Gun Violence in America

The 74th school shooting incident since Sandy Hook happened yesterday. When schools are in session, shooting incidents happen 1.37 times per week! Of course, this is only a small but highly visible part of gun violence in America.

The annual toll of deadly gun violence in most European and other developed countries is near 100. America distinguishes itself with a total over 10,000 gun-related deaths per year! Are we proud of this?

It is not surprising that our government does nothing to stop this because by and large our government has become completely ineffective in doing anything for the common good. So called law makers have mostly been bought off by the NRA in combination with manufacturers of guns and ammunition. 

But I really am skeptical that guns are the problem anyway. Obviously, mental health is a big problem too --- yet another problem that we seem incapable of dealing with. But I believe a far greater problem exists and that is the character of the American "melting pot" itself. Frankly speaking, the "melting pot" was a foolish experiment, one that virtually guaranteed cultural disaster. Americans gathered under the banner of "free for the taking" throughout the frontier era. Gradually, this moved into the era of hard core Capitalism, upward mobility, and profit at any price. The central element of American culture is greed --- our one distinguishing value. But something has changed in a couple generations. Most of my older friends will tell you that they worked their way up from small jobs by hard work and eventually "made good." And they did that. But young people don't do that anymore, at least not with the reliability that was possible generations ago. I think people are frustrated today, and picking up a gun and shooting someone has a real cathartic feeling.

Don't get me wrong. There are lots of great people out there who do fine things for one another. But they are not the majority and they have little cultural influence over the majority.

Religious Rights and Tolerance

The ultra conservative Christian group in Arizona that was responsible for pushing the recent legislation to allow discrimination on the basis of religious beliefs is called the Center for Arizona Policy. Cathi Herrod is the group's president. Other recent legislations sponsored by this group are Criminalizing Assisted Suicide, "Women's Health Protection Act" (which allows police to inspect abortion clinics without warning and without warrant), Corporate Scholarship Tax Credit (which gives tax breaks to corporations that give money to school tuition organizations), and Property Tax Exemptions for Religious Institutions. You can find out more about the organization and their successful legislations at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/28/arizona-anti-gay-bill_n_4860817.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

What is happening here, under the banner of "religious rights," is a constant process of trying to use political influence to require the people of a state to conform to specific behaviors promoted by their Christian faith. In effect, they are trying in every way possible to make Arizona a Christian state. Of course, the first amendment to the United States Constitution that supposedly gives them their "religious rights" also prohibits the formation of a national religion and, thereby, also prohibits the formation of a state religion. In the United States, we have the right to pursue any religious faith, including pursuing no religious faith. This means that citizens of the United States must be tolerant of others who pursue different faiths.

Consider the case of abortion. Whether an individual approves of abortion or not, it remains a law of the land that women have a right to pursue an abortion within a certain time period. Yet religious groups of several varieties, because they abhor the idea of abortion from within their own religious beliefs, have done everything in their power to prevent women from pursuing their legal rights. Where is tolerance?

I always thought that tolerance and love were mainstays of Christian beliefs, but a large number of Christian groups behave as though tolerance means only welcoming those who behave your way. That, of course, is not tolerance but rather dominance.

Religious Rights

The recent skirmishes over a bill in Arizona that would allow business owners to discriminate by refusing to serve certain people of their own choosing were defended by the claim that "religious rights" were involved. But Governor Jan Brewer vetoed the bill and that produced even more screaming that religious rights were being violated. "Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer makes Christians in her state second class citizens," tweeted one person. It's interesting that in this person's mind it is only Christians who are being deprived of their rights. Is it really only Christians who want this bill so that they can refuse to serve Gay and Lesbian couples? It's interesting how something that is proposed and defended on the basis of broad rights nevertheless comes down to just one thing, hatred of the LGBT world.

What interests me in all of this is the way Christians evidently feel threatened and how the concept of "religious rights" is used. The First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The first part of this sentence means that in the eyes of our government Christians have no more clout than any other religious or non-religious group. For to elevate Christians above Muslims, for instance, would be to establish a state authorized religion. The thorny part is the second half of the sentence, providing that Congress shall not prohibit the free exercise of religion. Does this mean that members of any religious group can do anything they wish so long as it is defended as an authorized "practice" of that religion? Hence, should American Muslims be allowed to follow all practices of Sharia Law? Should conservative Mormons be allowed to have numerous wives, many of them under age? Obviously, we are not ready to embrace every "practice" that comes along.

