Fixing the Roof When the House Has A Bad Foundation: Real Tax Reform

John McCain and Barack Obama have been sniping at each other over their respective tax plans, each assuring the American people that their plan is the best and that the other candidate's plan is wildly irresponsible. McCain insists that Obama's tax plan will drastically raise taxes, using a disingenuous tone of warning intended to suggest to everyone who listens to him speak on the subject that their taxes will go up. Barack Obama argues that the working and middle classes are overtaxed and that McCain's tax cuts will benefit the wealthiest segment of American taxpayers and not benefit the vast majority of Americans. This is the expected tax argument between Democrats and Republicans during an election year, and everyone is used to it by now... but the issue of taxes is still, for some reason, the strongest weapon in the Republican arsenal. Obama's language in this election suggests he intends to actually debate the tax issue on some level rather than resort to the standard Democratic counter of social programs, though he has those ready too.

Yes, the richest American taxpayers would benefit greatly from McCain's tax plan. The biggest cuts in his plan go to the top two tax brackets. At the same time, however, his tax cuts for the working and middle class are real. They are not as big as Obama's, it is very true, but they are real. Obama's plan does raise the taxes of Americans in the very top bracket by more than $700,000 a year. Yet his tax cuts for the bottom two tax brackets are nearly ten times McCain's cuts.

So McCain's argument is that the rich are overtaxed and the working class and the middle class are taxed about right, but could pay a little less. Obama's argument is that the working class, the middle class, and the mildly rich deserve tax breaks and the very rich are undertaxed. Each tax plan applies corrections to the perceived problems.

The flaw in both tax plans is that, while the working poor and the middle class are overtaxed in the present economy, the wealthiest Americans are both overtaxed and undertaxed. The highest tax rate, currently, is thirty-five percent. Even I find that excessive. Unfortunately, the percentage of people in the top bracket who pay taxes on their full taxable income is not particularly large. Ridiculous definitions of 'income', high priced tax attorneys not available to the middle class and working class, and a bevy of loopholes and tax shelters add up to equal an entire industry in legalized tax evasion.

The most important cure for the system is to reduce the defintion of 'income' to its real meaning: money received. Eliminate capital gains taxes and the estate tax and classify all capital gains above a specific level and all inheritances as 'income.' This would exempt bank interest and eliminate all taxes on the vast majority of stock dividends, while taxing high risk-high interest mutual funds like any other form of gambling. It would fairly tax inheritances, without confiscating them nearly in their entirety. In an age where stock brokers' questionairres for new customers include an 'income' category and mega-investors make their entire living off capital investments or playing the market, calling capital gains anything but income becomes ridiculous. An inheritance is income, it's money you didn't have that you have now.

The program would also entail the elimination of legal tax shelters and closing of the loopholes available to the wealthiest Americans. Deductions for charitable contributions would be more carefully capped and the definition of 'charity' would be reduced to its true intent much as the word 'income.' The website of the American Prospect advertises that donations to the liberal magazine are tax deductible. I'm certainly on the political left and I am a great fan of prospect contributors Sarah Posner and Courtney E. Martin, but voluntary donations to a business (and the American Prospect is a business, one must subscribe to the magazine to read much of the content, full access to to current issues online is only available to subscribers despite the very fine free content on the website) is not a true 'charitable donation' and should not be tax deductible. The loopholes that allow the 'overtaxed' to pay far less than they are required to pay need to be closed.

Perhaps most importantly, the way corporations are taxed needs to be changed. Instead of the unstable system of corporate taxes currently in place and constantly under conservative attack, corporate entities need to be assessed on a basis of corporate income as if they were individuals paying income tax. Extra taxes not based on this formula should be eliminated and loopholes closed.

Not being a financial expert, I will not presume to set actual tax rates myself. However, I would reduce the number of brackets to three and tax the richest Americans at the same rate as the mildly rich Americans. This would increase the taxes on the latter and significantly cut the taxes on the former. Some of the lower end of the current second highest tax bracket would be readjusted into the bracket below them.

Economists have been saying for some years now that the poverty line should be raised to about $25,000 a year, so I would give the Earned Income Credit to every taxpayer making less than $25,000.

Once the new tax brackets were established and the rates set, tax cuts and tax increases should all be temporary rather than permanent. Tax cuts on the working poor and many of the middle class are entirely appropriate in difficult economic times, but should not necessarily last when conditions improve. Tax hikes on the wealthy might be appropriate when times are flush, but should be rolled back in a bad economy.

