The Rebirth of Reason

Posted By Author on February 1, 2009

Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) would have you believe that this is the conflict he is trying to engage in.  It is not.  In this MSNBC article, he claims that Congress should reconsider the funding of the National Science Foundation because some employees have used their work computers to look at pornography during business hours.

On the face, this seems like a perfectly reasonable request, doesn’t it?  These people are using time intended for work on personal activities, so why should we continue to provide them with so much funding?  If they have time to spend on this, surely they have more than enough time to do what they’re meant to do.
That, however, is not the case.  The “ranking officials” cited in the report were appointed by the Bush Administration and are, therefore, no longer working for the Foundation.  The actions of a previous administration should not be used to justify punishment of a current one.  Further, the IT department of the Foundation is quoted in the article as saying “NSF immediately implemented additional IT systems controls to focus in particular on enforcement of the foundation’s long-standing policy prohibiting the use of its IT systems to access sexually explicit, gambling and other inappropriate Web sites.”
The actions, Senator, that you would take steps to punish have already been dealt with as effectively as possible, given current filtering technology (which is poor at best, though that is an entirely different subject).  Why do you feel you need to punish them further?

I do not mean to impugn the entire Republican party for the actions of a few.  It is the “neoconservative” element within the party that appears to be systematically trying to destroy science and rational thought in America.  During the Bush Administration, scientific funding was slashed across the board (source), directly assaulted in the classroom and elsewhere by non-scientific methods, and hamstrung by an executive with a fallacious and morally-superior interpretation of the facts (source 1, source 2).
Reader, it is our dominance in science and technology that secured the United States is place as a global superpower after World War II.  Without atomic bombs, supersonic jets, “supercomputers” in the home, and the countless other technological advancements made possible by funding from the National Science Foundation and other private benefactors, we would not be where we are today.
But we cannot sit on our laurels.  The rest of the world is catching up, largely because of changes we have made.  Once, brilliant minds from India, Africa, China, all over the world came here to study at our universities.  They would enter on student visas, learn all that we knew, and then be invited to stay here by the government.  They were offered the path to citizenship, given careers in the sciences at major companies like Dow and 3M, universities like Cal-Tech and Stanford, or facilities like Los Alamos.  But now, immigration has become a spectre to haunt our imaginations.  We fear that immigrants will take our jobs, so we send them home after teaching them, and they go to work for their own governments, pushing science forward around the globe while we ban further research and send even our own best and brightest to Europe and Japan.
And now Senator Grassley would have us fall further behind in a race we may already be losing just to satisfy his need to hold the moral high ground?  I think not.  The National Science Foundation “funds approximately 20 percent of all federally supported basic research conducted by the United States’ colleges and universities. In some fields, such as mathematics, computer science, economics and the social sciences, NSF is the major source of federal backing” (Wikipedia).  Can we really afford to slash advancements in all of these fields just because some employees don’t know to keep their work time for work and their personal time for personal activities?  Can we afford it even if most of these people no longer work there?

Regards,
The Author

Addendum:
Upon further consideration, I have come up with another possible reason for Senator Grassley’s desire to cut the National Science Foundation’s funding:  it is possible that he simply wants Federal employees to do their jobs while on the job.  This is a perfectly reasonable expectation, and I have no problem with wanting people to do the work they are being paid for.  However, it is well worth noting that Senator Grassley himself is not always “on the job.”
According to the Washington Post’s Congressional votes database, Senator Grassley has missed several votes.  But it is worth noting that these votes were all on the same day in 1993, and that Grassley has an exceptional attendance record, when compared to most other Senators.  I admire your dedidcation to your job, Senator, but I believe that your suggestion to punish a few lazy individuals by cutting the Foundation’s funding will do far too much to punish the innocent and far too little to actually punish the guilty.  A better suggestion would be to reprimand or fire the guilty parties than to further hamstring scientific research in this country.

Category: Common Sense, Internet Culture, Science, U.S. Politics | 1 Comment »
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Posted By Author on January 19, 2009

When deciding what topic to begin this project with, I had a wealth of options. Should I start simple? No, there’s nothing truly simple when dealing with billions of opinions and perspectives. Should I deal only with the most current events? Of course not; the greatest weakness of contemporary news reporting is a pervasive preference of “right now” over “right.” What, then?
It is only after a good deal of consideration that I decided to start with the biggest elephant in the room for most Americans, as it is both important in its own right and a symptom of a deeper problem. So it is in that spirit that we begin with the subject of “gay marriage.”