What we need to think through is what it means to "practice or exercise a religion." Catholics are counseled to shun birth control measures and to have as many children as possible. The exercise of Catholicism evidently means ignoring birth control when it comes to one's personal behavior. But does this give Catholics the right to disapprove of non-Catholics who want to behave otherwise? And how far can they go with their disapproval? It seems clear to me that the free exercise of a religion is the freedom to think in certain ways, to join with others of a similar faith, and to regulate one's own behavior in accordance. But everyone must remember that the very same right to religious freedom is held by every other person, which includes the right to be completely non-religious as well. So there must be an "edge" to personal behavior beyond which the practice of one's religious beliefs is no longer appropriate. This is because going beyond that edge begins to imply that all others must practice the same religious beliefs as you do. Interestingly, the First Amendment has a tricky side. If the Constitution in saying that free exercise of religion cannot be prohibited were to mean that any religious group can require others to conform to its standard of behavior, that would actually constitute an infraction of the first part of the amendment, that Congress shall not establish any religion. So clearly the First Amendment does not grant the free exercise of religion in any sense that allows religious groups to require their preferred behaviors of others. 

Now in the Arizona law the issue is whether a Christian business owner can refuse to do business with someone who behaves in a non-Christian way. The question is whether running a business is an authorized part of a Christian practice. Or, in running a business, does a person leave the free exercise of his/her religion behind and, instead, commit to working with people of any belief as guaranteed them by the Constitution. The answer seems obvious to me.

Is There Really a Science vs. Religion Debate?

Very recently there was a staged debate between Bill Nye, the Science Guy, and Ken Ham, the Genesis Guy (founder of the Creation Museum). The question posed was the limited question of the earth's history --- the Bible's version of a 6000-year history vs. Evolution's version of millions of years. Ham suggested that there are really several "sciences" and that his "Historical Science" based on the Bible deserves as much respect as so-called "Observational Science" favored by Nye. Ham claims that his Historical Science "works at least as well" as Observational Science. It is very interesting that Ham put it this way because his claim follows straight down the avenues of American Pragmatism, especially the version popularized by William James. Meaning and truth follow because something works for us. 

What concerns me is what it is, in Ham's mind, that works for him and his followers. I will illustrate, below, something the works pretty well for observational science. 

The general idea that trees have rings of annual growth works for us because we can cut a cross section from a tree and both show and count the rings. We can also demonstrate that rings increase in size or decrease in size in concert with the annual amount of precipitation. This gives the pattern of rings a unique "finger print" belonging to the weather history in the area where the tree grew. This works for us because we can compare trees that grew in the same region and whose histories are known. If one tree was cut down years earlier than another, we can still match the finger prints for the years that they overlapped. In this way, scientists have been able to map trees backward in time, producing a weather history through ring patterns. The bristlecone pines of the White Mountains are of special interest here because they are very slow growing and very old. Dendrochronologists have reconstructed ring sequences that go back 10,000 years and several living trees are on record as being very old indeed --- a 5,000 year old bristle cone pine and a 9,550 year old Norway spruce in Sweden. Dendrochronology also works for us as a comparison to radio-carbon dating for similar time periods. The two procedures compare very well; that is, they reinforce each others results. 

This is what observational scientists mean when they say that science works for them. Not only can we show things to one another but we can write about our observations in journals which can be read by others around the world (no matter what their religious beliefs are) and they can make similar observations of their own. The scientific community is a world community that shares observation of the natural world. It does not depend upon any particular object of reverence or a religious icon. 

What Mr. Ham needs to do now is to actually tell us what it is that works for him in his historical vision guided by the Bible. One of the first things we can say is that Ham's community is not a world community but only a segment of the Christian community. Furthermore, it seems to me that what works for this community is a kind of self-satisfied commitment of faith to a particular religious icon.

I want to go back to the title of this blog --- Is there really a religion vs. science debate? I don't want to put down the self-satisfaction of Ham's Christian community and I don't particularly want to elevate the satisfactions of observational scientists like dendrochronologists. What seems obvious to me, in fact, is that there is no debate and there is no possibility of a debate because there is no common ground. Both of these are what Wittgenstein called language-games and they have very different rules and goals for playing them. 