I think that this system makes more sense than the system currently in place, and I think that conservatives would be more happy than unhappy with the simplification of the system and the cutting of tax rates at the top levels. Liberals would find that more money came into the system as loopholes closed and corporations and wealthy individuals were taxed more logically and fairly. The tax burden on the working poor would be drastically reduced.

This is a very radical change to our present system, but the problems of government spending and mushrooming debt are real. Our current, conservative administration has proved they can be a nightmare. It's time to do something about it on a practical level, not an ideological level.

Ms. Iscol, This Is How I Dare

On May 26, about an hour before I went to bed (I never go to bed that early, but I was worn out by the hellish last leg of my flight home from my vacation), Jill Iscol posted this HuffingtonPost. Clearly, she feels passionately about the Clintons and Hillary's candidacy. I respect her passion.

That said, I don't agree with her logic. I don't speak out when Hillary is called foul names because being disrespected is part of the game of politics and she chose to run for senator and now for president for reasons I don't fully grasp. I've always had the feeling she was more interested in power or status than in any specific agenda, and I have the natural misgivings of someone from my time and place (a second generation Southern California born Californian, even if I do live in Tennessee now) of people who move somewhere new so they can run for office. Maybe, as a man, I find her off-putting, I admit it's theoretically possible... but I don't think so. I think I find her off-putting because, as someone interested in voting on qualifications and issues rather than personalities, she has so carefully trimmed and tacked her answers on nearly every issue and because her campaign rhetoric says one thing about Iraq and her votes in the Senate say something else.

John McCain was accused of fathering an illegitimate baby by a black woman and forcing his wife to consent to the adoption of said baby. Bill Clinton was accused of everything, almost literally. Adlai Stephenson was called an ivory tower scholastic with no understanding of the real world. Andrew Jackson was accused of being an adulterer and his wife was called a whore, they also called him a murderer. George Washington was accused of stealing his step-childrens' inheritance. Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson all poured so much abuse on each other in the political spectrum that it made what happened to Bill Clinton look mild. Then Hamilton was actually shot and killed by a political opponent. Slurs, insults, and slanders are part of the parcel when you decide on a career in politics. Hillary knew that and Ms. Iscol knows that too, and her feminist ire regarding the words 'bitch', 'whore', and 'cunt' doesn't change that fact. Worse things can be said.

Ms. Iscol is outraged that that the Clintons have been 'smeared as racists.' I don't believe that they are racists and I will say it repeatedly if desired: Hillary Clinton is certainly not a racist.

Yet she had not received those smears for no reason. Her campaign (and her husband) have stooped to race baiting tactics and pandering to racist impulses. When she tells unemployed or underpaid blue collar, blue-dog white Democrats in Kentucky or West Virginia that she is one of them, what does Ms. Iscol think she means? Senator Clinton is not blue collar, not unemployed, not at all poor, and claims not to be a blue-dog (though her voting record on the GWOT perhaps belies those claims), so what is left? She is white.

As a liberal Democrat seeking radical solutions to egregious social ills and injustices, I never had any intention of supporting Hillary and I did not vote for Obama. Having been raised in a pacifist church and having opposed the Iraq war from the first, I take strong issue with Hillary's anti-war rhetoric when every vote she has cast in the Senate on the issue has been in support of the Iraq war and she more recently voted in favor of a declaration that may be used by a Republican president as an excuse to invade Iran. I may vote for Obama in the general election, but Mike Gravel's proposed third party candidacy may win my vote. My principles may overpower my party loyalty, and I like Gravel. So I am no Obama supporter bashing Hillary for political gain.

The Democratic party needs a candidate and, for good or ill, we have two choices. Neither is a genuine liberal, both are center-left at best. Obama may be a closet conservative, though at least he has genuine ideas that can be described as progressive. Hillary is definitely a moderate, in most of the worst aspects of the word. In time of great moral and ethical debate in politics, moderates make the safe choice because they don't want to rock the boat.

That may be more damning than any 'b' or 'c' or 'w' word out there, and it's why I feel entirely comfortable not coming to Hillary's defense.

A Few Random Thoughts

Bear with me.

