Let's Talk About Christian Apologetics

Okay, let's start out with a quick explanation of just what Christian Apologetics is.  In a nutshell, Christian Apologetics is when someone defends the Christian religion by coming up with explanations for problems with Christian belief and Christian doctrine that rational thought and skeptical analysis bring up when such thought and analysis are leveled at Christianity.  The word "apologetics" has its roots in the Greek word apologia, meaning "a speech made in defense."  In Ancient Greece, it referred to a defense made during a trial.  After the accusation, the defendant was allowed to refute the charges against him with a reply to the accusation.  Up until the 1700s, the word "apologetics" was used to indicate any sort of intellectual defense made against accusations.  Right around the middle of the 18th Century, however, the word started to be applied only to the defense of religious doctrine and belief, and it is that narrower definition that continues to be used to this day.  Christian Apologetics is specifically the defense of Christianity.

So in a nutshell, that's Christian Apologetics.

The one thing to always keep in mind when discussing Christian Apologetics is that its basically made up nonsense.  The apologist relies on logical fallacy and semantic games to make his point, and counts on the general ignorance of science and the need of most unthinking Christians to have an easy answer to the "blasphemous" accusations made by the skeptical about their religion.  Supposedly, Christian Apologetics is based on "evidence," but the truth is that most of the so-called evidence is nothing more than personal opinion on the part of whatever "scholar" produced it in the first place.  (And producing this supposed "evidence" is a multi-billion dollar a year industry).

Two favorites of the apologist are Lee Strobel and his book The Case For Christ, and Josh McDowell and his book Evidence That Demands a Verdict.  It should be noted that both of these men are ministers.  Neither pretends to any scientific impartiality, objectivism, or unbiased opinions.  Oh sure, both make claims to objectivity, and claim to be looking at Christianity from the viewpoint of scholarly truth, but in practice they are as biased in favor of their own religion as any other believer, and are willing to make the most befuddling leaps of faith (pun intended) to support that religion as they find necessary.  The truth is, both men are snake oil salesmen selling a con game to the gullible.

But then, conning the gullible is the basic essence of religion.

Christian Apologists have nothing to support their personal opinions other than more personal opinion.  They have no access to documents written by Jesus (because no such documents exist), no museums full of Jesus artifacts (because no such artifacts exist), no supporting documents by other writers (because none such documents exist).  In short, they have nothing to support their words but logical fallacy, supposition, guesswork, and -- to put it bluntly -- their own ability to convince people that what they are saying isn't just a big pile of bullshit.  What they do have, though, is faith.  And its faith that not only keeps the pile of bullshit from falling over on itself, its what convinces the gullible to actually buy into it.

The primary source of the so-called "proof" that Apologists use to convince the general public that their arguments are sound that their storybook hero is real is the storybook itself.  The Bible is given the special privilege by these people of being able to confirm the truth of itself.  Unique among all other historical documents, Christians hold that the Bible is "historically reliable" simply because the Bible itself says that it is true.  Yes, that's right.  The Bible is true because the Bible says that it is true.  That's a handy little concession, isn't it?  Now, is there any sort of actual justification for this belief?  Does the Bible give accurate chronologies and verifiable facts about people, places, and things contained within it?  Are there avenues of research that clearly show that the Bible is accurate when it comes to the things it says?

Not at all.  Like any fictional story, the Bible describes a series of unlikely events using a plethora of characters and a mass of completely unverifiable fictional details to tell its story.  Oh sure, the setting for the story, Roman-ruled Judaea, was a real-enough place.  First Century Palestine certainly existed (you can, after all, hop a plane to Israel and visit the ruins).  But that said, fictional stories set in real-world locations do not cease to be fictional.

The central question is this:  Did a Jewish Carpenter walk on water, raise the dead, piss off the authorities, get crucified, and somehow get resurrected and taken up to heaven, just like the Bible describes?  Unfortunately for Christians, the only evidence -- the Biblical "facts", legends, history, and the vast number of "witnesses" -- we have saying that such a person really lived and did all those things are other characters in the same story giving testimony that the Jewish Carpenter in question actually existed.

As Dr. Kenneth Humphreys once put it, "This is rather like proving the existence of Batman by quoting the words of Robin the Boy Wonder."

Think about it.  As evidence of the "divine birth" of Jesus, we have the Book of Luke's testimony of the shepherds and the angels (Luke 2).  Never mind that Luke was written between 90 and 105 years after the supposed birth of Jesus.  The writer of Luke steps forward as a witness to dialogue quoted verbatim.  Jesus turning water into wine?  Well, we've got the writer of the Book of John as our key (and in fact, only) witness, writing his story nearly 140 years after the fact.  And who do we have to vouch for the resurrection?  Evidence for the "risen Christ" actually comes from Paul's testimony of "500 witnesses", none of whom are actually identified, the sightings of 12 apostles, and himself (1 Corinthians 15).  Of course, Paul's testimony contradicts the Book of Matthew, which only has two unidentified women and eleven of the twelve apostles.  The Book of Mark raises Matthews tally to three women and names them (Mary Magdalene, Mary the Mother of James, and Salome), two random passers-by, and the eleven apostles.  The stories don't even match up, but we are expected to take them as if they were unshakable truths, written in stone.  Sure.  Pull the other one.  The entire core belief of Christianity -- the resurrected savior -- rests on just under five hundred self-contradictory words written over a period of 180 years in an ancient and thoroughly discredited book.  Perhaps the writers of the Bible simply expected people to believe as they were told and never question anything.

