CommenTerry

The Five Most Deplorable Wastes of Human Life

God created life and therefore it is precious. It should not be taken away without just cause. It should not be endangered in a flippant or careless manner. It should be nurtured and protected to the fullest extent of the law. All too often, though, human life is treated as expendable by governments and average citizens alike. Convenience, pleasure, revenge, power, politics, and even outright indifference sometimes get a higher priority than human life. Due to those kinds of attitudes, human life is wasted on a daily basis. Every waste of human life is shameful, but there are five particularly deplorable ways in which it is destroyed. I would like to briefly discuss each of them.

(1) Abortion. If abortion is not a deplorable waste of human life, there aren't any. Obviously, there are exceptions like cases of rape, non-consensual incest, and situations in which the life or health of the mother is at stake. Abortion for any other reason is nothing but legalized murder. No, convenience is not a justifiable reason for snuffing out the lives of unborn children before they get a chance to take their first breath.

Feminists, Planned Parenthood, N.O.W., liberals, and those who are too spineless to speak up for what is right can call it a "woman's choice" issue all they want, but it doesn't change the sad reality. Yes, I do believe women should have control over their own bodies, including reproductive rights, but that's not the issue here. In fact, that whole argument is a red herring. Women can choose to not get pregnant. Whether through abstaining from sex or using reliable methods of birth control, it's their choice. Taking another human life, on the other hand, should not be a choice that's available to any individual in a civilized society.

(2) Unnecessary wars. There's nothing sadder than reading or hearing the names of young, vital, and talented young men and women who have been cut in down in the prime of their lives in a war that did not have to be fought.

Sometimes wars are unavoidable. Often, there are evil aggressors in the world who won't respond to anything but brute force. In those cases, not fighting a war could ultimately cost more lives than actually fighting it.

However, many times there are viable alternatives to war, such as diplomatic maneuvers and containment. No war should ever be fought until all of those options have been exhausted. Unfortunately, there are leaders all over the world who are, at times, determined to go to war, regardless of the other available options. Political ambition or the drive to enhance their popularity at home often prompts leaders to send their young citizens off to war. Greed and the drive to seize more territory are motivating factors for other heads of state. Others are driven by bogus intelligence and unsubstantiated fear into fighting preemptive wars. Still others are well-intentioned individuals who honestly believe their war efforts are making the world a safer place. They seem to forget that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."

(3) Executions of non-violent offenders. Many countries around world impose the ultimate sanction on those found guilty of crimes that range from drug possession to adultery. Even many countries that have never been guilty of this practice sometimes appear to condone it.

I can understand any country wanting to show its displeasure with certain types of crimes, even though they may not involve violence. I can also appreciate the fact that even some types of non-violent crimes are particularly heinous and that there are requirements for strong deterrents to them.

However, committing any act of violence (execution, torture, etc.) against a non-violent offender is completely unethical and immoral and never justified. Non-violent offenders, unlike many of their violent counterparts, can usually be rehabilitated. If justice, not rehabilitation, is the goal, then they can be sufficiently punished with prison time.

(4) HIV/AIDS. Deaths from this disease are so regrettable because they are so preventable. The extremely sad part is that there are innocent victims like children and those receiving blood transfusions, who contract this pernicious disease through no fault of their own.

While those who get it as a result of their own risky behavior deserve our sympathy, they are not innocent victims, despite what the liberal media might have us think. No one has to get HIV/AIDS. The spread of the disease could be completely halted if people would only start making the correct decisions, i.e., to not do illegal drugs and to postpone sexual activity until marriage. Yes, for those who cannot control their own desires, "safe sex" should be emphasized. However, it is never as foolproof as abstinence.

Now, granted, in some third world countries, many people lack the education required to make these decisions. We should be willing to spend the necessary money to make sure they get that education, if it will help abolish the scourge of this disease from our world. However, I can't help believing that most people know better, but just don't care. The fleeting pleasure of immoral sexual activity and illicit drugs is more important to them than their own health and the health of the world community.

