Newsweek Decides that Christianity is Delusional

I ran across this topic yesterday morning and immediately decided that it called for a fairly detailed response. Ergo, welcome to my first blog post of 2015. Happy New Year!

Newsweek's cover story for its January 2, 2015 issue (the online version of the story is dated December 23, 2014) is entitled "The Bible: So Misunderstood It's a Sin", by Kurt Eichenwald. The scholarship in this article is abysmal; it essentially amounts to a hatchet job on biblical Christianity, but his arguments are largely based on uninformed popular misconceptions or superficial reading of various passages. 

First of all, I will begin with one thing that the author does, unfortunately get right: his claim that many Christians are biblically illiterate is true. It has long been one of my greatest complaints that far too many believers in our time have at best a weak understanding of what it is that they claim to believe and why. This failure comes both on the part of the individual, who neglects reading their Bible or studying biblical teaching, and the church, which has by and large fallen woefully short in what I believe is one of its core biblical functions: passing on and preserving sound doctrine. Too many professing Christians have a very superficial faith built on tradition and emotion and not on what the Bible actually says. His criticism in the conclusion of the article that "too many [Christians] seem to read John Grisham novels with greater care than they apply to the book they consider to be the most important document in the world" rings sadly true. I'm sorry to have to agree with Eichenwald on this point, so far as this goes. However, that is probably the only thing from this article upon which I and the author will agree.

Eichenwald essentially presents a laundry list of things that he claims are "wrong" in the Bible, or things that have been misunderstood by Christians. As such, I believe the most effective way to present my responses is with a numbered list addressing each item more or less in the order that it appears in the article. This is a long article, so get some coffee and a comfortable chair... this could take a while. I'll try not to ramble on too much (like I'm doing now).

1. First, two general observations: 

    a.) Aside from the one-sided approach of only citing liberal scholars ("liberal" here referring to theological liberals, not necessarily political)... the few that he bothers citing... and disregarding any dissenting opinions, pretty much all of the author's appeals to "most biblical scholars agree" are put forth without justification and/or are unattributed. (In fairness, I'm not going to go to the effort to get citations for all of my "scholars say" statements, but then I'm not writing for Newsweek.)

    b.) Eichenwald, like many liberal scholars, as well as the so-called "New Atheists", frequently seems to be committing the fallacy of assuming that many of these items somehow escaped the attention of Christians over the many years since the Bible has existed. The Bible is in fact one of the most scrutinized books in modern history. It has been examined by theologians, historians, and rhetorical critics for centuries. Its meaning and historical reliability have been questioned and defended many times, and yet somehow it falls to a 21st century news magazine to provide an expose on how the Bible isn't really what we think it is. Essentially, this amounts to a rehashing of old arguments that have long since been answered or discredited.  

2. Eichenwald starts out by comparing the modern Bible to the children's game "telephone". For those who do not remember this game from kindergarten, telephone is where a phrase is passed around in a circle by whispering in your neighbor's ear, then she whispers the phrase into the next child's ear. By the time the phrase has completed the circle, it usually is completely different from when it started due to little differences in how each person in the circle says it to the next. 

  This is applied to the Bible in that, for centuries prior to invention of the printing press, scripture was hand-copied. This would provide plenty of opportunity for errors to compound, ultimately creating a very different product than the original text. Additionally, Eichenwald claims that this is compounded by the translation process where a translation is made from another translation, so that the modern translations that we use are very divergent from the original text. Without knowing more about how modern translations are made, this sounds like a valid criticism. 

  Where this criticism is wrong is that modern translations, such as the New King James (NKJV), the New International Version (NIV), and the New American Standard Bible (NASB), make use of the earliest available manuscripts in the original languages, thereby avoiding the "translation of a translation" issue, or even much of the potential for copy errors. It appears that Eichenwald is under the impression that modern translations merely "translate" the King James into modern English. This is not the case. Any copy of one of the new translations contains a preface that explains the translation process, which Eichenwald clearly didn't read. 