In addition to the argument that the Bible is true because it says it is true, Apologetics also cite early Christian scholars as evidence.  No, I don't mean they cite the works of these early Christian fathers, they cite the existence of such people.  The supposed lives of these men are used as evidence supporting Christianity, not just what they put down on paper.  For example, Ignatius of Antioch, who lived some time between 50 AD and 115 AD (we're not sure, precisely) has become the lynchpin of the Roman Catholic claim to world mastery.  According to the story, Ignatius was martyred when Emperor Trajan (a man for whom an astonishingly large amount of historical records exist, and who was, in truth, a relatively benign and harmless man as far as Roman Emperors go) took offense to the man for some unexplained reason, and rather than having him tried and executed in Antioch sentenced him to be killed by wild beasts in the Colliseum of Rome.  (This is doubly odd, given that, if that's what Trajan wanted to happen, Antioch had a Colliseum of its own that they could have used.)

We are asked to believe that the Emperor, who was at the time assembling his armies for the coming war with Parthia, took time out of his war preparations to assign an entire battalion of soldiers to bring bring Ignatius to Rome by way of a long and circuitous land-route that gave Ignatius the opportunity to meet and greet notable Christians nearly every step of his way.  Supposedly along this four month long journey, Ignatius wrote fifteen letters to various individuals, including the Virgin Mary and a Christian bishop who wasn't even born by the time Ignatius supposedly died.  Miraculous!

Of course, the importance of these supposed letters is not to supply historical accuracy to the story, but to bolster Catholic doctrine.  Ignatius's letters are filled to the brim with Fourth Century orthodoxy, telling the faithful how they are supposed to live their lives under the benign rule of the Church, how they are supposed to follow the doctrine supplied by the church, and how they are supposed to live their lives as good Christians.  Note I saidFourth Century orthodoxy.  Coming from the supposed pen of a Second Century martyr.  Amazing how that happens.  In addition, Ignatius is used as the "connecting authority" between the early so-called "Christian Jews" and the first true Christians.  (The first Roman bishop to identify himself as "Pope", Anicetus (who reigned over the church between 156 and 166 CE) -- did so supposedly after being named as such by Ignatius.  Similarly, Clements, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus are all used in a similar manner to Ignatius, as if the fact that they existed at all validates Christian doctrine, as if, somehow, the fact that a person living in the Second or Third Century somehow proves that a person in the First Century actually existed.

The problem with this being that evidence of belief is not evidence of fact.  If the fact that lots of people believe something means that the belief is automatically true, then that would validate the Hindu gods a lot better than the Christian one, given that Hinduism pre-dates Christianity by three thousand years.

Then there's the "sheer quantity of documentation" argument.  It goes something like "There is only one manuscript copy of Caesar's Gallic Wars and that dates to the Tenth Century.  In contrast there are twenty thousand manuscripts of the gospels in various languages, dating from the Sixth through Twelfth Centuries.  Doesn't that PROVE the correctness of the New Testament?"  Uh, no, it doesn't.  A lie repeated a hundred times does not stop being a lie, and a truth told only once does not stop being a truth.  But what this does show is how few Christian manuscripts -- or even scraps of Christian manuscripts -- managed to survive from before Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire.  Whole libraries full of ancient wisdom and learning -- Pagan wisdom and learning -- were burned to the ground by Christians.  For centuries, by order of the Christian church, the only approved literature was the Bible.  Everything else was forbidden and destroyed.

And modern Christian Apologists have the brass balls to claim that this self-generated lack of documentation for anything other than Christianity is proof of their own religion.  That's sort of like a Nazi saying that the lack of Jewish art is proof of the supremacy of the Nazi cause.

The Apologetics argument that really gets my goat is the one where the Christian asks, "Why would the apostles of Christ have suffered and died for a fake religion?"  Are you kidding me with this nonsense?  Seriously?  People "suffer and die" because they are told lies every single day.  Tell me, Mr. Christian, if suffering and dying for your faith is evidence of the truth of that faith, does that mean the terrorists who flew airplanes into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 go immediately to heaven, as the Koran said they would?  Even better, one early Christian king in what would become Germany is known to have tortured and murdered nearly ten thousand pagan Germans in an effort to force them to convert to Christianity.  Does the fact that they suffered and died prove the existence of Wotan and Thunor?

And that's ignoring the fact that there is precisely zero evidence that the "apostles of Christ" actually even existed, much less were tortured and murdered by the Romans.  At least not until the Christians started turning its attention to burning heretics at the stake.  Paul, for example, never refers to the execution of a single apostle.  Not once.  Though of course that does nothing to diminish the often repeated story of how the Emperor Nero "put Christians to the torch" in a pogram for which no historical evidence exists at all.  Religious-inspired murder proves nothing.

Now, normally, we could all just sit back and laugh at the gullible rubes who get conned into believing this nonsense.  Problem is, this is as rational as some Christians ever get.  And these people vote.

The thought of a truly Christian government in the United States scares me like no other nightmare scares me.

Feminism's False Dichotomy

"I'd like every man who doesn't call himself a feminist to explain to the women in his life why he doesn't believe in equality." -- Louise Brealy

Ladies and gentlemen, let me direct your attention to this statement by British actress, writer, and journalist Louise Brealey.  I call your attention to it because it is indicative of modern feminist thought.  It is also a perfect example of what intelligent people call the "False Dichotomy Fallacy."


Putting it quite simply, the False Dichotomy Fallacy is when a person frames their arguments as if there is only two possible options to choose from.  That is, they frame their argument so that either A is the truth, or B is the truth, as if there are no other possible options, despite the fact that its perfectly possible for any of the options C through Z to actually be true.


