Differences are Normal

 

I’m The Only One

But I'm the only one
Who'll walk across the fire for you
And I'm the only one
Who'll drown in my desire for you
It's only fear that makes you run
The demons that you're hiding from
When all your promises are gone
I'm the only one

You may be the only one, but no man is an island.

Arguably much of today's turmoil is caused by a misunderstanding of the relationship between the individual, the group, and the absolute. While I am not a certified statistician, statistics does offer some insights to help enlighten this issue.

Man is a sexual, social animal. The Group that is Man requires new Individuals to replenish the Group when an Individual dies. Man as Individual and Man as a Group seeks a relationship with an Absolute. If something is an Absolute, e.g. God, then it has no error. Statistics says that the Standard Error is the square root of the Variance divided by the square root of the sample size. An Individual has a sample size of 1. Thus an Individual can not have zero error unless his Variance is also zero. A group can approach zero error with a nonzero Variance, if the sample size, the size of the group, is increased. A uniform normal distribution is considered to be one where the Variance is 1. Thus a normal group can have virtually no error if the size of the group is large enough. Its error can not ever be equal to zero, but its error can approach zero.

The problem is that individuals try to approach the absolute. They can only appear to do that if their variance is zero. However that is not true of a group. To be normal, the variance should be one. If the variance is one and the sample group size is 100,000 then the Standard Error is only .001 which is almost zero. The problem is that a nonzero Variance requires that every value is NOT equal, even if those values are part of the same distribution, group.

In addition to not being normal, (a  statistical term not an ethical term), if a variance is zero on one issue, then it is unlikely to be zero for every issue. While Evangelical Christians and Catholics may agree on Abortion, they tend to disagree on the infallibility of the Pope. So how can an individual approach the absolute and still be a member of a group whose variance is not one. Einstein elaborated  on an answer to this in his General Theory of Relativity. It is possible to have an absolute i.e. the speed of light, and your relationship to that absolute depends on your frame of reference. Your weight, length, time all vary based on your speed in your frame of reference relative to the absolute that is the speed of light.

Humorists have long tried to tell us that reducing error in approaching the absolute does not mean that only one frame of reference is correct. In Gulliver’s Travel Jonathon Swift describes a silly difference, over whether you should break the eggs at the Big End or the Little End that led to deaths, war, and rebellion. Mark Twain said that “Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion -- several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight.

An individual man can approach the absolute, but a group of men can also approach that same absolute from a different frame of reference. A group should not expect its variance to ever be zero. In fact if it is normal, then it should have a variance of one.

Thus an individual should not expect a healthy group to have a variance of zero. The fact that individuals require different sexes to reproduce does not mean that an individual can not contribute to a group if that individual does not reproduce. Your sexual preference does govern your ability to reproduce, but your ability to reproduce is not the only way in which you can contribute to a group. A variance of one is normal. The willingness and ability to reproduce should be part of that variance.

Justice II

 

If I Had a Hammer

I'd hammer out danger
I'd hammer out a warning
I'd hammer out love between
My brothers and my sisters
All over this land.

Justice Thomas apparently  doesn’t know it is the Hammer of Justice.

Do we need any more proof that Justice Clarence ”Long Dong Silver” Thomas is the most dangerous man in the United States of America? Admittedly Justice Samuel “ Strip Search Sammy” Alito is giving him a run for the money, but Justice Thomas wins by a nose. The purpose of any trial is to establish the Truth. If the Truth is that there is evidence of innocence, then that is the Truth. In trials for capital crimes, there should be more care that the Truth has been discovered given that execution is not reversible. If the Truth is later found that an executed individual was innocent, there is no opportunity for a Mulligan on that wrongful execution.

Justice Thomas wrote the majority opinion in the Supreme Court case of Shinn v. Ramirez. In that opinion he stated that the court ”may not conduct an evidentiary hearing or otherwise consider evidence beyond the state-court record based on the ineffective assistance of state postconviction counsel.”  The court was NOT being asked to rule on evidence. SCOTUS was only asked if the defendant received his constitutionally required representation to discover the Truth, which may not have been part of the state-court record. Justice Thomas is apparently uninterested in the Truth, as he has shown in previous dissents, majority opinions, etc. The Supreme Court does not exist to protect the State, as Justice Thomas seems to suggest. It exist to protect the constitutional rights of individuals from excesses of the State.

