The End of Charitable Giving?

Today I spent the afternoon at Larry H. Miller’s beautiful funeral service in the Energy Solutions Arena, listening to his family describe the marvelous man that he was. Among other things, Larry was a first-class philanthropist. With no fanfare or media attention, he once gave a considerable sum of money to a non-profit arts organization with which I was affiliated. He did so with no thought for recognition, and, indeed, preferred that his donation be kept anonymous. Since then, the organization has publicly acknowledged him as a financial benefactor, so I don’t think I’m betraying any confidences here, but I don’t want to provide any more details than that out of respect for his initial request for anonymity.

Gifts like Larry Miller’s largely go unnoticed. But if Barack Obama gets his way, future gifts of a similar nature will likely go ungiven.

Consider: as part of his plan to stick it to the rich, President Obama’s proposed tax plan calls for the elimination of itemized deductions for any income over $250,000 per year. And I can almost hear the class warriors cheering in the cyberspace transoms…

“Here here! It’s time the fatcats paid their fair share! No more huge bonuses for CEOs while the working guy gets squat!”

Well, not so fast, working guy.

If Obama’s tax plan had been in effect, Larry Miller’s gift to our arts organization would not be tax deductible. Now Larry was a remarkable enough guy that he might have given the gift anyway, but my guess is it would probably have been a much smaller gift. And not all benefactors are as selfless as Larry Miller was. If you eliminate the tax advantage for charitable giving, then, as surely as the sun rises in the east, you’re going to eliminate a lot of charitable giving by the people who have the most to give.

Which means a whole host of charitable organizations will shrivel up and die.

There’s a certain poetic justice in the fact that the first ones to go will likely be the artsy fartsy frufru theatres that rail on the evils of capitalism while going cap in hand to every wealthy businessman in their community, begging for largesse. Arts organizations enforce a rigid ideological orthodoxy; most of them consist primarily of committed leftists who voted for Obama. But now that Obama’s government will now be taking a forty percent bite out of any donations in the future, there will be less money available and no rich patrons incented to part with it.

These guys have unwittingly dug their own artsy-fartsy graves.

And it will extend beyond the arts. You’re going to see the Red Cross and other humanitarian groups see a sharp drop in revenue. Churches are going to watch their coffers shrink by more than a ten percent tithe. It is axiomatic that when you tax something, you get less of it. Obama can pass any law he likes, but he cannot repeal the law of supply and demand.

Charitable contributions work because they’re surgically efficient. The patron donates to the cause he or she finds worthy, and the government allows the transaction to happen tax free because of the positive societal benefit. But under Obama, government will suck up all those dollars and spend them as inefficiently as possible, and the result will be a lot more lefty artsy-farsty types out of work.

So it’s not all bad, I guess.

Debt

I didn’t watch Obama last night. I wasn’t protesting per se; it’s just that I knew what he was going to say, and I knew what everyone’s reaction was going to be. He bolstered his support; he made no new converts, and he changed very little. These kinds of speeches have become something of a Kabuki ritual – everyone knows what part to play, and the whole thing is stylized to the point where there’s no room for spontaneity. The lefties are ebullient; the conservatives are panic-stricken, and the media mock the right with barely-concealed contempt.

So, in commenting on this, rather than rehash the same old lines, I thought I’d try to find a position that you might not expect me to have. And here it is:

The national debt is not as big a deal as you think it is.

Understand what I’m saying, please. I’m not saying it’s not a big deal. I’m saying it’s not as big a deal as you think it is. To illustrate, I take you back in time to the summer of 1990, just a few short months after I had self-righteously arrived home from Scotland and ended my service as a full-time missionary. I was traveling with my family through Mesquite, Nevada, and we were staying at the Peppermill Resort and Casino, an oasis of decadence in the middle of nowhere.

My cousin Norm invited me to accompany him to the craps tables to watch him gamble. I consented, mainly so I could look down my nose at him for his evilry. But I got caught up in the excitement, especially when Norm started winning. After a few rolls of the dice, Norm tossed me a five-dollar casino chip.

“Here,” he said. “Do what you want with it.”

Well, I was too righteous to actually gamble with my own money, but this was Norm’s money. In fact, it was a chip, not really money at all. What would be the harm in using this to have a few laughs? With that chip, I started mirroring Norm’s bets, and I found myself up about twenty dollars! So I stepped away from the craps table and over to a blackjack dealer, where I proceeded to lose a hundred and forty bucks of my own money over the course of an hour or so. (That doesn’t count the huge ATM fees charged by my bank as I feverishly withdrew twenty after twenty so I could keep playing “just until I broke even.”)

I learned something that night, which is that I’m a lousy gambler with an addictive personality, and I need to steer clear of the games of chance at all costs. To this day, I have the urge to gamble every time I pass through Nevada, and I’ve resisted the urge for fifteen years or so, but it hasn’t gone away completely.

But as nice and Ensigny as that lesson is, I learned something else, too – a hundred and forty bucks can be a lot of money.

I say “can be” because in my current life, a loss of a hundred and forty bucks would be annoying but hardly devastating. But back then, it felt like the equivalent of my annual salary. I was working part-time in the warehouse of the company that is now FranklinCovey, and I was making about five bucks an hour. I was living at home, so my expenses were minimal, but that hundred and forty bucks was practically a full paycheck. If I lost a full paycheck now, which, thankfully, is much more than $140, I’d probably feel now what I felt back then. Thankfully, I’m in a much, much stronger financial position now.

Yet consider this. My financial debt in 1990 was $0. My debt almost twenty years later is over $200,000. My debt has skyrocketed! So why am I not panicking?

It’s not rocket science.

I owe no credit card or student loan debt; my wife’s car is paid for, and my car will be paid off within the next few months. That will leave me with only one debt – my mortgage, which we just refinanced to be able to pay it off in 15 years instead of 30. That mortgage is collateralized by a house that, even in this depressed market, just appraised at a value much, much higher than I paid for it.

Debt doesn’t operate in a vacuum. It has to be considered against assets.

So what does this mean for the country? It means that the highest our national debt has ever been was in 1946, at the end of World War II. How is that possible? Even adjusted for inflation, the debt was nowhere near the trillions of dollars we’re looking at today.

But in comparison to our gross domestic product – our national income, if you will – the 1946 debt was close to 150% of GDP. Even as the dollars grew, the debt/GDP ratio fell dramatically until the Carter years, when it started to creep back up again. But even at the end of George W. Bush, we were only up to about 75% of GDP – half of where we were in 1946.

Post-WWII America, then, was an awful lot like post-mission Stallion. $140 was a lot of money.