I should also note here that, while we do not have the original manuscripts of the New Testament, we do have very early manuscripts, some dating to less than 100 years of the originals. There are also references in other literature contemporary with the Apostles that reference the Gospels and other NT books that let us know about when they were actually written and verifying their authorship. 

  Regarding the copy error issue, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (copies of Old Testament texts had been sealed up and preserved in a cave since about the time of Christ) in the 1940s demonstrates that the copy error problem may not be as large an issue as Eichenwald makes it out to be. The texts in the Dead Sea Scrolls (which, incidentally, are also used as source material for modern translations) contain minor differences from later texts due to copy errors, but these do not change the central meaning of the text itself. This provides grounds for some degree of confidence regarding the reliability of the copy process. 

Finally, he is correct regarding the issues involved in translating from an ancient language to a modern language, but, again, this is no new revelation. This is why theology and divinity students are taught biblical Greek and Hebrew in graduate school. (Incidentally, he makes frequent references to the Living Bible when giving examples of where he believes translators got it wrong; he apparently is unaware that the Living Bible is a paraphrase.)

3. Eichenwald's account of the Council of Nicea is essentially a work of fiction. C. FitzSimons Allison gives an excellent account of the events leading up to the councils of Nicea and Constantinople, as well as the results, in what is probably one of my favorite books on theology. Numerous other books, including some that came out following the surge in popularity of the Gnostic writings surrounding the screen adaptation of Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code", also address this. One that I have read is by Erwin Lutzer, which, unlike this article, cites its sources. 

4. Next, he claims that certain of our favorite passages in the Gospels were not part of the original text but were "made up" and added to the text by Medieval scholars with an agenda. I'm not familiar with the claim he makes regarding the story of the woman caught in adultery in the Gospel of John, so I will defer addressing that until I've had time to do a little research. 

  However, his second example of the last few verses of Mark is another demonstration of his poor scholarship, because the fact that those verses are not in the earliest manuscripts is stated in the footnotes of many modern translations. I've read discussions of this in several sources, including, if I recall correctly, a pretty simple teacher's guide that my church used when I was teaching a Sunday school class. Eichenwald claims that the book of Mark ends "awkwardly" and excludes several important events following the Ressurrection. In fact, the ending is widely believed to have been lost somehow; scholars are not sure how. It is widely recognized (if not universally accepted) that the last few verses are essentially a summary of material pulled from the other Gospels that were added later. There is no scandal or subterfuge there as Eichenwald claims, because it is widely known; however, there is nothing there that contradicts other scripture. 

5. Just in time for Christmas, Eichenwald next posits that the gospels of Matthew and Luke provide contradictory accounts of Jesus' birth. From this he concludes that the visit of the Magi described in Matthew never occurred (this is kind of a non-sequitor, and he provides no further justification for this conclusion). 

  This claim that the two accounts are contradictory makes no sense when one actually compares the two passages. This type of criticism of scripture is common, however, where two accounts are given for an event. Just because the accounts are different, it does not mean that they are contradictory. In this case, Luke gives a more detailed description of Jesus' birth and the events leading up to it, while Matthew picks up the story after Jesus is already born. Although the popular image of the Manger Scene we display at Christmas shows the Magi standing around the manger with the shepherds, a careful reading of the passage in Matthew indicates that Jesus was between one to two years old when the Magi arrived. The two passages are therefore not contradictory, but simply describe two separate events associated with Jesus' birth and early life. 

  He provides similar criticism of the texts regarding Jesus' trial before Pilate. Again, because the accounts are different does not mean that they are contradictory. One simply provides more detail than the other. 

  Many (I would even say most) instances where this type of criticism is made regarding different scriptural accounts of a single event involve a simple difference in emphasis or perspective. For example, if you asked me about a trip to Orlando I took a few years ago with a friend, I may say that we went to Universal and ate at Bob Marley's; if you go ask my friend what we did in Orlando, he may say we spent a day at Epcot. Our two accounts are different, but they don't contradict. In fact, we did both of these things on our trip. We just each chose to emphasize different things in our account based upon what stood out to us from our perspective.

