Urgent case study: rights definitions

I'm signed on and writing this before doing anything else because I just heard something on a talk show that helped me to realize a huge confusion that I can clear up right here and now. Hi young people, because this is especially for you, you'll see why in a moment. The previous two generations have become so mentally illiterate and sloppy that they no longer understand the definitions of the words they use in everyday speech but, most alarmingly, in politics and the search for social justice. It is no wonder that people are arguing over the correct way to solve huge problems because not only are they not discussing the same thing, defined the same way, they don't even understand what they are arguing for, on behalf of.

The first word I want to clarify, since that is what the talk show mentioned, is "rights." The talk show hosts played a sound byte from a politician where the politician claimed that they (politicians) "create" or "give" rights to people. No, that is incorrect, and the talk show hosts were quick to point this out. Yet I know that many of you would think that rights are created. They are not created; rights are in existence, continual existence. It is the depriving of rights that is the problem in society, so that is the first part of what I want to explain.

Every human being, just by virtue of existing, has certain absolute rights. They are not "rights" conferred by other human beings. To calm those social justice people (and believe me, I am on your side, I am coaching you though in a grave error) let me start with an obvious example. When you are born, no one had to give you a piece of paper saying you had the right to breathe the air. I mean, duh. If someone smothers you, though, they have deprived you of your rights. Do you understand that? When a human being is born they have rights already in existence, the complete set of rights all humans need and are born into, not given to them. Now you can understand the wording of the Founding Fathers better, where they recognize these inherent pre-existing eternal rights, not confer them. Believers understand that these rights are given by God when humans were created in the first place. Ethical non-believers understand that even if they deny a God, those rights are already in place, and don't have to be spelled out by a set of human beings, because it it "natural law" (believers use that term too), or "the right thing to do," or the "ethics of human rights" or other God-neutral but ethic phrases and philosophies. Both believers and non-believers who are ethical understand that genuine rights are eternal, inborn, and already in existence.

That is the first part of what the past two generations have warped and misunderstood. They have taken the eternal and inborn existence of rights and forgotten what that really means. When did this happen? Pretty much in the 1960's when people started saying "I want my rights." Yes, they were correct to perceive that those who suffered injustice were being deprived of rights. But "rights" became shorthand for remedies. Rights are not remedies. Rights cannot be created. They are already in existence. Rights exist and every thinking human, whether a believer or not, needs to protect the language in order to maintain clarity that all people have certainty of the rights that are inborn of being human.

So whether you believe in God or not you must understand that in the USA the Founding Fathers recognized that certain rights are in pre-existence. Go back to the example of the baby being born having the right to breathe air, even though no one wrote a piece of paper saying that that this baby has a license or permit under the law to breathe air upon birth. Anyone who is not insane or an idiot understands that. Thus it is really easy to understand that the right to be alive (including being able to breathe) is automatic upon coming alive (being born), duh. If someone takes a pillow and smothers the baby on birth, two things have happened. The baby's right to life was violated and so the baby was, to use the correct language "deprived of his or her rights." So you have "rights" and their opposite, which is not the "lack of rights" but the "deprivation of rights." And here is where it had become naturally confusing: not only was the smothered baby deprived of his or her rights (to life), but a civil crime was committed, assault, battery and murder. This is where the thinking became blurry during the 1960's and got worse and worse until now when it seems no one understands simple basic concepts and definitions anymore.

Just a pause, this is not going to turn into an abortion argument, so put that aside and let us work together for clarity about human rights. I am using the baby, full term, born in a wanted situation (presumably) for its universal ease in understanding, not for agenda. Keep that in mind when I start to also discuss in this case study civil (racial) deprivation of rights.

The Founding Fathers recognized every human being already has three basic "rights:" life (the right to be alive and not to have life truncated, such as in the smothering), liberty (the right to be free and not in bondage to another human being) and the pursuit of happiness (the right to lead one's life in search of sustaining and satisfaction). If you think about this, this is such a profound insight. In a pithy way the Founding Fathers summarized, using three simple words and phrases, these universal God given (or natural law/ethics) rights and pre-exist.

So you say, well, why was slavery and so forth legal when one has the right to liberty? Now you are getting it. Notice to ask me that question you said slavery was "legal?" It was not, correctly speaking, a right; many laws and social customs are violation of and deprivation of inherent rights. The civil rights movement started out using the verbiage correctly, but society started eroding their understanding of the fact that it happens every day throughout human society, this problem:

1. All humans have inherent rights not created by humans but eternal and already in place.
2. Some humans deprive other human beings of those rights.
3. Some deprivation of rights are actually legal under human made laws, but they are always wrong as they are deprivation of rights.
4. Human rights must always trump laws that deprive of human rights, but in reality we see that often the opposite takes place.
5. Rights cannot be created; rights already exist. What humans can do is restore those who have been deprived of their rights to no longer be deprived.

So now let me tackle the second core area of confusion about rights and the law. We now understand that rights already exist, totally without human creation or control. We also recognize that the problem is humans who deprive other humans of their rights. Thus slavery, while legal, was not "a right," (even if in the lingo people used that word) but slavery was, instead, a legal but unrighteous deprivation of human rights. Remember there is worldwide slavery still going on, both of servitude and sexual, and thus we must urgently understand that there is no "right," either legal or for "free market" reasons, for slavery in any form at all. Period. When slaves are freed they have not "gained" a right; their inherent rights have been restored.

So the second area of confusion exists around the terms "entitlement" and "reparation." Let's roll up sleeves and clear that up so we can actually get something done in this world before it is too late.

Remember that no one has a right to tax; taxing is a law, a mechanism, not a right. An entitlement is an expenditure of money gained by taxes, but it is a specific form of expenditure as a group is designated by "title" to receive funds. Thus that group is "entitled" because the name of the group segregates them from others so they receive special tax money. Let's use an obvious example.

The baby has been born and was not smothered, and so mother and father now have a person with a new title in their family "a child." Under USA tax law anyone who has the title "child" is entitled to being a tax deduction on the government tax forms. The baby was born with rights, but not with an entitlement. Entitlements are political, social, monarch or other human based decisions to confer or not, and has nothing to do with "rights." Too many people, both conservatives and liberals, think that they have a "right" to "entitlements." They may have a legal right, but we are speaking of human rights here. Human rights have become blurred by those who most advocate them by mixing them up with the concept of legal remedies and legal rights such as entitlements. Humans pass and enact entitlements for their own perceived fairness or merit agendas; humans do not create "rights" because human rights already exist.

So one must maintain clarity of thought and language, when one is debating or problem solving the giving of human laws/legal entitlements versus the problem of restoring deprived human rights. Too many well meaning people have ferocious arguments that are bull crap because they are not even speaking about either rights or entitlements/remedies/deprivation of rights (three different things). Do not "look" to law for "your rights," unless you mean "legal rights". In other words, no law states that a baby has the obvious human right to breathe the air. A law does say you can't smother a baby. If you look to human law for God given (natural, ethical) rights, you are lost from the very beginning, as human rights are in pre-existence, not conferred by law.

Human rights are like gold in a mine that is as yet undiscovered. The gold is already there and it's not there because some human "created gold" and then "injected it into a mountain," duh. Yet people can pass laws about who can own or explore the land. Those laws have nothing to do with the fact that the gold already exists, without the will or workings of mere human hands. Human rights exist and are eternal, no matter what a human being says or does. The problem is that many people deprive others of their human rights. It would be as if people told each other, "Well, the unmined gold in that mountain only exists if you have brown eyes, while if you have blue eyes that gold does not exist." We are not even speaking of the legality of pursuing the mining, we are speaking of a lack of reality of people who deprive others of their human rights, saying those human rights do not exist when they do, obviously, just as the gold exists whether you have brown eyes or blue.

This, young people, is one reason why faith in God gives, not takes away, strength, logic and clarity to human actions. Those who believe in God have a better comprehension of God given human rights. This is not because they necessarily "do better" or "behave better" or are "more moral" or "more ethical" than a well meaning atheist, for example. I'm not saying that at all. Rather, what I am saying is that non-believing human rights advocates live entirely within the framework of human created laws, and often they are caught and limited by the snares of human nature and laws. They say "you don't need to believe in God to be good," and that is true, but if they do not believe in God, then they believe only in the goodness of man, and that can only be understood, as a consequence, via deeds and laws. They inadvertently take their eyes off of the inherent truth of eternal inborn human rights (since they don't believe it is God given and inborn) and thus they think of rights as good behavior and laws. They put their own well meaning aim too low and too limited.

Like abortion, I am not making this about black/white slavery (notice I am speaking much of modern slavery, which is commercial/sexual and labor servitude) so do not try to discern agenda: I'm on everyone's side here. But I will now deliberately discuss the black/white slavery legacy in order to build upon the clarity of definitions by now tackling "remedy" and "reparations." I'm not using USA Native Americans in the case study because I need to keep this a global example.

First, to recap:
1. Human rights are inborn and pre-exist.
2. Human rights can be deprived, and often are, but are not created by humans.
3. Deprived human rights must be addressed and restored. In other words the depriving of rights must cease.
4. Entitlements are a special legal monetary consideration given to a designated group, which reflects the priorities of society.
5. Remedies are the means by which an injustice is corrected and rights restored, not "given."

Let's start with an easy example. Someone breaks into your house and steals your television. The police catch the person and give you back your television. The police "restore" your goods, your television, they do not need to write a law "giving you a right to own a television." You already had the right to the television.

Human rights are the same thing. The rights already exist, but some humans deprive others. Those humans need to be stopped from depriving others. When someone is stopped from depriving a person of their rights, all is automatically good again. The rights were always there, but someone blocked you from them. Now the rights are restored when the person stops depriving you of them.

But hold on, you say, damage is done when rights were deprived. I agree. But you must be clear in your mind what you are working on in a given moment: 1) restoring access to deprived rights and/or 2) compensating for the damage.

