The Pro Bowl Problem

During Sunday’s NFL Pro Bowl, color commentator Daryl Johnston said over 84 million football fans cast ballots for the event via text messaging and online polls. Aside from quantifying America’s obsession with football, the votes prove one thing: the state of disarray of American politics. By contrast, just over 101 million people voted for the presidency in 2000. In 2004, the largest turnout for an election in United States history, still only 121 million people voted. The 2006 general election did not even attract as many votes as the Pro Bowl, with only 80 million cast.

Academic cynics will use this data to point out U.S. citizens’ neglect of civic duties, while others still will claim that football obsession is just another part of American consumerism and fascination with celebrities. But few will actually admit the real story behind 84 million people casting their votes to send their favorite players to Honolulu: the NFL has it figured out; Washington and Denver do not.

For NFL fans, the process was as easy as sitting in their favorite easy chair, and sometime between their fourth beer and a lame Cialis commercial, they had to pick up a phone and text in their favorite candidates.

In contrast, the government requires voters to register, somehow claiming the American electorate is more literate by forcing this process. Then, citizens are required to vote on only one day of each year, either through a mail-in ballot or going to their local precinct polling location. What motivation do already-proven lazy Americans have to move, especially when their vote, economically speaking, will not make a difference?

At least for the Pro Bowl fans had several choices: even the lowliest defensive ends all the way to Jared Allen were on the ballot. There were no preliminary elections to decide if Derek Anderson was even a viable candidate compared with Tom Brady.

But with the caucuses now over, Americans are left deciding among two men and a woman who is fit to run the nation. Soon, that number will shrink to two choices, and anyone who is not a diehard Hillary Clinton or John McCain fan is left with uneasy visions of two Americas: one of socialism or one of a security state.

No wonder no one votes anymore. In 2004, it would take even the most optimistic voter to find 3 million candidates willing to vote for his or her choice and “make a difference.” And currently, there is little difference between the candidates if any at all. Hillary is to McCain as Brady is to Manning: same results, different teams.

If academics and politicians really want U.S. citizens to become more active in the electoral process, they should start by revamping the system. Because when more Americans vote for a third-string cornerback than a U.S. senator, clearly, Washington has a problem.

Throw out the garbage

Though I am not an endorser of term limits by any means, the following article in the Washington Post does make a strong case for getting rid of men who have spent so long in the Senate that their buttocks are permanently imprinted in the Senate-floor seat cloth.

Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) joined the most exclusive club in the Senate yesterday, casting his 15,000th roll-call vote since winning election in 1962. Inouye, 83, became just the fourth senator in chamber history to cast that many votes, along with the late Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), and Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

Look at this list. A Judeo-Christian scholar could not have come up with better candidates for the Four Horsemen even if he tried.

Strom Thurmond led the infamous nation's longest filibuster for 24 hours and 18 minutes in order to derail the Civil Rights Act of 1957. At the time, he was a segregationist and an intransigent Democrat. His racist views subsided over time, as did his party affiliation, eventually switching to the Republicans in 1964.

The southern senator was also notorious for marrying a 23-year-old former Miss South Carolina (1965) turned office bunny when he was 66 years old. Usually, it is easy to ignore glitches in the personal lives of politicians, despite what public opinion might say, but this case is an exception. Anyone marrying a woman 43 years younger than him is disgusting.

Robert Byrd has served in office since 1959, only 17 years after he was a member of the Klu Klux Klan and an avowed racist. He was quoted about his opposition to racially integrating the military, saying:

Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.

The West Virginia senior senator claims he became disinterested in the Klan after a year and joined it primarily "because it offered excitement and because it was strongly opposed to communism." However, Byrd's involvement continued through at least 1947, when he wrote a letter to a Grand Wizard stating: "The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia" and "in every state in the nation."

Nonethelss, like many politicians, Byrd has sweet-talked and fiddled (literally) his way out of the KKK mess, stating in 1997 that he deeply regrets his involvement, has apologized a thousand times, saying "intolerance had no place in America."

