adherents to the Godless religions exercise faith not to believe in God. Since no truly definitive evidence exists either way, it requires the same amount of faith for the Christian to believe in God as it does for the Atheist to deny God. Christianity bases its morality on the codes handed down from God and recorded in the divinely inspired Word of God, while secularism bases its morality on reason, science, and experience. (Silverman, pg 325) Christians believe that Morality exists based on the teachings of Jesus Christ, while Nietzscheists believe in moral nihilism based on the teachings of Friedrich Nietzsche. (Nietzsche, pg 301)(Jesus, pg 333) The religion of Atheism teaches dysteleology, one of its main tenants, which is the belief that God could not possibly exist because of the pain and suffering that is present on the earth. Christ teaches us that the key to easing the pain and suffering on earth is to love our enemies, and to be good to those who are not good to us.

Every human being whose feet have ever touched the face of the earth, whose breathe has ever captured the air of the planet, and whose mind possesses sufficient mental capacity to reason, has erected his or her own customized personal belief model, or has adopted an existing belief structure that answers, satisfactorily to the individual, the questions of: 1.) the origin of mankind and 2.) the origin and definition of morality. Humans can therefore be divided into two groups, which are: 1.) those who affirm the existence of God, or gods, and 2.) those who deny the existence of God, or gods. It is from one’s personal affirmation or denial of God that codes of morality emanate. One who believes in the Abrahamic monotheistic God, for example, will adopt existing codes of morality that originate from the Judeo-Christian texts and teachings, such as the Ten Commandments or the New Testament. Hindu morality extends from the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, and that of Islam from the texts of the Koran. In the same way, one who believes that God is a fallacious idea will adopt codes of morality that grow out of a belief in: 1.) humanistic universal codes of morality, 2.) the ability of logic and reason to yield the exposure of normative behaviors that are deduced to be the ethical components of secular morality, 3.) instinctive morality that has evolved Darwinistically within the collective conscience of the human race, or 4.) moral nihilism, which is the belief that ideas of right and wrong, and therefore morality by extension, do not exist.

All of these address two fundamental and important questions. The first is: does God exist? The second is: from where does morality originate, and how is it defined? Christianity, Atheism, Hinduism, Agnosticism, and Buddhism, as examples, attempt to answer these questions, and therefore all fall in the same definitive ontological category. Irrespective of the label one assigns to the many belief constructs, whether it is the term theistic religion, non-theistic religion, metaphysical belief system, or ontological belief model, all seek to arrive at the same end, which is a definition of morality and an explanation of human existence. In this light, Christianity is no different than Islam, Buddhism is no different than Agnosticism, and Hinduism is no different than Atheism. They all end at the same place: the adoption of a moral code via the determination that God either does or does not exist.

All humans possess ontological belief models, which are effectively religions, whether one chooses to describe them as such, or not. Without a doubt, it is not the role of government to force one belief system over another. In fact, to do so, as Sam Adams described, would be grounds to label one a “bigot.” Religious bigotry is one of the core reasons why Europeans fled the Old World, which was to escape the persecutory results of government-imposed systems of belief. The wall of separation was an illustrative metaphor that Jefferson used to describe the disempowerment of government, an innate feature of the American framework of governance, which prevented government from forcibly projecting certain beliefs onto the Danbury Baptists. It was not intended to be a bilateral prohibition or disempowerment of the Baptists, or any other group or sect, from the free expression of their beliefs in the public sphere.

When the Courts forced removal of prayer from schools in Murray v. Curlett, it was done to appease Madalyn Murray O’Hair, a prominent American Atheist. The subsequent purging of the public sphere of the symbols and practices associated with certain belief systems has deprived the likes of Christians, Jews, and Hindus of the right of free expression by creating a public climate that is comfortable only for the Atheist or Secularist. The government has barred discussion of Creationism, and has endorsed the teaching of Darwinian Theory, which is commonly accepted by virtually all Secularists and Atheists, as the only possible explanation of human origin. Government prohibits opportunities for students to meditate independently, based on their individual belief structure, during moments of silence. Such a prohibition represents a denial of rights to individuals and sects that value meditational reflection, and a concomitant endorsement of Atheistic and Secularist beliefs, which do not value moments of meditative and reflective silence.

