Opinion

Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina, I’m Just Trying To Walk The Line

2009-07-10T03:21:35+00:00

The soapy saga of the lovestruck governor, the dishonorable Mark Sanford of the great state of South Carolina… almost topped the news this week.

His psoriasis of love is certainly one of the biggest itches of recent political history and almost put Michael Jackson’s death in the shadows. But we humans, floating in the 24/7 tsunami of poor taste fostered by network and cable celebrity news, like a good scandal.

A metaphor for the last week was supplied by the Alpo dog food company. Their researchers offered volunteers five types of mashed up food, including pâté, duck liver mousse, liverwurst and meat from a can of Alpo. Only three out of the eighteen volunteers were able to distinguish the dog food from the other delicacies. Whether Sanford will manage to remain as governor after “crossing so many lines” is basically up to the political gods of the Palmetto State.

Maybe they will use the long fronds of the tropical tree to cool off the hot governor so he can continue to lead them on the right trail – Appalachian, not Argentinian. I think it’s an even bet he can survive the onslaught of the righteous, but as W.C. Fields said in one of his heavier moments: “Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.”

So, who knows if all these flights to Argentine fantasies will come crashing down? Sanford seems to have admitted testing quite a few samples “crossing” his path. Perhaps some of them really like Alpo.

What’s a handful of women? Would that include the likes of Ma Frickert, Joan Rivers and Anna Nicole Smith? Sanford says he “crossed lines” with a handful of women other than his mistress – but never had sex with them.

Is he pulling a William Jefferson “never-had-sex-with-that-woman” Clinton on us? Couldn’t he tell a soul mate from an Alpo eater? He said he “never crossed the ultimate line” with anyone except his new soul mate, Maria Belen Chapur. He says he “let his guard down” and “engaged in some physical contact” but “didn’t cross the sex line.” I guess that means he was just canoodling, dallying at full staff, trifling with, vamping instead of making the “beast with two backs” that Will Shakespeare so aptly described.

But with Maria all guards were AWOL, the Palmetto fronds were not cooling, and he admits “I spent the last five days crying in Argentina.” This is heavy-breathing stuff.

The “Devil Made Me Do It” Defense

According to Cal Thomas, that great defender of everything Republican and Christian “family values,” that Sexy Sanford must have heard the “voice” that’s “always on the prowl looking for new people to destroy.” I’m assuming the voice belongs to the Devil, whispering dirty thoughts in the oft-kissed ears of the “family values” governor.

This is, I must also assume, the beginning of “The Devil Made Me Do It” defense made famous by so many Christian politicians caught with zippers and pants down. Thomas makes the broad “assumption” that “every married person has heard the voice; the one that says you deserve something ‘better.’” Sexy Sanford must be thoroughly confused most of the time, listening raptly to all those voices telling him that something “better’” is in the next skirt.

Sexy Sanford, steeped in Biblical lore, had the audacity to compare himself to King David and his “family values” Simmons romp with Bathsheba while her husband was away fighting for their country. Sanford says King David then picked up the pieces of his life.

That’s why he doesn’t want to resign. However, Mrs. Sanford said, “His career is not a concern of mine. He’ll be worrying about that, and I’ll be worrying about my family and the character of my children.” I like her. Give him another shot in his testimonials.

When Corky and I spent a three-year tour in the South, we quickly found out that most Southern politicians had the morals of scorpions and plantation owners. They felt that if they were elected they had a divine right to money and sex as long as they folded their hands in prayer on Sunday. Think of Huey Long, Bill Clinton, Nuke Grinch and Big Daddy in “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.”

Ex-Governor Ed Edwards of Louisana (I think he’s still in jail on corruption charges) described the attitude of Southern politicians with his famous line: “The only way I’d lose an election would be if I were found in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.”

Sanford seems to have the same attitude. Of course, as a hard-as-rock conservativefundamentalist he got elected railing against sinners and hugging his kids out in public. But, if he is such a Bible thumper, I would think he would be preparing for his public stoning near the Confederate flag on the grounds of the South Carolina capital.

Isn’t that the punishment for adultery? Can the Bible just be ignored if you don’t agree with the verse?

Sexy Sanford also opposes same-sex marriage with every fiber of his body – which he seems to have used a lot lately. He claims his wife Jenny gave him permission to go to New York with his spiritual advisor to meet Maria and kiss her off. I’m not sure that would even make a believable movie scene. Sanford says same-sex marriages are a threat to traditional marriages in the heterosexual scene.

Here’s a guy who is prowling around the fleshpots of the South Carolina capital looking for scores, and he is worried about “traditional” marriage?

I have yet to hear a sound reason how marriage between two lesbians affects marriage between two heterosexuals. We are what we are. God didn’t ensure that each person would get the exact amount of testosterone or estrogen necessary for the process of bringing Pol Pot or Mother Teresa into the world. If Evangelicals believe the Bible when it says God looked in the womb and checked each fetus at conception and again before birth, why don’t they believe that God also put a “prime” sign on each straight, lesbian, gay and transgender born into this world. Wasn’t the birth with His approval?

The World Is Awash With Religious Sex Problems

According to Genesis, God created everything. So we have little creatures that reproduce asexually. Other creatures such as worms reproduce by changing themselves sexually – if necessary. Evangelicals reproduce sexually. But why does practically every species have gay, lesbian and transgender beings? There are gay elephants, giraffes and fish. When Noah added two dinosaurs to his collection to escape the flood, chances are one was gay. Two male king penguins recently raised a chick in captivity. Monkeys, gorillas and man have about the same ratio of gays.

Science has made great progress over the last 5,000 years. Science brings up thousands of new questions each year, and no one in the religious business seems to be able to answer them.

Evangelicals have recently opened the Creation Museum in Kentucky based on Biblical references that God created the universe in six days about 6,000 years ago. Recent scientific evidence indicates the Earth is at least 14 billion years old and may be a lot older. The Hubble telescope opens up the beauty and wonders of our universe. And the Europeans are working on what they call the “42-meter Extremely Large Telescope” which may end up being 100 times as sensitive as the Hubble. It is designed to explore the origins of the first stars and galaxies and to see whether there are other planets just like Earth roaming the Heavens. It may also investigate the “dark matter” that may make the universe tick.

Did T-Rex Have Neanderthals For Lunch?

Isn’t “religion” making religion irrelevant by refusing to even look at what science is revealing to us? Near the entrance to the Creation Museum, there is a display of a young girl feeding a carrot to a squirrel and two huge dinosaurs standing in the background. Science says dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago, about 61 million years before man appeared on Earth. That’s a big “whoops!”

The museum preachers say that the dinosaurs died in 2348 B.C. at the time of the Great Flood. Actually, in “real” history the Bible thumpers flood was at the same time the first libraries were established in Egypt; epic poetry was written in Babylonia, celebrating the re-creation of the world; Egyptian literature expressed lamentations and skepticism about the meaning of life; and the bow and arrow was first used in war. I wonder if Tyrannosaurus Rex was trained by somebody to serve as a war dinosaur as elephants were trained by the Asians as war elephants?

No wonder Sanford seems confused. His conservative beliefs, his faith (whatever it is) and his marriage vows seem to be based on a foundation of cherry jello and dino dung.

After All, Says The Vatican, What Are Nuns Really For?

As if the Vatican doesn’t have enough problems with its intransigent attitudes toward all aspects of sex, whether abuse by priests; the use of contraceptives; the possibility of women as priests, bishops, and cardinals; or even a Pope named Sue, now the guys in long black skirts are investigating American nuns!

They are bringing back the Inquisition to question the loyalty and service of women who have basically served as the Church’s waste management service, its cheap teacher corps and the maid service for countless priests. Sister Sandra M. Schneiders, professor emerita at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkley, seems to have it nailed: “They think of us as an ecclesiastical work force, whereas we are religious, we’re living the life of total dedication to Christ, and out of that flows a profound concern for the good will of all humanity. So our vision of our lives, and their vision of us as a work force, are just not on the same planet.”

This is the most polite “stuff it” I have heard directed toward the tired old grey men of the Vatican.