6. He next points out the seeming contradiction of Jesus being the Son of God and the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah being the "son of David". The reasoning goes: if Joseph was a descendant of King David (as the Gospels say that he was), but Jesus was not Joseph's biological son, then Jesus was not a descendant of David. 

  Unlike some of the other issues brought up in this article, this one is actually a pretty good question that a lot of people, including believers, find themselves wondering about. Eichenwald unwittingly stumbles upon the answer, although he is unaware of it. He points out that the two genealogies given for Jesus in Matthew and Luke trace his lineage back to David. Then he says that it would make sense if Mary were descended from David, because that would then make Jesus a descendant of David. 

  It apparently escaped his notice, however, that the two genealogies are different (I was surprised by this as I expected him to point this out as a contradiction). Both trace back to David, but one has the lineage coming through Solomon, the other is through David's other son Nathan. In fact, the genealogy given in Matthew is Joseph's and the one in Luke is widely accepted as Mary's genealogy (Joseph being referred to as the "son of Heli" probably means that he was the son-in-law). Here is a brief but pretty good treatment on the two genealogies.

7. The two creation account idea that the author posits is another one that is fairly common, so I won't criticize Eichenwald on this one. The thought is that Genesis 1 and 2 each contain a separate and contradictory account of creation. However, actually comparing the two chapters, one can see that the second chapter is essentially a rehashing of certain details from the first chapter (a partial summary of sorts) with some elaboration. For example, in the first chapter, it says that God created the man and woman, but in the second chapter it gives the details of that creation. Another example is that in the first chapter, it says that God separated the waters above from the waters below (I'm paraphrasing), which I interpret as describing creation of the water cycle. In the second chapter, it describes mists rising from the earth and watering the ground (again, a description of the water cycle, although some people interpret that verse differently). I believe that a clear reading of the text justifies viewing the two chapters as complementary rather than contradictory. 

8. The criticism of the account of Noah again shows poor readership on Eichenwald's part. One issue that he finds "strange" is the different number of days given for the length of the flood and for how long Noah and his family were in the ark (Genesis 7-8). If he had given the text a careful reading (taking into account that phraseology for ancient texts is a little different from how a modern text would read), he probably would not have been so confused. The text indicates that the flood water rose for 40 days, it remained on the surface (or at least was not perceived as receding) for 150 days, and that it took a year for the water to recede sufficiently for them to disembark. 

9. From here, he continues on to matters of interpretation and further claims of forgery (including a claim that 1 Timothy was not authored by Paul, which he makes little effort to substantiate, and a rather puzzling claim that the doctrine in 1 Timothy more closely resembles Gnostic doctrine, which is utter nonsense). I won't get bogged down in disputing each of his claims regarding interpretation in this post, because this is somewhat of a digression from the main thesis of the article.

Eichenwald wraps up the article with by claiming: "This examination is not an attack on the Bible or Christianity", but that claim runs contrary to everything in the article that comes before it. This is a work of pure sophistry that makes little effort to conceal its bias. 

The Hobby Lobby Decision

I've seen a lot of discussion about the Hobby Lobby decision, about how they’re against women, they’re denying birth control to women while they still allow similar drugs/procedures for men, how they are imposing their religious views on everyone else, and so forth. I’ll address each in turn. I of course am not involved in any way in Hobby Lobby's corporate operations, so I cannot speak with any authority on what their intentions or motivations were, but I have reviewed the majority opinion from the Supreme Court, which can be read in full (if you have some time and a few brain cells to kill) here. The first four pages of the majority opinion, however (pp.7-10 of the pdf) summarize the court's rationale very nicely. My observations follow:

1. “The case was based on hatred of women or was against women’s birth control”