Let's say the thief smashed a window to get into your house to take the TV. If, in our silly but usefully clear example, TV represents a human right you already had, when the police remove the deprivation of your right as a problem (someone else had your TV) that concludes their role in this matter. Part of society must focus on ensuring that no one's rights are deprived. That is not the same as the part of society that now helps you to inventory the damage and get you back on your feet. The police do not fix your window, or give you money to have it fixed. They also do not take a window out of the thief's house and give it to you. Human rights campaigners must focus, like the TV recovering police, on removing obstacles to other people's access to their pre-existing human rights. Human rights should not at all complicate their essential first priority with issues of remedy and reparations, since those require human created processes, rules, law, procedures and logic. For example the homeowner may have an insurance policy and pursues remedy based not on human rights but the commercial agreement he or she has in place for insurance reimbursement.

Now, here's where we need to clear up the whole "slavery reparations" language. You might, being an attentive reader, now put two and two together and say, "Well, suppose the culture gives an entitlement that all people who had TV's stolen from them gets a $100 tax credit or payment to remedy that their rights were violated." Now you are talking! See? Now you are getting somewhere. You have separated the restoration of deprived human rights from the "picking up the mess left behind" process. That would be a logical use of the entitlement human made process, not right to address lingering damage from a now corrected deprivation of human rights. An entitlement is the creating of a group of people based on their title (titles such as senior citizens, social security recipients, children, people who had their TV's stolen) who now receive goods, services or usually monatary special consideration. Remember, a human baby has the pre-existing universal inborn right to be born and to breathe the air, a crime is committed (and that right was deprived) if the baby is smothered, but the decision to give a tax deduction to the successfully born baby is an entitlement based on the title "child."

Suppose someone tried to smother the baby in the hospital and while they did not succeed they did some real damage to the baby. This is now the area of remedy and it is entirely dealt with by human laws and processes. This is where morality must be one's compass and this is what the Bible means about being "righteous" and "just." Here's what I mean.

Righteousness and justice must be immediate and focused on the actual people involved in the problem. You go after the guy who stole the TV for remedy and damages, not anyone who ever stole a TV. You go after whoever tried to smother your baby (and perhaps the bad procedures of where this crime took place), but you don't sue every hospital and every person who ever wronged a child. In other words, remedy is targeted and immediate. Too many in society have drifted away from that understanding in their attempts to "recover" what is they are "entitled to." See? That's wrong language. No one is "entitled" to "remedy" unless an entitlement law exists that all people who had stolen TV sets (title) receive $100. Remedy is the attempt to provide justice and righteousness after a wrong has been committed, and there is a wide range of possible valid avenues for remedy, all based on human law, process and free will regarding goodness, charity and virtue.

Two people each had a TV stolen via smashed windows. One gets reimbursement from their insurance company. The other does not have insurance, but has a friend who owns a window business and the friend, through charity, rebuilds and replaces the window for free.

The term "reparations" is best understood as the financial punishment levied onto the combatant who is defeated in a war. So now, build on the foundation I have given to you about entitlements and remedy. If one country is attacked unjustly by another, yet defeats the aggressor at great cost, the aggrieved victorious country may well indeed impose reparations onto the aggressor losing nation. The most obvious example of that is World War I when huge, back breaking reparations were placed upon Germany, the aggressor and loser of the war. (And put aside all the nuance around who did what to whom and stick to the basic facts). In reparations you clobber the entire country because they are the unit by which the injustice occurred. So even the peace movement in the aggressor country would get clobbered by reparations, as no distinction is made. That's not entirely bad because we all understand enablers, whether willing or against their will. It's the theory that a country could not war if people such as farmers did not keep growing food and thus enable the war machine, even if the farmers themselves were against the war in the first place.

That is the slippery slope of reparations. They are strictly speaking logical but in reality there is a huge problem. The first problem is that it must be immediate. In other words, the second generation should not pay for the war of the first generation. The second problem is, as I stated, reparations are the largest and broadest of all entitlements. The title thus becomes "an entire country."

Those are the problems in logic and justice that even well meaning black/white slave reparations face, which is why it is a waste of time to discuss it, really. I am not at all marganizing what has been done, but I am trying to be your friend and your coach and teach you how to be alive and have your rights today. So bear with me as we use this sensitive subject in this case study.

You no doubt agree with me that reparations must be 1) immediate and 2) appropriately targeted. I bet you think I'm going to say it's "too late" for reparations, since legal slavery ended over one hundred years ago. Nope, I'm not going to say that. I'm going to help you get reparations. Here is what you need to do. You need to determine who took your TV or, rather, your ancestors' TV, and you have suffered as a result. Thus you need to research in Africa which tribes first captured your ancestors and name them as the first liable group for reparations. In general many Africans were captured and sold into slavery by rival African tribes. So you need to identify which ones were involved and proportion responsibility. Then you need to identify the European countries/monarchies that funded the slave capturing and transport. Your rights were first deprived by those who captured your ancestors, those who stole your TV, and by those who provided the capturing and transportation facilities. Your rights were then secondly in time sequence deprived by the slave owners who purchased and kept the slaves. Thus you must outline the shape of your "war reparations country" in order to appropriately target them. But in your case it is a virtual country, to use the computer term, who owe you reparations. Not to be political I will make up names, except for the USA.

Virtual reparations country: 30% the African tribes X, Y, Z who captured and sold slaves, 30% the European countries O, P, Q who seized slaves, provided men and ships to transport them, 40% the actual white people in the USA who sold, owned and profited from slaves.

You see the problem? Genuine reparations have one of two possiblities: 1) designate a country as being "guilty" such as was done in WWI or 2) identify those who actually conducted the wrong and apportion blame according to their actual participation.

So without taking sides, dear friends, I am simply teaching you the difference between genuine reparations and entitlements. A society could take the stance that every person who had an almost smothered child, or a stolen TV (and I'm not trivializing, but using the case study materials) gets an entitlement based on that title as a remedy. A society could try to designate that those who descended from an almost smothered child also receives an entitlement. The problem is that entitlement comes from your own participatory tax dollars, by definition. Reparations comes from "the other guy" the one who "actually did it." In order to do just reparations you have to research and apportion (wow, would that keep lawyers busy!) guilt and blame and then trace the descendants and apportion the cost of the reparations aka entitlement to them. You know that makes very little sense because the rule of reparations is that if done against a group you are indeed charging those who were innocent and against the war in the first place, and also their subsequent generations.

I don't want to get too far into transforming this into a slavery reparations case study since this is a case study about rights, and how rights are inborn and eternal, compared to human devices such as deprivation of rights, entitlements, remedy, crime and reparations.

But you see that many in public office, and privately, have their definitions all backwards and blurry and ultimately ineffective. As a result humans are farther from understanding their inherent God (or natural/ethical) given rights, rather than closer. So when I listen to political or legal debate I really find it so pointless because people are not even sure what they are arguing about factually and clearly, in truth. This is a problem of rights, entitlement and remedy policy in all parts of life in all societies and governments, where people have lost actual understanding of the ultimate motivation which is inborn rights of all humans and the removal of the means of depriving rights in the here and now. Without that first everything else is futile and even counterproductive fail. What good will it be if two hundred years from now people are arguing how to remedy the legacy of child sexual slavery and abuse, for example, if they allowed it to happen in the here and now? People, it's only one lived human life apiece, and one earth, and the consequences (and thus remedies) must happen in the here and now, based on universal recognition of authentic inborn human rights and removal of real deprivations of those human rights.

I hope that you have understood this and find it helpful.

More about UN and diplomacy

For example, here's an idea that would make the ineffective UN immediately more effective. This took me about five seconds to think of as an idea.

One problem is the inherent source of much conflict in the world, which are civil wars, internal to a country and/or neighboring countries who have ethnic groups that cross boundaries. However, the way the UN is structured, whoever rules the government of each country appoints the ambassador to the UN. Do you see an immediate problem? That has plagued the UN from day one.

My suggestion is that in addition to appointing the official ambassador to the UN, each country must send a delegate as an observer and a participant on committees and so forth from the minority party, the party in opposition, or the next largest ethnic group in that country. For example, when the Dems are in power in the USA, the Reps get to select a shadow ambassador. Hopefully the two would provide valuable common ground in their time together. As another example, a Muslim country with both Shia and Sunni would appoint one as the official ambassador according to how power is held in that country, and the clerics or other leaders of the minority denomination would select their shadow ambassador.

This would be crucial whenever any civil conflict arises in a member nation and/or when there is cross boundary tension between two groups struggling for power. One would be the official ambassador to the UN, per the country's rules for determining such, and the other would be the valued educational and awareness ambassador, working with the official ambassador and also representing his or her group's interests to the UN at large, separate from specifically that country.

How cool would that be? And actually useful.

Read Mr. Gadhafi's comments about the UN

Do a search for the AP article. I cannot disagree with his observations regarding the structure of the UN, its great failure to prevent 65 wars, and the pointlessness of the so called "Security Council" structure. Putting aside some of its significant, yet still flawed, humanitarian efforts, which Mr. Gadhafi is not addressing, one cannot argue with his acute and insightful observation of the facts.

Western propaganda and popular mindset wants to give high marks to great efforts, even if the results are all fails. It's like giving a student a passing grade because he or she tried to make the stuff up really hard. In stark contrast to that flawed mindset, the Bible teaches that by the fruit you shall know the tree.

Friends, especially young people, ask yourself in politics and in all life matters: what results, regardless of the effort put into it, are being yielded? What is the fruit from each tree? Do not start out with the assumption that a tree, such as the UN, is "good," and then make constant excuses for one rotten apple after the other falling out of the tree. Is that not a "duh" opportunity or what?

Evaluate objectively the dropping thuds of rotten fruit over the decades of the UN, such as:
1. Its dismal record in solving or preventing any conflict at all.
2. Sexual and other abuse by UN forces, particularly in Africa.
3. Crimes and corruption by UN staff who then have "diplomatic immunity."
4. UN "representatives" from the immoral media with laughable "role models."
5. Leadership in complex topics (climate change) that they know absolutely nothing about.

And there is more. There are a lot of dropped rotten apple "thuds" to overlook over the past decades while still parroting that "the UN 'does a lot of good.'"

Diplomacy case study: political parties

I want to use the occasion of President Obama and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton (congratulations by the way!) meeting with career diplomats at the State Department to offer another, hopefully helpful, case study. This case study, I think, is essential to speedy and fruitful progress in the Middle East, especially regarding Israel and Palestine, but also the Taliban in Afghanistan and all the groups, including Al Qaida, in Pakistan.