So, yes, Obama’s massive spending is growing the debt at a ridiculous rate – we’ll easily hit 100% of GDP in his first term, and if the spending doesn’t slow down, we could start getting close to WWII levels. But if the economy starts growing again, we’re going to get through it. In addition, our national debt is rolled over on a daily basis. The idea that our children or grandchildren are going to wake up one morning and find a multi-trillion-dollar bill in their mailbox is alarmist nonsense. As long as the economy keeps pace with the debt, which, historically, has always been the case, then future generations will be just fine.

That’s not to say it’s not a big deal. And, indeed, with the retiring of the Baby Boomers, our entitlement programs are expanding far more rapidly than out shrinking economy, and we could be in serious trouble.

So, yes, it’s bad. But perspective is a wonderful thing. Which, to come full circle, is why I didn’t bother watching the president’s speech last night.

Remembering Larry H. Miller

To anyone reading this blog outside of Utah, the name Larry H. Miller probably means nothing to you. But that’s not the case if you’ve spent any time in the Beehive State, where Larry Miller’s car dealership empire floods the airwaves with commercials using the slogan “You know this guy!”

Well, in point of fact, I did know this guy and was very saddened to learn of his passing on Friday of last week. Larry was an entrepreneur with his finger in all sorts of pies – he owned car dealerships, the Jordan Commons complex in Sandy, a TV station, and, of course, the Utah Jazz and its ancillary sports franchises. What you may not know, however, is that for three hours a week, Larry also taught a class to BYU MBA students entitled “Entrepreneurial Perspectives.” I took the class back in ’99, and because of a scheduling glitch, there were only three of us in the class. Consequently, we got to spend three hours a week, practically one-on-one, with the most successful entrepreneur in the state.

When I signed up for the class, I expected to hear all kinds of wild, inside stories about the Utah Jazz and the world of professional sports. Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered that Larry would use most of the class to regale us with tales of – car parts. Seriously. The guy began working in the parts department of a Toyota dealership, and car parts were his passion. He knew more about car parts than any person who has ever lived, and it was stunning to see just how important they were to him, even after all his success. I can’t imagine anything I’d rather do less than work in the parts department of an auto dealership, but, given his druthers, Larry Miller could likely have lived his life behind one of those counters and be happy for all of his days. Circumstances combined, however, to push him out of his comfortable situation and out on his own. That led him to start his own dealership, and his competitive nature demanded that his dealership be more successful than the one he left, and the rest is history.

Larry was the most competitive person I’ve ever met. He did not like to lose.

He told the stories of being a marble champion and practicing marbles, day in and day out, for three solid years. He told stories of his twenty-seven years as a pitcher for a professional softball team, pitching for so long and so hard that his elbow was distended for the rest of his life. But most of all, he told stories about car parts, and how he parlayed a passion for such into a multi-billion dollar empire. He told us about a time when one of his competitors called him to ask how it was that he was able to outperform him time and time again. Larry answered by saying, “I can do that because I get up every morning and think of new ways to kick your ass.”

As I said, Larry did not like to lose. And he didn’t lose all that often.

His competitive streak came with a steep pricetag. He was too busy winning to spend any time with his children, and as of 1999, his wife, Gail, still resented it. At one point in the class, Larry asked us to bring our wives to listen to Gail teach a session about what it’s like to be married to an entrepreneur. Gail likened it to riding down the side of a mountain in the passenger’s seat of a car – it’s fast, bumpy, and dangerous, and you have absolutely no control over where you’re going. Mrs. Cornell and I kept waiting for the happy ending, for the “but it’s all better now” moment, and it never came. She was in tears for much of the class session, and it made for several awkward moments. I read in the paper later that Larry ended up raising one of his grandchildren as his own, giving him a second chance at childrearing to make up for what he’d lost the first time around. You could tell, from all of Larry’s stories, that this was the one thing he regretted more than anything else. His teaching our class was, I think, part of his penance. In the last decade or so of his life, he tried very hard to connect with all of the people who may not have had the stamina to keep up with him.

But don’t misunderstand; Larry was driven, sure, but he was no ogre. He was quick to laughter; he was generous to a fault, and he may have been one of the brightest people I’ve ever met, even if he was also one of the least bookish. He dropped out of college after a few weeks, citing his “short attention span and lousy study habits,” but he could tell you, in detail, the name and number of any Toyota car part produced over the past fifty years. He pursued the things that interested him with feverish intensity; he ignored the things that didn’t. He was straightforward, honest, and incapable of being anything but candid.

Yes, I knew that guy. And I will miss him.

Other Perspectives

I’m just about done with the Gitmo thing. I think I’ll let POUNDS have the last word on yesterday’s discussion, at least from my point of view. However, I did want to offer this e-mail, which I received over the past two days. It comes from the wife of a serviceman, and I think it provides a valuable perspective.

I post it here with permission of the author, with some edits to keep her identity confidential:

I have been reading your blog and have found it refreshing to find some of my same questions being raised. It's hard at times living here to have non-liberal beliefs. I just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to put stuff out there and stimulate thought and conversation. I tend to stay on the "quiet" side of things and not draw attention - hard to believe I know. But, with a husband in the military I don't have a lot of common ground with the parents picking up their kids in Range Rovers slapped with Obama stickers.

Your Gitmo piece was interesting. There was a time when hubby was going to be deployed there for a year and went through some of the prep stuff for it. He shared just a few examples of what he could with me and it was enough. Most guards have no weapons, just a radio to call for help. The guard who was pulled into a call and repeatedly bashed between the wall and the cell door until he actually used the radio to defend himself and get free would surely have something to say on the subject. The inmates who threaten the families of the guards are routine.

The rights of US Citizens being extended to Gitmo detainees is beyond me. I don't know what the answer is, wish I did, but blindly closing the facility and turning the infidel haters loose doesn't seem to be it.

Anyhow, just wanted to give you a thumbs up and if we could keep this discussion off the blog I'd appreciate it... we're still trying to blend in and lay low here in liberal land. It's sad really we can't be more open about it but we'd rather be careful and protect the kids. Years ago someone had drawn with pen on our front door jamb a small swastika - don't know why but it still bothers hubby. He presumes it was a military thing as he would come and go to work in uniform.

Anyhow, Hubby is heading off to Afghanistan this summer so keep us in your thoughts.

Moving beyond Gitmo, I think one of the pertinent take-aways from this letter is that too many good people feel they need to avoid saying what they really believe because they’re afraid of ad hominem responses. On so many issues of the day, people shut down discussion by questioning the motives of their ideological opponents. (People on both the right and left are guilty of this, although, from my end, it feels like conservatives are called on the carpet for it a whole lot more often than liberals are.)

