In 2008, I heartily endorsed the reelection of Rep. Wolf when I posted the Off on a Tangent endorsements. Then, when President George W. Bush (R) embarked on a mad binge of socialist bailouts and bank takeovers, I was forced to rescind most of my endorsements—including Wolf’s—for reconsideration because most of my endorsees had voted in the face of vehement, consistent, and vocal public opposition for the ill-advised and ineffective TARP bailout. I ended up endorsing Wolf anyway, reluctantly, with some new caveats. Most importantly, I said that “Wolf must oppose any further moves toward socialist interventionism by our government and must defend the free market economy.”

This caveat has become even more important in the last two years, as President Barack Obama (D) and his strong Democratic majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate have expanded and accelerated the mad and misguided federal spending that started under Bush. In 2009, the first annual federal deficit under Obama was nearly four-times bigger than Bush’s record-setting 2008 deficit, and the Democratic Party—roaring into power on promises of fiscal responsibility—shows no sign of stopping the madness.

Barnett, running on the Democratic ticket for the 10th District seat, makes cogent arguments against this insane spending that has already begun to extend and deepen our recession and threatens to destabilize the entire American economy. He says that he is “absolutely committed” to a balanced federal budget and cutting discretionary spending. He supports redirecting any federal bailouts to small businesses, small banks, and individual homeowners instead of to large, multinational corporations. These are admirable goals.

But these, like Obama’s eerily-similar statements during his 2008 campaign, seem to be more mirage than fact. Barnett calls the massive Bush/Obama bailout deficits “necessary” (though, at least, admits they are “not sustainable”). He urges tax increases for wealthy Americans who already pay more than their fair share, even though lowering taxes—even for the ‘rich’—is a proven deficit buster and tax hikes always hurt economic recoveries. He urges massive cuts in federal spending, yes, but instead of cutting funding for countless spurious and unnecessary federal programs he believes we should target…defense spending. Seriously?

Barnett also advocates a misguided re-regulation of our banks—despite federal regulation of the mortgage industry having played a huge part in the banking collapse. You don’t solve a problem by adding more of what caused it. He supports the terribly malformed health care reform bill passed earlier this year, saying that he could only have been prouder if he had been in Congress to vote for it himself, and has no interest in repealing its most pernicious and unconstitutional requirements or replacing it with fair, effective reforms we could all agree on.

While he has some good ideas and priorities—a desire to improve our transportation infrastructure, a ‘carrot and stick’ approach to moving beyond our dependence on foreign oil, and programs that benefit individual Americans instead of corporate big-wigs on Wall St.—Barnett is strangely quiet on the details. These positives, however, do not outweigh the many negatives discussed above. Barnett’s plans for economic recovery, despite his ‘balanced budget’ platitudes, will hurt more than they help, and any argument for a reduction in defense spending is a complete non-starter when we are constantly threatened by radical Islam and, worse, potential political instability world-wide due to failing national economies.

Redpath, running under a Libertarian Party banner, presents much better ideas for improving our economic plight. He calls for a stop to the “cheesy, half-baked, short-sighted Federal responses to the current economic situation” and, instead, calls for a massive reduction in federal spending. He supports a plan presented by the Cato Institute for $348 billion in spending cuts that would only effect the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Transportation, Energy, Education, and HUD—departments that, in general, are largely unnecessary at the federal level anyway.  He also supports reducing trade restrictions and tariffs that artificially and negatively impact international trade—trade which benefits our own standard of living, that in other countries, and reduces incentives for international violence and tension. He would press for replacing our overly-complex, redistributive tax code with a better, fairer, simpler flat-tax. He believes in a balanced federal budget and, unlike Barnett, actually seems to have a plausible path for getting there.

As a Libertarian and, apparently, a believer in the U.S. Constitution, Redpath also supports devolving authorities not granted to the federal government by the Constitution back to the states. This is consistent with a plain-text reading of the 10th Amendment, which explicitly reserves all authorities not granted to the federal government by the Constitution to the states or to the people. As such, Redpath would press for a repeal of federal drug laws, gambling laws, health care laws (including the recently passed ‘reform’ act), and entitlement programs. He does not necessarily believe these laws should not exist, he just believes—rightly—that they are state, not federal issues. Each state should be permitted to establish (or not establish) these laws and programs for themselves consistent with their own needs.

Redpath would also seek to establish an “open, but regulated” immigration policy which would permit any person who isn’t a criminal, doesn’t have communicable diseases, and isn’t a security threat to enter the United States and have a path toward citizenship. Immigrants, however, would not receive any federal benefits. This is almost exactly the ideal immigration policy—welcoming and open, but with reasonable protections against the social ills that follow naturally from unregulated illegal immigration.

My one major objection to Redpath’s platform is his national security plan, which inexplicably calls for a withdrawal from Afghanistan and a “focus on Al-Qaeda as the [U.S's] greatest security threat”—as if a military presence in Afghanistan isn’t an important piece of fighting al-Qaeda. He also calls for a massive reduction in defense spending and a completely non-interventionist (read: isolationist) military policy. These are tempting positions to agree with, but the fact remains that a certain level of foreign interventionism is necessary in our modern, interconnected world. If we withdraw from the international political scene, there is no other power in existence that can present a realistic deterrent against foreign leaders who would, if they had the chance, embark on a policy of imperialist totalitarianism, ethnic cleansing, and worse.

Without an active U.S. foreign policy, it is only a matter of years before North Korea conquers South Korea and expands beyond, before an Iranian caliphate begins to conquer its neighbors, and before Israel’s mortal enemies invade it once more and try to repeat the holocaust. Then it is only a matter of one or more decades before those surging, radical regimes begin to threaten Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Who will stop them? The United Nations, NATO, and others would be incapable of mounting an effective response without our participation. I don’t think the United States should have to be the world’s policeman, but we are required—by moral necessity, if nothing else—to act in that role until any other free republic (or amalgamation thereof) is willing and able. I don’t like the state of affairs any more than Redpath does, but the fact is that his foreign policies would be catastrophic in the long term for us and the entire world.

Finally, we come to Rep. Wolf. Unfortunately, Wolf does not seem to have updated his web site at all since 2008—at least not insofar as its real content—which tells me that he is very confident in his prospects for reelection. Indeed, Wolf has not even bothered to change his copyright dates—his ‘Wolf Works’ issues section is “Paid for and Authorized by Friends of Frank Wolf[,] Copyright © 2008.” Worse, he has added no content relating to the Bush/Obama Bailout Bonanza and instead focuses solely on the bygone issues from earlier in the 2008 campaign. This is disappointing; he should be embarrassed.