(5) Drunk/irresponsible driving. Everyone makes mistakes while driving (or doing anything else). People will occasionally become distracted, momentarily look away from the road, fail to properly monitor their mirrors, etc. Sometimes those mistakes have deadly consequences. However, I don't consider deaths from the occasional and inevitable mistake to be among the most shameful wastes of human life.

What I'm talking about here is intentional and/or habitual behavior that leads the loss of life. People continue to get behind the wheel after drinking too much, despite being warned over and over again about the dangers. Others just have to drive at least ten miles per hour over the posted speed limit, no matter what. They don't seem to understand the fact that how they arrive at their destination is more important than when they get there. Still others feel the need to constantly drive aggressively and take unnecessary risks. People who practice those kinds of behavior are accidents waiting to happen. Deaths resulting from those accidents are so lamentable because they could all be avoided with a little patience and common sense.

The NFL Needs a New Tie-Breaker

After enduring that disgusting final weekend of the 2004 NFL regular season, I came to the conclusion that a new tie-breaker is needed. How a team performs during the final weekend should be the first tie-breaker, with all the current tie-breakers falling in line after that. A team that won its final game would hold the first tie-breaker advantage against a team they're tied with that lost its final game. If they both lost, both won, or both tied their final game, then the current tie-breakers would take effect in the order that they currently exist. That would accomplish at least three of positive things.

First, a team with a one game lead for a playoff spot, headed into the final weekend, would have more difficulty "backing in" to the playoffs the way Minnesota did that year. By all rights, New Orleans should have made the playoffs instead of the Vikings. They finished with identical records. However, the Saints won their final game, while the Vikings lost theirs. In fact, under the NFL's current crazy tie-breaker system, the Vikings' loss, while ultimately not damaging their own playoff hopes, ironically was one of the major factors that kept the Saints out of the playoffs! Under my proposed rule, the Saints would have been in and the Vikings would have been out.

Second, it would keep more playoff berths/positions open going into the final weekend and maintain more excitement and suspense all the way to the end. Currently, a team with a one game lead for a playoff berth, bye, home field advantage, and/or seeding can have that position clinched before the final weekend if they own the tie-breaker over the team(s) they lead. Under my proposal, that would not be possible. That position would still be open through the final weekend of the season. For example, the Pittsburgh Steelers would not have clinched the home field advantage in the AFC in 2004 until they beat Buffalo in the final weekend, instead of having it already clinched going into that game.

Third, it would also keep teams with one game leads from having de-facto "byes" during the final weekend. Take Indianapolis for example. The Colts' game against Denver that weekend was meaningless to them, even though it meant everything to the Broncos. Although the Colts had only a one game lead over San Diego for the number three seed in the AFC, they owned the tie-breaker over the Chargers. I don't care what anyone says, the Colts, with their lack of effort, effectively rolled over and allowed the Broncos to win, which wasn't fair to Jacksonville and Baltimore, the teams competing with the Broncos for the final AFC playoff spot. Under my proposal, the Colts would have had to win to maintain their third seed in the playoffs.

The Counterproductive Estimated Tax Requirement

The requirement to pay estimated taxes on capital gains (along with its associated penalties for non-compliance) is counterproductive. It hurts both the taxpayer and the government and should be abolished.

Here's an illustration of what I mean. Let's say a man in the 35% tax bracket incurred a $1000 tax bill in the first quarter on an investment that earns him 20% a year. He could go ahead and send that money in to the IRS by the first quarter deadline to avoid a 5% penalty for the final three quarters of the year. This penalty would be $37.50 ($1000 x .05 x .75). Or he could go ahead and keep that money drawing the 20% for the last three quarters ($1000 x .20 x .75) for a total of $150. Of course, he would have to pay the $37.50 penalty when he files and the taxes on his additional $150 gains would be $52.50. That would still leave him with $60 ($150 - $37.50 - 52.50) that he wouldn't have had by just paying the estimated taxes. Even if there is a subsequent penalty on the $150 totaling $5.63 ($150 x .05 x .75), he would still be left with $54.37.