However, Byrd's voting record is not much better than his jejune participations in the KKK. In 1964, he, like Thurmond in 1957, filibustered the Civil Rights Act, and for his entire congressional career, he has repeatedly voted against black judicial nominations.

Of course, the mountain man denies all of this as a past life, as a part of an environment that it took him years to get over, and that if he could go back, he would vote in favor of the Civil Rights Act. However, the real issue is not Byrd's regrets or current policies (despite his continual support for bills libertarians would consider frivolous or detrimental to liberty), but the fact that the people of West Virginia have sent this senator back to Washington twelve times, five of which were during the years he would have been described as a racist.

Outside of racial politics, Byrd appears to be a standard-issue Democrat. He opposed the invasion of Iraq, posses relatively liberal economic views, and opposes basically everything President Bush does. And in 2007, the longest-serving senator in U.S. history wasted the Senate's time with a 25-minute tirade against animal dogfighting, accomplishing nothing of importance, and earning himself People for the Ethical Treatment of Animal's 2007 Person of the Year.

Ted Kennedy is one of the most vehemently hated politicians in U.S. history, especially by conservatives. A stalwart liberal, the man lives and breathes to create the most progressive legislation known to mankind, including fervent support for gun control, same-sex marriage, abortion rights, progressive income taxes, and environmentally-friendly energy policies.

In April 2006, Kennedy was named one of Time's 10 best senator's, a label that should appear suspicious to all but the most adamant reader's of a magazine that espouses liberal values.

However, the problem with Ted is not his support to grant gays rights or that he is essentially Focus on the Family's anti-Christ. In fact, the man deserves credit for garnering such a reputation of hate by social conservatives. At least someone in America is keeping the evangelical Christian brainwash movement under control.

The problem with Kennedy is that no matter what social ideology the man may believe, his way of ensuring its fulfillment is through overbearing government laws. And of course, his relentless pursuit of a socialist America earns him the official and distinguished honor as one of Libertas Immortalis' Destroyer's of Freedom.

Last, but certainly not least, is Mr. Land of Rainbows, Daniel K. Inouye. While not much is known about the Hawaiian senior senator, at least, not in the Ted Kennedy sense, a quick view of his voting record reveals a man as committed to a socialism as Kennedy. Though it appears he is most committed to Hawaiian values, whatever those may be, 94 percent of time, he is in lockstep with his Democratic colleagues.

Government qua proctologist

The federal government this week has launched so many so-called probes, or deep investigations, that Washington D.C. looks like a proctologist's office.

The Drug Enforcement Agency today announced it would launch a probe into Heath Ledger's untimely death, which was determined to be the result of a drug overdose.

"We're trying to identify if these were legitimate prescriptions that he had, or if they were illegally obtained or dispensed and by whom," a source told the New York Daily News.

For what? To make American's everywhere feel safer knowing that our government cares about not only our children but also our celebrities?

There hasn't been a Hollywood-government story this ridiculous since Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California.

To make probing matters worse, Congress has taken a deep look into a Lipitor commercial, hoping to get to the bottom of whether or not Robert Jarvik was paid too much money and whether or not he used a body double.

The cholesterol-lowering drug features a series of advertisements starring Jarvik, who is depicted not only a medical professional endorsing medication, but him paddling a canoe.

The Herculean feat astonished Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), who believes that Jarvik used a body double, since obviously, there are no 60-year-old men capable of moving a boat across water.

And of course, there is the matter of legitimacy regarding his claim to be a doctor, a claim that Congress believes is false and is hurting consumers.

Despite Jarvik's public statement admitting that he is a medical researcher not a practicing physician, the feds are furious that someone not allowed to prescribe medication would endorse a medication.

If the Committee on Energy and Commerce believes that such commercials are detrimental to the health of Americans everywhere, perhaps it should launch an investigation into their own candidacy commercials next. They may be shocked to learn all the lies they tell to get public support.

First Ledger, then Jarvik. Either way, if you planning on a trip to Washington anytime soon, you better pick up a healthy supply of lubricant. The federal government may find out you lied about your weight at a high school reunion.

Abortion: a revision in thought

It is not often that I will change my stance about a particular, and usually, when this happens, it becomes a humiliating experience, convincing not only myself but those around me, that often, nothing remains concrete.