Having said that, Wolf, as an incumbent, has something the other candidates don’t have: a Congressional voting record. Following his fateful vote for the Bush-initiated TARP bailout in 2008 that almost lost him the Off on a Tangent endorsement, Wolf seems to have gotten the message his constituents sent him—loudly—about wasteful federal spending. He opposed the proposed auto-bailout that failed in Congress in December 2008 (though Bush ultimately repurposed TARP money for the car companies anyway, Constitution be damned). He voted against Obama’s so-called stimulus and recovery bills. He opposed the misguided health care reform plan. In general, Wolf has done exactly what I asked him to do: oppose socialist economic interventionism and work to defend the free market economy.

The reasons I endorsed him in the first place remain the strongest arguments in favor of sending Wolf back to Congress. He has tried to overcome Richmond’s inaction on improving our transportation infrastructure. He has been among the strongest cheerleaders for extending MetroRail to Dulles Airport. He has opposed misguided and ineffective HOV restrictions that simply inhibit traffic flow (slowing everybody down and likely increasing emissions). He has opposed toll increases on the Dulles Toll Road and Dulles Greenway (while his Republican brethren in the statehouse have done the opposite and tried to add new toll roads). He is tough on crime, supports the fundamental right to keep and bear arms, and is among the biggest Congressional advocates for human rights issues in China, Darfur, and other hot-spots. Overall, Wolf has served us well.

But I am torn on whether his overall record is enough to send Wolf back for another term. I value principles, and if Wolf is really a free-market conservative who believes that the federal government should not overstep its Constitutional authorities then why did he vote for the TARP bailout? That he seems to have corrected his ‘government will fix it’ views in the mean time, this one vote is absolute proof that Wolf is not what he seems. He was presented with a choice: toe the party line and do what a Republican president told him to do, or vote for free market principles. He, like pretty much every other member of Congress, received hundreds of thousands of calls and emails from his constituents demanding that he vote against the TARP bailout. When it came time to vote, he thumbed his nose at them and at the ideals that make this country—and this state—what it is.

His change of course in the mean time smacks of political expediency, not of true principle. Republicans who voted for the TARP bailouts were sell-outs—nothing more, nothing less. That many TARP-supporting Republicans later turned against Obama’s continuation of the same basic policies (and many Democrats who opposed TARP later supported the Obama continuations) proves that they were simply toeing the party line, principles be damned. The Republican Party’s economic policy positions may have returned to their free-market roots, and rightfully so, but it is no thanks to Presidents like Bush—or representatives like Wolf—who so easily abandoned them in the first place. I am loathe to vote into office somebody who simply follows the whims of the party leadership on one of the most fundamental of issues, and so blithely ignores the will of his constituents to please a lame-duck same-party President.

Rep. Wolf has been in Congress for thirty years and, in my judgement, he has become complacent. TARP was the first salvo in a concerted effort to ‘spend our way out of the recession’—a Keynesian economic concept that is guaranteed to fail—and Wolf, supposedly a free-market conservative, supported it. This tells me that he is not what he seems to be, and if the Republican Party flips back to a policy of economic interventionism it is reasonable to believe that Wolf will flip with them.

So what are voters of the 10th District to do? It is simple. The people of the 10th District cannot trust the shaky conservatism of Rep. Wolf, nor should we embrace the counterproductive socialist policies of Barnett. Only one candidate presents a clear, principled, and correct position on our national economy and on matters of federal authority. I endorse the election of William Redpath to represent Virginia’s 10th District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

While he is misguided on certain national security and foreign policy matters, these negatives are easily outweighed by Redpath’s principled and consistent positions on returning authority to state governments (in accordance with the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution) and reducing unnecessary federal intervention in our free market economy. These are the principles that will balance our federal budget and—quite possibly—stave off a full-fledged economic free-fall at the hands of the Keynesian spenders. The people of the 10th District deserve an advocate in Congress who takes a principled stand on these fundamental issues.

Question #1: Property Tax Exemptions for the Elderly and Disabled

Currently, the Virginia Constitution (Article X, Section 6, Part B) allows the General Assembly to give localities authority to grant partial or complete property tax exemptions for the elderly and disabled. The exemptions can apply to persons 65 years old or older and to anybody suffering from permanent, total disability, provided the General Assembly has deemed that they bear an “extraordinary tax burden…in relation to their income and financial worth.”

The constitutional amendment (PDF link) being presented to the voters as question #1 would modify this provision in two ways. First, it would remove the requirement that the tax exemptions only be granted to people suffering an “extraordinary tax burden.” Second, it would devolve authority from the General Assembly to the localities themselves to set income and financial worth requirements for granting the tax relief.

Since property taxes are the primary funding source for our city and county governments, it makes sense that those same local governments should have the primary authority—and get the blame—for setting property tax rates, establishing exemptions, and determining criteria for exemptions. I endorse a YES vote on question #1.

Question #2: Property Tax Exemptions for Disabled Veterans

Closely related to question #1, the constitutional amendment (PDF link) being presented to the voters as question #2 would add a new section to the Virginia Constitution (Article X, Section 6-A) requiring the General Assembly to establish a complete property tax exemption for military veterans suffering a permanent, total, service-related disability.

Our disabled military veterans have paid quite enough for our benefit—they’ve paid with their blood. Any property tax relief they get today comes as part of the general relief for the disabled which will, assuming question #1 passes, soon become the responsibility of our localities. This new provision would grant our veterans a standing, state-wide, total property tax exemption that localities could not take away. I endorse a YES vote on question #2.

Question #3: Permissible Size of the ‘Rainy Day Fund’

The Virginia Constitution (Article X, Section 8) establishes a Revenue Stabilization Fund, colloquially called the ‘Rainy Day Fund,’ which the state uses to offset revenue shortfalls when they occur and better maintain its operations through economic downturns. The size of the fund is currently limited to 10% of the average of the annual tax revenues for the preceding three fiscal years.

The constitutional amendment (PDF link) being presented to the voters as question #3 would simply increase the permissible size of the Rainy Day Fund from 10% to 15% of the average of the annual tax revenues for the preceding three fiscal years. This change will give the General Assembly a bit more wiggle room for handling sudden economic downturns without any undue negative impact on the citizens of Virginia. I endorse a YES vote on question #3.

