Critique Of An Unthinking Man, Pt. 5

This is my final installment of my critique on Robert A. Hall's "I'm Tired." To catch up on my comments to his piece please see Parts One, Two, Three and Four. Hall finishes his rant as follows:

I’m tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers and politicians of both parties talking about innocent mistakes, stupid mistakes or youthful mistakes, when we all know they think their only mistake was getting caught. I’m tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or poor.

I'm really not quite sure how the first and second sentences here connect, unless Hall means that the expectation of forgiveness from the public that celebrities have when they get caught having affairs or doing drugs is the same sort of "entitlement" starving kids have when they get their only meal of the day at school. I also don't really understand how a Tiger Woods or a Lindsay Lohan really fits into the rest of Hall's litany of things that tucker him out, but I suppose trying to find strong logic in this piece is a fool's errand.

Speaking of poor, I’m tired of hearing people with air-conditioned homes, color TVs and two cars called poor. The majority of Americans didn’t have that in 1970, but we didn’t know we were “poor.” The poverty pimps have to keep changing the definition of poor to keep the dollars flowing.

I’m real tired of people who don’t take responsibility for their lives and actions. I’m tired of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination, or big-whatever for their problems.

True! And I can't believe that the people who did call themselves poor in 1970 had the audacity to do so when they probably had running water and electricity running through their homes- the majority of Americans didn't have that in 1894. How dare people try to raise the bar of what we consider "poverty" as the rest of society surges forward?! At the time of the Founding Fathers, you were only poor if you had one pair of knickers, ate hay for at least 4 meals a week and could only afford two corners on your hat instead of three! If that definition was good enough for them, it's good enough for us, too.

Also, I think we all know that discrimination has been, since the late 1960s, dead and gone. Doesn't exist. At all. It's about time those whiners get over it and pull themselves up by their bootstraps! To be fair, personal responsibility is certainly important and government assistance should be temporary (as it has been since the Clinton Administration) in order to help people get back on their feet and then let them make their own way. Those who scam the system or expect the rest of us to support them for an entire lifetime (unless they have an impairment which keeps them from gainful employment) should be expected to carry their own weight. However, as most thinking people realize, sometimes folks fall on hard times and we've decided, as a society, to help each other out via certain stopgap measures (Unemployment Benefits, Social Security Disability Insurance, WIC, etc.).

Yes, I’m damn tired. But I’m also glad to be 63. Because, mostly, I’m not going to get to see the world these people are making. I’m just sorry for my granddaughter.

...AAaaand scene. Way to end it on a high note, Robert. Since this same rant has basically been put forth during every period of American history with the same sort of doomsday urgency with which Hall writes, I have a feeling his granddaughter won't wind up in as dire of circumstances as he expects. I responded to this piece partially because of how simply ridiculous (and typically angry) it was; but also because the cadre of people who believe such things- and there are many- act as if they are the enlightened few who have a responsibility to save America from malicious usurpers, that they have a duty passed down from Washington himself not to let America move from where they'd like it to be. That, simply, is not the case. There are other, more rational ways to consider these issues and we have decided, through political debate and elections, that our country should move in certain directions and deal with certain issues through government intervention.

These rants will never go away- and at least people care enough to speak up, no matter how ill-informed they may be- but I hope that those who read this critique consider the issues fully and get legitimate information before getting as bent out of shape as Mr. Hall did when writing. Critical Focus is dedicated to considering the challenges of our day through logical and rational analysis, and aims at sharing this approach with others in the hopes that it spreads to our (inter)national discourse.

You can find Mr. Hall's blog (and leave your comments) here.

