Reading the newspaper – on paper

For the last several years, I have gotten my news – and analysis of the news – largely by means of the internet. I read articles and columns at the websites of newspapers and magazines, I visit blogs, and I scan the headlines of news stories listed by my ISP. But the past several days, I have been unable to do this due to technical difficulties.

This time the problem isn’t with my ISP, it’s with my home computer. After a few years of it getting increasingly slow and unreliable, it finally became unusable. (I will find out the diagnosis tomorrow; my guess is that it’s not worth fixing.) So today after work I nabbed the day’s copy of the Wall Street Journal from the lobby on my way out the door. (Unless someone claims it, it will just end up in the trash.)

I often read WSJ articles online, but as many are for subscribers only, my selection of articles to read is quite limited. Having participated in the Iowa caucus yesterday evening, I was particularly interested in reading news and analysis about it. I found a good deal of worthwhile reading, and started wondering how much I have missed out on by limiting myself to those articles I can read online.

The first one I read was “Iowa Voters Split On Electability, Core GOP Values.” It’s all about choosing between principles and pragmatism – something that I have struggled with a lot as I considered who to vote for in the caucus yesterday. Do I select the candidate whose views I share most closely, or the one with the best chance of actually getting the nomination, and possibly winning the election?

I used to opt for pragmatism, then decided in 2008 that pragmatism resulted in electing politicians who either shared few of the principles I considered important, or gave them lip service but disregarded them in practice. I might opt for pragmatism again in the 2012 election, but it depends who the eventual Republican candidate turns out to be.

After last night a lot of people are assuming it will be Mitt Romney. And a lot of people are hoping it will be – including the people I shared a table with at the caucus yesterday evening, and the employee in the computer store where I took my PC for troubleshooting. One reason given by many who favor Romney is that he has experience running a business, not just as a politician.

That has always made a lot of sense to me, but “The GOP’s Not-So-Great Communicators” challenges that assumption. “Running the federal government is nothing at all like running a business,” Peter Robinson says. “Presidents must instead govern by getting the rest of us to see things they way they see them.” Unfortunately, none of the current batch of Republican candidates is doing too great a job at that.

There was quite a bit more good reading, about the various candidates and their prospects after Iowa, about the election in general, and about other current issues that I hadn’t been thinking about all that much. As my internet session at the library is about to expire, I don’t have time to find links to each article or write about it. (I sure hope my computer can be fixed or they can sell me an inexpensive but good used computer!)

I don’t know whether I will consider getting my own subscription. But I just might want to nab that paper on my way out the door more often.

Propaganda masquerading as polling

I don’t usually answer the phone unless I know who’s calling. But one day recently I grabbed the phone after the third ring  because I thought it might be my husband and didn’t want to take the time to check caller ID (the answering machine cuts in on the fourth ring). It turned out to be a public opinion poll.

We’ve been getting a lot of those calls lately – something about living in Iowa with a presidential election coming next year. The few times I’ve taken these calls in the past few months (usually because I’m expecting a call and forget to check caller ID before answering), I’ve declined to participate, explaining that I really hadn’t been paying any attention to the candidates yet.

Now it’s getting close enough to caucus time that I am starting to pay a bit more attention. Besides, the woman on the phone seemed friendly, unlike some I have talked to on such calls who display no warmth or personality. Also, I wasn’t in the middle of anything except waiting for a cake to bake. And finally, I like to occasionally participate in a poll just to have an idea what questions people are being asked, so that when I see poll results I have an idea how meaningful they might be.

Citizen petitions in the internet age

If I got my news from TV, perhaps I’d have heard of this before. I haven’t listened to any of Obama’s speeches, or anyone’s analysis and commentary on his speeches. I may have seen a brief mention of the “We the People” website last month, but didn’t bother to find out what it was about.

It was an article at the Wall Street Journal that informed me about Obama’s initiative to make it easier for people to collect signatures on petitions to the government and to get the most popular ones addressed promptly. I have to admit that I first had to Google the whole idea of citizen petitions, as that part of the First Amendment was one I had forgotten about – if I even remembered it past the test on the Constitution in eleventh grade civics class.