Note: Since the last general election I have moved from Fairfax County, VA to Loudoun County, VA.

Virginia county governments are required to put bond issuance to a voter referendum in order to borrow money on behalf of the county. Bond issuance is usually used by governments to raise money for large capital expenditures, and those bonds are repaid to their purchasers at a later date with interest. Bond referendums in Virginia almost always pass by a large margin, in large part because people think they are voting in favor of the agencies that will benefit (after all, who wants to vote ‘against’ schools, parks, or transportation?). Many voters do not realize that bond issuance contributes to government debt and should be used sparingly.

School Bonds

Citizens of Loudoun County will be asked through a bond referendum to authorize the Board of Supervisors to borrow up to $26.8 million to finance, in whole or in part, the building of a new elementary school near Leesburg, VA.

The Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) system, like most school systems in Virginia, is positively awash in money despite its continual arguments to the contrary. According to the Loudoun County FY2011 budget, schools (including school capital expenditures and school debt service) account for a mind-boggling 67.2% of all county tax spending. Yes, our schools get significantly more funding than all other county services combined and employ 73.2% of all county employees. LCPS’s 2009-2010 budget is a whopping $732.5 million, which equates to just slightly under $12,000 per-pupil per-year.

Instead of using some of this windfall to build the new elementary school, LCPS and the Board of Supervisors think we should, instead, take on new public debts in the midst of a record-breaking recession. They have not made any reasonable case for why we should do so at this time, especially given the fact that LCPS—like almost all other public schools in this country—does not seem to be properly managing the money it already has, nor does it seem to be providing an appropriate academic return on our massive investments.

The schools would only need to set aside a minuscule 3.6% of their normal annual budget to match the amount that would be raised by the proposed bond issuance, and they would need to set aside even less if they spread the cost over a few years. The building of this new elementary school should be funded out of LCPS’s normal annual budget, not with new public debt in the midst of a recession. I endorse a NO vote on the Loudoun County School Bonds Referendum.

I remember that, after the segment I had biked on opened, I noticed two errors on signs. I wrote a letter to the Virginia Dept. of Transportation (VDOT) about it and the errors soon got fixed. Even today, if you’re driving on Fairfax County Parkway heading north, you’ll notice that the signs saying ‘Fox Mill Rd. Next Signal’ and ‘Sunrise Valley Dr. Next Signal’ both have corrective ‘patches’ over the Dr. and Rd. appellations. I’m responsible for that; they originally said ‘Fox Mill Dr.’ and ‘Sunrise Valley Rd.’

Well, today—six years after that kindergartener finished college—the last segment of this 35-mile highway is finally about to open. Way to go, guys. At this rate our transportation infrastructure will catch up with 2010 traffic volume no later than, say, 3827.

I will also be introducing something new this year: a sort of ‘general endorsement’ (I haven’t come up with a real name for it yet). Especially in years like this one, the elections in which I’m making endorsements only matter to a relatively small percentage of my readers. In addition to these specific endorsements, I’ll be adding an overarching ‘things you should consider when voting this year’ piece that will apply across-the-board to U.S. voters. I will not specifically endorse any particular candidates or party in this piece, but will hopefully provide you with some ‘food for thought’ as you consider your respective votes.

As I have done since 2004, I am planning to provide live election coverage from approx. 7pm until approx. midnight on 11/2/2010. This will include results for all races in which I’ve made endorsements and a feed of any relevant national news that might come up. I project winners based on my own method that includes analysis of media reports, exit polling, and official returns. I have been known to occasionally call an election winner correctly before any mainstream media outlet does, if the data supports it. (For example, I called the 2004 Presidential election for George W. Bush [R] several hours before any major media outlet had done so.)

McCartney puts aside these hyper-exaggerated caricatures, and rightfully so, but then latches on the supposed ‘apocalyptic’ views held my many of the participants as being a bad thing for political debate. Normally, I might agree with this thesis. In normal times, this kind of ‘so-and-so is destroying America’ rhetoric cheapens and degrades our political discourse—another subject I’ve covered before.

In the article, the author points to a seemingly random selection of rally attendees who speak in nebulous terms about an impending apocalyptic end to the United States, at least as it exists today. It is unfortunate that so many people have these kinds of one-dimensional, over-simplified views on current events—although, in the interest of fairness, the majority of folks attending the last half-decade of anti-war protests probably couldn’t have articulated their views any more deftly. The American masses have never been known for their articulateness.

But here is the problem: while most of the people who swarmed Washington on Saturday to make a conservative political statement couldn’t explain their ‘apocalyptic’ views on the state of the republic, their views have a core truth behind them that too few people are discussing. Perhaps we should all be thinking a little apocalyptically right now.

You see, governments tend to fail after they bankrupt themselves and their national economies. The fall of the Roman Empire, the French Revolution, the Russian Civil War, the collapse of the USSR, the Argentinian military coup and its later return to free elections, the Cuban Revolution, Venezuela’s slide toward radial socialism, and the rise of Nazism in Germany all trace themselves (in-whole or in-part) to failed economies caused by poor governmental economic policy. It’s very rare for a system of government to survive for long after it decisively bungles its country’s economy.

“Surely,” you say, “that can’t happen here.”

Of course it can, and don’t call me Shirley.

The problem, at least in recent history, usually boils down to something called Keynesian economics. John Maynard Keynes, a British economist, developed a school of economic thought early in the 20th century that says an active government economic policy is necessary for economic stability and growth. One of the lynchpins of his theory, which was in-vogue during the Great Depression, was that the way to get out of a large recession or depression is for the government to spend its way out. It seems sort-of logical, I guess…the idea is that massive spending puts people to work, gives them spending money, and contributes to a ‘jump starting’ of the economy.

It simply doesn’t work. Government spending and the artificial release of cash into an economy reduces the value of money and leads to inflation…and if the spending and printing isn’t stopped in time, it leads to hyperinflation and an inevitable collapse of the economy and (by extension) the government the destabilized it. This is what happened to the so-called Weimar Republic in Germany, and its collapse opened a power vacuum and made it possible for Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party to rise to power.

