Moxie

This is Moxie, one of my two pet female rats, in I think a particularly nice photo. She's about 4 months old. Her cage-mate Pepsi is more camera-shy, but I'll try to capture her sometime soon.

The photo is deceptive in one way -- she actually has pink eyes. But when shot with a flash, this makes her looks like the Demon Rat from Hell, so I used red-eye removal. Trust me though, she's still this cute in person.

What I Am, and Why

I am an American by birth, naturally. But it goes a little further than that. I'm at least a third-generation American on all sides of the family (all four of my grandparents were born in the US, and at least some of my great-grandparents). Being a fairly generic, mostly European ethnic mix (Welsh and Norwegian that I know about, probably some English and/or Scottish, and a bit of Cherokee), I was never really urged to think of myself as anything but an American -- not an Italian-American or Irish-American or anything of the sort. Nor was I particularly subjected to sectionalism of any sort; while I'm fond of California, where I've always lived, I don't particularly consider it the "best part" of the country.

But I'm not just American by circumstance; I'm one by avocation, as well. I believe in our basic system and principles of government. Though I would personally take the theism out, I believe in the the words of the Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Further, I think the Founders designed a pretty good, resilient, stable system for securing these rights -- the checks and balances of our three branches of government -- and I like the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, most notably the First, Fourth, and Fifth amendments. Ours is, ideally, a government of laws, not of men, and that is as it should be.

Of course, I'm aware we haven't always held to the principles as firmly as we should; that mistakes have been made; that no system is perfect. But I'm pretty happy with the one we've got, and think that the majority of the time, we get it right eventually.

I am a Liberal because I believe that the government has a valid role to play in actively securing these rights for individuals. It's not enough for government to play a passive role, not itself interfering with liberty; it should be an active helper. It should do this through taking responsibility for educating the populace; through providing the infrastructure that allows commerce to take place; by protecting the environment; through consumer protection laws, through mechanisms to fight discrimination, unfair trade practices, abuse and exploitation of the weak by the strong. I do not succumb to what I think of as the Libertarian fallacy, that fewer laws means more freedom; while I believe the free market is the best mechanism yet devised for creating and distributing wealth, I believe an unregulated free market can be as oppressive of individuals as any tyrannical state. I believe in maintaining a social safety net at least strong enough to keep children from going hungry, to keep temporary economic setbacks from leading to a life of poverty, and to maintain public safety and health.

I consider myself a Moderate, not so much in the sense that I am somewhere between Liberal and Conservative -- though I do have some centrist views -- but in the sense that I am not a radical or extremist. I recognize that I share the country and the world with people who hold some very different views than I do, and that sometimes it is necessary to compromise. Sometimes it's a matter of picking one's battles; sometimes it's a matter of tactics; other times it's genuinely a question of finding a solution everyone can live with, even if no one considers it perfect. I tend to favor working through the institutions of government and society first, resorting to civil disobedience only in cases of particular injustice and failure of government to respond; and to outright violence or revolution only when the alternative is accepting tyranny.

I am a Democrat -- that is, a member of the Democratic Party -- because I feel it is the party that is working most consistently and effectively in support of my philosophies and interests. Some of the other parties are attractive in some senses (the Green party, for instance), but they often go too far in one direction; also, from a practical standpoint, they simply haven't got the power to effect change directly, though they can influence policy at times. If one looks historically at "third parties" in American history, you find that when one strikes a particularly popular viewpoint, one or both of the major parties co-opt their agenda; the party fades from history due to its success, rather than failure. So if, for instance, one feels the Democratic party isn't liberal enough, I think working to shift the party to the left is likely to be more effective than abandoning it for a smaller niche party.

State of the Union message

Thoughts as I watched:

I have RealPlayer fired up, streaming from the House Chamber; Hastert & Cheney are announcing who gets to escort the President into the chamber. It's 5:59, California time (my time stamps may be a bit off, if there's streaming lag). Let's see how this goes, shall we?

6:00 -- Mrs. Bush has been seated; diplomatic corps is coming in.

6:02 -- the Supreme Court justices come in -- looks like Alito got confirmed just in time to get his ticket. (Actually, the picture isn't good enough for me to be sure, but since he's been sworn in, I would presume it's him.)

