New Year’s Resolutions for Republicans

New Year’s Resolutions for Republicans:

1. Every time I waggle my finger in shame at the poor who live off of government handouts, I will claim one fewer tax deduction for the 2010 tax year. 

2. Every time I use the word “socialism,” I must donate $25.00 to a public school I attended.

3. Every time I shake my fist at health-care reform, I must volunteer six months of my financial planning skills to one uninsured family waiting in the emergency room.

4. Every time I rage against two gay people who love each other enough to get married, I must reunite two straight people who hate each other enough to get divorced.

5. Every time I ridicule environmental regulations, I must leave my suburb – just once, for like a whole hour, to see what a downtown looks like in the daytime.

What resolutions would you add for Republicans? What would you add for Democrats? Comment below!

A Christian Nation?

Recently, I enjoyed a healthy debate with a friend of mine who claimed that ours is a Christian nation, thus we ought to be comfortable with blurring the lines between church and state such as displaying the ten commandments in courtrooms, promoting school prayer, and praying at government-sponsored events like school board meetings and high school football games. The basis of her argument is simply that our founding fathers were Christian and the evidence of their faith is easily revealed by their many references to God in all our founding documents. She went on to argue that taking Christianity out of these public institutions is to chisel away at the core beliefs of our nation.

Our debate was not about the existence of God, the delights of Christianity, or the blessings of spirituality.  We stayed focused on the line between church and state, mostly.

I asked what ought to be done with the non-Christians: the Muslim, the atheist, the Jew, etc.  She said that non-believers still have access to everything that America provides for all of its citizens: civil rights and liberties, presumption of innocence in a court of law, a free public education, bill of rights stuff like having guns and screaming at trees, ambulances that show up when you call 911, the right to vote, and so forth and so on. No citizen is denied the bounty of our nation because of their beliefs.

She asked me if I could think of one legal right or privilege denied to the non-Christian in our nation. Certainly, I replied, there are none. Every citizen is afforded the same rights and privileges under the law.

She continued by stating quite eloquently that this nation is clearly a Christian nation – that most of our citizens are Christian, that our founding fathers practiced Christianity, and they even took steps to ensure that we, the people, suffered no threat to the freedom of religion, and that our worship may not be trampled upon by an oppressive government. Therefore, any effort to censure public prayer, the public display of scripture, or similar expressions of belief ought to be considered a violation of our rights.

She asked me if it was fair that a majority of people be denied their ability to worship as they please because a few among us do not believe as the majority do.

She noted that the vast majority of people in that football stadium, in those school board meetings, in those courtrooms are Christians – and since this nation was founded as a Christian nation, and since the majority of us are Christian, we should affirm and celebrate our national religion and express it publicly and frequently.

I, having listened and pondered her words, asked her if ours was also a White nation.

A White nation? She replied, stunned.

A White nation, I said. We are a nation with a White majority, founded by White men who owned slaves, with guiding documents that repeatedly reference slavery, and we deny no rights or privileges to non-Whites in our laws and practices. Why shouldn’t we get on public address systems and celebrate our Whiteness? Why shouldn’t we be able to affirm how great it is to be White at football games and school board meetings. How about posting in every courtroom the top ten reasons why being White is really, really awesome?

She understood that my example was tongue-in-cheek, but played my game anyway.

Being White is not a choice, she argued. You are born that way. You can’t change it. Religion is something you choose, or at least it’s something you could change if you wanted.

So religion is a choice?

Indeed, it is.

Something you choose? I asked.

Yes, of course.

And if you make the correct choice, you get all sorts of bonuses (like judges and teachers and elected officials and referees who clearly take your side from the get-go), but if you make the incorrect choice, you only get the basic package (like the right to vote and scream at trees), but the impartiality of your court case, your complaint to the city council or school board, or even your football game might be a little iffy if you reveal that you aren’t a Christian.

She stopped me in my tracks. Just because an elected official posts the ten commandments, for example, doesn’t mean that he would be biased against non-Christians, she said.

What if a judge posting a sign in his courtroom that said “I love attractive blondes with large breasts” but when confronted about it assured everyone that he could remain impartial in the trial of Pamela Anderson v. Susan Boyle. Do you think he could be completely impartial?

Of course not! Why the hell would he be dumb enough to post a sign like that, she stammered.

Because the majority of Americans choose to worship attractive blondes with large breasts, I replied.

But I don’t have the choice to be blonde or have big breasts, she argued!

You do in America, I said with a smile.

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Being in the “majority” might make it easier to deny others their freedoms, but it doesn’t make it right. Let’s reconsider whether it’s necessary for our courts, our classrooms, and our public spaces to declare a preference for one thing while promising impartiality for its opposite. Doing so doesn’t deny you your rights, it restores them for those whom you serve under an oath of impartiality. If we really believe in freedom and justice for all, let’s eliminate the signs and chants that are little more than asterisks on the Bill of Rights. It might be true that we COULD change if we wanted to please the majority, but it ought not to be a requirement for justice in America – be it breasts or beliefs.

Anderson’s Paradox

Anderson’s Paradox: In politics, facts are opinions, and opinions are facts.

 Huh? Welcome to modern American politics. Read on.

Facts are Opinons.