In the United States, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (D), a Keynesian believer, embarked on a similarly ill-advised binge of government spending. We had the advantage, however, of not having to make war reparations so we were able to stay solvent much longer than Germany. But most reputable economists (i.e., non-Keynesians) now recognize that the mad federal spending of the so-called ‘New Deal’ and its successors prolonged and deepened the Great Depression, which otherwise may well have been ending—or over—by 1935. Following Roosevelt’s economic policy to its logical conclusion, assuming World War II had not intervened, our own economy would have collapsed and would very likely have taken our system of government with it before the mid-1940′s. The Great Depression was bad, no doubt, but if you think that’s as bad as it gets you might have some real surprises ahead.

The fact that our public schools continue to teach a simplified and false ‘Roosevelt saved America from the Depression’ narrative is a continual thorn in my side. Students only learn the truth about the ‘New Deal’ if a) they go to college, b) they choose a major that requires economics courses, and c) they are lucky enough to go to a school with an economics department not stacked with biased Keynesians. Obviously, only a small percentage of Americans (me included) meet the conditions. Most of the rest accept without reservation the fable that the ‘New Deal’ ‘worked.’

Despite there being no examples whatsoever of Keynesian economic policies actually working to end a recession or depression (unless there’s a world war involved), it keeps rising from the dead like a B-movie zombie. Every time an economy goes south, you have people spouting off about how we need to ‘inject’ money into the economy with government spending. It doesn’t even pass the common-sense test; how can you spend your way out of an economic hole? Even an attentive 5th grader could craft a more-sound economic policy than trying to spend our way out of a recession. It sounds idiotic on its face, and rightly so. Keynesian ‘recovery’ policies have failed every single time they have been attempted, and they will keep failing.

When our economy turned south in the waning days of President George W. Bush’s (R) second term, how did he, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke respond? They implemented a Keynesian policy of bailouts and willy-nilly federal spending, ballooning the 2008 deficits to record levels (much to the chagrin of fiscal conservatives like myself). Those of us who paid attention in Econ. 101 knew these efforts would fail and make the budding recession worse. That’s exactly what happened; we’re still paying the price today.

So the American people, in part because of their intuitive knowledge that it is absolutely impossible to fix a flagging economy with more pointless spending, rightfully rejected the Bush/Paulson/Bernanke doctrine and voted for a change. The Republican bailout spending was the last nail in the coffin of Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) presidential campaign; his poll numbers, already dragging, dropped five points overnight when he ‘suspended his campaign’ to go back to Washington and pass the Wall St. executive bailouts that something like 65% of Americans opposed. He made me so mad when he voted for the bailouts that I rescinded my endorsement and seriously considered throwing my support behind a third-party candidate or even abstaining from the election entirely; our choices in the election were between ‘bad’ and ‘worse.’

President Barack Obama (D) easily took the presidency, and the Democratic Party took solid super-majorities in both houses of Congress. Americans were mad and sent a clear message to the powers-that-be: no more bailouts, no more mad spending, no more waste, and no more pandering to big business.

But what did Obama do when he took office? He appointed Tim Geitner, the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York who had worked with Bush, Paulson, and Bernanke to architect the Bear Stearns and AIG bailouts, to replace Paulson as Treasury Secretary. He re-appointed Bernanke—a Bush appointee and bailout architect—as Federal Reserve Chairman. He accelerated and expanded the bailouts, purchased 60% of General Motors, and added a series of ‘stimulus’ and ‘recovery’ spending efforts on top of all that. In other words: same stupid game Bush was playing, just bigger.

After being elected to stop the mad federal spending and bring back the balanced budgets we last enjoyed under President Bill Clinton (D)—continually arguing during the campaign that he was the fiscal conservative and believer in balanced budgets—Obama promptly set a new deficit record four-times higher than the one set by Bush in 2008. Bush turned out to be Keynesian, cleverly disguised a free-market conservative, and set us on this insane and destructive economic path. Obama, however, quickly made Bush look like a lightweight.

So where does this madness lead? Assuming that things continue on their present trajectory, the inevitable outcome is high rates of inflation which will further destabilize the economy. Once inflation takes hold, if the powers-that-be do not quickly correct their economic policy, it will accelerate until we see a Weimar Republic-style cycle of hyperinflation and a complete collapse of the American monetary system. The collapse of our monetary system will be followed quickly by a collapse of our Constitutional republic. I would not dare predict what will replace it, but there’s no guarantee that we’ll like it. How’s that for a concrete, clear explanation of those ‘apocalyptic views,’ Mr. McCartney?

The best analysis I’ve read of how hyperinflation can happen in America is a two-part series from Gonzalo Lira: part 1 and part 2. I strongly recommend you read it. The first part covers how it will happen, and the second covers what it will be like for us rubes.

This is not some hyper-partisan right-wing fear mongering; my regular readers should know me better than that. I’m the first to state, as I did above, that these idiotic policies were put in place on George W. Bush’s watch. The same eventual outcome would have happened with an open-ended continuation of Bush’s economic policies under John McCain, it just would have happened slower. Under Bush/McCain Keynesianism, we’d be looking at a catastrophic collapse of the American republic in, say, 10-15 years. Under Obama Keynesianism, I’d predict something more like 5-10 years.

Of course, these are merely rough estimates and worst-case scenarios. Even on the fastest possible collapse timeline, there are at least two intervening Congressional elections and one presidential election—either of which can bring about a drastic course correction, an abandonment of Keynesianism, and a drastic reduction in federal spending akin to Greece’s ‘austerity’ program. The flip side is that those elections, if we elect the wrong people, could just as easily lead us to double-down on these spending policies with the insane belief that Keynesian economics will somehow start working if we ‘just give it enough time.’ That approach will accelerate the collapse.

Does this all sound crazy to you? It really shouldn’t.

The United States as a free republic has already outlasted most free republics. The mean survival length seems to float around 200 years, and we’re already over 220 (counting from the establishment of the government under our current Constitution in 1789). It’s worth noting that our previous republic, under the Articles of Confederation, only functioned for eleven years (1777-1789)—and the first four of those were under an un-ratified draft of the document. There’s no reason to think that our current system of government will continue to exist in its current form indefinitely unless we dedicate ourselves to keeping it. Governments, by default, collapse now and then.

As long as we are indifferent, and as long as we allow our leaders (in both parties) to pursue these kinds of destructive economic policies, we have no right to complain when it all falls apart—and with this kind of complacent attitude pervasive in our society, the system will fall apart. It’s just a matter of when.

I ran across another dishonorable misrepresentation today—one we see all the time and never give a second thought to. I was watching Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade today and noticed a pretty standard statement nestled in the end credits:

The story, all names, characters[,] and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons, places, buildings[,] and products is intended or should be inferred.

