WRONG ON MARRIAGE, RICK

Rick Warren has offended large numbers of Jews,
Muslims, and gays. That's three strikes, and he
should be out as presidential prayer leader. Jews
and Muslims are offended mightily by his claim
that they are barred from heaven unless they ac-
cept Jesus. Many gays are offended by that too,
as well as his leadership in opposing gay marriage.

Rick is willfully and woefully ignorant about mar-
riage and what's it all about, Alfie. He is misin-
formed as well about homosexuality, but I have
already addressed that earlier. He avers that con-
ventional monogamy is a universal norm. That is
factually incorrect, as a 3 min. Google will quickly
show.

Throughout the long sweep of history, polygamy
and concubinage have been far more prevalent than
life-long monogamy (L. L. M.). Muslims of course
allow polygamy, as does the Old Testament, and
most of Africa, originally. Concubinage was preva-
lent in China, and geisha girls in Japan for centuries.
L. L. M. is a fairly recent and hugely minority view
of marriage, as is romantic love as a basis for it. His-
torically, marriage has been more concerned with
property than with propiety.

What we have in the U. S. is serial monogamy. Half
the marriages end in divorce, as do more than half of
the re-marriages. The majority of children growing
up in the U. S. are in single parent households. That's
the reality!

Both Inuits in the far north, and south sea islanders
practiced sexual hospitality for strangers without
much inhibition until the missionaries showed up and
taught their position (L. L. M., that is). In Hinduism
(and Greek mythology) even gods have concubines
and extra-marital affairs. In Europe, prostitution is
legal in many countries, and a hefty share of the cli-
ents are married men. So while L. L. M. may be the
ideal, it certainly is not the norm anywhere on this
planet.

Rev. Warren is certainly entitled to preach his con-
victions without harassment or ridicule. And I mean
him no disrespect here, at all. But he is not only fac-
tually wrong about monogamy, he is morally and
ethically wrong to impose his religious beliefs on civil
law. That's a clear violation of church/state separa-
tion. We can't have religion making our civil laws.
That way is theocracy, and the end of all civil liber-
ties!

Let me hear what you think.

jgoodwin004@centurytel.net

GAYNESS IS NOT "JUST A LIFESTYLE"

By dismissing homosexuality as a "lifestyle choice,"

its enemies are assuming that it is a choice freely

arrived at. But if a choice is not free, is it really a

choice? For example, in a "shot-gun wedding," the

partners "choose" to "do the right thing." But co-

ercion limits the freedom of either partner to refuse

the arrangement.

Internal pressures can be just as decisive on beha-

viour as external ones. Among these pressures

are our appetites and cravings. Most of us have

natural inclinations toward people of the opposite

sex. Teen age boys are usually reved up sexually

when perusing a catalog for Victoria's Secret. If

such sights leave him cold however, but views of

naked men excite him, that could be a problem. It

could be a matter of wiring. Yes, he "chooses" men

over women, just as he chooses ice cream over cold

spinach. The latter just doesn't appeal to him. And

he can hardly be blamed for that!

We have a niece who is attractive, but has never had

the slightest interest in boys. She loved to play boys'

sports, and from the age of 11 on dressed like a boy.

Are such preferences simply a choice? Uncaused?

Or are they programmed by biology?

She had one date in high school, for a prom. In Girl

Scout camp she discovered she was attracted to girls.

In college she entered a long term lesbian relationship.

Her dad can't accept that. He insists on seeing it as a

moral failing, a "lifestyle choice." She is not aware of

it ever being a choice. It is as natural for her as brea-

thing. Who is right?

ON ABANDONING OUR AUTO INDUSTRY

Roger Cohen is against helping the sinking auto
makers. In the NYT (Op Ed. 12/17/08) essay
"Pan Am Dies, America Lives," he recalls fondly
the glory of a great airline, and sadness at its de-
mise. But life goes on, he writes. And new airlines
came on to replace the old. The same will happen
with car making. No big deal. "Nobody subsi-
dized U. S. Steel or the auto-maker Packard in
the belief that the world without them was un-
thinkable," he argues.

He has no inkling of the depth and seriousness
of the international catastrophe now enveloping
the financial world. The European economy is in
crisis, as is that of Japan. China is also facing major
problems. In letting our car industry go under, he
is assuming that market forces will produce some-
thing better to replace it. What is really at risk how-
ever is not just one industry, but all of them. It's
systemic: first went housing, then hedge funds, then
banking and insurance. And now it's autos. What
next? If autos go, the domino effect spreads like a
crack in a windshield.

