Ensuring Philosophical Integrity

The United States has a great history, I'm sure, but I'll probably never know or understand it, mostly because I'll never live it and I'll never be able to compile a truly unbiased collection of its various bits (if somebody has any suggestions for a good history book [the world, the United States, anything] I'd really appreciate it. I'm hesitant to buy any book without a suggestion due to the difficult nature of being skeptical and the art and effectiveness of the utilization of information subversion techniques [just take a look at any book by Bill O'Reilly {SIC?} to see how logic and philosophy can be hijacked to support illogical and philosophically unsound moral and cultural appeals to authority).

I'm not a religious person. I make a conscious effort to suspend belief in the name of progress. I would not have any conception of the things I have conceived to date if I had a strict adherence to any belief system that excluded those ideas as a possibility. Being that I'm not a religious person, I don't really have much of an opinion on others' beliefs. There may or may not be some sort of uncaused first cause floating around enacting misery and happiness at any time in 'everywhere,' but I have no way of obtaining any evidence whatsoever, and there are way too many empirical explanations for the motivations I may have to decide to 'believe,' starting with our most basic understandings of human neurological capacities (the very nature of perception tells us we're capable of constructing a vision of the universe based on sensory input, so why not an illusion of omnipotent patriarchal presence?).

i'm not posting here to argue the existence of god, though, but only to give a little background as to why i'm pasting a link to a video and a few things i think make great thinking exercises for anybody from any background. thinking is okay. it isn't yet a crime, strangely enough! just wait until the airports start installing quick scanning mri machines in the ticket lines. once they see that area of your temporal lobe associated with growing impatient you had better active your electro-magnetic pulse shield, because you're about to be tasered into social acceptance by some well meaning behavioral modification officers.

i'm effectively an 'ignostic,' which is a slightly silly term that i normally wouldn't use if it didn't actually have some thought put into its creation. to summarize, it basically means that i don't actively disbelieve in a god or gods the way an atheist would, and i don't actively suspend disbelief for the sake of calling myself an agnostic (i am an agnostic, by definition), but that i find the question of god to be completely irrational and unappraochable by logic and philosophy, and as such disregard it unless provoked into conversation. it's a fascinating subject, and another one of those great mental exercises (if you actually allow yourself to freely think about it [look to the churches for a great example of the dangers of thought-crime]). i just won't take a stance on it for the same reason i don't have a favorite football team or a favorite chuck e. cheese band member: my criteria for choosing one would be based on some biased notion of stunted understanding of the universe, not on the principles of the evolution of information into complex structures.

i really don't want to start a religious debate, but you can feel more than welcome to respond to anything i say (exercise your first amendment, it can be liberating [that was a really bad joke, i know]). i'm a sucker for argumentation; open discussion is a pillar of civilized discourse, and personal responsibility to accept all expression and speech (offensive, frightening, threatening, completely in-line with your own thinking) is absolutely necessary to maintain the philosophical integrity of the foundation of the united states of america. otherwise we begin to establish a moral oppression by a majority with a sense of entitlement to regulate the rights of others based on an obvious appeal to authority, emotion and a number of other logical fallacies you can search for on google, something this country was founded to defeat.

social growth is an oscillation, i know, and conflict is a necessary aspect of progress, but conflict and progress both require an ability for people of diverse philosophies, opinions and ideologies to express themselves freely in order for their unique perspectives to have an effect on others. internal conflict alone is not enough to bring about social change. it must be externalized, that is the very nature of information from the most basic, quantum scale observations (the effect of a photon on a neutron, for example, and the way that communication aids in the structuring of matter) to the most complex form of communication i can think of (me typing this comes immediately to mind).

even if you do not wish for progress, however, if you wish to live in the bubble of patriarchal security that a belief in something such as an abrahamic god might provide, you must maintain the philosophical integrity that the constitution of the united states of america provides every one of its citizens. if a southern baptist is elected president and does the things southern baptists find agreeable, what might a roman catholic think when his civil liberties are impinged upon? i won't give any specific examples, because i really am very ignorant of the petty rivalries between religions (by choice, i am more interested in the structure, social ramifications and other 'stuff' related to religion), but i'm sure there are plenty of people in the fort smith area who have a good idea of what it means to be catholic versus baptist outside of the holy trinity and grape juice as a good substitute for the blood of christ.