Nuns did most of the real work in the hospitals, schools and other institutions of the Catholic Church in this country while priests and bishops talked, talked and talked and avoided the tough questions.

Since the so-called reforms of the Second Vatican Council, nuns have decided they will not be the mules, cooks and floor scrubbers of the church anymore. Nuns have been very active in organizations that advocate the ordination of women and married men as priests. Why were there 180,000 nuns in 1965 and only 60,000 today? There are about 340 congregations of nuns in the U.S. Some of them have been neglected by the Vatican and are quite destitute.

Why Charles Darwin Had Blue Eyes

History and science are formidable hurdles for religious fundamentalists such as Sexy Sanford to overcome. The world is catching up and is winning. The Catholic Church is having another Inquisition to slap down the nuns who want and deserve to play a prominent role in the church. No doubt nuns will be on the altars, giving the sermons and raising the bread and wine in worship – some day, if not soon.

While preparing this column I was also reading a National Geographic article about Charles Darwin. To illustrate how science is trumping old-time religion, there is a paragraph explaining how Darwin ended up with blue eyes. I don’t understand even half of it, but some humans do. And that’s the wonder of the free-will mind. How Darwin ended up with blue eyes was explained by scientists in 2008:

“(We) have found the genetic mutation common to all blue-eyed people. The mutation is a single letter change, from A to G, on the long arm of the chromosome 15, which dampens the expression of a gene called OCA2, involved in the manufacture of the pigment that darkens the eyes. By comparing the DNA of Danes with that of the people from Turkey and Jordan, (we) calculated that this mutation happened only about 6,000-10,000 years ago… in a particular individual somewhere around the Black Sea. So Darwin may have gotten his blue eyes because of a single misspelled letter in the DNA in the baby of a Neolithic farmer.”

Trying to squash science and reason is like trying to un-ring a bell – or like Sexy Sanford finding a soul mate when he already had one.

Policy Without Public Notice

2009-07-10T03:17:55+00:00

Even though the Fourth is over and done with, that does not mean the fireworks have dissipated in downtown Fargo. In fact, something tells us the fireworks is just beginning—if we are talking about downtown parking issues and the issuance of parking tickets.

HPR was contacted a few days ago by a family that has lived and worked downtown for over 30 years. That was the first we had heard of some of the new parking policies apparently implemented by the City Commission recently.

We should have been more inquisitive 10 or so days ago when we saw a team of city workers going up and down Broadway taping something over each and every one of the downtown parking restriction signs. Had we taken the time to go read the new signage, we may have had insight into some of the changes coming to all of us downtown.

Unbeknownst to us, or most of you we are guessing, Fargo leaders decided to start ticketing on Broadway on Saturdays. The 90-minute Monday-Friday parking restrictions now are Monday-Saturday if you look closely to our modified signs downtown.

While the goal of this effort is noble, we take issue with the method it was all done and with the total lack of voice afforded many businesses and residents in the process.

Yes, we all agree there are parking problems: BUILD A PARKING RAMP. And, similarly, we agree that education is important and that many folks are not aware there are some parking lots they can park in so as to avoid ticketing or towing: BUILD A PARKING RAMP.

But we wholeheartedly disagree with such policy discussions and actual policy changes unfolding with little or no notice to the people whatsoever, let alone input along the way.

The notion that many will learn the hard way is not acceptable. Paying $15 fines as a punishment for parking downtown on Broadway on Saturdays will simply fuel the animosity that is aplenty as it is. (And do not park on the same block again or you’ll find out that it is not 90-minute parking but that you cannot even park on the same block again without getting ticketed again. Coming downtown can be very expensive.)

The notion that some Broadway businesses will have special treatment to make sure they have parking spots available only pushes the burden of dealing with filled streets (remember a few years ago when we were begging people to come downtown?) onto the connecting avenues. That’s short-sighted and not a long-term solution; in fact, it replaces one set of problems with another.

We readily admit that we have a prejudice toward city leadership and its downtown parking restriction enforcers when it comes to parking and ticketing issues and procedures. We call it a cash cow; others, of course, say it is not about revenue generation at all, for the City that is.

Our prejudice stems from the last time they implemented new, more stringent rules. Do you remember? We were told they would ‘warn’ people at first so as to let people adjust to the new rules, regulations and higher costs. Well, that did not happen. There were no warnings. Just tickets from the onset.

This is not good public relations. It is also not what we could call a good neighbor policy.

Now we see it again. New rules put in place before we are told about them, before ordinary people have a chance to say squat.

Heck, there were even television news stories this past week about the City hiring security people to issue even more tickets in downtown Fargo. Adding Saturdays means the revenues can increase 20 percent if we are doing our math correctly. That’s just wrong and deserves not only significant public discussion, but public notice.

We commend those folks who desire to address concerns and needs in our downtown. However, this approach seems to be based on input from a select few with vested interests, which is fine, but not to the exclusion of everyone else.

The City should back off giving tickets on Saturdays downtown. And the City should back off a policy that favors a few Broadway businesses to the exclusion of everyone else downtown.

We suspect lots of people have ideas and suggestions for downtown parking and ticketing and traffic flows. That feedback is much more valuable when sought out proactively, not after the fact. Otherwise, we have fireworks going off, which is indeed the case from what we are hearing and seeing right out our front doors.

Trollwood’s Splendor

Next week, Trollwood itself upstages the old Trollwood. Everyone knows Trollwood is an exemplary community asset. Well, it’s much more than that, truly.

The Wiz will be the first show there in the new 150-acre setting in south Moorhead. Though Trollwood performances are ordinarily extraordinary, the setting for this year’s performance will be unlike any ever before.

It’s simply breathtaking and gorgeous.

We cannot wait to hear the public reaction not only to top notch theatre, music and art, but we eagerly await their take on the new digs.

In our opinion, it’s a stellar performance already and the show has not even begun. Go to The Wiz. Then go out there for future concerts, weddings and receptions, family picnics, and even personal quiet moments in the company of Mother Nature.

We commend the visionaries who laid this groundwork for a cultural journey that will even further transcend generations and boundaries.

It’s the best ticket in town.

Jagged Edges

2009-07-02T06:56:43+00:00

http://www.jagged-edges.com

The $20,000 Vote

2009-07-02T06:29:45+00:00

Our Opinion / Each “yes” vote represents a future commitment of almost $20,000.

The turnout was awful, and the result was what city leaders wanted. With over 90 percent of those voting supporting the half-cent sales tax for flood protection, it was a resounding mandate. Now city leaders have a savings account or cash flow they can work with to plan for the future.

Though nobody knows the plan yet, we encourage — if at all possible — going the route of a diversion. If it cannot feasibly be done on the Minnesota side, then do it on the North Dakota side. We also need to fit Fargo’s protection plan into the broader region’s plan.

In time, we hope city leaders will not leave the entire onus of flood protection on the shoulders of lower and middle class wage earners as sales taxes tend to do. We fully expect that property owners will equally participate in funding the solutions agreed upon down the road. That means, if $200 million comes from sales tax, then an equal $200 million should come from property taxes and levies. If that much is not needed, the sales tax should be sunseted earlier than the 20-year window approved by voters Tuesday.

With over 10,000 “yes” votes, each one represents a future commitment of almost $20,000 in sales tax collections. That is astounding. The turnout was dismal by every standard. HPR’s guess is that the power wielded by each vote will not likely be seen ever again in our lifetime.

Property owners need to pay a fair share. We all need to be vigilant so as to assure that happens.

Electioneering on Election Day

We were disappointed to see WDAY and KVLY television stations airing Vote Yes ads in rebroadcasts of the nightly news in the early hours of the morning on election day, June 30.

This is two years in a row HPR is pointing out what appear to be technical violations of the North Dakota electioneering laws. Last June, The Forum published an editorial with its endorsements on election day. This year at least two TV stations broke the rules.

North Dakota law (NDCC 16.1-10-06) prohibits what is called electioneering on election day, for or against measures and candidates.