In any case, one of the reasons I enjoy these exchanges with POUNDS is that he’s always willing to engage the argument without insulting the person on the other side. If everyone in elected office were willing to do the same, I’d feel a whole lot more confident about our country’s future, regardless of which party holds power.

As it stands, I think we’ve got a long way to go. What's more, it'd be nice if we actually started to go in that direction.

Gitmo II

Interesting and provocative issues raised by yesterday’s post demand a sequel. I’m not interested in repeating myself, but there’s much more in this issue to explore, and many of the comments to yesterday’s essay raise excellent questions.

I’ll skip past the anonymous guy who tells me I’ve “lost my marbles” and start with POUNDS, who asks the following questions:

1) To guarantee that a 9/11 attack would never happen to us again, would you abolish Habeus Corpus? (just yes or no... please don't tell me about Lincoln.).

I’ll skip Lincoln, as the situation here is not analogous to the Civil War, in which Habeas Corpus was denied to American citizens. A simple “yes” or a “no,” however, requires context. The question assumes that unlawful enemy combatants have the right to Habeas Corpus, which, thanks to Tony Kennedy’s weaselry, is now the position of the United States Supreme Court, in contradiction to Congress’ determination otherwise in 2006.

I don’t think these unlawful combatants, who are neither American citizens nor uniformed soldiers representing an enemy state, have the right to Habeus Corpus, no. So, yes, I would suspend that right in this case, particularly if it would save American lives. Yet the use of the word “abolish” suggests scope and permanence – i.e. would I eliminate forever Habeus Corpus for American citizens and everyone else if it would guarantee no other 9/11-style attacks in perpetuity? No, I would not.

POUNDS’ second question:

2) To guarantee that a 9/11 attack would never happen to us again, would you abolish the first amendment?

Again, applying similar considerations with regard to scope and permanence, absolutely not.

Derek/Polchinello then worries that Guantanamo has become something of a grey area legally, and he’s probably right, although I don’t think this happened as a result of negligence. The Bush Administration sought legal clarification of the status of prisoners on several occasions, and they met with mixed results. The most recent Supreme Court decision ignores precedent in favor of “human rights,” which, while probably well-intentioned, does a disservice to the nation as a whole. In my estimation, Guantanamo is the worst possible option except for all the others. Those who seek to dismantle it offer no viable alternative in its place.

POUNDS later cites this website for review, and I recommend it to you while having only perused a few of these testimonials myself. What I found in my brief perusal were complaints about disruption techniques – waking prisoners up at all hours of the day or night - and stories of cells that were either too hot or too cold. Other prisoners complained of being shackled in ways that didn’t allow them to stand up straight or sleep comfortably. Some prisoners complained of being humiliated by being forced to submit to the authority of a woman, having their beards shaved, or, as one prisoner maintained, being “wrapped in the flag of Israel.” Some tell wild tales of prostitutes being brought in on a regular basis to taunt them. Surprisingly, I found no mention of waterboarding, which Bush/Cheney critics often suggest is rampant at Guantanamo, nor did I find any suggestion of things that often come to mind when people use the word “torture,” i.e. mutilation of body parts and the like.

These testimonials concern me less than they do POUNDS.

To begin with, most, but not all, of these stories come directly from the prisoners themselves, not from firsthand observations. The only leverage these prisoners have left to them is the ability to provoke international outrage at their treatment at the hands of the Americans, and they’ve often been successful without being truthful. Anyone else remember the Newsweek article about the Koran at Gitmo that was supposedly flushed down the toilet? The incident provoked riots across the globe, despite the fact that it didn’t happen. If Gitmo were engaged in systemic torture and mistreatment of its prisoners, documented instances of such would provoke similar international condemnation. As it stands, we’re usually forced to take the prisoner’s word for it. I find it telling that even these prisoners most outrageous stories don’t include hands being cut off or eyes being sliced out, which is how many of the detainee’s home countries would deal with these guys. It’s not because they don’t want people to believe that; it’s that they know nobody will.

POUNDS questions the veracity of the Cocktail story because it’s essentially a fourth-hand account. Point taken. Can we, then, apply at least as high a level of skepticism to the word of a suspected terrorist? POUNDS refuses to consider the guilt or innocence of these people, yet I confess that I consider their word to be exponentially less trustworthy than the word of an American soldier.

POUNDS sums up his position thusly:

NOW.... IF I HAD TO MAKE A DECISION IMMEDIATELY ON WHAT TO DO WITH THE PRISONERS:

Nothing is more un-American (in my opinion) than the thought of the United States government locking people away without even affording them trials.So, if forced to make a decision, without the the benefit of all the information that has been withheld by the government, I would say:

PUT THEM ON TRIAL RIGHT NOW.... OR LET THEM GO!!!!(As for the place of location pending their immediate trial: I would hold them in the nearest available local jail.... just as other defendants are held.)

That would be an unmitigated disaster. These people were not arrested and charged with a crime; they were captured on the field of battle. None of them were read their Miranda rights. Given the standards of domestic criminal courts, that’s grounds for release right there. And even Obama has admitted that these are some pretty bad dudes, and their release would endanger American lives.

Closing Guantanamo would be a huge step toward returning terrorism to the realm of domestic law enforcement, which is where it was throughout the Clinton Administration. The folly of that approach became apparent on 9/11. No, I don’t want to dismantle the Bill of Rights. Instead, I want the nation to recognize that arresting crooks is very different from fighting a war. By closing Guantanamo, we will ignore that reality and once again bury our heads in the sand.

Guantanamo

I spent the evening with someone who recently came back from a visit to Guantanamo Bay.

The first thing he said was that the biggest health problem facing the detainees at Guantanamo is obesity. They are better fed, better cared for, and better treated than most have them have been at any time in their lives. Contrary to being the center of the torture universe, Guantanamo has very strict regulations that guide their actions. “It’s the carrot and the stick thing, and I have nothing but carrots,” said one of the guards. “I have no sticks.”

Many of the prisoners have been known to prepare something known as “the Cocktail.” The Cocktail is made up of whatever loathsome materials are accessible to these guys. Given their limited resources, that means whatever their own bodies can produce. The Cocktail consists of various parts blood, urine, feces, and semen. One of the female guards, on her first night on duty, was hit in the face with a Cocktail, which was thrown through the wire mesh laid over the bars of the cells. This guard went out, showered up, and went right back on duty to demonstrate her unwillingness to be intimidated.