However, in the words of syndicated conservative columnist and former New Left member David Horowitz, “it is not my values that have changed, but rather, how I approach them.”

Today, I humbly speak of abortion, an issue that in the past I have been so adamantly opposed to, I was often pinned as a Southern Baptist, a far-right neoconservative, or even a religious evangelical zealot. However, those epithets, as deprecating as they were at times (especially for a man who considers religion to be the source of over 1500 years of oppression and tyranny), somehow never bothered me.

Rather, it took a relationship with a woman much different than myself to realize that my stance on abortion needed a thorough reexamination.

I place life as the highest virtue a human being posses. For as Ayn Rand said, it “is the source of all other rights.” The question for me was not whether or not we should respect life or whether or not the value of life trumps the value of liberty (it most certainly does). It was whether or not abortion is an extraction of life. The conclusion I came to was influenced by the following argument.

Life is philosophically defined as rational cognizance. One does not grant the quality of life to a cow or a chicken, or in many cases, even more domesticated animals, such as a cat. Humanity may respect these creatures out of respect for their quality of being, i.e. that they are alive and breathing, but to grant them the quality of life based on their cellular movements or ability to feel pleasure or pain is a weak argument, endorsed by philosophers of the primitive school, such as Peter Singer. It is rational cognizance that separates humanity from animalia.

The argument described as pro-life is usually recognized as “the claim of a potential.” Essentially, this means that an embryonic cell must be recognized as life because of its potential to become a rational being. However, recent scientific investigation has proven that an embryonic cell does not even posses the ability to posses rational cognizance (its potential to become a rational being) until the end of the first trimester: when it becomes a fetus. Until this time, an embryo posses no more potential rationality than a sperm or an egg, and to be consistent in opposition to abortion based on “the claim of a potential,” one would also have to be opposed to masturbation, menstruation, and ejaculation that does result in fertilization. Indeed, opposition to two out of three of those would be impractical and unrealistic, if not downright ridiculous, and opposition to menstruation is impossible, as it is a naturally-occurring process.

And so, as shown through reductio ad absurdum, to be pro-life is irrational and inconsistent.

It should be noted, however, that abortions beyond the first trimester, however, are irrational, disgusting, and a violation of human life. Anyone considering an abortion at this point has little to no justification, unless, of course, not performing one would cost the mother her life as well.

Again, life is the value and source for my stance on abortion, just as before. The only thing that has changed is how I approach the issue. For even the most adamant libertarian still believes in the right to life.

Ron Paul: The Case for Liberty

It is not often that this blog will openly endorse any candidate from either major party for a position of national, state, or local power. In fact, its author was so fed up with the 2006 governor's race in Colorado, that he and several friends wrote himself in as a candidate on the ballot.

However, for the first time since the Civil War, in a nation established on freedom, a candidate has emerged that has literally turned political races across the country upside down.

Reason magazine has a fantastic expose on the Ron Paul revolution, and so, this blog will go no further in establishing his support, except to summarize the article: Endorsements by Johnny Rotten (of Sex Pistols fame), George Will (a conservative Washington Post columnist), Republicans, Democrats, and Libertarians alike have driven the movement for liberty to new heights.

What this means for the presidential election, time may only tell. Ron Paul will probably not win the Republican nomination (a party that these days prides itself on such a big tent that you could fit Rosie O'Donnell and her hot air underneath), but he has certainly changed the way all the candidates are talking about the issues.

As one of the only antiwar candidates running in both parties, Paul certainly is not popular with the America-first patriots or the stalwart realist conservatives. His opponents constantly slam him for his opinion on Iraq, and even people like conservative columnist Michelle Malkin have chimed in on mess, adding that Ron Paul is a nut case and completely wrong for the Republican Party.

Democrats, especially those on the far left, would love Ron Paul's stance on Iraq. Trouble is, they hate everything else he stands for. Ron Paul is probably the only true capitalist in Congress, and do not forget his diehard stance on the Second Amendment. Guns and greed: two words bound to get anyone kicked out of the Democratic National Convention.

