Random Thoughts

The Criminalization of Maple Syrup

2012-01-12T09:06:00.000-08:00

Has the entrepreneurial spirit got you thinking about digging through grandma's recipe drawer, finding that homemade maple syrup recipe, and producing your own offering for sale?

Well you better make sure it’s ACTUALLY maple syrup or the federal government may come after you.

Three months ago, the Maple Agriculture Protection and Law Enforcement Act of 2011 (MAPLE Act) was introduced in the Senate. This is no joke. There is really, really, really a MAPLE Act of 2011. This bill would make it a federal crime, punishable with prison time, for anyone to knowingly and willfully distribute in interstate commerce a product that is falsely labeled as maple syrup.

Certainly it is unethical to label something as "A" when it is not "A". False advertising is wrong and consumers should be protected against such fraud. But guess what?!!! They already are!

No one will argue that fraudulent behavior should go unpunished. But there are already two anti-fraud laws that would apply to selling "unpure" maple syrup.

The two most widely used federal anti-fraud laws are the mail fraud act and the wire fraud act. These acts already cover anyone who deals in large-scale marketing of fraudulent material in the mail or via telecommunications services. That means the MAPLE Act is redundant and totally unnecessary. It was likely some politician's pet project.

With ample criminal laws on the books to deal with fraud, we do not need yet another law to tangle an already over-regulated world. It is not this one law that causes me to chafe. It is knowing that there are thousands of other inane and unnecessary laws that do nothing but gum up the works.

Jesus Would Not Qualify for The Religious Exemption?

2011-10-03T12:19:00.000-07:00

"Not even Jesus would qualify for the Health & Human Services (HHS) contraceptive mandate religious exemption." Ain't that sweet??!!

Under the HHS mandate, an exemption could only be claimed by faith-based institutions that serve ONLY members of their same faith - thereby excluding the large number of religious organizations that offer their services to people of any or no faith. So there you have it. If an institution is truly following the Christ-like model and serving ALL in need, then they must now violate their own consciences by providing "a health benefit" to employees which includes morally objectionable components.

I agree with Cardinal Daniel DeNardo who has blasted the Obama administration for their "misguided efforts to foster false values among our youth, to silence the voice of moral truth in the public domain, and to deprive believers of their constitutionally-protected right to live according to their religious convictions."

So I have a prediction. If this HHS mandate stands, one of two things is going to happen. Either, 1) Catholic (and other religious) hospitals and social services institutions will be forced to restrict their good works to *only* those who profess their faith, or 2) Faith-based groups will stop serving the needy altogether.

Arena of Ideas

2011-10-01T09:00:00.000-07:00

The path to true enlightenment
Begins with cold, hard facts.
Let’s spar in the arena of ideas,
Not the back alley of personal attacks.

If you truly have a belief to sell,
Then argue it with aplomb.
Don’t distract, divert, and obfuscate
And then just call me ‘dumb’.

Debra McCusker, August 2011

Broken

2010-05-25T10:24:00.000-07:00

When your eyes see only discord,

When every act offends,

The twig is going to snap.

You wanted one that always bends.

And once the twig is broken,

There's really no repair.

Look at your life. Don't be surprised.

The twig required care.

The broken twig’s heart and soul

Was all but thrown away,

So when another picked it up

Don’t look on in dismay.

Finders keepers, losers weepers,

The children learn to sing.

When loss is risked through careless folly,

The lament just leaves a hollow ring.

Swirls

2009-05-22T13:18:00.000-07:00

by Debra McCusker, Mar 2009

Life sweeps past me

And it is all so chaotic and confusing.

Shutters rattle; grit and debris gather.

I'm stunned. Thoughts scattering. Thoughts fusing.

Lights flicker. I fumble for help to light my way.

Sight obscured by the spray and rain.

The wind's roar consumes me as

Emotions swirl: loneliness, fear, ... pain.

Nature is ever at work building and tearing down,

Everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest.

I look for answers, I pray for retreat;

My hopes and doubts confessed.

And then the storm passes

And the roaring wind becomes a song,

Disparate souls once apart, now together.

Meant to be all along.

