No, Mr. President, You Are Not as Dumb as a Doorknob

As much as I love the Jib Jab take on This Land is Your Land, I now have to disagree with the line about who is the intellectual.

It may be past the Democratic Party leaders’ limited intellect, but clear-thinking Republicans will tell you: you cannot "win" a war. Anytime you send your strongest and best young people into harm’s way, you have already lost. War is Hell, you’ve sent your children to Hell, and now they will be changed forever.

Anytime you spill one drop of blood -- yours or theirs -- you’ve already lost. When you’ve damaged the country’s economy, the citizenry’s peace, the planet’s safety, you’ve already lost. This is not a card game, and no one -- no one -- gets to keep all the cards in the end. Please don’t bring your Polaroid cameras and send pictures of your atrocities home to me (as in my March 16, 2004 post). Don’t bring your video camera, Mr. Johnny K, to re-enact your daydreams of glory. And, please, please, little Ms. Lynndie E., don’t bring your digital cameras to record for all posterity your sexual fantasies or your sadistic lust for gore.

President Bush was right on this one (the first time). We cannot "win" this war. We can and will keep power and success out of terrorists reach. But to do so, we have to fight. And in the words of Steppenwolf,

"No matter who’s the 'winner', we can't pay the cost -- there’s a monster on the loose, he’s got our heads into a noose, and he sits there... watching..."

 The Proof

Note from Linda: I asked Dan Heaton, one of the best reporters I know, to respond to John's post. I admire Dan because he not only writes well, but his writings represent the man I see him to be from the glimpses in the lunch room --a man who speaks of activities with his kids, his family, and his church with such excitement and animation and sincere joy, one could never doubt the depth of his relationships to God, family, and community.

---

In a recent entry, writer John Addis suggests that there really is no God, at least not in the way that Christians consider there to be a God.

The challenge that there is no God is a difficult one. Who I am to argue that there really is one and that I know who God is?

I thought for a week or two, that perhaps I was unqualified to take this challenge. After all, this is merely an internet forum. It is not a church, or my own home, where I most normally talk about God. But, if I believe in God in the Christian sense, then I am compelled to respond and proclaim that "Yes, there is a God."

I am sure that John wants more, however, than me just to say there is a God because I believe that to be so -- although I think the strong faith of even one educated, rational man that something is so can in fact be part of the proof that such a thing is so. (Let's just say for the sake of argument that I am both educated and rational. If I'm not, surely we don't have to look too hard to find a person who is both educated and rational and believes in God.)

How do I prove that there is a God?

Certainly, we can point to any number of verses in the Bible. John dismays over the many versions of the Bible that are out there. Indeed, John, this can be confusing to the newcomer. The story of what is contained in the New Testament of the Bible is approximately 2,000 years old. Many of the Old Testament stories go back thousands of years more. Since my son's elementary school purchases a new version of its Social Studies textbooks every few years, it shouldn't really come as any surprise than that a 2,000 year old book has had more than a few updates over the years.

Part of the reason the Bible has been updated over the years is the discovery of ancient texts which corroborate what is written in earlier Bible versions but give us more complete and more accurate "originals" which allow us to update our current translations. The existence of these ancient texts are themselves an exhibit that God, and His Son, Jesus, exist.

But what if the ancient texts are just part of the hoax? Or, more likely, part of the misguided notion by some writers that there was a Jesus who was the Son of God? (The existence of a Son of God would seem to also argue the existence of God himself.)

We go to my next proof.

Today, some 2,000 years after his death, a majority of the people of this Earth are still at least casually aware of the son of a carpenter who lived in some backwater Roman province once upon a time. I offer this as another proof that Jesus, and therefore his Heavenly Father, existed. Less than 200 years after their deaths, most Americans probably can name only a dozen or so of the 40-plus men who have served as president of the United States. The names of even the famous and the powerful fade quickly from human memory, particularly in these modern times. And yet, here we are, with millions of people still talking about, studying and praying to Jesus.

Christians define, among other ways, God as being "good" and God as being "love." I don't think I need to spend much time proving that both "good" and "love" exists in this world. I can also prove the existence of their opposites, "evil" and "hate", if necessary, reinforcing the positive proof. If God is "good" and God is "love" and both good and love exist, we have another proof that God is in existence.