The argument for allowing homosexuals to legally marry is one of simple civil rights. Proponents believe it is discriminatory for homosexual couples to be denied the legal right of marriage afforded to heterosexuals. The argument against is almost entirely religious in nature.In the Judeo-Christian-Islamic family of religions, homosexuality is seen as a sin. But, according to my (layman’s) understanding of the nature of sin, all sins are equal in the eyes of God. Murder is no more or less grave than coveting another’s posessions, which is no more or less so than lying. So, to deny marriage to one specific group of sinners and not to, say, those who are morbidly obese because they cannot exercise self-control is to be prejudicial.It is also argued that marriage is a sacred religious sacrament that has always been between a man and a woman. This is blatantly false. Looking back less than 150 years, the Mormon church endorsed polygamy, but only as long as it was the man who had multiple spouses. Further back, marriages were used to cement alliances, to settle familial disputes, and to preserve royal lineages. Their religious aspect has long been supplanted by their practical roles in society.
That is not to say that there is no religious component to marriage. It is a religious ceremony, for most, that serves as the starting point for a union with a large number of religious connections. But atheists and agnostics marry, too. Should we deny them the right simply because they don’t want to bring religion into the equation? What of those who marry in a civil ceremony before a judge? If they are allowed, then why not homosexuals? It is also argued that preventing gay marriage is somehow defending the sanctity of marriage itself. How, I must ask, is this possible if you continue to allow divorce?

Simply put, these arguments are a redressing of the exact same arguments that were put forth in protest of interracial marriage, and largely come from the same subset of the population: those who wish to impose their morality on others.
And here we come to the crux of the issue. Religion is used to create a personal moral code for each individual, what you are and are not willing to do. The law describes what you are and are not allowed to do. In many places, these two overlap, but this should not be used as evidence that they are the same. A person’s moral code is unique to them, applies only to themselves, and requires no consensus. You decide whether you are willing to steal to feed your family, for instance. The law is created by consensus and applies to every member of a society. Whether or not your family is starving, stealing is agains the law.In many societies, for many many years, the moral and legal codes have been one and the same, crafted from the same source document, a religious text. Among these societies are the Puritans, the Kingdom of Israel, and Afghanistan as ruled by the Taliban. All three are theocracies, states governmed by religious texts.
The United States is not a theocracy. It has never been a theocracy. And I sincerely hope that it will never be a theocracy, as this directly contradicts the will of the framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We specifically created the United States to separate church from state, because we had seen first-hand what the commingling of religion and politics created in the Church of England. Among the much-vaunted Founding Fathers were represented deism (Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Cornelius Harnett, Gouverneur Morris, Hugh Williamson), Catholicism (C. Carroll, D. Carroll, Fitzsimons), Episcopalianism, Presbyterianism, Lutheranism, Methodism, and several other lesser-known Protestant denominations. It is worth noting that they are not all Christian, and that they placed explicit language in the First Amendment to prevent the United States from establishing a state religion, let alone becoming a theocracy. So, then, to allow the doctrine of any religion to be the primary motivator behind the passage of a law flies in the face of the First Amendment. And as all of the arguments against gay marriage are rooted in religious protest, they must be discarded.

However, to simply dismiss someone’s protests as unimportant because they are based on religion is to be arrogant and derogatory. These people see a cornerstone of their faith being eroded by the iron fist of Federal authority. To that end, I have proposed a solution: we simply must disentangle the religious and secular aspects of marriage.Many people propose “civil unions” as an alternative to marriage for homosexuals, but this creates a Jim Crow situation where two subsets of the population are offered “separate but equal” treatment that can quickly and easily become anything but. I propose that we revise this so that all unions between two consenting adults are henceforth “civil unions.” It offers the exact same legal benefits as a traditional marriage license, but without the use of the word “marriage” that seems to so inflame some. If you have a marriage license in your safe deposit box, it is the functional equivalent of the new “civil union license.” The two are legally equivalent by virtue of being the same thing. Then, if a couple wants to get married in a religious ceremony, they are prefectly welcome to do so. If a church doesn’t want to recognize a homosexual union, they can simply deny them a religious ceremony, as they are currently able to.
But, and this is the important part, they are able to file joint tax returns, visit each other in the ICU, sign legal documents, avail themselves of spousal privelege, and all the other activities currently kept from them.

And with that, the question of “gay marriage” can be put to rest in a way that satisfies both sides and does not degrade into petty bickering and vitriolic name-calling.

Regards,
The Author

Category: Civil Rights, Common Sense, General Interest, Religion, U.S. Politics | 1 Comment »
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Posted By Author on January 12, 2009

I am sorry, Reader.

I fully intended to begin the new year promptly with my first posting here, discussing a topic that seems to be of great importance to a great many people.  However, protracted illness has led to several postponements and my falling behind schedule.  I have been working on this first discussion, but it is not complete yet and I don’t want to be just another “blog” (least of all because I do not like the word) where the frequency of postings is more important than the quality of what is written.  Within a few days, the first topic should be posted, and we shall continue from there.

Regards,
The Author

Category: General Interest | No Comments »
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Posted By Author on December 16, 2008

Hello, Reader.

I am the Author.  Recently, I have noticed a dramatic and unwanted change in society:  the world is full of people who are convinced that their way is the only way to solve a problem, and that anyone who disagrees is morally treasonous.  I disagree; I feel that such forced polarization is itself morally treasonous.

It is in that vein that I have started this project.  My goal is to offer an alternative solution:  rational thought.
Too often, I find that common sense is anything but common.

Please note:  Due to complex circumstances, this introductory post is still a work in progress.  Regular posting will begin on January 1, 2009.

Category: Common Sense, General Interest | 5 Comments »
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