In this case, Ms. Brealey is saying "If you do not support feminism (Option A) you must oppose gender equality (Option B)."  Her statement makes it quite clear that, in her opinion, at least, you cannot believe in and support gender equality if you are not a feminist.  And the reason why this is a fallacy (that is, the reason why it is bad logic) is simple:  it is absolutely possible to not favor "Feminism" (a specific political movement) and yet still be in favor of "gender equality" (a specific political ideal).


If you're wondering how such a thing is possible, I beg of you:  open your mind and stop drinking the Kool-Aid for a moment and listen.  It is possible for several reasons.


First, it is entirely possible to be a proponent of gender equality, yet not agree with the methods by which the feminist movement goes about achieving gender equality.  Remember the push to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, back in the 70s and early 80s?  There were several pro-women groups -- groups made up of women campaigning on behalf of the rights of women -- who opposed the ERA because they opposed the specific language involved in the proposed amendment.  They were not opposed to the idea of gender equality -- they just didn't like the fact that the Amendment, as it was written, infantilized women and implied that they (women) were second class citizens.


In addition, several of those women refused to describe themselves as "feminist" and did not support the ERA because they didn't go for the "sexual politics" part of the movement (and by that they and I mean the actual "sex" parts of the politics -- the free access to birth control, the support of abortion, and so on) while supporting the "gender politics" parts of it (equal pay for equal work, no second class citizen status, and so on) involved in feminism,  These women still supported gender equality, but didn't agree with the entire platform built by organized feminism and thus would not identify themselves as feminist.


Second, it is entirely possible to dislike the "enshrining female privilege" aspects of the modern feminist movement without wanting to end equality between the genders.  The modern feminist movement opposes -- and I am not making this up, they actively OPPOSE -- any attempt to bring more public awareness to male victims of rape or domestic violence, or equal access to recovery resources for male victims of rape and domestic violence.  The movement apparently sees such efforts as "taking the resources away from women", who are apparently more important than men simply because they are women.


They also oppose doing anything about leveling the playing field for men in Family Courts (thus giving men the rights and consideration already enjoyed by women) or the problem of false accusations of rape and abuse being used as weapons in divorce cases (to put it bluntly, the feminist movement claims that there are no false accusations, and that women would never stoop so low as to use a rape or abuse claim as a weapon against a man).


They oppose doing anything about the fact that the percentage of men graduating from college is dropping swiftly.


And they oppose -- and this one get's me fucking angry, guys -- they actively lobby against the increase of governmental funding for research into so-called "men's health issues" like testicular cancer and the like despite the fact that men's health research is only funded to the tune of a tenth (1/10th) of how women's health research is funded.


And remember, while they are fighting to stop anyone doing anything about these problems, they are screaming to the rooftops about how society as a whole is ignoring "women's problems".  Which makes their opposition to men's causes a little suspect to me.


Now, realistically, I cannot say that every single feminist on the planet opposes all of these things.  As individuals, I'm sure that they don't; I'm sure that there are feminists out there who are perfectly willing to campaign for more assistance to male domestic violence victims, or to level the playing field in family court.


But...


However...


That said...


Unfortunately, the feminist movement -- organized feminism as an overall whole -- actively and effectively does oppose these things.


And on that basis alone, it is perfectly reasonable for a lot of people to look at the actions of the organized feminist movement, think about it a little bit, and then come to the conclusion that they just can't get on board with that.  It is perfectly reasonable for them to say "Sorry, but I am not a feminist if feminism means treating male rape victims as jokes to be ignored at best and insulted and abused at worst."  Or say "Sorry, but I am not a feminist if being a feminist means thinking that there's no reason to do anything about men dying ten to fifteen years earlier than women, or committing suicide four times as often, or dying of cancer twice as often."


Which, to bring it back to the point I started on, means that anyone saying "You're either a feminist or you're a bigot who opposes equality" is either an idiot (which Ms. Brealey isn't) or has some sort of agenda that would benefit from people not thinking about just how much damage the feminist movement is truly doing to our society.


Think about it.

Government Is Not the Problem

Here's the truth:  governments make mistakes sometime.

Government, like all things, is not perfect.

And when government botches things up, it generally botches things up disasterously.

Especially when the Republicans are in charge.  No, seriously, a study was done regarding events which the government completely and totally messed up on, and the Republicans lead the Democrats for incompetent management of government by a ratio of 4:1.

And of course, government is not the proper solution to all problems, and is hardly ever the entire solution to anything.

Here's more truth for you:  the government is the only entity large enough and powerful enough to handle certain issues.  It is the only entity large enough and powerful enough to stand up to, and stop, the abuses of democracy and other American ideals by those who would attempt to dominate, subjugate, and explot the interests of We the People...   In this sense, the government, especially at the federal level, is very definitely the ultimate solution.

There is a long tradition in this country of carping about the government.  And its not just this government, either.  I'm absolutely certain that somewhere, sometime, way back in Ancient Mesopotamia, somebody was complaining about Sargon the Great and how his administration was doing nothing to assuage the troubles faced by the common man.  Of course, before the rise of modern democracy, those who complained about government generally were those who had been disenfranchised somehow.  The poor and the downtrodden.  The outlaws.  The political enemies.  Because prior to democracy, the rich and the powerful loved the government.  After all, they were the government.

For the poor, it was generally wise to keep your complaints about how the local lord was running his fiefdom to yourself unless you had a real need to discover what torture and execution felt like.  This all changed with Democracy.  First with the United States, then with France, and then slowly with the rest of the world.  Suddenly the age-old tradition of government being the plaything of the rich and powerful was completely flipped.  Democratic governments were controlled, at least theoretically, by We the People...