New detainees are kept in isolation with nothing but a bare cell and a Koran. As they demonstrate their capacity to avoid trouble, they’re brought into contact with other prisoners and given extended privileges – more time outdoors, for instance. During interrogations, prisoners are seated in large, overstuffed chairs, with their ankles chained to the table so that they can’t lunge forward and injure the guards. The detainees begin by talking about how they were innocent goat herders who were gathered up by mistake. So the interrogators then begin talking about seemingly innocuous things, like their family and their hometowns. These conversations extend over periods of weeks and months, allowing the military to piece together details and use them in conversations with other inmates to leverage more information. It’s not that difficult to recognize the al-Qaeda hierarchy, as it manifests itself within Guantanamo in ways identical to how these people operated outside of Guantanamo. They operate according to the command structure within the Guantanamo walls.

Case in point: On one occasion, the guards were concerned that one of the detainees was blocking the surveillance camera in their cell. Someone was sent to investigate, and he ended up slipping on the floor in the cell on a sticky, smelly sea of Cocktail ingredients, after which he was battered within an inch of his life. The prisoners had unscrewed several long, fluorescent light bulbs over the course of several months, and they were using them as clubs to assault their captors. This operation took weeks, if not months, to plan in advance. The goal was not escape or even humiliation of the guards. It was to goad the Americans into finally killing one of the inmates, which would provoke an international incident. So far, the detainees have not been able to convince an American to execute one of them. It’s not for lack of trying.

The question remains unanswered: what do we do with these people? No prison in the United States wants them. Even Fort Leavenworth, the military detention center, has said it is not equipped to handle prisoners like this.

We can’t send them back to their own countries, either. Even the Amnesty International types recognize that Middle Eastern countries are far less forgiving than we are. If handed back to their home governments, these people will be genuinely tortured and killed, usually as part of the same gruesome process. If they’re released into the wild, so to speak, they return to their natural habitat. The number two al-Qaeda operative in Yemen was once a resident at Guantanamo Bay.

President Obama has decided to close Guantanamo. It will make all the Bush-bashers happy, but it creates more problems than it solves. It also puts American lives at risk.

This may prove to be the single most ill-advised decision he will make in his presidency.

Freedom v Fairness II: This time, it's personal!

A sequel to yesterday's post, framed around comments by Abbot of Arbroath, who begins thusly:

 

I can grasp the freedom = equality issue is a challenge. There rest is debatable.



Then let’s debate it! Although I’m not sure what the “rest” is.

"Let’s begin with the basic assumption at the root of our nation’s founding"

This is inaccurate. Freedom was for white males and don’t you dare forget that when you propagate a mythical history.

Agreed that freedom for white males was indeed the practice, but it was never the ideal. Jefferson recognized the disconnect between a slave-owning state and the concept that all men are created equal and tried to put language in the Declaration decrying slavery. Over 600,000 Americans died in a civil war for this idea. I think it’s mythical history to suggest that the founders cynically ignored the universal implications of the Jeffersonian language.

"All over the world, people have made the exchange, and the standard of living for everyone has gone down as a result."

This is contestable. Check out the GDP per capita listings even from the CIA. Unsurprisingly, the top 10 - the US is ranked 10th. Small countries with banking backgrounds hiding money are the competition. The others are small European countries with redistributive systems. 

In fact looking at the listing - there is little difference, about 3000 USD, between most European countries which embrace mixed economy and higher tax burden (a bit like the current mixed economy which is presented as a bail-out in the US) but provide health care, schooling, university, pensions and employment protection.

I’m not convinced that GDP is the best way to measure freedom. These stats show Qatar with a per capita GDP almost twice that of the US, yet that’s because the oil-soaked Emir of Qatar has a personal GDP of approximately a gazillion dollars, which tends to skew the numbers a little bit. Qatar is home to the equivalent of modern-day slavery, even though its GDP can’t be beat.

In addition, 3000 USD is a 6.7% difference, which is not insignificant. Imagine a country with a 6.7% growth rate, and you’ll see what I mean.

It all depends on what you see the function of the state to be - to make money or to ensure equitable society with high levels of social cohesion and low levels of violence. 


I hope those aren't the only two options available, as I don’t like either of them. The state shouldn’t exist “to make money;” taxation should only be a necessary evil to maintain the state’s basic and enumerated functions. That’s one of the reasons, incidentally, why Obama lost my vote early on. When it was pointed out to him that the state would make MORE money with a lower capital gains tax rate, he said he would still raise the tax because it was “a question of fairness.” So even if it means less money, he’s going to screw over the rich.

I’m all about “high levels of social cohesion” and “low levels of violence.” I get hives when you start talking about “equitable society.” Do you mean equal opportunity or equal outcomes? Because they are very, very different things.

You cannot afford to neglect the link between the creation of government as an entity to ensure autonomy and low levels of violence in societies that do redistribute. Murder rates for European countries average 1k per annum for around 60m compared to the US with 17k murders for 300m.

Correlation isn’t causation. I don’t see how you make the case that the reason people in the US shoot each other more often because the welfare state isn’t as bulky. I think this is a separate issue entirely.

There is an obvious concern. Also the UN reporting rates is of interest as the US only reports assaults crime which involve a firearm or end in serious bodily injury; other countries classify emotional or abusive assaults ( shouting in the street) as an assault. This is an “apple and pears” comparison but the intent behind the logic of report compilation is telling. 


Maybe it is, but I don’t know what it tells.

Is economic freedom the be all and end all of all of government?



Is that supposed to be a rhetorical question?

I suppose there’s more to it, but I don’t think you can separate economic freedom from, say, freedom. When the Declaration was first written, the three unalienable rights Jefferson cited were life, liberty, and property. The idea that economic freedom is somehow tangential to the overall freedom equation ignores the founding principles of the nation.

As for the be all and end all of government, it would be nice if government had an “end all.” It seems to define its role according to its whims, and the result is an expansion of government’s role and a diminishment of personal freedom. As Ronald Reagan once said, “no government has ever voluntarily reduced itself in size.”

Government exists not to grant freedom but rather to protect it. And, as Jefferson wrote, “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it." That's nice to know in theory, but I don't see an economically intrusive government going away any time soon. 

Freedom vs. Fairness

Stress has been high these last few days – I’m preparing a PR event for work, and I was stupid enough to give out my own cell number as the RSVP line. Which means I’ve been inundated with phone calls, and I haven’t been able to breathe. The event is on Friday, which means the calls end on Friday, too, hopefully.

I anxiously await the arrival of freedom.

Which leads me to our topic today, boys and girls, which is the aforementioned freedom thingie. Whereas tolerance is overrated, freedom is vastly underrated. And a large chunk of the electorate neither knows nor cares what it is.

