One government, two worlds

Many years ago, I had a pastor that was giving a series of sermons on hot topics of the day. Of course, many of those topics are still big, not least of which is the topic of abortion rights. You can probably guess what side of the issue he came down on, but many people might be surprised how he approached it.

Rather than simply standing up and blasting the opposition to his personal view, he took time to point out some things that most people don't think of. A person's views on abortion are really formed largely upon their opinion of the nature of what an embryo/fetus really is. If you believe it's a human being, then you're most likely going to want to see it protected. If you believe that it's just a lump of tissue on the wall of a woman's uterus, then removing that lump and disposing of it is no more of a moral issue than getting a wart removed. Until you take the time to understand those two viewpoints, you'll never understand those who stand on the other side of the issue from you.

My main point here is not about abortion, but about understanding the opposition on many, many issues. I find myself so often confused as to why the Republicans and Democrats seem to have so much animosity towards one another when there really seems to me to be very little difference between them. Where does this animosity come from?

I was thinking about the Libertarians, and I remembered something one of them once told me. (I have a lot of respect for Libertarians, although I myself am not one, because I tend to see them as perhaps the least hypocritical party for reasons that may become clear here.) This Libertarian pointed out that Democrats seem to think we can use government to solve all our problems, and openly admit it. However, while Republicans say that they are against "big government", if you watch them, you'll realize that they simply want a different kind of big government than the Democrats. I think there's a deep truth there.

We're not talking about a fetus now, we're talking about our government; what is it that Republicans and Democrats view the government to fundamentally be? I think that it's that view of government's fundamental purpose that not only forms the two parties' policies, but is the root of the animosity they have toward each other.

Take two issues; taxing the rich on the one hand, gay marriage on the other. Generally, Democrats are for both of these, and Republicans are against them. Why? The Republicans look at the government and ask, "What can the government do to protect me from things I think are wrong?" We don't like to see our money being taken, so less taxes for everyone. We have a moral system that says homosexuality is wrong, so we're not going to budge on that. The Democrats look at the government and ask, "What can the government do to create situations that I think are right?" We need money for social programs which the rich can afford to fund, so more taxes for everyone, especially the rich, and whatever my personal views on homosexuality may be, equal rights for everyone is a good idea.

So many Republicans and other conservatives seem to have this idea that liberals feel that wealth is evil. Why? Because they seem to want to just tax that evil right out of the rich. Now I'm sure there are a few people who do believe that, but not the majority. Where do Republicans get this idea? It's from their view of the purpose of government. The action of raising taxes on the rich implies to them that rich people must be wrong. That is not why Democrats do it.

Likewise, Democrats seem to feel that conservatives feel it's right to squelch the rights of others. Why? Because they don't take every chance possible to expand equal rights to everyone at every time. Once again, I'm sure there really are people who enjoy stopping those they dislike from enjoying their full freedom, but the aim of most conservatives tends to be different. They just want to stop what they view as being immoral. Democrats assume hatred of freedom and hatred of the poor on the part of Republicans because of a refusal to see eye to eye with them. But Republicans are just following their moral conscience, just like Democrats.

How do Libertarians view the government? To them it's just a tool for people to force their own morality on others, which is exactly what the Democrats and Republicans both do, albeit in different ways. My view? Does it matter? The fact is everyone thinks they're right, and the opposition is wrong, and it's all based on opinion. All I hope for is that people will stop mistaking a difference of opinion for a lack of morality, because there is nobody who is completely moral or amoral. We're all just trying to make things right.

New Year's Irresolution

So, tomorrow is New Year's Day, right? This may not be a rhetorical question.

Within the year commonly referred to as 2008, Jews will celebrate the beginning of the year 5769 on September 29th. Many people in Asia will mark February 7th as the beginning of the year of the (Earth) Rat. For Muslims, the year 1429 starts on January 10th, and the year 1430 starts on December 29th. This can conceivably be confusing, you may imagine.

The fact is, I've always felt that celebrating new years and anniversaries was a custom that was somewhat questionable. The amount of time it takes the earth to orbit around the sun is really in some sense only interesting when it comes to agriculture, and not personally being a farmer, why should I care? We mark the days to give them significance, not because they have any inherent significance in themselves.

