Politics and Marriage

Posted on 2008-01-13 by David

I was invited to share my views on political issues relating to marriage and was pointed to DefendMarriage.org as a reference point. I think the issues relating to marriage and the politics surrounding marriage (gay rights and abortion rights are listed in the invitation and states rights are a part of the political discussion as well) really illustrate that there is more to this issue than simply answering the question of what defines "marriage" in our society. The following statement on traditional marriage from defendmarriage.org really outlines the socially conservative position on the surface issue of defining marriage:

Marriage between man and woman is the time-honored foundation of the institution of the family. This legally recognized and protected union is intended to be life-long, preceded by sexual abstinence and followed by absolute fidelity and loyalty. Such marriage offers security, benefits, and joys that no other relationship can, including children born and nurtured in a home of love and total commitment. Marriage is the institution universally sanctioned by civilization to ensure that children receive a full measure of parental love, resources and attention.

I fully agree with that definition of what marriage is. The question that I keep asking myself in order to define the parameters of the deeper issues is why, and in what ways should the law "recognize and protect" marriage. If we return to a proper protection of individual rights many of the reasons used to justify stretching that legal definition of marriage evaporate. If two people engage in a homosexual lifestyle and establish a loving and committed relationship then the government has no business interfering with hospital visitation rights etc. Our society gains nothing by infringing upon those individual rights.

On other questions, such as tax breaks and insurance benefits there should be no issue. Individuals can will their property to anyone regardless of family connection and the government should never have a primary right of ownership that is functionally implied through inheritance taxes. The same holds true with tax breaks for married couples – there should be no need for tax breaks because we should not have an income tax (which again implies that the government owns the money and simply allows individuals to a portion of what they contribute to the GNP). If we had no income tax there would be no tax benefit for being married.

As for health care benefits for families, family insurance policies would essentially be a type of small-group policy. Insurance companies could offer policies to match any kind of group whose business they want.

With regard to adoption, that is a social service that should not be run by the state. Instead, adoption should be a matter that is resolved between willing biological parents and individuals that are willing and to whom the natural parents chose to transfer the rights and responsibilities of parenthood. No need to worry about biological children because homosexual couples have voluntarily chosen a lifestyle that does not produce biological children. (Even those who argue that homosexuality is an inborn identity must recognize that those individuals may choose not to engage in the lifestyle.)

By removing those issues from the arsenal of those who agitate for recognition of gay marriage, the discussion would be reduced to the core issue of what constitutes marriage. That issue is not primarily a political issue, it is a cultural/theological issue. The government is only responsible to ensure that individuals on both sides of the issue do not have their rights trampled by others.

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Unalienable Rights

Posted on 2008-01-12 by David

On the issues of gay rights, abortion rights, or womens rights I think that Ron Paul captures the truth with his repeated assertion that there is only one kind of rights – individual rights. These are the rights that were called unalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence. When individual rights are properly protected many of the issues related to gay rights, womens rights, or minority rights fall away so that the central issues can be approached from their proper perspective.

For example, if individual rights are fairly enforced we do not need hate-crimes legislation because hate crimes are, first and foremost, crimes against individuals which should be dealt with in a manner to protect and defend the rights of those individuals. No amount of legislation will make a racist like a minority against which they hold a prejudice. If individual rights are properly enforced that will serve as a deterrent against racially inspired crimes as any hate-crimes law (this is not to imply that it will stop the crimes completely, but an admission that hate-crimes laws won’t either).

On issues such as abortion we can stop asking about whether a woman has “a right to control her own body” and focus the discussion on defining where individual rights begin – in other words, if the pre-born infant is an individual then the woman cannot blithely infringe upon the rights of that individual, but appropriate decisions can be made when the well-being of the mother and the well-being of the child are at odds.

The more I think about this the more I am convinced that it is difficult to  help people understand individual rights when we have ceded responsibility to the government to ensure that nobody is hungry, sick, uneducated, or poor and we have allowed the government to own everything although it generously allows us to keep part of the money we earn through our economic contributions.