Let’s begin with the basic assumption at the root of our nation’s founding. Freedom is an inherent right, one granted by God, not government. When government gets in the way, it’s time to get a new government. I’m not as poetic as Thomas Jefferson, but I think the paraphrase is accurate.

Every minute of every day, you have the freedom to make choices. For instance, right now I’m choosing to write a blog entry instead of ANSWERING THAT DAMN PHONE… which is, of course, ringing even as we speak. However, by choosing to do this, I have also chosen the consequences – I’m going to have to clear out my voicemail again – I only have eighteen messages before it fills up – and this will likely add to the stress of my day. Of course, I could blow off the phone calls entirely, which would likely mean I lose my job. But I chose those consequences when I took the job. I also like the consequence of getting paid, and this seemed to be the best course of action I was free to take to get the big bucks.

So as much as I moan and whine about how much things suck at the moment – STOP RINGING, PHONE! – I chose this. I was free to do so, and I did it. I would like to be starring on American Idol instead, or playing James Bond in the next 007 movie, or collecting endorsement deals for my eight Olympic gold medals, but those choices aren’t available to me. I’m too old and too lousy to be on American Idol; too ugly and unknown to be James Bond; too flabby and bong free to be Michael Phelps. Freedom and opportunity are not necessarily the same thing.

Or, to put it another way, freedom doesn’t make life fair.

As a nation, we keep thinking fairness and freedom are the same thing. They’re not. They’re antithetical. In order to make your life just as nifty as someone else’s, government yanks away some of their freedom to provide you with fairness. So Obama’s stimulus plan gives “tax rebates” to people who don’t pay taxes. He’s putting us a trillion more dollars in debt to “stimulate the economy” at the expense of your freedom. Every resource the government confiscates to fuel its activity is a resource you’re no longer free to manage.

Nobody seems to think of it in these terms anymore.

Instead, they point out all the great things the government is doing with your money. And how unfair it is that rich people make so much and poor people get so little, and what are you, heartless? Many even invoke religious principles to justify the encroachment of government on your liberty. After all, Christ gave to the poor, didn’t he? Aren’t we supposed to do what Christ does?

I read a letter to the editor to this effect in the Deseret News yesterday. “As an LDS member who often votes Democratic,” the guy says, “I do so because I believe those with much have a mandate to help those with little.” As a guy who never votes Democratic, I can’t agree with this more. Yet the Democrats - and way too many Republicans - refuse to allow me the freedom to help others. They take my resources and distribute them as they see fit, and they do so at the point of a gun. I am not free to resist, unless I want to go to jail for tax evasion. I don’t get to choose how the money is spent, and I have less money of my own to direct to the people and programs I believe in. How is that fulfilling Christ’s mission? When did Christ confiscate someone else’s property against their will?

People prefer fairness because fairness is tidy and neat. Freedom is messy. Freedom means people can be jerks and spend their money on season tickets to minor league hockey games instead of giving it to the food bank. Freedom means people who look like Brad Pitt will get Oscar nominations and people who look like Stallion Cornell can only write catty, jealous blog comments about it. Freedom means disappointment and frustration when things don’t go as you planned, which is more often than not. It’s no wonder, then, that people want to trade in freedom for fairness.

Folks, I’m telling you, it’s not a good deal.

All over the world, people have made the exchange, and the standard of living for everyone has gone down as a result. I’d rather make fifty grand a year and have my neighbor make a hundred than have both of us make twenty-five. I don’t think someone else’s success limits my freedom. I do think that a government that piles on the debt is putting me in bondage with the best of intentions. That’s something it has no right to do.

In the course of writing this, I’ve gotten twelve new voicemail messages. Shoot me now.

Tolerance is Overrated

I went to my second Salt Lake Interfaith Roundtable last night.

I wrote about much of this the first time around, and my basic opinion hasn’t changed. Bringing a lot of people together of different faiths to find ways to be inoffensive strikes me as a waste of time. It comes from a posture of fear – rather than state what you believe and then leave the matter with God, these kind of events offer up the lowest common denominator, the pieces of faith that are so innocuous that not only do they fail to offend, they fail to inspire. But since no blood is shed, everyone pats themselves on the back for being so “tolerant.”

Well, what’s so great about tolerance?

A good deal of my life is lived tolerantly, and that doesn’t make me a great person, or even a good one. I tolerate speed limits that I think are lousy; I tolerate alarm clocks that go off earlier than they ought to. I tolerate freezing cold mornings and icy windows. I tolerate junk mail and bad radio ads and Internet popups. I tolerate clients and customers and coworkers who are ignoramuses and weasels. I tolerate long hours and screaming children and the necessity of doing the dishes every damn day of the week.

There are things, every day, that I like to do, and there are things, every day, that I refuse to do. Everything else, I tolerate.

And that’s the same with everyone, isn’t it? How many of us, when taking out the garbage for the billionth time, finally throw the bin into the middle of the road and scream “Enough! I refuse to tolerate this!” and then run screaming into the night? Do you hang up on a friend who’s probably been talking a little too long, or do you listen tolerantly, albeit hoping that something comes along to rescue you?

Tolerance is a fact of life, and it’s one of the least exciting ones, at that.

It’s sad, then, that there are so many people who have such a low tolerance threshold. Tolerance itself is a pretty measly standard in and of itself. If too many human beings are so reprehensible that you can’t even tolerate them, then maybe there’s something wrong with you, not them. And that something is not something that can be cured by a namby pamby interfaith gathering, which is, itself, pretty intolerable. If you’re willing to injure or kill someone else because of how or what they worship, I’m doubting that watching a choir of Muslim children sing the Five Pillars of Islam to the tune of Yankee Doodle is going to dissuade you. (That was very weird, but I tolerated it just the same.)

Still, it was nice to see a group of Jewish children and a group of Muslim children singing together. I liked that. And I really liked the bagpiper who played "Amazing Grace." That transported me back to Edinburgh Castle in 1988 at the Edinburgh Tattoo, with a lone bagpiper standing atop the ramparts of the castle, illuminated by a single spotlight.

Everything else I tolerated. Until I finally had to get up and go to the bathroom.

Obama's Flop Sweat

Nothing is more frightening than the sinking feeling that you know you’re in over your head.

I vividly recall when I took over the Pink Garter Theatre in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and had to pretend that I had the first clue about what I was doing. I didn’t. And it didn’t take very long for people to find out that I didn’t. The result was that that first theatre season was a steady stream of misfires and mistakes, accompanied by sleepless nights and moments of wild panic. Flop sweat sucks.

Anyone else see where I’m going with this?

