Five Sundry Bloglettes

Why, in the long run, America will legalize Gay marriage.

Let’s pretend that ½ of the general populace supports it. This seems likely since there’s about an equal number of those who consider themselves conservative as those who consider themselves liberal, and independents will likewise probably be split evenly on this issue. So, let’s just pretend. This ½ of the populace will vote to legalize gay marriage. The other ½ will oppose it.

However, among the ½ who oppose gay marriage, there is a much more difficult set of decisions that must be made, ones that aren’t in the equation for those who support it. Those who oppose it don’t have a harder decision because ‘they know in their hearts gay marriage is a good thing and they know in their hearts that they are just bigots deep down.’ Nothing like that. Those who oppose it have a harder decision because even though they feel it is wrong, they may feel that it is not the government’s job to determine morality, or to decide this particular issue of morality. I personally know some people who consider homosexuality a sin, but who support legalizing gay marriage.

There won’t be anyone in the ½ of America who thinks homosexuality is ok that will vote against gay marriage. But there will be some in the ½ of America who thinks homosexuality is a sin that will still vote to legalize gay marriage, considering it a trampling of rights – that’s what America is all about. Of course, so far, I’m wrong. In 31 states traditional marriage has prevailed, recently most notably and surprisingly in Maine.

Moral Relativists are mean people.

People tell me that evil doesn’t exist. Next time someone tells me that I’ll ask them if they believe that hatred exists. I’m sure they’ll agree.

Evil may best be described as actions motivated by hatred. I don’t think you can do an evil act and not feel hatred in some way, on some level. You can cause harm without out right angry hatred, such as allowing someone to be hurt and you don’t try to help them and that is evil too, derived from apathy. But even if it is out of apathy, there has to be some kind of hatred on some level. This is demonstrated by the fact that you cannot love someone and allow them to be hurt. Obviously this is different from allowing someone to be harmed so they can learn. This could be out of love. The obvious example is letting a kid get (slightly) burned on the stove so that the kid will learn to listen to her mother next time to not touch the stove. But imagine a parent that allowed her child to run into a busy street so that the child can ‘learn’ that cars hurt you. That’s evil (or insanity). Such a parent does not love the kid. The parent must loathe the child on some level. That is evil.

This argument is entirely semantic of course. But aren’t all discussions of evil? When people tell me that evil doesn’t exist, they are saying so because they are trying to argue that morality is a false notion. If you cut it down to evil = hatred, and they must agree that the concept of hatred exists, they will then be forced to argue that hatred isn’t wrong. What a lovely idea.

Glad to have Obama as my president – no sarcasm.

People always talk about how Obama is a bad president, he’s a socialist, he’s inept, etc. Maybe he’s a bad president. But I would much rather have Obama than Putin or the guys who run the West Bank or the guys who run Lebanon or China or virtually any nation in Africa, or the vast majority of nations throughout history. Or for that matter, I’d rather have him than the majority of nations throughout the 20th century. It’s all in the comparison, like poverty, it doesn’t truly exist in America. We just think it does.

Sarah Palin, it’s simple.

Sarah Palin is always big news on the political scene. But I never read anything about her ever. I always skip anything involving Sarah Palin no matter what it is. I only learned two things about her last year and it’s enough for me. These two things are all I need to know to forever vote for her.

1) she fought against her own party who were corrupt and won the governorship in Alaska.

2) her voter approval rating was always astronomically high.

No one fights your own party and wins, and no one has such insanely high approval ratings. That’s a president I’d want to have. I trust someone who fights the corruption of their own party and who everyone on both sides of the aisle support overwhelmingly. People talk about how we’re too polarized as a nation, too partisan. Sarah Palin seems to be a bridge builder of far more acuity than Obama, and she did so by actually doing it, not by saying she would.

The Berlin Wall did not Fall

You read correctly. It did not fall. It was torn down. It was not an inevitable event. It had to be physically broken apart by people, not by time or its own weight. There was no fall of the Berlin Wall, there was a tearing down of the Berlin Wall. The distinction is highly relevant.

Just as Martin Luther King jr. said – “Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability.”

The wall was built by evil decisions and torn down by good ones. There was nothing inevitable about either event.