“North Dakota broadcasters and newspapers are all well aware of this law,” media counsel Jack McDonald of Bismarck explained to HPR. “The vast majority of the stations and newspaper follow it. I do not advise them to run election-day ads, but I have told them that this law is very likely unconstitutional, and that many, many state, federal courts, and even the U.S. Supreme Court, have held that similar laws are a violation of the 1st Amendment, and that the need for free political speech is perhaps its greatest on the day people actually vote.”

According to McDonald, there have likely been three or four violations of this law in nearly every election he could remember in the past 20 years or so, many inadvertent, but some deliberate.

“It’s really unenforceable,” McDonald said. “I am not aware of any prosecutions for violations. For instance, it does not apply to fixed displays, billboards or bumper stickers. It does not apply to lawn signs or ads that simply say Vote Republican or Vote Democrat, without referring to specific candidates. In Minot, a city ordinance requires lawn signs to come down so many days after an election, so in Minot the lawn signs stay up during elections.”

“Neither the North Dakota Newspaper Association nor the North Dakota Broadcasters Association has a position per se on this issue. The law is what it is for better or worse,” McDonald said. “The legislature actually repealed this law in 1981 in a revision of the state’s election laws, but then had buyer’s remorse when it discovered this meant lawn signs could stay up. They all thought citizens liked the idea that lawn signs had to come down, so they re-instated the law.”

We appreciate Jack McDonald answering HPR’s questions on short notice. In some ways, it confirms what we’ve been suspecting for a while now: the days of quiet election Tuesdays without ads are pretty much history. The only thing that may keep the spirit of electioneering laws alive in North Dakota is a shared willingness by all media to do so.

The Great Downtown Clean-up

The Great Downtown Clean-up came and went Tuesday night. Thanks to 75 or more volunteers, Broadway and its back alleys, as well as some off-shoot streets, are clean and spiffy. Many hands do indeed make work light.

While the idea first surfaced in an HPR editorial, we have to hand it to Norm Robinson of the Downtown Neighborhood Association (DNA) and Dave Anderson of the Downtown Community Partnership (DCP) for organizing the event and breathing life into it with structure.

The image of teams of people on different blocks was a great visual to keep in the forefront of our minds. There were sweepers, shovelers, graffiti removers, power washers, power blowers, vaccuum machines and simple garbage collectors. By the time the event was completed, our downtown neighborhood looked simply awesome.

Some businesses like HPR and Dempsey’s adopted their blocks, which in this instance, represented a few city blocks. Those teams then went across the street and cleaned on the other side as well. Further down, AM1100 The Flag adopted their block. The folks from Drunken Noodle showed up and made for a good team. Representatives from Vlana Vlee were also present with brooms in hand, and many others as well.

DNA folks were very visible and engaged, as were the Downtown Community Partnership folks. From what we could tell, those teams were power washing sidewalks practically until dark. That meant the area was done, as the final stage was that final rinse, so to speak.

The good old North Dakota wind was not very helpful. Teams learned quickly to move north to south, as the wind was brisk to say the least. Afterwards, our group of about 20 folks gathered in Dempsey’s for a cool one courtesy of Bert Meyers — who offered a beverage for everyone who worked on their block — and ideas of how to improve turnout and participation were bubbling up constantly in conversation.

The Great Downtown Clean-up fostered a sense of community. The result was immediately tangible. Even the next day, we noticed people picking up cigarette butts and pieces of paper blowing about on the street.

Now that this phase is done, we need to keep it up. Do not tolerate garbage underfoot as you walk around downtown. Pick the crap up, and dispense of it immediately. Others will see you do it, and sooner than not, we’ll have evolved a culture of cleanliness and pride.

Thanks to the volunteers who showed up and worked hard. Thanks to the sponsors, DNA, DCP, AM100 The Flag, Shortprinter.com, and of course HPR’s troupe. You all done good and deserve a pat on the back, or a thumbs up, or a prairie rose. And let’s do this every year.

Zach’s Going Behind Bars

HPR’s editor, Zach Kobrinsky, is getting locked up July 16 at the Red River Zoo to raise money for muscular dystrophy research and awareness. You can contribute to the cause at
http://www.joinmda.org/MyLockup/MyHomepage/tabid/72929/Participant/zach/Default.aspx. Help fight muscular dystrophy, and join us at the zoo on the 16th at 5 p.m. for some fun as well.

Operations For Goats Of All Ages

2009-07-02T06:03:26+00:00

The recent shootings at the Holocaust Museum in Washington by an 88-year old white supremacist and of Dr. George Tiller, an abortion doctor in Wichita, by another white-supremacist-Montana-Freeman-wacko made me think of a fascinating book I had read a couple of years ago that also concerned sex.

The book is “Better For All The World: The Secret History Of Forced Sterilization And America’s Quest For Racial Purity” by Harry Bruinius. I kept extensive notes when I read it because of his premise that America’s attempt to keep the mentally retarded (called imbeciles, morons, defectives and other choice labels) from reproducing themselves ended up supplying the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler with the guidelines, principles, techniques and philosophy of how to create and maintain a master race.

People who are greedy, ambitious, and sometimes filled with larceny can take advantage during a period when science is still dazzled by ignorance. In the 1930s Dr. John Brinkley became one of the richest men in America, a medical quack and a serial killer all at the same time. He took advantage of our perpetual rut. He convinced impotent men that he could solve all of their erectile dysfunctions by transplanting goat testicles into their scrotum. Old and young goats have a certain reputation, jumping both young and old bones, whether human or goat. Evidently the goat testicles lost their potency in the transfer, and many men died. Brinkley thought that he could get to the billfolds of men by concentrating on the genital area. He opened up a specialist hospital to treat prostate and rectal problems in Del Rio, Texas and one in San Juan for colon malfunctions.

It was said Brinkley was a great actor, looking important and rich in a white suit, Vandyke beard and driving one of his dozen Cadillacs. The cars were all painted to match the red of his Bavarian mansion in Del Rio. He owned three very expensive yachts, renting one to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor whenever they required one. His mansion featured a huge theater organ played by an organist he hired away from the famous Grauman’s Theater in Los Angeles. In the entrance hallway was displayed a giant hand-painted photograph of Brinkley in an admiral’s uniform with a prize tuna he caught. It was titled “Tuna Fish and Self.” He also owned powerful radio stations that introduced country music to the country. He featured the Carter Family (including a very young Johnny Cash) Jimmie Rogers, Red Foley and Gene Autry.

In 1930, the Kansas Board of Medical Examiners pulled his license after confirming he had caused the deaths of 42 patients. But that didn’t matter to Brinkley. He moved down close to the Mexican border and started to send his “prescriptions” to patients in many states who wrote and described their symptoms to him, making another fortune.

It Is Better For The World If….

Dr. Brinkley concentrated on the testosterone side during his reign of error in the 1930s. Many doctors, medical boards, legislators and state governors studied the eugenics of the 19th and 20th centuries, brought about by men who thought that reproduction by “defectives” would bankrupt the world. Eugenics centered around the idea that certain people “were fitter than others” by birth. If matched with the right “breeder,” the union could produce “fitter” children. Actually this idea is still around, with some people still talking about and trying to produce “superbabies.”

Good people all over the world were very enthusiastic about the science of eugenics. According to an article in the Star Tribune in February of 2008, one of the leaders was Dr. Charles Dight of Minneapolis, founder of the Minnesota Eugenics Society in the 1920s. Dr. Dight believed that the feeble-minded were unfit to have children, so in 1933 he sent a letter to Adolf Hitler, chancellor of Nazi Germany, praising Hitler’s plan “to stamp out mental inferiority among the German people.”

Hitler had already started to sterilize thousands in the early 1930s, using medical science developed in Great Britain and the United States. Even ten years later, during the Holocaust, German concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Buchenwald the Nazis were still experimenting with sterilizations. The Tribune reporter revealed the case of 87-year-old Margot de Wilde of Plymouth, Minnesota, a Jew sent to Auschwitz with her husband at age 21. Her husband was gassed but she, because she had been a married woman, was saved for medical experiments.