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The Irony of Supressing Votes

Posted on 2008-01-11 by David

I find it rather funny that we have such a fuss being raised about laws requiring voters to show ID at the polls that a case has to be heard by the Supreme Court on the issue. What strikes me is that:

  1. if we had more voters voting, whatever fraud the voter ID laws are meant to combat would have less effect in a larger pool of ballots
  2. the plantiffs have not demonstrated that this law has prevented anyone from voting
  3. voting fraud is more rare at the polling place than it is in absentee voting where no ID is required

This seems like another case of the law being used to address minutia

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Uncommitted in Michigan

Posted on 2008-01-10 by David

In case this election cycle was not convoluted enough already we now get to approach the Michigan primary. The combination of having an open primary and having the DNC strip the delegates from Michigan for moving their primary into January meant that we faced the prospect of Democrats in Michigan voting in the Republican primary which does nothing to make the Republican contest any clearer. All the major Democratic candidates promised not to campaign in Michigan and Obama and Edwards went so far as to leave their names off the ballot in Michigan so the only major choice on the Democratic ballot there is Clinton. Now comes the news that Obama and Edwards are encouraging their supporters in Michigan to vote “Uncommitted” rather than allow Clinton to sweep that state.

From the sound of things, having all their delegates stripped by the DNC does not actually indicate that they have no delegates. I’d love for someone to explain how that works for me, but NPR reported that if “Uncommitted” receives 15% or more in a district then those delegates could later support Obama or Edwards.

If Michigan Democrats take this course there would be more confidence in the Republican results there. If they don’t then it really makes you wonder how satisfying this “victory” would be for Clinton. It reminds me of the Iraqi elections under Saddam Hussein – Mr. President-for-Life just loved getting 99.9 – 100% support as the only candidate on the ballot with citizens being required to “participate.”

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Bloggers – Turn Out Utah

Posted on 2008-01-08 by David

Earlier today, before significant numbers of ballots had been counted, the news coming out of New Hampshire was that turnout was way up and some precincts were requesting more ballots. In response to that, JM Bell and Misty Fowler each suggested that we’d love to have that problem in Utah. The more I think about that the more I am convinced that not only would we love to have that “problem” but have four weeks to actively work to achieve that in our state.

I’ve suggested before that any election with high turnout is a good election. Let’s make this into such an election. Starting now, let’s light up the Utah Political Blogosphere with ideas and thoughts to inspire people to turn out and vote in the primary election. Misty has set a good example by posting reminders about registration deadlines and information about how to register. What else can we do to encourage people to participate?

People all around the country have wondered why Iowa and New Hampshire should have so much influence on our elections – let’s show that Utahns can be as politically involved as Iowans.

If you are interested in pushing for this let me know – share your ideas of how we can encourage people online and offline to get to the polls. If you don’t think that higher turnout is valuable, convince me that low turnout has any benefit to our state or our nation.

Posted in State | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments

The Pull of Youth

Posted on 2008-01-07 by David

I can’t really explain why the following passage stuck in my mind from Frank Richs’ column in the New York Times yesterday. Something about it just caught my attention and has been hanging on in the background ever since. Speaking of the winners of the Iowa caucuses:

The two men are the youngest candidates in the entire field, the least angry and the least inclined to seek votes by saturation-bombing us with the post-9/11 arsenal of fear. They both radiate the kind of wit and joy (and, yes, hope) that can come only with self-confidence and a comfort in their own skins. They don’t run from Americans who are not in their club. Mr. Obama had no problem winning over a conclave of white Christian conservatives at Rick Warren’s megachurch in Orange County, Calif., even though he insisted on the necessity of condoms in fighting AIDS. Unlike the top-tier candidates in the G.O.P. presidential race, or the “compassionate conservative” president who refused for years to meet with the N.A.A.C.P., Mr. Huckabee showed up last fall for the PBS debate at the historically black Morgan State University and aced it.

The “they” who did not see the cultural power of these men, of course, includes not just the insular establishments of both their parties but the equally cloistered echo chamber of our political journalism’s status quo. It would take a whole column to list all the much-repeated Beltway story lines that collapsed on Thursday night.

One thing that struck me was the admission that the established leaders of the parties and the professionals of political journalism can’t grasp what is happening in this year’s primaries. The second thing was the comment that these are the two youngest candidates. I had known that Obama was the youngest candidate, but I had never really considered the age of Huckabee. Back before Huckabee was a top candidate I noticed in my study of the candidates that Mitt Romney was the youngest of the major Republican candidates and he was a couple of months older than Hillary who was the oldest of the major Democratic candidates. That was an interesting split between the two parties in my mind.