Critique Of An Unthinking Man, Pt. 4

This is Part 4 of my critique of Robert A. Hall's "I'm Tired." You can find Parts 1, 2 & 3 here, here and here. Hall continues:

I’m tired of illegal aliens being called “undocumented workers,” especially the ones who aren’t working, but are living on welfare or crime. What’s next? Calling drug dealers, “Undocumented Pharmacists”? And, no, I’m not against Hispanics. Most of them are Catholic and it’s been a few hundred years since Catholics wanted to kill me for my religion. I’m willing to fast track for citizenship any Hispanic person who can speak English, doesn’t have a criminal record and who is self-supporting without family on welfare, or who serves honorably for three years in our military. Those are the citizens we need. Update: A few people have taken this to indicate some bias against Catholics, bbased on events 400 years ago. While I think they are either too touchy or fail to understand, I was onlly trying to say that Ihave zero problem with Catholics wanting to come to the US, but that I hav great concerns about Muslims, as a good % of them do want to kill me, or force their religion and moral code on me.

Usually, the term "illegal" is to refer to a violation of the criminal code- within which immigration laws are not contained. (Drug dealers, on the other hand, are violating the criminal code, yet we don't call them "illegal pharmacists," so I'm not sure where he's going with that). Even without that distinction, an alien who is in the country without authorization is not, himself, "illegal," as a person cannot be against the law- only their actions can. If Mr. Hall prefers to be accurate, the term "alien whose residence is unauthorized" would probably be the best. It's also a good thing that Mr. Hall isn't "against Hispanics" because (shockingly) there do exist non-Hispanic immigrants.

Mr. Hall can put away his concern about immigrants on welfare, as it's absolutely unfounded. Even immigrants with green cards cannot receive welfare benefits until five years after they've received their resident authorization. Any undocumented alien is ineligible for federal welfare programs. Indeed, undocumented aliens actually pay into the system, rather than taking out of it, as they have Social Security and Medicare fees taken out of their paychecks but can't access those programs. Even a paper as liberal as the Wall Street Journal finds that to be the case.

Finally, thank god Mr. Hall is off the radar of all of us Catholics! Too bad a "good %" of Muslims want to kill him. There are roughly 1.5 billion Muslims in the world. It's a shame that a good percentage of those people want to kill any non-Muslim, which he clearly has evidence of. Incredibly lucky for me that in my time living in a Muslim country I didn't encounter one of this large portion!

I’m tired of latte liberals and journalists, who would never wear the uniform of the Republic themselves, or let their entitlement-handicapped kids near a recruiting station, trashing our military. They and their kids can sit at home, never having to make split-second decisions under life and death circumstances, and bad mouth better people then themselves. Do bad things happen in war? You bet. Do our troops sometimes misbehave? Sure. Does this compare with the atrocities that were the policy of our enemies for the last fifty years—and still are? Not even close. So here’s the deal. I’ll let myself be subjected to all the humiliation and abuse that was heaped on terrorists at Abu Ghraib or Gitmo, and the critics can let themselves be subject to captivity by the Muslims who tortured and beheaded Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, or the Muslims who tortured and murdered Marine Lt. Col. William Higgins in Lebanon, or the Muslims who ran the blood-spattered Al Qaeda torture rooms our troops found in Iraq, or the Muslims who cut off the heads of schoolgirls in Indonesia, because the girls were Christian. Then we’ll compare notes. British and American soldiers are the only troops in history that civilians came to for help and handouts, instead of hiding from in fear. UPDATE: It has rightly been pointed out to me, several times, that I should have included Canadian, Australian and New Zealand troops here. My apologies for slighting these gallant allies of freedom.

Arg! Those Latte Liberals, what with their progressive politics and their penchants for European-style coffee drinks! Who do they think they are? How dare they keep any tabs on the military?! How dare they hold the force that fights under the flag of their country to a standard higher than what the other side is doing?! Thank god no liberal has ever served in the military- that sure would give them credibility, according to Mr. Hall. Graciously, Mr. Hall will prove that being waterboarded and soaked with water and left outside in sub-zero temperatures (which killed a detainee at Bagram Airbase) is a walk in the park (when will that be exactly?). And Mr. Hall can also be commended for going through extensive research on every war (ever) to declare that not at any other moment in all of history did a civilian ask an enemy troop for help. Solid work.