Digging Out Of The Economic Malaise – The Many Are Smarter Than The Few

2009-02-10T13:41:00.000-08:00

In constructing an organized economic and social order, you’ve got to first understand fully the system in which the order is supposed to exist. As F. A. Hayek points out in his paper "The Use of Knowledge in Society", if it were simply a problem of accumulating all of the relevant information and having the capacity to understand all of the inputs/outputs, then almost any good scientist could apply straightforward logic to solve society's problems. But here is the rub. "… the 'data' from which the economic calculus starts are never for the whole society given to a single mind which could work out the implications, … and can never be so given." The world we live in is far too complex. No single person can ever wrap his mind around all the intricacies of it.

As is the case with any very large problem, the ability to make strides forward often hinges on the admission that “the many” are smarter than “the few”. Why is this so difficult to admit? Our country and our government are resistant to the fact that no single mind (or limited committee) can grasp the entire economic problem, or anticipate all of the unintended consequences. Utilizing collective wisdom has many advantages over relying on a single oracle of knowledge. First, a continuum of distributed decision-making tends to create a self-correcting system. Small individual errors tend to be containable; the collateral damage is minimized. Lessons are learned, adjustments are made in a timely fashion, and the process carries forward. Small individual successes are emulated and expanded. This is such an important consideration. Secondly, not all problems demand the same solution. Command-and-control problem solving disseminates the same template answer to address a host of individual issues. Is it really more likely that an intellectual (far from “ground zero”) can devise a more optimal solution than the man on the scene? Although “the solution” may work for a test case, in a complex societal organism a one-size-fits-all approach leaves a lot to be desired.

If it were simply an issue of accumulating all of the relevant information and feeding it through a computer for analysis, then the economic crash of 2008 would not have happened. The ‘data’ would have been clear, the implications would have been analyzed logically, and the avoidance course would have been taken. But alas, societal problems are bigger than any one mind and more powerful than any one administration. These ills are made through a long series of errors, omissions, and poor judgments and they are only solvable through the culmination of thousands of responsible individual actions. For any politician or government official to contend that “a program” can fix a complex societal or economic problem is folly. It is a myth that any crisis is so complicated that the masses shouldn't question plans and programs, leaving their future in the hands of the "experts." A distributed response, thousands of individual economics decisions, yields more evenly dispersed results and does it more quickly.

Recessions are compounded when the populace becomes dependent on government programs, bailouts, and safety nets. These warp decision-making and the risk tolerance balance. They also breed lethargy and apprehension. It was The Federal Reserve and Congress, not the free market, that allowed ambitious bureaucrats and politicians to pull strings in the financial sector, mandate irrational lending policies, manipulate the value of money, and plunge our economy into crisis. That is the kind of central planning expertise we can do without.

An Unsung Woman of Science

2008-12-01T10:40:00.000-08:00

I have been reading the book E = mc², subtitled “a biography of the world's most famous equation.” Although this might sound about as interesting as watching paint dry, it is actually quite an interesting little memoir. It covers so many of the background characters and breakthroughs that led up to Einstein’s big theory. It is as much of a history lesson as it is a study in physics.

One section that I found most interesting is a detailing of the foundational work of a little known French researcher (at least I was unfamiliar with her work) named Emilie du Chatelet. She was the youngest child of a French aristocrat and was said to “flaunt her mind, frightening away the suitors”.

Finally, Emilie married a wealthy soldier who was almost constantly away on military campaigns. This was convenient because Emilie preferred to be absorbed in studying texts and following along with Descartes’s analytic geometry. The book goes on to say that the marriage was a pro forma arrangement, and in time the soldier accepted Emilie having affairs while he was away. Along the way, she crossed paths with the playwright and thinker Voltaire and they formed a strong relationship, sharing deep interests in political reform, fast conversation, and a drive to advance science.

Reinvigorating a mostly abandoned chateau in Cirey that had been in her husband’s family for generations, she and Voltaire created a research retreat with a library comparable to that of the Academy of Sciences in Paris. Emilie often worked at her desk well into the evening, surrounded by candles around her stacks of calculations and research texts. She ended up bridging and coalescing the works of German natural philosopher Gottfried Leibniz (who postulated that E was equivalent to mass times the square of velocity) and a Dutch researcher named ‘sGravesande who had experimental evidence of the square law via trials he had run dropping weights onto a soft clay floor. Emilie du Chatelet deepened Liebniz’s theory and solidified it with the concrete results of the ‘sGravesande results. She published her work and justified mv² as a fruitful definition of energy. Due to her clear writing and the reputation of Cirey as an independent research center, du Chatelet’s work was key in establishing a solid direction for the study of energy. This was in the 1740’s. It would be two more centuries before the publication of Einstein's theory.