I can also prove the existence of beauty and wonder and power and other things that God "is."

I look at the delicate balances that exist throughout nature and science and am unable to accept the notion that all of these things were able to happen by accident. The Earth hangs in the sky at just the right distance from the sun to warm us, but not fry us. Any father away and the human species would be unable to exist because of the cold. The intricate balance of the gravity and other sciences at work to accommodate the Sun-Earth relationship is just one of many such instances. The fact that all of the sciences are even now continuing to be researched and greater understanding of the exact nature of these relationships is still unknown does not lessen the amazement I have that the balance works.

I also consider what the world does on Sunday morning. Around the globe, people from all races and backgrounds pause to worship God. I use "Sunday morning" as a catch-all phrase, as I realize there are other times when people worship God. If we include non-Christians who are worshipping God as they understand Him, whenever their "Sunday morning" is, the vast, vast majority of the human race believes in a God. Abraham Lincoln said "If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." Can the majority of the human race have been fooled for more than 2,000 years? It seems unlikely.

Finally, I have reserved what I believe to be my best argument that God exists, though my least scientific, for last.

I have been fortunate enough to witness, on four separate occasions, the birth of a child. Again, I consider myself to be a rational and educated man. I believe in my heart that the event that I witnessed on those occasions simply is more amazing, more complex, more incredible than anything that could have happened by accident.

Like others, I can't call God on the phone and have him meet us somewhere to prove his presence. I have however seen his presence in the phone itself and in the places I have been to meet others. I am certain that God does indeed exist.

Dan Heaton is an award-winning reporter and Business Editor for The Macomb Daily.

 A Pluralistic Response

I found something very interesting about John’s article. First off, it was the best explanation and reasons I’ve ever read concerning Atheism. In fact, I agreed with everything mentioned... except for the rather large point that I do believe in the existence of God.

I am Catholic. At least enough, though I might not be as active in my faith as others would say I have to be, in order to say I am Catholic. Like most people, I only believe what I believe because it’s what I was taught, what I've grown up on. In time it has also become my gut feeling. My gut feeling that this "God" is real.

Now, I do not believe that my God is, in fact, the only and one true "God." It’s impossible to be able to come to that conclusion. John pointed out that really you can’t come to the definite conclusion of a God existing, that it’s all in the feeling. Any concept of faith or religion has been introduced to the world through human beings. Even in the concept of divine inspiration (how the writers of the bible knew what to write), it would be the thoughts of God filtered through the mind of Man. The reason we have so many divisions of the Christian faith is because people get these gut feelings that something isn’t right with the status quo. But any and all of those feelings are human reactions to human events -- morals that might evolve from teachings put into place by others. If there was one "true" religion, everyone would know it because there would be some sort of divine evidence. Everyone would feel the same way about things.

I say I am Catholic, but I don’t apply Catholicism to my concept of got God -- in that the God I believe in may not be the specific God described by the Catholic church. I believe in a creator, an omnipotent being that is not governed by the teachings and writings of the human race. But it is a God that, really, I don’t know anything about.

I have an excerpt from a paper I wrote for my Intro to Liberation Theology class on Michel Foucault’s book, This is Not a Pipe. The book was originally written in French, though not fluent in French I read the English translation. In this particular book, Foucault studies the nuances of the French painter, René Magritte, particularly with regards to Ceci n’est pas une pipe (This is Not a Pipe) and Les Deuz mystéres, and develops his idea of applying the paintings to calligrams (poems where the words are arranged in the shape of the object they are talking about), and social critique into some sort of general idea of what Magritte was actually saying with his paintings. Here is the excerpt:

This way of thinking [that representations of things cannot actually be what they represent] is not limited to objects and the describing words of the object, but also to definitions of words, too. For example, “Theology: this is not the study of God,” or “This is not God.” In order for you to be able to study something, i.e. paleontology, you need the object there, the fossils. Theology therefore cannot teach me God, but rather it tells me more about who is doing the studying than it does about God, the subject. None of the books we read ever tell me what God is, they tell me what one person’s idea of God is. Whatever God is, we can never describe God fully. Words cannot accomplish this because we lack the language. God is a father, but a father is just a symbol to what God is. All symbols fail us in describing the totality of God, they are but a glimpse.