Almost every movie has this statement, or something very similar, it its credits. We’ve grown blind to it. But, in this case and many others, it is a bald-faced lie. In one scene, Indiana Jones finds himself face-to-face with Adolf Hitler. Hitler, thinking Jones wants an autograph, signs ‘Adolf Hitler’ in Jones’s father’s Grail Diary. The bad guys in the movie are Nazis who wear Nazi uniforms. The city of Berlin is one of the places where the action supposedly takes place.

Are we to honestly believe that a Nazi leader in Berlin, in 1938, with an iconic mustache, and named Adolf Hitler is not ‘intended or should be inferred’ to be identified with the ‘actual person’ named Adolf Hitler? Or that his name is ‘fictitious?’ Are we to believe that the city of Berlin is not ‘intended or should be inferred’ to be identified with ‘actual place’ Berlin? Come on, give us a little credit! It’s obviously a fictional film, and there’s no harm in having a disclaimer in the credits, but at least write one that tells the truth.

I don’t mean to pick on this particular film. Almost every fictional film that makes reference to real-world celebrities, historical figures, movements, places, and events is ‘intended and should be inferred’ to refer to those very people, places, and events and yet carries a warning like this explicitly stating otherwise. That’s called a lie, and it’s another [admittedly minor] symptom of a society that no longer values accuracy and honesty.

For literally years now, I’ve been hoping that Folding@Home would switch to the BOINC platform. BOINC, designed and maintained by the University of California at Berkeley, isn’t a distributed computing project of its own but rather a platform upon which other projects can do their work. The cool thing about BOINC is that you can split your computing power between different distributed computing projects; you aren’t tied-in to just one of many worthy causes. Well, after a lot of patient waiting, I don’t think Folding@Home is ever coming to BOINC…so I switched to BOINC without them.

The two computers that I have running 24/7 at home—a home network server and a desktop—are now running BOINC when they’re not doing other things, and I’ve shut down their Folding@Home clients (since they can’t coexist peacefully without a lot of bothersome configuration). I’m splitting my time (roughly-equally) between human disease research and astronomical research. These are the projects to which I’m currently donating some of my spare computer time (and the rough percentage I’m donating). You can also see my stats (which are still very young) here.

• Einstein@Home (12.5%): Processes data from gravitational wave detectors to find and analyse pulsars, stars, and black holes.
• SETI@Home (25.0%): One of the oldest distributed computing projects; analyses data from radio telescopes in an effort to find possible signals from alien intelligence.
• Rosetta@Home (25.0%): Analyses proteins in an effort to understand how they relate to human diseases (similar to the Folding@Home project).
• SIMAP (12.5%): Another protein study project to identify similarities and relationships between different proteins.
• World Community Grid (25.0%): A ‘meta project’ sponsored by IBM that researches many human diseases like cancer, malaria, muscular dystrophy, AIDS, and protein diseases like Alzheimer’s. In addition, some of the time goes towards clean energy research.

Anyway, if you have a desktop computer that you leave on all/most of the time, you might want to install one of these applications. They just run in the background and you’ll never even notice them, but the time your computer isn’t doing anything else will be spent doing some good. If you have a little more time to spare, you can set up a BOINC manager and split your time among many projects like nerdy people do ;-).

I wrote back in April about why I didn’t have an e-reader, even though I’m a fairly avid reader. Then, two months later, I ordered an Amazon Kindle 2. The only thing that really changed in those two months was the Kindle’s price, which dropped precipitously from $250 to a much more reasonable (but still a bit high) $190. I still went back and forth over whether a single-use device was really worth that much, but I eventually gave in. Had it dropped to $150, there probably wouldn’t have even been an argument.

I chose the Kindle over the competitive Barnes & Noble Nook, which has a WiFi-only model for $150, because Amazon’s larger selection of books and the Kindle’s always-there 3G ‘Whispernet’ together seemed to justify spending an extra $40. The Nook’s main advantages are its color touchscreen, located below the nearly-identical-to-the-Kindle e-ink display, and that it runs the open-source Android operating system and is thus more hackable. The touchscreen was neat, but I found it unnecessary (and surprisingly laggy) when I tried it out. I’m not particularly interested in hacking on an e-reader either, since the built-in software in both the Kindle and Nook are quite sufficient for reading…which is the whole point of the device. Having said that, the Nook is a fine device and a worthy competitor to the Kindle.

Sony also offers a line of e-readers but, in typical Sony style, they seem to look good on paper and perform poorly in reality. They lack the slick integration with the online stores offered by the Kindle and Nook and, worse, every time I’ve tried to use one in a store it’s been broken. Not the way to sell a product, guys. Between the Kindle’s arrival in July and today, Amazon has discontinued the Kindle 2 and replaced it with a new model at the same price and has also introduced a cheaper WiFi-only version at $140 (both currently available for pre-order). They also sell a grossly-overpriced Kindle DX for $380.

While many in the ‘net punditry have tried to write comparisons of these e-readers with the Apple iPad, they are different devices that serve a different purpose. The iPad does a million different things, and one of them is being an e-reader, but for serious readers there is no real comparison. The dedicated e-readers like the Kindle are just e-readers and are built exclusively for that purpose. If you read now-and-then between YouTube videos, emails, and Facebook status updates then maybe the iPad will suit your usage fine. If you like to read for a while without distraction, then you should be looking at a dedicated e-reader.

Why? More than anything else, because of the display.

The iPad is a great all-around device, but it uses an LCD display just like a laptop or smartphone. This is great for reading emails, viewing web pages, watching videos, and so on…but if you’ve ever tried to sit down and read on one of these devices for hours on end, you’ll quickly find your eyes bothering you and, worse, you’ll find yourself constantly interrupted by those very emails, Facebook updates, and whatnot popping up periodically. The Kindle, Nook, Sony readers, and others use an innovative e-ink display with no backlight that is very well suited to displaying text, but not to much of anything else.

What this means is that looking at text on a true e-reader is very, very similar to looking at text on paper. You rely on ambient light, so you can’t use them in the dark but you can use them in bright sunlight. A book’s page on the Kindle 2′s screen looks basically like a book’s page in a book, except for a bit darker background. Amazon says that the upcoming Kindle has better contrast, which will be nice I guess, but the Kindle 2′s has not given me any trouble in real-world usage.

