Online Puzzle Game: Yeah, it's weird, in a Monte-Python-meets-Myst way. But if you have a few minutes, go ahead and pick up the phone.

Bin Laden's Deadline: Just a reminder that the three month deadline is about to expire. Oooooh, be afraid.

Or, use your head, and remember that when a terrorist is capable of doing something bad, they do it, when they can only do something small, they do it and threaten worse, and when they can't do anything, they make threats.

They will also use the least amount of effort necessary to inspire fear. The purpose of deadlines is to do just that--inspire fear.

This Film Ends When Your Face Implodes: If you only check the Homestar site on Mondays, you may have missed this bit of They Might Be Gianty goodness.

I saw them do this song in concert a couple months ago and dug it--the video's rockin'.

Quote of the Day: Sent to me by my Dad:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. --Marianne Williamson in her book, A Return to Love, used by Nelson Mandella in his inauguration speech.

Watch 'Em Run: Electoral votes based on current polling data.

Moral Relativism: Because of my last post, Sandefur has called me a Moral Relativist.

Which I am, of course, not. I'm a moral absolutist to the core. I've spent a lot of time in discussion with moral relativists who felt that the only way for there to be absolute morality was if there was a God, and since there wasn't one, there was no absolute morality.

My position was that in order for morality to be absolute, God couldn't proscribe it, he would have to be subject to it, whether he existed or not.

So why, then, my stance, which seems to be that of a moral relativist?

Because it's actually the opposite. The moral relativist would ask, "Who are the majority, that they may dictate to me what is right and wrong?"

Only a moral absolutist would assert that it was possible to actually be morally right or morally wrong, in complete isolation from what opinions were held by others.

Consequently we need some way to determine what moral system to operate under, since it will be disagreed with.

As I said in my last post, "In a government of the people, by the people, for the people, the people should, and do, have the greatest influence on the nation's policy."

I used the phrase "of the people, by the people, for the people," deliberately--it's from the Gettysburg Address, a war that was fought, to some degree, over moral issues--slavery, and the right of secession.

Which is what the real question Sandefur doesn't think I've answered seems to boil down to--when, as was the case with Lincoln and Confederacy, can morality be imposed on someone, and when are we forced to accept the will of the majority, notwithstanding it be contrary to our own?

I can honestly say I've never really considered where the line needs to be placed. My attitude has always been that if the majority is trying to vote in immoral policy or elect immoral officials, your only recourse is to try and change the voters.

As ridiculous as he finds it that the majority can enact laws that he feels to be morally reprehensible, I find it equally ridiculous to assert that somehow my moral position should be deemed more weighty than that of the masses, and they should be subjected to my whims.

I understand his rationale--he feels that if the morality is built into the system, then even if the people go astray, the system can still remain stable and moral. And to a large degree, this is what we do.

It's the purpose of so many declarations of "rights." Laws that violate those pre-defined "rights" are immoral, and get tossed. Laws that do not get to stand.

So then, "What, precisely, is the limit to which Peterson refers?"

It's that the people can't vote in a law that violates their outlined rights.

That's the limit.

The problem is that a lot of aspects of those rights are subject to interpretation. He interprets it a violation of those rights for drugs and prostitution to be outlawed--most would disagree. Some would interpret it a violation of those rights for him to refuse to play their song on a radio station he owned--he (and I) would disagree.

So "rights"-based morality is still, to some degree, not absolute.

This is not bad. This is, in fact, how it should be. The people should ultimately have their way. That's what Democracy is about.

And if even we tried to stop it, even if we ultimately declared the will of the people as secondary to that of the judiciary or whoever, the people would eventually vote in people who would replace those justices or judges or senators, and in the end things would go the way they wanted.

So the people get to vote for wealth redistribution if they want, and there's really nothing more I can do about it than if they voted in drug legalization or eliminating the FDA or any of the other policies the Libertarians embrace.

Even judicial appeal and (dare I say) military intervention would just be a quick-fix, until the politicians began promising to appoint judges or implement policy that would overturn the ruling in line with the will of the people, and then we'd be right back where we started.

The toughest part of any such might-makes-right action is the subsequent convincing of the masses that what happened was "right," otherwise the action won't stick. Reconstruction was far more vital to shaping the future of the nation than the war itself was. George W. Bush is having the enjoyable ride he is in the polls right now because he's not doing a good enough job of convicing the people why the Iraq war was necessary for them, despite the actual correctness of the action.

Ultimately, all you can do is enlighten.

(In an update, he says I think it is "okay" for the government to steal from the masses, that I agree with HRC. Where did I say this? I said it was morally reprehensible and theft. How are those synonymous with "okay"? That's like me saying that he thinks alcoholism is a neat just because he wouldn't reimpliment prohibition.

In fact, that analogy's not even perfect, because I would be actively working against welfare reform, while he'd be working for freedom to drink.)

Answering the Rhetorical Question of Homer, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Accept That I'm Surrounded By Idiots, A Blog Post With A Title Not Much Longer Than The Actual Post: So here's Sandefur's question:

So, once again, I ask, if Erik Peterson agrees that redistribution of wealth is theft, how can he believe that the state has the right to commit theft? Where does the state get this right?

The answer is to be found in the answering of Homer's rhetorical question, which Sandefur quoted somewhere over the course of this discussion:

Who's to say what's right and wrong nowadays, what with our modern ways....

His answer would likely be the judiciary. My--qualified--answer would be the majority. Or the duly elected representatives of the majority.

So why not take it a step further? Why not allow morality to be determined by the appointees of the duly elected representatives of the majority, and say it's good enough?

Because it unfairly tips the scales of our checks and balances in favor of the judiciary.