The Supreme Court has become political because Justices such as Justice Thomas have made it political. He has  no respect for the Truth, only respect for the State. The call is coming from inside the building. Danger. Warning. Justice Thomas is NOT interested in wielding the Hammer of Justice.

Corporations

 

People

A feeling deep in your soul
Says you were half now you're whole
No more hunger and thirst
But first be a person who needs people
People who need people
Are the luckiest people in the world

Are Corporations people?

The SCOTUS, in Citizens United v. FEC opined that corporations are people and thus have the right of free speech.  I do not agree with SCOTUS in that case.  Corporations are NOT people.  The Constitution says that the people are enumerated in the decennial census. That census does not list corporations.  Yes, corporations are groups of people, and people have free speech.  But corporations are legally a special group of people.  If a group is liable for an action, then every member of that group is liable. If you are driving the car in a bank robbery and one of your gang kills a bystander during the robbery, then you are guilty of murder even if you never held the murder weapon.  However if the corporation  is sued for a wrong doing, your assets as a owner of that corporation are protected.   Only those assets that you have legally transferred to the corporation ( i.e. the corporation’s assets) are subject to liability.

The question is thus whether you can transfer the right of speech to a corporation.  If you can not transfer it, then a corporation, even though it is a group that includes you, can not own it.  Freedom of speech is an absolute.  Like life and liberty, it either exists or does not exist.  It can not be subdivided.  You can not give your life to a corporation. (You can give your life FOR a corporation, but it is still your life. You can not give your life TO a corporation.)  You can not give your liberty to a corporation.  You can not give your freedom of  speech to a corporation.  A corporation can not exercise what it does not have.  It thus has no freedom of speech, even though its shareholders have freedom of speech.

You dissolve a corporation, you do not execute a corporation.  You penalize/fine a corporation, you do not jail a corporation. There are no corporations on death row in Texas.  This is because while shareholders of corporations are people, society has decided in law that corporations are NOT people. Corporations can NOT both have special protections and absolute rights. You can not have your cake and eat it too!

Republicans VI

 

Back in Time

So take me away, I don't mind
But you'd better promise me, I'll be back in time
Gotta get back in time

Get back, get back
(Get back Marty!)

Marty McFly was right. I don’t think we are ready for this.

Single-ballot plurality-rule elections structured within single-member districts tend to favor a two-party such as that of the United States, according to Duverger’s Law. Throughout most of US history, there have been two parties.

The constitution did NOT envision the formation of political parties,  But from the beginning there were effectively two parties: the Federalists and the Democrat-Republicans. This led to the crisis after the election of 1800, when the Vice President, who was supposed to be the second-place finisher in the vote for President and the President and his intended Vice President, were both from the same party (Democrat-Republican) and thus received the same number of electoral votes. This ultimately led to the 12^th Amendment.

After the election of Andrew Jackson,  disaffected conservative Democrat-Republicans joined with  conservative Federalists to form the Whigs. This was the conservative party from 1830 to 1852. The problem is that while there were two political parties, there were more than two pollical beliefs:  Conservative Pro-Slavery; Conservative Anti-Slavery; Liberal Anti-Slavery and Liberal Pro-Slavery. The current Republican Party was formed not as a conservative party but as an anti‑slavery party. It included not only conservatives who believed in Government but also Know Nothings who did not believe in the expansion of slavery and Whigs who did not believe in government regulation.

While the Republican party was more conservative than the Democratic Party, it has had its own divisions. Grover Cleveland was elected president because of the divisions between the corrupt nominee James Blaine supported by the Republican Stalwarts and the anti-corruption Mugwumps. The split between the traditional Republicans backing William Howard Taft and the Progressive Republicans backing Teddy Roosevelt led to the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

The corruption of James Blaine and the segregation of Andrew Jackson has been combined in today's Donald Trump. Conservative, non-segregationist Republicans may split and form a new party as in 1830 or may serve to usher in only a Democrat Party rule. While examining history can be instructive, the future has yet to be written.

Closets

 

I’ve Had the Time of My Life

'Cause I've had the time of my life
And I've searched though every open door
'Til I found the truth
And I owe it all to you...

 “Nobody puts Baby in a corner”, but nobody should put anyone in a closet/corner.