Here’s the part of the story that is quite nifty. After publishing her work, Emilie took a pause to take care of some family dealings and consider what research topic to study next. She traveled with Voltaire. She was amused that the new generation of courtiers at Versailles appeared oblivious that she was one of the leading interpreters of modern physics or that in her spare time she had published original translations of the works of Aristotle and Virgil. The best part: Occasionally it would slip when she did a burst of probability calculations for the gaming table! What a gal!

Sadly, du Chatelet died at age forty from complications following childbirth in an era of crude medicine and poor hygiene. Her writings and work had truly been an indispensable step in forming the postulate that energy was proportional to mv², but her contributions are rarely credited. Perhaps her untimely and early death caused memory of her work to fade, or possibly a woman’s intellectual prowess was not meant to be in the 1700’s.

“Now you know,” as Paul Harvey would say, “… the rest of the story”.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Polling Results

2008-10-24T09:21:00.000-07:00

Many of you are showing some signs of bewilderment as the polls indicate that Barack Obama is up by anywhere between 3 and 11 points in national and some "battleground" state surveys. The national media is preaching a coordinated message of a slam dunk victory for the Obama-Biden ticket. But as the days tick down to Nov 4, some polls are appearing to tighten a bit. This has caused me to wonder: How much of polling is a science and how much of it is a slight-of-hand art?

I have made a few cursory observations that weaken my faith in the prognosticative value of any poll. I am also seeing how polling, when not done in a purely scientific fashion, can be used to "create reality" rather than estimate actual group sentiment. My first observation is based upon taking note of the sample size used in the poll. Polling organizations that survey large samples are indicating a tighter race. Almost every poll being touted on national news showing Obama up by 10 or more points is based upon a sample size of 500 or fewer people. Can 500 people's responses really model the performance of over 100 million voters? I can see that this could be true, but there are so many ways that the results could be perturbed that I can also see that this might not present an accurate picture. The fact that polling organization "A" and polling organization "B" can come up with results that vary so widely is testament to this. For example the George Washington University/Battleground Poll for the period of 10/14 - 10/20 sampled 1000 likely voters and showed Obama-Biden up by a mere 1percentage point. The ABC News/Washington Post Poll sampled a similar sample size (1336 likely voters) and gave Obama-Biden a 9 point advantage. Both views cannot be the true picture. The Rasmussen Poll sampled three times as many likely voters (3000 LV) and reports a 4 point advantage for Obama-Biden. Each of the three polls I mention here sampled different audiences over slightly different date ranges. If the results vary so widely based upon who exactly responded and when they were polled, who can we trust? Is it prudent to let polls effect our decision-making process at all? The mainstream media seems to want us to listen to some cherry-picked results and ignore others.

Let's take a look back at the presidential election of 2004. CNN/USAT/Gallup sampled 793 likely voters during the period of October 9 - 10 and found John Kerry up by 2 points, 50% to 48%. That same polling organization polled 709 likely voters from August 23 - 25 and gave Bush a 3 point advantage, 50% to 47%. During the period from July 8 - 11, Kerry had a 4 point advantage with 706 likely voters being polled by the same organization. What conclusion(s) can we draw? I can think of only two. 1) The time period in which a poll is conducted affects the results, and 2) the particular sample of respondents affects the results. There are a few other questions, whose answers would be enlightening: 1) Were the same questions used in each poll?, 2) Was there any geographic preference used in one poll versus another?, 3) Was a particular respondent's answers accepted or rejected based on any concrete criteria? In short, I ask whether the goal of a polling organization is to report a truly unbiased picture. Do polls report trends or do they aspire to create them?