6:06 -- While waiting, I remember that I had a dream last night that had Dick Cheney in it. Strangely, he was accompanying my family on a San Diego vacation, for no apparent reason. We were getting ready to head to Petco Park for a San Diego Padres triple-header, if one can imagine such a thing. The rest of us were dressed sensibly for an afternoon and evening at the ball park, but Cheney was in a suit and tie. I remember trying to decide if I should avoid any political discussion, if I should try to engage him in some kind of constructive discourse (expressing my disagreements as politely as possible) -- or say what I REALLY think.

6:08 -- Cheney is saved from my wrath by the Sergent-at-Arms: here comes the President.

6:11 -- I wonder what's in the large envelopes he just handed to Cheney and Hastert at the podium? Copies of the speech? Autographed head shots? Hmmm.

6:12:40 -- Speech starts with a tribute to Corretta Scott King. Standing ovation. Predictable, but certainly approrpriate.

6:14 -- Nearly two minutes in before he says the State of the Union is "strong."

6:16 -- First mention of September 11th.

6:18 -- Osama bin Laden actually gets mentioned. (Iraq mentioned a few phrases later...)

6:25 -- On the whole, I agree with what he says we have to do in Iraq. I'm annoyed at his complaining about "defeatism" on the part of some critics. And, I don't entirely share his rosy outlook on how things are going. But I have to admit that the question of "what we do now" is only slightly releated to the question of whether we should have gone into Iraq in the first place.

This doesn't mean, however, that we should consider that question completely moot. Analyzing how that decision was made is, IMHO, important as a guide to future decisions. (Whether you think it was correct or not.)

6:35 -- Here comes the domestic surveilance -- excuse me, TERRORIST surveilance defense.

6:36 -- Interesting that they focused for a moment on the Supreme Court justices as Bush talked about this. I presume the Court members normally try to remain as impassive as they looked there.

6:37 -- What's the sudden attack on isolationism? I mean, yeah, I agree, isolationism is an out-of-date policy, but didn't we settle that around 1941? Is anyone really preaching it now?

6:40 -- I expect to hear a lot of debunking (or disputing, if you prefer) of his job and economic growth numbers tomorrow. For me, I don't have the numbers on tap, but I wonder if people besides me will note the dissonance between "make my tax cuts permanent" and "cut the deficit in half." (You mean the deficit we didn't have before your tax cuts...?)

I suppose linking "earmark reform" with the line-item veto was inevitible.

6:44 -- OK, that's interesting. I think the Dems just got up an applauded the failure of his Social Security proposal last year. (And good for them.)

The notion of a bi-partisan commission to work on entitlement reform is a good one; I just don't believe, under the current government, will truly be bi-partisan. (Maybe next year.)

6:46 -- "Affordable health care" gets a good round of applause. Claiming that we are meeting the needs of the poor and elderly does not.

6:48 -- Two minutes on health care? Nothing about the savings accounts the commentators have been talking about? Maybe he'll go back to it.

6:50 -- The energy proposals sound good, if they're really followed up. Thirty years later than they should be (and I don't blame Bush or the Republicans entirely for that), and not drastic enough, in my opinion -- but it we really do it, a good start.

6:52 -- I'd love to hear Bush actually explain the concept of "nanotechnology."

6:54 -- "In recent years, America has become a more hopeful nation." Wow, is that counter to my personal experience. The 1990's was a great time of optimism; the time between the end of the Cold War and 9/11, I think, will be looked back on as one of the happiest times in our country's history, when we had nothing better to worry about than the President's sex life. The 21st century, by contrast, has pretty much sucked so far.

6:56 -- Ah, yes, there's Alito. I wonder if O'Connor has a seat somewhere? Hmmmm...they're showing the ovation...if she's in the crowd I can't see it.

Meantime, here comes the social agenda. Abortion (has it really gone down during his presidency? I've heard the opposite), gay marriage (obliquely referred to), now human cloning...

7:03 -- "May God Bless America." Speech over, about 51 minutes. Pretty generic, no particularly bold initiatives. A relatively lackluster ovation at the end, I think. (Well, his popularity rating is pretty low.)