Overall, this book allows us to deconstruct what we “know” about God, or anything in this world, so that we can begin to know the real thing. Every time we try to represent a pipe, the words or drawings of the object is not a pipe, not even close. It only truly represents one aspect of what the pipe really is.

Through this class, I came into the belief in pluralism. Pluralism is a concept that, essentially, whatever belief a person has, is ok for them. It’s an understanding of their religion by being able to deconstruct everything I know about mine, and believe the gut feelings we each have, though different, are both valid. And yes, I can even apply this to the radical Muslim groups that believe killing Americans is the right thing to do. If this is what they were taught, I’m not going to tell them that their gut feeling is wrong, even when it affects my life. It’s illogical to say, “everyone can believe what they believe, but since your belief involves wanting to kill me, you’re wrong.”

Someone once tried to explain religion and God to me by using the "many paths up the one mountain" metaphor -- that there is one mountain with God at the top, and people of all religions and all beliefs travel up this mountain, to the same top, from different paths. But true pluralism isn’t just one mountain. It’s an infinite number of mountains with an infinite number of paths up each one. No mountain is bigger, no mountain is the “right mountain.”

Though I haven’t deconstructed past my gut feeling of an existing God, I can still open myself up to enlightenment because of one thing I’ve been able to admit to myself: I am in no way right in my way of thinking, in terms of being universally right. I know that in some aspects of thinking I could be wrong, and probably am. I’m human, and flawed, and accept that part of my existence.

Note: I know I didn’t include witty metaphors or stories of wheel-chair riding bible-thumpers, or make believe accountants; this article is meant as a response of John's specific argument. I couldn’t really apply so much to politics, because politics is a subject that I don’t know enough on to offer my opinion, and frankly I find myself lost in this upcoming election. But this is the reason why sites like ludicrosity appeal to me so much, because its not simply articles written by someone who’s supposed to "write an article", but rather a sharing of opinions and ideas in whatever form they develop.

 The Defense

When someone uses the word "atheist", it tends to evoke images of black-clad body-pierced goth kids rebelling against the happy, conformist Christian faith of their parents. It is nearly forgotten that many of our most revered thinkers, from Voltaire to Nietzsche, Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Edison, Walt Whitman to Mark Twain, George Orwell to Ernest Hemingway, Carl Sagan to Albert Einstein, were all atheists (of varying degrees). They were not atheists out of some kind of rebellious turmoil, but out of rational thought and contemplation. Even today, there is a direct correlation with increased education and decreased belief in religion.

This is not to say there aren't many intelligent and educated Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Taoists, or even Wiccans. But I must name drop a bit in order to counter the conventional cultural "wisdom" equating disbelief in God with unintelligence, laziness, or confusion.

In politics, when Democrats think Republicans are "stupid" or "uninformed" (and vice versa), it's generally because their own political beliefs just seem so right to them. It's just a feeling in their collective gut that is so personally obvious that anyone who disagrees must be on the wrong side of the obvious. We're all guilty of it -- there are times I listen to people like Moore or Franken or Krugman or Kerry and think my God, how could any rational, educated, intelligent person possibly agree with these idiots? But I have to remember that there are those who feel the same way about Limbaugh and Coultier and D'Souza and Bush. And both sides feel in their minds and hearts that the other side is uninformed or illiterate. (More on this later.)

In mere debates on elections and public policy, the stakes aren't nearly as high as going to heaven or hell for all eternity. If it's true that we're judged not only for our actions, but for our innermost thoughts and beliefs, then we better make sure we pick the "correct" religion.

A woman in an electric wheelchair gave me a little Baptist propaganda booklet at Meijer the other day, which detailed (in the form of a comic!) a man who sinned by lusting after a woman (by looking at her from behind and thinking "mmm, nice" in a thought bubble) and daydreaming about baseball in church. You guessed it -- those sins were enough to send him into the fiery pits of hell for all eternity. Pretty strict. When the four-wheeled missionary asked about my own faith, I futilely tried to engage her in discussion about the wide variety of religions and bibles, expressing polite skepticism that one book must be "right" and all the others "wrong." To which she replied in somewhat of a huff that all bibles were heretical and satanic except for the King James Version. Then she revved away with judgmental fury toward the sinless produce.