By the way, I remember watching George Mitchell’s great work as diplomatic envoy during The Troubles in Ireland and am glad to see him, and Richard Holbrook, back in the saddle again!

This case study is to help you to have clearer and more productive vision, and thus dialogue, with civilian populations who support radical organizations who regularly or occasionally engage in terrorism.

When an organization, such as Hamas, engages in terrorist activities, such as shooting rockets into civilian parts of Israel, it is natural that a certain skewing of viewpoint takes place by even the most seasoned diplomats. However, this skewing has become entirely too unconscious and routine and thus brings an error into the logical and the feelings that are brought to the diplomatic table. This case study is to help you to eliminate the skewing in perception that takes place when one contemplates or dialogues with an organization that is civilian based but conducts some or many terrorist activities. When you eliminate that skewing of perception, which is based on error, you can make greater progress in your objectives, including the halting of the terroristic component of their activities.

Let’s use some silly examples first. Suppose you are speaking to someone who is just wonderful but has bad breath. Doesn’t the bad breath totally mess up your encounter with them, and doesn’t it ruin your appreciation of their finer qualities? The person with the bad breath could be a beauty queen, or a young Einstein, or the holiest person you know, but you can’t appreciate any of those qualities so long as you are suffering from their bad breath!

This is what a civilian population who supports an organization with a terroristic component is like. Just because they have bad breath in their encounter, this does not mean they are not worthy and wonderful people. Thus, the people of Gaza, by having elected Hamas, are being treated as if they are nothing but gas bags of bad breath. That is unjust, incorrect and unfair.

Let us return to the bad breath example. Coffee, a wonderful beverage, is the cause of much bad breath. So there is an example of a great gift to humanity-coffee-having an unfortunate and often unconscious side effect in many, bad breath. I could not stand the breath of my ex- after he had drunk coffee; it was actually worse than how he smelled after smoking cigarettes. But that does not mean that he was no longer an intelligent person, or one who could look nice, or one that could be kind. He was all of those things, but with bad breath after drinking coffee. So coffee, a genuine gift to humanity and a beneficial thing, can, if not monitored, have an unpleasant side effect that masks all the other good, for those moments, in the person. We can also list other foods like this, such as onions and garlic, feta cheese and so forth.

However, bad breath can also be a warning sign of a health problem. Every mindful and caring parent of a small child knows this. When your child suddenly has bad breath, they are not doing it to annoy you or to be “dirty.” A child with bad breath usually has a nasal drip or an allergy, thus a respiratory health matter. Bad breath is a sign that is supposed to be helpful, to alert someone to a problematic health condition. So you don’t want to be angry at the small infant with bad breath, or just “cover it up,” but look as to why they have the bad breath so that the health matter can be attended to.

Thus the Gaza people with Hamas can be viewed as being like a person with bad breath, and one must see if it is an unconscious side effect of a good thing (coffee) or the sign of a health problem (respiratory distress). By the way, I am not saying Hamas is the bad breath, LOL! I am saying their terroristic actions are the bad breath. Separate from the terroristic acts Hamas members are the same as Gaza civilians, the good that is being masked by the bad breath.

So the first job of the diplomat is to recognize that the terroristic acts that one observes, whether by Hamas or any other group, is like “bad breath.” It has a disproportionate effect of masking the vast majority of normalcy and goodness, with common aspirations, of the people “underneath” the bad breath. Too often diplomats, to say nothing of the reactionary governments, not only just focus on the bad breath but they seem to have entire conversations (mostly threats) with the bad breath (the acts of terrorism) rather than the lips, mouths, brains and hearts of the people behind the terrorism bad breath. I’m faintly amazed that I have to explain this to so many people who think they are otherwise so intelligent.

This is one of the things that the diplomats of, in particular the British Empire, for all their faults well understood. These foreign servants lived among the local people so much that many were accused of “going native” or “going bush,” which is that they embrace the local culture. Thus they were not reactionary when there were “bad breath” incidents, because they maintained their 80 percent to 20 percent understanding of the people who are behind the bad breath and the bad breath acts itself. This was one of the great attributes of the golden age of diplomacy, this ability to maintain vision on not only the “bad breath,” but keep the majority of one’s understanding on the people and the underlying reasons for the bad breath acts.

Now, here is another analogy to help you to understand. There are certain things that the Republican party tends to do that makes me just vomit in disgust, just as there are certain things that the Democrat party does that also makes me vomit. But I do not reduce all the millions of people who agree in each party with those particular positions into thinking of them as just barf making sub-humans, LOL. I know that behind the party platforms and individual heinous viewpoints are, in general, a bunch of individual people who share aspirations and are trying to do the best that they can.

Here is a related analogy. Let’s look at the political party affiliation of the ten Presidents after our first, George Washington.

John Adams: Federalist

Thomas Jefferson: Democratic-Republican

James Madison: Democratic-Republican

James Monroe: Democratic-Republican

John Quincy Adams: Federalist until 1808, Democratic-Republican until 1825, National Republican (Whig) thereafter

Andrew Jackson: Democratic

Martin Van Buren: Democratic (during Presidency); Free Soil (from 1848)

William Henry Harrison: Whig

John Tyler: Whig

James Knox Polk: Democratic

Now, from this list you can observe without reading a “too long” dissertation that political parties came into being and evolved at a rapid rate. Democratic-Republican used to be one party, and they evolved and split. Federalists were the party of our country’s founding, yet even though they were the “original” they did not maintain a mandate once the country was well established. Other parties such as “Free Soil” sprang up in response to current conditions, yet they are forgotten today. Political parties and affiliations are a living and vibrant thing. Likewise people like the Palestinians have an evolving attempt to organize around “parties,” for lack of a better word, that reflect their aspirations and their current reality. Yet countries such as the United States and Israel act like they should be frozen in time.

It is a diplomatic error to think that, “Well, the Palestinians had the PLO, which we denounced since they were terrorists, but they gave up terrorism to become Fatah and thus they are ‘OK’ and we will ‘allow’ the Palestinians to ‘have’ Fatah and Fatah alone.” Huh? What if the United States was forced to only have the Federalist party, one party, the “first and only” alone? After all, the USA was formed by the Federalists. Shouldn’t the USA be forced to have only one party, the Federalists? Are not the Democratic and Republican parties invalid?

When Gaza people voted Hamas into power they were doing so because they were frustrated with the shortcomings, including financial corruption, of Fatah. Yet to this day western diplomats are mouthing off that Hamas is not “legitimate?” Well, I don’t think that any USA political party since the Federalists is valid. I’m not joking. If you are going to tell me that people halfway around the world do not live like the rest of us, having evolving needs and evolving responses in affiliation (and yes, some of them have some bad breath) then I think we should live by the same “rules,” else we are shameless hypocrites. So I am quite serious that I believe that all political parties since the Federalist Party are invalid.

If a diplomat cannot look at a people, such as the Palestinians in Gaza, and have the most fundamental understanding that despite the terroristic actions that are the bad breath of the party in power that this is part of normal democracy and the urges of the people, then one can neither achieve peace nor even have correct vision of the problems, challenges and opportunities. You are punishing the Gaza people for trying to self correct what they thought was a problem with the ruling party, Fatah. You are enabling Israel, by focusing only on the bad breath terrorism, to bomb the hell out of people to punish them for trying to “kick the bums out of office and elect new people,” which was just what they did. It is one of the democratic hypocrisies of the century, in my opinion.

So to wrap up this case study, the point I am trying to make is that politicians, most especially diplomats, must learn to recognize normal democratic process in the natural form that it takes place in other countries and cultures, such as the forming and electing of new parties. Second one must recognize if the bad breath of terrorism of those parties are due to systemic health problems which must be addressed, rather than punching the teeth and gums of innocent men, women and children out of their mouths to “cure the bad breath” and then blame them for it to boot. Third, one must look at the diplomatic challenge and see the parallels in our own history (the British thought we were terrorists, by the way) and respond with a resonance and firm guidance in more fruitful channels rather than denial. Fourth, we need to invest in people’s political interest and participation, not discourage it when we don’t like the results. Fifth we must not have dialogue with the bad breath acts and, instead, go back to having dialogue with the people, friend and foe alike. Sixth, just as the USA would resent being told we must go back to Federalist party alone, so too we must not expect people to have “one size fit all” political parties that meet our (or Israel’s) approval.

I hope that you have found this helpful. I have a lot more to say about how to get going in productive diplomacy but I don't want to make this "tl/dr" (too long; didn't read).

Case study: Understanding America

I believe that no one can effectively understand, love or govern any part of the United States of America unless one has read one specific poem, "Prairie" by Carl Sandburg (my favorite poet).

You know how in science fiction books and fantasy novels sometimes the hero discovers something like an instant learning helmet, where he or she puts it on and they suddenly have a lot of knowledge and wisdom put directly into his or her brain?

"Prairie" accomplishes the same thing. It explains the land of America, the people of America, God, time, destiny, hopes, reality, joy, the economy and peace of mind. One also cannot truly understand the environment or being "green" without reading and studying this poem.

Carl Sandburg was hardly wearing rose colored glasses, so even cynics can have total confidence in his vision. He saw the horrors of service in World War I, and has antiwar and Socialist credentials! But he also believed in God, and admired Abraham Lincoln above all men, spending years in study of him.

Follow this link and study this poem, allowing yourself to really feel section by section what he is transmitting, and you will have an instant transfusion of understanding American. Print it out and read it a few times, at leisure, over these next few days.

"Put on your instant learning and wisdom helmet" here:

http://www.bartleby.com/134/1.html

Cultural Diplomacy tutorial Part 3

Cultural Diplomacy tutorial Part 3

The case study in this tutorial is the example of how Jewish and Christian politicians and diplomats achieve the best dialogue, whether secular or faith based topics, with Islamic politicians and diplomats. My remarks include all the sects of Islam, specifically Shiite and Sunni, and also both the vast majority of Islam that is mainstream, and the minority of Islam that is extremist or terroristic.