Unfortunately, this didn't sit well with government's former owners.  They knew that this "democracy" fad had to go, and so they came up with two basic strategies.  First, they tried to buy it back.  Politicians, judges, and public officials of all stripes were generally quite amenable to this idea, selling their time, attention, and loyalty, not to mention their honesty and integrity, to the highest bidder.  But it wasn't enough.  Try as they might, the rich and powerful couldn't ever seen to fully complete their conquest of the government and all those pesky We the People... who weren't interested in just standing back and letting the rich take over again.  So they came up with a second, complimentary strategy.  The second strategy involved dividing and conquering.  If the rich could persuade a bare majority of the really stupid poor people to go along with them, they could tighten their grip on the reins of power.

There are a lot of ways to divide.  Race and religion are the two greatest hits when it comes to causing a population to eat itself, and boy howdy were these put to good use by the rich and powerful in their efforts to divide We the People...  Concurrent with the rise of democracy, however, came a new tactic:  promoting active distrust of the government, so as to lessen its legitimacy.  It also lessened the people's sense of ownership of the government.  A disenchanted and apathetic citizenry, one that doesn't think government works, and doesn't think their vote counts, will tune out the entire subject of politics.  They will not show up at polling places, and thus not exercise their power of control over the government.  This gives a much wider opportunity for the rich and powerful to grab control with only a small percentage of the voters helping them to do it.

This tactic is pure evil.

No, seriously, it's evil.  It's evil because it intentionally risks driving the entire country into the ground.  The wisest leaders know that citizens loving and believing in their government is crucial to the strength and well-being of the entire nation.  Conservatives are willing to abuse this ancient axiom to gain political and economic power.  They rationalize it away by saying that it is they, the rich and powerful, who have always had the "divine right to rule."  But the truth is, they have no interest whatsoever in a nation "for the people, by the people, and of the people."  What they want is a return to the "good old days" when there was no democracy.

With the faith of We the People... in their government wrecked, the rich and powerul can do whatever they want.  They can slash taxes on themselves while increasing taxes on the poor and middle class.  They can deregulate their giant, predatory businesses.  They can write laws and appoint judges who will favor them.  They can loot the treasury.  They can start wars all over the globe.  They can propagate their fundamental philosophy, that "greed is good."  They become what they most crave to be:  rulers of the world.  You know that the ruination of America is not far off when such a philosophy, as utterly lacking in any sort of virtue as it is, gains the upper hand.  The less We the People... believe in their government, the weaker they are, and the better the rich and powerful like it.

The people in the lower and middle classes who support these corporate oligarchs in their take-over of the United States are those who share some of the anger and bitterness of governmental control over their "freedoms."  Again, just as with the rich and powerful, it is their "traditional values" that they believe are being threatened by the government.  These "freedoms", these "traditional values", are things like the freedom to discriminate, the freedom to be as prejudiced and hateful as they want to be.  The freedom to force other people to live as they do.  The freedom to suppress books and movies and television shows and music they don't like.  Those are the freedoms and traditional values we're talking about.  And this is why social conservatives buy into the "government is the problem" bullshit.  They see government spreading and enabling equality, liberty, justice for all, and the pursuit of happiness -- in other words, government trying to live up to its own ideals -- they see government spreading scientific knowledge rather than religious ignorance, and modernity and multi-culturalism being applied to the art of governance, and they dont like it at all.

Why?

Because all of this chips away at the advantages and privileges they have enjoyed for generations.  The actual or perceived loss of being special infuriates them.  Thus, they become willing henchmen for the siren's call of the rich and powerful:  "government bad!" which allows the oligarchs to steal the government away from We the People...

Of course, the concept that "the government is the problem" is a great big lie.

Even the most cursory glance into the history of the United States reveals this idea to be nothing more than a myth.  We the People of the United States, organized into our shared objectives in the form of the federal government, has achieved more in the last 238 years (as of this writing) than the rest of humanity has in the last thousand.  The progress that we, Americans, created has stunned, amazed, and revolutionized the world in ways that cannot be overlooked, ignored, and dismissed.  I may rail about unnecessary military adventurism, but I also have to admit that from the Continental Army all the way up to today, the American military has also been the world's policemen, and the world likes it that way.  From Lewis and Clark all the way up to the Apollo astronauts, Americans have led the world in courage, fortitude, and character when it comes to revealing new worlds of wonder.  Federally funded scientists have led the way in virtually all areas of science.  America's national parks are the envy of the world.  Our dams and bridges and interstate highway system was once one of the crowning achievements of mankind.  The American Post Office still is the benchmark by which all other such services around the world are measured.  When calamity strikes anywhere in the world, it is to the United States that people look to for aid.  Even people who just hours before were badmouthing the government cry for federal help when their world comes crashing down around them.  Oh yeah, and one more thing.

You know that internet thing that everyone talks about?  The one you're using right now?

It was invented, created, and initially funded by the US government.

And even more important than these triumphs were the times when the government was all that stood between some part of American culture and the corruption of our ideals.  When this happens, not everyone is happy with the government, especially those people who are asked -- forced sometimes -- to back down and let other people live as they want.  When a group of people takes a particular dislike to what another group of people are saying, or doing, or even just thinking, and move to actively stop them, it is the federal government whose job it is to stand in the way of the onrushing horde and say, "No.  They have a right to their freedoms just as you do, and your not liking them is no excuse."

Equality.  Justice.  Liberty for all.  The pursuit of happiness.  That's what its all about.