The question before the Supreme Court focused strictly on four post-conception drugs (RU 486 being an example) that in effect chemically induce an abortion. Other forms of birth control like birth control pills, IUD’s, etc. were not even dealt with in the case. Therefore, the idea that HL and the other companies involved in the suit were against birth control, or even specifically against birth control for women, is false. The challenge to the law was about companies being mandated to finance coverage for abortions; it was not about birth control. Furthermore, the fact that HL is, according to some articles, still covering vasectomies for men is therefore irrelevant. They were not objecting to birth control for women, just drugs that induce abortion. Granted, some people will find the opposition to abortion every bit as unpalatable, but nonetheless, the rhetoric that claims that the case was built around a hatred of women, it was against birth control, etc. is not supported by the facts of the case. 

So far as the blame for any damage done to this provision of the "Afordable Care Act" (ACA) requiring employers provide health care coverage, I say it rests on the shoulders of the lawmakers who passed the law, not on HL et al or SCOTUS. If Congress had not overreached by including these four specific medications, despite knowing at the time that including them in the mandate would be controversial and would probably be challenged in court (there was plenty of talk about it at the time, so much so that policy makers gave in so far as to allow an exemption for religious organizations), then we wouldn’t even be having this conversation right now. The birth control provisions, without these four medications, would have probably not been challenged, and the provision would have stood, at least so long as the ACA remained in effect. (I have addressed my issues with the ACA in general in earlier posts; I won't go into them here.)

2. “They are forcing their religious beliefs on everyone else”

This logic is exactly backwards. By mandating that an employer act in a way that violates their religious convictions, under penalty of law, the government was violating the employers’ First Amendment rights. For an individual (or in this case a business) to chose not to participate in a particular behavior is not "forcing" their religious beliefs on others. Forcing religious beliefs on other people is coercing or requiring them by law to participate in behavior with which they do not agree. If anyone was being forced in this manner in this case, it was the plaintiffs, not the employees. 

I think a big problem here is that our understanding of “rights” has become corrupted.  To use the terminology used in the Declaration of Independence, we have the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. That means that we have the right to these things unimpeded by others or by the government. (The key word there is “unimpeded”.) We do not have the “right” to require others to enable us toward these pursuits. (The key word there is “enable”.) 

To use an admittedly imperfect example, I am a big believer in the Second Amendment, but my right of self-defense would not justify me to expect that my neighbors be required by law to pool their money to help me buy a firearm. This is a matter of passive vs. active involvement: the government (or my neighbors, except through consensual agreement such as a covenant provision in my deed that says “no guns allowed”) cannot hinder my free exercise of my rights as guaranteed under the Second Amendment. This is passive. But this does not mean that they must take an active role by financing my exercise of those rights. So in other words, my neighbors are not “depriving” me of my rights by refusing to give me money to go to the gun store. In fact, if anything, my requiring them to do so deprives them of some of their own rights. Is this equitable?

Going directly to the matter at hand, a lot of people hold the conviction (it isn’t solely a religious conviction, but for those who believe that way it certainly is a religious matter) that life begins at conception, and that the termination of a pregnancy literally deprives a human being of their life. Many of those who support abortion obviously do not feel this way, but it needs to be recognized that a very large number of people do, and many of them hold this as a religious conviction. Recalling my example above about my neighbors paying for my trip to the gun store, the person who does not wish to part with their own money for Smith & Wesson might object on the grounds that they just don’t like guns, or they might have stronger public policy concerns about the efficacy of allowing individual citizens to own guns, but it most likely will not rise to the level of a religious conviction. So if my neighbor’s rights are violated to some degree by my forcing them to pay for my self-defense needs, would it not be much more true that people with a strong religious conviction regarding abortion would have their rights violated by being forced to pay for the purchase of someone else’s abortion-inducing medication?

So the question at hand is this:  does an employer choosing not to pay for coverage for these medications deprive a woman of her rights? Is active enabling on the part of the employer a necessity in order for the woman’s rights to be honored, or is the employer only obligated in a passive sense, i.e. not actively preventing the woman from having access to these medications? What if taking an active role violates the employer’s religious convictions, thereby violating their First Amendment rights of the free exercise of religion? This was the basic question address by SCOTUS in the Hobby Lobby case. 

