Social/Domestic

With the breaking news that the FDA has approved the use of the “morning after” pill for 17 year olds without a prescription or parental consent or notification, talk has broken out across blogs, newsrooms, and facebook about how the “horribly oppressive” Bush administration encouraged backwards sexual health policies and now maybe American can finally be like its European counterparts and push into the 21^st century.

There are many issues with this blanket categorization. First of all, the abstinence education policy supported by the Bush administration can be characterized as putting emphasis upon self-control and engaging in a dialogue about sexuality with teens instead of just handing them condoms and saying “good luck.” Although this might be interpreted as just a “positive spin” on a “naïve” policy, why don’t we ask why we keep lowering the bar for our children? Why do we keep saying, “kids will be kids” and handing our children over to the soulless media moguls behind the MTV trash? This is ludicrous. It is neither naïve nor ignorant and certainly not oppressive to craft adolescent health policies that encourage our teenagers to consider the repercussions of their actions, their maturity to handle such a great responsibility, and their own personal dignity as a human being. If we do not think our children cable of abstinence, surely they will not think so either.

Secondly, there is a difference in the legal status between an eighteen year old and a seventeen year old. With the FDA’s new policy, this distinction is effectively erased. So if a 17 year old can now get the Plan B pill without a prescription, why not a 16 year old? Or, a 12 year old? This is increase in the independent rights of minors separated out from parental guidance is extremely problematic. The government requires parents to care for their children and imposes all sorts of criminal and civil suits against those who do not. This includes medical care. A parent may be held criminally or civilly negligent for failing to care for their child. But the government wants it both ways: a parent must be required to care for their child without being fully informed as to the care their child needs. This is illogical. A parent is now expected to care for a child who they able to know increasingly less and less about! Even if there are situations where a child would be put in danger if their parent knew of their sexual behavior, the laws could be crafted to create a judicial by-pass where the child would have recourse to get an exception on parental notification. Such exceptions are already in place in most states that require parental notification and/or consent for contraceptives. Furthermore, this dichotomy disrespects the fact that parents should have the freedom to raise their children as they see fit. If the parent does not want to support their child’s sexual choices, they shouldn’t have to. And is it the worst thing if a teen must wait until they are eighteen to have sex, go on the pill, etc.? What about this teen pregnancy rate that’s so rampant—that has only become more rampant with the increasing availability of contraception and abortion? I suppose this has only occurred because of eight years of encouraging abstinence only education? Maybe the family actually IS the building block of society and demeaning it by eroding legal protection for it really DOES have an affect!

Although many would like to see conservatives on these issues as being old-fashioned, stupid, or backwards as the result of cult-like evangelical Christian beliefs, this couldn’t further from the truth. It is not being compassionate or responsible to expect that your child cannot control themselves and will engage in sex out of animalistic compulsion. This is a degradation of culture and of sexuality itself. If teens are going to take on the responsibility of having sex, then they need to take on the responsibility of talking to their parents and then their doctor. Sexual decisions are intensely personal and up till now, the law has recognized that children and adolescents may not have the capacity to make these decisions responsibly and so need the guidance of their families. Hopefully, the new administration will realize this and embrace the new-fashioned policies of dignity that former administrations have advocated.

Imagine that it’s 2 a.m. and you wake up and realize your house is on fire. You evacuate and call the local fire station. Unfortunately, your house burns to the ground because the fire chief in charge of saving your house was not up to speed on fire fighting techniques. You’re obviously having a bad week. Although the fire chief was not the best or the brightest in his field, you can find solace in one thing: he met diversity standards when compared to his co-workers which ensured his promotions. Does that make you feel better? I didn’t think so.

Unfortunately, this situation could become a reality. Tomorrow morning the United States Supreme Court will hear arguments relating to a 2004 lawsuit filed by white firefighters who passed an exam for promotion only to have the test results thrown out simply because no African American candidate received a high enough score to also be considered for the same promotion. The promotion exams were given in two parts and focused on firefighting methods, knowledge and skills. Part 1 had 200 multiple-choice questions and counted for 60% of the final score. Part two was an oral exam in which candidates described responses to various scenarios, which counted for 40%.

Some proponents of throwing out the exams (who have won thus far) argued that the test should have been weighted differently (30% test, 65% oral, 5% seniority). Others have said that the test was racially biased in the first place. The city even worried that it would be breaking laws by not throwing out the test. These arguments seem to ignore at least two facts. First, an independent company crafted the test only after receiving approval from the local government to do so. Second, one of the firefighters who should have been promoted studied between 8 and 13 hours a day and spent over $1,000 preparing for the test. Unfortunately, he has only been rewarded, thus far, with four years of legal battles.

I will leave you with a couple of questions to ponder. If the test standards were changed but the result stayed the same (i.e., lack of diversity), would the test still be considered flawed? If that answer is yes, then how many times do you have to change the test before it can be approved? Would the test have to change until it forced diversity, even if it didn’t test on the skills necessary to be a successful fireman? Finally, do we really want our firefighters to be diverse so badly that we’re willing to sacrifice their skill level?

I, for one, want the best qualified firemen (and policemen too) working and leading in my community. If the top 10 firemen are all white, then I say promote them. If the top 10 are African American, then I say promote them. For once, let’s throw the race card out the window and actually make intelligent decisions. I don’t think we should be willing to compromise safety to meet some random percentage of diversity crafted in a meeting while houses are burning throughout the community.