Somehow I doubt that the framers of the Constitution could have imagined some of the “grievances” over which citizens would one day seek “redress,” any more than they could have imagined the high-tech means by which petitions would one day be submitted. Some of the petitions that caught my eye are:

• Promote legislation to prevent public schools from starting earlier than 8 a.m.
• Reinstall Solar Panels on the White House
• Stop all Wild Horse Roundups
• Complete the U.S. Transition to the modern metric system. Allowing us to manufacture items we could sell to the World.
• Preserve 6 Day Mail Delivery

These are far from the most popular, though each has hundreds of signatures. Legalizing marijuana has by far the most signatures, though forgiving student loan debt, cracking down on puppy mills, and abolishing the TSA are also among the top five right now. I am somewhat heartened that a petition to dissolve the electoral college (which I’m not saying I necessarily agree with, but it deserves consideration) is nearly 5000 signatures ahead of a petition to acknowledge the presence of extraterrestrials.

Are these the issues that people care about most? Are they the problems that seem to require involvement by the White House because other means to deal with them have failed? Are the people who write these petitions, and the ones who sign them, representative of the country as a whole?

If so, I must be more out of touch with society than I thought. I didn’t think I was missing anything worthwhile by not watching TV. But I suppose watching it would remind me what a strange world I live in.

What surprises me is that nowhere in the list (at least not under Government Reform where one would expect it to be categorized) did I see anything like the “Congressional Amendment of 2012″ proposed here, a something similar to which one of my cousins posted on facebook today. I know lots of people would be happy to sign that one.

Thinking about the Pledge of Allegiance

This being Memorial Day weekend, it seems like a good time to blog about a speech I’m preparing for Toastmasters. I’m interested in your opinions, which may give me helpful material for my speech.

When I first joined Toastmasters, I was surprised when the president of the club set up a small American flag and led us in the Pledge of Allegiance. What did that have to do with public speaking, I wondered? But I got used to it.

When our club re-formed, a couple of years later, after having been inactive for a few months due to lack of participation, the new president did not lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. I was surprised. Wasn’t saying the Pledge part of a Toastmasters meeting? But I got used to it.

When I participated in the Toastmasters area contest in March, we began with the Pledge of Allegiance. When I visited another local club, we started with the Pledge. So when I became president of our club last month, one of the first things I did was find out who or what determined whether to include the Pledge at the start of meetings.

I found out that it is decided by majority vote of active members in the club. So I plan to suggest we vote on it at an upcoming meeting. But first I want to do my next speech on the Pledge of Allegiance, so we’ll be adequately prepared to vote knowledgeably on the subject. (I picked June 8 for the day to give my speech, it being the meeting day closest to Flag Day on June 14.)

Considering that today we tend to associate the Pledge of Allegiance with conservative politics, I was surprised to learn that it was written by a Socialist. Francis Bellamy (cousin of Edward Bellamy who wrote Looking Backward) was a Baptist minister who preached Christian Socialism. He advocated a variety of social reforms, including many that we take for granted today – municipal ownership of water, free public schools, women’s suffrage, the 8-hour day, safety laws, and the end of child labor.

Bellamy saw the public schools not only as a way to improve the lives of most people, but also as a way to influence the next generation to the Christian socialist way of thinking. He believed that state-controlled education and a state-controlled economy would lead to the utopia described in his cousin’s novel. Providing public schools with American flags and teaching schoolchildren to pledge their allegiance to that flag would promote devotion to the state and help lead to the desired nationalization of the economy.

Whatever Americans may have thought of Bellamy’s politics, they responded positively to the idea of having their children recite a pledge to the flag. Within thirty years, several states had passed laws requiring schoolchildren to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. In part, this was seen as a way to help immigrants come to think of themselves as Americans. The original wording of the pledge said “I pledge allegiance to my flag,” but as there were concerns that immigrants might think it referred to the flag of their former homeland, it was changed to “the flag of the United States” and later to its current wording “the flag of the United States of America.”

Not everyone thought the pledge was a good thing, however. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that pledging allegiance to a flag is a form of idolatry, bowing down to a thing made by men. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1943 that children could not be required to say the pledge, and states that make it a mandatory exercise at school have to allow children to opt out.

Some people see the pledge as promoting statism – concentrating control in the government at the cost of individual liberty. Others worry that it promotes an unhealthy attitude of nationalism (seeing ourselves as superior to people of other countries) rather than a healthy sense of patriotism (gratitude for what is good about our country and willingness to work to improve it).

Some people object to schoolchildren reciting the pledge on the grounds that most of them do not understand what they are saying. What purpose is there, they ask, in requiring such a recitation other than to inculcate in the children a sense of blind loyalty? Some adults object to saying the pledge because pledge advocates accuse those who do not recite it of lacking patriotism. If people feel pressured into saying it, then it becomes a tool of coercion rather than a tribute to liberty.