The merits of the case can of course still be debated. One thing that I think could be a potential issue in the future is the implications for the legal distinction that exists between the corporation as a legal entity and its owners as individual persons. However, when discussing the more incendiary aspects of the case, it is particularly important to take an informed position with regards to the facts of the case and with regards to what the decision does and does not address. Emotion frequently plays too great a role in political debate, often to the point that facts and logic are left by the wayside. Unfortunately, emotion grips people's attention, and political rhetoric heightens the emotional impact to the point that people become blinded to all else. Feeling strongly about an issue is a good thing, so long as it does not lead to the abandonment of truth along the way. 

Thought Police

I've never watched Duck Dynasty. I don't even have cable. But I have to comment on the suspension of Phil Robertson from the show following his comments regarding homosexuality in an interview with GQ Magazine. 

This is not important because of the show. But it is important because it is indicative of the direction our culture has been moving over the past several years. Political correctness (PC) is the common term for it, but the term hardly does justice to how insidious this trend is. What it amounts to is a speech code -- the requirement that ones speech fit within a narrowly defined range of what is acceptable under threat of vilification, harassment, or in this case possible termination of employment. 

This brings to mind as a case in point the 2009 Miss USA pageant when "celebrity" judge Perez Hilton asked contestant Carrie Prejean her opinion of same-sex marriage. When she answered that she supported the traditional view of marriage, Hilton, apparently shocked at her ability for independent thought, spent the next several days flogging her on his video blog, and the media basically made it their purpose to find whatever information was necessary to destroy her (she eventually lost her crown due to alleged breach of contract and largely fell out of favor with cultural conservatives who had seen her as a potential poster child for traditional values, but the point I'm making is that the media made it their mission to seek out this information in order to discredit her as a means of retribution for stating her views). One imagines the purpose was to make an example of her for the benefit of any who would dare to not toe the party line when it comes to homosexuality or same-sex marriage. 

Apparently, Phil Robertson did not learn from the example made of Ms. Prejean, because he dared to speak his own beliefs, which do not align with the officially sanctioned beliefs, in a public venue. Robertson's statement was not "hateful" (the term frequently used by the PC crowd for any view that they disagree with), it was simply his statement of what he believes to be right. And, by the way, what he said was consistent with what the Bible says about homosexuality. So Robertson is being ostracized not only for stating his own opinion, but for his religious beliefs! 

This is no small matter regarding a television program, it represents a seed change in American culture, where the free exchange of ideas is replaced with the Thought Police, waiting for some non-conforming speech or belief to make itself known so that it can be quickly and mercilessly punished. 

One important thing to note: This is not a First Amendment issue. The First Amendment precludes the government from prohibiting the free exercise of religion; the government had no role in the incident with Prejean or with Robertson. This is an important distinction, but it is nonetheless alarming. For those who may disagree with Robertson, that's fine, but when people can be subjected to character assassination and be suspended or fired from work for holding traditional religious views, we are crossing a line in our society that I don't believe we want to cross. And ultimately that would come back to bite all of us, regardless of what side of this particular issue you are on. 

Shameful

The reports of private citizens being inconvenienced or even harassed by federal agents "enforcing" the shutdown have been pouring in over the past few days:  90-something World War II veterans barred entry to the WWII Memorial in DC (or attempted barred entry).  A hotel owner along the Blue Ridge Parkway was forced to shut down during peak tourism season simply because the Pisgah Inn is located along the federally-run parkway, depriving him of his most profitable season and his employees of pay.  Elderly residents of privately-owned homes located on federal land forced out of their homes.  Traffic cones placed along the road outside of Mt. Rushmore to prevent passers-by from even stopping to look at the closed monument.  Park rangers attempt to shut down Mount Vernon, a privately-owned historical site whose parking lot apparently happens to be jointly-owned by the Federal Park Service.  The Grand Canyon shut down, despite offers by Arizona's state government to use private donations to fund the park's operation during the shutdown.  Access to Florida Bay (the ocean!) is cut off to charter fishermen.  