It is one thing for the judiciary to decide on how to interpret the finer points of the law, overturn legislative pronouncements that exceed the boundaries set by governing legislative pronouncements.

It's another thing altogether for justices and judges to spin law in whole cloth based on their individual perceptions.

So what about the public choice effect? What about the idea that, if given free reign to do what they will, the voters will shackle up Steven King and force him to release the rest of the Dark Tower series immediately, for fifty cents a copy? That the majority would force those who base their judgments of Kirsten Dunst's beauty on bad paparazzi photos to be subjected to electroshock-based re-education?

This is where the wonderful rotating and sliding scales of checks and balances come into play. When the electorate begins to abuse its power, it does become necessary for the courts to step in and take some of that power away. This is why I qualified my answer above--because in a balanced system, even the electorate should not become too powerful, and should fail to get its way from time to time. The same should happen when the judiciary starts running wild--the people's voice should be able to step in and overrule it.

And the later will, inevitably, be the case more often than the reverse.

In a government of the people, by the people, for the people, the people should, and do, have the greatest influence on the nation's policy. In fact, if you tried to draw the line anywhere else, it would still find it's way back to the side of the people, because that's how things work in a democracy.

. . . we get the presidents we deserve. A great people is what you need for a great president. Washington was the greatest president, because the people were at their most enlightened and alert. [America] right now is escapist. It wants to be soothed, and told it doesn't have to pay or sacrifice or learn. [Willis, Garry, "Things That Matter," Vis a Vis, July 1988, p. 70]

It has to be that way. I do not believe that a government of elected officials and their appointees can keep the nation moral if the people of the nation are morally bankrupt any more than I believe the government could somehow feed every hungry mouth if the people of the nation stopped being industrious.

You cannot impose morality on a free people and still claim they are free to govern themselves. Such is the paradox of a free society. It only lasts so long as the people in it continue to have the values that uphold it.

Jeffrey R. Holland said, in the same commencement speech from which I took the above quote,

Such public and personal virtue was understood by the Founding Fathers to be the precondition for republican government, the base upon which the structure of all government would be built. Such personal ideals as John Adams' "virtuous citizen" and Thomas Jefferson's "moral sense" and "aristocracy of talent and virtue" were fundamental. Even the pessimistic James Madison said,

I go on this great republican principle, that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom. Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks, no form of government, can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. [20 June 1788, in The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, arr. Jonathan Elliot, vol. 3 (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1901), pp. 536­37]

So while I may be fully confident that I have the moral high ground, this does me no good until I am able to persuade my neighbor of the same, and we convince our other neighbors, and together, cumulatively, we arrive at a better place. To paraphrase former LDS church president and US Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, it is one thing to try and take the people out of the slums, but quite another to take slums out of the hearts of the people, so they can take themselves out of the slums.

So, for me, all of this means that the people of the nation are free--within limits--to decide what actions are "moral." If I feel differently, it is my responsibility to help them see why they are wrong.

Fun With Babelfish: If you're looking for something mindless to do for fun, take a few of your recent blogposts and translate them into a foreign language using Babelfish. Then translate the foreign text back to English.

It's wacky good fun!

Golly, Superman: When I read headline of "carcasa superman spread boatos", I was worried. All hoopla of the carcass of superman has worried me. I mean, I I liked Roswell in such a way how much guy following, but Jason Behr is not none superman.

What it told was really the better bit of the notice of the carcass still.

Shia LaBeouf would make one jimmy great Olsen.


a Small Mary Jane: Sandefur declared me one libertarian, interpreting the fact that I believe that the states have the right to make laws I do not agree to the o in some average way me must belong to a party that works executing laws that I do not believe, because not to execute laws I.

Favorably sufficiently. I declare I blind it so that its inability finds Kirsten Dunst "considerably."

Adjustment please its license of driver in agreement . . .

Golly, Superman: When I read the headline "Superman Casting Rumored", I was worried. All of the Superman casting hoopla has me worried. I mean, I liked Roswell as much as the next guy, but Jason Behr is no Superman.

What it reported was actually the best bit of casting news yet.

Shia LaBeouf would make a great Jimmy Olsen.

A Little Mary Jane: Sandefur has declared me a Libertarian, interpreting the fact that I believe states have the right to make laws I don't agree with to somehow mean I should belong to a party that would work for implementing laws I don't believe in, for not implementing laws I do.

Fair enough.

I declare him blind for his inability to find Kirsten Dunst "pretty."

Please adjust his driver's license accordingly.

The problem with the Mary Jane character in the movies is that they've combined two characters to make her, two characters that are actually meant to be complete contrasts to each other, sort of like trying to combine the stoic, dark, muscular Batman with the laughy, colorful, skinny Joker to make one "more complex" character.

In this case, the two characters are Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane from the Spider Man comic books.

Gwen Stacy was the cute girl-next-door who represented the calm, peaceful home life Peter could have had if he had never become Spider-man. She represented stability and beauty and security (Her father was the police chief). She died while Spider-man was battling the Green Goblin, in a confrontation similiar to the one at the end of the first movie.

Mary Jane, on the other hand, was the wild girl with the flaming red hair and the edge-of-your-seat attitude about life. This is the girl whose father was abusive, but rather than turning her towards extroversion, it taught her to fight. This is the girl who dated Harry Osborne but flirted shamelessly with Peter. After school she became a star, not of stuffy Jane Austen-style plays, but of soap operas. This is the girl who would call Peter "Tiger."

So trying to combine the two has created a somewhat muddled character without clear motivation. I'm somewhat disappointed with the result--I regret not getting to see the feisty flame-haired flirt on screen--but hey, it's Kirsten Dunst! Who's complaining?