Ah, of course. The King James Version. It's not even enough to choose the right book, but you even need the right printing.

My father and I had countless late night discussions and debates over religion when I was in grade school (yes, I had an odd childhood, and it wasn't even technically "grade" school since the neo-libbie gifted "grade" school I attended didn't have "grades", or even desks or bells, but that's for another article). Dad was a Catholic schoolteacher in downtown Detroit, and his only sister is a Catholic nun -- i.e., he was biased, but knew his shit. He would have a few beers, and read or describe books of the bible to me, asking me to interpret their meaning, telling me how many adults couldn't grasp the complexities in the stories of Job or Issac (and praising me when I did), encouraging me to always think deeper, to find the hidden messages, or even the discrepancies. Indeed, he showed me how the conflicts and apparent mistakes in the bible (particularly passages in Genesis or books of the New Testament which disagreed with each other) actually added, not detracted, from the book's overall credibility, for the same reason that police officers expect discrepancies in the stories of eye witnesses, and would be highly skeptical if the story of each witness matched exactly in every detail.

We also discussed St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica, and his proofs of the existence of God, which so impressed and intrigued me that years later I picked Thomas as my Catholic confirmation name. (If you've never read this, it's wonderful and fascinating and online here.) And, up until recently, had you asked if I believed in God, I would have answered "of course" and sent you to that very link.

But something always bothered me. Perhaps, if you read it, you'll pick up on it as well. The arguments initially seem sound, such as the concept of everything in motion needing to be put in motion by something else, but Aquinas tends to conclude with lines like: "Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God." Try and read that from the perspective of someone who has never heard of God, or believes in something or someone else. Isn't it rather a large, convenient conceptual leap to go from "well something must be out there" to a specific proof of the Judeo-Christian Creator? Wouldn't it have been equally arbitrary to say "and this everyone understands to be Mithra" or "and this everyone understands to be the council of learned elders" or "and this everyone understands to be Steve from Accounting"? Summa Theologica only works if you already take the existence of God as a given, as an "a priori." It only offers support to a premise previously concluded by the writer and reader.

This, of course, is human nature. Look at all the evidence we had concerning weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It's not that the evidence itself was all bad, but that we came at it from the a priori assumption that the stockpiles existed in the first place. Therefore all information that helped support our pre-concluded conclusion served to add credibility -- easy when the premise on which the evidence was gathered wasn't questioned. This is why different people can look at the same facts and events and research and come to different opinions. Michael Moore has a gut feeling, an a priori assumption, that Bush is a slimeball, and therefore only information that supports this preconception stands out to him. On the other hand, my own gut feeling is that Kerry is a slimeball, and so naturally information that stands out to me supports my premise. Of course defeatjohnjohn.com spends more time on anti-Kerry evidence than pro-Kerry evidence -- the idea that Kerry would be a horrible president is my a priori. I just feel it, know it. (Luckily, Kerry seems intent on providing me thousands upon thousands of examples to support my theory, but that's for the other site.)

So, with regards to the existence of God, arguments that presuppose His existence won't persuade me, any more than arguments presupposing Bush's idiocy will win over one of Bush's supporters. I have no doubt of the sincerity behind the believers. "God" simply seems clear to them. They just feel it, know it. It's in their gut. And therefore all the evidence they see around them supports their a priori. That's why arguments between atheists and theists can get so frustrating -- to a believer, something like "well, what about puppies?" is irrefutable proof of their position. Obviously, a puppy couldn't exist without God, because He is the "this everyone understands to be."

When someone is diagnosed with terminal cancer and then makes a surprising recovery, people praise it at a miracle, and proof of God's existence and compassion. And yet when someone is diagnosed with terminal cancer and dies, or if someone gets hit by a bus or is tortured to death or worse, God is either never mentioned, or we hear things like "well, God has a plan" or "God works in mysterious ways." Wait... what? It seems awfully convenient for two mutually exclusive outcomes to prove the same theory. (Bone to the libs: "If we find stockpiles of WMDs, that proves Saddam had them! If we don't find stockpiles of WMDs, that proves he had them and destroyed them! Either way is proof! Yay! Hot damn, we're prescient!")