A federal park ranger was actually quoted as saying that they have been ordered to "make things as difficult as possible" for people during the shutdown. The shutdown is naturally going to cause pain for some people -- particularly for government employees, who will have to defer income until a CR is passed, and for contractors, among others.  But the tactics being employed by the Administration appear to be aimed at maximizing the pain from the shutdown in order to gain political points against the Republicans, to whom the president believes he can shift all of the blame for the shutdown, even as he refuses to negotiate to reach a solution and reopen the government.  So confident of this is the White House that an unnamed official was quoted as saying that it did not matter to them how long the shutdown lasts, because "we're winning".  (Naturally, the White House has sense disavowed this statement.)

Perhaps shifting the blame for these bizarre closures onto House and Senate Republicans would be more plausible if these measures were actually mandated by a government shutdown.  The problem is that they are not.  One could understand closing, say, federally-maintained rest areas along the Blue Ridge Parkway (somebody has to clean the toilets), but there is no practical reason why the World War II monument, for example, should be closed to visitors due to a shutdown (in fact, from a fiscal standpoint, erecting barriers and stationing patrols to keep tourists out incurs greater cost than leaving it open), and certainly not in forcing the Pisgah Inn's closure. 

So petty, so despotic, so childish in fact is this behavior by the executive branch, I find it difficult to even characterize it in rational terms. 

In a previous post, I explained how Niskanen predicted that, faced with cuts, a government agency will threaten to cut its most highly-valued service in order to motivate its appropriators to restore funding; in that post, I argued that this characterized the president's behavior in seeking to "maximize the pain" from the cuts associated with sequestration.  The president is doing it again, but this time, due to the much larger scope of services affected, he is able to inflict that much more pain.  We as citizens and voters should not view lightly behavior by the executive branch of our government to willfully increase the pain to private citizens from an already difficult situation.  As Speaker Boehner said, "This is not a... game!"  The president should stop treating it as one. 

The Healthcare Debate, Part Deux

In an earlier (2009) post, I discussed some of the reasons why the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare, was the wrong prescription for what ails healthcare in the United States and offered some of my own ideas for a solution. However, it has been awhile, and since things seem to be coming to a head with the current push in Congress to defund Obamacare, it seems appropriate to revisit the issue. 

Because the bill was still in its early stages at the time of my previous post and I was therefore unaware of many of its particulars (and, as then-Speaker Pelosi indicated, many legislators who voted to pass the bill weren't even completely aware of its contents), I didn't foresee many of the effects that impending implementation of the policy has had in the national economy, although I was correct in predicting that Obamacare would result in driving up the cost of healthcare, not in reducing it. 

For example, at the time I was not aware of the employer mandates that are now leading a crush of employers to cut full-time workers and to cut hours to drop workers below full-time levels so as to avoid the added costs.  I also was unaware of the individual mandate that would require individuals not covered under employer plans to purchase health insurance themselves, or the prohibition of insurance carriers exempting existing conditions from coverage. The combination of these factors has meant that thousands upon thousands of workers are seeing cuts in work hours, which means less wage income (don't blame the employers; many of them would potentially be bankrupted by the added cost imposed by the employer mandate which would lead to their workers losing their jobs entirely); this loss of wage income is compounded when the worker, having lost her employer-provided insurance and now covered under the individual mandate, must now pay the full cost of health insurance for her family. To top it off, this hit on the worker's finances is compounded by increases in insurance premiums resulting from increased demand for insurance policies and from insurance companies compensating for the increased risk to them from being forced to cover pre-existing conditions. (Whether you see requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions as good or bad, it does put upward pressure on premiums.)

In short, the result of Obamacare, rather than the promised "affordable" healthcare costs, is higher premiums for nearly everyone, save low-income families whose premiums the program will subsidize (which presents the added problem of the necessity of either raising taxes or increasing national debt), and lower wage income as a result of employer mandates. This is not theoretical; numerous announcements of the cutting of workers and workers' hours have already begun as some are already reporting premium increases. 

