Wasabisoft

With any luck AT ALL I’ll be moving to somewhere in the Southern California region around mid-2010. Jobs for guys with my “career experience” abound down there, so I feel my chances are pretty good… the big question(s) will be: 1) can I secure a job near a zoo/aquarium so Sarah has somewhere to work as well; 2) can I secure a job near a university with an advanced degree program in Zoology/Marine Biology , also for Sarah’s benefit; 3) can I secure a job that will allow me to build up capital towards founding my world-consuming Smoothie King franchise; and 4) should number 3 prove undoable, should I bend my efforts towards entering local politics and make a living off my not-inconsiderable bullshitting skills? To quote my new political adviser Manic Hateball: Signs point to YES. Read on!

So what did that previous paragraph have to do with the title of this article? Not terribly much, except that my boredom this morning led me to investigate various California political organizations, to include calitics.com, an admittedly progressive (read: Democrat) website that nevertheless seems to be fairly committed to serious and reasonable dialogue within the sphere of California politics. I make a big deal about not supporting either of the major political parties, but there’s some interesting stuff there, to include this story about the Catholic Church’s attempts to dodge somewhere between 3 and 15 million dollars in taxes owed to the city of San Francisco. This kind of thing always registers on my radar, both because I oppose the bureaucratization of spirituality (aka religion) and because I virulently oppose the invasion of government by the glaze-eyed armies of religious dogma.

I’ll try to keep this short as I already posted the gist of my argument on the calitics.com site: the laws of a church (or any organization, for that matter) CANNOT overrule the laws of society. To do so invalidates the entire foundation of society, regardless of the intent of the organization in question. What keeps our society from becoming an Iran-esque Theocracy is the principle of separation of church and state, and I quote: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” I choose to carry that philosophy a step further (because I would likely be an Activist Supreme Court Justice, because this just isn’t 1776 anymore) and make the following statement: any justification for a course of action that affects society in general must be supported by the facts of reality. In other words, debate surrounding any proposed law must be derived from the reality in which all our citizens reside; to attempt to justify a law via belief (ANY belief) is irresponsible, not to mention unfair to people who do NOT support that belief. The trick is distinguishing between opinion supported by fact (valid support) and opinion justified by mere belief, no matter how strongly held (invalid support). For example: a valid argument in favor of using animals as food sources would address the dentition of humans being indicative of an omnivorous diet, the increased calorie concentration required by active brains, the ease of humane treatment of foodstuff creatures and the relative value of human needs as opposed to those of other species; an invalid argument would be invoking either biblical support (God gave Man dominion over all the animals) or doctrinal support (PETA’s stated belief that any pain visited upon an animal is inexcusable).

While the Founders of our country are generally held to have included the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment as a reaction to the King of England declaring the Church of England to be the official religion of the Americas, the philosophy itself, as applied to the idea of society, remains valid: the responsible wielding of governance (and of force) over a nation must derive from logical thought and conjecture (the rule of Reason) as opposed to appeals to dogma (the rule of Faith) or force itself (the rule of Fear). The entire purpose of democracy is to establish this rule of Reason, to weigh ideas and laws based upon their merit to society… and I fear this may be an area where our Constitution and way of governance are no longer sufficient to protect our society from either Faith or Fear. There is, rather tragically, no provision in place that requires ANYONE in our society – either citizens or Congresspeople or Justices or the President himself – to actually follow the voice of Reason. Advocates of Christian reasoning for laws (such as laws banning homosexual union and abortion regardless of circumstance) should actually be the most dedicated to this principle of reason; if we were to allow religious justification as a valid form of support for lawmaking, it is not difficult to imagine what shape our country could take should adherents to a different religion become the population majority. I’m pretty sure that Christians (et cetera) would much rather have a secular in charge than an Ayatollah.

Our insistence upon the prevalence of Reason in our government is what protects us from religious authoritarianism, any religion’s authoritarianism. Even those people who would like a bit of their own religion in government should look to Reason as a defense against the religions of others in government. Perhaps the most depressing facet of this issue is that they do: when their religion is challenged, the religious are incredibly quick to enlist the aid of Reason when Reason supports their cause. Any other time, their beliefs are inscrutable and beyond reproach and how dare you even imply that their God could ever be wrong about anything ever. EVER. What was it Martin Sheen said in The West Wing… “When the facts support you, argue the facts; when the law supports you, argue the law; and if you don’t have the facts or the law, then bang your fist upon the table as loud as you can!” I think the reason why the religious try so hard to change the law is because the facts are unhelpful and their fists are tired…

…But then again, pretty much every special interest group in the nation has the same problem. Oddly enough, they use the same tactics, despite having no Bible backing them up. The fact that “Lobbyist” is a legitimate job title lends some credence to this quality of our society. It would appear that religion is not the only culprit in the search for special treatment, for the use of law against the fair interests of society. What really gets to me is that the rule of law is supposed to be an extension of the rule of Reason, but the process is embarrassingly easily corrupted under our current system of government. The biggest reason why I hope to eventually run for some kind of public office is that I long ago reached the point where I cannot trust anyone currently in government to govern responsibly. I have no illusions of affecting any kind of major change on my own; I do hope to gain a large enough audience to inspire some intellectual integrity in society at large. And maybe a harem. Our standards are only as high as our society demands… and I don’t feel that responsibility in governance is too much to ask. Only when we look to reality for our ideals will we once again function effectively as a society.

Comma Bitches.