I usually approach these entries as if I were writing an opinion column and try to adhere to certain standards, and right now I'm not doing that. I'm simply sorting through random thoughts in my head. More column-style entries will follow, naturally, but I just feel the need to purge right now.

As a registered Democrat, I wish our nominee wasn't going to be Obama or Clinton. I respect Obama and the man gives hell of a speech, but for all the 'dangerous liberal' rhetoric from the right, he strikes me as too centrist in a world that requires more radical solutions. I think those solutions will have to come from the left, as the right is unwilling to solve problems. They want to profit from problems. The other choice for Democratic nominee? Hillary Clinton, or as her friends call her since she started campaigning so hard for the redneck vote in places like West Virginia and Kentucky, 'Lyonne.' That's a Lynx and Lamb joke. If you don't get it, Google 'Prussian Blue.' I know Hillary isn't genuinely a racist, but her pandering to racist motivations is disturbing.

Why didn't any of you people who claim to be against the war in Iraq, torture, illegal surveillance of American citizens, and corporate corruption and for national health care and the rebuilding of a just social safety net for America vote for Dennis Kucinich or Mike Gravel?

That's what people mean by 'blue collar white voters' and 'rural voters', you know. Rednecks afraid of the idea of a black president. Since when did Hillary think we were in a war against the liberal elitists anyway? Isn't she supposed to be a liberal elitist?

I really wish I could bitch-slap John McCain with a rubber chicken. He used to be my favorite conservative and now he's so busy campaigning for the General Robert Toombs vote that he sometimes appears to be to the right of the president who once beat him in a primary by circulating fliers accusing him of fathering his adopted daughter (Bangladeshi, for the record) with a black mistress and then forcing his white wife to take her into the family home.

General Robert Toombs is the man who, in a classic case of 'damn the revolution, don't sully the cause', wrote to Jefferson Davis that offering black volunteers their freedom in return for fighting for the Confederacy should not ever, ever be contemplated because if freedom was an inducement then slavery was morally wrong and of course slavery could never be morally wrong. A true conservative.

I was born and raised in California. I feel better qualified than most of the politicians involved in the debate to have an opinion on illegal immigration. My opinion? Let anybody who wants to come into the country come into the country. If everyone in Mexico comes to the United States, maybe the Saturn factory will move north of the border again.

Regulation of trade and commerce is necessary to ensure free markets. A free market is a competitive market in which the consumer and the producer are as free as the capitalist and the merchant. An unregulated market leads to a monopoly economy in which no one is free. If you don't believe me, ask Alexander Hamilton. Then take a look at the history of the oil industry.

If you're opposed to all corporate and income taxes, what will pay for your corporate welfare and government bailouts?

Now the right is using its own failures as proof the left is wrong. Conservatives are using the Bush administration's total failure in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as an argument against the perils of government. What sort of a political process do we have where one side uses its own failures as proof of its argument against the other side's successes and solutions?

What is the last problem you can think of that was actually solved by conservatism? Think about it. Take all the time you need.

Will the Democrats really take advantage of the Republican implosion to implode even more self-destructively? And do I get to blame Hillary for it?

Let's think about elitism for a moment. Is it a really a bad idea to let qualified people do jobs for which they are qualified? Is it really a good idea to let scientific laymen and the clergy decide what science should be taught in schools? Is it really a good idea to elect a 'man of the people' if the aristocrat actually knows what he is doing? Would anyone with an understanding of history choose Cato over Caesar or Wilkie over Roosevelt?

Have you noticed the people who cry out against 'elitism', from Jefferson down to Bush, are all rich aristocrats who've never done an honest day's work in their lives?

Thank you for bearing with me. I'll try to be more coherent next time.

Our Dirty Laundry: Reverend Wright Has A Point

It finally happened this week. It was going to happen, of course. Most of us knew it. Yet it was still a surprise when it happened, because the issue had been bouncing around for so long that there was a good chance it would lose traction.

Yet, last week, Reverend Wright held a press conference defending himself and Barack Obama. In that press conference, he pushed too far. He spoke for the presidential candidate without the candidate's leave, always a big mistake. He presumed to know what Senator Obama was thinking and the results didn't go well for him.

Barack Obama threw the good reverend under the bus.

More than that, he sounded generally angry and hurt that Rev. Wright would go so far. He looked to be a man shocked by the betrayal of a close friend, and his repudiation of Rev. Wright was not merely political. It was very personal. The friendship was over.