On the whole, not much one can disagree with on the surface. The devil is in the details and the follow-up. Speaking personally, I have little confidence in either, based on experience with this President. Now let's see what the Democratic response is...

7:11 -- Parlimentary details handled, joint session adjourned by Hastert.

7:17 -- Democratic response starts, Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia. He too starts with Corretta Scott King.

7:20 -- Already tired of him saying "There's a better way." (Even if he is right.)

7:21 -- He mentions the Medicare drug benefit fiasco; I don't think I heard anything about THAT from the President.

7:25 -- Did they glue this guy's left eyebrow on too high?

7:27 -- "God Bless the United States of America." Finished. Short, largely accurate (I think), but not forceful enough. And Kaine doesn't impress me very much as a speaker. I would have liked to have heard more numbers and hard facts; it's what the opposition does best, whoever it is.

Now it's time for the spin doctors...and time for me to go play "City of Heroes" or something.

The War on Christmas

In 1960, while my mother was pregnant with me, her minister (Baptist, I think) announced one Sunday morning that since John F. Kennedy was Catholic, voting for him was a sin. My mom, bless her, not normally one to make any kind of a scene, rose from her pew that moment, left the church and never went back. Though she remained personally religious for the rest of her life, my brother and I were raised in a completely secular manner, though we did spend a couple weeks in Bible School one summer; the sum total of what I recall from it being a little ditty called "Choo-Choo, the Bible Train is Coming Down the Track." (That's also approximately 70 percent of the lyrics.)

Nonetheless, we, like everyone else I knew, celebrated Christmas every year, in the typical suburban American manner: getting up early Christmas morning, examining the loot left by Santa and sent by relatives, seeking out neighborhood friends to deliver the traditional greeting -- "What'd you get?" -- and later eating the second of two annual Turkey dinners, having devoured the last of the Thanksgiving leftovers scant days before.

So when I hear from conservative commentators out there, upset that businesses and governmental bodies are saying "Happy Holidays!" instead of "Merry Christmas!" and implying that doing so is somehow an attack on Christianity -- I get confused. My instinct is to wonder what they think the current celebration of Christmas has to do with Christianity, anyway.

Oh, sure, supposedly we're celebrating the birth of Jesus -- even though no one thinks he was actually born on December 25th, or even close to it. Sure, many of the traditional carols tell the story of the Nativity, and we're all familiar with such icons as the Star of Bethleham and the Three Wise Men. But we're also celebrating the New Year, and a tradition of a festival of the winter solstice that long predates the rise of Christianity -- not to mention a gift-giving frenzy without which our retail economy would probably collapse.

So what difference does the terminology make? I called the holiday Christmas, wished people a Merry Christmas, found my presents under a Christmas tree, liked looking at Christmas lights, sang Christmas carols and ate Christmas cookies -- but none of that made me a Christian. Frankly, given the main use to which our culture puts the season -- to urge consumers to an orgy of spending, most of it on non-necessities -- I would think the devout would be happy to see businesses moving away from associating such activities with Jesus Christ.

No, that's not what's going on here. This is nothing more than some conservative activists once again attempting to build an us-versus-them, godly-versus-secular, good-versus-evil mentality amongst the genuinely faithful. They've taken a few legitimate concerns about seperation of church and state (say, government-sponsored Nativity scenes) and talked it up into an all-out "War on Christmas" -- meaning, of course, a war on Christianity. Come on. Do they really think the board of directors of Wal-Mart, deciding to put "Happy Holidays" in their ads, is doing so to alienate Christians?

Frankly, I think if the Christians really want to keep the meaning of their holiday about Jesus and His message, the best thing they could do would be to move Christmas to another part of the year, away from the New Year/Solstice/Gift-giving and general revelry festival. Pick another day to represent the birth of the Lord, and make that the day to go to church and reflect on one's faith. And let the current "holiday season" stay the generic time of peace on earth, goodwill toward men...and "What'd you get?"

A prediction.

I've been neglecting the blog lately, but I wanted to sneak in today to record a long-term political prediction:

Remember the name of Nathaniel Fick. Someday you're going to be hearing it again.