There is a glare sometimes from overhead lights, which is remedied by adjusting the angle you hold the device. A more anti-glare screen surface would be a welcome improvement. Also a faster refresh rate on the e-ink display would be welcome. In order to prevent ghosting and other problems related to the e-ink technology, the Kindle flashes the entire screen when it refreshes (when ‘turning’ the page). You get used to this fairly quickly, but it was distracting at first. If they can make it happen faster, that would be cool.

Overall, I really like the Kindle’s size and ergonomics. The large ‘next page’ buttons on either side of the display seem to line up perfectly with your thumbs when you hold it naturally, and the five-way navigator nub makes it quick and easy to get around the menus and lists of books. The Kindle includes a physical keyboard (where the Nook has its secondary touchscreen). This is nice when I need to enter a quick note, but doesn’t get a lot of use day-to-day. Personally I’m kind-of torn about this. The keyboard seems like it’s a waste of space that might be used for something else (like the Nook’s touchscreen) but, at the same time, I find that the Nook’s touchscreen makes it feel more like a gadget and less like a book. Books, of course, don’t have keyboards…but there’s something about the physicality of buttons, as opposed to displays, that I like about the Kindle. It feels ‘real,’ instead of like a window into some electronic universe.

The battery life seems to be quite good; even with the 3G network connected, I consistently get many days of use before needing a charge. It’s also really easy to turn off the 3G connection if you want to extend your battery life. The e-ink display, in addition to being so easy on the eyes, uses no energy except when it is updating. In fact, when you put it to sleep with the power switch it puts gray-scale pictures of authors or old books and artwork on the screen. It just leaves them there with a message saying, “Slide and release the power switch to wake.” Once again, e-ink is not like an LCD. ‘Off’ does not automatically mean ‘blank.’

Besides the keyboard and the basic array of navigation buttons, the Kindle has a power slider switch on the top and a standard headphone plug (for listening to audiobooks, MP3s, or so the Kindle can read to you). The volume toggle is on the upper-right hand side. On the bottom it has a standard mini-USB port for charging or connecting to a computer. On-board memory is 1.4gb, which is plenty of space for tons and tons of books. The new Kindle replaces the five-way navigator nub with a different arrangement, but it seems to me that it won’t be much better or worse. The new one is also quite a bit smaller—although the screen is the same size on the new Kindle, they have greatly reduced the size of the bezels around it. It also more-than doubles its memory to 4gb.

I added an Amazon-branded leather cover for my Kindle which is quite good, but way overpriced at $35. The Kindle actually snaps into the cover on the side. The cover gives the Kindle a bit more heft and protection and makes it feel even more like a physical book in the hand.

Navigation & Content

When you start up the Kindle, you’re presented with a very straightforward home screen. You can choose to sort it by title, author, or by ‘collections’ (folders, basically). I find it easiest to sort by collections. Books I’m currently reading I intentionally leave uncategorized so they appear on the home screen, while everything else is nestled in one or more collections. I basically leave mine broken down into ‘To Read’ (items I haven’t read yet), ‘Archived’ (items I’ve finished reading), ‘Church’ (Bibles, Missals, etc.), and ‘Reference’ (a dictionary, Bibles, the Constitution, and more). You could certainly break things down even more if you wanted to.

The Kindle also has a pretty decent search mechanism. From the navigation screens you can just start typing to search the device, or you can bring up the device menu and go to a more fully-functional search. You can search items on your Kindle, the Kindle store, the built-in dictionary, Google, or Wikipedia.

Getting content onto your Kindle is mind-numbingly easy. Amazon’s preferred method is that you use the Kindle store, which is accessible from any Internet-connected computer or from the Kindle itself. Assuming you have your Amazon one-click buying set up, you can buy any book or periodical in the Kindle store from the device itself. It’s downloaded to the Kindle and ready to read, generally, in seconds. Obviously this relies on connection to the Amazon ‘Whispernet,’ the free, included wireless Internet access (which actually runs off AT&T’s network). The new WiFi-only model will only be able to do this when connected to a wireless network. If you choose to buy on a computer, you can choose which device(s) to send the book to.

Amazon also did a great job of integrating multiple devices. Kindle applications are available for Windows PCs, Macs, iPhones, iPads, BlackBerries, and Android phones. You can move your books back and forth pretty seamlessly between your various devices and, by default, it’ll even remember how far you’ve read between the different devices. I installed the Kindle app on Melissa’s iPad, for example, and she has access to any of the purchased books in my library.

Unfortunately (though understandably), this slick integration only works with content you’ve bought from Amazon—which isn’t the only way to get e-books. In addition to Amazon’s AZW and Topaz formats (either DRM-encumbered or not), the Kindle will support unencumbered MOBI books, text files, and PDFs. Amazon also provides a conversion service to process HTML and Microsoft Word files into a Kindle-compatible format, though delivering these wirelessly to your device comes with a small fee. Connecting the Kindle to a computer’s USB port mounts it like a flash hard drive, and it’s super easy to put compatible files on it. Additionally, you can use the free third-party Calibre software to manage your e-books from your Windows PC, Linux machine, or Mac (much like iTunes manages music).

E-books of classics with expired copyrights are available free from places like Project Gutenberg, which can be a great way to get a head start on starting your e-book collection without spending much money. For the Kindle, you should download the MOBI formatted books. For pretty much any other e-reader, you should use EPUB. Unfortunately, the Kindle does not support the emerging EPUB standard. It’s the only major e-reader that doesn’t; EPUB is used by the iPad and Nook by default, and is also supported on Sony’s readers. This is not a big deal—the format incompatibility can be overcome with free converters—but I would prefer that Amazon embrace the e-book standard that virtually all of its competitors have adopted.

This is less troubling than the fact that all of the e-readers use incompatible DRM schemes to prevent you from moving your own purchased content between devices, even when they use the same file formats. There are a few methods to remove DRM ‘protection’ from Kindle books so you have unfettered access to the content you have purchased; using these tools will make it easier for you to switch to non-Amazon e-readers in the future if you choose to. I keep an unencumbered backup of all the e-books I buy for this reason. Breaking DRM for purposes of interoperability is an expressly permitted exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, but most of the publishing industry erroneously claims it’s illegal (come on guys, just read the law).

This DRM madness needs to end; if I buy a book for a Kindle, and decide in two years to buy a Nook instead, I have the right to take my purchased content with me to the new device.