And that’s without even taking into consideration the whole matter of those two words “under God” that were added in 1954. Some atheists and agnostics object to saying the pledge because it amounts to lying to say that the country is “under God.” Others consider it a form of prayer, and to require anyone to say a prayer, even such a generic one, violates their right to religious freedom. Some Christians object because it is such a generic reference to God, and suggests that the is one deity worshipped by all regardless of their specific religious beliefs.

After reading all these arguments, I found myself wondering, do I even want to suggest to my fellow Toastmasters that we consider adding the Pledge of Allegiance to our meeting agenda? But of course there are arguments on the positive side as well.

For many, perhaps most Americans, there is no need to analyze the history of the pledge or the possibility that patriotism can be twisted into something perverse. The American flag represents our country and the freedom that draws so many people to seek U.S. citizenship. Saying the pledge is a way of honoring the country, and honoring the brave men and women who died to make and keep us free. It is a promise to be faithful to the ideals that it stands for, recognizing that we fall short but determining to work to make the country better.

If there were no Pledge of Allegiance, and no history of reciting it, I doubt that many people would argue for creating one. But given that we do have the Pledge, and over one hundred years history of reciting it, to choose not to say it does not come across as a neutral choice. (Likewise, if the words “under God” were not now part of the pledge, there might be no push to add them. But to take them away sends a certain message that is generally interpreted as anti-God.)

The Pledge of Allegiance has meant different things to a lot of people, from a tool to promote socialism to an idolatrous oath to a statement of love for country. It has been used by politicians to paint their opponents as unpatriotic, and by protesters as a way to make a statement about the country. If we say it, our motives may possibly be misunderstood by some people, and if we do not say it, our motives will almost certainly be misunderstood by others.

So which approach has the greater opportunity to express what we do want to express, a gratitude for the freedom that we have, freedom that lets us choose whether or not to say it? If you were a member of the Toastmasters club and asked to vote on it, what would you choose?

Whether and how to change the flag

Even since I first heard of Puerto Rico when I was a child, I’ve heard arguments about whether or not it should become our 51st state. As with other complex and controversial topics, the arguments I hear or read often sound convincing – until someone else presents a contrary view.

On the whole, I tend to lean toward agreeing with the proponents of statehood, both for reasons of principle and pragmatism. As to principle, why should citizens of this country not have the same kind of voting rights and elected representatives at the federal level? The practical reasons have to do with the economic boost that statehood proponents believe would occur, as it has with other states that entered the Union.

Trying to predict economic outcomes, of course, is difficult at best. But I do think that statehood proponents have a point when they point out the flaws in the economic arguments of opponents to statehood. The latter group claim that since rates of poverty are so high in Puerto Rico, having Puerto Ricans pay federal income tax would generate little revenue, while more tax dollars from the existing fifty states would flow into Puerto Rico.

The question is whether the current state of the economy in Puerto Rico would persist. The opponents of statehood seem to assume that it would. The proponent of statehood point to studies that purport to show that the island’s economy would experience a significant boost. People who know far more about economics than I do can’t agree on the matter, so I’m not going to try to render an opinion. But I do know that the economy is so complex, influenced by so many interdependent factors, that you can’t change a few factors and expect the others not to change also.

The purpose of this post isn’t to argue for or against statehood, however. If the subject interests you, there are a variety of website that discuss the matter. The U.S. Council for Puerto Rico Statehood is – as the name says - for statehood. No Statehood for Puerto Rico and ProEnglish oppose it. This one gives a fairly balanced view, I think, of the issues from both perspectives.

What I found interesting this evening was a far easier question: How could we rearrange the stars on our flag to add in one more? Fifty-one is three times seventeen, but it would hardly work to have three rows of seventeen stars. You could split seventeen into eight and nine, and have six rows of eight and six row of nine, but then you wouldn’t have the nice symmetry of today’s flag, with longer rows of stars at both top and bottom.

Of course, if Puerto Rico became a state, might there be other territories desiring the same status? How would you make a flag with fifty-two stars, or fifty-three? Fortunately, a mathematician and a computer can offer practical solutions to these questions far more easily than economists and politicians can answer the thornier questions regarding statehood.

Check here for an interactive flag calculator that lets you see possible configurations for anywhere from one to one hundred stars – with three exceptions for which there are no valid patterns (at least not using the six most common star configurations). Many numbers offer two or more possible patterns (try clicking on the long, short, alternate, equal, wyoming, and oregon buttons when they are not grayed out).