In the example above, many people would go ahead and send in the $1000 by the first quarter deadline in order to avoid the penalty. The rules encourage them to do this, but by doing so, they are cheating themselves and the government out of money. If the estimated tax requirement for capital gains were abolished, the man in my illustration would end up keeping an additional $97.50 ($150 - $52.50) and the government would get an additional $52 in tax revenue by letting him hold on to his money longer. In addition, the rules associated with estimated taxes are way too complicated and cause major inconveniences for taxpayers and IRS employees alike.

With all of that in mind, I so no reason why this requirement as it applies to capital gains should not be eliminated as soon as possible. Is the government so rich that can routinely turn away the extra funds? Does it just like to limit the earning ability of its citizens? Or does Congress just make a habit out of shooting itself in the foot? I think we all know the answer to that last question. Therefore, don't expect any changes to estimated tax rules any time soon.

An Alan Smithee Letter

A letter about insurance reform that I wrote to the editor of the local newspaper appeared in that publication yesterday morning. However, it did not appear in quite the way that I wrote it. I understand the fact that this newspaper reserves the right to edit letters for "accuracy, brevity, clarity, legality, and taste." They print that fact on their editorial page every day and I have had no issues with their edits of my letters in the past. 

However, I have a problem with one of them this time. While there were several edits done to this particular letter as well, the problem I'm referring to is with a change made to the last prepositional phrase of the last sentence of the letter. 

Here's that sentence as I originally wrote it: "This requirement shouldn't pose any greater risk for the insurance companies than that current model as the percentage of sickly people in any large group should remain relatively constant, regardless of whether they work for just one company or a thousand."

Now, here's how that last propositional phrase appeared in the newspaper: "...for a small company or a large one."

This is more than just a subtle or syntactical change - it changed the meaning and impact of what I was trying to convey. Besides, it causes that whole sentence not to many any sense. The pronoun "they" refers back to the large group of people. How could a large group of people work for a small company? If they did, that company, by definition, could not be small. That's an oxymoron like "the candidate from the independent party" or "I paid toll to drive on the freeway." As a result, my entire letter was dumbed down to a sixth-grade level.

It's too bad my name was attached to it. In the condition in which it was printed, I would rather that this letter had been attributed to Alan Smithee. For those not familiar with that common practice in Hollywood, a director of a given film will occasionally disown it and ascribe the directorship of that film to the fictitious name Alan Smithee. A director will do this, dubbing it "an Alan Smithee film" if, for some reason, that film gets edited in such a way that the final product is not something he wants his name associated with.

All of this reminds me of why I started my blog in the first place - to have to my opinions delivered unfiltered and unedited to the world.

Random Rants and Raves #58

Those who tell everything they know always have a lot of explaining to do.       

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Some people are always looking for the easy way out, even when there is none; others will always do the right thing, even when there's every excuse to take the easy way out.

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Instead of spending time planning for our future or living in the present, many of us waste far too much ruminating over the past.

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Ice through the door means water on the floor! 

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Wouldn't it be interesting to have a president with the last name of Newcomb? Or Vito? 

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When something bad happens to someone, we tend to be more sympathetic if it's something that we think could happen to us. If we don't think it could, then we find it very tempting to withhold our sympathy.

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It's nice to feel needed, but no one wants to feel completely depended upon.

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I'm a firm believer that churches ought to sponsor activities especially for married couples. That way, they'll feel included too.

Are Natural Disasters Punishment for Wicked Living?

During every hurricane season without fail, I'll hear someone say something to the following effect: "It's no wonder we are having so many devastating storms; God is demonstrating His great displeasure at the fact that people have become so wicked." The sad part is that most of the people who say such things are very sincere Christians who actually believe what they are saying to be true. However, such uninformed conjecture is about as far from the truth as it can get.

   

You see, there are three main problems with the presumption that God uses natural disasters to punish humans for sin. One of them is biblical and the other two are derived from reason and just plain common sense.

 

The biblical contradiction to the idea that God would use storms as punishment for sin can be found in Matthew 5:45, which states the following: "That ye may be the children of your Father which is heaven; for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust" (KJV). This verse should make it quite obvious that God sends good and bad weather to everyone, regardless of the goodness or evilness of its recipients.