Barack Obama couldn’t possibly have lived up to the expectations placed upon him, which makes the fact that he’s in over his head all that much worse. His lashing out over resistance to his wretched stimulus bill is childish and silly. According to him, we will never recover economically unless this bill passes. Never! That’s an absurd statement on its face, and it also ignores the fact that there is next to nothing in this bill that is stimulative.

Recessions end. Even depressions end. The question isn’t if, it’s when. It’s a lot harder to shorten them than it is to prolong them, and a trillion dollars worth of pork isn’t going to shorten anything. Amity Shlaes’ masterwork The Forgotten Man demonstrates just how much the expansion of government did to kill business incentives and deepen the Great Depression. For four elections, FDR was able to blame Herbert Hoover for the nation’s woes, even during the “Depression within the Depression” of the late 1930s. How long will Obama be able to blame George W. Bush for everything? I don’t know. It depends how bad things get, as well as how many times Obama falls short of fixing things.

The one component of this that is startling to me is just how broadly Obama misread his mandate. He rejected calls from House Republicans to cut taxes, on the grounds that the American people rejected that idea at the polls this November. Really? Obama promised to cut taxes for 95% of all Americans. Now he’s only cutting taxes for people who don’t pay taxes. That’s a boon to his Treasury secretary, I guess, but it demonstrates the fact that he never believed his own bullcrap.

Obama, for all his post partisan blather, is proving to be a remarkably leftist president. This is not a remarkably leftist nation. As the incongruity between Obama’s rhetoric and his results continues to grow, as I believe it will, a lot of people are going to realize that no matter how much the Emperor works out, he still looks silly without any clothes on.

The flop sweat is beading up on his forehead even as we speak.

Pelosi is dumb; Abbot is not

Before I get to the main point of today’s installment, I just have to embed this little tidbit at the outset. Currently, it’s the screaming headline on the Drudge Report, so it’s not like this is the first place you’re going to see it, but this needs to be shared as far and wide as possible.



A 500 million monthly job loss in a country of 300 million people is pretty staggering, since it means that every American loses his or her job at least once a month, and 200 million of them are losing it twice. But since I haven’t lost my job this month, that means at least one person may have lost their job thrice. Pelosi still has her job, too, as do a lot of people I know, which leads me to believe that maybe 200 million jobs are safe, and maybe a hundred million or so are fired, on average, five or so times a month. Having been fired myself – albeit not this month – that’s gotta really, really suck.

Anyway, to my point: I want to welcome Abbot of Arbroath and thank him for his thoughtful and insightful comments to this blog. It’s always more fun to discuss things when I can find intelligent people who disagree, and I hope Abbot feels welcome to continue to do just that. It also makes it cooler when I have people from outside the US taking an interest in what I’m saying. This is no provincial digital backwater, no, sir. We’re an international blog.

You can read Abbot’s comment in full without interruption in yesterday’s comments. I’ll be reposting them in this post, too, but I’m going to break it up with my own replies to create the illusion of a real-time exchange, but it is only an illusion. If you want to read Abbot unfiltered, you’d best go back to the original source.

Abbot begins:

apologise for my generalisations which I do, however, feel entitled to given the register of the blog ;-)

Nothing to apologize for. There’s always danger in generalizations, but it’s very hard to discuss big ideas without them.

Your understanding of homosexuality – seems to be based on men having sex! The sexualisation of “same sex attracted” people is reductionist and belittling. Their entire lives have been reduced to a physical act. There is no appreciation of homo-social, homo-emotional, homo-intellectual, homo-erotic, homo-ethical – it’s all been reduced to sex. This is the responsibility of undereducated people on both the left and right as American society seems to need to polarise, emotionalise, and simplify just about everything – and sex is a great lowest common denominator and has the moralistic superiority element.

Believe it or not, I agree with a lot of this, except I would put it in a contrasting context. That is to say, defining people as “gay” or “straight” ignores the fact that sexuality is a lot more fluid than these labels would indicate. One reason that some “gay” men get married is they find themselves attracted, at one point in their life, to another woman, and then they become disappointed when, after marriage, the attraction to other men doesn’t disappear. Too many “straight” men fall prey to this, too – they think if they marry their one true love, other women will no longer be attractive, and that doesn’t happen, either.

I have a hard time understanding the significance of “homo-social” or “homo-emotional” relationships, or how they are exclusive to gay men. In other words, I have had, and continue to have, very close emotional relationships with other men that are in no way sexual. Are you saying a close relationship between people of the same gender is the exclusive province of homosexuals? Because if that’s the case, your labels are far more confining than mine are.

Men don’t leave their wives for just for sex – heck many men stay married and have it on the side including Republicans with either sex! Gay married men make a choice to be themselves. Sometimes that means staying with the family which might include antidepressants, counselling, non-sexual marriage and sometimes they make a choice to split. Neither choice is made in haste or in a flippant manner and neither choice deserves any ridicule. In fact, its none of our business unless you are a personal friend.

I certainly wasn’t trying to imply that any of these decisions are made flippantly, or that they deserve ridicule. Nor did I think that Republicans have a monopoly on sexual restraint or heterosexuality.

On the 17th June 2008, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences US Journal, you can find the results of brain scanning of homosexual and heterosexual men and women. Have a read! The brain of gay men and straight women are far more aligned (and balanced) than that of straight men and lesbians. This is significant to use the word scientifically. Interestingly, lesbian brains are unequal in hemisphere size and response patterns which are closer to the heterosexual male.

I can’t really comment on this, as I’m not sure what it means, or what a “balanced” brain is. If you’re trying to argue that homosexuality has biological origins, I have no counter-argument. I don’t think we’re anywhere near understanding what those origins are, but I do think the idea that people actively choose, out of the blue, which gender they are attracted to is kind of silly.

“Tabloid” thought reduces homosexuals to a mere sex acts. In the meantime, when you listen to music, try and fix your economic problems, read your bible, use your computer to read this blog, thank God for your nuclear defences – just remember Handel, Di Vinci, King James, Turing, Keynes

Also deomcracy as we understand it based upon our classsics - generated by homos! Also guardians of christianity during 2 millenia to allow a "restoration" - that would be those darn homos again! I am glad they were not all suffering from compulsive behaviour disorder but actually used their different minds to be someone.

Again, we’re in agreement here. I don’t think, for a moment, that homosexuality negates any of the great and good things that people do. My point, for the past three days, has not been that gay people are scum or that they should only be defined by their sex acts. It’s that the nuclear family matters, and that it shouldn’t be redefined to accommodate the changes sexual mores of the day.

To sum up: Nancy Pelosi is an imbecile. Thank you.

