Why are opinions based on consensus different from those based on conscience?

Question to Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson:

Do you think New Mexico was right to fine the photographer for not photographing the gay wedding?

Johnson’s Answer:

"Look. Here's the issue. You've narrowly defined this. But if we allow for discrimination — if we pass a law that allows for discrimination on the basis of religion — literally, we're gonna open up a can of worms when it come stop discrimination of all forms, starting with Muslims … who knows. You're narrowly looking at a situation where if you broaden that, I just tell you — on the basis of religious freedom, being able to discriminate — something that is currently not allowed — discrimination will exist in places we never dreamed of."

Source >

Hillary Clinton:

“Deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.”

Many sources, here’s one >

Photo at right: One of 24 tattered flags that used to hang from lamp posts on Main Street in Derby, CT in August 2015. The city replaced them. Photo: New Haven Register; Source: Fox News >

Here’s a question for Gary and Hillary and anyone else who is so adamant about separating religious conscience from public policy:

Q: Why are opinions based on consensus different from those based on conscience?

The practical answer “consensus represents the will of the people” is not a permissible answer, because it doesn’t discriminate between what we usually consider good things (say, feeding millions of starving people in faraway lands) and what we usually consider bad things (say, exterminating millions of people in faraway lands).

I’d be delighted to hear a defense for social order that doesn’t rely on some irreducible principles of right and wrong that exist apart from consensus. I’d throw my hat in with the atheists running for president (Steve Hill), Methodists (Hillary), Presbyterians (Trump), or Lutherans (Johnson) who presumably have this answer, if they made a sincere attempt to explain why their beliefs are preferred to mine.

It’s not a difficult conversation to start, but I’d wager it would be discarded as eggheaded, irrelevant, or impractical.

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Should a Jewish deli be forced to sell pork? Why not? Why should I have to walk across the street to buy my pork when the Jewish deli is closer?

Same with wedding cakes, wedding photos, birth control, or anything else that falls between consensus and conscience.

The logic seems to be if you don’t change how you believe, and the majority no longer wishes to tolerate your beliefs, then we’ll simply legislate over them.

Is there an answer?

Of course there is.

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A: Matters of conscience remain legally protected so long as they don’t interfere with those of others.

It’s not rocket science. As my 12th grade history teacher at McDowell High School in Erie, PA used to remind us, "my rights stop where yours begin."

There’s a difference between banning contraception and forcing everyone to offer it. There’s a difference between legalizing gay marriage and forcing everyone to participate in it.

And it’s easy to demonstrate: Suppose a baker was asked to make a pornographic cake. It’s not illegal. But it happens to be offensive to many people, and we wouldn’t require the baker to oblige.

Or: Imagine a future in which the sensibilities of PETA are the norm. We could easily see hunting, animal farming, and the consumption of meat outlawed, especially if there were conflating environmental or financial considerations (eg, if you have limited water, growing grain feeds more people than raising cattle).

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You’re not allowed to tell me what to think.

Of all the things Americans agree to do because others insist they're good for us, there’s one place we all draw the line: You’re not allowed to tell me what to think.

If I want to vote based on my atheistic or hedonistic or anarchistic or Democratic or Republican values, that’s up to me, not you, and not a convention hall full of people like you.

Americans know how to handle a little ignorant buffoonery. We’ve been dealing with that forever.

What would be new to us is a leader who seriously thinks my “deep-seated … religious beliefs” need to change.

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And my personal beliefs have nothing to do with this, aside from the fact they’re mine, and just important as yours, even if you’re running for president, and even if you don’t think so.

[2016.07.29]

Even a smidgen of Christlikeness is an impossible expectation.

Christians are not to be angry, vindictive, spiteful, hateful, morose, bitter, boastful, or easily offended. They’re not supposed to take pleasure in the discomfort of others, be mean-spirited, or consider their own needs ahead of the needs of others. And “others” is everyone, those I like and who like me, those I dislike and dislike me.

I’ve failed at all those things. Some every day. Being fully Christlike is not only difficult, it’s impossible.

But we’re called to take up our cross nevertheless, for as long as we are able to carry it.

Photo at right: Father Jacques Hamel. Fr Hamel was killed by Islamic terrorists while delivering Mass at Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray church in Rouen, France. The 84-year-old priest was forced to kneel at the altar and had his throat slit. Some accounts have him later decapitated. His killers apparently also performed some sort of Islamic service at the altar. Credit: AFP. Source: bbc.com.

Sometimes life ends horribly, as it did for Fr Hamel.

Sometimes it ends peacefully (if painfully) as it did for my dad - his family at his bedside.

Sometimes it ends in the huddled terror of mass graves, floods, earthquakes, explosions.

