As the devil sticks his flag into the mud
Mrs Carol has run off with Reverend Judd
Hell is such a lonely place
And your big expensive face will never last
...
We're all mad here
     —Tom Waits

What follows is an excerpt from an email conversation. It's rough and stream-of-consciousness. It's certainly not a carefully crafted political position statement. My first thought was to hold off on posting this until I could take the time to reorganize, polish, re-write, polish, edit, polish, start over from scratch, polish, etc. ad nauseum. Best intentions, however, get nothing done when you are me. So. It stands as is. Incomplete. Incoherent. Incontinent. Erm... anyway.

Here's where I'm at. I'm 100% pro-life. Abortion is murder. End of story. But I'm not a single issue voter. And I don't think that legislation is even the most effective way to deal with abortion. Legislation is just a bandage, however necessary that may be. The real solution is the hearts and minds of people, and it's essentially a moral question, which no legislative body is really capable of addressing. Governance sucks as a means of enforcing a moral norm, it can only play the role of protector.

I also think asinine wars are immoral, but that hasn't stopped our trigger happy commander in chief, who is at least somewhat guilty of attempting to propagate a quasi religious war. His language in regards to Iraq was that of "Good vs. Evil", which is fine and dandy when the world is black and white and the black hats and white hats are all so very clear AND the outcome of the white hats actions only negatively effect the black hats and their supporters. Saddam Hussein was an evil man. I believe that. His regime was evil. I believe that, too. But our actions there were arrogant, impetuous, and inept. The novelist T. H. White in his Arthurian romance novel, "The Once and Future King", had Merlyn say something to the effect that you can tell who's at fault in a war by who started it. I do not buy into the Bush Doctrine's defense of the preemptive strike. The doctrine is corrupt and immoral. And our ineptitude has cost us and the Iraqis dearly. Did Hussein deserve to be deposed? Of course! Did we do the right thing by going in there, guns blazing, and destroying all semblance of civil order? Not a bit.

I'm also entirely at odds with the vulgar and irresponsible mentality that takes "Drill, Baby, Drill!" as a beloved slogan. Yes, we're reaching a crisis point with our off-the-chart energy consumption. But those who criticize the West, and particularly America, for decadence have a point. We're a culture of commodity, consumption, and excess. We don't want to be told no. We don't want to be told to slow down. We don't want to restrict ourselves in any way. And when we go up against a culture that understands sacrifice and self-restraint we're going to have major problems dealing with it in a successful way. We either have to change or become mightier. Our only solution for dealing with the Japanese at the end of WWII was to destroy a monumental number of civilian lives. We know how to overpower. We succeed by using an outward reaching extremism. This is entirely counter to any sane interpretation of Christian morality, which is one of the reasons why I am so chaffed by politicians claiming God for their ambitions. Hrm. I went from vulgar consumption of natural resources to military power... woops.

Back to the environment. Environmentalists as represented by those who readily wear the label are a mixed bunch, with many of them verging on a kind of hostile anti-humanism. My sense of man's place in the world is largely formed by what you might call an Orthodox Christian anthropology. The created world was created by a loving God. The Creation is "Good", and we are to be wise stewards of the created world. Destruction of natural beauty is a type of violence against beauty, and not just in an aesthetic sense, but spiritually and morally. Our appetites need to adjust. The cosmos is more than just a set of resources for us to take advantage of for material gain. The West has gone mad and lost all sense beyond easy, tactile, physical pleasure. And we're destroying ourselves and everything around us as a result of it. The whole world has gone mad.

The other area where I am conservative is in gun control. Bring on the guns. More responsible citizens need to carry guns. Kids need to learn how to responsibly use firearms. They need to stop being an icon of fear and become a tool treated with knowledgeable respect. We are being made weak against victimizers because they have the guns and the will to use them and we don't have them, or don't have the guts to use them, or are just plain jittery about them. That said, I don't own a gun, don't know if I'll ever own a gun, and am not comfortable with them. I wish it were otherwise, but lack the motivation to change it at the moment.

I'm not fond of government institutions and programs. The government is terribly inefficient. So theoretically I'd be against major social programs, socialized health care, government bailouts for people being foreclosed on, etc. But I'm even less fond of corrupt, greedy, and faceless companies screwing over anyone they can in order to make or save a dime. Health insurance companies, mortgage brokers, even the medical institutions themselves have lost sight of the human beings they are there to help. It is all about making money for the shareholders. My wife's employer tried it's damnedest to not insure Madelyn after she was born. There was a mix up and they didn't get the documents they needed within the first 30 days after Madelyn was born. They fought us for a month and somehow, for some reason they finally gave in. I think someone pulled strings, but we don't know who. We were rejected not just by the company, but by specific people in positions of relative authority more than once before somehow she was finally accepted. Bureaucratic, dehumanizing indifference and greed. Our culture likes to vaunt some sort of affirmational humanism at every moment. I feel good about you, you feel good about me. We feel good about the world. Meanwhile we habitually walk over people in the most undignified way with the apology of "it's nothing personal -- it's business." Humanism would maybe be an improvement over this -- this is nothing but careless materialism.

I guess this means that I'm at odds with capitalism. The free market doesn't make moral choices. The free market makes choices to advance monetary interests. Where money is the primary interest, the moral relationship amongst people is challenged, to say the least. Does that make me a socialist, marxist, communist, fascist... hell, I don't know what it makes me. We've got capitalism, and until I know of something better and less inherently evil then I'll continue to argue that we need to engage capitalism from a moral and spiritual foundation. After all, the problem isn't some one socio-economic or political ideology over another, it's people. People are the problem and people are the solution. The hearts and minds. If people begin to think in terms of "love thy neighbor", they'll act with that love in whatever they involve themselves. The real problem isn't a particular method for governing national and international trade, it's that people don't know much of anything about love outside of some romantic or politicized and meaningless humanitarian love of the people.