I can't condemn Obama. He held on and refused to disavow the man when it was just a matter of controversial political beliefs, but when Rev. Wright presumed to speak for Obama as a presidential candidate then the only choice was to agree (either silently or vocally) with the reverend's statements or to disavow them.

Yet the statements that Reverend Wright has made, as controversial as they may be and as hard as they hit home with white Americans who are either pricked by a guilty conscience or convicted of their own superiority and the perfection of the United States of America, they are not entirely full of shit.

No, the U.S. government did not 'unleash' AIDS on the African-American community... but President Reagan did completely ignore the pain, suffering, and death of AIDS victims for years. Federal funding for AIDS research always lagged in the Reagan and George I years, and the breakthroughs in AIDS treatment finally made are available only to those who can (through government aid, private charity, or personal assets) afford them. Bill Clinton's failure to push a national health care program through a liberal and Democratic Congress in his first term in office meant that the poor and unemployed were no better off than they were before. The government may not have 'unleashed' AIDS on anyone, but it did far too little and too late to help anyone.

As for the statement that the United States brought the events of 9/11 on itself... this is a much more difficult and complicated issue. No country deserves to have its civilians killed by a horrible terrorist act. Certainly we did not deserve to be the victims of 9/11. Yet, ever since the end of the Cold War, the ringing shouts of American triumphalism and imperialism have been heard through the world. Have American capitalists really forgotten the maxims of their own classical prophets? Thomas Malthus noted that for the middle class to be comfortable and the rich to be rich, the poor needed to be poor and exploited. He argued that attempts to ameliorate the plight of the unemployed and of the exploited working class would destroy the entire British economy. Is this far from the cries of the American right that we cannot 'afford' national health care, social security, unemployment, or any sort of social safety net whatsoever? Now take this one step further: for the United States to be a rich consumer nation, the Third World nations who now provide the resources we consume must be exploited and oppressed in the same manner as the Victorian working class of Dickens. Britain's workers got angry. Clearly, parts of the third world are angry too.

Malthus was not necessarily right, but his doctrines provide a warm blanket of necessity to keep the cold of guilt away from the rich, powerful, and corrupt. 9/11 tore through that blanket, and the actions of the rich, powerful, and corrupt certainly contributed to the anger that motivated 9/11.

Louis Farrakhan is a bad guy and I, personally, believe the Nation of Islam to be a protection racket disguised as religion. I don't have any more sympathy for anti-Semites than I do for racists, black men and Jewish men are equally my brothers. Yet, the concept of black militancy is not entirely negative despite the attempts of those uncomfortable with the status quo to frame it as such. The original black militants of the 1920s and 1930s created black businesses, a black baseball league, and black entertainment. They proved that black communities could be self sufficient and that blacks really were equal, whatever the law dictated or racists believed. The sporting successes of Joe Louis, Bill Spiller, Jackie Robinson, and Bill Russell would not have been possible without them. Many of the civil rights gains of the 50s and 60s would not have been possible without black athletes having convinced white America that blacks could be heroes.

When drugs, crime, and the institutional and geographical segregation of the urban north appeared to be even more frightening adversaries than white men with guns and ropes, black militants attempted to encourage self-sufficiency once again. The notion of racial separatism may be abominable, but to many of them it seemed that black communities had been strongest when racism was strongest and that too many African-Americans were failing to take action to improve their own lives. The idea that we should all take action to improve our own lives has another name: 'The American Dream.'

I don't know if Reverend Wright loves the United States of America, but if he is truly as 'anti-American' as the Clinton Democratic Establishment and the Republican Party would paint him then it is possible he has some cause to be. Perhaps we should solve the problems, instead of condemning the men who call our attention to them, however misguidedly.

The Most Liberal Candidate? Do Conservative Writers And Commentators Really Understand Obama?

The first time I heard Senator Barak Obama speak, I was told to have very high hopes. I was watching the Democratic National Convention in 2004 and had been told by a friend of mine that I needed to hear Obama speak. She had extremely high opinions of Senator Obama, living in a suburb of Chicago, and had followed his career in state politics and had been very enthusiastic about his possible future presidential candidacy. Her only regret was that her particular suburb of Chicago was across the state line and she couldn't vote for Obama in state elections. This probably increased her desire to see him run in an election in which she could vote.