My first point is that it is not necessary to be a believer of any faith, per se, in order to have a successful dialogue with Muslim countries. There is a long history of cordial and productive relationships between certain Muslim countries and countries that have either no declared faith, such as China or Russia during the time it was within the USSR, or countries with eastern faiths, such as India and Japan. These tend to be mutually beneficial cultural and economic (trade) relationships. Also, in the past, certain Muslim countries have sought “big brother” protection and alliance, such as has historically existed with the former USSR, as a counterbalance to countries who have been supported by the USA. There is less of a need for that now, but it is still a realistic and understandable underlying motivation, and I’d do the same thing if I were them. This, for those of you who are young to Middle East politics, is the reason that Russia belongs to what is called the “Quartet” of countries that try to assist in discussions for peace in the Middle East. One cannot bring both parties to the table if one party arrives with a superpower on its side while the other sits with a less developed country status and no ability to power share. So to summarize this point, Muslims do not look down on “non believer” countries and in fact have a proven history that extends itself every year with more and more relationships with countries of various faiths or no declared faith at all. A secondary point is that since Muslims lack having a country in the “superpower” category of countries, a survival instinct that is quite realistic and I would do it myself is to maintain a close “big brother or big sister” relationship with a superpower that is friendly and sympathetic to their situations. Do not view that as a negative, as that is a very reasonable and balanced thing to do.

My second point is to explain how diplomacy among Muslim countries and those that profess belief in the one monotheistic God (Christianity and Judaism) should provide a common basis of foundational comprehension, even in secular topics, but in the past the opposite has occurred. Let me first start with an analogy. If one has to negotiate a problem with, let’s say, how your neighbor is using his back yard, is it easier to negotiate with your neighbor if he is a stranger in the sense he is not related to you by blood or marriage, or if your neighbor is a relative of yours? It depends on the circumstances, but I think you see what I mean. The most bitter conflicts in domestic matters can be among relatives, each of whom “expects more and better” from the other because the other is a relative. So having a shared history, family or foundational belief is not a guarantee of better outcome and far from it, it can be much worse if one side feels bitterly betrayed on a personal level. This is important to understand even though I know that modern “secularists” might be all quivering with indignation if they read my words, arguing that one’s faith should have “nothing to do” with secular diplomacy. Well, duh. If you do not understand your partner or combatant’s faith stance in diplomacy, and they have a strong overriding faith, denying your own faith to yourself hardly equips you to better understand them! That would be like saying to your cousin, with whom you are quarreling over land that your shared grandfather left to you both, that you no longer believe that your grandfather ever existed, and hence he should not have any influence on the argument! How stupid would that be? Your cousin would think that you are crazy and likely evil, if you benefited by inheriting land through your grandfather’s will and legacy, and then denied his very existence while quarreling with another of his descendants over that land! So to summarize my second point, even if you represent a secular personal or governmental point of view, you must understand that your Islamic partner perceives a relationship with you and your country based on God, whether you believe in God or not. In fact, it is personally offensive to a Muslim, even if he or she does not show it, if you are the beneficiary of a shared faith history but you deny it. Again, I’m not saying that faith has to enter into a secular dialogue. But I am teaching you how to understand the point of view of the Muslims with whom you dialogue, if you represent a personage or country that seems to deny the “family” relationship of believing the same God. This is the crux of the problem with extremists and why they feel such a burning contempt for the West. But it is also a missed opportunity among mainstream diplomacy where Westerners seem more concerned with denying their own faith history than with being who they are authentically. Muslims respect authentic belief in God, and thus they respect the person who is not ashamed or in denial of that, even if it has nothing to do with the subject being negotiated or discussed.

My third point is related to the second, which is to address why, if Muslims respect belief in God, do they use the term of insult “crusader?” For those of you young to this topic, the term crusader comes from the “Middle Ages,” or early medieval times, roughly seven hundred to a thousand years ago, when armies from Christian nations attempted to “reclaim” the Holy Land, which had been seized by armies of Islam. Islam had been spreading through conquest throughout the Middle East, Africa and even Europe. Yet the Christian defenders and combatants were not called crusaders unless they were specifically sent to wrest the Holy Land from what were called the Mohammadans. Crusaders were organized and sent by Christian leaders and sponsored by whichever Pope occupied the Seat of Peter in Rome at that time. Crusaders wore the cross of Jesus Christ on their armor, and invoked his name in their activities. And there, you see, is the problem. Muslims perceived the Christians to be fighting in the name of Jesus Christ and not of God, the God they share with Christians. Muslims do not deny Jesus Christ at all, and in fact, the Qur’an has much honor and praise for him, recognizing Jesus as an authentic prophet from God given special miraculous capabilities directly from the Holy Spirit of God. But rather than seeing crusaders attempt to regain the Holy Land on behalf of the shared God who created both Muslims and Christians, Muslims perceived that Christians had “broken away” from God, in their eyes. This is why “crusader” is used as an insult, both then and today. A “crusader” is someone who seems to elevate Jesus Christ alone and who denies God.

I hope this helps people to understand, then, the strange paradox of extremist Muslims who consider the West to be “Godless” yet insult them with a term that seems to invoke God, which is “crusader.” The term crusader has endured because of that very perception, which has some foundation in truth. The term “Muslim” to a Muslim means someone who believes in the one God. This is why the Qur’an declares the Israelite patriarchs and prophets, such as Abraham and Jacob, to “be Muslims.” They are not doing a retroactive conversion. The term Muslim means a believer in the one monotheistic God, the God who self identified from Adam, throughout Israelite history, and to and including Jesus Christ. Muslims “keep their eye,” however, only on God. They revere the prophets and forefathers, but they would never fight in “the name” of any of them. Thus the Muslims during the time of the Crusades viewed the Christian crusader combatants of fighting in the name of Jesus Christ, but not in the name of God. Muslims were genuinely fighting in the name of God, believing that they were forcing the heathen, the pagan and also the Abrahamic faiths that had gone “astray” back to putting their attention and worship toward God and only God. That is why they swept through the Middle East, through much of northern Africa, and into southern Europe, until they were finally stopped by the Christian nations of Europe and the line held. But the term “crusader” was used with contempt not toward the defenders of the invaded countries, but because that was the term that those who came to liberate the Holy Land in the name of Jesus Christ adopted for themselves. So when a modern extremist Muslim uses the term “crusader” as an insult that is code language for accusing a Christian of being a nominal Christian who does not really believe in God.

Because during the Crusades to be Christian meant to be Catholic, since the Reformation was still several hundred years off in the future, Muslims maintained a suspicion of Catholics long after it was necessary. But in recent years through enhanced dialogue and more ecumenical education, Muslims have come to realize that Catholics do genuinely believe in the one God, despite what the actions of the historic crusaders seemed to indicate. And this is also why there are examples of countries, such as Syria and until recently Iraq, where the Christian Orthodox and Catholic faiths have peacefully co-existed within predominately Muslim countries all along. The Qur’an states that there should be peaceful co-existence. But the history of the Crusaders gave Muslims the perception that Christians go beyond “defending” their country from forced conversion by Muslims, and would, in fact, mount attacks to wrest back the Holy Land from the Muslims, who are descendants of the original occupants, while the Europeans were not. So where pockets of Orthodox and Catholics held on and continued to reside in the land of their ancestors, they were able to do so, though often under very harsh circumstances (such as in Egypt), since there is a continuity of these Christians in that land. But “crusader” has a connotation of an “invading outsider meddler.” Thus extremists will apply the code word “crusader” to even highly irreligious cultural mores that invade from the West, such as lewd entertainment, in the ultimate irony. Extremist Muslims use the term crusader as insult of even the behavior that true Christians disapprove of in agreement with them, which is the degraded cultural and societal behaviors that they deplore, since they perceive it as a degrading cultural invasion rather than a genuinely God fearing invasion. So to summarize, if one is to negotiate with Muslims, one must understand that when the term “crusader” is invoked, it is not a back handed compliment admiring someone’s adversarial faith (kind of a “Muslim versus Christian” slogan) but is instead, basically, code word for accusing the “crusader” of being an invading cultural anti-God and God denying force. Extremist Muslims are not “admiring” the faith of people they call “crusaders.” They are evoking the belief that “crusaders” abandoned worship of the one God and thus bring with them degraded cultural values and beliefs.

None of what I am teaching here, by the way, is justifying or excusing extremist Islamic beliefs. As I’ve blogged before one of the greatest errors among devout Islamic believers is that they believe they have a mandate from God to do what the Bible calls “smiting,” but, in fact, they do not have that mandate. However, one cannot productively dialogue with either moderates or extremists if one does not understand the origins of their point of view, and accurately decode their terminology and language of concepts.

So my fourth point is that either consciously or unconsciously, Muslims have higher expectations from Jewish and Christian individuals or countries because they have perfect understanding that all three faiths originate from belief in the same God. Muslims therefore, consciously or unconsciously, “expect” better behavior and comprehension of the complexity of issues from Jews and Christians. This is also why they have been bitterly disappointed when they do not perceive this common foundation of relationship. It is, like I used in my analogy, as if both cousins inherited land from a grandfather, but one denies that the grandfather even existed. Even if the reality of the grandfather is not pertinent to the topic under discussion, it is very disconcerting to the believer to be in dialogue with the non believer. Thus, as certain Israeli leaders have become more secular and less religious, rather than this being viewed as a reassuring development, to the Muslim it is very disconcerting. They view that as a development that increases the distance between the parties in dialogue, not narrows it. Muslims wonder how Israelis can understand their point of view if they no longer seem to believe in the same God, from which the Muslim point of view springs. So secular “logic” that advocates becoming more secular and faith neutral in negotiating is an advantage and a plus in negotiating is totally wrong. Modernists seem to think that separation of church and state, plus increased reliance on secular beliefs and reasoning is helpful to genuine diplomacy, but the opposite is true. Western countries and pro Israel organizations have completely erred in this regard. Trust me, a Muslim diplomat better understands an extreme Orthodox Jew than they understand a Jew who has become secular, because to a Muslim, a secular or a non-believer is unpredictable. Muslims understand people who are motivated by belief in the same God, but who may have vigorous disagreement about what share of God’s creation to allocate and claim. Muslims, especially extremists, do not understand former believers who seem to be motivated by degraded Western values rather than God.