The Baptist-on-wheels was doing what she thought, felt, and knew was right, based on her a priori. What concerns me is not her motivation, but her logic. St. Thomas Aquinas "proved" the existence of God through circumstantial, not empirical means. (The counter-argument that "well, God can't simply come out and prove He exists because we have to have faith" also seems a little too convenient.) None of our beliefs are made in a vacuum. Our basic "givens", our assumptions on which we base all other intellectual endeavors, are taught. No human could ever have the time or ability to discover everything for himself (fire, pi, DNA, etc.) so we teach the young all we know so they can have the highest possible starting point. We couldn't have flown to the moon if our ancestors had taught us a geocentric universe.

What if God had arbitrarily decided that belief in planetary orbits was required for admission into heaven? Hardly seems fair for all the people who lived before Galiello. Well then, why would God allegedly require belief in Himself, let alone Christianity or Islam, for admission into heaven? Those who believe in God do so because they were taught that God existed, just as the Egyptians believed in their gods because that's how they were taught, ditto Sumerians and their mythology, or even modern China and their state-sponsored atheism. Are we to believe that there exists a Supreme Being who is so shockingly unjust as to let Baptists go to heaven simply because they happened to be raised in Baptist homes and Buddhists go to hell simply because they were raised in Buddhist homes?

Even if there was a God, it seems logically impossible for one's own salvation to be dependent on the blind chance of a taught belief in His existence. And since nearly all religions require strict belief in their specific version of "the truth" in order to achieve enlightenment, it seems clear that, at the very least, any religion that claims such has completely disproved its own thesis in a omniscient and just Creator. In other words, if there is a "God", He almost certainly can't be anything resembling the conscious, intolerant entity described in modern religion, for the concept collapses under the weight of its own logic.

There are two types of atheism. Negative atheism, sometimes called "weak atheism" or agnosticism, can be defined as the "absence of belief in God." Because it is the believer/theist that is making the assertion "there is a God", the burden of proof is on them; a disbeliever is simply withholding assent to this assumption. Positive atheism, sometimes called "strong atheism", is better defined as "the belief that God does not exist." This is a "positive" position (in philosophical terms) and, though it may sound like splitting hairs at first, is actually quite different. Suppose a guy is murdered, and the police suspect the aforementioned Steve from Accounting. There is a significant difference between not believing Steve is guilty because of a lack of evidence, and believing Steve is not guilty because specific evidence proves his innocence. Positive atheists therefore go a step further in rejecting the "given" that God exists by asserting there is actual, a posteriori (empirical) evidence that He doesn't (or couldn't).

I am, as detailed above, a negative atheist. Strong belief in the existence of God and strong belief in the non-existence of God both require an element of faith which I cannot logically accept. If there is no evidence that Steve from Accounting is a murderer, then we shouldn't lock him up simply because it feels to some like he did it. Even if hundreds of generations insist that he did it. I also disagree with the positive atheists, who believe there is definitive evidence that there can't be a creator of any type, at all. I believe that, too, would close my mind off from possibility, making me equally as foolish as participants in the religions I have formally objected.

In truth, I like to think there is some point to this whole "life" thing, some reason beyond human understanding and comprehension. I like to believe my consciousness will not die when my body does, that all I've absorbed and learned through the years will serve some eventual purpose. But to accept, as definitive answer, only one version of "the truth", this describable entity called "God" defined and tweaked by man for millennia as a way of explaining the unexplainable, seems wrong to me. I just feel it, know it. I am an atheist not because I am afraid, or hateful, or lost in sin, or uninformed, or disillusioned. I am an atheist because I seek understanding and enlightenment, opened doors instead of closed doors, answers instead of excuses. I cannot base all of my beliefs on one hell of an arbitrary, passed-down "given" which those in my society trust in solely because they happened to be born and raised among others who bought it, too.

I'm at least willing to admit I may be wrong. Maybe Jesus was the Son of God and Man, maybe Kerry would be the greatest President in three generations, and maybe the imaginary Steve from Accounting is one sick murdering son of a bitch. Perhaps I'm now guilty of having faith in my lack of faith. But I think it's important to never stop questioning, and am proud to have arrived at this belief on my own terms -- not because someone told me its what I should follow, but because my mind and heart tell me its right.

