Moral Basis?

This morning on Meet the Press, there was a debate between Senator George Allen (R, Virginia) and Jim Webb, his Democratic challenger this November. I wasn't able to hear much of it, but early on, I did catch Russert asking Allen if he agreed with a quote from Colin Powell to the effect that "the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis for our war on terror." Sen. Allen is a politician, so of course he did a complex song-and-dance around it. But I'm not running for office and doubt I ever will, so here is my straight answer to that question.

I think a significant portion of the world doubted our moral basis for any struggle against terrorism as early as September 12, 2001. Although they never show up in newscasts anymore, I distinctly recall celebrations in numerous places as the news spread about the September 11th attacks. There was laughing and dancing, gunfire into the air, shouts of "Death to America". They think we deserved what we got simply because of who we are. Why should we care if they doubt our moral basis? They have less credibility on moral judgments than would Helen Keller on aesthetic comparisons of various shades of blue.

Do certain Europeans doubt our moral basis? Are we talking about French, German, and Russian idiots -- nay, criminals -- that tried to stonewall any effort to do anything about terrorism because it might interfere with the sweetheart oil deals they had that were in complete violation of the Oil for Food arrangements? Or are we talking about the people in Kofi Annan's own office who did the same thing? Again, we are worried about the moral judgments of folks who on their best days have far less brains, hearts, or courage than Dorothy's three friends on their worst days.

Sometimes you just have to ignore what other people might think, go do the right thing, and leave the judgments to historians of centuries hence. History has not judged Neville Chamberlain kindly, but at least Chamberlain came around when Hitler proved that Churchill was right.

Too Many and Too Few Diplomats

The U.S. foreign policy establishment suffers from a couple of problems. One is that it is spread more widely than anyone gives it credit for. Obviously it primarily consists of the State Department bureaucracy; there are probably hundreds of people at Foggy Bottom that no one has heard of, and yet have influence over various details of our international relations. However, the Constitution specifies that the Senate must ratify treaties, and has "advice and consent" oversight on presidential appointments to upper-level positions and ambassadorships; therefore, virtually every veteran Senator, as well as a number of Senatorial candidates, fancies him- or herself as a foreign policy expert. And you have to include much of the media in the foreign policy establishment because many journalists seem to see themselves as the real experts concerning any subject they've ever reported on.

But the real problem is that the foreign policy establishment has both too many and too few diplomats. That is, it suffers from an overabundance of good diplomats and a fierce paucity of great ones. So, you ask, what is the difference? Well, I don't remember who first said this in the dim recesses of history, so I can't credit it properly, but a good diplomat will let you have your way some of the time, whereas a truly great diplomat will let you have his way all of the time and lead you to believe that it was your idea all along. There are simply not enough people in the establishment that are convinced that what is good for U.S. security is also good for the civilized world in general. And there are far too many who want to give concessions in order to soothe tensions with those who hate us.

I don't often agree with columnist Froma Harrop, but on September 7 she nailed it with her "Islamic Terror's Endless 'Root Causes'" column. A most telling quote from that column:

Islamic terrorists are attacking people on nearly every continent -- many who have little or nothing to do with U.S. foreign policy. Multicultural, huggy-bear, we're-not-in-Iraq Canada has uncovered a plot by 17 Muslims to invade its Parliament and chop off the prime minister's head.

No matter how you paint it, no matter how you try to soothe it and justify it and mollify it, the terrorists and their ringleaders are simply going to hate everyone and everything that fails to submit to them absolutely 100%. And any concession made by our supposed experts to address the "root causes" of terrorism is never going to be seen by them as a step towards peaceful compromise, but as weakness that should be exploited to the fullest. They have proven any number of times that they do not believe in compromise, except as a temporary measure to give them a chance to regroup and regather their strength.

We can't afford such compromises, as they only make it easier for them to kill us. But way too many in our foreign policy establishment are foolishly convinced that such a path is the intellectually superior one.

"Can't we all just get along?" No. We can't. Because they won't.

Fred Phelps is Not a Reverend

Let me just say that it offends me that Fred Phelps (I refuse to dignify him with the honorific "Reverend") identifies himself as a Christian just as I do. And let me say that it also offends me that his Westboro Baptist "God Hates Fags" Church carries the same Baptist tag as the churches in which I grew up. They devoutly wish to be seen tithing their mint, dill, and cummin as they laugh off the weightier matters of justice and mercy and faithfulness (Matt 23:23).

How dare they insult grieving families by picketing funerals of soldiers, announcing that these young men and women deserved to die for serving a country soft on homosexuality? Their website proudly proclaims the number of days Matthew Shepard has spent in hell, and they boast of having announced his entry there by picketing his funeral. Now, it is not up to me to say who is and is not in hell, and thank God it is not up to Phelps, either, but even assuming that his pronouncement is true concerning Shepard's eternal destiny, I should think that it would be a matter of great sorrow, not celebration nor gleeful provocation. Their bragging seems to me to be little different than that of a KKK mob proud of having lynched a lone unarmed black man.