The government’s extirpation of belief-based symbology, liturgy, introspection and silent adjuration at the behest of Secularists and Atheists represents tacit approbation of their systems of belief. In effect, Secularism and Atheism are modern America’s government sanctioned religions, and their status as non-theistic is completely irrelevant. The ban on public prayer, the prohibition of erecting symbolic displays in public spaces, and the removal of belief oriented texts from public common areas are classic examples of an overreaching government inhibiting liberty.

The proper approach for managing beliefs in the public sphere is illustrated beautifully on the walls in the U.S. Supreme Court’s main chamber, where marble panels display sculpted images of Moses, Muhammad, and Confucius. Thus, the moral codes originating from the theistic beliefs of Judaism and Islam are represented in the depictions of Moses and Muhammad, and coexist harmoniously with the non-theistic Chinese humanist idea of morality that emanates from Confucianism, as represented in the depiction of Confucius. And so it is, on the marble friezes of the highest court in the land, in fact the very court that struck free expression from public life, that Judeo-Christian, Islamic, and Secularist beliefs are all represented in unity, in the spirit of diversity. Yet, elsewhere in public life, only the views of Secularists and Atheists have voice.

Repressing public discourse is not tolerance. A Christian hearing and respecting the prayer of a Muslim prior to a public proceeding is true tolerance. A Hindu teacher explaining her beliefs to her Jewish students is true tolerance. A Sikh showing appreciation for Christian art in a government building is true tolerance. An Atheist who explains his position on evolution to a group of science students in a public school is true tolerance. The Buddhist who respectfully contemplates the eight-fold path to enlightenment during a Christian prayer is true tolerance. Rather than a place of restriction, the public sphere should be a place where tribute to our independence from religious repression is paid through the free expression of diverse beliefs. Instead of protesting a Muslim prayer in a public classroom, or a nativity scene on a courthouse lawn, we should be filled with thankfulness that Americans are free to engage in religious expression.

Our maturity as a tolerant nation should allow us to observe and respect the free expression of alternate beliefs in the public realm. It is an immature and intolerant nation that cries foul when another publicly exercises his or her religious beliefs. It is a mature and tolerant nation that celebrates liberty when another person publicly exercises his or her religious beliefs. We should not be afraid to hear a Christians pray in a public gathering. We should not fear a Jewish symbol on public property. We should not fear an Atheist’s point of view in a public text book. We should fear none of these, because none of these represent state endorsement of theistic or non-theistic religion. On the other hand, they do represent the very definition of diversity and tolerance.

When religion was stripped from the public sphere, its standards of morality were stripped with it, thus creating a moral vacuum that has since been filled with the morality derived from Godless religions. The ruling upholds and supports the religious tenants of atheism and secularism in public discourse, and disallows the tenants of Christianity, Judaism, or Hinduism. When the courthouse lawn is stripped of the nativity scene, government shows reverence to atheist beliefs while scoffing at Christian beliefs. When the Ten Commandments were taken from the classroom, the government gave preferential treatment to students who adhere to atheism and secularism, and second-class treatment to Christians and Jews. Government banned prayer in school to appease adherents of atheism and proponents of secularism, and to appeal to their religious beliefs over those of Christians and Jews.

The early settlers fled to America from Britain to escape persecution at the hands of the Church of England, which was the only church endorsed by the government. Today, Christians and Jews are alienated by the Church of America, which worships the tenants of secularism, atheism, and other non-theistic religions. In so many ways, our nation has come full circle, and we are once again living under a government that represses theistic religious expression and endorses non-theistic religious beliefs.

In case you haven't noticed, there is no new world to which we can flee religious persecution. That means we have two choices: live with it, or change it.