 Okay, Crotch Rocket Punks -- Move Over.

I just traded in my Red Hat with the little veil for a Red Helmet from the local Harley store discount table. Added a few feathers. And I’m ready to rule the highway in my Big Blue Booty Jet.

My SUV may not be able to go 255 mph in 1/4 mile. In fact, I doubt it can go 255 mph in 1/4 of a continent. But I think it is just as dangerous on Dead Man’s Curve.

First I strap myself into the lumbar support seat and wrap my hands around the wheel at a risque Ten-Two position. Then I lean forward, lean low, and get ready to roll. Well, as low as my belly will let me bend and as close as my chin can get to resting on the dash. A lotta Bach and a little a/c. Perfect.

As I whip in and out of the lanes, I discover I need to do a ballast lean –- so I lean away from the curves instead of into them. It’s a trick I learned from my ex who once used our children as counterweights when he had driven his van down a washed out dirt road that had half plummeted into the deep canyon below. (That is one of those adventures kids think are so cool and moms would be better off not knowing about.)

Since that Tron-looking biker started taking my expressway every morning during rush hour, I have developed a whole new philosophy on suicide. Why not take half the highway with you? Why not take the cheap thrills of speed and precision steering to get that adrenalin high? If you are too cowardly to do something real with your life, why not do something that imitates feeling real? Feel brave. Feel alive. Crotch Rocket enthusiasts recommend starting with a 600 cc 370 lb. bike. Booty Jet enthusiasts (me) recommend you start with the Saturn Vue. Either way, when you tip, parts are more accessible.

And by the way, am I the only one who keeps thinking of that Lion King song when listening to the news?

Muqtada al-Sadr! What a wonderful phrase
Muqtada al-Sadr! Ain't no passing craze
It means no worries for the rest of your days
It's our problem-free philosophy
Muqtada al-Sadr!
Muqtada al-Sadr?
Yeah. It's our motto!
What's a motto?
Nothing. What's a-motto with you?

Oh. And Go Michael Phelps! You work hard, you like Eminem, and you are making us proud!

 Call for Submissions

Greetings all!

I'm happy to report these pages are averaging more daily viewers than ever, even on slower weeks like this one, presumably by people hoping there's something new. We appreciate your patience during the slow days, but do not take for granted that you'll continue to read if we're not updating. :)

So, we'd like to "open the floor" to potential guest columnists. If you've read ludicrosity for a while, you probably have a good feel for our style and what we're about. If you're relatively new, feel free to click on a month and random and browse through a couple old entries. Social/political commentary can be fun, if you have something to say.

Submissions may be emailed to guests@ludicrosity.com, preferably with your name and an attached photo. While this is a strictly non-profit blog and we can't pay for a published article, you will retain full credit and a permanent link.

If it works, we've discussed the possibility of having two articles from me, two articles from Linda, and one article from a guest each week. This should keep ludicrosity fresh and exciting even when not as much is going on and/or one or both of us get backed up.

Thanks again for reading, and we look forward to hearing from you!

 Message to a Son

What??? You don’t believe in Jesus or God????

What did you say????

Where did that come from????

When you were conceived (at Willie Nelson's Bi-Centennial Picnic, July 4, 1976), your Dad and I had drained our bank account of its last $7.40 to purchase some cigarettes and cheap hotdogs and a 12-pack of Texas Pride to get us through the long weekend. It was hot. We were starving and without hope or future. But we had two free tickets to the Bi-Centennial Picnic and we wanted to celebrate this America so we spent everything we had and went.

A few weeks later, we found out you were coming. I had to fight for your right to be born against that almighty foe, Planned Parenthood -- that self-proclaimed protector of society who tries to keep all poor people from reproducing. But even with no jobs and being pregnant and living half a country away from my family, did I ever feel a lack of God? Of course not.

I found three part time jobs and took them all just to get some grocery money to provide nutrition for your developing little self, grateful to be the Midwestern-raised kind of woman that is willing and able to work.

I prayed every day –- probably every hour –- that you would be born healthy, happy, wise, and good, and do God’s work. And then you came, healthy, happy, wise, and good.