I'm pretty sure Christ had people like Fred in mind when he foretold of responding to boasts of faithfulness with a disgusted "I never knew you." (Matt 7:22-23)

Mind you, I am not in any sense being soft on homosexuality. I am against gay marriage and believe that true matrimony involves one man and one woman -- although I think that the frivolous treatment of marriage and divorce by multitudes of heterosexuals has to be at least as detrimental to its sanctity as is the desire of some gay couples to legitimize an already long-term monogamous relationship. But that's for another blog.

I'm not being soft on homosexuality; I'm being critical of those who view it with a magnifier that minimizes any other form of sinfulness. But Phelps is an easy target. He and his ilk seem to try hard to be noticed for being mean.

This may seem an odd thing to say for someone who has long associated himself with the Religious Right -- and will continue to do so -- but there are a number of people whose message is really just a more subtle form of Phelps' venom. And I fear that they do more harm than benefit to the cause of reaching people for Christ. (That is supposed to be the objective, isn't it?)

When Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell had their infamous conversation on the 700 Club about the causes and meanings of the September 11th attacks, I just cringed and thought "Why did they have to say that?" Their statements served no purpose other than to get their names into the mix as having made a pronouncement about the attacks.

The statements were certainly premature. But to say that the attacks were the result of homosexuality and abortion was really irresponsible. When God punished a people for sin in the Bible, it was usually pretty clear Who the punishment came from and why. If the attacks destroyed a major abortion clinic or a gay pride headquarters, the statements might have had a little more credibility. But as it is, they were insulting to the memory of thousands that died that day only because they had gone to work.

Alternative Maximum Tax

Yeah, I know that the "M" in "AMT" is supposed to stand for "Minimum", but if you read my previous rants, you know that I also disagree that the "Earned Income Credit" is anything that somebody earned. No the AMT is an alternative tax that is designed to make sure you pay the maximum possible tax.

The AMT was established in the 1960's to ensure that very wealthy people hiding behind numerous tax shelters still had to pay at least some tax. Well, guess what? We've had quite a few changes to the tax code in the past three decades. Those shelters just don't exist anymore, so the entire justification for the AMT is obsolete by more than a decade. The only tax shelter I've ever seen was the novelty one my aunt gave me, consisting of three carpet tacks with a small roof over them.

But it's even more ridiculous. Back in 1969, the AMT probably snagged fewer than 30 people in the entire U.S., but the threshholds were never indexed for inflation. Again, guess what? "Very wealthy" in 1969 and "very wealthy" today are two very different things; $60K was a lot of money in '69, but today a family of four pulling in $60K/year is only borderline middle class. And what was fewer than 30 people then, now, well, you need to tack five more zeroes onto that 30. (For the math-impaired, that's three million.)

As it is, a fraction of my itemized deductions is already discounted away (it's called IRC Section 68). But then to slap an Alternative Maximum Tax on top of what I already have to cough up is simply evil incarnate.

E(?)IC Alternative

Okay, so if you advocate the elimination of the Earned (?) Income Credit [see previous Tax Rant], you will of course be branded as mean-spirited, uncompassionate, greedy, etc, etc, etc. So how about some alternatives? A valid alternative would allow someone to receive the same dollar amount for which they are eligible under current EIC rules, but have that dollar amount granted in such a way as to make it 99.9% impossible to treat like a lottery windfall.

Here's one possibility: Educational Savings Accounts. ESAs already exist in the tax code, and allow you tax advantages when you spend hard-earned dough on the intellectual improvement of yourself and/or your dependents. So how about creating a special ESA into which your EIC money is deposited? You can withdraw at any time in the form of a check payable to an educational institution, but you cannot otherwise touch the money for five years, or maybe even ten. And if you do make a withdrawal that is not a check to a financial institution, the bank hosting the ESA has to report that withdrawal, and it gets charged to you as regular income. Yeah, regular income; you know, the stuff that reasonably successful people pay confiscatory taxes on.

Earned (?) Income Credit

We need to do away with the EIC. It's supposed to be a "helping hand", but it's just another wealth transfer, enabling certain people to get a bigger tax refund than they actually had taxes withheld. But how many people get an EIC refund and actually invest it or otherwise apply it to the improvement of their overall financial position? No, it seems like most of them just treat it like a winning lottery ticket, and blow it on something quick and frivolous. (The lottery just being a tax on people who can't do math, but that's another rant.)

The EIC is treated like free money. Folks like H&R Block and Jackson-Hewitt make big bucks from the people that would rather get only 60% of their free money RIGHT NOW than wait three whole long weeks for the check to arrive with 100% of their free money. It would be interesting to get data from the big tax-prep companies to see what kind of correlation there is between customers who get EIC and customers who take refund-advance loans. But you probably won't see such data without a court order, because those companies' business model depends on the complexities and inequities of the tax code.

Hello

Hello. I'm Steve and I occasionally write random musings that occur to me and refuse to be ignored. I did have a blog on my own home server, but since no one knew to look there, nobody ever read it. So my first few posts here are actually copies of various things I've written so far this year.