The World Atheist Convention in Dublin adopted the following declaration on secularism and the place of religion in public life.

1. Personal Freedoms
(a) Freedom of conscience, religion and belief are private and unlimited. Freedom to practice religion should be limited only by the need to respect the rights and freedoms of others.
(b) All people should be free to participate equally in the democratic process.
(c) Freedom of expression should be limited only by the need to respect the rights and freedoms of others. There should be no right ‘not to be offended’ in law. All blasphemy laws, whether explicit or implicit, should be repealed and should not be enacted.

2. Secular Democracy
(a) The sovereignty of the State is derived from the people and not from any god or gods.
(b) The only reference in the constitution to religion should be an assertion that the State is secular. (c) The State should be based on democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Public policy should be formed by applying reason, and not religious faith, to evidence.
(d) Government should be secular. The state should be strictly neutral in matters of religion and its absence, favouring none and discriminating against none.
(e) Religions should have no special financial consideration in public life, such as tax-free status for religious activities, or grants to promote religion or run faith schools.
(f) Membership of a religion should not be a basis for appointing a person to any State position.
(g) The law should neither grant nor refuse any right, privilege, power or immunity, on the basis of faith or religion or the absence of either.

3. Secular Education
(a) State education should be secular. Religious education, if it happens, should be limited to education about religion and its absence.
(b) Children should be taught about the diversity of religious and nonreligious philosophical beliefs in an objective manner, with no faith formation in school hours.
(c) Children should be educated in critical thinking and the distinction between faith and reason as a guide to knowledge. Science should be taught free from religious interference.

4. One Law For All
(a) There should be one secular law for all, democratically decided and evenly enforced, with no jurisdiction for religious courts to settle civil matters or family disputes.
(b) The law should not criminalise private conduct because the doctrine of any religion deems such conduct to be immoral, if that private conduct respects the rights and freedoms of others.
(c) Employers or social service providers with religious beliefs should not be allowed to discriminate on any grounds not essential to the job in question.

It seems well thought out and leaves little to quarrel with. As a matter of fact, I only have a few peeves.

4.(c). It implies that employers or social service providers without religious beliefs should be allowed to discriminate. The entire point could vanish and have no impact. We do not want any discrimination at all, religious or otherwise.

4.(b) poses problems too. I agree with it 100%. That doesn't help. Let me give you an example. In secular humanism, which is the philosophy this manifesto espouses, humans reason their way from emotion and ego warped values to policy and law. If, for example, bestiality turns your stomach, you can reason and rationalize a legitimate framework for a law banning it. You may not just say "God forbids it." But you can still find a way to make a law against it. If it tickles your fancy to molest a moose, you can reason and rationalize a way to add it to your bill of rights. In the end, it is your values, not their source or your rationalizations that count. If you have a population that is 60-80% Christian, that is going to influence their values. Would you simply ignore the values of the majority because you can claim it is derived from religious dogma?

3.(b) ends with "with no faith formation in school hours." I feel pretty certain that the people who wrote this know it is hooey. There is always faith formation. What they are driving to is a formation of faith that nature operates without the influence of the super natural. Let's face it, that is the distinction between religious and secular education. Whether we operate in a framework of laws driven purely by nature or a framework that includes the effects of the supernatural.

1.(c). "There should be no right 'not to be offended' in law." Offensive behavior is disruptive to peaceful and orderly society. That is why there is a generic 'disorderly conduct' law on the books all across America in every jurisdiction. In America, the 1rst Amendment is limited by several constraints that have nothing to do with religion.

Overall, it's the best declaration of it's type that I have seen.

Argumentative

I've often been accused of being argumentative. I could not disagree. I do like to argue. I think, however, that our definitions are not the same.

To many, being argumentative means simply to be quarrelsome. To divide, drive contention or play the devil's advocate.

In debate, arguments are the facts (or assertions of fact) exchanged to drive a change in perception.

It has been said that people are not stupid, they are ignorant. It is our ignorance that drives most of the divergence between our perspectives. In America, where our school systems' curricula are locally driven, there is not a strong degree of common knowledge. That is one possible factor in our intractable debates.

A professor James Fishkin of Stanford University developed something called Deliberative Democracy. He directed or advised 22 deliberative polling events. In these events, a random sample of people were polled on contemporary issues. Using those as a baseline, the group would gather and discuss the issues and be provided briefing materials to educate the group on the issues in question. It was found that as the individuals became better educated on the issues and discussed them more with the group, their initial responses shifted to a more unanimous response.

I liked hearing people talk about their experience with deliberative polls in California recently...

This event was a wake-up call about how out-of-touch I really am from California politics.

I consider myself to be educated and relatively informed, but as a young, busy - VERY busy - mom who relies on Facebook posts for most of my news, I realized ... I was just totally disconnected from politics once the polls closed and the excitement went away.

Leading debate in a useful manner is my hope. Far from the current problem as outlined by political scientist Jacob Hacker...

The result [of ignorance] is a society in which wired activists at either end of the spectrum dominate the debate—and lead politicians astray at precisely the wrong moment.

Every economist knows how to deal with the debt ... But poll after poll shows that voters have no clue what the budget actually looks like.

When ignorance, hate mongering and fear mongering drive the debate we can only be driven farther apart far from consensus or valuable conclusions about policy.

As a really good example, we can find that raising the taxes and closing loopholes for people with large incomes is a necessary policy without first promoting hatred of the people affected.

I don't think of myself as a breeder of contention but rather a champion of clear rational thought. A promoter of honest debate. A fanboy of productive political debate.

Ego

It's my belief that a well composed argument is free of a debater's ego. So free of their ego that you cannot tell what their position is on a topic other than what a rational, logical and realistic conclusion to an agreed upon set of premises is.