Looking into the ages now I find that Huckabee is two years younger than the next youngest candidate (John Edwards) and only 6 years older than Obama. I wonder if part of this is more than just the rhetoric of change, but the evidence that the electorate is ready to pass the reins of leadership over to a younger generation. If Huckabee goes on to get the Republican nomination there is only one viable Democrat left who could represent the Baby Boom generation in the general election – that would be Hillary Clinton (unless by some miracle Rill Richardson can leap from 4th place to 1st among the Democrats).

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Pre-Fix Winners and Losers

Posted on 2008-01-05 by David

Over at the Washington Post political blog – The Fix – Chris Cillizza always does a Winners and Losers post after every debate. While he’s tied up with the Democratic debate I thought I’d beat him to the punch on the Republican side for tonight’s debate.

WINNERS

Mitt Romney: The fact that every other candidate was attacking Romney indicates the consensus that if he wins in New Hampshire on Tuesday he is the clear front runner for the Republican nomination. Every candidate but Mitt can benefit by having this race stay undecided for a few more weeks.

LOSERS

Mitt Romney: With everyone attacking him, Romney was unable to score any clear victory in the debate which can’t help his chances on Tuesday.

How did I do Chris?

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Vote Totals in Iowa

Posted on 2008-01-05 by David

I had written before that the Iowa Democrats should publish their vote totals rather than just “delegate equivalents.” Today I discovered that USA Today is reporting the votes in the Iowa caucus results. Thanks to this more detailed information I finally see how Hillary Clinton managed to get one more delegate than John Edwards even though she got a lower vote total. (In one district she got enough higher to get one more delegate than Edwards and everywhere else she was close enough that her lower totals did not lead to fewer delegates.)

It appears that they will report the same amount of information on all the states as the primaries progress (they had Wyoming Republicans from today).

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Candidate Questions vs President Questions

Posted on 2008-01-04 by David

Thanks to Scott’s post on Presidential Qualifications I really got thinking about the difference between what we should look for in a president and what we often do look for in a candidate. Scott quoted three questions that Dr. Lawrence Lindsey suggested we should be asking to choose a good president:

    • “Has the candidate faced a crisis or overcome a major setback in his or her life?”
    • “Has has the candidate had a variety of life experiences?”
    • “Can the candidate tell the difference between a foreign enemy and a political opponent?”

To those questions, Scott then listed the three questions that we seem to ask about the candidates that we choose to support:

    • Is this candidate most likely to win?
    • How closely do I agree with this candidate?
    • Do I like this candidate’s personality?

Now Scott leaves me asking myself, are these two sets of questions complimentary to each other, contradictory to each other, or independent of each other?

I tend to think that the two sets of questions are complimentary. The first set (for selecting a president) should be asked first because there is nothing to gain by choosing a candidate who can win if they can’t pass the test of whether they are likely to be a good president. I think that set of questions is what I was crudely trying to answer through my candidate endorsement series earlier last year. If we could ask those questions generally we might be better at retaining the good candidates who sometimes drop out early when they can’t capture our attention with the second set of questions. On the other hand, there is a lot of value to be had by applying the second set of questions to the available candidates after they have been passed through the sieve of the first question set.

Once the primaries are over, if your favored candidates are no longer in the race it can be useful to return to the first set of questions and see which of the remaining candidates (if any) qualify. (The only time the second set of questions should apply is when there are multiple candidates available that pass that first critical standard.)

Now I ask myself if my positions on the candidates would have been any different if I had followed this process more exactly for the 2008 field.

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Iowa Caucuses

Posted on 2008-01-03 by David

No, I’m not liveblogging nor am I going to analyze the results. I do wonder why I find it so fascinating to watch the results come in. That’s the same question I asked myself in November 2006 as I watched the results between Orrin Hatch and Pete Ashdown. The difference is in 2006 I was happy early on when Ashdown was slightly ahead (the more democratic areas seemed to report first) and I sat and watched as all the lemming votes floated in for Hatch to win.

Thankfully this time there was no such turn of fortune. Obama won among the Democrats by a very respectable margin and I am left to wonder how Hillary will spin her third place finish, especially as the later votes show her falling further behind Edwards rather than keeping right up with him. Huckabee won quickly among the Republicans so that I could turn my attention to wondering which candidates would drop out. My only disappointment is that Ron Paul could not stay closer to McCain and Thompson.

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