	Photo at Left: The skulls and bones of Capuchin brothers adorn this altar in a Capuchin Crypt in Rome, Italy. Credit: Dnalor_01. Source:  Wikimedia Commons. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Photo at Right: Skulls of the victims of the Khmer Rouge occupation of Cambodia. Source:  Wikimedia Commons; License: Denne fil er udgivet under Creative Commons Navngivelse 2.0 Generisk-licensen.

And sometimes it ends in isolation - a homeless shelter, prison, a hospital bed, a car accident, a heart attack in the middle of the night - and we slip away alone.

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I recall seeing an inverted pyramid of human skulls in the Smithsonian when I was a child. The skulls formed something of a chart demonstrating population growth.

We’ve gotten so used to seeing human skulls, we barely flinch at mass graves in Cambodia, and are simply perplexed at catacombs and monasteries.

But each time I see them, I think the same thing: What had collected inside those boney shells before they were emptied? How many smiles and tears lived in there, connecting and accreting to form a unique Individual who is recognized by other unique Individuals with smiles and tears of their own?

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Notice the title of this blog. I didn’t say that Christlikeness is an unreasonable expectation, just impossible. It’s reasonable because Christlikeness is a journey, and it never ends until we put down our cross, like Fr Hamel did, like my dad did.

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There’s a Christian concept that, roughly stated, encourages us to turn our pain over to God and regard our unhappiness as a blessing. Baptists say “God never gives us more than we can bear,” or repeat the words of James to “count it all joy.” Catholics are encouraged to share in Christ’s passion and offer up their sorrows to Him.

The subtext underlying both traditions has strong elements of amends and apology.

I’m not sure I know how any of that works. I’m not sure anyone really does. Because anything so counterintuitive usually remains in the realms of faith and skepticism, which are remarkably similar since they concern themselves with the very same mysteries, just come to drastically different conclusions.

[2016.07.26]

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Wasserman Schultz is out. Is Johnson in?

CNN: The DNC chair won't speak at Dem convention following Wikileaks >
(Sun July 24, 2016)

The MSNBC pundits this morning (Sunday 7/24) sort of tilted their heads and said in essence, Wasserman Schultz wasn't well-liked and it was probably time for her to go anyway, as if she'd struck out in the bottom of the ninth with bases loaded.

Establishment Democrats seem to think that if they talk loudly about something else - anything else - unflattering developments will go away, and so the Clinton campaign suggested that Trump plotted with Putin to release the emails that Wasserman Schultz resigned over. (You can't make this stuff up.)

 

Photo at right: Gary Johnson, former Governor of New Mexico and 2016 Libertarian Party nominee for President.

 

Poll: Gary Johnson At 26% In Utah, Three Points From Overtaking Trump >
(July 23, 2016)

Glenn Beck: “I’m probably going to vote for Gary Johnson” >

Rumors Circulate About Jeb Bush Endorsing Libertarian Gary Johnson >

If you're interested ... Gary Johnson On the Issues >

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Libertarians are cool.

Gary Johnson Slogan	Linux Slogan

 

I voted Libertarian a number of years ago. I may again.

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I thought I was the only one to see the similarity…

I went looking for a picture of Mike Pence that resembled Race Bannon from the original Johnny Quest, and someone had already done it for me.

L: Race Bannon. R: Mike Pence | Credit: Nuvo.net

Who's Race Bannon, you ask?

Sit back enjoy 2:30 minutes of what Saturday mornings *used* to be about, when men were men and fought pterodactyls, mechanical spiders, and all manner of fantastical beasties and nefarious villains.

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Ask not whose speech you can steal.

A.F. Branco, May 18, 2016 - NeverTrump, SCOTUS, 

Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, 2016, political cartoon 

Visit therealside.com here >

National media recently used the words “bombshell,” “firestorm,” and "plagiarism" to describe Melania Trump's use of portions of Michelle Obama’s convention speech eight years ago.

I think "plagiarism" is a little harsh, since Barack Obama did it himself (later defended as "poor footnoting" - "Michelle Obama Copied Alinsky in Speech Melania Trump Allegedly Plagiarized" >) 

The "plagiarism" I'm especially fond of recalling is JFK's use of Cicero's "ask not what you can do for your country," a line that defines his presidency to this day, but was written by the Roman orator over 2,000 years ago (and apparently borrowed from Juvenal).

Uncredited borrowing wasn't always considered plagiarism, but it is today, and it doesn't matter how old the words are.

So, call Melania Trump a plagiarist if you will, but be fair and apply the same standard to everyone. If there’s a scale of such things, Melania was on the sloppy and naive end, and Obama was on the deliberate and surreptitious end.

If you've spent much time here, you  know my opinion of Trump, but FWIW, despite the energy spent by networks, comedians, and pundits to exaggerate Trump’s flaws and deemphasize or ignore Hillary’s, I predict he will be our next president.

Being that I don’t care for either, I’ve been listening to coverage carefully, and I think it’s fair to say the coverage is lopsided, which goes from sadly humorous to sadly tragic when the same myopia intersects with terrorism and racial tension.

