Piss On Them (Properly)

there is an old saying about "fighting fire with fire" which doesn't make sense to me anymore. it seems to me that fire would best be fought with water. with that in mind, i will now strive to piss on Mike Huckabee and his supporters as much as is divinely possible.

firstly, it should be noted for the record that every mass political movement contains a percentage of idiocy that positively dwarfs that of almost any individual's or the population as a whole, simply because any political movement that achieves mass popularity can be found to be but a reaction to the circumstances that preceded it and caused it. and as with the popular saying about fire, the masses seem always determined to "fight idiocy with idiocy".

secondly, if i but had the power it would not be so, because power so corrupts. but religious fundamentalists, under the U.S. Constitution, have every right that everyone else has, to organize and assert themselves in the public arena in furthering their proscriptions/beliefs into law. whether they should be able to do so from a foundation of tax-exempt institutions is a debate for the future, which in turn will be a reaction, if religious fundamentalists continue to succeed as they do today.

reason and logic in the civic arena should rule the debate. morals derived from experience and faith have a place in the debate, but once one religion becomes disproportionately influential, the other religions will be compelled to try to match it. then religions, rooted in the logic and reason of centuries ago, now meta-morphisized into only faith, will rapidly distort questions concerning the raising and spending of public money, demanding that it be directed to the ludicrous, while calling it sublime.this applies to 'progressives', 'neo-cons', and 'baptists' equally, whether in the form of the 'war on poverty', the 'war on terror', or the looming war over the role of a semi-standardized belief in God and the traditional values associated with it, in future public policy. for every solution has consequences, some unintended and unforeseeable, some perhaps not. and from every negative consequence will come some good.

over 200 years in practice of the history of the U.S. has shown repeatedly that action and reaction are primarily the result of a dedicated, activist minority. yet it is also true that in every case, the majority allowed change by foregoing the use of it's power to stop change. the old saying "evil triumphs when good men do nothing" comes quickly to those who have sought to maintain the status quo and failed.

ultimately Government, hence Politics, is about the raising and spending of money for publicly directed purposes. every policy, large or small, momentary or generational, should be subjected to as thorough a cost/benefit analysis as humans are able by as many as practicable. each citizen must be an accountant when assessing public policy in order to hold public officials accountable. it is proper for each individual to use their faith and beliefs in the accounting process. then they should assert themselves in public with "it is MY opinion", "it is MY belief", or even up to "it is my religious teaching/belief" on the questions of the day.

but when their assertions begin with "GOD says", "GOD requires" or "GODdemands", the injection of spiritual/existential faith and belief is intruding upon reasoned debate and will quickly succeed in destroying the use of reason and experience upon questions of public expenditures.

and of course, the same applies to "Science says", "Science shows", and "Science demands", especially when the Science is, as yet, undefinitive. most unfortunate it is that there is, as yet, as much disagreement over what constitutes "definitive" in Science as there is with Faith. such is the nature of humans when dealing with questions concerning how to force their neighbors to act. even more so when incomprehensible sums of money are involved.

yes, STATISM is also a religion, one that currently has even more consequences and almost as many differing versions of it's principles and applications as does Faith in God's Word (which is also just about as many different versions as there are people who subscribe to the tenets of it, for it is entirely arguable that no two people's belief systems are identical)while it is impossible to remove sentiment and emotion completely from any question, emotions are even more an enemy of reason and logic in the public sphere than they are in an individual. the struggle to sublimate emotion and muster as much reason as possible to public questions will be a never-ending one for humanity.

A Constitution proscribing limited and carefully delineated powers to various branches and subdivisions of Government, is the most powerful tool yet devised by man to assist in reason's perpetual struggle with emotions of the day.

stephen h. smith 21Dec2007