My only real gripe about getting content on the Kindle—which applies just as much to Kindle’s competitors—is that there’s no way to get my paper books into my e-book universe without buying them all over again. When I started using my computer to manage my music, and my iPod to take my music with me, I was able to ‘rip’ my existing CD collection into the computer so that my collection includes both new music purchased electronically and music I had before on CD. While more difficult (and involving more quality loss), I could have imported music from vinyl records, cassette tapes, and 8-tracks too without too much trouble. There is essentially no practical way to import my existing book collection into the computer and/or the Kindle.

I would like to see a way to scan a book’s bar code (or some other fairly easy method) and get a discount on that book through the Kindle store. I don’t expect it for free, especially considering that it costs Amazon to operate the ‘Whispernet’ connection over-which it’s delivered, but if I bought a $30 hardcover it seems a little silly to have to spend full price to buy it again. The publishers already got my money (and already ‘licensed’ the content to me, according to their tortured understanding of copyright)…so let me use it on my exciting new device that is going to be notable part of the salvation of the publishing industry. So far I’ve only re-bought two books (not counting the Bible), and both of them were priced well-under $5. No way am I paying over $5 to gain access to a book I already bought.

Books

Of course, the main reason pretty much anybody buys a Kindle or one of its competitors is because they love to read. That’s the whole point, after all—bringing books into the digital age and making reading fun again. The Kindle succeeds. Amazon really hit the nail on the head here, recreating as closely as possible the experience of reading a book. Where the Kindle deviates from the old world of books made of dead trees, it does so logically—remembering where you left off without a bookmark (eliminating those joyous moments where you close the book without one and have to find where you were), letting you add notes without cluttering the margins (and without having to find them later), and so on.

When you click on a book with the five-way navigator from the home screen, it takes you directly to wherever you were last time you were reading it (or, if you haven’t read it before, it takes you to the beginning—usually past all the pointless acknowledgements and copyright notices). You can also tap to the right on the five-way to get the book’s information like its title, author, and cover. From this screen you can also navigate through the book, view your notes and marks, or search inside the book. This is also one place that you can add a book to one or more of your collections (you can also do this from the collection’s page en-masse).

When you’re reading, the screen is very simple. On the top, you get the book’s title, 3G wireless status, and battery status. On the bottom you get an indication bar showing where in the book you are. Other than that, you just get the book. No distractions; no interruptions. It’s just the book. You can also press the ‘Menu’ button to get a little more information and a number of options (similar to those on the book’s information screen). From here you can also bookmark the page, or add your own annotation. I like to highlight interesting passages and add a note so I can come back and find them later, and the Kindle actually syncs these up to their servers (along with your position in the book) so you can read your notes on any of the other Kindle apps…at least in books you bought from Amazon.

When you’re in the book, pressing one of the two large ‘Next Page’ buttons on the Kindle advances to the next screen. There is also a ‘Prev. Page’ button, but only for the left hand…on the right side this is a ‘Home’ button that returns you to the device’s home screen. On the upcoming new Kindle, there is a ‘Prev.’ button on both sides and the ‘Home’ button moves down above the five-way navigation—a nice improvement. As I mentioned earlier, there is a slight lag when the screen refreshes as it blanks out the e-ink. You will probably find that you get used to this the more you use the Kindle and, in fact, I now naturally press the ‘Next’ button just a hair before I get to the end of the page so the next page is ready for me at the right moment. With a little practice, reading a book on a Kindle quickly becomes as natural as reading one on paper.

Of course, you can buy books super-easy through the Kindle Store (discussed above). Best of all, if you’re not sure whether a book is worth it, you can usually get a chapter or two for free and upgrade it to the full version if you decide you like it.

Periodicals

In addition to books, you can subscribe to a large number of newspapers and periodicals through the Kindle store. These are billed on a monthly basis to your Amazon one-click account, and are generally quite a bit less expensive than their print counterparts (and, even better, they don’t come loaded up with all the advertising you see in print). Periodicals are delivered magically through Amazon’s ‘Whispernet’ when they come out.

I am subscribed to The Washington Post Kindle edition, which is $11.99/mo. You can start a free 14-day trial subscription of pretty much any available newspaper and, if you hate it, stop your subscription before you start getting billed for it. Note, however, that this is an ‘opt-out’ kind of thing. If you take no action after starting a trial subscription, it will automatically become a pay subscription.

Like books on the Kindle, clicking on an issue of a periodical takes you to wherever you were before or, if you haven’t started reading it yet, it takes you to the beginning. For the Post, the beginning is the lead front-page article. Personally, I prefer to go to the issue’s information page (again, same way as on a book) and go to its content page and select the ‘view articles’ link showing the number of articles from there. That gives me a quick overview of what’s in that section and I can choose articles that look interesting (and ignore the rest). You can press the ‘Back’ button (below the five-way navigator) to jump back to the section list.

As long as the ‘Whispernet’ is connected, each day’s Post downloads to the Kindle every morning at around 5am and is ready for reading when I wake up. The Kindle keeps several previous issues on the device, and you can mark particular issues to be kept indefinitely and ‘clip’ articles you want to hold on to. So far, the only one I’ve clipped is my own Letter to the Editor that was published earlier this month.

All-in-all, I think that the Post is probably worth $11.99/mo.…but just barely. It’s hard to justify paying anything for something that is basically free on the Internet. The cost of most newspapers’ and magazines’ Kindle editions is somewhere between the online price (usually $0) and the paper subscription price. The closer it gets to the online price, however, the better. Unless you spend a lot of your time reading a particular paper or magazine’s stuff online, the convenience of the Kindle edition probably isn’t worth the cost. However, if you currently subscribe to the paper version of a periodical, you’ll probably save some cash by switching to the Kindle edition. Of course, for many magazines, that means losing the color and probably many of the photos. For a newspaper that’s probably not a big deal.

Other Features

While the Kindle is essentially a one-purpose device—an e-reader—it does have a few little extras.

The most useful one, which I use constantly, is the built-in dictionary. Once again, mind-numbingly simple is the name of the game. If you see a word you don’t recognize in whatever you’re reading, just navigate to it using the five-way navigator and wait a second. The definition of that word (or at least the first couple lines of it) will pop up at the bottom of the screen. If you want to see the full-length description, just press the ‘Enter’ key on the keyboard and the full definition pops up. Just press the ‘Back’ button to return right to where you were. You can also search the dictionary from the built-in search mechanism.