She described the experiments later: “You were just called down to the room. They took X-rays and then inserted fluids into the vaginal area, and we didn’t know what it was. We thought either artificial insemination or sterilization. It didn’t hurt… but I never had children.” She later learned after the war that the Nazis were trying to develop mass sterilization methods.

What’s The Difference Between A Genius And A Complete Dolt?

A Victorian Englishman by the name of Francis Galton came up with the idea that genius must be inherited. When he studied evolution and the theories of survival of the fittest developed by his cousin Charles Darwin, Dalton theorized that man’s abilities, especially intelligence, are passed on to the next generation. He named his science “eugenics” from the Greek word “eugenes,” which means “hereditarily endowed with noble qualities.”

Later in the 19th century proponents and practitioners would use examples from history to support Darwin’s “Origin of The Species” and Dalton’s preliminary studies. They cited the cases of the Romans who threw “defective” babies into the Tiber River or left them on mountainsides to starve.

Dr. John Bell, who conducted the sterilization operation that was challenged in the courts and finally approved by the U.S. Supreme Court, wrote: “The idea of elimination… of those who were expected to be disqualified for a certain standard of physical and mental perfection, has come down to us through a great space of time… Such efforts to preserve a healthy race, cruel as they may seem, were after all but the pursuit of natural laws: the buds unfit to mature, fall; and the weaklings of the flock must perish.”

The object of restrictive marriage laws around the turn of the century was to keep “defectives” from breeding. As an example, an 1896 law in Connecticut prohibited the marriage and sexual activity of eugenically unfit women under 45. The minimum penalty for breaking the law was three years in prison. Indiana passed a law in 1905 making illegal any marriage of “mentally deficient” persons, those who would have had a “transmissible” disease (such as feeble-mindedness) or those who were habitual drunkards. By 1914, 30 states had eugenic marriage laws. As early as 1894, the superintendent of the Kansas Asylum for Idiots and Feeble-minded Youths made the announcement he had castrated 14 girls and 44 boys so they wouldn’t practice the “evil habit of masturbation.” Dr. F. Hoyt Pilcher later lost his job when newspapers discovered his actions, calling them “cruel” and “brutal.”

Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, the corn flakes pusher from Battle Creek, lectured the conferees at a 1915 conference on race betterment in San Francisco: “The world needs a new aristocracy… made up of real Apollos and Venuses and their fortunate progeny. Instead of such an aristocracy, we are actually building up an aristocracy of lunatics, idiots, paupers, and criminals. These unfit persons already have reached the proportions of a vast multitude — 500,000 lunatics; 90,000 idiots; 90,000 epileptics; and 80,000 criminals, and we are supporting these defectives in idleness like real aristocrats at an expense of $100 million a year.” Evidently corn flakes couldn’t solve all problems.

So the operation that ended up making sterilization legal in the United States was conducted on mentally retarded Carrie Buck by Dr. Bell in Virginia (an ironic note). He made accurate notes because this was going to be a court case: “She went to the operating room at 9:30 and returned to her bed at 10:30, recovered promptly from anesthesia… One inch was removed from each Fallopian tube, the tubes ligated and the ends cauterized by carbolic acid followed by alcohol, and the edges of the broad ligaments brought together with continuous suture. Abdominal wound was united with layer sutures and the approximation of the closure was good.”

“Three Generations Of Imbeciles Are Enough”

Eventually the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that the Constitution “did not prohibit the compulsory sterilization of a U.S. citizen.” Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the majority opinion: “We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already tap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

Holmes, who had been interested in the “science” of eugenics for years, wrote in a letter to British intellectual Harold Laski: “I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy” (!).

Winston Churchill, later to become British prime minister, also supported the Court’s decision: “The unnatural increasingly rapid growth of the feeble-minded and insane coupled as it is with a steady restriction among all the thrifty and superior stocks, constitutes a national and race danger impossible to exaggerate… A simple surgical operation would allow these individuals to live in the world without causing inconvenience to others.”

Germans Used American Laws To Defend Themselves In War Crimes Trials

By the end of 1927, 28 states would have sterilization laws that could immediately survive any constitutional attacks by religious fundamentalists. Before science caught up with the reality of sterilization in the middle of the 20th century, over 65,000 women, most of them very poor, would be officially sterilized. It’s estimated that thousands more were sterilized when agreements were made between doctors and families. Americans always seem ready to accept pseudo-science in our ever-dynamic quest for moral, social, and religious purity in our society. The Nazi Party passed a comprehensive sterilization law for Germany in 1933 based on American legislation. At the Nuremberg Trials after WWII, German doctors based their war crimes defense on the fact that they had copied American precedents!

Thousands of victims of sterilization laws, both male and female, are still alive in this country because forced sterilizations took place through the 1970s. A woman in Denver, who sued the state of Colorado and lost (like every lawsuit involving forced sterilizations in the U.S.) said: “What they did to me was sexual murder. I’m just like a female spayed animal. They made me half a woman. They took my heart and left a stone, you hear me?”

Many governors have apologized for their state’s actions of the past.” There are always people who want to bring forced sterilization back. Colorado, as an example, after dropping it’s original law, has turned back new forced sterilization bills five times. The science of genetics continues to develop at a rapid pace, particularly with the identity of DNA and the human genome. We have thousands of doctors, researchers and other scientists working on the intricacies of gene inheritance, disease, cell abnormalities and hundreds of other absorbing problems. But we also have to remember that 41 percent of the world population has no access to a toilet or outhouse.

Before we put too much faith in this complicated work we should remember the sterilization of Carrie Buck by Dr. Bell. Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes was wrong when he said: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Carrie Buck had a three-year-old daughter named Vivian when she was sterilized. Vivian later attended one of the better public schools in Charlottesville, completing four semesters of study — and made the honor roll each semester.

The United States of China

2009-06-25T18:42:55+00:00

By Dr. M. Wayne Alexander
Contributing Writer
Suppose the People’s Republic of China decides to invade the U.S. Because it already owns much of the U.S. debt, perhaps it wants to protect its investment. Or it might want to relieve population pressures on the mainland. Or maybe it just figures it can.
To support the invasion Chinese leaders gear up heavy industry to build large passenger ships and wide-bodied airplanes. It need not produce weapons: no Uzi’s, AK 47’s or Kalashnikovs, no tanks, mortars, or fighter jets. Military force is not a part of the invasion.

Instead, one morning the Chinese government loads 5,600,000 men and women between the ages of 15 and 64, each armed only with an ATM card and a $25K bank balance, on board these ships and airplanes. They deliver the 5.6 million people to sea ports and air terminals spread across the U.S. The next morning it loads another 5.6 million men and women on board ships and airplanes and takes them to the U.S. It could bring 5.6 million people over for 90 days straight before half the population between the ages of 15 and 64 was transported.

(Note that 956,533,408 people between the ages of 15 and 64 live in China. By the time you read this, it will likely number one billion. One billion divided by 2 and then by 90 days is about 5,600,000. And each day another huge number of young Chinese turns 15.)
Rather than showing passports at airport and dockside immigration stations, these undocumented aliens stream past government functionaries’ desks, line up at the ATM machines, and then head into the streets. These 5.6 M people per day do not carry weapons of any kind. They merely disembark from the ships and airplanes, fan out into the cities and countryside, and take their places besides U.S. citizens. Soon they are creating businesses, investing in homes, and buying consumer goods.
Of course, the U.S. military establishment and many private citizens will notice all these undocumented aliens flowing into their country. The military and armed citizens will protest, probably with force. Each day they might well shoot thousands of these Chinese immigrants, their bodies piling up on city streets. No matter; tomorrow another 5,600,000 Chinese will arrive. Through sheer force of numbers, the immigrants will neutralize the military and relieve private citizens of their weapons. At the end of 90 days, many more Chinese citizens ages 15 to 64 will live in the U.S. than U.S. citizens of that age (2010: 181 million ages 20 to 64).
Other than temporary shortages of food and housing, life will go on, through probably on a reduced scale with less consumption of goods and services than before. On the other hand, with the new Chinese-Americans running for public office and assuming government functions, starting new businesses, buying cars and shopping at Wal-Mart, the long-term economy might be stronger.
Within 50 years everything will seem back to normal, though most U.S. citizens will number Chinese ancestors among their European and African ones. The population density will have increased, of course, but since larger families means a lower standard of living for each member, most families will include only 1.2 children. In the long-run density will decline. And U.S. citizens will be casting nervous glances at India.