As a North Carolina resident, I decided to look at some particular data for my state. I downloaded the complete polling report from Tel Opinion Research, LLC entitled "NORTH CAROLINA STATEWIDE SURVEY RESEARCH REPORT OCTOBER 2008". Looking at some of the internals in this report gives the poll watcher some important information in order to interpret the results. One of the most interesting line items is the breakdown of respondents by “philosophy”. The report revealed that its sample used respondents divided as such: Very Liberal = 9%, Somewhat Liberal = 10%, Somewhat Conservative = 20%, Very Conservative = 20%, and Moderate = 36%. At first glance this might seem like an extremely fair cross-section of the populace. It might even appear that the sample is skewed toward a conservative view. I would like to make the argument that this poll, in reality, may be misrepresenting the true sentiment of North Carolinians as a whole by over-polling persons who declare themselves as philosophically “moderate”, and who may be in reality somewhat liberal.

The Battleground Poll, the most respected and thorough of all public opinion polls, released its latest results on August 20th, 2008. Bruce Walker, author and political analyst, has been tracking Question D3 of the Battleground Poll since June 2002, in thirteen consecutive Battleground Poll reports. He believes that this question, of all of the ones in the poll, is the single most important question in revealing an underlying story of American politics. Americans respond to Question D3 more consistently than to any other question in Battleground Poll surveys over the thirteen ones analyzed. Question D3 is this: When thinking about politics and government, do you consider yourself to be: a) Very conservative, b) Somewhat conservative, c) Moderate, d) Somewhat liberal, d) Very liberal, or e) Unsure/Refused.

Here are the results from the August 2008 Battleground Survey: Very Liberal = 9%, Somewhat Liberal = 27%, Somewhat Conservative = 40%, Very Conservative = 20%, Moderate = 2% and Unsure = 2%. This is not a quirk or one-time snapshot of American philosophy; the Somewhat/Very Conservative numbers have remained between 59 and 63%, in every Battleground survey all of the way back to the year 2002. The Somewhat/Very Liberal numbers have always remained small in comparison. And only a tiny fraction of people ever choose “moderate” when describing themselves in the Battleground Survey. With this is mind, who really are the philosophically “moderate” class in the "NORTH CAROLINA STATEWIDE SURVEY RESEARCH REPORT OCTOBER 2008"? In a traditionally conservative southern state, could a person who tells a pollster that he/she is a moderate be diluting a more liberal bent? I assert that the North Carolina poll is over-sampling moderates and that this technique, either obliviously or purposefully, is skewing the results away from the truth. We will have to wait until after November 4 to see if my suspicions about this (or other) sampling technique(s) are accurate.

Change We Can Bereave In

2008-10-03T15:36:00.000-07:00

When my husband and I bought our first house, it was the early 1980's and interest rates were in the high teens. Loan approval was a long drawn-out process. Examination of the borrower’s credit history was extensive. Ahhh… the good old days. The financial market crises of today are in large part due to loose lending practices, practices that supplanted good old-fashioned scrutiny with affirmative action mandates. The chickens are coming home to roost.

Loans in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s were being given out like party favors. Individuals who had no credit history and no verifiable income were still approved for loans, in large part due to pressures from ACORN and other "civil liberties" groups who pushed the concept that everyone had the “right” to share in the American Dream of home ownership. The problem with manufacturing rights where no rights actually exist is that market-driven logic is trumped by command-and-control directives. When the “directors” (i.e. politicians) are clueless, we end up with the panic and chaos that we have today. When lending institutions are required by law to live with ill-conceived rules, they seem to do whatever it takes to “make the numbers” while still drawing inside the lines. They come up with creative loan arrangements just to satisfy the regulators.

Democrat Presidential candidate Barack Obama was quick to blame the bankruptcy of Wall Street giant Lehman Brothers on Republicans’ “failed philosophy”. It is curious that he avoided mentioning the ties that Lehman had with his web of associates, including indicted real estate developer Tony Rezko. It is also peculiar that few journalists mention that Barack, himself, was a lawyer who advocated on behalf of ACORN for the very lax lending practices that he chides today. Joe Biden, in the VP debate on October 2nd, also did a lot of finger pointing.