Sex: The Sequel

Great comments on yesterday’s post, some of which merit further discussion. I’ll begin with an e-mail I received that should start the ball rolling here:

You seem to make the assumption (as do most people....... especially "expert analysts" in the mainstream media), that the nuclear family has been disintegrating in recent years...... and largely due to a "liberal / progressive / sexually permissive / overly tolerant" approach that has consumed the nation over the last several decades. Alas: if only we could cling to those good old values conservatives and religious folk hold so dear!!

REALITY CHECK:
Not only is the national divorce rate on a steady and continuing decline in the last thirty years, but the highest divorce rates are in the SOUTH and the lowest divorce rates are in the NORTHEAST. (Massachusetts has consistently had the lowest divorce rate of any state.)

Although many socioeconomic factors influence the divorce rate in any given state (or region), it is invariably true that the states and regions that wear their religion and patriotism on their sleeve have the highest rate of families breaking up.

I must add that I was completely surprised that the states usually identified strongly with the LDS Church (Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, Wyoming) don't fare much better than the Southern states (where the Evangelicals are in large majorities) when the percentages are compared to the national average. Jews do even worse. Mainline Protestant faiths do best among organized religions. But ......... brace yourself....... agnostics and atheists have the lowest divorce rates BY FAR....

I'd be curious to read (either by email or on your blog) why you think the reality is so different from the popular perception.

This email was accompanied by an impressive group of stats which confirm the writer’s assertions. Candidly, I don’t have an answer as to why religious marriages break up more often than nonreligious ones. To hazard a guess, I would assume that religious people get married as a result of cultural pressures more often than non-religious ones do, which means the non-religious have their eyes wide open going in. And while atheists who marry may have a high success rate, it would also be interesting to see what percentage of atheists bother getting married at all.

But that’s another discussion altogether. My point wasn’t so much that too many marriages are ending in divorce; my point was that fewer people consider marriage a necessary institution in the first place.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, back in 1963, lamented the fact that the out-of-wedlock birthrate among blacks was at a staggering 23.6%, compared to only 3.07% for whites. Yet today, 25% of white infants are born out of wedlock, compared to a staggering 70% of all black infants. The correlation between illegitimacy and poverty is well-documented and irrefutable. We now have a generation of African-Americans with no connection to a father or a traditional family, because nobody seems to recognize that getting married is a good first step before having sex and making babies.

Abbot of Arbroath, our friend from across the pond, chimed in with the following:

Stallion, you have some questionable underlying assumptions.

First, one basic is that secular society has given itself to “reckless abandon”. “Chastity is a destructive notion” is not something most educated and liberal people would consider. You have put words in other people lips and as such I call you on it! Ok you need to be able to generalise to write a blog but come on!

How do I know he’s from across the pond? One: he spells “generalize” in a flagrantly British manner. And, two, he says so later on in his comment. (Although let the record show I was clued in with the British spelling.)

But to address his point (which is, ironically, itself a generalization,) I can only offer my own anecdotal experience, which came from plenty of liberal and educated people telling me that if I wasn’t having sex in my twenties, something was seriously wrong with me. (But at least I had porn and everything, right? What? No porn, either? What is WRONG with you, Stallion?) None of them offered this sort of opinion in an academic setting, nor do I have stats to back it up, but I don’t think I’m wrong in recognizing it as reflective of the prevailing cultural winds.

I think he missed my point about the state coming between a “child and its sexually repressive parent,” as, in his comment, he proceeds to talk about sexual abuse. Make no mistake: I agree wholeheartedly that the state ought to step in – and aggressively so - when a child is sexually abused. That’s because today, the definition of sexual abuse does not include a parent who works to prevent their child from having sex. It’s tomorrow’s definition that I’m worried about.

He hits closest to home, however, when he talks about gay men who get married.

Many gay men have been married. They bear a burden alone which you cannot understand and neither can their community leaders or even their wife. I know a few who have killed themselves rather than give into “temptation”. I bet their children and their wife would have rather they addressed the issue honestly – however painful it may be than to see them driven to such deep despair that they take their life. You oversimplify this issue to your discredit.

Perhaps. I certainly plead guilty to not understanding the burden borne by those who are sexually attracted to the same gender. This has been a frequent topic of discussion on this blog, and I doubt I’ll break any new ground with this little essay. Abbot’s anecdotes are heartbreaking, although I can share some of my own, too. I know several married couples, not all of them Mormons, where the husbands have made no secret of their homosexual feelings, and both husband and wife have still been able to work together to build a stable, happy home for each other and their children. Earlier, Abbot chides me for equating sexual fulfillment with uncontrolled behavior, and now I’m in trouble for expecting a man attracted to another man to control that behavior to sustain a marriage. I can’t win for losing.

Then we get back into the gay marriage issue:

If marriage is such a wonderful control mechanism that delivers so much to you personally and to society, then you are a selfish b*stard to want to keep it to yourself.

That’s just it. I don’t want to keep it to myself. I don’t want to prevent ANYONE from getting married. (Unless it’s one of my daughters and they’re marrying a jerk, but that’s a separate discussion, too.)

I’ve talked about this extensively, too, but I’ll summarize. Abbot, you’re not asking for the right to marry. You already have that right. You’re asking me to recognize, as marriage, a partnership between two people which is not a marriage, thereby requiring me to overlook the reality that children need a mom and a dad.

I’m reminded of a classic moment from Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, a film many of my LDS friends will find offensive, but which makes the point better than I could.

I provide video below, along with the accompanying script excerpt, taken from this source:



FRANCIS: Yeah. I think Judith's point of view is very valid, Reg, provided
the Movement never forgets that it is the inalienable right of every man--
STAN: Or woman.
FRANCIS: Or woman... to rid himself--
STAN: Or herself.
FRANCIS: Or herself.
REG: Agreed.
FRANCIS: Thank you, brother.
STAN: Or sister.
FRANCIS: Or sister. Where was I?
REG: I think you'd finished.
FRANCIS: Oh. Right.
REG: Furthermore, it is the birthright of every man--
STAN: Or woman.
REG: Why don't you shut up about women, Stan. You're putting us off.
STAN: Women have a perfect right to play a part in our movement, Reg.
FRANCIS: Why are you always on about women, Stan?
STAN: I want to be one.
REG: What?
STAN: I want to be a woman. From now on, I want you all to call me
'Loretta'.
REG: What?!
LORETTA: It's my right as a man.
JUDITH: Well, why do you want to be Loretta, Stan?
LORETTA: I want to have babies.
REG: You want to have babies?!
LORETTA: It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.
REG: But... you can't have babies.
LORETTA: Don't you oppress me.
REG: I'm not oppressing you, Stan. You haven't got a womb! Where's the
fetus going to gestate?! You going to keep it in a box?!
LORETTA: [crying]
JUDITH: Here! I-- I've got an idea. Suppose you agree that he can't
actually have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody's fault, not
even the Romans', but that he can have the right to have babies.
FRANCIS: Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right
to have babies, brother. Sister. Sorry.
REG: What's the point?
FRANCIS: What?
REG: What's the point of fighting for his right to have babies when he can't
have babies?!
FRANCIS: It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.
REG: Symbolic of his struggle against reality.