You may not believe in God, but He believes in you.

It is an old line, but one dear to my heart. What if the astronauts landed on Mars and found a disposable Kodak camera -- would you say the camera was the product of natural evolution? And yet how much more complex is the human eye? Could either possibly exist without a guiding hand?

 Son of a Millworker

Senator Edwards is the son of a millworker. I know this because every time he gives a speech, he mentions that he was the son of a millworker. Every time anyone else gives a speech about him, it's highlighted that he was the son of a millworker. Every time an article is written about him, it's underscored that he was the son of a millworker. Well, that's not entirely fair. Sometimes they shake things up and say "mill worker".

Of course, it's a touch more accurate to say he was the son of a "mill production manager", and the little shack they show in the commercials isn't really where he was raised, but perhaps that's just nitpicking. I suppose if I felt my "humble origins" would help me win public office, I could show a picture of my parents' old trailer, even though I only lived there until I was three.

The whole point is kinda moot, since before any of us knew his name, Edwards became a multi-gazillionaire. To hear him talk, you'd think he was still living in that small house in Seneca, and not the 4-million dollar mansion in which he presently resides. (Then again, to hear Kerry talk you'd think he just got through with his last Vietnam assignment a few months ago, but that's for a different article.)

In a way, Edwards' insistence that it's amazing a "son of a millworker" can compete for higher office is a bit, well, duh. Many of our greatest presidents, from Jackson to Lincoln to Eisenhower to Reagan, grew up not only poor, but in poverty. The point behind what Edwards really means is a valid one: in America, we don't have a caste system. Some of our richest and most powerful people, in politics, entertainment, and business, came from extremely humble origins. Unlike, say, Great Britain, in which every article ever written about J. K. Rowling can't resist references to her "public assistance" days since it's such a unfathomable rarity, most of our millionaires were self-made -- especially in the entertainment and technology arenas. In speeches, Edwards uses the millworker example as a way of underscoring why this country is such a neato place (though he seems to forget he's not the first one to notice that.)

Ironic, then, that the other thing Edwards can't make a speech without mentioning is his theory of the "two Americas." It's generally worded like this: "In this country there are two Americas: one for the privileged who get everything they want, and one for everyone else who struggle for the things they need." Sounds reasonable, but wasn't his whole point about America being great because the "son of a millworker" could run for President completely contradictory to the "two Americas" philosophy? It seems a little silly to simultaneously decry a division between rich and poor while bragging that part of our greatness is that no such line exists. (It'd be like making your fortune from suing doctors and hospitals and health care providers for hundreds of millions of dollars, and then giving speeches all over the country about the need for lower health care costs. Oh, wait.)

Yes, the media and entertainment industry and politicians all love oversimplifying our nation into two huge groups of individuals, "the rich" and "the poor", with a great chasm between them that only the exceptional (like Edwards) can cross. But in actuality, the range of incomes in the U.S. is a pretty smooth curve. Though we may not have quite the egalitarian distribution of income as certain bank protesters might advocate, and although the upper 1% controls an enormous disproportion of the nation's wealth, the idea that there are "two Americas" ignores the 90% of us on some point on the slope in the middle.

I don't mean to be too hard on Edwards. Unlike most politicians, Edwards' passion for "fighting for the little guy" seems genuine and heartfelt. But the tired, divisive "us vs. them" rhetoric used by so many Democrats seems equally tiring when delivered by someone who's an example to the contrary. Rather than continuing to make the nation's poor feel like it isn't their fault, that their place in life is hopeless unless the Democrats come and save them, that the rich don't deserve their riches and in an equitable world an uneducated single mother would make more than a multi-degreed executive, rather than dividing us into "two Americas", why not use your own life experiences to help defy that myth? Why not spend more time on the fact that you were the first in your family to go to college, that you worked your ass off to pay your way through law school (even though it meant buying Elizabeth an $11 wedding ring,) that you achieved your wealth not out of some unfair, undeserved "luck" but by trying harder than others. Show by example that the American dream is open to anyone and everyone, and that even though success to some may come faster than to others, the Democratic party stands for everyone's chance to try.

After all, I hear you were the son of a millworker.