 

The second problem with the whole idea of God punishing sin with the use of natural disasters is the obvious randomness with which they occur. They occur in places where the majority of the people are practicing Christians just as often as they occur in places where the majority of the people are hostile to Christianity. This is consistent with the general fact that bad things often happen to good people, while good things often happen to evil people. That's just the way things work here on earth. Saying that God sends storms and other disasters because of wicked living is inconsistent with everything we can observe on a daily basis and flies in the face of logic and reason.

 

The third problem with the storms-as-punishment-for-evil mentality is the simple fact that, no matter how bad a given weather-related disaster is, we can usually check the record book and find one that was much worse years ago. If the world is growing more and more wicked, shouldn't calamities of nature be growing more and more fierce and intense? Wouldn't the record books have to be re-written every year or so? This is simply not the case, as we can almost always find records of worse disasters from the past, when there was supposedly less evil in the world.

 

A Common Sense Approach to Religious Freedom

Down through the centuries and all over the world, the battle for religious freedom has been a bitter one. The United States has been no exception. Although most of those who founded this country came here seeking religious freedom, it has been a source of contention from the beginning and remains so today. There are fanatics on both sides of this issue. On one side, we have those who think their religious freedom is being violated if they are not allowed to force their religion down everyone else's throat. One the other side, we have those who believe it's their inalienable right to never be exposed to any element of religious life. Both extremes are wrong. Government should be neither hostile to any religion nor an enforcer of it. Instead, those who possess common sense should be capable of assenting to a happy medium.

Contrary to popular belief, the phrase, "separation of church and state", cannot be found in the U.S. Constitution. That phrase is misleading anyway as many people interpret it as "protection of the state from the church." Most of our Founding Fathers frequently, and often publicly, expressed their faith in a Creator, so it should be obvious to anyone that they never intended to banish expressions of religious faith from the public square. Any separation of church and state that they had in mind was to serve only four major functions: (1) allow people to freely practice the religion of their choice (or no religion at all) without interference from the state, (2) forbid any religion or denomination  from being set up as the "state church", (3) prevent the state from having the church do its bidding, and (4) protect the church from being regulated and having its practices dictated to it by the state. From these principles, I think we can derive a common sense approach to religious freedom.

Cur common sense approach should allow for verbal religious expression and for the display of religious symbols and materials in public and government venues. Although all religions should have equal access and rights regarding those expressions and displays, the majority religion would obviously have a major advantage here. But so be it. No one would be hurt or forced to practice any religion against his or her will. If anyone is offended, that's their problem. No one has a right to not be offended, although many people think they have this right. Being offended once in a while is the price one has to pay for living in a free and open society. If someone has a major problem with that, they are free to leave this country any time they wish.

Our common sense approach should also allow for limited amounts of prayer and religious teaching in public schools. It should not be the focus of any public school, but it should be permitted and based on the religion favored by the majority of the parents in a given school district. The majority of parents could opt for no prayer or religious teaching at all in a given school district, if they so desired. All parents would have the option of not having their child (children) participate in or be present for the prayer and religious teaching. Although the teaching of evolution would still be mandatory, creationism could be taught as part of any religious curriculum.

Another tenet of our common sense approach would be to make sure that all religious speech, no matter how offensive or "hateful" some people might find it, is always safeguarded. We do not want to follow Canada's lead of coding political correctness into law and banning some forms of religious speech. For example, in some parts of Canada, a person can be fined or jailed for proclaiming that homosexual activity is sinful. Too many people don't want to hear sin called sin anymore, but we must make sure that people always have the right to condemn anything that their religion says is wrong. This even includes the right of a Muslim, for example, to denounce our culture. As long as someone doesn't yell "fire" in a crowded theater, explicitly threaten anyone, or call for someone else to do harm, their speech should be protected.

Another element of our common sense approach to religious freedom would be to prohibit any laws (1) that are based solely on religious beliefs and (2) that punish those who do not follow them. For example, laws ordering that stores be closed on Sunday should be banned. Now, just because some law correlates with someone's religious belief doesn't mean it should be invalidated. Many valid laws, even those against murder, correspond to religious commandments. What I'm talking about are laws that exist expressly for furthering a religion. The state has no right to enforce anyone's religious beliefs, even those of the majority religion. Besides, what's the use of forcing someone to obey religious laws? Does it make them any more righteous? Does it make the community or the nation any more righteous? I don't think so.