Money and politics

I’m sure I’ve read only a tiny fraction of what has been written in the blogosphere since last Friday regarding the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. But I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Much of the argument over the decision deal with the nature of corporations and whether they are persons deserving protections guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. Other arguments speculate as to the possible outcome of allowing corporations to spend billions of dollars to influence elections.

The two questions are separate issues, I think, and should not be conflated. One can believe that corporations have the right to free speech but worry about the possible outcome of letting them exercise that right. One can believe that corporations are mere legal fictions with no inherent rights, yet believe that letting them get involved in political campaigns will not corrupt the democratic process (more than it already is, anyway).

At least on WorldMagBlog, the opponents of the SCOTUS decision seem to view corporations in a very negative light. They worry about how safety regulations will be dismantled, workers will be maltreated, and only the wealthy stockholders will profit. I find myself arguing on the side of corporations, because both from my experience (I have worked for seven different corporations, mostly large ones) and my studies for my MBA, I see corporations playing a positive role in society.

We probably all have read about the horrible working conditions before worker safety laws were enacted, and how bitterly companies opposed reforms. I remember reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair in eighth grade, and I was appalled at the awful conditions people lived and worked in. There is a need for some level of regulation. But that doesn’t mean that if we allow corporations greater latitude, that they will push to return to those “bad old days.”

In business school (at Rider University), we learned that, in the long run, businesses benefit from working for the interests of all their stakeholders, not just their stockholders. They may gain short term profits from actions that hurt workers, the environment, the community, or even their trading partners (suppliers and customers), but in the long run they profit more by maintaining the good will of all those stakeholders.

Books: Liberty and Tyranny (part 3)

[continued from previous two posts]

Levin covers a number of different areas of conservative thought, but important to all of them is the idea of limited government. There is a need for government to perform certain essential tasks – but no more. And as much as possible, the best level of government to handle these responsibilities is the one closest to the situation. That is why education is best handled at the local level. Very little was originally intended to be handled at the federal level.

Growing up in Connecticut, I was puzzled by the slight differences in laws between different states. When I went shopping in or near my hometown, I knew how to calculate the sales tax and thus the total I would need to pay the cashier. But when we did any shopping during camping trips elsewhere in New England, my calculutions were always off, because I had forgotten that other states had higher or lower sales tax, or includes/excluded different items.

There were also different traffic laws. Most other states allowed right turn on red, before Connecticut adopted the practice (it was the next to last state to do so). Speed limits were different (until President Nixon imposed the nationwide 55 mph speed limit in 1973). I think I was also vaguely aware of different state laws as to the sale of such things as alcohol, firecrackers, and lottery tickets.

None of the differences seemed huge. As far as I could tell, from visiting relatives in different states, there was not a lot of difference between living in one state or another, except those that had to do with by physical laws (climate, topography) rather than manmade law. As I studied history in school, I learned how and when different states had been added to the Union. But the reason why they each had a state constitution and their own set of laws remained a mystery to me.

Books: Liberty and Tyranny (continued)

[continued from yesterday's post]

One thing I liked about this book was that it discussed conservatism primarily in the abstract, citing examples more from history than current events. That way you can focus on the concepts themselves, without the emotional baggage the accompanies current manifestations of conservatism, either in personalities or programs. Discussions on worldmagblog so often become mired in specific details of what some well-known conservative or liberal did, or anecdotal evidence of the success or failure of some particular program.

Since no one is perfect and no one’s program is perfect, there will always be places to find fault, and somehow the faults of one’s political opponents always seem somewhat worse than those of people on the same side. Even when this is admitted, however, such fault still end up being used as evidence of the perversity of the opponents’ political views. This tendency is less pronounced when it comes to discussing history – though it’s hardly absent.

On the other hand, discussing conservatism in the abstract makes it hard to envision how it can be put into practice in the real world. And it paints a picture of the conservative as the paragon of moral clarity, while his opponent is a tyrant, the source of unmitigated evil. There may be people in the world who fit those two extremes, but most people are much more a mix of noble and ignoble thoughts and motives.

Who is this Statist, anyway? Levin explains right at the beginning that he will use the term Statist rather than Liberal, since Liberal should rightly mean broad-minded, and Levin considers today’s “liberals” to be the very opposite. They want to control people’s lives by government regulation that reaches into just about every aspect of people’s lives. What products you are able to buy, how you can use your money, how you can use your own property – these are just a few of the ways that your liberty is abridged by those who call themselves liberals. Therefore, Levin calls them Statists, to emphasize their use of government power.