I would like to remind ol’ Joe of these words: “For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac... and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market... If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.” That was John McCain three years ago as he was urging for passage of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act (S. 190). He was a leader on the issue, having co-sponsored the bill. Mr. Biden, on the other hand, took the wrong stand. He and other Senate Democrats blocked passage of the important reform. Obama, the neophyte, was not even in the Senate at the time. The Obama-Biden ticket is a culmination of two wrongs (inexperience and wrong-headedness). And those two wrongs do not make a right.

Barack Obama is the high risk loan. He has nothing but a nice smile and flowery platitudes as the evidence he can deliver on all that he promises. He has no history of accomplishment. The experience that he does have is with entities that cause problems, not solve them. He has ties to nefarious characters. If we put this guy in charge of things, I fear that we will be lamenting it far into the future.

The Second Amendment is Easy to Interpret

2008-06-27T09:12:00.000-07:00

“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” —Second Amendment to the United States Constitution

Read it. Embrace it. Believe it. "The right of the People" ... which means individuals. "Shall not be infringed" ... which means not compromised or diminished. It is all fairly straightforward.

... On Being Charitable

2008-06-02T13:18:00.000-07:00

"But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly." -- Matthew 6:3-4

The Merits of Repealing The "Death Tax"

2008-05-09T12:47:00.000-07:00

Merit, as some define it, means a special combination of hard work, skill, and channeled genius. And there are those who advocate the retention of the estate tax on the basis that inherited assets are not achieved through "merit". The logic seems to go like this: Heirs do not deserve a tax "break" on inherited assets when they have not contributed to the skill and genius of amassing it, (even though all of said money was taxed once already when earned).

To the portfolio of attributes constituting merit, I'd like to add "risk" as a key component. Any individual that runs a business assumes risk, whether that business is an original start-up, a purchased franchise, or an inherited company. When a person assumes the risk, he or she should have the opportunity to reap the rewards.

We have all heard the expression "with risk comes reward", or maybe the pop culture mantra "no pain, no gain" rings a more familiar bell.

What happens when a person puts in the pain (the sweat and, yes, the risk) but the gain is taken away? Where's the incentive? Why take the risk? What's the purpose of the pain? When you take away the incentives, you suppress the genius. You take away the motivation to accept any risk in the first place.

And this is why the repeal of the "death tax" makes clear and perfect sense. When a person is taxed on his or her income once, what can make anyone think that it is right or appropriate to tax the same money again when the assets are passed to an heir? Isn't this double taxation a dis-incentive to growth? Indeed it is. And doesn't this kind of thinking dilute genius and innovation? Yes, it does. Is suppressed growth what any country needs in a complex world with global competition and pressures? Or would an incentive to growth be more appropriate?

Let's get over all of this whiny class-envy rhetoric and let the merits of merit rule ... and be justly rewarded.

Contemplation

2008-04-23T08:43:00.000-07:00

Enough said.

I Married A Car Guy

2008-04-22T13:00:00.000-07:00

I married a Car Guy. I admit that I did not fully appreciate the significance of this at the get-go. It takes a while to sink in. It is one of those things where no one incident or characteristic is a signal. It is a culmination of facts that leads to no other conclusion: my husband is “A Car Guy”.

The initial hint: a report from his mother that Dave uttered his first word, "car", while rolling a can of soup across the floor. Or the fact that Dave passed his driver’s road test the first time with impeccable execution. The day of the high school prom? His mom had to accept the flower delivery because Dave’s hands were covered with grease. But these were just anecdotes with no particular significance at the time.

Add to these, though, a few additional details. Ask Dave about his proudest moments and he might say “winning the Auto-X Rookie of the Year Award” or “the piece of driving pulled off that allowed his vehicle to be the first one cleanly through an unfolding multi-vehicle highway pileup”. Or observe that Dave maintains a database system to track his 119 wheels and 130 tires, including their exact locations. Do most families have a key rack with labeled key fobs for the car fleet? Or a diary to log when a car is driven and which one should be exercised next?

Is it really normal to be able to look at a VIN and see the country of origin, make, year, body and engine? I was mystified on our 20^th wedding anniversary to receive a gift that included both the modern platinum and traditional china: platinum-tipped spark plugs! Thought inspired? Perhaps.

I can hardly wait for the 30^th anniversary.

Yes, I married a Car Guy.

Everyday Things

2008-04-17T08:43:00.000-07:00

Gloom envelopes the Earth;
Tales of woe echo from shore to shore.
It will be much harder for folks today
To live as comfortably as those before.