I’m tired of people telling me that their party has a corner on virtue and the other party has a corner on corruption. Read the papers—bums are bi-partisan. And I’m tired of people telling me we need bi-partisanship. I live in Illinois, where the “Illinois Combine” of Democrats and Republicans has worked together harmoniously to loot the public for years. And I notice that the tax cheats in Obama’s cabinet are bi-partisan as well.

I certainly won't disagree with Mr. Hall that corruption is bipartisan. Having lived in Illinois for eight years, I can attest to how disheartening it is to find scandal after scandal break from our government. I can't, however, agree that this means that bipartisanship is the problem. Our system is growing more and more polarized, with parties taking an opposing stance regardless of the subject. This is incredibly inefficient government and wastes both the time and money of the American people (those for whom the government is supposed to be getting things done). Just because both parties have corrupt members doesn't mean both parties are awful, it means that corrupt people, no matter what party they belong to, are awful.

Critique Of An Unthinking Man, Pt. 3

This piece builds on the discussion of Robert A. Hall's "I'm Tired" begun in Part 1 and Part 2. I'll continue to respond to Mr. Hall's countless complaints. He writes:

I’m tired of a news media that thinks Bush’s fundraising and inaugural expenses were obscene, but that think Obama’s, at triple the cost, were wonderful. That thinks Bush exercising daily was a waste of presidential time, but Obama exercising is a great example for the public to control weight and stress, that picked over every line of Bush’s military records, but never demanded that Kerry release his, that slammed Palin with two years as governor for being too inexperienced for VP, but touted Obama with three years as senator as potentially the best president ever.

Wonder why people are dropping their subscriptions or switching to Fox News? Get a clue. I didn’t vote for Bush in 2000, but the media and Kerry drove me to his camp in 2004.

First, I'd assume people are dropping their subscriptions to magazines and newspapers to opt for digital versions, but that's the least of my concerns here. The major difference between President Obama's and President Bush's campaigns funds were where they came from: Obama hitting a new record for individual contributions, while Bush had more corporate funding- a legitimate difference for the big bad media to point out.

I hadn't noticed a lot of people complaining about President Bush's exercise regimen, but if they were, I agree that that's a petty thing to criticize a President on and I'd rather have an executive in good health than not. As for John Kerry's military record as compared to George Bush's, I don't think there's much of a comparison, as one was injured in combat and the other couldn't hack the Air National Guard. As a whole, I admit that there was some fascination in the media over Obama's campaign and how different a candidate he was than those in the past, but the evidence just doesn't seem to point to the collusion against conservatism some seem to see.

I’m tired of being told that out of “tolerance for other cultures” we must let Saudi Arabia use our oil money to fund mosques and madrassa Islamic schools to preach hate in America, while no American group is allowed to fund a church, synagogue or religious school in Saudi Arabia to teach love and tolerance.

Well, that's the difference between a free and open society and a less progressive one- it's the sacrifice our founding fathers made when they wrote the Constitution and allowed for freedoms of religion and speech. If you'd like to be the one to call for rolling back the First Amendment, you have that right, but I think you might be met with some push-back.

I’m tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global warming, which no one is allowed to debate. My wife and I live in a two-bedroom apartment and carpool together five miles to our jobs. We also own a three-bedroom condo where our daughter and granddaughter live. Our carbon footprint is about 5% of Al Gore’s, and if you’re greener than Gore, you’re green enough.

No one is allowed to debate global warming? Was there some new law passed (in violation of the First Amendment) that I'm not aware of? Or is Hall saying that the evidence so overwhelmingly stacks up against him that every time he tries to deny global warming people refuse to take him seriously? There's a difference between "not allowed" and "not swayed." To be honest, it does sound like Mr. Hall lives a fairly carbon-low lifestyle, and that's to be commended.

I’m tired of being told that drug addicts have a disease, and I must help support and treat them, and pay for the damage they do. Did a giant germ rush out of a dark alley, grab them, and stuff white powder up their noses while they tried to fight it off? I don’t think Gay people choose to be Gay, but I damn sure think druggies chose to take drugs. And I’m tired of harassment from cool people treating me like a freak when I tell them I never tried marijuana. Update: People have written to tell me I'd have more sympathy if this was close to me. It is exactly having seen the destruction of alcoholism and herion addiction in my own family that makes me pretty itolerate of people who are willing to destroy the people around them to indulge themselves.