Another useful feature is the ‘text-to-speech’ tool. The Kindle can actually read to you (albeit in a somewhat unnatural computer voice). This isn’t very useful to me at home, but I do use it occasionally in the car. I plug the Kindle’s headphone port into my car’s audio-in port and tell it to start reading, so I can ‘read’ on my way to and from work. There is some room for improvement here; there are only two voices to choose from (male and female), and it does occasionally mangle words bad enough that I have to stop it and look at the screen to see what the heck it tried to say. Generally, however, it does the job and is a very cool feature. Some publishers have chosen to block this feature in certain books—the scourge of DRM strikes again—but the vast majority of books I’ve bought support this, as do all the ones I added on my own from Project Gutenberg.

The Kindle, as of software version 2.5, also has the ability to post passages of what you’re reading to Twitter or Facebook. Once you’ve set it up to link to your social networking account, you just highlight the text you want to share and press “Alt-Enter” on the keyboard. Then you can enter your comment(s) and press ‘Share.’ In seconds, the Kindle posts it up to your Twitter and/or Facebook account. I probably wouldn’t miss this feature much if it didn’t exist, but it is a nice touch.

Finally, the Kindle comes with an experimental web browser. When you search Wikipedia, it’s actually just loading Wikipedia pages using this browser. It’s very basic, based on the same old, mediocre NetFront engine that was behind the Palm Blazer browser on old Palm OS phones, but it works…sortof. Let’s just say that the Kindle is not a replacement for your smartphone. Browsing is free over the ‘Whispernet,’ at least for now.

Amazon has announced that the new Kindle will come with an experimental WebKit-based browser (using the same rendering engine used by Google Chrome, Apple Safari, the iPhone and iPad, Android phones, Palm WebOS phones, Symbian S60 phones, and soon BlackBerries too). It’s unclear if this will be ported back to older Kindles, and it’s even more unclear if it’ll still be free on the ‘Whispernet.’ Amazon obliquely says that the new browser will be “free to use over Wi-Fi” and leaves it there.

Conclusion

All-in-all, the Kindle 2 is a great little device—if you get it with the right expectations. It’s not a tablet computer like an iPad. It’s not a smartphone. It’s an e-reader. Its sole purpose is to eliminate the need to lug around printed books and, at that, it generally excels. The e-ink display is wonderful for reading, the software is easy and straightforward, and the little bells-and-whistles that Amazon snuck in here-and-there don’t get in the way. This is a device for people who want to read, not for people who want their device to entertain them with Twitter feeds and YouTube videos.

And for people who do indeed do a lot of reading, it’s well worth buying—especially with the new $140 version coming to market soon, which drops the ‘Whispernet’ and works on WiFi alone. Had the cheaper, WiFi-only version been available at the time, I likely would have saved the $50 and bought it instead. The ‘Whispernet’ 3G connection is cool and all, but I really almost never use it except when I’m at home and could have been on my WiFi network anyway. At $140 (and even at the WiFi-only Nook’s $150), an avid reader can probably justify the expense for what is basically a single-purpose device, especially since you’ll save money buying e-books instead of print books.

Who is the Kindle wrong for? Well, for one, if you don’t do a lot of reading it’s probably a waste. If you only read now-and-then, it doesn’t make economic sense to spend $140 or $190 on a reading device. Indeed, even a moderate reader probably won’t make up the cost of the device in e-book savings—especially as the cost of e-books begins to creep inexplicably upward—unless they buy a lot of hardcovers and new releases. It’s also wrong for readers who spend much of their time reading photo- or color-heavy books and periodicals. The e-ink display is absolutely awesome for reading text, and it even does a decent job at gray-scale photos, but that’s about it.

But if you don’t fall into one of those groups, and you love to read, you should definitely give the Kindle a look. It’s also worth checking out the Kindle’s primary competition, the Barnes & Noble Nook, which comes with a very similar set of features and capabilities at a similar price. Personally, I prefer the Kindle for Amazon’s broader e-book selection and because I find the Nook’s secondary screen more distracting than useful—the Kindle, to me, feels more like a book, while the Nook feels more like a gadget. To each his own, I suppose, but if you are in the market for an e-reader they are both worthy devices. You should try both out and see what you think. To try out a Nook, you can go to any Barnes & Noble bookstore. To try out a Kindle, your options are more limited; they are on display at some (but not all) Target stores and are in the hands of millions of customers.

You don’t have to like what those beliefs are, but if a religious group believes—for example—that unmarried cohabitation is immoral, then that religious group is under no obligation to provide its services (whatever they are) to an unmarried cohabiting couple. Cohabitation should not be criminalized, since government generally has no place legislating private morality…but neither should it be illegal for private religious organizations to refuse to endorse and support unmarried cohabitation. Each law would be just as wrong as the other, as they both take freedom away from the individuals to follow their conscience.

It’s the same when we talk about homosexuality. Even if you are the most pro-gay rights person in the world, you should find it appalling that governments think it’s acceptable to force religious organizations to, say, provide adoption services to gay couples when it runs counter to their beliefs. Homosexual activity should not be criminalized…but, once again, neither should it be illegal for private religious organizations to act in accordance with their beliefs. The gay-rights activists’ moral views on homosexuality have no more or less validity in the public sphere than devout Christians’ moral views on it, and government has no right to declare either view to be invalid.

If a religious group and its adherents believe homosexuality to be sinful, they have a fundamental right to refuse to provide services—like adoption—to gay couples. You don’t have to like that Catholic adoption agencies won’t adopt children to gay couples any more than a devout Catholic has to like governments legalizing gay marriage. If you don’t like it and don’t agree with it, you don’t have to use Catholic adoption services. You have no right, simply because you disagree with the Catholic position on the issue, to demand that Catholic organizations follow your moral beliefs instead of their own.

Laws that require religious groups to follow the state’s dictates on conscience are undeniably unjust and immoral, no matter how much you or I might agree with the ideas behind those dictates. We have a right to decide for ourselves what is morally acceptable and what isn’t. When the state starts to demand your adherence to their ideas of right and wrong—on whichever side—beyond the most basic fundamental civil liberties (like rights to life, liberty, and property; free speech; free press; right to keep and bear arms; etc.), then the state has become despotic and the people are no longer free.

With each passing year, our western societies move further and further down this path. How long before it becomes a crime even to think that something is morally wrong if the state has decided it isn’t?