I don’t know that Monty Python would appreciate this clip being put into service of a raging conservative argument, but just as Loretta can’t have babies, a gay couple can’t be the same thing as a mommy and a daddy. That’s a harsh reality for many, and it’s no fun to bring it up, because everyone wants to be inclusive and kind, and nobody likes to be reminded of realities that get in the way of their appetites, which leads me back to my original point, which is that I like McDonalds breakfasts.

Thank you.

Sex

This should be fun.

It’s remarkable to me how, in my own lifetime, sexual mores have changed so drastically. Go back about fifteen years or so before I was born, and you’ll find a society that was so prudish that I Love Lucy and The Dick Van Dyke Show asked us to believe that married couples slept in separate beds. The word “pregnant” was verboten on television, too – “expecting” was acceptable, but it was pushing the line. Compare that to what’s acceptable today, and you’ll realize just how drastically things have changed. The change isn’t all bad; I’m not really interested in pretending that sex doesn’t happen, but I think a world that errs on the side of caution rather than reckless abandon is probably better than the world we have now.

C.S. Lewis once described the sexual appetite as “morbidly inflamed,” and to illustrate this, he described a burlesque house where women weren’t pulling down their stockings. Instead, people would come out with plates of food and offer you teasing glimpses of chocolate chip cookies or a side of ham. It’s a ludicrous image, but it demonstrates how we’ve elevated the sexual instinct to a place in our personal and public lives that is equally ludicrous.

Growing up as a practicing Latter-day Saint, nothing set me apart further from the mainstream than my supposed “sexual repression.” Particularly as I got older, more and more people were aghast that I was antiquated enough to think that sex should wait until marriage. And, indeed, many of them assumed that I was simply hypocritical and not telling the full story. A good number of them doubted that abstinence was even possible. Unlike any other appetite, we’re now led to assume that the sexual appetite is unique, in that it is the only bodily appetite over which we fundamentally have no control.

This is the primary reason why the gap between the LDS Church and the world at large continues to grow, and as the chasm widens, it’s going to get harder and harder to straddle it. Chastity was once a quaint notion in the world’s eyes; nowadays it’s considered a destructive one. It may well reach the point where the state will intervene to protect children without ample freedom to express themselves sexually, stepping between a child and his sexually repressive parents or church. If that sounds ludicrous to you, then try to imagine what the concept of gay marriage sounded like when Lucy and Ricky were on the air.

We’re going down a very, very dangerous road.

There are those who will read this and scoff at my supposed Puritanism and wonder why on earth I should care. Someone else’s sexual behavior, we’re told, is only of interest to busybodies and zealots, and we ought not regulate in any way what happens in the bedroom. I agree with that to a point, in that I don’t think governmental regulation on this score is necessary or helpful. But in the days of separate beds on television, it wasn’t the government dictating sexual restraint. It was the prevailing societal standards of the day, the same forces that now are making great strides at marginalizing as a “hater” anyone opposed to labeling a gay couple as married. Defining the role of sex in society is not the role of government; it’s the role of the people who make up the government. And it’s a role at which we’re miserably failing. Because sexual behavior matters, and it impacts far more than just the people in the bedroom.

Those who consider sex to be uncontrollable end up breaking up marriages, destroying families, and creating generations of children with no sense of continuity or community. We’re going down a road where the nuclear family becomes an archaic construction, where “mommy and daddy” are a cute idea in theory, where the world is about nothing but a series of multiple partners and nothing lasts, nothing counts, nothing matters. There’s a lot more sex in that world, so that’s something to look forward to. (Believe it or not, I like sex, actually. Big fan.) But think of everything that’s lost along the way. Is that really a world you’re looking forward to seeing?

Control of sexual appetites isn’t about prudishness or shame any more than a healthy diet is about hatred of food. If I ate everything I wanted to eat regardless of the consequences, I’d have three meals of McDonald’s breakfasts. I’d never exercise; I’d eat donuts twelve times a day, and I’d drink a lot of Strawberry Quik. I don’t think the government should step in and tell me not to do that, but I doubt anyone around me would applaud my lack of restraint. And, sadly, those McDonalds b*stards stop serving breakfast after 10:30.

Similarly, if I pursued my sexual appetites to their natural conclusions, my wife would be gone, my children would hate me, and I’d have no deep, fundamental connection to anything. But many would see that as just the price I paid for being “who I really am.”

No, I’m not sure that’s entirely true. There’s still enough shame left in the world that people who abandon their families and children are considered turds. But not necessarily so if they abandon their families because they’re gay. After all, how can you expect a man who’s attracted to other men to stay married to a woman? It’s who they are! Why should they deny that? Why do you hate them?

Suddenly, a bizarre double standard becomes evident. A married man attracted to other women is expected to keep his pants zipped. A married man attracted to other men, however, can’t help themselves, and they shouldn’t be expected to “live a lie.” I wonder if they’d be encouraged to eat a Sausage McMuffin with egg three times a day, too.

I remember a conversation I heard between radio talk show host Dennis Prager and a gay man who had just left his wife and children because he didn’t want to live a lie, and he was furious about what “society had done” to him. Prager and he then had the following exchange.

“Do you hate your wife, then, for marrying you?” Prager asked.

“No, of course not. I loved my wife. I still love her.”

“You’re just not sexually attracted to her.”

“Right.”

“How about your children, then? Do you hate them?”

The man was indignant. “Of course not! I love my children. I’d die for them.”

“But you wouldn’t have any of them if you hadn’t married your wife.”

“I don’t get it,” the man said. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying,” Prager replied, “that society didn’t do all that bad by you, did they?”

And then there was silence on the radio for a very long time.

People who would define us by our appetites, as if our appetites are as immutable as the color of our hair or skin, make a fundamental mistake, and it redounds negatively to society at large. Whether you’re attracted to men, women, horses, or anything else is beside the fundamental point, which is that the nuclear family is the source of life’s primary joys, and to enjoy the kind of happiness that only comes from a deep connection to your ancestors and your descendants, you have to exercise sexual discipline.

A society that refuses to recognize that is one that is in the kind of very deep trouble in which we currently find ourselves.