As a speaker, Senator Obama blew me away. The man could give a speech and make you feel it resonate, not just hear the words. When I took a few moments to really consider the words, however, I felt a cold, naked jolt of strong discomfort mingle with my enjoyment of his speaking style. He sounded like Ronald Reagan. I don't mean his speaking style, or that his resonation reminded me of President Reagan's admittedly glorious speaking ability. No. Embedded in the substance of what he was saying there was a faint echo of the substance of Reagan's appeals to the left to move closer to the center in order to join his notion of mainstream America. Now, I hardly think I really am in the mainstream of American politics. My view of the government's responsibility for social welfare is closer to Dennis Kunich's view than to Senator Clinton's view or that of Senator Obama himself. On the subject of 'national security', while I understand that the situations into which Neo-Conservative Neo-Romantics have plunged us in service to their Hegelian world-spirit must be faced with extreme judgement and cannot be solved by such an easy measure as a unilateral withdrawal, I feel that our present administration is really interested in corporate security and I'm not sure that either of the two contenders for the Democratic nomination would be a huge improvement. I'm not moved to Nietzchean sacrifices on behalf of Repulican leaders who see themselves as world-historical figures on the path to empire. On the subject of economics, my views are capitalist but hardly in line with those of the Austrian School free market anarchists who whisper in the ear of conservatives in this era; I believe in Ricardo's labor theory of value and feel that allowing corporations to commit acts that would send individuals to prison is a fascist market rather than a free market. With the possible exception of the late Paul Wellstone, I doubt there's a Senator that's been close to my politics since Robert LaFollette.

Now, as a registered Democrat, I don't feel that it's my duty to move closer to the center when I believe the center to be dangerously compromised by the right on far too many issues. I feel that it's my duty to do my best to advise the leaders of my party about my concerns and that it is their duty to bring the vast majority of Americans who make up the center closer to the left.

If all of the above wasn't clear enough, I'll be short and simple: I feel Barak Obama is far too moderate a candidate for president at a time when we should be boldly championing liberal issues in the face of conservative failures. Remember, that's what they did to us to win back political primacy? Hammer the voting public with conservative fiscal sensibility and moral honesty in the face of Democratic wishy-washiness? It's time for us to trumpet liberal social values and morality in the face of conservative mean-spiritedness, imperial aspirations, and corruption.

Fox News broadcasters and conservative journalists have been throwing about Senator Obama's liberalism. The fact that he is a Democrat automatically makes him a liberal in their minds, and the fact that he uses the word 'change' so often makes him some scary fringe lefty. Wake up people. There aren't any genuinely fringe leftists in the United States. That involves actual socialism, which just isn't popular here. There certainly aren't any genuine fringe leftists in the leadership of the Democratic Party. Hillary Clinton is a free trader, a deficit hawk, and a voice of the party's post-Bill Clinton moderate establishment. John Edwards, whom many will shout deserves the VP nomination again, is a southern populist. Howard Dean, the party's chairman, is a utilitarian of the old school: he'd have been very liberal in Victorian England but is more center-left now.

The fact is, Senator Obama could very well be a closet conservative. He attends a church pastored by a man who looks on paper to be a likely supporter of Governor Mike Huckabee if Mr. Obama were not running. His economic advisors are a collection of moderate Republicans shut out of their own party by people who think it's better to trust a corporation not to rob its stockholders than it is to trust the government with the power to put people like Ken Lay in jail and meaningfully punish corporations for criminal operations. His campaign has attracted a significant number of fiscal and social conservatives leery of the Christian Coalition wing of the GOP. If we are to judge a man by his friends, as one proverb tells us, then we might be led to believe that Senator Obama would have been the most liberal candidate for the Republican nomination... if he could have persuaded Rudy Giuliani to endorse him instead of competing for the all-important pro-choice vote in the Republican primaries.

Of the possible choices for Democratic nominee that remain, I prefer Senator Obama to Senator Clinton. Doubts about his liberal credentials aside, I don't deny his ability to inspire a liberal revolution with his words. Remember, JFK was a moderate too. I distrust Senator Clinton's unwillingness to state her real positions on issues when they might be controversial and disapprove the way she attempts to appropriate moral high-ground in national security debates despite having followed the administration line on major policy votes on Iraq. If I have to have a pro-war president, at least John McCain will tell me he's pro-war to my face and I feel I can trust him to try to draw line between real terrorists and convenient targets. Senator Obama, however, may genuinely have something new to offer and I can't help but agree that his background and life give him more insight into a point of view beyond that of the corporate exploiter or the ignorant redneck bully, the two faces we have chosen to show the rest of the world far too often.