Here are some examples of this. A Muslim can well understand combating with a Jew or a Christian over whose church, mosque or synagogue should occupy a given sacred space. That is easy to understand, even if the solution sure is difficult to reach, if even possible, for at least each side understands full well the other side’s motivation. Each side believes in their faith, in, ultimately, the same God, but is robustly combating for the upper hand in a sacred arena. This type of diplomacy opportunity may be difficult to resolve, if one and only one site is being fought over, but it’s not hard to identify and explore the options and have a fruitful dialogue, should everyone be motivated to pursue a solution. However, Muslims are totally baffled and enraged by actions that they believe originate from a denial of their diplomatic combatant’s own God. An example of this is the Israeli government’s policy of destroying the housing of the families of those they identify as terrorists. This is such a secular and cold determination of policy that Muslims cannot fathom it, and thus have an increased contempt, rather than an increased compliance. Likewise the hindering of basic needs for the Palestinians, such as being enfranchised in the economy, or as happened recently the ability to repair a burst sewage treatment pond that actually killed people, is just seen as evidence of a God denying secularism. The problem is that a Muslim is at a loss as to how to negotiate. I certainly sympathize, since it is a challenge to negotiate with someone who is fully absorbed with exercising secular power, regardless of their positive or negative underlying motivation. This is why Muslims may turn to more extreme advocates, rather than lesser, since they perceive the exercise of secular power as being a “pushing” without knowing where the pushing is going to end up, as if one is blindfolded and forced to walk backwards. When a Muslim argues with an Orthodox Jew, however, they both understand each other’s agenda and purpose, and are not obscured by wondering where the random reactions of secular decisions and exertions of power will take them.

So to summarize, Muslims are Muslims because they believe in the one God, and thus they have less understanding of “cultural Jews” and “cultural Christians” and their motivations. Just as westerners worry about “how far will Islamic extremists go?” in truth Muslims worry and wonder “how far will western secular extremists go?” Muslims, especially the clergy, feel that westerners, including the Israelis, have no self restraint and thus are totally unpredictable in what they will do, and that is very worrisome. And please, I am not at all diminishing the genuine self restraint that Israel and its people have repeatedly demonstrated as they have tolerated continual terrorist attacks. What I mean is that the overall agenda and the specific tactics of westerners and the Israelis seem, to Muslims, to be “open ended” and anything might happen, including totally illogical and counterproductive movements and decisions. We all know that random behavior is the most challenging to deal with in all aspects of life. Muslims feel that secular believers have removed their own norms and commonality of expectations and thus “anything goes” as far as the westerners and Israelis are concerned. This has been one of the fundamental root causes of the lack of progress in the resolution of the problems in the Middle East. Muslims have had to negotiate with many unpredictable partners.

My fifth point is that during times of uncertainty people adopt the old adage “any port in a storm.” That expression means that a boat that is in danger of sinking must dock at the first port it finds, even if that is really not an ideal place. Thus people will ally themselves with some very dubious beliefs and cohorts if they feel pressurized in chaotic conditions. All sides in the Middle East situation have done this. The Israelis hooked up with certain Evangelical and other outlying Christian groups who view Israel just as cannon fodder for conversion and the “imminent” “battle with the Anti-Christ.” I will say one thing; at least these nuts have made Catholics look good again. Muslims have come to learn to distinguish between Christians who are mainstream and are not presuming to dictate who is doing what to whom “according to the Bible” and those who are trying to use the conflict in the Middle East as some sort of stage for their Anti-Christ play. Israelis in their desperation for peace and normalcy have taken money and listened to the horrible advice of many Christian nut jobs. I can’t think of too many worse combinations that Jews who have lost their own faith and who take advice from Christians who are lost in a confrontational fantasy. This in fact harkens back to the crusader problem where some sort of new age crusaders have run around in Israel influencing secular leaning Jews toward thinking of the Muslims and themselves as participants in some end of times tableau. This is a sane diplomat’s worse nightmare, LOL. Muslims would find it much easier to negotiate with solid Orthodox or Conservative Jews who have the discipline and self contained restraint of mainstream beliefs. What is really sad is that when conservative Jews backlash, often they hit the Christians who are not the nut jobs, especially Catholics and Orthodox. So Jews bog down in arguing about whether Pope Pius XII was all he could have been in helping Jews in World War II, rather than wondering why so many Christians are running around Israel looking for the Anti-Christ and predicting how many Jews will die and how many will convert before “the end of times.” Muslims, on the other hand, have come to discern between whacky Christians and the mainstream Christians, notably the Catholic Church, and thus things are improving and options are opening up. So my advice to any diplomat who has to deal with issues regarding Israel is to be aware that for decades now certain Christian nut jobs have pulled strings behind the scenes among the Israeli government and populace, stirring up an “end of times” mentality that is contrary to diplomatic good faith efforts.

This is one reason why Iran has become so outspoken regarding their Shiite Twelver beliefs. The Iranian clergy and government are fully aware that certain secularists and Christians have influenced Israelis with their manufactured “end of times” narrative and expectations. As I’ve explained, Muslims of all sects have a justifiable suspicion that Christians have, in general, abandoned the one God. Remember, crusaders are, to them, secularized Christians who promote Jesus Christ and deny God. So it’s not like Iran decided to suddenly spout what westerners may deride as apocalyptic and “extremist Islam beliefs.” Rather, Iranians view themselves as “setting the record straight.” From the point of view of the clergy and the government of Iran, they perceive that Israel has become overrun with unpredictable crusaders and secularized Jews. Contrary to popular thought and as I discussed above “secular logic,” Iran is not reassured by less devout Jews. Greater devotion and mainstream faith is stabilizing on all sides, among Muslims, Jews and Christians alike. This is why the clergy of Iran, the President, and other government representatives constantly reiterate their faith context within documents of even only secular scope. They feel they must repeatedly refute and restore what they consider to be a mainstream context for what they think is often irrational secular or cultist influences. Western governments and the media erroneously portray Iran as like suddenly coming up with strange ideas while the opposite is true. They view themselves as speaking up, louder and louder, as they see a jumble of marginal cultist beliefs and secularization invade their own region of the world, specifically Israel. The last thing Iranian clergy wants are nominal Christians telling the Israelis that they “know” that the Anti-Christ is this or that and that the end of time is “coming” here or there on such and such a place. Mark my words, behind the scenes “end of time” nut job advocacy has set back peace in the Middle East. This became clear to the Iranians and others when they observed some of the muted but unmistakable behind the scenes apocalyptic dialogue that informed the invasion of Iraq by the USA. So to summarize this point, a diplomat who dialogues with Iran must realize that Iran is not trying to be extremist in their beliefs or out of the mainstream but, rather, Iranians feel they must speak up with what they view as the correct and less specific interpretations of end of time theology. Like the Catholic Church, Iranians in general believe that only God knows those times and that those events and their timing cannot and should not be manipulated by human beings. Thus it is an error for diplomats to view the faith based verbiage of the Iranian government to be provocative. In fact, the opposite is true, where Iranians feel that reiteration of their faith context is mainstream and helpful to stabilizing what has been an increasingly unstable and chaotic fragmentation in their part of the world.

The obvious example of any port in a storm is the attraction of extreme Hadassah teachings and militant Palestinian organizations, giving rise to what is called Islamic extremism. When people feel disenfranchised and continually pushed by what they consider to be unpredictable and randomly pushing forces, they join up with forces that they feel can push back. Some of it is so frustratingly predictable. For example, people have known for years that the legal Palestinian organizations, led by Arafat, were at best inexperienced and at worst corrupt regarding the financials of aid that was given to them by the rest of the world. But rather than send a lot of boring accountants and viewing that as a problem that needed to be solved, those who oppose the Palestinian agenda laughed in their hands at the hapless and corrupt looting and wasting of money. However, suddenly there is no laughter when the people, who are no fools, elect Hamas into power. Suddenly there is outrage and puzzlement, how could the Palestinians vote in even worse extremists! I found reading such reports in the newspapers to be too foolish to even put up with. Everyone knew full well that the Palestinian government was wasting and looting, as just about every immature government agency will do, and they just let it happen rather than donate and even insist on financial advisors. But every wise option was blocked by the view that it was “aiding terrorists” when one helps the Palestinians. That is what I mean by the feeling that secularized Jews have, to Muslims, an alarmingly unpredictable set of reactions and the international community, including the UN, has been naïve, to say the least. I would have sent a boatload of accountants to the Palestinian authority along with the financial aid and as a condition to it, and that’s a fact. I mean, it must have been twenty years ago that I heard on a NYC TV news station report chuckling about how Arafat has part ownership of a bowling alley in Manhattan. How stupid is this? Everyone was laughing up their sleeves at how the Palestinians mismanaged their aid money, and the people suffered, and then they are surprised when finally the Palestinians “threw the bums out” and elected Hamas? Then you heard squeals and howling of “outrage” all the way to the supposedly democracy advocating White House. The average Palestinian family has been looted every which way imaginable, and everyone has been “in on it,” including the USA and Israel. And then people wonder when they continue to despair and adopt “any port in a storm.”

My sixth point is about the terminology “Zionist entity.” Westerners and the Israelis view the use of this term by Muslims as a slur, just like the term crusaders. Diplomats need to not be so simplistic and understand, just as I explained crusader, the nuance and origins of the term. Muslims use the term Zionist in order to avoid using the terms “Jewish” or “Israelite,” those two terms which they have no desire to insult. Muslims share the faith history preserved in the Jewish Bible of the ancient Israelites and confirm in their own Qur’an that Judaism is one of the God believing faiths. They, correctly, observe that the secular state of Israel has a government that is neither Jewish, as in being a theocracy or state religion, or Israelite, as in mandated and structured as the Kingdom of Israel of old. Thus the Muslims who use this term are taking care not to call Israel something that they feel it is not (which is, as I explained, a faith based structure as was in the past) but to characterize it as what they think it is, which is a created construct. Israel was created, as many countries in the world have been, as a result of the end of colonialism, armed conflict and UN or other governing mandate. This makes the state of Israel, in the eyes of many, to be the “Zionist entity.” It was the Zionist political movement, in reaction to the Holocaust during World War II that resulted in the creation of a state that then became populated by immigrant Jews. I’m not making a statement as to the justification of the state of Israel either way, so I’m not being critical or “taking sides.” I’m explaining the mindset and historical facts that any diplomat needs to appreciate. When someone refers to the “Zionist entity,” sure, they are not being complimentary. But one must understand the nature of the slur in order to successful comprehend diplomatic positions.