Nonetheless, even as Union bosses, who supported the president in the last two elections, have turned on Obamacare due to its expected negative impact on their negotiated health plans, the Democrat-controlled Senate is preparing to vote to push forward on implementation. 

Some have said that this policy should be advanced because it at least represents an attempt to address the problems with healthcare. As I discussed in my earlier post, there are indeed problems with healthcare, particularly in terms of its affordability and thereby accessibility; however, I have never been one to subscribe to the idea that policies should be implemented simply to be seen as "at least doing something" without first, at the very least, carefully considering whether the policy in question will actually address the problem at hand. As we are already seeing, the problem of affordability is not addressed by Obamacare; in fact it is exacerbated by it. 

What Happened to a Colorblind Society?

A man whom I very much admire, a man ahead of his time who sadly met a tragic end several years before I was born, once said that he dreamed of a day when a man was judged by the content of his character, not the color of his skin. The tragedy in our time is that many - too many - of those who claim to be his ideological children have laid aside his vision in favor of advancing their own political agenda. 

Racism is a blight on the history of this nation. The fact that slavery persisted until the latter half of the 19th century is an anathema. The political and social repression of blacks, especially (but not only) in the South, through much of the 20th century was shameful, and the (mis)application of states' rights to defend such behavior created an unfortunate linkage in the minds of many between states' rights and institutionalized discrimination. 

To say that racial discrimination does not still exist in this nation would be delusional. Many of the older generations have passed their prejudices to their children and grandchildren; longstanding disdain toward people with a different skin color or ethnic lineage still persists among some families and individuals. Sadly, I suspect that no one alive today will live to see the total extinction of racism, if it ever happens at all. 

Nonetheless, to say that there has not been great progress would also be erroneous. Where schools and neighborhoods were once segregated, people of all races live as neighbors, work in the same offices, and play on the same playgrounds. Interracial marriage, once looked upon by the ignorant as "unnatural", is now common. Where blacks were once deprived of their right to vote, even in majority-white districts, blacks now serve as mayors, city and county council members, state and national legislators, and, certainly not to be overlooked, president. 

One should never let the progress that has been made blind them to the problems that still exist. But one should never attempt to unravel the progress that has been made in order to make political hay of the problems that still exist. This is what is being done by some on the Left right now; it is hypocritical and it is demeaning to the very individuals whom they feign to be defending. 

The case in point that prompted me to write this is a Bloomberg article entitled "House Republicans Set to Defy Obama Are Mostly White Men", which was subsequently picked up by the group Occupy Democrats (a liberal group meant to counterbalance the Tea Party) in a post entitled "Meet The Thirty-Eight White Men Holding America Hostage". 

First of all, consider the hypocrisy in the titles of these articles. Occupy Democrats is one of the liberal groups that accuses conservatives in general and the Tea Party specifically of being racists. Nonetheless, a group whose rhetoric equates conservatism with racism happily resorts to blatant racism to attempt to discredit lawmakers who dare to oppose their policies. In short, they are using the very same tactic - judging someone by the color of their skin - that they are accusing their opponents of using. Who of us has never heard the old aphorism that "two wrongs don't make a right"? (Incidentally, despite the inflammatory headline, there is nothing in either the Bloomberg or the Occupy Democrats article that even attempts to support their implication of racist motivation for opposing the liberal agenda.) 

Secondly, this tactic is demeaning, in this case, to President Obama. It is demeaning because it operates under the assumption (or at least the implication) that the only possible reason that this group of Republicans could have for opposing the president is the color of his skin. (This tactic has been used before; here is a letter to the editor that I wrote in 2011 in response to one incidence.) 