There are those out there who would love to thwart these ideals for other Americans, simply because they don't like the other Americans.  It is the job of the federal government to stand in the way and say, "No."

Racists don't like being told they had to treat black people and Hispanic people and other minorities like human beings.  Chauvenists don't like being told that they have to treat women as equals.  Homophobes don't like being told that they have to be forced to treat gay people as human beings.  Religious zealots don't like being told they have to tolerate people who believe differently than they do.  Polluters don't like being told they have to protect the environment.  Banks don't like being told that they can't run the economy like it was a casino.  Insurance companies don't like being told they can't deny their customers treatment or cancel their customers at will.

People even bitch about such petty things as having to wear their seatbelts or wear a motorcycle helmet.  It's always something.  There is no limit to the carping and griping and bitching that goes on about the government.

Sometimes the griping is warranted, such as the backlash against the Bush administration's utter failure to properly prepare and manage the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  For their failure to properly prepare for or react to Hurricane Katrina.  For the housing bubble, the bank bailouts, and, eventually, pretty much everything about the George W. Bush administration.  Still, its a long way from recognizing that one particular segment of the government, at one time, was really, really bad at governing to believing that all government, everywhere, is bad.

Study American history and you find that government actually works pretty well, and more virtuously, when its allowed to govern.  When it doesn't face a lot of interference from conservative business interests.  When the conservatives are in charge, they see to work to make sure their own negative prophecies regarding the "failure of government" come true.  The conservatives make the messes, the liberals then have to fight tooth and nail to clean those same messes up, while simultaneously being blamed by the conservatives for the messes they are cleaning.

So yeah.  The old saw about government being the problem is a huge lie.

Unless, of course, you're talking about a conservative-controlled government. 

There Is No Such Thing as a Free Market

Simple as that.

There is no such thing as a "free market."  Period.

There never has been, there never will be.

Its a fairy tale.

Yet another conservative myth.

The very idea is 100% bullshit.

It might be possible, theoretically at least, that a truly "free market" could exist, if we're talking about something like the public market square of a village with a hundred people or fewer in it where everyone knows and trusts each other.  But in any thing larger, like -- just to pull an example out of the air -- a nation of 300+ million people?  Forget about it.

Of course, the truth is that the very same people who so aggressively promote the idea of a "free market" are actually the last people on Earth who actually want such a thing:  the corporate conservatives and the professional politicians that the corporates have bought and paid for.  These folks don't really want a "free market."  They want a rigged market.  And the truth is, that's pretty much what they have.

Of course, they can (and do) think of ways to make it even more rigged in their favor, which is what they truly want:  a world where Big Business owns and runs the world, and where government -- the only entity with the power to counter and put controls on Big Business -- is small enough to "drown in a bathtub."  (At least when it comes to regulating business; Big Business loves it when government promotes the interests of Big Business.)

So what do Big Business corporate conservatives actually mean when they talk about a "free market?"

Glad you asked.

What they mean is that corporations should be free to do whatever they want.  They should be free to sell anything, anywhere, without any concern over whether the product is harmful, toxic, or dangerous.  What they mean is that corporations should be free to enslave their workers and not have to pay them a living wage, or pay them at all, in fact.  Corporations should be free to demand utter loyalty from their workers, while returning no loyalty whatsover to those same workers.  They believe that corporations should be free to extract, exploit, subjugate, and monopolize whenever they want to do so.  Corporations should be free from any sort of tax burden, and from government regulation, and responsibility for any damage they cause.  They believe that corporations should be free to buy and sell politicians in order to control the government.  And they believe that corporations should be free to eliminate the competition using any means necessary.

When conservatives talk about the "free market," it's simply code phrases for the Big Business concept of Heaven:  a world in which Big Business does what it wants, any time, all the time.  Of course, this would be Hell for everyone else.  And by "everyone else" I include smaller businesses, because the truth is such a world would be a killing field.  The moment a small business poked its head out of its hole, Big Business would swoop in like a hawk and devour it.  As for the workers and the consumers, the "free market" envisioned by the giant multi-national corporations would make them hardly better than slaves.  Such people would be free to accept their lot and nothing else.

You say one of their products blew up in your face and left you blind?  Prove it wasn't your own fault!

You say unsafe working conditions led to your husband getting killed?  Try sueing us.  We dare you; not only won't your "frivolous lawsuit" get anywhere in the courts, we might send some guys over to your daughter's elementary school so she can send a message back home to mommy and daddy for us about how its smarter to not make waves.

In such a world, parastic banks would run wild with speculation, buying and selling without constraint and inventiing all manner of financial "instruments" which which to dissect their customers and relieve them of money, security, and future.  The privatization of anything and everything would run rampant in the conservative wet dream of a "free market."

How about a quick game of "let's pretend".  Let's pretend such a world came about.  What, exactly, would that lead to?

First off, the goal of the corporate conservative's "free market" is to assume all the powers of government and then take those powers to the limit, including total control and exploitation of the people.  So say goodbye to freedom, democracy, the vote, and the ability to decide for yourself how your life will go from then on.  Your electricity, gas, and water wouldn't come from public utilities, but from predatory corporations who can raise the rates or cut you off whenever they feel the whim.  Toll roads and bridges would proliferate.  The court system would be privatized, with a strong profit incentive to lock as many people away in the privately run prisons as possible.  Wars would be completely privatized, with a strong profit motive to keep the fighting going as long as possible, and to use up the weapons and equipment so as to create a need for more.  Education would be privatized, with only the wealthy getting more than just the basic training.  Public schools would become indoctrination centers where children are taught to be barely literate worker bees or soldiers for the state and its corporate overlords.