Questions and comments: mwalex@702com.net

Health Care in the U.S. – Dr. Rube Goldberg With Scalpel And Prescription Blank

2009-06-25T18:17:40+00:00

One should realize that health care in this country has reached a bizarre, what planet-are-we-on stage when former Republican speaker and new Catholic Nuke Grinch states before God and everybody, including his new buddy Pope Benedict, that health care ”is a human right that cannot be rationed by Washington.” Now we know Nuke is running for president! Health care a human right? Why, Nuke, that is in direct violation of the Republican LETMDIE philosophy of at least a century.

C’mon, Nuke, whatever happened to that famous philosophy that free markets solve all of society’s problems? Here’s an example of how the free market medical system operates in this country: A Pap test screens for cervical cancer. A total hysterectomy removes the uterus and cervix. Is it possible to have cervical cancer when there is no cervix? Perhaps a hospital or health insurance CEO can tell us why ten million American women who lack a cervix are still getting Pap tests for cervical cancer! These guys would sell eyeglasses to Helen Keller!

Over the last decade hospital administrators really pushed new “heart” wings for their hospitals because that’s where Willie Sutton’s money is. Lots of carving, opening of chests, expensive operating rooms, $10,000 a day intensive care rooms, new blood machines and lengthy rehabs. A much better money-maker than pneumonia and staph infections. Is that why patients in McAllen, Texas have five times the coronary-bypass operations as patients in Pueblo, Colorado? Is it attitude or altitude? Why are back surgery rates in Casper, Wyoming six times what they are in Honolulu and New York City? Dick Cheney, their brother, can’t be that heavy.

Time magazine columnist Sharon Begley reported on a revolt of greedy spinal fusion surgeons. In the 1990s the Institutes of Health determined that spinal fusion operations didn’t help back pain much. Some insurance companies got the word and said they would not cover the expensive operation. Surgeons, with loads of money from these complicated surgeries, bribed their Congress to take away funding from the agency. So much for the Hippocratic Oath about “doing no harm!” They really harmed the billfolds of patients while filling their own. The agency, by the way, made no more recommendations about treatments.

What “Socialized” Medicine Will Do for Americans

Canadians live two more years than Americans do. Wouldn’t you like to have a couple more years of life, particularly with good health? Of course, the poor and middle class who can’t afford health insurance die at a young age, lowering our statistical life span. Well, according to the evangelicals, they’ll enjoy Heaven more anyway. It also helps the cost-benefit ratio to let them go early.

As of 2009, American children are twice as likely to die before the age of five as those medical miracles of Portugal, Spain and Slovenia. As a matter of fact, World Health Organization surveys place us 29th in infant mortality among industrialized nations. How many times have we heard Republicans say “WE HAVE THE BEST MEDICAL CARE IN THE WORLD!” Yes, we do – if you make $300,000 or more. Why should an American woman’s chances of dying in childbirth be three times what it is in those bastions of socialized medicine, Germany, Spain and Greece? Even the citizens of Cyprus have a longer life span than we do.

If we had socialized medicine in the United States, stroke patients would probably be taking aspirin at a cost of less than $10 per month instead of the drug ticlopidine at $100 per month. Even with all the research proving aspirin is better, we still have 100,000 Americans taking a drug that costs ten times as much.

Free markets are particularly good for drug manufacturers because the health care system is not like other markets. The demand for not dying is almost universal and unlimited among human beings. Such an attitude can be a great money maker for greedy free marketeers. Celgene makes specialty pharmaceuticals. Remember thalidomide, that drug that transformed normal babies into ones without the necessary number of legs and arms? Now it is used as a cancer treatment in some cases. It’s so cheap Brazil sells it to pharmacies for as little as a few pennies a pill.

When Celgene found it was being used in cancer treatment, it changed the size and shape a little and priced it at $6 a pill in 1998. It became the little pill that could. So Celgene raised the price to about $180 a pill, so suddenly a year’s treatment with thalidomide pills cost $66,000. Oh, but they were not done yet. In 2005 Celgene dramatically introduced Revlimid as a new wonder drug. It happens to be a derivative of thalidomide that is supposed to be less toxic. There is no proof it is as effective. But a little pill that cost a few pennies to make in the early 1990s has now grown up and has been priced at $260 a pill, or an annual supply at $94,000.

But the folks at Celgene are pikers compared to the thieves at Genzyme, a biotechnology company. Although the government did most of the research on Gaucher disease, a rare inherited disorder that can cause enlarged livers and such, the company marketed Cerezyme and charges patients more than $300,000 a year for it. Some experts believe that lower doses of the drug would be just as effective – but the company tries to refute that evidence. Let’s all hail and worship the free marketeers for doing such a number on people who want to live.

From Freedom Fries, Good Red Wine, and the Best Health Care System in the World

Remember when France refused to help us in the invasion-quagmire of Iraq and the Congressional Republicans changed the menu in the House dining room from “French Fries” to “Freedom Fries?” My ancestors were too smart to come up with potato fries anyway because they act as Improvised Explosive Devices in arteries.

Also, the French have been smart enough to come up with the best universal health plan in the world, as judged by the World Health Organization. We rank 33rd, just behind Castro’s Cuba. Hardly a good ranking for a country with THE BEST MEDICAL CARE IN THE WORLD. The French are also quite innovative in medicine. They developed the strategy and techniques for the first face transplants.

The French spend half as much as we do on health care, and take care of everybody while our Republicans continue to obstruct care for 48 million uninsured Americans with their LETMDIE “care plan.” The French live longer, eat more delicious gravies, drink more wine for digestion, and have six weeks of vacation guaranteed. Oh, and their industrial productivity rate is better than ours. The best medical care in the world does it for them. We rank behind even uncivilized countries. Now over 50 percent of the bankruptcies in this country are because of monstrous medical bills. But what is amazing is that 75 percent of those who go bankrupt because of medical bills actually have health insurance. Boy, is that terrific coverage!

The Canadians now are ranked third in world health care. Some idiot Republican congressman referred to their system as “the horrors of a Canadian-style single-payer system.” We should live in such horror. Americans in Vermont and New Hampshire are crossing the border for health care because it is even cheaper without insurance as ours is with insurance! Corky and I have traveled extensively in Canada in the last 15 years in every province except Nunavut. I have never talked to a Canadian who bad-mouthed the Canadian system.

An American lawyer who moved to Canada three years ago had a stroke. She spent a week in a Canadian hospital and three months in rehab under their insurance plan. The hospital never talked to her about money and all of her bills were paid. In a 2008 business trip to San Francisco she suffered a dizzy spell. An ambulance rushed her to a hospital emergency room. The first person who talked to her was a clerk with a computer asking how she was going to pay the bill. After five hours of hospital time it was determined nothing was wrong. The bill for her five-hour stay was $8,789.29.

Why Don’t I Dazzle You With a Few Figures?

These facts are all based on 2008 figures. The average cost of a family insurance plan now is $12,680. Hell, any family can cover that. It’s only doubled in eight years. We spend $6,714 per capita for health care and still have 48 million uninsured and over 25 million underinsured. Canada spends $3,678 and everybody is covered. Britain spends $2,760 and everybody is insured. France spends slightly more than Great Britain and is acclaimed for having the best system in the world. In the past 12 months 18 percent of American families could not pay for medicine or health care. Premiums have increased 117 percent over the last ten years. How much has your pay gone up? Does it matter?

Recently a Nova Scotia woman spent three months in a hospital because of a serious car accident. After her hospitalization she was forced to move to Los Angeles because her husband was transferred. She had not paid a dime toward her huge bill in Nova Scotia because she was covered by Canadian health insurance. In the U.S. she could not get any health insurance regardless of price because of her pre-existing conditions from her accident in Nova Scotia. This is a classic case of cherry-picking.