(also posted on defeatjohnjohn.com)

 "If the Election Were Held Today..."

We will be hearing this phrase a lot in the coming weeks. Our answers will depend on who do we love, who do we trust, or who is the lesser of two evils.

Myself, I am pining for a viable third party. The Republicans started one in the mid 1800's to oppose the Democrats and the Whigs. They were a third party created as a two-issue party–that being to abolish slavery and to open up the western states as free lands. Their first national winning candidate happened to be Abraham Lincoln. But soon the Republicans, being made up of typical Americans, evolved into a mainstream party of many issues and lots and lots of politics and compromises and buy-outs. That is what we Americans do.

We adapt anything into the mainstream of society. No matter how hard one may try to rebel, we just suck'em in and make 'em a part of us. Like the poem:

"He drew a circle to keep us out. . . But Love & I had the wit to win; We drew a circle that took him in." That is how a Viet Nam Vet Against the War can go from burning his ribbons and demonstrating against The Establishment to running for president. The Hippies have been incorporated into government jobs. The Black Panthers are in business suits. The Women Libbers are cooing over grand babies.

Since I can't find a viable Third Party for 2004, I am forced to study the two-party issues.

For example, John Kerry's recent promises to open up stem cell research.

Bush put restrictions on the government funding of stem cell research because it is, as are so many things, a "slippery slope". He fears it may lead to embryo farms, cloned babies, and fetuses grown for the harvest. And don't you dare think atrocities would never occur after what doctors and scientists did in the free for all of Hitler's Nazi Germany.

The Pope is against it (something about massacre of innocents), but he is also against birth control pills, in-vitro fertilizations, all of it.

Take an infertile couple wishing to have a baby. The in-vitro fertility clinic takes some of the woman's eggs and the man’s sperm and fertilizes the eggs artificially (outside the woman's body). This is opposite of birth control pills which were created to prevent the production of most eggs and prevent the uterus from accepting the fertilized embryos if any are conceived.

In the "test tubes" cells split and grow for about 3-5 days into about 150 cells which you can call an embryo or a blastocyst. The healthy embryo is implanted into the woman's womb and abracadabra-please-and-thank-you, you get pregnancy in an infertile womb. Well, its not really that easy. It is painful, it's expensive, it takes several tries, and sometimes it doesn’t work at all.

The debate now emerges. What do you do with the embryos that have not been implanted? They may be frozen for future use, adopted by other infertile couples, disposed of, or (in a John Kerry World) sent to the research lab where the stem cells are pulled out and studied, experimented with, used for stuff. Stuff like finding cures for Diabetes, Parkinson, Alzheimer, Spinal Cord injury, Liver disease, etc, etc, etc.

Those 150-cell blastocyst embryos may be the perfect cells to regrow diseased cells. They have not yet developed (or differentiated) into specific function cells. So they can be coaxed into blood cells, brain cells, spinal cord cells, pancreas cells, neural cells, limitless possibilities. And this may be the important point: They have not yet been differentiated.

They are not nerves, nor muscle, nor tissue, nor fluid cells. They are blank cells.

Adult stem cells have been used for over 30 years. Doctors have been using the stem cells from bone marrow to help patients with blood disease. Adult stem cells from umbilical cords, placental tissue, etc. Unfortunately, adult stem cells are limited and can’t be differentiated into most kinds of cells whereas the embryo stem cells can become any kind of cell.

President Bush restricted the federal funds to embryo stem cell research to the lines of embryo stem cells already in existence as of August of 2001. He said "We do not end some lives for the medical benefit of others. . . a belief that life, including early life, is biologically human, genetically distinct and valuable."

Let's think about The moment of Differentiation -- when blank cells become human cells with human functions. Not a bad idea: define the moment of human life at the point when the cells have specific function. Oh, I like this idea. Wish it was mine but it is Carrie Addis's idea.

Since we don't bury or grieve for 3-5 day old embryos, usually we don't even know we conceived or aborted at this point, it may be a great place to start. I know I have somehow grown to believe in birth control pills. I don't have a problem with stopping the possibility of a future life that has not yet been conceived. And I have grown to put up with the making of the uterus unattractive for an embryo. This may be the beginning of an answer.