Iran serves as an excellent example in the Zionist entity discussion. Many westerners insist on thinking that Iranians hate Jews, and when they hear Iranians use the term “Zionist entity” they think that is a slur referencing that supposed hatred. But that is not true. There is a minority Jewish population in Iran and they have a parliamentary representative who occupies the seat reserved for Jews. Whenever that representative or others state that Iranians do not hate Jews, they are accused of being brainwashed, controlled, and oppressed or, not to be indelicate, to use American slang referring to servants “the house Jew.” I mean, if you want to believe that a country hates your faith or your culture, even if that is not true, I guess it’s a free world and you can think what you want. But any of your diplomatic endeavors will of necessity go awry due to this lack of misunderstanding. “Zionist entity” is a code word that is not just a slur regarding the belief that the state of Israel is a false and artificial construct, but it also a positive validation that the speaker is not using the term “Jewish” or “Israelite” as a slur. Diplomats need to understand precisely what the parties to negotiation are actually saying and what they actually believe.

My seventh point is that when stances are misunderstood, over simplified or painted as cartoons, rather than being clarifying, greater confusion results. To use the previous example, if one insists in believing that Iran “hates Jews,” one has swept off the table multiple diplomatic options that are valid but presume that Iran does not hate Jews. Thus simplistic and erroneous thought and speech eliminate valid diplomatic options rather than make the problem easier to solve.

My eighth point is that extremist speech tends to breed more extremist speech in response. Many people are outraged by what the President of Iran says about the Holocaust. But if you were experienced diplomats who understand human nature, you’d recognize that “pressing buttons” is a common reaction to being characterized in cartoon terms one’s self. If people are going to insist that one is a “Jew hater” when one is not, one loses motivation to defend the accuracy of what you do believe, and it is common to respond by shrugging and pressing some buttons in return. Genuine diplomats recognize that and put it in their proper context. As a diplomatic pointer that I may give to those who are outraged by comments such as questioning the Holocaust. It is diplomatically a sign of weakness and insecurity to obsess over and freak out about a statement that one knows is untrue. Every poker player knows that if your opponent stops the game to tell you that your mother wears combat books and is a linebacker on the Green Bay Packers, that you do not stop the game to get “proof” that your mother does not wear combat boots and that she is not a hefty linebacker for an American football team. And you do not obsess during the rest of the game with thinking that your opponent “really believes” that your hefty combat boot wearing mamma spends her Sundays playing on the gridiron. I try to think back to the last time I observed a genuine deft diplomat on the public stage and I must confess, I really cannot think of any recently. The Americans in particular seem so eager to get into tit-for-tat name calling while actually holding their “diplomatic” portfolios that it is just pathetic.

My ninth and final point, for this particular blogging, is that diplomats must avoid using bad or otherwise inexplicable behavior as “input” to unrelated situations being negotiated without fully understanding its context. Here I am referring to the relationships between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Westerners observe outbreaks of horrible violence and merciless cruelty between these groups as somehow being informative of the character of the people and the faith in general. That sounds like a powerful argument that no one can refute, that surely there is something “wrong” with a faith where the believers of different sects can bomb each other’s shrines and mosques, torture civilians, murder children, and describe them as unbelievers. However, here is the danger of drawing a cultural conclusion from those events. If an observer had arrived on earth for the first time in the 1970’s and 1980’s and their only exposure to Christian Protestants and Catholics was to be Northern Ireland, what would they “learn” and conclude? They would see Protestants and Catholics do unspeakable things to each other. If they left earth at that point and told their colleagues what they saw, what valid conclusions could they have taken back with them based on witnessing what came to be called “The Troubles?” Likewise diplomats must take great care to not draw broad based conclusions when they witness terrible sectarian violence among Muslims. It is factual information that must be considered in context (and indeed was not considered by the Americans at ALL when they invaded Iraq, to the woe and detriment to all), where one knows that the potential for such a conflict exists, just as it did in fact exist between Protestants and Catholics in the power keg of Northern Ireland. Diplomats constantly “mine” for information and perspectives that are fully informed by the context and the factors that could precipitate those conditions, but they are very cautious about sweeping generalities of culture and character, which would in the large part be proven disastrously wrong.

Well, I hope that you, dear readers, have found my thoughts here to be helpful. I feel I must make some sort of joke about being a diplomat with an invisible and very low paying portfolio, ha.

I give President Elect Obama an A+ press conference

I think he did great. I listened to it on the radio, since I don't have a TV, so I can't comment on his suit and necktie, as I would like to (I have a great fashion interest in the neckties that men wear, and have enjoyed shopping for them for my ex's).

In my opinion President Elect Obama was thoughtful, deliberate and constrained in his statements, as well he should be since the press always pushes politicians to go farther than appropriate. Conservatives seem to expect that he make statements that one would make after a coup d'etat, LOL, rather than after his first briefing during the transition while there is obviously a still sitting and active President and Congress. If one listened carefully he did make a few interesting points of substance, just the right amount.

And he was droll! Readers know that I admire humor that is droll, and that requires a deft touch. So on both substance and humor I give him an A+.

Political tutorial: Part 2 Liberalism

Here is the tutorial about what it means to be a true liberal. I hope that you have read the Part 1 tutorial about being a conservative since I will reference the same concepts and analogies.


A genuine liberal is content with the faith structure, the government structure and the economic principles of his or her country. Thus in the United States that profile would be a liberal who believes in and loves America, validating that it is a nation of believers (though belief is not required), that it is a republic that is informed by democracy (the United States is not a democracy) and that the capitalism which fuels the economy is a valid and good model for this country. So, actually, a genuine liberal starts out with endorsing the same principles as a conservative regarding being in approval of the goodness of his or her country and its people. If the liberal does not believe in the goodness of the country and its people, then he or she is not a liberal but an alienated revolutionary. I’m not being insulting; I am helping you expand your vocabulary and understanding of people’s motivations, including your own. There is nothing wrong with being a revolutionary in the right place at the right time. For example, the United States was founded when as a colony it rebelled and had a revolution to break England’s rule of the colonies. That is why it is called the American Revolutionary War. Thus a revolution is usually called for when a genuine tyranny is in control, or when a colony has matured to the point where it seeks to break from the country in control. However, a revolutionary mindset is not called for when one seeks to extend rights within an otherwise just country. That is not only wrong but counterproductive.

Let me give the example of the American Civil War, known as the war against slavery. The southerners who believed in the continued ownership of slaves actually considered themselves justified revolutionaries. Why? They thought that the Federal government was taking away from them a “right,” which was the right to continue having slaves. So they thought they were noble, just as were the Revolutionary soldiers who created America by breaking from England, but in their case thinking that by breaking from the USA federation and forming their own states that they were retaining rights. This is why it is important to understand the difference between a revolutionary and a true liberal, and why I have to “back into” a definition of true liberalism by first showing what it is NOT. Liberals and conservatives, even though they did not call themselves that, were the ones to fight and defeat slavery in the United States. It was liberalism that identified and stimulated the intellectual and moral impulse to rid the country of slavery, and it was in alliance with conservatives that this was in fact accomplished. Somehow in the United States from the 1960’s onward the word “revolution” and the distortion of what is really means became a self destructive erroneous model of behavior that has become glorified, at the detriment of the very causes that people think they are espousing. Remember, in order to be intellectually honest you have to look at human historic record to identify revolutions, and assess whether they were beneficial or destructive. The American Revolution against the British was moral and constructive, giving birth to a great nation. However, who would argue that the South revolting against the North in order to protect slavery was a “good thing?” Do those of you who think social change only is achieved through “revolution” think that you would have cheered those revolutionaries, the slave owning Confederates? Likewise there were revolutions that resulted in Communist governments. Somehow modern “revolutionaries” are unable to see the terrible fallout of such unjust revolutions, regardless of the obvious and measurable outcomes (Stalin and his murder of millions in concentration camps, for example. Nothing the czars did was as bad as that, ultimately. Look also at Pol Pot in Cambodia and explain how that was a “good” revolution).

So the past two generations have been particularly brainwashed and “pumped up” by thinking that one must “fight for one’s rights” and “got to revolution.” They never see the difference between being a liberal advocate for rights and being a destructive and ultimately self destructive, “revolutionary.” Believe me, I saw them in my time, as they put on their berets and pose in front of the mirror thinking they look like “Che G,” yet have no idea about how to work “within the system” (a term they distained) in order to achieve what they wanted and even more.

Let’s use the analogy I presented in the Part 1 conservative blog post, where we had met our vegetarian conservative. Our vegetarian conservative valued the delicious and nutritious salad, and was cautious about the addition of new ingredients or the salad dressing, using discernment and good taste when he or she did make those decisions. What is our vegetarian liberal like? Now, here I am going to describe a genuine and true liberal, not a pseudo liberal, as most are today. A genuine liberal shares the same valuing of the salad as does the vegetarian conservative. In fact, the genuine liberal enjoys his or her salad so much that he or she wants to be sure that everyone else who wants or needs one can obtain one that is just as good. Thus, underlying all true liberalism is an active sense of “social justice.” This does not mean that the vegetarian conservative does not also want many people to also have salads. But the vegetarian conservative tends to focus on the kitchen where the salad is produced; making sure that there is enough for everyone who seeks it out. The vegetarian conservative does not tend to look around and identify who is in want or need of the salad. The vegetarian liberal is a restless soul who tends to look around to see who needs or wants the salad, but does not have it.

So how does the true vegetarian liberal feel? The vegetarian liberal loves his or her salad and thinks that it is so wonderful that all should have access to the same quality salad. The vegetarian true liberal does not turn against salad and hate it because it is not available to all. The vegetarian true liberal does not take salad away from someone else and put it in front of the one who lacked it, saying that is “fair.” And the vegetarian true liberal does not insult the producers of the salad, either those who went before us or the ones who are producing the salads now. The vegetarian true liberal is a “nudge,” to use a Yiddish term, where the liberal identifies a social justice need (such as the need for more people to receive their own equal qualities salad) and then nags the vegetarian conservative to find a way to make that done. Liberalism is frosting on the cake of conservatism; they are absolutely not in opposition.