I can't pretend to know what Mr. Hall's family has gone through as a result of alcohol and drug abuse, so I won't expect him to feel a certain way. I do know that alcoholism has run through a fair portion of my family (which would lead someone to believe there's something hereditary about it) and find it interesting that Hall claims there is no drug or alcohol addiction disease but alludes to "alcoholism and heroin addiction."

As with any mental illness, it's certainly difficult to accept that someone's behavior is a symptom of their disease and there does exist a great amount of personal responsibility attached (just as a schizophrenic with violent tendencies has a responsibility to take meds to keep himself from being a danger to others). However, Mr. Hall's disbelief in a disease known as "addiction" simply flies in the face of every credible medical and psychological journal, study and definition of disorders. He's free to believe what he likes- and thanks to the First Amendment he dislikes so much, even to espouse his beliefs- but that neither makes what he believes true nor credible.

Critique Of An Unthinking Man, Pt. 2

Yesterday, I responded to a short excerpt from Robert A. Hall's "I'm Tired." Unfortunately, he wrote plenty more.

I’m tired of being told how bad America is by leftwing millionaires like Michael Moore, George Soros and Hollywood entertainers who live in luxury because of the opportunities America offers. In thirty years, if they get their way, the United States will have the religious freedom and women’s rights of Saudi Arabia, the economy of Zimbabwe, the freedom of the press of China, the crime and violence of Mexico, the tolerance for Gay people of Iran, and the freedom of speech of Venezuela. Won’t multiculturalism be beautiful?

This is the most stunningly unthinking paragraph I may have ever read. Is he really saying that the American Left is the side pushing down gay rights, freedom of speech and women's rights?! While I certainly have plenty of problems with the one-sided tactics of Michael Moore, what the Right doesn't get about the Left is this: most people criticizing America from the Left really love the country- they love it so much, in fact, that they're willing to point out when it's not living up to its potential. America, most on the Left would say, is a wonderful and promising place; but like every place, it isn't perfect and we need to continue to move it toward reaching the promise made by the founding fathers. To say that the Left wants the worst aspects of other countries merely because they don't despise everything foreign is a sad and typical line of attack.

I’m tired of being told that Islam is a “Religion of Peace,” when every day I can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives and daughters for their family “honor;” of Muslims rioting over some slight offense; of Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they aren’t “believers;” of Muslims burning schools for girls; of Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for “adultery;” of Muslims mutilating the genitals of little girls; all in the name of Allah, because the Qur’an and Shari’a law tells them to.

Absolutely. All of these things are horrific and despicable acts of cruelty. It's hard to reconcile the media's portrayal of these acts with being told that Islam is a "Religion of Peace." However, it's interesting that here Mr. Hall bases his argument on what the media tells him and later rails against the media for doing such a poor job. If all Muslims are willing to kill all non-Muslims, how have other religious groups lasted for centuries in Muslim-majority countries? It's easy to lump together a whole group of people whom we don't understand very well and paint them with the brush of the worst of their kind. But they could just as easily lump together Christians as the people who falsely say that the Bible tells them to hate "niggers" and "faggots." Are all Christians the same as the skinheads and neo-Nazis who purport to be acting within their faith? Then why does Hall make such generalizations of all Muslims? Let's all agree that extremists suck.

I believe “a man should be judged by the content of his character, not by the color of his skin.” I’m tired of being told that “race doesn’t matter” in the post-racial world of President Obama, when it’s all that matters in affirmative action jobs, lower college admission and graduation standards for minorities (harming them the most), government contract set-asides, tolerance for the ghetto culture of violence and fatherless children that hurts minorities more than anyone, and in the appointment of US Senators from Illinois. I think it’s very cool that we have a black president and that a black child is doing her homework at the desk where Lincoln wrote the emancipation proclamation. I just wish the black president was Condi Rice, or someone who believes more in freedom and the individual and less in an all-knowing government.