Think about how much money the very rich could squeeze from the lower classes with such limitless power.

Without government subsidies, price controls, and regulations, food production would become wholly predatory.  Prices would skyrocket.  Food quality and safety would plummet.  Only the rich would be able to afford clean, healthy food; the rest of us would have to settle for the cheap stuff and take our chances with every bite we eat or drop we drink.  That's assuming we could afford any food or water in the first place.  Scavenging, begging, and starving would become a way of life for billions of people.  And health care?  Sorry, but with no government assistance, no government health programs, disease would explode into pandemics.  Of course, the wealthy would protect themselves by ghettoizing the poor.  No need for them to worry, though, because even if the disease does make it to them, they have all the doctors.

The problem is that even a system where the very rich control everything and fuck the poor, it all falls apart very quickly.  Unregulated capitalism eventually eats itself.  When the poor and the middle class disappear, the profits the rich depend on also disappear.  But the corporate conservatives, who are all about instant gratification and getting the short term gain, know that trillions upon trillions of dollars are to be made by the greatest pirates the world has ever seen.  And as long as they're making tons of money now, they give fuck all about what happens tomorrow.  Not their problem, man.  They've made their fat stacks of cash, and that's all that matters.

So.

That's the free market in a nutshell.  A truly free market is a recipe for utter disaster should it ever be imposed.  Its a beast that would tear the goose that laid the golden eggs to pieces.

Little by little over the past 30 years, the corporate conservatives have managed to nudge us further and further in the direction of their wet dream.  Since the Reagan administration, the conservative mantra has been "government is the problem, not the solution."  Its become commonly accepted wisdom among the less intelligent members of the population (almost all of whom are social conservatives).  According to this philosophy, the solution to the "government problem" is the free market.  Conservatives have been bleating this same noise for decades, and millions upon millions of people believe it.  As Joseph Goebbels correctly stated, "people will believe anything if you repeat it often enough."  This has always been the tactic of the very richest in order to gain the support of the rest of us in order to cripple the only thing powerful enough to stop them:  a government run by We the People...

The proof of the pudding is in the eating.  Since Ronald Reagan, the "free market" has had 30 years to produce the results that the corporate conservatives always promise:  that great wealth will come "trickling down" to everyone.  Jobs galore will be available, and everyone will enjoy improvements to their basic standard of living.

Anyone else but me notice that this just hasn't happened?

Seriously, for three decades, taxes have been slashed for the richest Americans.  Deregulation is the rule, dramatically reducing safeguards in every sector of business.  Competent government regulators have been replaced by capitalist foxes who are supposed to be guarding the henhouse.  The "free market" ethos has been applied to an extent that would have left the people who led this country out of the Great Depression stunned in sheer disbelief.  And this same thing has happened in countries all around the world, not just the United States.

What has actually happened is the reverse of what the conservatives behind the "Reagan Revolution" promised.  Real wages and the earning power of the average American family has stalled out if not reversed.  Prices have zoomed upward to the point where decent housing, health care, and college educations are beyond the reach of over half the population.  For the first time in American history, the greater majority of people in this country face the prospect that their children will have worse lives than they led, and that their grand-children will have lives that are even worse than that.

This is what the "free market" has done to America.  Imagine how much worse it would be if the market were even more "free" than it already is.

This Is Why I Make Such A Big Deal About Women Who Rape Men

On Facebook, I shared a link to a news story entitled "The Hard Truth About Girl-on-Guy Rape" that not only talked about how much more common it is than anyone believes, but how men who are raped by women have almost nowhere to turn for help without getting ridiculed, or having their masculinity questioned.

Almost immediately after, I received the following as a Private Message on Facebook.  I quote it in full, without editing, with the express permission of the person who sent it to me.  When I thanked him for sharing his story with me, he said, "You are welcome to use it anonymously if you wish."  I asked him if he was sure about it, and he once again said I could share the story with other people.

This is why I make such a big deal about this subject, folks.  I make a big deal about because there are men out there who have gone through this trauma (and yes, it is a trauma) but who feel they can't come forward for one reason or another, and who nevertheless who need to talk about it with someone if only so they know that they are not alone.  That there are other men who have gone through this, and that there are people who understand and who care.  That he isn't weak.  That he is still a human being and that he still matters.

And if I only reach one of them, if what I do only helps one such man, then my job here is done.

So here it is.  His story.

Thanks for posting the link to the article on The Hard Truth About Girl-on-Guy Rape.

About 23 years ago I was taken advantage of by 2 women at a party when I was too drunk to defend myself. There was a group of people around as I called out no, and no one did anything. I have never felt I could do anything about it. I was not interested in either girl, and one was underage. The next day I confronted two friends that hosted the party (a married couple), and the two girls denied knowing anything about it, saying they were too drunk to remember anything.  

It is something I don't think about generally, but seeing the article at least made me feel less like "the only guy" to have that happen.

I haven't discussed it with anyone over the years. And would not be comfortable in public (though knowing FB is not very secure format), I never even told my ex-wife during the 14 years we were together.  (I had myself thoroughly tested for STD's after incident just in case).

I was stunned by the numbers quoted in the article.

Thank you for your bravery.

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

There is a persistent myth going around in the United States.

This myth states that conservatives are the "better guardians" of the US economy.  Everyone knows that its the "Tax and Spend Liberals" who generate recessions and debt, after all.  Everybody knows this.  This so-called "fact" is so well known that even most liberals don't question it.