It is fair, it seems to me, for each group to get into the other's language-game and ask critical questions that aim at clarification. If Ham's intention is to understand the Bible literally and if we ignore, for now, the fact that the Bible has been translated out of its original language and gone through many different editions, it is still fair to ask, it seems to me, how we can calculate the age of our earth when Genesis admits that the order of creation doesn't admit the tools for defining 'years' for several days. At the same time, it is fair for Creationists to get as deeply into observational science as they can and ask whether God can fairly be excluded from a scientific account of the universe. These are interesting questions, it seems to me, but they do not stand as a "debate" in which either side might be construed as winning.  

Another thought about the Second Amendment.

First of all, there is an enormous amount of paranoia in this country about both guns and the Second Amendment. Paranoia is good for the people who want no restrictions of gun manufacture or sales because it keeps people in fear that they will lose their rights and their guns. That's why big money is in back of paranoia production.

In fact, no one in power is talking about eliminating the Second Amendment and no one is talking about taking everyone's guns away from them. So why don't we drop the paranoia and talk about what really matters, which is why the gun lobby has such a tight grip on Congress that it is impossible to do anything about regulating gun traffic. 

The Second Amendment talks about citizens bearing arms so that a militia is always potentially available to come to the country's defense. It didn't talk about people carrying guns into theaters and shooting obnoxious men who text their daughters during previews (which happened just yesterday) or arming heads of households so they could accidentally shoot their sons coming in late through the back door (which happened years ago). The arms of the time were muskets and pistols, not weapons of nearly-massive destruction. 

My point is that the Constitution is a living document, meaning that it has to be reinterpreted and advanced as the times change. With a well trained and supplied military and National Guard, we may no longer need every person to be prepared with military-style weaponry. Just because the Second Amendment gave us the right to have a musket or two, I don't think it is rational to believe that everyone today has an equivalent "right" to posses an assault weapon. 

I have a 12-gauge shotgun for hunting but the law says that I must keep a plug in the magazine so that I can load only three shells. I have a six-shot Ruger pistol but the law says (in California at least) that I cannot carry it concealed in any way and that I am responsible for keeping it out of accessibility to children. There are other interesting laws. One cannot fly an airplane without first taking training and qualifying for a pilot's license. One cannot drive an automobile on public roadways without a training, a driver's license, and sufficient insurance. All of these laws are in the name of public safety. But virtually anyone can buy an assault weapon capable of killing hundreds of people within minutes without training, insurance, or any other regulation.

Yes, guns don't kill people. People kill people with guns (and with other things). But it is terribly difficult to predict what people are going to kill. It is way too simplistic to say that law abiding citizens can do anything they please and criminals are the ones to be regulated. Unfortunately, we don't know who the criminals are until they have committed a crime. (The man who shot the texter, mentioned above, was a retired policeman.)

When I wanted to go hunting, I had to take a training class before I could get a license to hunt. I don't see anything wrong with that, and in particular I never saw it as a violation of my Second Amendment rights. 

Global Warming and the Big Freeze

Well, the eastern US (that is, just about everything east of the Rocky Mountains) has had an extremely cold and icy winter thus far. So, of course, those who disbelieve in Global Warming and Climate Change are out in mass yelling "victory." 

But not so fast! Global Warming does not mean that we cannot have winters --- even severe winters. Indeed, the seasons continue to cycle through just as the tilted axis of earth intended. Global Warming is an issue of averages and requires us to look at long periods. So neither spectacular heat waves nor spectacular freezes have very much to say about it. The real question is whether actual temperature records around the earth demonstrate a gradual increase and, if so, whether we can observe consequences of this gradual rise in temperatures. So far as I know, scientists around the world are indeed recording increases in average temperatures and, among other observations, they are seeing the disappearance of polar ice, including the withdrawal of glaciers. All of this is problematic, when viewed through well established theories of weather generation because the polar ice has a great influence over the ways that weather events are generated in the latitudes below. American winters, for instance, are greatly influenced by the position of the so-called jet stream. The average position of the jet stream as it comes off the Pacific Ocean can bring snow into the Sierra Nevada and rain into Southern California or it can hang us out to dry. And the track of the jet stream is heavily influenced by what happens in the far north. If you have been following weather maps for the last few weeks, you will have noticed that the jet stream has been coming off the Pacific up in Oregon and then diving dramatically to the south east of Nevada, bringing extreme cold and snow to everywhere east of that line.