We need a pill for our many stresses,
Why, there are deadlines beyond control.
The weights of the world are on our shoulders,
All of these crises take a toll.

We can't pay the mortgage plus the cable bill.
We've max’d out the Mastercard.
Did grandpa have all of these worries?
Did the founding fathers have it this hard?

We live in a world of superlatives --
Famine, plague ... another grave alarm.
Weapons of mass destruction, global pandemics,
Greenhouse gases making us warm.

It helps us feel good, though, to make a difference;
Our influence is like a therapy.
If we could be fulfilled by everyday things,
Would that be such a travesty?

Gloom envelopes the Earth;
Tales of woe echo from shore to shore.
Everybody wants to save the Earth, but
Who's ready to help Mom … mop the floor?

by Debra McCusker

Heart or Head?

2008-04-14T16:12:00.000-07:00

Which should you trust more, your heart or your head?

In making the determination as to whether it is prudent, correct or wise to trust the heart or the head more on a decision, it is best to explore what really makes up “a decision”. Some pundits tout gut feelings and snap judgments as effective means of decision making. A case in point is Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Blink: the Power of Thinking without Thinking”. This is an interesting take on the issue but I would like to suggest that no decision, even a snap judgment, is ever made with no thought behind it. A “feeling in the gut” or a heart-felt decision is actually created from a confluence of past experiences, observances, and absorbed knowledge. The gut feeling will be correct if, and only if, the circumstance at hand matches closely to a scenario retained in the “personal database” of experience and knowledge.

So, it can be said that a gut reaction or heart-felt decision is just a subset of the fully formed analytical judgment (i.e., trusting one’s head). Although the snap judgment seems “without thought”, it is not. Rather, the connections and pathways are made at such speed from the personal data store that the thinking part seems non-existent. Which method is more trustworthy (heart or head) can be based upon whether the current decision is being made about a purely personal pursuit or whether the decision affects or encompasses a group or society. On a personal decision, there are two basic things that make the “snap” heart-felt approach a little more plausible. First, the collateral damage is minimized due to the tightly defined nature of an “individual” problem. Second, the personal problem has a much higher probability of being within the grasp of the individual decision-maker. That is, the decision-maker’s collection of internalized knowledge and experience has a fairly good likelihood of mapping correctly to the problem at hand.

When studying cognitive processes and intellectual expertise, scientists often turn to the game of chess as a test bed. In 1909, chess grand master José Raúl Capablanca took part in an exhibition tournament where he won 168 games in a row. He often played multiple games simultaneously and typically pondered an individual move for only seconds. How could he do that? Studies show that the expert relies not so much on an intrinsically stronger power of analysis as on a store of structured knowledge. When confronted with a difficult situation, the weak player may sit calculating for half an hour, often factoring choices many moves ahead, yet still miss the right move. The grandmaster sees the best move immediately, without consciously analyzing anything at all. To the casual observer, the expert’s behavior may appear magical or providential. Rather than divine inspiration, though, it is the master’s uncanny ability to recall a finite number of chunks of information and then connect and reconstruct scenarios that produces the awesome edge.

Those TV commercials that present all of the unbelievable maneuvers of an SUV or high-performance sports car may be a metaphor for decision-making. And the same disclaimer may apply: “Professional driver on a closed course. Do not try this at home.” That expert, any expert, may look like he or she is making an easy maneuver. In truth, that trained individual chunks information and processes it so quickly that the rest of us are fooled into assuming that some jobs can be done “without a thought”. In the limited instances when intimate knowledge of a problem area does exist, the expert-level snap judgment may indeed work. But unless you are so absorbed with a subject area that it is simply part of your inner fabric, I suggest that you listen to what your mother always told you: “Sweetie, Use Your Head!”

Social Justice – What Would Jesus Do?

2008-03-20T12:57:00.000-07:00

If I would attempt to define justice or fairness, at least within the American democratic tradition, I would say that it would distill down to simply this: apply the same rules and standards to everyone. But in recent years, this definition of justice has been rebuked as “not good enough”. I am told that because not everyone comes into this world with the same talents, resources, and connections, there needs to be “special considerations” or some means to boost those who do not naturally rise to the top.