The final component to our common sense approach would be to ensure that we protect speech or entertainment that might be offensive to any particular religion or even religion in general. Once again, no one has a right to not be offended. Many fundamentalist Christians are so outraged by anti-Christian speech or entertainment that they would like to see it banned, censored, or at least driven from the airwaves. However, if we're going to have unlimited freedom to promote our religion, then others should have unlimited freedom to demean it. If we don't allow the free exercise of anti-religious speech, we are not much better than an Islamic theocracy and we are not practitioners of true religious freedom. Besides, if one's religion can't hold up in the face of criticism, it is evidently quite weak anyway.

Insurance Reform, Not National Health Insurance

A gentleman writing a recent letter to the editor of my local newspaper thought he was making a case for national health insurance, but he actually made a case for insurance reform. He was basically ranting about the fact that small businesses and the self-employed generally do not have access to true group insurance the employees of large corporations do. So far, the insurance lobby has succeeded in putting the brakes on any attempts by legislators to rectify this situation.

   

However, we don’t need another huge government bureaucracy like national health insurance. We just need laws that force insurance companies that sell group health insurance in this country to widen its scope of availability, i.e., make it available to more entities than just large corporations.

 

Quality group insurance should be made available to groups of small businesses and the self-employed who pool their resources together in “insurance cooperatives” in much the same way that members of other cooperatives and credit units do today. Any self-employed person or small business employee who wanted to join one of these organizations and purchase group insurance should be allowed to do so without regard to the condition of their or a family member’s health. That’s the way it works for employees of big businesses.

This requirement shouldn’t pose any greater risk for the insurance companies than the current model as the percentage of sickly people in any large group should remain relatively constant, regardless of whether they work for just one company or a thousand.

Thank God for the Bill of Rights

The whole episide with what's going on right now at Guantanamo Bay makes me more thankful than ever for the Bill of Rights we enjoy as Amercan citizens. Obviously, President Bush and other government officials are doing everything they can to avoid giving those prisoners held there any right to a trial by jury or the right not be held indefinitely without being charged. This is scary because it domonstates exactly what the government, whether controlled by Republicans, Democrats, or whomever, would do to us if it could.

Don't think for one minute that our government officials wouldn't deny us those same rights if they could get away with it. For example, if it weren't for the Constitution, they would likely try to hold Americans suspected of one of any number of felonies or misdemeanors indifintely and would attempt to deny them a trial by jury. The government could come up with all kinds of reasons why people should not be extended basic civil rights, like it is doing now with the Gitmo prisoners. The Bill of Rights was written to protect us against government officials, past and present, whom our Founding Fathers knew would oppress us if given half a chance.   

America's Moral Dichotomy

I find it quite interesting that while America is in the midst of a moral decline, it is clamping down on non-violent sex offenders and men who use the services of prostitutes. At a time when adultery, cohabitation by unwed partners, and out of wedlock births are running rampant, some people are being branded with a modern-day scarlet letter and having their names and faces shamefully posted all over the newspapers and the Internet. That seems like a hypocritical dichotomy to me.

We have now decided that that there is nothing immoral, abnormal, or sinful about homosexual behavior. In fact, we do back flips to make sure we never seem the least bit "homophobic" or do anything to offend the homosexual community. Yet at the same time it seems that we want to take adults who have consensual sexual trysts with teenagers and throw them into the same category with child molesters or even child killers.

Our culture tells teenagers that sexual activity at their age is natural and normal. Their sex education classes present them with an amoral view of sexuality and teach them that there is absolutely nothing wrong with premarital sex. We even hand out condoms to them in the schools. Yet when two teenagers engage in sexual activity, we feign outrage when one is 18 or 19 and the other is a bit younger, demanding that the older teen be labeled a sex offender.    

As a result of all this hypocrisy, I can't help but think that many of those who appear of today's sex offender lists are morally superior to many of those who are not listed!