Problem is, its false.  Not true.  A lie.  A bunch of hot air.  A load of bullshit, in other words.

If you take a close look at the usual conservative strategies when it comes to economic policy in this country, you find out pretty quickly that there are two problems with this myth that make it almost impossible for it to be true.


Those two problems are:

1. Conservatives are greedy.
2. Conservatives are amoral.

Thus, putting conservatives in charge of the economy is like going into business with the Mafia.  If you're part of the Mafia, you're probably going to come out with your pockets stuffed with cash, sitting pretty on top of the world.  If you're not a part of the Mafia, sooner or later you're going to get shanked and left to rot in some alley.

Now, for the sake of fairness I should say that when I talk about conservatives and how they mess up the economy I am not talking about social conservatives.  Social conservatives are the ones who want to restrict a woman's rights regarding birth control, and want to make sure that homosexuals are punished for the crime of existing, and who want to make sure that English is the only language spoken in this country.  Things like that.  I'm not talking about those conservatives right now.

I'm talking about the "professional" conservatives.  The corporate conservatives who represent the real wealth and power of the Republican party.  When it comes to the economy, the social conservatives are passengers just along for the ride.  And its a really bumpy, bumpy ride.

The most important thing to remember about corporate conservatives is this:  they want all governmental economic policy aimed at aiding the richest people in America become even richer.  They want the government to basically be at the beck and call of the corporations so that they can line their pockets with ever-increasing amounts of money.  Now, compare this to liberal economic policy, which is aimed at helping Joe Middle-Class thrive.

That last paragraph is American economics in a nutshell, by the way.

The conservative ideal of coddling the rich is called "supply-side economics."  Its also known as "trickle-down economics" (and, humorously, was once called "Voodoo economics" by then presidential candidate George H. Bush back in 1980 when he was running against Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination).  The core of this philosophy is low, low, low taxes for the rich and the corporations, and utter deregulation of commerce and the markets.

Historically, this policy generates cycles of boom and bust.  Its an "economic bubble" generator that produces no lasting stability and no lasting prosperity.  It gave us the Gilded Age and the economic panic of the 1890s.  It gave us the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression.  And most recently, it produced the Reagan-Bush and Clinton-Bush serial bubbles, the Savings and Loan disaster, the 2008 Bank Bailout, and then of course the Great Recession that the American economy is still very much mired in.

"Trickle down" works great if you start off at the top, but not so great if you're in the middle or, heaven help you, at the bottom.  The famous "trickle down" flood that Ronald Reagan promised would "float all boats" never seens to quite materialize, even as the people at the top of the economic pile, and the corporations they run and own, record record profits.

The liberal economic philosophy based on supporting the Middle Class is called "demand-side economics."  Its also known as Keynesian economics, after its creator and chief promoter, John Maynard Keynes.  Keynes work was adopted by Franklin Roosevent, and his policies created a relative calm in the American economy that lasted for nearly fifty years.  That calm created the largest expansion of the Middle Class in the history of the world.

Remember that "Golden Age" that Republicans are so nostalgic about, when a Middle Class family with only the father working could afford a decent house, a new car every few years, braces and piano lessons for little Susie, and everyone's covered by adequate health insurance and a decent pension was all but guaranteed?  When many companies cared enough about their employees that they paid them a living wage and considered them family and not just replaceable cogs in the machine?  When unions were strong, taxes on the rich and the corporations, not to mention regulation of business practices, were much tighter than today, and yet everyone was thriving economically?

Yeah, all that was created by the liberal economic policies of John Maynard Keynes.

The moral of this story is that the corporate conservative emphasis on making sure that the rich and powerful are taken care of first is compeletely backward if what you want to do is create a strong economy.  It doesn't matter how much "supply" you have, if there's no "demand" for it, you aren't going to sell it and your economy is going to fail spectacularly.  It takes demand to fuel an economy, and it takes a strong Middle Class to create demand.

Bottom line:  when the Middle Class is thriving , so is everyone else!

Think about it for just a moment, please.

• If you are poor, but the Middle Class is doing well, there's a good chance if you work hard and cover your bases that you'll find yourself suddenly a member of the Middle Class.  Economic improvement.
• If you're Middle Class and doing well, there's every chance that you'll suddenly find yourself climbing into the upper ranges of the Middle Class, or who knows, maybe into the Upper Class.
• And if you're already Upper Class, when the people who work for you are doing well, they're spending more on the companies you've invested in, which means you get richer too!

This was the situation enjoyed in America right after World War II:  the economy was humming along like a well-oiled machine, there was butt-loads of upward mobility to be had, and pretty much everyone was doing better than they had been before the War.

On the other hand, when the Middle Class is getting constantly hammered, like they have been since the 1980s, the only mobility is downward.  Middle Class people get laid off and become poor people, and poor people are so poor that they're stuck there with no chance of improving their condition at all.

Of course, no matter what, the rich do just fine, but then they're rich.  They would be prospering even if every non-rich person in America was reduced to economic serfdom.  As the saying goes, its easy to get to home plate when you start out on third base.  But when the only people thriving are the folks who are already thriving, and none of them are willing to share with the less fortunate, you're courting disaster.  Thus, the booms, busts, panics, crashes, depressions, recessions, and bail outs.

So, what you have to do is ask yourself a simple question:  which economic policy works out best for you and your family?  If you're a so-called "one percenter," then obviously trickle-down works much, much better for you.  But if you're in the vast population of people who aren't in the one percent, why the hell would you ever consider voting for people who want to continue keeping you in the poor house?  Seriously, are you insane?

But wait!  There's more!