Doesn't the above list suggest a general deteriora-
tion going on that is a lot more serious than one or
two car companies going broke? The house is on
fire. Do we let one room burn, oblivious to its con-
nection with others?

What's crashing is the world-wide economic system.
As I wrote in the last blog, George Soros wrote in
1998 (The Crisis of Global Capitalism): "What I pre-
dict is the imminent disintegration of the global capi-
talist system." That's what's happening! Paul Krug-
man gets it, as does Robert Reich and others. Ger-
many is blocking the fire engines trying to fight the
conflagration in Europe. Mr. Cohen, in objecting to
rescue operations here, is ignoring the global extent
and the potential destruction of this melt down.

The death of our auto industry will leave a hole in
our economic dike through which will pour a flood
of foreclosures, bankruptcies, and welfare costs.
Mr. Cohen doesn't mention the $570 bn. Defense
budget, about three quarters of which is wasted.
It's main justification is that it's a jobs program.
Along side the defense budget, $15 bn in a loan
for cars is chump change. But it's absolutely essen-
tial, not only to folks in that industry, but to keep
all our heads above water!

THE DYING MARKET GOD

Marketolatry has been the reigning religion of glo-
bal capitalism. It has exhibited blind faith in Adam
Smith's "invisible hand" (I. H.), which Smith be-
lieved governs the allocation of resources, capital
and labor in the most efficient possible way.

While Smith's confidence in the market to self-regu-
late was conditional, later apostles like Milton Fried-
man and Alan Greespan turned that principle into
dogma. And dogmas have a way of becoming un-
conditional. That's too bad, because it can produce
chaos, and now has.

The effectiveness of Smith's I. H. depends on open,
honest, and full information on all aspects of any and
all business transactions. Without this, the hand is
operating blind. Picture a surgeon operating blind,
and you'll understand the disaster afoot now in the
world economy. When the I. H. confronts a series
of Ponzi schemes, all it has left of the hand to give
is a finger!

Thomas Friedman, in today's NYT, notes the Ber-
nard Madoff scandal, and then comments: "I have
no sympathy for Madoff. But the fact is, his alled-
ged Ponzi scheme was only slightly more outra-
geous than the 'legal' scheme that Wall Street was
running, fueled by cheap credit, low standards and
high greed. What do you call giving a worker who
makes $14,000 a year a nothing-down and nothing-
to-pay-for-two-years mortgage to buy a $750,000
home, and then bundling that mortgage with 100
others into bonds -- which Moody's or Standard &
Poors rate AAA -- and then selling them to banks
and pension funds the world over? That's what our
financial industry was doing. If that isn't a pyramid
scheme, what is it?"

George Soros wrote about the dangers of these
kinds of shenanigans, ten years ago in The Crisis of
Global Capitalism. Soros, for anyone not familiar
with him, is a multi-millionaire philanthropist who
graduated broke from the London School of Eco-
nomics and made a fortune in speculating on cur-
rency futures, and other commodities. He runs a
very successful investing firm.

In the book just mentioned, he wrote: "What I pre-
dict is the imminent disintegration of the global
capitalistic system. . . . The 19th century was punc-
tuated by devastating panics followed by economic
depressions. We are currently in the process of re-
living that experience. . . . in the current global cri-
sis, both theory and practice are proving inadequate."

Soros holds that our present financial situation is the
result of market fundamentalism (M. F.) run amok.
He is not alone in that view. It is one shared by Paul
Krugman and James K. Galbraith, among others.
Soros again: "I believe that the revival of market
fundamentalism can be explained only by faith in a
magic quality ("the invisible hand") that is even
more important than the scientific base. Not in vain
did President Reagan speak of the 'magic of the mar-
ketplace.' A key feature of fundamentalist beliefs is
that they rely on either/or judgments. If a proposi-
tion is wrong, its opposite is claimed to be right. This
logical incoherence lies at the heart of market fun-
damentalism. State intervention in the economy
has always produced some negative results. This
has been true not only of central planning but also of
the welfare state and of Keynesian demand manage-
ment. From this banal observation, market funda-
mentalists jump to a totally illogical conclusion: If
state intervention is faulty, free markets must be
perfect."

Soros expains further: ". . . fundamentalism implies
a certain kind of belief that is easily carried to ex-
tremes. It is a belief in perfection, a belief in abso-
lutes, a belief that every problem must have a solu-
tion. It posits an authority that is endowed with
perfect knowledg even if that knowledge is not readi-
ly accessible to ordinary mortals."

Pres. Bush recently remarked: "I've abandoned
free-market principles to save the free-market
system." Doesn't that tell you the principles don't
work? The system is trashed, and has been for
some time. Deal with it.