While it is true that liberals generally favor regulation far more than do conservatives, I have trouble with the idea of assuming to know their motives. Levin says, “But it is the Statist’s purpose to make as many individuals as possible dependent on the government.” I have known quite a few liberals, and they are variously motivated by concern for the poor and oppressed, protection of the environment, or reaction against what they perceive as the moral code that conservatives seem to be attempting to impose on society. The result of their efforts may well be dependence on the government, but that does not mean it is their purpose. If Levin thinks that all or even most liberals are Statists in the full sense he describes, he is blinded by his own ideology.

Books: Liberty and Tyranny

My husband is enjoying being able to discuss politics with our older son, now that he is old enough to understand and take an interest in current issues and events. At his request, I checked this book (along with Ann Coulter’s latest book) out from the public library, for them to read and discuss. When they were done, he offered them to me to read. I wasn’t interested in Coulter’s book, from what I had heard about her and the excerpts our son had read aloud.

But I took a look at Mark Levine’s book and decided it was worth reading. I even kept it two days past the due date, when I discovered I couldn’t renew it because someone else put a hold on it, so I could finish the book. (Fortunately our library only charges a dime a day per book.) I’ve considered myself a conservative for a long time, but it’s a long time since I had seen someone articulate the conservative views clearly and succinctly without indulging in sarcasm and invective.

I do have some criticisms of the book, but for the most part I thought that Levin presented the main principles of conservatism well. At first I thought some statements were made without offering examples or corroboration, but once I got into the meat of the book, he provided examples and lots of footnotes. If I were to purchase the book, I would be able to do further research into some of the areas he discusses, using the sources noted in the notes at the end of the book.

I first came to hold a conservative position in college. I happened to turn 18 in 1980, right at the start of the presidential campaign (although that first semester I was studying at Word of Life Bible Institute, where no TV or radios were allowed and I paid little attention to the outside world (they kept us much too busy anyway). By the time Reagan emerged as the Republican candidate, I had decided to transfer from WOLBI to Cedarville College (now Cedarville University), and that fall I took a required course that included an introduction to both economics and political science.

I wasn’t certain just how the Bible supported free markets as clearly as our professor said, but everything he said about free markets and limited government made sense to me. When a straw poll taken that fall at the college showed over 90% support for Reagan among the student body, I was actually surprised it wasn’t higher. How could anyone listen to what they taught us about what the Republicans stood for and what the Democrats stood for, and not choose to vote for Reagan?

Books: Memorial Day

Arguments regarding the morality of “enhanced interrogation techniques” often focus on the “ticking-bomb” scenario, a hypothetical situation where a terrorist (in custody) has information regarding a plan to use WMD, possibly a nuclear bomb that will wipe out an entire city. Conservatives tend to point to the number of American lives that would be saved by using whatever means necessary to get the terrorist to talk, and that he deserves some pretty severe punishment anyway for his part in a mass murder conspiracy.

Liberals tend to point out how extremely unlikely such a scenario is, and that there is no way of knowing whether a captured suspect actually does have knowledge of the details of what is planned, or that he will tell the truth if he does speak. Using a highly unlikely scenario to justify torture of actual human beings, who may not even be complicit in the acts of terror they are being questioned about, gives too much power to government agency officials who may abuse that power. And the victims of that wrongly wielded power could someday be us.

Conservatives – who on other issues are often far more suspicious about government having too much power – prefer to err on the side of security rather than personal freedoms when it comes to the fight against terrorism. I find my sympathies more with the liberals on this one, but I also think that most people on both sides have far too little knowledge of real as opposed to hypothetical scenarios to be good judges of the matter. Personally I am glad not to have to be making those life-and-death decisions.

In the book I just finished listening to, Vince Flynn puts flesh on the hypothetical nuclear bomb scenario. Al Qaeda has managed to obtain the material needed to make the bomb, has apparently managed to smuggle it into the U.S., and plans to use it to destroy a major city. Mitch Rapp, a CIA operative, is charged with finding out the where, when, and how soon enough to avert the disaster.

Rapp’s methods are whatever it takes to get the job done, not necessarily within the parameters of what is officially allowed. Unofficially, he is granted a fair degree of latitude, because he is known to get results. And he is trusted to do what is best for the country, not for his own personal gain or satisfaction. That is, he is trusted by his boss and some others high up in the nation’s security apparatus. There are others who are adamantly opposed to him, whether for philosophical or personal reasons.