Congress is currently bickering over the cost of President Obama’s plan. Last year we spent $2.4 trillion on health care. The Republicans are having a hissy fit over $1.6 trillion additional over ten years to cover everybody. We have now spent $960 billion on the Iraq War – which we will never win. Remember when Bush’s boys said it would only cost $1 billion to defeat Iraq? Actually $1.6 trillion spread over ten years is not a bad deal. Divide it up. We pay 1,300 health insurance companies $400 billion a year just to do paperwork and billings!

Let’s Take Health Insurance Away From All Federal Employees, Particularly Congress! What a Wakeup Call That Would Be for Middle-Class Reality!

Naturally Republicans are opposed to any programs that help the pissants of this country make a better life for themselves. They have been against civil rights, animal rights, human rights, workers’ rights, women’s rights, children’s rights, minimum wage laws, children’s health plans, bank regulations, the forty-hour week and overtime rules, road and bridge building and repair, Social Security, pension rights, public schools, Pell Grants for college tuition, all regulatory agencies and thousands of other policies that work for the common good and even for some country club members.

The only things they are for are low taxes, Bahama bank accounts, unregulated hedge funds, gated communities and throwing all lawyers in the Marianas Trench. They are also against any form of the military draft so they can have a “volunteer” military composed of pissants who fight their wars for them. They also plead constantly for malpractice “reform.”

Why don’t they ask the American Medical Association to clean house of incompetent doctors like they always ask the National Education Association to clean house of incompetent teachers? National studies indicate that five percent of doctors commit 54 percent of the medical malpractice in this country – and that malpractice awards only add about one-half percent to the total cost of health care. Can you imagine what would happen to patients if there were no malpractice suits?

And don’t you ever believe that Republicans are for health insurance, public or private, for everybody. Senate committees are currently going through 388 amendments attached to the Democratic Senate bill. Of all those amendments, 364 are sponsored by Republicans. That should tell you whether Republicans have any thought of ever voting for a health plan that covers all the pissants. Over their selfish bodies – and not until their kids inherit all their money without paying “death” taxes.

We Want You!

2009-06-25T18:14:01+00:00

We Want You!

Downtown Clean-up

Tuesday is when we clean up our act in downtown Fargo. When we clean out the cobwebs, the junk, the garbage. When we pick the weeds and erase graffiti. When we join forces to do a dirty job.

Many hands make work light. By joining up with friends and neighbors next Tuesday night, beginning at 5:30 in the U.S. Bank Parking lot on Broadway, we will make light work of a yeoman’s task, namely cleaning up our own back yard—and front yard, as well as the gutters and alleys.

Fargo’s downtown is booming and bustling. Some estimate that we have a little big community downtown numbering 20,000 people. With the reinvigorated downtown comes more mess. And, truly, things are a mess.

The Great Downtown Clean-up is a partnership sponsored by HPR, AM1100 The Flag, the Downtown Neighborhood Association, and the Downtown Community Partnership. It goes until dark.

While this is just a first-time effort, we suspect the event will become an annual deal, or maybe even twice a year: a spring and a fall clean-up. And, once cleaned up, folks will maybe think twice before throwing their garbage into the open or dropping cigarette butts or gum on the sidewalk. And just maybe the sense of pride will instill in all of us the notion that we ought to pick up crap when we see it and throw it away right then and there.

What began as a seed of an idea in an HPR editorial not very long ago has indeed sprouted into something tangible and rewarding. We want to thank Norm Robinson from the Downtown Neighborhood Association—along with Downtown Dave (Anderson) from the Downtown Community Partnership—for giving the clean-up idea structure and form. They literally breathed life into the idea with a truly can-do attitude.

Several businesses are participating and supporting the event with manpower and rallypower. HPR and AM1100 The Flag are happy to provide media sponsorship.

As you can well imagine, when new events get a start out of the gate, we get feedback and ideas from other people telling us what works and does not work in other communities. We welcome such feedback.

Also, we get our creative juices going. One such idea ruminating around in at least one brain (be nice, now) is to replicate a practice we found over at the Hotel Donaldson, namely artistic painting of garbage dumpsters. They are beautiful works of arts by dumpster standards and they are an inspiration to get the ball rolling to have a dumpster painting on the prairie project…

But that is another editorial.

Meanwhile, we hope you show up Tuesday night to spruce up our downtown and to have fun at the same time. Pass the word. Let’s make this a shining success.

Sales Tax Vote

Speaking of Tuesday, we cannot overlook reminding Fargo residents to get out and vote in the election calling for a half-cent, 20-year sales tax to help fund flood protection efforts. The tax would raise an estimated $200 million if approved by 60 percent of the voters in Tuesday’s special election.

Regardless of your position—or ours or anybody else’s—get out and vote and make it a mandate of the people.

HPR On The Grow

Even though HPR is nearing its 15th birthday in September, that does not mean we do not continually reinvent how we do business. We have some exciting things to share.

Initially, we are saturating the Fargo-Moorhead market more and more. You will be noticing a full-blown effort in the next few months to dramatically grow HPR’s presence here in Fargo, Moorhead and West Fargo.

We are on the grow. For example, beginning this week, HPR will be dropping 900 additional copies each week in our North Fargo - Moorhead route. And this is just the beginning. We intend to increase our market penetration by one-third by this fall, which will bring us to 10,000 copies picked up each week.

A side benefit will especially be reaped by our advertisers who will get the benefit of several thousand additional readers seeing their print messages each week, and all at no additional cost.

We also will soon be launching an entirely new approach to what we typically call Classified Ads. The web and print versions of HPR will easily facilitate and fuel this community-based development.

It’s fun to grow and expand and to think big. HPR’s editorial team is getting great traction under our great new editor Zach Kobrinsky. Our sales team—now comprised of Jay Miller, Liz Pearce, Michelle Carney and John Edmonds—is top notch.

July Birthdays

Happy birthday to the following folks celebrating their birthdays this month: Martin Jonason, Marvin Jonason, Darin Loven, Jack Mihelich, Cory Holter, Margie Bailly, Dan Killian, Bert Meyers, Klaus Meyers, Diederich Harms, Dana Nichols, Kyle Rudolph, Gwen Berg, Trish Gavin, Jana Strand-Rakowski, Lance Thorn, Eric Short, Laurel Litchfield, Kasi Miller, Roylene Jacobs, Sharon Martens, Jaclyn Gomez, Jana Tronier, Jon E. Flatland, Kia Ullrich, Rick Steen, Martin Wishnatsky, Charles Hinton, Deb Broker, Blind Joe, Arlette Preston, Martin Woods, Andrew Thomson, Jamie Langness, James Burgum, Cody Johnson, Jesse Rock, Becca Mellem, Jean Kelly, Brooks Johnson, Barry Nelson, Tim Stabo, Joanna Nedberg, Les Lindsay, Ryan Gustafson, Ben Holtz, Crystal Dueker, Isaac Kobrinsky, Nathan Kobrinsky, Wally DeSautel, Dave Holand, Joe Steffan, Candy Strand, Joe Curry, Robyn McDaniel, Kevin Moriarty, Kirby Berg, Mary Thoelke, Kim Winnegge, Derek Green, Janet Letexier, Kristy Young, Matt Bossert, Georgia Hill and Abby Gold.

Patent Leather Shoes and the Sins of the Flesh

2009-06-18T17:51:48+00:00

This week perfectly illustrates what happens when humans are in rut–which is basically all the time. The sins of the flesh are always with us. The murder of abortionist Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas, the release of the nine-year investigation of Catholic Church sex abuse in Irish reform schools and orphanages, and the revelation that Cher’s daughter Chastity Bono is transgendering herself-himself into a son of Cher simply points out that humans have a greater hour-by-hour sexual load to carry than bull elk, paramecium, cattle, lions and rabbits. But this is just part of the story.

Abortion has been an important subject in the cave, hut, castle, yurt, brownstone, teepee, McMansion, ranch house, condo, space capsule, grass leanto and even perhaps the Garden of Eden. The historical record proves it happened in all these residences except for the last one. But for a few minutes let’s take a statistical look at a subject which raises the blood pressure of certain celibate priests, bishops, Baptists and other evangelicals who aren’t pregnant at the moment.