It turns out that corporate conservatives are lying to you about more than just the effects of trickle-down economics.  Corporate conservatives spend a lot of their time telling you how evil the government is, and how government spending is a sin and how it must be stopped when they're asking you for your vote.  But have you ever noticed that when they're in power, they don't actually do anything about it?

Oh sure, they promise to cut government spending, but once in office they actually do the exact opposite.  They lied to you to gain your trust and to get elected, but they never once had any intention of cutting government spending.  All those platitudes about "shrinking big government" were just that:  platitudes.  Conservatives simply love deficit spending and big government.  The bigger the better, in fact, because it allows them to manipulate things for their own benefit all around the world.

A look at the facts prove that conservatives are the worst money managers and the most profligate spenders of all.  The comparison between conservative spending and liberal spending isn't even close.  Conservatives accuse liberals of being "tax and spenders," but the truth is, conservatives are "charge and spenders," which is much, much worse.  They put everyone on the national credit card without any clue as to how things will be paid for.

"Tax and spend" is a caricature of liberals, just another way conservatives lie, but at least taxing and spending provides some means to pay for what is being spent.  If a conservative ran your personal economy in the same way they manage the national economy, you'd be up to your ears in overwhelming debt within hours of you handing your checkbook to them.

Corporate conservatives continually bleat about this myth of a "small government," as if in the modern world there could even really be such a thing.  Its all a big web of lies.  Conservatives are liars.  They say one thing, and do the exact opposite.

You know which two presidents were the biggest promoters of the idea of small government in the history of the United States?  If you guessed Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, give yourself a cookie.  Now, can you guess which two presidents were the two biggest expanders of the federal government in the history of the United States?  If you once-again guessed Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, you get another cookie.

Even worse than putting everything on credit is the truth about what all that money was spent on.  Rather than spending it on our crumbling national infrastructure, or on health care, or on education, or maybe on cleaning up the environment, it was mostly given away to the rich and the corporations.  And when it wasn't handed out to people who were already sitting on huge stacks of cash, it was being spent on useless and meaningless military adventurism.  We the People... got almost nothing from Conservative largess.

Tax cuts for the rich and a policy of allowing corporations to wriggle out of their fair share of the tax burden are the primary reasons why our government operates under an astronomical amount of debt.  Ronald Reagan went hog-wild on military spending as part of a plan to "kill" the already-dying Soviet Union by way of the arms race.  But that was just a warm-up to George W. Bush's squandering of $3 trillion, most of which ended up in the pockets of his friends and his father's friends.  That $3 trillion includes at least $19 billion that simply vanished.  Oops!  Its gone!  The money vanished and we don't know where it is!  Sorry about that, heh heh heh...

Can you imagine the Republican reaction if someone in the Obama administration managed to just misplace $19 billion?

And then there's the tens of billions that we know -- that we can absolutely fucking prove -- were slid across the metaphorical table and into the pockets of Haliburton, KBR, and Blackwater.  All of which corporations were owned and operated, it must be noted, by friends and family members of both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

That's the conservative economic management style.  "Grab as much cash as you can for you and your friends and fuck everyone else."  And they're not even going to buy you dinner first.

Most corporate conservatives know damn well that trickle-down economics just doesn't work.  They know its a lie.  Worse, they know its effectively theft.  But they like getting rich and have no moral center at all, so they stick to propaganda about cutting spending, lowering taxes, shrinking the government, and protecting the so-called "job creators."  The irony is, they are also not doing anything illegal.  They're rigged the system so that it only benefits them, which as I noted isn't illegal.  Its just utterly corrupt and immoral.  Of course, like the horde of bloody-minded pirates they are, they don't care about morals either.

Each time a new election comes around, the conservatives trot out the same old bullshit.  The Republican Lie Machine is currently (as I write this) trying to pin everything bad that's going on with the economy on Barack Obama.  They promise to cut government spending and usher in "small government", ignoring the fact that government spending is the lowest its been since Lyndon Johnson was in office.  We've heard this bullshit before:  Reagan, George H. Bush, George W. Bush... even John McCain and Mitt Romney.  Every single conservative running for office uses this same playbook.  "Let's get government out of the way, and everyone will prosper."

DO NOT FOR ONE MOMENT BELIEVE A WORD OF IT!

Once in power, they won't keep their word, and if they ever actually tried, the crushing weight of economic debt would be borne by the Middle Class and the poor, while the ultra-rich and the corporations -- who caused and then greatly benefited from that same debt -- would continue sucking up all the available wealth they could, and would do so with a smile on their face.

Consider, for just a moment, the absolute mean-spirited hate that drove the most recent (as I write this) Republican-created government shut-down.  Conservatives had absolutely no problem whatsoever with throwing millions of people out of work, cutting off Social Security benefits, shutting down desperately needed government survives, torpedoing the financial markets, and even risking defaulting on our national debt in a childish attempt to force the liberals to give them what they wanted.

Prosecutors call this sort of thing "extortion," and its usually considered a felony.

The conservatives who did this were thumbing their noses in contempt at the very concept of democracy.  They didn't like the fact that the other side of the political aisle won the election, so they threw a temper tantrum.  Problem is, this sort of action is nothing short of economic terrorism.  Never once have the liberals ever come close to doing this to their own nation!  Yet conservatives seem to be embracing such immoral and dangerous acts as a part of their standard economic strategy.  When you don't win, or if a law is passed that you don't like, just throw a temper tantrum and threaten to flush the country's economy down the toilet unless you're given your way.

Al-Queda couldn't have dreamed of a better ally than Congressional conservatives.