If you would like to read the opinion of the Federal District Court of Connecticut for this case, you can find it here: http://www.ctemploymentlawblog.com/newhaven1.pdf.

This third article in the series of what has now been labeled as liberal fascism, promoted by many as pure socialism, will discuss why it rubs people raw that the government is taking something from them and giving it to someone else.
As a basic idea, we will look at the teachings of Thomas Aquinas.  He wrote several important ideas.  One of these ideas is that man is a “moral agent.”  By living life, people get the chance to make moral choices (should I be lazy or work, should I be nice or hit, should I cheat or be honest, etc.)  And people get better, and become more “moral” and “good” at making moral choices by doing them.  When a person is prevented from making a moral choices, they decline in the ability to make good moral choices.  It could be viewed as a habit because the more you practice it, the better you become and the easier it is to do it right.  This idea is an outflowing of Aquinas’s teachings on what he called the “Cardinal Virtues” in his book Summa Theologica.

A second thing from Aquinas is the idea of Eternal Law and its relationship to Divine Law, natural law, and man-made law.  Here is where I want this article to focus, because here is where we see why fascism/socialism prevent moral agency, are against or “violate” natural law, and cause strife when used as a system of government.  They feel wrong because they are wrong.
First, a few basic definitions.  Eternal law is a label for the rules God uses to run the universe.  We won’t ever know them all, but we do get to know some of them.  The ones we find out by thinking properly are called “natural law.”  The natural law is sometimes described as our conscience, the little “Jiminy Cricket” or tiny angel on our shoulder which tells us if an action is right or wrong.  It is in reality larger than that, and for our purpose can be thought of as “how a person should think and act” based on if they are (1) thinking properly—using good reason, and (2) acting properly on those correct thoughts.
Man-made law, I suggest, when it violates natural law—because it is from thinking wrongly—causes people to get angry and resistive.  It creates strife in the population because it violates what the Apostle Paul says is “written on our hearts,” those ideas we know deep inside to be true.
Some examples in history are slavery and Prohibition.  Let’s briefly look at each before we get to fascism/socialism.  Our Declaration of Independence set out to correct abuses in the natural law; after all, the king had to obey natural law but wasn’t.  The Declaration set him straight and was an arrow shot at the “sun” to reset our freedoms under God.  But the weakness of our Founders was that when it came down to it, they weaseled out of getting rid of slavery.  They made the Constitution and in it broke the natural law by making it fine to own people.  And it cost dearly less than 100 years later with the Civil War, the strife which could not be escaped because the man-made law (Constitution) was out of step/in conflict with the natural law (Declaration of Independence).  Contrast this with Britain, where my namesake, William Wilberforce, fought tirelessly in Parliament for over 20 years and ended the slave trade in Britain without firing a single shot.  He taught people to reason and think properly about how slavery violated natural law.

In Prohibition you had a group of people who rejected alcohol.  I may have some very conservative folks mad at me, but even Jesus drank wine.  The reason for rejecting it and making it a law to impose on other people was not biblical, was not reasoned rightly, and came more from a false sense of social modesty.  It’s not unscriptural to drink.  In fact, alcohol has been around for centuries.  The abuse of it should be avoided.  As a result, man-made law (the 18th Amendment) caused strife, was an extreme burden on the people, and was repealed (the 21st Amendment).  You might think this is a stretch, and I admit it is weaker than the first, but still I offer it.

Now let’s look at fascism/socialism.  Each takes private property—your things—by force and gives it to other people not based on your permission but on a belief that the government, for itself or as a proxy (substitute) for the “people” is better able to arrange or control your thing than you are.  Economically this is a disaster.  Why?  Because it deprives you, as Aquinas wrote, of the practice of making moral choices.  The government takes over your ability to decide.  And this process, enforced by man-made law, violates the natural law not only by preventing you from making good choices but by taking your private property.

Is that wrong?  Yes.  God Himself is the maker of the idea of private property.  You can get to the notion of private property by thinking properly.  It is part of the natural law.  First, and it would be overwhelming to mention them all here, but the Bible is jam-packed with the idea that God is the giver of private property.  It forms the basis of the commandments not to steal or its related commandment of not to covet (envy) what someone else has.

So when the government takes away what you have, what you made by the moral choices (to work and not be lazy), it causes you to be mad.  Why?  Because God made you to value what you worked for.  Also, it makes people not understand the goodness of work and turns many of them, if not all, into lazy choosers, who become, out of habit, bad moral choice makers.  This is a, if not the, huge problem with fascism/socialism.  And it really doesn’t matter which you look at, because wherever either system has been in place the strife and grief naturally caused requires a huge, oppressive, brutal government to intimidate, arrest, exile, or most often kill the people who disagree with them.

It may seem chic to call socialism cool, or to think that fascism is just one of a cornucopia of political systems, each one no better than the other.  But they are wrong.  They are contrary to natural law and will always cause strife.  We have the best one here what is left of our free market and our republic which values private property, life, and the rule of law.  Like our motto here at SquareWon, it’s about the ideas.  Let’s all reject fascism/socialism before it’s too late.

“We cannot expect the Americans to jump from capitalism to Communism [or facism], but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of socialism [or facism] until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism [which in reality becomes totalitarianism, like Nazi Germany or the USSR]  -Soviet Leader Nikit Khrushchev, 1959 [insertions are mine-Wm. Wilberforce].