This much can be measured and observed. What causes Global Warming is a matter for speculation, though scientists are now reasonably confident that the output of "green house gases" is the culprit. Here is where politics --- left and right --- comes to the fore. If scientists are right in believing that green house gases should be blamed for Global Warming, then we should probably do something about the production of these gases to avoid the disastrous results predicted --- rising ocean levels that may well flood coastal regions and even bury small islands, and dramatic changes in world-wide weather patterns (hurricanes, tornadoes, etc). The problem is that reducing our output of green house gases requires changes in our habitual lifestyles, and there are powerful people who have huge investments in maintaining our habitual lifestyles. So the more rational among these people want to assert that the science is incomplete and inconclusive, and they are partly right. Scientists base their expectations on theoretical models that can always be challenged and should be challenged. That is what science is about. But this fact alone does not mean that scientists are presently wrong in what they believe; it simply means that we have to continue working on this. 

Now the more-nearly irrational disbelievers want to claim that scientists have formed a large Climate-Change Cult that is trying to use government (especially the socialist Federal government) to ruin the American paradise --- especially their own wealth-producing paradise of "big oil." This claim, of course, just demonstrates pure ignorance of what science is all about and how it works. If there is a cult at work here, it is the cult of ignorance and anti-intellectualism that has plagued the American scene for centuries. 

Capitalism

The Conservative Right likes to see themselves as the guardians of Capitalism. Liberals, in the worst light, are viewed as Socialists at the very least and, when tempers get really riled up, Communists. The trouble with the Conservative Right's position is that they neither define nor justify the particular form of Capitalism which they are guarding, and Capitalism can have many forms depending on the character of the people involved.

In the most basic sense, Capitalism is simply an economic system in which there is private ownership of the means of production. At the time of our nation's founding, the economy was agrarian so the principal means of production was land and certain tools involved in farming the land. The majority of Capitalists were independent farmers, the very population upon which Jefferson rested his utopian concept of a democratic government. With so much in common, people would be able to come together to participate in government and solve their shared problems.

Of course, even in the infancy of our nation, there were already economic factors that, as they developed, would topple such a utopia. There was already an industrial-agricultural split between New England and the South. And Southern Capitalism depended upon slavery. In the North, the means of production was moving toward the tools and institutions of industry and away from mere land and cottage tools. In the era of industrial production, Capitalism took on an entirely different appearance. Since the means of production was becoming factories and large-investment machines, Capitalists were far fewer in number and the remainder of the population increasingly turned to laboring for their means of survival. As Marx saw it, Capitalist society became increasingly divided between the Bourgeoisie (Capital owning class) and the Proletariat (laboring class). 

The notion of "means of survival" is interesting in the context of this discussion. In a strictly agrarian society the "means of production" is equivalent to the "means of survival". That equivalence continues for the Capitalist in an industrial society but the remainder of the population is alienated from the means of production so that its survival becomes contingent. Capital is a means of survival for the majority of people only in the contingency that they are able to sell their labor at a price that can sustain them. Today, the vast majority of Americans depend on selling their labor in order to survive. While 80% of Americans were still small farmers in the late 19th Century, the percentage of small farmers now is so small that the US Census has dropped the category as inconsequential. But selling our labor depends entirely upon the management of Capital and that means an enormous division of power. Jeffersonian democracy is a thing of the past. However one wishes to characterize the American government today, it is no longer a coming together of equals to solve shared problems. It is far more like an "oligarchy in democratic clothing".

In fact, the system of industrial Capitalism places an enormous moral burden on a small number of people for the welfare and survival of the majority of their countrymen has become their responsibility. That is the sad truth --- "sad" because with only a few exceptions Capitalists have largely ignored this burden. The situation is rather like the situation of the doctor Plato describes whose true role is nurturing the health of patients but who becomes so involved in the making of money that his patients' health suffers. Capitalists of the late 19th Century enhanced their profits by buying labor at the lowest possible price which was established by the most meagre sense of survival --- the simple ability to get up the next day and work again. Anyone injured in the process or becoming ill or refusing the indignity could easily be replaced. So long as the aim of the Capitalist is simply maximizing profits all kinds of terrible things can happen.

I see no problem with the Capitalist system of economy if the moral burden is understood. That burden is to produce products of superior quality for delivery to consumers and to contribute to the well being and survival of the people who contribute to production by selling their labor. But this burden requires that Capitalists focus on other matters than pure profit taking. The quality of products is a simple matter of honesty. Caring for the well being of those who work for you is a less simple but still clear matter. The means of production are useless without the help of those who labor; hence, the welfare of those who labor is an obligation that must be met. It is not a matter of simply buying labor at the minimum wage possible; it is a matter of functioning as part of a cooperative community.