Al Franken has a standard phrase in senate speeches and political interviews: “You are entitled to your own opinions, but you aren’t entitled to your own facts.” I’m a big fan of Al Franken, but I think he’s wrong. In a digital age where the “facts” are often presented by corporations, political groups, hero pundits, and other motivated interests, we have a hard time of knowing just how honest a fact is. Does global warming exist?  Depends on who you ask. Each side has their own set of “facts” to prove their opinions.

Show me a set of “facts” to prove that the Democrat’s health care plan will ruin America, and I will show you a set of “facts” to prove that it will save America. Show me a set of “facts” to prove that the economy is getting better as a result of Obama’s strategic efforts, and I will show you a set of “facts” to prove it is getting worse. What the internet provides in terms of “facts” is great, but what it lacks in terms of “truth” is even worse.

There are three causes of the “facts are opinions” paradox. First, we seem to have great confidence in our scientific thinking, despite a complete lack of training or awareness of the scientific process. In just a few seconds, we can read and interpret graphs, charts, tables, and data sets and walk away with what we think is a conclusive understanding. Second, we tend to enjoy great leaps of logic that begin with soft data and end with hard truths. We do so largely based on ethos rather than logos. Our affirmation or rejection of internet-based data is more often based on “who” is telling us that this data is true rather than the “what, when, where, how” and most importantly “why“  they are telling us this is true. Whatever filter we use to dismiss data from villian-source seems to disappear when we readily accept data from hero-source. Third, we tend to start with the conclusion and end with the data, and the internet gives us plenty of fuel for our fire. Every home with an angry person armed with a thousand facts to prove the Democrats wrong is countered by an angry person armed with a thousand facts to prove the Republicans wrong. Neither person will accept the “facts” of the other, and both persons believe their “facts” to be the Truth.

Oh sure, you believe that your facts are better than my facts, but if I can make the same argument, then we are at an impasse. In the last thirty years, the quantity of senate and house votes has made a much bigger difference than the quality of their arguments, regardless of the controlling party.

In short, 1) the internet has made it impossible for us to discover the truth when there is any competition for opinion, and 2) the facts and data we often accept as True are acceptable for reasons other than science or fact, and 3) even if we did possess the Truth, nobody would believe us except for those who already do.

So I’m no longer interested in facts. I can’t trust facts anymore, they are too opinionated. What I DO trust are opinions, and I’m increasingly convinced that the path back to political civility isn’t through facts, but opinions.

Opinions are Facts.

Our opinions stem from our values, and partisan politics is simply a juxtoposition of values. If you strip a political argument of  hyperbole, fear, smokescreens, and other “facts,” what remains are values. Republicans value security and economic freedom. Democrats value liberty and social freedom. Consequently, much of what we call partisan politics is simply an effort to protect and preserve the values that we believe to be most important. The health care debate, for example, is really a debate about economic freedom – either from the government or from corporations, and the health care system itself is simply the point at which these competing values clash. The same is true for the environment, education, international conflict, and whatever else may dominate the evening news.

While I’ve lost faith in our ability to debate the facts, I have a great deal of confidence in our ability to debate our values. Unfortunately, we tend not to debate our values because we perceive them to be unchangeable. We’ve also redefined “values” to mean religious convictions, which is unfortunate. For whatever I may or may not believe about religion in America, I think we ought to be clear that religion should support our values and not the other way around. To presume otherwise is to falsely believe that if there is no religion, there can be no values.

So what could our nation look like if we put down our facts and picked up our values? What if we debated the health care legislation in terms of whether a government for the people is more important than a government of the people? What if the gay marriage debate started sounding more like a debate about which rights are unalienable? Messy at first, for sure, but I suspect that minds are more likely changed – including my own – by focusing on internal values rather than external facts.

Why This Matters

Modern political debate seems to reject personal opinion and rely heavily on “facts” that are neither reliable nor useful regardless of their validity. Doing so has created an impasse with no hope of resolution. Both sides believe that they have a monopoly on Truth, and neither side seems particularly interested in hearing what the other side has to say.

We tend to shoot each other with our “fact guns” and then wonder why nobody is falling down, so we call our targets too stupid to understand how convincing our bullets are. Maybe our facts aren’t nearly as powerful as we think them to be. Perhaps it is because we presume that we all share the same values, which we do not. We don’t all share the same values, and until we acknowledge this, we aren’t going to make very much progress.

You think I’m too stupid to understand that this health care legislation will bankrupt our nation. I think you are too stupid to understand that our health care system is bankrupting our nation. Both of us are armed to the teeth with facts, and neither of us show much sign of budging. Both of us value economic freedom, but one of us wants freedom from an oppressive government while the other wants freedom from coporate greed.

Like two ships passing in the night, we are both advocating for economic freedom but from completely different vantage points. You want economic freedom from an oppressive government, and I want economic freedom from the unregulated health care industry. Maybe it’s time to talk about civil rights (protection OF the government) versus civil liberties (protection FROM the government). If we found some common ground on this debate, we could apply those values to the case in point.

In order to determine what is right or wrong, we must depend more on our internal values than our external facts. Let’s eliminate the hyperbole, fear, smokescreens and other “facts” and start addressing our core values that support our opinions. If it’s right, we ought to do it. If it’s wrong, we ought not to do it. We are capable of determining right and wrong not by analyzing facts, but by comparing values.

This is my resolution for this year. I’m going to stop trying to debate facts and start trying to compare values. To be honest, I don’t know what that always mean or look like, but I think it is a start toward resolving our greatest conflicts.

Your thoughts? Please comment!