Still, while he may be the best remaining choice for the Democratic nominee, Senator Obama is no liberal.

Practical Politics and Consistent Morality: Why The Far Right Hates John McCain

I want to make it clear that I am not endorsing John McCain as a candidate for president. I merely believe that if we have to have a Republican president (as Hilary Clinton's resurgence is making it appear) that McCain is the best possible choice. I don't agree with McCain politically on every issue, and certainly I differ with him on social issues like abortion and gay rights. However, I respect that Senator McCain understands (as I do) that abortion and gay rights are very complex moral issues rather than the simple 'with-us-or-against-us' litmus tests that the Conservative and Liberal establishments in this country have made them.

It's that degree of understanding and independence that brings out reactionary anger at John McCain. It's important to understand that the leadership of the current conservative movement in this country consists of three separate camps: religious reactionaries whose personal doubts and insecurities in their own faith demand that the government legitimize it for them by legislation and judicial fiat, economic right wingers whose vision of corporate fascism is radically different from anything Adam Smith described or envisioned, and foreign policy hawks who want to see a new era of American imperialism. Senator McCain is not truly a member of any of these three camps.

He possesses a conventional Christian morality whose basic message is conservative in a social sense, but he is opposed to making evangelical Christian dogma the law of the land because he believes in the Constitutional freedom of religion. This is why Dr. James Dobson is against Senator McCain's candidacy even though McCain's pro-life voting record is perfect. He once spoke what reasonable people can only call the plain truth, calling the late Rev. Jerry Falwell and the Rev. Pat Robertson 'agents of intolerance.' The religious reactionaries have not and will never forgive him for that, but it was a much kinder way of speaking the truth about such men than the words 'bigoted and hypocritical State Church fascists opposed to everything Jesus Christ ever preached about love and the brotherhood of man.' Even the liberal leadership isn't willing to be that harsh in their judgment of the religious right. The point is that Senator McCain understands that, however positive a good faith may be on a personal and social level, not even all Christians agree on the same doctrines and that other religions have a right to practice and participate as well.

Senator McCain is certainly no liberal on economic policy, but he doesn't believe that corporations have the right to spend billions of dollars to buy candidacies and political parties. Health care corporations don't have the right to be immune from lawsuit when they put the fiscal bottom line over proper medical care for the sick and injured. Political bribery is a danger to the very fabric of our political system and bribery is not free speech. There are moral and social obligations in the medical field that trump profit margins and citizens must be allowed to seek redress for wrongs suffered when those responsible for providing health care fail to live up to those moral and social obligations. Senator McCain understands both those facts and, in addition, he actually believes corporations don't have a right to thoughtlessly destroy the environment to make money in the short-term either. These are the three issues upon which he 'betrayed' the Republican Party (though it's important to note that on the issues of political bribery and health care, his co-sponsors of the bills the Republicans call so very evil were betraying the Democratic party as well) by taking a committed, consistent moral stance. That's why the talk-radio mouthpieces for corporate fascism so aggressively condemn McCain.

The one issue in which McCain is in lockstep with the right wing establishment in the United States is foreign policy. He believes in a strong military, a certain degree of unilateralism in foreign policy decisions, and a certain degree of American political and economic imperialism. Since this has become, thanks to the out-going administration, one of the most central issues of U.S. politics one might think that the right wing would see Senator McCain as its logical champion. The problem is that he is a pragmatist on this issue rather than a dogmatist. He fell out of favor early in the 'Global War On Terror' because he spoke truth to power in telling President Bush the military realities of invading Afghanistan and Iraq. He advocated significantly larger troop assignments and time has proven him right. Afghanistan has degenerated back to anarchy and only the 'Surge' has allowed the U.S. military to maintain some semblance of order in Iraq, though it is important to note that things have not become as sunny and secure as the right wing establishment would like you to believe. If you don't believe me, watch the news.