Let the record show that in 2008 there were 353,015 births per day in the world. That’s 14,709 per hour, 245 per minute, and four births for the second that it took to kill Dr. Tiller.

Respected medical authorities estimate that up to one-half of all pregnancies end in miscarriages. Many women have recurrent miscarriages before giving birth. (Technically, a miscarriage is the loss of any pregnancy up to the 20-week gestational age.) The experts say that about 20 percent of all pregnancies cause visible signs such as cramping, bleeding, the passing of clots and/or tissue from the vagina. There is an equal number of so-called “silent” miscarriages. In other words, the victim does not know she was even pregnant for as long as eight weeks and has lost the fetus. The most common cause of miscarriages is a chromosomal abnormality where the genetic material of the sperm and egg do not fuse together properly.

So let’s play a numbers game. If we have about 350,000 births per day, let’s use the conservative figure of 320,000 miscarriages for that same day. That’s based on the medical fact that close to one-half of all pregnancies end in miscarriage. But now we have to switch to religion instead of concentrating on fact. I think most people would recognize there is a difference.

“You Knit me Together in my Mother’s Womb”

Pro-lifers often cite the Bible for the basis of their beliefs that abortion is murder. Psalm 139 is a popular one to “prove” that God is the ultimate ob-gyn: “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful. I know that full well.”

If God is “knitting” babies together in the womb, why does He screw up on about half of the babies? Why doesn’t He see to it that the egg and sperm fuse together properly? Is He rejecting the egg because of sins by the prospective mother? When a seven-month fetus is found by sonogram to have no brain, does He just say “whoops!” and offer to do an instant miracle? What happens when a baby is born with three sets of limbs? What about the sets of Siamese twins conjoined at the head?

I think it’s reasonable to postulate that any act a person wants to perform – killing another human being such as an abortion doctor, selling a beer on Sunday, having 300 wives and 500 concubines like Solomon, or even washing a car – can be supported by some obscure or prominent verse in the Bible. After all, it was written by men who are always looking for a way to justify their actions. So am I. I’m human. But even some evangelical professors of religion insist there is nothing in the Bible about abortion.

Michael J. Gorman, a New Testament and early church history expert at the Ecumenical Institute of Theology in Baltimore states flatly: “I can’t take you to text that says, ‘Don’t commit abortion.’ It just doesn’t exist.” But this isn’t my point. Pragmatism must rule when there aren’t any other answers. Sure there is life at the moment of conception. If that kind of “life” continues, then we can welcome that life to the other 350,000 who made it through the obstacle course of the blood stream, the nervous system, the science of genetics, and the perils of the vagina. But what does life at conception represent? Potential only. That speck of life-egg may develop into Jonas Salk-or Jack the Ripper-or a serial killer-or George Washington Carver-or Joe Stalin-or Mother Theresa-or Dr. Joseph Mengele-or Dr. Tiller’s killer.

There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground to stake out in the abortion battle. The American Taliban jihadist Bible thumper who has talked directly to God says, “Life is started at conception – a moment after that – it is murder.” The pro-choice pragmatist looks at the numbers of miscarriages, the cost of raising another baby, the reality of genetic foulups, and sarcastically responds: “I’m glad you finally settled the issue for everyone. It must be difficult to be God.” The pro-life faction loves to play God when it does not want to recognize that 40,000 children die each day according to the UN Children’s Emergency Fund, mainly because religious organizations obstruct the distribution of birth control devices in poor countries.

The Bible Contains an Inordinate Amount of Sex

There’s no question the Bible contains an inordinate amount of sex. That’s because humans who have been given the pleasure and the terror of the perpetual rut are constantly thinking about it. Well, that’s life. We should accept it. The Catholic Church, as Catholic columnist Anna Quindlen puts it, “seems to have a bizarre preoccupation with sins of the flesh.” But forced celibacy of priests and popes has only been around about a thousand years. And celibacy rules came about because of economics, not religious beliefs. Too much property was ending up in the private hands of the offspring of priests and popes, so to stop the flow of riches to private hands instead of the Church, the popes and bishops said: “No more priestly hanky-panky. No more sex. No more kids to inherit property.”

The Catholic Church tried to sell the idea that giving up priestly, bishopric, cardinal and pope carnality would lift their leaders and allow them to grow the wings of angels. And for their wretched, horny followers, sex was for procreation only. Good Catholic girls were warned about polishing their patent leather shoes to a mirror finish so that boys could see their panties.

Oh, one could play Vatican Roulette with the calendar and thermometers and try to turn a major league sex schedule into only on Sunday, but Catholics never bought the idea that giving up sex would place them at the right-hand. Catholics, like other humans, want passion and pleasure and practically no procreation. That’s why Catholic Church attendance in Europe now runs two percent of eligibles. In the United States at the present time, four times as many people leave the Church as join it. The Catholic Church still is the largest “church” in the United States. But the second largest “church” of religionists is composed of ex-Catholics.

Just last week on a radio talk show I was accused of picking on the Catholic Church because I am an “ex.” So be it. I’ll quit when the right-wing bishops stop whining about abortion and actually do something about poverty, homelessness, and the priests who were allowed to rape the young in their charge with absolute impunity for decades. The report on the abuse of Irish boys and girls placed under the Church’s predator wings will likely destroy the Irish Catholic Church. This was also all about sex, sex, sex and celibacy, celibacy, celibacy.

Did God Really Send The Shooter?

At Dr. Tiller’s funeral the usual Christian jihadists showed up with their graphic signs and red, white, and blue patriotic symbols, including the following signs to attack the widow in her hour of grief: “Bloody Obama,” “American Is Doomed,” “Abortion Is Bloody Murder,” ”God Sent The Shooter,” “God Is Your Enemy,” “Baby Killer In Hell,” “God Hates Obama,” and other signs of Christian love, forgiveness, and prayer. How many Catholic bishops and Baptist ministers led prayers for the soul of Dr. Tiller? Oh, that’s right, he committed murder.

Was it murder when he aborted a seven-month fetus when it was discovered it had no brain? How do you raise a child with no brain? Would the Wichita churches volunteer to raise that child? The pro-lifers should read the website “A Heartbreaking Choice.” Was it murder when patients with fetuses with severe abnormalities known to cause severe physical and mental disabilities were sent to him because he was skilled in aborting third trimester fetuses? Women from all over the United States were recommended to him and only two other doctors in the country were as skilled as he was in performing these complex and heartbreaking operations. Was it murder when it was well-known that a baby with severe physical handicaps would live for only a few minutes outside of the womb Sonograms can reveal some terrible conditions and abnormalities.

The following is a passage written by a woman who had to make a terrible decision: “Imagine what it is like to walk around in your third trimester, obviously pregnant, while well-meaning people ask you about this baby that you don’t expect to be taking home from the hospital. Then imagine the baby survives (the birth) and days later you take home this child who will die…. A hospice nurse comes to your house every couple of days and reminds you the signs and symptoms of death…. Eventually this baby dies a grueling death in your arms, you want another baby, but are paralyzed by the thought of having another child with the same condition….”

A modern writer who uses verses from Dante’s Inferno has created a powerful image using Canto XXVI when Dante is looking down at the damned in Hell from a cliff: “When I arrive in an airplane and I see New York, many many times it reminds me of this canto because there are billions and billions of little lights, like fireflies, and every little light hides a sinner.” Perhaps it is something the pro-lifers should also think about.

200 Million Women Worldwide Don’t Want Pregnancies at Will

History tells us that about the same ratio-number of abortions have been performed for centuries, whether legal or illegal. Women will find a way, whether it is the coat hanger, a piece of jagged wood, or a bottle of lye. The World Health Organization experts say that there are 19 million unsafe abortions performed each year in Third World countries that kill 70,000 women. In Tanzania, for example, where abortion is illegal except to save the life or health of the mother, it is a practice to use herbs or other powerful mixtures to poison the fetus. Or they beat on the bellies of the pregnant – or they insert objects in the vagina. Often infection, bleeding, and puncture of the uterus or bowel may occur. In some cases the doctor must remove the uterus in order to save his patient.