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I lived through the assassinations of the 60s, race riots and Vietnam. Nothing we are seeing today approaches the fear and chaos of those times. But it easily can. There's no rule that says the United States can't descend into disorder so severe that the only way we can hold it together is enforce a police state - suspended elections, marshal law, firearm confiscations, food rationing, etc.

Unfortunately, regardless of our opinion of right and wrong, the most brutal states have survived the longest, growing and prospering until they could no longer suppress internal dissent or protect against external threats (the why's are many, but the outcome is the same).

As a McDowell High School substitute teacher of mine (Mr. Painter) long ago said, if you took all the wars out of your history book, it'd be no thicker than a magazine.

We aren't much more than a large, layered feudal state in which we pledge allegiance in exchange for enough social order to grow crops, make horse shoes, or write advertising copy.

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My book is at 84,142 words. I'm actually skipping around and right now working on the last two chapters, which are postlogs. The final conflict is a hodge-podge of contextless sentences and notes to self regarding who needs to be there, loose ends that need to be snipped, etc. It's slow going.

I'm also picking at my next book, completely different genre. It's a short(er), quick read, but finer detail. 

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Writing in the cloud: A free solution for long manuscripts.

I've spent a lot of time between the 2015 holidays and my return from China exploring free alternatives to tools I need to write.

Here is a summary. Perhaps the time I spent will save you some.

What I Needed

1. A word processor 
2. A hierarchical outliner
3. Cloud storage.

Requirements

1. Must work under Windows and Linux (because I do; Wine or VMs a last resort).
2. Must be free or open source, actively developed, preferably with a friendly and helpful community.
3. Word processor must have a document navigator and elegantly handle long documents with many chapter headers and comments, a handful of styles, tables and images, and uncomplicated formatting.
4. Outliner must support Rich Text and image embedding. (Eg, must act like a word processor.)

What I've Tried
Nearly everything you'll find here:

1. Alternatives to MS Office       
2. Alternatives to OneNote
3. Alternatives to Google Drive

What I Decided to Use

1. Kingsoft WPS Office
2. CherryTree Outliner
3. DropBox 

Why I Didn't Choose Some Obvious Contenders

1. Microsoft Word
   • I  have a one-year free subscription (full installation and Office 365, came with a laptop). But that's not free. That's a carrot. The last thing I need is to become so dependent on an app that I'm forced to pay for it to continue writing.
   • Word is sluggish with long manuscripts, even on new computers with lots of memory. I can't believe everyone else is experiencing this, but Word 2016 just can't keep up.
   • No native Linux client, of course.
   
2. OpenOffice/LibreOffice
   • Big problem: Not 100% compatible with Word. Found out the hard way when I used it to renew a travel visa (involved disappearing images).
   • Small problem (but a deal killer): Try this - create a long Writer document in LibreOffice. Scroll down to some random location. Make an edit. Scroll down some more (don't PgDn or use the down arrow). Now save. What happens? You're bounced back up to where you left your cursor. Now imagine jumping around a 300-page manuscript and finding yourself hopelessly lost between where you were and where you were before that.
   
3. SoftMaker FreeOffice
   • I really like this suite. It's a smart, lean alternative to MS out of Germany, and despite a few issues, I almost paid for it. I'd been watching prices of Softmaker and WPS and waited for a sale. As soon as Softmaker went on sale, I planned to buy it. On the last day of the sale, I visited the site to buy, and... the price had gone up $10. Sorry, Softmaker. I know these things are often controlled by algorithms, but you lost the sale and a customer.
   
4. Calligra Suite
   • I'm excited about this suite because it includes a database module, Kexi, but the word processor is still in its infancy. Hope to see something to test drive down the road.
   
5. Google Drive / Google Docs
   • Google's spell checker has no equal. I use Docs all the time just for final spell checking short documents, but it's not for longer manuscripts (yet) and document navigation is rudimentary.
   • No native Linux client. Of course, you can use Google Drive and Docs through the browser, but there's no installable client for Drive, and apparently no interest from Google in creating one.
   • Google Drive app routinely stops responding on Windows 10. (Wonder why.)
   
6. OneNote
   • OneNote is a very nice outliner/notetaker from Microsoft, and it's 100% free. But it's so integrated into OneDrive, unless I'm committed to OneDrive, OneNote is not the best answer,
   • No Linux support, of course.       

Final World

• I can pirate nearly anything I feel like looking for. I didn't want to.
• Free is sometimes better than what you pay for. You just have to spend a little time looking and learning. 
• Sometimes (not always, but sometimes), those who give things away care more than those who sell them. And that doesn't just go for software. That goes for things like the News from Lake Wobegon, too, and 4th of July fireworks, and good conversations and soup kitchens and wafers and those little cups of wine Donald Trump knows so much about.

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