all that said, take a look at what ron paul has to say in the first real interview i've seen of him since his google candidates session:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/01042008/watch2.html

he is a christian, he has stated that he does not believe in evolution (though he also did raise his hand when asked if he believes in evolution during a debate, a question that has absolutely no bearing on any presidential candidate whatsoever. we are voting for the person best suited to maintain our civil liberties and to uphold the constitution, not head biologist for the department of agriculture), and i'm pretty sure that we have a lot of other subjects we could both talk great lengths about that we disagree upon. what i want to point out, though, for thsoe who have been blinded by the romanization of our nation's political process, is that none of these issues matter when you choose a president UNLESS that president is willing to sacrifice our civil liberties in order to further his own personal agendas (mike huckabee, anybody? that guy has repeatedly said it's ok to raise taxes as long as it's for a good cause [and cites arkansas roads as an example! i wonder if any of that tax money went to paying his computer technicians to wipe his administration's hard drives once his adventure as governor of our great state, but i'm spinning off on an incredibly wild tangent, here]).

you may not think much about that, because you're probably a 'good' person. you probably want better roads, and probably don't really even mind a minor increase in taxes to take care of that. you may think that a precedent has been set, and that incremental increases are alright, because they really don't effect us all that much. that's ok, it really is. we're people with lives outside of debating the finer points of governmental philosophy. what happens, though, when yours and a religious president with a sense of patriarchal authoritarian entitlement's opinions don't mesh all that well?

fortunately for roughly 75% of the country, we have a currently operating example of such a president taking advantage of our 'goodness' to further the corporatization of this nation in such small increments as to be negligable for most people who have more immediate woes occupying our minds.

the idea that because a precedent has been set that something is ok is a logical fallacy of the most basic magnitude. it's so mundane as to not even be a very fun exercise in debasement. by my rough, ignorant estimation, i would consider it an appeal to common practice, but i'm sure there's something more precise to describe it. simply because something has been done for a long time or is done commonly does not make it logical or reasonable to do. because we are losing our civil liberties with the promise of a safer life (dwight eisenhower said 'If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.' i'm not a big fan of quotes, but i don't want it to seem like i came up with that idea on my own, or anything. it's way too clever.) does not mean that we should continue to do so, for any reason, ESPECIALLY in the face of the adversity of reasonable, logical, philosophically sound explanations for alternative options.

the reasons i am voting for ron paul in the arkansas primaries aren't his opinions on abortion, or creationism, or any of these other things that shouldn't be a factor in a president's decisions for the execution of the constitution. the reasons are simply related to his interpretation of the constitution and the logical end result of the philosophies of liberty. not freedom, because freedom is just not possible. not equality, because equality is just not possible. liberty, because liberty is a logical philosophical proposition that doesn't necessarily take into account the vast differences in culture and personality from group to group and person to person, but certainly allows for their manifestation, propagation, and free access for contemplation.

civil liberties aid in the preservation of diversity by allowing people to live as they wish within the confines of the responsibility that comes with accepting the privacy and lifestyles of others. you cannot reasonably expect a non-christian to respect a christian if an oppressive majority leader is inventing regulations to inhibit the way people are allowed to express themselves in order to stymie whatever offense they may feel at having their sensibilities assaulted by alien concepts.

this nation's roots are established in the ideas of revolt and civil disobedience, and that we don't feel compelled to do so to protect those of us with the most radical ideas (from racism to socialism, and everything in between, so long as those ideas when enacted do not violate the civil liberties of others [we do not have a right to not be scared, nor do we have a right to not be offended, and for very good reason. we wouldn't simply have a prison system in that case, but perhaps would be forced to wear concrete suits with concrete helmets and little iron bar visors to work, as well as little ankle bracelets to let daddy bush know where we are at all times, because we are certainly all too stupid to take care of ourselves. it's true, i watched the news and saw less than one percent of the population doing stupid things, and more then 99 percent of the population wasn't even shown! that must mean that we all need a president who will give us the right to hold somebody else accountable
for the bad things that happen to us.

freedom is relative to your alignment with the current oppressive majority's social constraints, be they enacted by a leader or enforced by a culture. when the zeitgeist shifts, you may certainly find yourself left behind, and if you have children, what will they do? will they revolt in the name of their religion, or will they revolt in the name of liberty and justice for all? the best way to ensure our security is not to destroy the cultures that antagonize us, but to embrace the principles that best allow us to maintain our diversities without enforcing them. it is a very depressing irony to see wars committed in the name of democracy under the banner of liberty. we will free you with oppression, we will continue to live freely until we're a little bit older than we used to be and somebody a little bit more spry comes along to make us aware of just how slow our reflexes have gotten. we should enact change through reason rather than impulse, and let our impulses to revolt complement our reasons for supporting the cause of liberty. fight the power and fight the establishment, and when it comes time that you've wrested control of your destiny out of the cold hands of incapable government officials, fight yourself. conflict is humbling, and humility is a wonderful way to ensure the continuation of our progress as an intelligent species in this very curious universe.