The WHO also estimates that over 200 million women worldwide don’t want pregnancies but they know nothing about family planning.

President Barack Obama’s recent speech at Notre Dame containing references to abortion made the 24-hour news cycles for weeks. The pro-life protesters also gained press. These exchanges might have inspired the murder of Dr. Tiller. But a speech by President Patricia McGuire of Trinity College of Washington, another Catholic school, did not get much press, but her speech perhaps more accurately described the thoughts of millions of moderate Catholics: “The religious vigilantes have established themselves as uber-guardians of a belief system we can hardly recognize. Theirs is a narrow faith devoted almost exclusively to one issue (abortion). They defend the rights of the unborn but have no charity toward the living. They mock justice as a liberal mythology. The demonstrations against the president at Notre Dame were an embarrassment to all Catholics.” Amen, sister – and she received a standing ovation from the graduation crowd. At last, a Catholic voice of reason in the abortion wars.

Kapitalism: Its Nature and Logic

2009-06-18T17:44:28+00:00

In the preceding HPR essay, Kapitalism on The Couch (April. 23, 2009; http://www.hpr1.com), capitalism was nudged up onto the analytical couch of Karl Marx and Carl Jung. Our analytical dialogue begins by examining the nature and logic of capitalism, which will address the dialectical approach to knowledge, a materialist approach to history, the psyche-social-analytical method, its commitments to individuation and socialism, and finally a look at how Marx’s visionary concept of society might be fulfilled in a future dialectical corporation.

As stated in the first essay, The Mathematics of Faith (February 25, 2009; http://www.hpr1.com), the objective of these essays is to understand how the unconscious side of the individual psyche and the hidden side of capitalism impact our system of political-economy, and in this essay we look at the nature of capitalism.
The book “The Nature and Logic of Capitalism” is economist Robert Heilbronner’s answer to the question, “What is capitalism?” Is the core of history found in the description of its “social formations” as Marx proposes? Or does its core lie in the realm of ideas as modern economist Joseph Schumpeter (“Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy”) maintains? At the center of this dialogue is the philosophical thought of Hegel – a dialectical approach to knowledge, which plays a central role in Marx’s social analysis of capitalism. This dialogue was addressed in Fukuyama’s essay, “The End of History?”, which argues that history ended when the “idea of communism” died in 1989 with the fall of the USSR, leaving the idea of the liberal democratic state the winner. However, in Marx’s view an era’s “social formation” determines history and continues to evolve aided by an important variable – technology.

History became a real interest of mine in the summer of 1959, when I read Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich” and Gorlitz’s “The History of the German General Staff.” That fall I entered Fargo Central High School and one of its inspirational teachers, besides Ed “Gadfly” Raymond, was Bill Barney. I wrote two book reports for Coach Barney on my summer’s readings and was hooked on history. Later at UND I struggled with a decision to major in history or psychology; the latter barely won.

Years later I realized that behind the thoughts of the worldly philosophers is a history of supporting thought. In Jung’s case his studies of the Gnostics, Alchemy, and the I Ching provided confirmation for individuation psychology. Later, we will explore how these ideas are relevant to our study of global capitalism, but now the existential issue is this: How does an idea arise?

For Marx, ideas arise the same way as British historian Jacob Bronowski in this book and TV series “The Ascent of Man” suggests – the evolution of the opposable thumb, man’s ability to grasp and fashion tools drives the development of the mind. In Marx’s terms at the center of history is its “social formation,” or more specifically its “distinctive arrangement of its social arrangements of productions” (Heilbronner 1985:14). Marx’s approach to the study of history is to examine these social arrangements of production or its “modes of productions.”

A rough taxonomy of history to apply this to is the primitive, imperial, feudal, and capitalist eras. Each of these eras has a unique mode of production to produce and commandeer its wealth – primitive society produces hunters and gathers, imperial/feudal society produces peasants/warriors and lords, and capitalist society produces workers and capitalists. Except for the primitive, which really does not have history, the imperial and feudal eras both had a capitalist element but it was not the centralizing mode shaping these societies. When the mode of trade and manufacturing moved to center stage, economists designated the era capitalism. This era has undergone significant change and continues to evolve, as the current global economic meltdown testifies to (Frontline: “The Global Meltdown”). We will address the evolution of capitalism, which some suggest is moving toward “socialism,” but first, the nature of capitalism.

The era of capitalism begins around 1700 and while it has changed over the last 300 years, it has maintained the same “specific determinative forces.” Understanding these forces has been a central task of the great economists. Adam Smith, in 1776, was unable to decipher this complexity and simply saw the forces as a deity, “the invisible hand” that directed the drama onto beneficial paths. For Marx, 100 years later, the directing force in an “internal dialectic that asserts its sway through a ‘fetishism’ that blinds men to their real social situation” – hiding the real relationship between labor and capital. We will be examining this internal dialectic later.

For modern economists like Schumpeter, the determinative force is individual (laissez faire) efforts to acquire wealth, which is the force driving society toward a state of “general equilibrium of wants and capabilities.” In all of these explanations, business activities are viewed as being directed by hidden forces beneath the surface of economic life. And as pointed out in a previous essay, Marx’s discovery of an “unsuspected level of reality beneath the surface of capitalism” is visionary and very relevant today – that is, to become aware (Heilbronner 1985:17).

To study these “agency forces,” Heilbronner (1985:19) proposes a framework, where the nature of any social system refers to its “behavior-shaping institutions and relationships,” and its logic as the “pattern of configurational changes generated and guided by this inner core.” The nature of a social system can be divided into three categories. The first is givens like geography, climate, and natural resources, which are not that important in the overall scheme, as the resource-poor Japanese success testifies to. Far more important is the second category, which is the drives and capacities (psychic energies) of individuals and how these are transformed from the raw state of the child into a socialized adult fitting into its social system. This is a central idea of Adam Smith – the wealth of nations is its citizens, one area we will examine deeply. Remember from the first essay, Christ’s main concern was to take the bean out of one’s eye – this is, to become aware.

In looking into this key source of wealth, individual drives and capacities, we will rely on the work of Marx, Freud, Jung and others. We will examine the capitalist’s socializing/indoctrinating educational system, a topic on the front burner of every national dialogue. An issue deep inside this dialogue is the topic of innovation and this is not just about new commodities to sell the Chinese, but innovation in new ways to think, feel and live. We will look at how Hegel and Marx’s dialectic will directly contribute to our dialogue on creativity/innovation and how Marx and Jung’s thought play an interdependent role in the ecological challenge facing the world.

The third category of nature is a society’s institutions, organizations, and belief systems. These have been created to receive man’s psyche energies and now act as channels directing these energies. Institutions that oversee indoctrination, education, and sustain the social-legal framework are vital to maintaining societal harmony. The Christian belief-system and its underlying logic (“The Mathematics of Faith”) also needs to be further addressed in the understanding of capitalism (Max Weber, “The Protestant Ethic and the Sprit of Capitalism”).

We will also closely examine the transnational corporation’s (TNC) role and a key variable under its control – technology. With technology as the dynamo behind globalization (Friedman, “The World is Flat”), globalization has been called the new magmus opus of our time and its driving logic, profit maximization, depends on technology (Giegerich, “The Opposition of ‘Individual’ and ‘Collective’ Psychology’s Basic Fault”). We will examine this thought and the new psyche-ecological ethic that surfaces.

The socializing process this third category imposes upon society is by no means smooth. The institutions molding behavior are themselves directed by inner logics that may take the form of “class against class, against tribe, civilization against civilization, or focus on color, religion, or sex.” Involved in all these logics are issues of domination and oppression, which invariably leads to alienation. In spite of capitalism’s wealth, it is difficult to find anyone not alienated by its nature and logic – why? As we will uncover, it is all about money – money, money, money – wealth, who produces it, who gets it, and why. Next, we examine the logic of capitalism.

To be continued…