In effect, the Bloomberg writer and Occupy Democrats are reducing the president to nothing more than his skin color, rather than a thinking human being with ideas and beliefs that can be debated and either supported or opposed. They are de facto judging the man by the color of his skin and nothing else. This is racism carried out under the guise of defending the very person it is demeaning, and it is every bit as shameful as it is for anyone who in fact does oppose (or support) Obama only because of his race. Racism is racism, regardless of the color of the skin - or the political affiliation - of the perpetrator. If it is wrong when a Republican or Tea Party member makes racist comments (as some do... it doesn't make all racist), then it is equally wrong when a liberal does (as some do... it doesn't make all racist). 

America must move past this evil. As I said earlier, racism may never really go away completely, and that is tragic. But so long as some individuals, be they conservative, liberal, libertarian, or independent, see creating division among the American people according to their race as a means of advancing their own agendas - and so long as voters continue to fall for such tactics - we will have a very difficult time moving in the right direction, toward a truly colorblind society. 

Internal Revenue Severance

Recent events surrounding abuse of power and wasteful practices by the IRS simply underscores what I have believed for some time: it is time for the IRS to go.  Targeting of groups with “conservative-sounding” names for special scrutiny by the agency, downright insubordination by certain of its leaders in their appearances before Congress, and the more recent revelation of extravagant spending on employees trips are only the most recent symptoms.  The problem is not incidental but systemic.  It is the type of abuse that becomes not only possible but incentivized when power becomes too concentrated.  

The Framers recognized this when the established the Federalist system of dividing power between national and state governments; however, over the 224 years since our system of government was established, particularly within the past eighty years or so, this separation of powers has been steadily eroded.  With this erosion has come an increase in government involvement and regulation in everyday life of every citizen, more wasteful spending, and less and less effectual services (most notably education, which seems to become worse, not better, with each additional federal program).  Also increasing, however, is the opportunity for corruption.  It is not that corruption did not exist or was not prevalent in previous generations; one justification for the direct election of US senators, established by the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, was that state legislatures, who were originally responsible for appointing each state’s senators, were granting the seats to the highest bidders.  However, while corruption at the state or local level is difficult enough to root out, it is that much more difficult at the national level.  For example, as Tiebout points out, one can ultimately “vote with their feet” and move to another city/county/state (if the abuse is egregious enough, at least in theory, the mass emigration could force reform by the state or local government).  But the options are more limited if the abuse is at the national level.    

With this in mind, is a national agency that monitors, keeps track of, and taxes every single American really necessary?  In fact, every state, without exception, has its own agencies and laws to collect taxes, be it sales tax, income tax, or a combination of the two.  Why should these existing state-level structures not be utilized?  The best option is for states to be allowed to determine for themselves how they collect tax revenue, but since there have been competing plans for reforming the federal tax code for some time, including the Flat Tax and the Fair (national sales) Tax, I will focus on these two options.  Either of these options could be enacted at the federal level, then each state could collect the tax using its existing apparatus; for those states who do not have the necessary structure (for example, if the Flat Tax were enacted, a state that does not currently levy an income tax) could be given a block grant to set up the necessary mechanism.  At the federal level, the only tax collection agency necessary would literally be an office of a handful of people responsible for receiving tax payments from the fifty states.  

Given that we are so accustomed to the burgeoning IRS, it may sound unprecedented to decentralize its function to the states.  However, prior to passage of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913, the federal government in fact did tax through the states with very little direct taxation of individual citizens.  Under the original constitutional structure, the national government would tax each state according to its population and the states would raise the tax revenue for the federal government along with its normal tax collections.  This was changed in 1913 because it failed to take into account state income levels (so that a poor state with a large population could wind up paying more taxes than a smaller but much wealthier state).  However, the system suggested here would resolve this issue without the need for individuals’ incomes and very lives being under the scrutiny of an intrusive federal agency.  And while no system is immune to abuse, any that arises can be dealt with relatively more effectively than is possible when all power is centralized in one national agency.  

This change is long overdue; the recent revelations of abuse only highlight the need.  Now is the time to move on this and address the underlying disease, not to merely treat the symptoms.