Ah, the old "I'm not racist, but..." I do wish that everyone could just be judged by their own merits and believe that one day (I think we're getting closer and closer) we can do away with affirmative action practices. But we don't live in a vacuum and, sadly, not everyone has an equal chance to succeed in America because not everyone starts off from the same spot. Sure, if a child isn't read to by his mother and grows up with no father figure and winds up in the "ghetto culture of violence" it's certainly the parents' fault. But doesn't it make more sense to help those kids better their situation than to let them sink into the cycle? Shouldn't we also promote diverse representation in the Congress and other leadership positions and give those kids people of their background and ethnicity to look up to and emulate? I don't think anyone really likes affirmative action (I'd love it if we all started out with the same chances), we're just broken up into the camps of people who think it's necessary and those who don't.

Critique Of An Unthinking Man, Pt. 1

I'm not exactly sure why, but people on the political Right seem to really love disseminating "important" information via email forward (an efficient way to reach a large number of people in 1997). We've all gotten them, the "truth" about this or that which we should all know. Usually, I don't give these forwards a second thought, as they're far too ridiculous even to acknowledge.

However, a friend recently forwarded me something she'd gotten from her father, a piece entitled "I'm Tired" by Robert A. Hall, a former MA State Senator. Because Hall's piece has gotten around quite a bit on the internet, and because I believe he espouses some of the hatred a strange portion of the country believes right now, I thought I'd take the time to discuss his writing.

Hall writes:

I’ll be 63 soon. Except for one semester in college when jobs were scarce, and a six-month period when I was between jobs, but job-hunting every day, I’ve worked, hard, since I was 18. Despite some health challenges, I still put in 50-hour weeks, and haven’t called in sick in seven or eight years. I make a good salary, but I didn’t inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, there’s no retirement in sight, and I’m tired. Very tired.

I’m tired of being told that I have to “spread the wealth around” to people who don’t have my work ethic. I’m tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy or stupid to earn it.

I’m tired of being told that I have to pay more taxes to “keep people in their homes.” Sure, if they lost their jobs or got sick, I’m willing to help. But if they bought McMansions at three times the price of our paid-off, $250,000 condo, on one-third of my salary, then let the leftwing Congresscritters who passed Fannie and Freddie and the Community Reinvestment Act that created the bubble help them—with their own money.

Mr. Hall's work history is certainly an admirable one and the type of work ethic that has allowed so many Americans to better their lots in life. Understandably, after so many years of hard work, he's tired; and I'll admit that he and I are not at the same points in our lives. However, he fails to consider a good number of things.

First, "spread the wealth around" has been a general principle of our social system for as long as the U.S. has existed. People are taxed, in one way or another, and those tax dollars fund projects and services that everyone, regardless of their work ethic, uses (roads, schools, police, and yes- welfare). Sure, there are some freeloaders who take more than their share without working hard for it. But there are also hard-working single parents, students and veterans who are given special assistance when they need it in the hopes that they'll get back on their feet and in the belief that they contribute important things to our society. Simply receiving government benefits and assistance does not mean that someone is lazy, nor stupid.

Next, Hall leaves out a major portion of people who have been foreclosed on. He seems to have forgotten the fact that there were predatory lenders who sought out and duped people into mortgages that were fiscally unsound and then sold off the risk- and not all these people were in a "$250,000 condo." Also, keeping people in their homes is better for everyone- would Mr. Hall rather that five houses on his block were foreclosed on with squatters taking up residence? Is that good for his property value? Is it good to have so many homes sitting on the books of the banks that just made it back from the brink of collapse?

Finally, there are definitely people on the Left to blame for the housing bubble. There are also people on the Right and in the middle. Regulators fell asleep at the switch (with the help of some warm milk and cookies from lobbyists for the banks), banks and major corporations leveraged themselves way beyond their means, consumers' greed got the better of their pocketbooks and lenders gave out mortgages they knew couldn't be paid off. Why is it that Hall only blames liberal politicians? Either he doesn't understand the full scope of the history, or he's simply being disingenuous- I won't pretend to know which.