Modern liberalism has developed a very unhealthy and unproductive rage. For some reason in modern times liberalism has lost its modesty and became “revolutionary elitist. “ Liberals used to be very humble souls, grateful for the goodness of what they have, and gently seeking to make the same goodness available to others. It was not for nothing that Hubert Humphrey was called “The Happy Warrior.” True liberals value and love what they have and seek to identify what we used to call the “disenfranchised” in order to bring them into the franchise, because it is good in there. Rather than hating the country or system that produced so much goodness, true liberals seek to bring more into the fold of enjoying the goodness. It is the techniques where the disenfranchised are brought into the fold where true conservatives and true liberals may have their legitimate disagreement, and that is where I had expected this country to evolve to at this point, rather than devolving into total meanness and stupidity of discourse and deed as it has. For example, I’ve pointed out in previous posts that the founders and original beneficiaries of the Civil Rights movement wanted the same thing that everyone else did: freedom, equality, a good home, a good job and a happy family. The elders, the ancestors, of modern Afro Americans loved their country and wanted to be enfranchised. They didn’t hate. These remarkable people didn’t hate even when they had every reason to, when they were oppressed in actual slavery. You can read many stories about slaves who escaped, who then worked at jobs to earn money that they then used to buy the freedom of their families. They did not hate the country and they did not hate the system. They fought and bought their way into being enfranchised. They did not view their children as a “burden,” but a blessing, even in those worst of times. For example, they struggled to get into the armed services, even serving in segregated units, not to have a “job,” but because they believed in their country as flawed as it was in regard to their treatment, and sought enfranchisement, not “revolution.”

Now here is where maniac conservatives have both consciously and unconsciously honed the hatred of many modern “liberals.” I alluded to maniac liberals in my previous Part 1 posting, and now I will allude to maniac conservatives. Maniac conservatives have a smugness and hardness at heart that can be described as follows. A vegetarian maniac conservative would like to wave around in front of the disenfranchised a serving of salad, saying, “Mm, mm this sure is good! If you worked hard you could have one of these too!” And then they would turn their backs and call themselves wonderful defenders of conservatism and capitalism. Such behavior is always outrageous and I well understand liberals who feel incited. Maniac conservatives like to bait the “have nots.” Maniac liberals, then, in response, want to tear down all that is good, like cutting the baby in half, to be “fair” and in retaliation. Unfortunately, rather than having reached a time where true conservatives and true liberals work together, disagreeing only on their methods, the dialogue is based on the rage generated by the self destructive energies of the maniac conservatives and maniac liberals, who are the puppet string pullers behind the scenes.

Another definition of a true liberal is a person who has a firm faith and moral ethos foundation. Without that liberals tend to be rudderless and reactive. That is one of the downfalls of genuine liberalism, their abandonment of traditional faith and moral strictures. Genuine liberals are enfranchised in their faith and moral heritage; they do not “invent a faith” as they trundle through life. Thus “new age” and other occult beliefs have taken root like weeds in the ethos of many liberals, and thus have led them totally astray. This is why they tend to make up out of the air ideas of “new rights” and “new grievances” as they stumble through life, untrue to their own heritage and the wisdom of those who came before. Modern liberals “make it up as they go along.” How have equal rights and civil rights gone, therefore, from being free and being able to support a family to having under age sex, tearing and tossing the baby out of the womb like a used snot rag, and then watching booty shake in your music video? I’m being serious. True liberals do not take their vegetarian salads and show children how to rub the pieces up their orifices while filming themselves on the cell phone. But all modern liberals care about is thinking of a “new right” or a “new outrage” that always seem to share one thing in common, which is sullying and destroying the actual foundational “salad.”

A genuine vegetarian liberal wants to expand the kitchen and expand the factory and expand the access so all who need and want the good high quality salad can obtain it. A false vegetarian liberal thinks of ways to roll the pieces of the salad in the dirt, to “get back at” those who created it in the first place, and to teach those who did not have the salad that “mm, mm, this dirt covered salad that WE invented and provided to you sure is good.” A genuine vegetarian liberal expands access to the salad and promotes peace of mind. A false vegetarian liberal makes sure that the stomach remains churning in “indignation” and rage, even as the person who had been denied the salad finally receives it. When a false liberal hands out a “right” or a “gift” to the disenfranchised, they ought to to hand out the little purple pill at the same time, because rather than promoting peace of mind and prosperity, they promote angst and continuing mental discord.

For that reason I stopped thinking of myself, personally, as a liberal many years ago.

Liberals have forgotten that they are supposed to expand the base that conservatism built, not warp or destroy it so that everyone has less of worth and worthiness in the end.

I hope that you find this helpful.

Pop culture supplemental material to Part I politics

Here is some “modern culture” supplemental information to what I wrote about in Tutorial 1 about conservatism. I mentioned that a great social upheaval that is, at the heart of it, an error is the demonizing of the concept that good people are “protective” and have “something to protect.” While protective parents, community leaders, bosses and governments were once viewed as ideals, in the grasping of a hedonistic “anything goes” “ideal” during the sexual and drug revolution of the 1960’s, someone who was protective became demonized into being “oppressors.” I have excerpted from a Bob Dylan song from the time where you can see what I am saying was actually codified in the so called “voice of the generation.”

http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/My-Back-Pages-lyrics-Bob-Dylan/7ECC3BFD1A56ED8D4825696900282D21

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

Great… not only did that fresh and “enlightened” generation demonize being protective as being the result of “deception,” but they also first declared “Good and bad, I define these terms.” Really? Really? I was there and trust me; no one was defining “good and bad” in the 1960’-70’s in any wise or responsible way.

Now, I was a freshman in college in 1971 and one of my dorm roommates, an Italian Catholic girl, just loved Bob Dylan. I can still imagine her clutching to her chest his “complete book of lyrics” (I seem to remember it as bright pink) much more fondly than the Bible. I, frankly, loathed Bob Dylan, except for one or two songs, including the one I quote from here. Yes, I really like the song “My Back Pages” even though I totally disagree with its premise. Mature people are able to do that. They can like one or two songs without giving the conceptual basis of the lyrics or the writer or singer a “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.” But she just loved, loved, loved him, and also clutched her book by Malcolm X “Soul on Ice” just to prove that she was “with it” and “hip” and “not just some white girl” and “down for the struggle.” She had no clue what she was actually reading or listening to, but that was the way it was. And in fact, as I’ve written about her before, she had a secret abortion that freshman year, and I stood by her, as friends do, even though I know she was doing a wrong thing. Everyone was doing a wrong thing in those times, and it only got worse now. Why? Because people think “having something to protect” is bad and deceptive, and they think that God is all “relative” and “Good and bad, I define these terms.” When it comes to having an ethos and a genuine humanitarian conscience, our country had a miscarriage in the 1960’s-1970’s, and its not because of the “oppressors.”

Anyway, I thought you’d enjoy seeing a pop culture reference to the very phenomenon that I described in my tutorial. By the way, yes, I did recently review Bob Dylan’s album. He of course went through his Christian born again conversion many years ago, and I think that has served him well. I’ve also read one of his recent autobiographical books. I remain troubled, however, by Christian evangelical and “born again” experiences because they emphasize individual salvation and de-emphasize the body of Christ of the union of faithful which, troubled as it is, the Catholic Church maintains. Thus there is not a continuum of a sense of collective responsibility among evangelicals and “born agains,” because all they emphasize is emulating, according to their individual perception, Christ, and they tend to view salvation as kind of a conga line that goes under the limbo pole, and each person “makes it” and is “saved,” or not. That is not a socially responsible or ultimately salvatory mindset, as reading the ENTIRE works of Jesus and the Apostles reveals. So when he was “born again,” half of me was of course glad, while the other half rolled my eyes. Being “born again” is a handy way to focus on one’s self, figuring that now “I’m good with God,” while letting one’s self off the hook for having been a communal bad example, and working against the true body of the Church who attempts to conserve the greater good.

That is one reason we have the abortion debacle that we have today. I have written about this before, and will do so again when I write the tutorial about liberals. Liberals have an excellent nose for hypocrisy. I was furious throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s (and remain so today, though obviously the damage is done) that evangelicals, “born agains” and “fundamentalists” break their own arms trying to pat themselves on the back as being the defender of the unborn babies, of being anti-abortion, while at the same time not doing one damn thing about putting their money where their mouth is and sponsoring children to be born or at least adopted using their own alms. For twenty years and more they attacked not only those who have abortions but also the Catholic Church, who is the place where adoption agencies and orphanages used to thrive. Never once did I see an evangelical step forward and stop an abortion by paying to bring the pregnant woman into their fold, to have the child, and to either raise the child or surrender it for adoption. So, as I have written before on this blog, that is why I am not too very impressed with “conversion” experiences, because I know, and I can tell you for a fact, that humans need to focus on a continual relationship with God and walking a just path within God’s entire community, and not glad happy slapping one’s back at having “made it” under the “limbo pole” of salvation. It is not too difficult for me to envision that procurers of abortions are side by side in hell with those who claimed such moral greatness in opposing abortion, but who never donated a dollar toward actually raising a child who would otherwise have been aborted. Trust me, that’s a very hard lesson many will learn when it is too late. They’ll pour money into political campaigns (and thus enrich lawyers and the media), but not actually bring the pregnant stranger into their home. This was particularly true in the terrible 1970’s and 1980’s, when even the quaint places for “wayward girls” fell away from support, so there was not an iota of encouragement from either side to have and financially support a live and living baby.

*Fuming* as I always do when recalling those times and looking at how its only gotten worse and not better.