If you study all of this, read for content, and then collate all the data then the reason that the leaders of conservative orthodoxy in the United States denigrate McCain becomes clear. John McCain speaks his mind when he disagrees with them and acts on his principles when he believes it necessary. American Conservatism of this modern era has one guiding principle: toe the party line and suck up your personal beliefs for the good of the movement. Don't dissent publicly. The Republican Party is a big tent, sure, but what that means in practice is that moderates and libertarians are welcome as long as they act like conservatives.

Like any reactionary movement, dissent is the cardinal sin in Modern American Conservatism. ' Individual rights over group rights' is a political phrase, when an individual is a member of their group then the group rights come first.

That's why MAC can't stand Mac.

Church and State, God and Country II: A Letter to a Newspaper

"We are facing the most crucial time that has ever existed in our nation's history. Politicians are fighting among themselves to attain power. What is desperately needed is to lead our nation back to Christianity. We were founded by our forefathers as a Christian nation. We have strayed so far from Christian principles that we are facing destruction.

Mike Huckabee should be a landslide choice. He is a devoted Christian and would lead us in the right direction. I believe he is God's choice. He was the 44th governor of Arkansas and he should be the 44th president of the United States.

Let's pick a leader who has character. Read Huckabee's book, 'Character is the issue.' It is very inspiring. It gives us insight as to what could be expected of him as our next president. Let's make this come true."

- J.W. "Bill" Smith in a letter to the Bristol Herald Courier, published January 31, 2008

While former Governor Huckabee appears to have little or no chance to win the Republican primary at this point, the above letter grabbed my attention immediately as soon as I read it. It shows the failure of an American citizen to understand the United States Constitution or the mind of its framers. It displays very dangerous misconceptions about the nature of our nation and its laws and it displays an intolerance that is all the more vicious for coming from well-meaning ignorance.

The United States was not founded as a Christian nation. Many of the founding fathers were Christians, most of those were of Protestant denominations, but not all. Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Franklin, and others were deists. Washington may not even have been that, during his lifetime his enemies accused him of outright atheism. Very nearly all were firmly opposed to the establishment of a state church or to allow any church or denomination to make its own doctrine the law of the land. New England had been a hotbed of religious persecution, despite being founded by men and women fleeing it. The Puritans of Massachusetts persecuted those who did not follow their religious codes of morality. The exiles Anne Hutchinson led from Massachusetts Bay to Rhode Island, fleeing that persecution, would then persecute those who did not toe their own doctrinal line. This, and the memory of the persecution of Catholics by Anglicans and the warring between High Church Anglicans and Puritans in England, made the founding fathers determined to keep the churches out of the business of writing the laws of the land.

What is true, and what many liberals unfortunately forget, is that the United States was initially founded as a nation of Christians. It is true, as conservatives claim, that many Christian principles went into the development of our nation's laws. What conservatives do not understand is that those principles are not solely Christian. They come from philosophers and political scientists like John Locke and David Hume (from whose ideas our modern American system ultimately evolved), like Rene Descartes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (both of whom strongly influenced Thomas Paine, as well as Jefferson and Madison and the future French Revolution), as far back as Plato and Parmenides, who gave us the idea of 'self-evident truths.' Most of these principles are shared by all the major religions of the world. More than that, they are shared by the majority of agnostics, atheists, deists, New Agers, modern pagans, and secular humanists.

What Mr. Smith and others like him wish to see legislated into the law of the United States are not 'Christian principles.' They are specific ideas of Christian doctrine as believed by the church to which they belong. They are the very things that the founding fathers specifically wished kept out of the United States Constitution and the laws of the states. The inability to separate between the concepts of a nation founded by Christians (in part, in great part, this cannot be denied) and of a Christian nation is one of the great challenges our country faces right now. It is a challenge our society will, ultimately, have to meet and overcome as it overcame slavery and as it still struggles to overcome bigotry, chauvinism, and prejudice.

Fortunately, this is a far cry from 'the most crucial time in our nation's history.' Nor is it the greatest challenge our nation has faced. The American Revolution, the War of 1812, slavery and the Civil War, and the World Wars were all crises far beyond anything we face now. The big challenges, the challenges of bigotry, chauvinism, prejudice, and religious intolerance are not 'national' challenges, despite of the manner in which they intrude so viciously upon politics. They are personal challenges that we must overcome in ourselves and help others to overcome. They are only national challenges in that it is our social responsibility to continue to combat such social ills as a nation.

I still have faith in us.