It is true that the weak, the disabled, and the downtrodden need advocates to help them in coping with their lots in life. Our prayers and appropriate financial support should certainly go to further the missions of those who choose vocations as aid workers, rural health care providers, occupational therapists, tutors, orphanage practitioners, and the like. The questions that need to be asked, though, are how should the necessary help be distributed, how does one determine the worthy recipients, and who should gauge the most efficient methods to offer the aid?

One definition of social justice that I recently read is that it “can be seen as a belief in and the pursuit of human rights and the equal distribution of resources for all people.” This sounds very pious and worthy on the surface. What good person would ever say that he or she is against human rights? Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world if we were all equal? The problem that I see with this philosophical argument is the tendency of the “pious” ends to continue justifying the means, any means, calling for ever-expanding social and political interventions. When I read “equal distribution of resources for all people”, I can’t help but think, “who is doing the distributing?”

Can we take a page from Jesus, the most wise and wonderful philosopher, when it comes to furthering social justice? What would Jesus do? First, we should remember that Jesus taught his disciples that in order to be like the Master they must "wash one another's feet" (John 13:14). Recall also that before Jesus told them this, it was He who actually washed their feet. I don’t think that Jesus ever sent followers down roads that He did not travel himself. In fact, Jesus is the embodiment of compassion (suffering with), agonizing to the point of death to save humanity. There is a lesson here for all of us. It is really one thing to tell others what to do “to be just” and quite another to instruct by example.

It is very bothersome when “the powers that be” tell everyone else that they will decide what is worthwhile (foreign aid, entitlement programs, and subsidies) and that “we” (and our pocketbooks) should just go along for the ride. If I disagree with your methods or have a moral conflict with your causes, is it “just” to be forced to fund them? I would much rather do my own research and then give my time, talent and treasure to those efforts that I deem to be the most worthy. On the other hand, if I see that what you are doing is really valuable and a genuine help to those in need, I will naturally feel motivated to join your efforts for good, and do so without coercion.

Social justice, in my opinion, has become a catch-all phrase to wrap around any project to give it that warm and worthwhile feeling. Too many times, the “equal distribution of resources” objective has become a deterrent for individual initiative and a mechanism for corruption (a la the oil for food program). When social justice becomes a bureaucratic endeavor rather than an aggregate of individual convictions, true justice is not served.

Jesus taught his disciples to follow His own example in living a life of service to others. In following Jesus’ example, we can learn to bless those who exhibit faith, to reward personal ambition, to respect authority and law, to live simply, to shepherd the lost, to provide hope for the hopeless and to tend to the needs of our neighbors. Remember that when Jesus instructed the lame man to “take up [his] bed and walk”, it actually took initiative for the man to receive his anointing. Free will is always a major component in Jesus’ teachings. So it seems that social justice, on the whole, is best achieved through embracing a system based upon merit and initiative, promoting a free and fair market, and encouraging philanthropy and charity according to the convictions in each individual heart. I pray that you will be blessed as you spread goodwill to those around you.

Terri's Prayer

2008-03-20T11:59:00.000-07:00

Terri's Prayer: Dying to be Heard

(in memory and honor of Terri Schiavo)

Dear heavenly Father, so wise and merciful --

So compassionate and kind.

I lift this humble prayer to You

For those I've left behind.

For judges who followed procedure.

They used finely-tuned knowledge and skill

But overlooked the right to life --

Choosing not to save, but to kill.

For all of the leaders who didn't react

To divert a court-ordered death.

I cried but no one understood

And then I breathed … my last breath.

Lord, I now understand what your son endured

As He was tortured, beaten and jeered.

That cup of cool water was so close to our lips

But slapped away as we had all feared.

I take refuge in the philosopher's words

That suffering is not meant as damnation

But rather an ointment from the Great Physician,

A prescription on the road to salvation.

I pray for those who work for the helpless;

They keep our society human.

Give them strength to fight for dignity and life

Through this fog of moral confusion.

For the weak, the disabled, the innocent --

These petitions go out to Thee

So that the works of my almighty God

Might be made manifest through me.

God gives each life a purpose;

We can't predict just how.

Brothers and sisters, this prayer is for you,

Can you hear me now?