So where does Paul fit into the presidential races? If he is not going to win, then what is his point?

His point is that no one, not in a hundred years has stood up for capitalism. No one has said the war has gone too far (without first following the statement with a Bush bash, of course). And no one has said: what happened to America?

By asking the questions, Paul has opened two large doors in this year's presidential race.

The first is wide and recognized by candidates across the board, though all in different ways. It is a simple statement, a question that while many ask, few dare answer with words such as tyranny, oppression, destruction, or force. Paul asks: Where did America go wrong?

The second is much narrower. It is the answer beyond the answer to where America went wrong, and seeks a solution. Not in the form of legislation or of tyranny or of terrible ballot initiatives but in the form of a single idea, a virtue long adulterated long forgotten: liberty. For Paul is best summed up by his three clause platform:

I don't want want to run your life. We all have different values. I wouldn't know how to do it, I don't have the authority under the Constitution, and I don't have the moral right. I don't want to run the economy. People run the economy in a free society. I don't want to run the world...We don't need to be imposing ourselves around the world.

In the words of Dennis Miller: "Eloquent in its brevity." However, though these doors will open for only a short time during the 2008 presidential race, hope is that the doors stay open for the American people much longer.

What Paul has really accomplished is a renewal for the case of liberty. A renewal sought by many of the last decades, and aside from a few marks, has accomplished very little in our nation: We still pay very high taxes. Our freedoms are still restricted. The Constitution is more like guidelines than law. And the American people are no better today than we were under the tyrannical rule of King George III in 1775.

But for once, a candidate recognizes this and rather than asking what JFK immortalized in his speech, what you can do for your country, Paul is asking, why is your country doing anything for you?

Government is bloated and obnoxious. Rights have been repressed. And freedom is but one or two more laws away from extinction every day that Congress is in session. Many agree on this. But few dare say it.

The best of the people always stood for life and liberty, no doubt. But never have they stood together. Paul's campaign does this and more. It is an answer to the question that men have asked since the enlightenement, the central tenant of democracy, the central point of our Constitution, and the central word of our long-forgotten Declaration of Independence.

Scholars debate democracy and its uses every day. But while this author disagrees with democracy as a concept in general, we must not abandon its uses in the present. For perhaps there is no better explanation for the people nor answer for the academics than the summary Ron Paul gave of his supporters: "Freedom is popular."

Clinton's healthcare plan proposal a philosophical sham

Hillary Clinton is at it again with HillaryCare, only this time she claims that it will be a mix of "private coverage and government subsidized health care." Though Clinton's proposal is slightly less socialist than her thirteen-year-old attempt at revamping health care via the government, it serves as a frightening reminder of the slow but painful death of the free market.

And though it is unlikely that even if Clinton were elected the plan would ever see fruition, the idea nonetheless spells doom for not only capitalists but freedom-loving Americans everywhere.

Unfortunately, Clinton is not the only one hell-bent on health care coverage. Colorado legislators are also considering several options, two of which claim to ensure over 90 percent of the population.

Philosophically, health care issues are often disguised as one's of critical government importance, since for many worldly citizens, the measure of a government's success is based on the life expectancy of its citizenry. However, these confused radicals not only know nothing of world history (until the last century, no government prided itself on the life expectancy of its population) but also nothing of philosophy.

What they effectively do is frame the argument as this: health care equates to life, and men have a right to life, therefore, we have a right to health care. In fact, a fellow student at the University of Colorado quickly found out how much people hold onto this belief when she was shouted down for saying there is no right to health care.

She is right. No man has a right to health anymore than he has a right to food, water, shelter, clothing, or any other basic human need. And while some particular religions or ideologies may require men to surrender themselves to others for these seemingly basic needs, reason would dictate otherwise.

It is not a sin to say no to free health care, and Christian or not, conservative or not, liberal or not, human rights activist or not, no one should believe that health care is a right. Humans have many rights, but the ability to go to a doctor for a common cold is not one of them.

The Great Global Warming Swindle

Anyone who believes that those who do not "believe" in human-induced climate change are a group of heretics or uneducated morons needs to watch this video.