Even if they did have significance for their own sake, then we have to wonder, how do we properly mark that significance? There are, as implied above, numerous calendar systems, and there is no inherent reason to assume that any one of them is the best. The calendar we use here in the west has a 365-day year, but of course, that's not the actual time that it takes for the earth to move around the sun. How long does it take? Well, it's not 365.25 days, either, as you may have been led to believe. I'm not sure which is the exact measure one might wsh to use, but according to what I have read, the "Gaussian year" is 365.2568983 days, the "Sidereal year" is 365.2563604 days, and the "Tropical year" is 365.2421904 days. The odd upshot of the fractional part of the year and our attempts to adjust for it in our calendars is that a child born on New Year's Day 2008 would likely have the true anniversary of his/her birth on December 31st, 2008, due to the extra day we will be adding in February. Weird.

Really, though, I had a point in all of this, and it wasn't supposed to be a downer about the futility of trying to mark the passage of time in a universe that works like clockwork, if by "clockwork" we mean in the sense of a watch that that loses about a minute per day. The fact is that like so many things in our world that we have laid down as arbitrary rules and measurings of what's right, there is still a purpose, and a good one. So many of us, myself included, have some odd internal preference to live like anarchists and say, "Throw out the rules, all of them, and let me live as I choose, not by your schedule, not by your standards, not by your rules, but with true freedom!" But it is those very rules that give us the freedom that we really truly desire.

I hate living at the mercy of the clock and my work schedule, and I hate to have someone say, you must be sitting at your desk at such-and-such time, and you must take your break at this hour, and you have to stay here until such time as I say. I have to work the same time every day from Monday through Friday, although I'd much rather have the freedom to simply put in as many hours as I wish at whatever time interval I wish, on whichever days I wish. Yet... I said to a friend the other day, "Meet me for lunch on Thursday at 11, okay?" I would not have had the chance to meet with my friend without the common rules of the clock, an understanding of the days of the week, and the annual commemoration (artificial though it is on many levels) of the birth of Christ, which had given him occasion to be in town and visit family.

Yes, like so many of the building blocks of our society, I have a love-hate relationship with the calendar and the clock. I'm a horrible procrastinator, and the people and institutions of the world around me constantly push me with deadlines that I hate, but if they chose not to, I wouldn't give them the time of day, as they say.

Confession time: In 2007, I procrastinated in sending in my vehicle registration papers. I ended up paying a late fee. When I finally sent in the papers, I got my registration sticker, but procrastinated in putting it on the car. I got pulled over and ticketed. I procrastinated in paying off the ticket. Due to further procrastination, what should have been a $10 fine ended up turning into an astronomical amount that I shall not disclose here, and on top of that, because I procrastinated in reading my mail and paying of that increased fine in time, my license was suspended, and I will have to pay to get it reinstated. I am a victim of the calendar, but it's certainly not the calendar's fault, it's my own fault for ignoring it when it came knocking at my door.

There's a lesson to be learned in this, (Setting aside the obvious lesson of "Brucker is an idiot"?) and for some people it may be obvious, while for others not so much. Most of us, when we think of evil, think of an act of causing harm to another individual by our actions. Nonetheless, there is a strong tendency to overlook another sort of evil, which is the evil of knowing what is the right action to take, and not taking it. What I see in the situation I have put myself in, and the situation that many of us contemplate in taking the New Year as a time of self-evaluation, is a corollary sort of evil: the evil of knowing that which is the right thing to do, and putting it off for later.

So often in life, we know what is right; we even know that there is an action that we should do that is right, and failing to do it is wrong. Yet still, we hesitate. Is there a nasty habit that you need to stop? Is there a problem that you need to fix, and have been putting off? Is there an uncomfortable truth that you need to come to grips with, and have mentally avoided as long as you can? If it has to be the New Year for you to face up to those things, then so be it, but whenever you happen to be reading this, it is the New Year. It may be some culture's day to commemorate the completion of a solar cycle, or it may be the anniversary of someone's birth that you know. Every single day is the anniversary of something, and every single day is a good day to do that which is right. I don't know what that is for you, but if you know, then there is no better day than today to do it.