Politics Tutorial: Part I, the Conservative

Politics Tutorial Part I: Conservative

I am going to explain here what true conservatism means. So this will be a tutorial to provide an accurate definition of a “conservative.” I will turn my attention to liberalism and being a “liberal” in part two. I always have young people on my mind, hoping this will be of benefit to them in particular, as they have been raised and educated in very ambiguous and erroneous times, thus they have been taught simply wrong definitions and historical perspectives of both concepts, of both conservatism and liberalism. But I also have to address the very followers and “believers” of each “side” too, because I have observed that you don’t even know what it actually means to claim to be a conservative, or to claim to be a liberal. Both sides have totally lost their integrity of cause as a result, since you claim to be what you no longer remember it is in truth. A kind analogy is like this. Everyone has probably seen a little boy, let’s say a three or four year old, who one day, in imitation of his father, tells someone “I’m a man too!” We all smile, and even maybe call him “Little Man” as a nickname, but while he is a male, and he is a little boy, he is not yet a man, nor does he even know all the fullness of definition of what it is to be a “man.” Likewise I see even the party leaders calling themselves “liberal” or “conservative,” and they don’t have a clue as to what that designation and position really means, no matter how much they think they are emulating their historical predecessors. So I hope to bring a strong light of clarity to this problem. Let’s start with conservatives.


The word “conservative” comes from the verb “to conserve.” For example, the early environmentalist aka “green” movement was called “conservation.” By the way, the “politically correct” movement in speech from using the term “conservationist” to “environmentalist” was an early sign of losing comprehension of one’s own terminology and implied actions, and has been at the root of much of the problems of radicalizing the “environmentalist” movement. Ironically by changing from “conservationists” to “environmentalists,” the result boomeranged to the opposite of what they wanted. But that is a subject for another tutorial. Back in the early days of the “conservationist” movement (of which I was a part and an observer), the philosophical “sorting out” that we did was to decide whether we were “conservationists” or “preservationists.” Everyone agreed that the difference is that conservationists do “conserve,” as in “protect” or “accumulate” or “judiciously utilize” while preservationists “preserve” in the sense that they will not use what they have, but maintain it in its “original state.” Thus those who decided to work in the new area of designating historic buildings and areas and restoring them chose, correctly, the term “historic preservationists.” Historic preservationists identify and restore buildings or even neighborhoods to how they appeared at a particular meaningful time, and then they defend that restoration against change or degradation. Conservationists correctly realized that they could only rarely be “preservationists,” since the earth is, by definition, the place where humans and animals live, where progress takes place, and change happens, including the hopefully judicious and prudent use of natural resources. So here is the important point. Many people think that to be a “conservative” means to be “frozen in time.” That is not true. A conservative is a realistic who embraces change, but only while “conserving” the base on which the change would be implemented. In politics this means that a conservative is a person who protects the basis of the, in our case, American way of life and the American nation and mandate as a whole. In lifestyle a conservative is a person who protects his family and livelihood. He does not do this by sealing the family up in a bomb shelter; that would be a preservationist LOL. A conservative man or woman has as their primary purpose the protection and thriving growth of their core family, their core beliefs and their core method of making a living.


So a conservative is constantly concerned with and is constantly checking all proposed “changes” against a mental evaluation of whether that change is consistent and protective of the good foundation upon which the change is proposed. A vegetarian conservative, for example, would think carefully about what salad dressing he or she is adding to their carefully constructed salad. A vegetarian conservative understands that the nutrition and the goodness of their meal is the salad, constructed to their taste using wholesome ingredients. The “change” is the salad dressing, and a vegetarian conservative considers carefully what dressing they add to their salad, seeking only to improve upon the salad and not to harm or ruin it. So a really conservative vegetarian might cautiously add oil and vinegar, enough for flavor and moisture, but not to add calories, fat, artificial ingredients, or worst of all, a repellent taste. A kind of borderline conservative vegetarian might dump huge globs of high fat ranch dressing, making it delicious if he or she only wants to taste the dressing and not the salad ingredients LOL. They are still a conservative, even then, because they still eat the nutritious salad, valuing it, even though they just taste and calorie bombed it LOL.

This is why a political conservative is constantly checking any proposed political change, no matter how worthy that change is, against the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and also ways of handling unintentional consequences and fallout of even good changes. Suppose that the vegetarian conservative decides to add beets to the salad. Would he or she just drop the glass jar of beets into the middle of the salad? Would he or she buy a whole fresh beet, and then throw it unwashed and unpeeled right into the middle of the salad? Um, no, unless the conservative is engaging in some sort of performance art (and conservatives tend not to make statements using absurdist style performance art). No, the vegetarian conservative washes, peels and slices the right amount of beets to enhance the salad, not to “make a point” of “change for change’s sake.” Further, the vegetarian conservative makes sure that he or she has prepared sufficient beets for their whole family or all their friends and more so, has provided alternatives for those who just cannot abide the taste of beets. This is why TRUE political conservatives constantly, consistently and carefully assess any proposed change, no matter how judicious and beneficial, against the backdrop of what they are conserving, which is the United States, its freedom, its protections, its stability and its impact on families and culture, including genuine freedom of worship.

Thus a real vegetarian conservative might drive moderate conservatives or liberals crazy while they do this assessment. A real vegetarian conservative, when presented with a newly discovered “vegetable” to “try out” is likely to do a lot of thinking and research before serving it up to his or her family. A vegetarian conservative, if given a newly found vegetable, the “zork” let’s say, by a world traveling neighbor, and being told that it cures cancer, prevents pimples and removes that excess belly fat would be very, very, VERY cautious. A vegetarian conservative would carefully consider the implications of BOTH scenarios, if the zork was indeed a new miracle food, what would be the impact of that success (might kids get addicted? would it destroy the corn industry?) or the alternative that it is not true and possibly even dangerous (thus the vegetarian conservative is glad they took the time to research and think about it before biting into it and serving it to their family or friends). Meanwhile the less understanding moderate conservative or liberal might be yelling insults at the vegetarian conservative while the vegetarian conservative is pondering, since they do not understand the sober responsibility of the vegetarian conservative. They just view it as “resistance to change” and the vegetarian conservative being “frozen in the past.” While the vegetarian conservative is evaluating the zork, the moderate conservative or liberal runs out and buys ads on the TV and Internet accusing the vegetarian conservative as being “against change” and having “issues” because they won’t immediately embrace the zork.

No matter what their party or political designation, I argue that every United States President before the last century was a conservative. Even if they had kooky ideas and took risks, each President since George Washington, up until the most recent of times, had first and foremost the “conservation” of the Republic of the United States of America as the cradle of goodness and freedom. In fact, I would argue that until recently, every American was a conservative, whether they realized it or not, especially once they reached a mature age. In fact, that was a common pithy saying when I was growing up. People always joked, and also explained, that liberalism is a youthful experiment and point of view, until they grow up and have “something to protect.” A wise middle aged conservative woman once explained that to my extremely liberal ex-husband, saying “If you had something to protect, you’d be a conservative.” Somewhere along the line, I’d say in the 1960’s, having something to protect became a dirty word. The pop psychology and depressive sex and drug culture argued that protecting is “bad” and having nothing to protect is “good.” Conservatives were demonized as being “against change.” Does that sound familiar? Conservatives are not against change. Conservatives tend to be the drivers of prudent GENUINE change that also preserves all that is good and free about the base.

You need look no further than the great President Abraham Lincoln. As every student knows Abraham Lincoln fought the Civil War on the side of “preserving the Union.” Lincoln did not invade the South in order to overthrow slavery. Lincoln opposed slavery using sound conservative principles. Lincoln refused to allow the Southern states to claim “States’ rights” in order to maintain their slavery and further Lincoln refused to allow the states to secede from the Union (in other words, break away from the United States and form a separate country) in order to maintain their slavery. See, if maniac liberals went back in time and tried to advise Lincoln in the beginning of the crisis, they would leap onto the Constitution and insult it, saying that it “should never have had slavery in the first place,” and that “the United States is a bad country” and would have agitated for actions that weaken or even destroy the base of the country, rather than using the conservative solution, which IS forceful and it IS change, but it seeks to protect the Union, not destroy it, while doing a great good. Maniac liberals would have attacked the fact that the USA was formed when slavery was a dreadful but prevalent practice, they would have attacked “states rights” as a whole, just because the seceding states sought to misuse that right, rather than use sober and deep understanding of the accurate and good basis for the country, its foundation, and reinforce the return to the Union without losing rights in the course of gaining rights. Thus Lincoln succeeded in one of the greatest changes in the history of the country, the abolition of slavery, exactly by being a conservative, who said, basically “Yes, states rights, but not those rights, and yes states rights, but not at the cost of the Union, not by fracturing our country.” Maniac liberals would have wanted the entire Constitution and States rights thrown out, and thus would neither have defeated slavery nor preserved the goodness of the nature of the United States. By the way, don’t worry, when I write about liberals I will criticize maniac conservatives too!

A genuine conservative does not need to be “schooled at Yale” or attend the correct mind expanding socials to be “smart enough.” For example, our vegetarian conservative did not have to learn how to make a healthy salad by watching a cable network, or going to a Culinary Institute. Genuine conservatives are informed by both their natural intelligence and their instincts, founded on love. Liberals love too, but I will explain the difference in the second tutorial. Genuine conservatives have an ardent love of their country and the traditional family as its basis, even if neither has been particularly kind to them in their personal life. Plenty of conservatives grew up in the school of hard knocks. The difference is that they do not feel that entitles them to be victims with a chip on their shoulder. This is because they recognize that stuff happens in life, but it is not an indictment of life, or their great country, or the importance of the family. For example, our vegetarian conservative might have a bad salad at a restaurant one day, but he or she does not now condemn all salads, or all restaurants. A genuine conservative recognizes that if he or she had freedom curtailed unfairly, or they grew up in a sad family situation, that is all the more reason to “protect” and “conserve” the right of everyone else to have a different experience, a positive and fruitful experience. Now, the “how” this is accomplished is where authentic conservatism has come unraveled and warped in modern times, resulting in jingoistic knee jerk reactions by many modern so called conservatives toward genuine suffering. I deplore modern conservatives who do not seem to understand compassion. That is not how it used to be, even in times when social services were absent. True conservatives had genuine social compassion, and they used to be wise and prudent about how to achieve it. I cannot say that they have that knowledge now. This does not make liberals “correct.” It means that there is a huge gaping hole in America that both sides are worsening, not bettering. Not too long ago even self proclaimed liberals were conservatives. I sometimes think that Hubert Humphrey was the last true liberal, who was a conservative who promoted change and social justice. Ah, yes, that is my hint about the definition of a true liberal.

I hope that you find this useful.