People choose a cloistered life willingly because they want to have the time to contemplate and “see the world spinning round.”  This is their choice. And because it is their choice, they do have the time to contemplate, and society is often the better for their contemplation, when it is shared with society

The cloistered life is not dissimilar from a closeted life. However, people do not willing chose to enter the closet. They are closeted because society will not accept them as they are. They do not have time to contemplate.  Instead they have to expend time to cover up the reason that society put them in the closet.  The time that they could have spent contemplating  is lost to society.

How many "Eureka" moments has society missed because the time that could have been spent  contemplating was spent closeting. You can’t find the truth until you open every door.

The Republican Party

 

(Ain’t Nothin’ But A) Houseparty

They're dancing on the ceiling, they're dancing on the floor
People everywhere coming through the door
They know there's a party going on
Through the dance and romance all night long

Has the Republican (house) Party gotten out of control?

Nancy Pelosi has said that the Republican Party is needed for the good of the Nation. By that I assume that she means the party of Everett Dirksen, Gerald Ford, John McCain, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, George Romney, etc and not the party of Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, Ron Johnson, Josh Hawley, Kevin McCarthy, among many others including he who shall not be named.

Speaker Pelosi means the party of limited government, not the party of no government. She means the party of careful reflection before action, not the party that acts first and gets itself in trouble. The party that acts for the country, and not for themselves. I miss them too! Where did it all go wrong?

People might point to the election of Donald Trump. Others might point to the rise of the Tea Party. Others might point to the Supreme Court’s decision on Florida in 2000. I would like to suggest that it happened when Gorge H. W. Bush accepted the nomination as the Vice President of Ronald Reagan. Somehow a Faustian bargain was struck and the branch of the party that mocked voodoo economics and supply side tax cuts, embraced those positions in order to achieve power.

A candidate who was divorced, and from Hollywood became the darling of evangelicals  (and if you believe that they share the same sexual beliefs, then I have some ocean front property in Kansas I would like to sell you).   A first lady, whose beliefs in astrology and the occult that would have gotten her burned at the stake as a witch in years past, became beloved by evangelicals  A president who was a former union leader  (of the Screen Actors Guild), and beloved by the union members, broke unions. A president who is beloved by the lower and middle class promoted a tax code that has benefited primarily the rich. If he had been opposed by the moderates in the Republican Party, he might never have been elected.

The consequences have been the immediate elevation of Justice Thomas, and the eventual nominations of Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett. Would we have had either the Iraq War, the Capitol Riot, vaccine and climate (not to mention science in general) deniers, if the Republican Party had not sold its soul. But the genie is out of the bottle and the Republican Party we need may be nowhere to be found. It may be time to shut down the Party.

Catholicism

 

Old Time Religion

Give me that old-time religion
Give me that old-time religion
Give me that old-time religion
It's good enough for me.

Can a Catholic be a US Constitutional officer?

I am a non-practicing Catholic. I graduated from both a Catholic Grade and High School. It was only after my eldest son nearly failed a required Theology course at Boston College, for daring to question Catholic beliefs, that I stopped practicing. It did not help that my parish church had been a previous posting of Father James Porter, the first Catholic priest in Massachusetts to be convicted of  child molestation. I had even previously been a CCD, "Sunday School" teacher in my parish. My High School was run by the CSC, the same order that runs Notre Dame, the University where Justice Barrett taught and graduated from law school. Boston College is of course run by Jesuits, and the Jesuits also run Holy Cross, the college from which Justice Thomas graduated. Justice Alito is of course a Catholic, as is Justice Kavanaugh. My fear is that the draft Supreme Court opinion on abortion will be characterized as a Catholic opinion.

While I was in grade school, John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, was campaigning for President. He attended a Southern Baptist convention where he had to explain that his beliefs as a Catholic would not prevent him from exercising his Constitutional duties as President. Fast forward over 60 years and Catholic President Biden is being chastised by some Catholic Bishops for exercising his Constitutional responsibilities as President over his Catholic beliefs. Uh, guys, you can’t have it both ways. Are some Catholic Bishops now saying that a Catholic can not be President?

It is a Catholic belief that life begins at conception. It is not a Constitutional belief. The Constitution protects persons, including viable fetuses. It does not appear to protect non-viable fetuses, who are not considered the People by the Constitution (e.g. they are not counted as the People in the Constitutionally required Decennial Census).  As a Catholic, I can resent that the draft SCOTUS position on abortion is being characterized as a Catholic opinion. The SCOTUS was asked to render a Constitutional opinion, not a Catholic opinion.