This is how I like to roll. I think it might work too well. So well that even my own family does not know what my values and opinions are from what I write.

Even though I believe that is how an argument should be conducted, it does not mean that an editorial of sorts revealing my own thoughts and opinions should be forbidden. I hope to share as thoughtfully as possible what my opinions are on a variety of subjects with this post.

Politics. Am I a Republican or Democrat? I am not registered as either. I consider myself Independent. I, like probably most youth, had liberal leanings when I was younger. Some of my ideas sounded communist to the people I talked to. The wisdom of time and experience has matured my perspectives and expectations of reality and my leanings have shifted far enough to the right that I no longer consider myself as having a leaning at all.

Taxes and Budget. I was not a fan of Clinton. I thought it a shameful disgrace that he should be elected president at all after dodging the draft and he did not fail to live up to an expectation of continued embarrassment and shame at the way he conducted his affairs (even literally) while in office. However, I have no complaints with the 'Clinton Era' budget. I use 1997 as the golden standard. The budget was close to being balanced (about .3% of GDP more was spent than we had in revenue) and I thought the spending (as a percent of GDP, about 20%) reflected a proper re-investment in America's values.

Bush, Taxes and Budget. I have a chart. I am not linking to it here, but I will in another post if anyone is interested. In this chart, it demonstrates (to my mind) that the Bush tax cuts demonstrated that tax cuts can indeed promote economic growth. However, they also show that the cuts were too deep to be offset by the increase in revenue they created. Bush did not spend a great deal more than he should have (spending stayed very close to the 20% of GDP that I endorse), but it was not always spent in a way that I think reflected general American values.

Obama, Taxes and Budget. Again, my chart demonstrates what I am going to say, ask if you want to see it in pretty lines instead of words. Spending greatly exceeds the 20% of GDP that I endorse. GDP is, at best, stagnant while spending is through the roof. Revenue is at a terrible low, thanks to a recession and... drum-roll... unsustainably low taxes. One of those, maybe not so rare, cases where both Republican outcries of excessive spending and Democratic outcries of not enough revenue generating taxation are correct. Obama promised a lot coming into office and he has appeared too weak to deliver on most any account.

Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq was a wrong war to get into from the very beginning. I have been saying so from the very beginning but my voice carries no weight with any decision maker. I feel, from an ethical perspective, that when you aggress against someone it carries a responsibility. We cannot accomplish what our responsibility dictates because our goals are not appropriate to do so. We, in my opinion, need to get out of Iraq completely. Afghanistan is no better. Our reasons for going to Afghanistan were irrational and emotional. A war there serves only to put into practice untried training and equipment at the cost of foreign lives and interests. It does not serve our foreign interests nor are we honoring an American value to help others. So, while value can be found in putting our military through practical maneuvers, the non-monetary costs exceed the value we find in continuing. Again, get out.

Homosexuals in General, Marriage and the Military. Homosexuality as an expression of sexual orientation is nobody's business. Any policy made to promote or demote an expression of sexual orientation is a violation of civil rights and should be avoided as such. Even the idea that a law might need to be passed to allow marriage between same sex partners is ludicrous. There are military people who do not want homosexuals to serve with them. There are also people who do not want blacks, women, Muslims, etc to serve with them. None of their prejudices have any merit.

Religion. I am, myself, irreligious. I believe that religion is an emergent expression of the complex human brain. It is both fictitious and real, much like centrifugal force is something fictitious, but has a measurable and calculable effect. The question of whether God exists is nonsensical while the concept of and issue related to (for example) the Catholic Church are real and meaningful to humans.

Religion and [anything else]. Religion is a human expression and therefore most humans have to deal with religious involvement. When our values are incompatible with a religious value it causes anxiety. That anxiety can express itself in a lot of ways, but we commonly see it as expressed as a rejection of a religion as a whole, or an attempt to reject the 'offending' personal value. If I were to be asked, "Kelly, my [personal value] is against religious doctrine, am I right? Is [x] religion wrong?" The first question is usually pretty easy to answer. Any self-image is ok if you are not hurting someone else, no matter how immoral another person might feel you are. I even might find my stomach turned, but that doesn't make you wrong. The second question, again, is nonsensical. The correctness and authoritive weight carried by a religious belief is fictitious. Ignoring or adhering to religious doctrines might carry real consequences, but that is a consequence of being part of a society.

Religion and Science. Really, this issue is so blown out of proportion. The idea that religion is (generally speaking) anti-science is mostly born of ignorance and myth propagation. If anything, I would say that religion has made science the respectable and disciplined craft that it is today (barring politically motivated shameful examples from recent news). A good example is one often sited to bash religion while actually serving to demonstrate my statement. That is the example of Galileo. It is often said that the church tried to stifle science by silencing Galileo and condemning his discoveries. Far from the truth, the Church endorsed Galileo's discoveries and the mathematical theory of heliocentrism (which was not in fact Galileo's). By the time Galileo managed to get the theory suppressed, it was about 90 years old and taught in universities. Galileo believed himself to be ordained by God to make his discoveries and reinterpret scripture with what he learned. The church insisted on scientific proof before considering the reinterpretation of scripture. It can be said that no proof was good enough for the church and that would be both reasonable to say and reasonable of the church as all proof offered by Galileo was wrong! The church finally adopted heliocentrism before even the proof it had required was available. But their demand for proof, I believe, pushed natural philosophers (now called scientists and physicists) to be more rigorous and clearly define the difference between a theory and a fact and develop the scientific method.

Immigration and Illegal Immigrants. Let them all in. Except criminals. Everyone wanting to come to America should be welcome, with the caveat that they provide complete identification (including fingerprints and DNA) and that they be deported to their country of origin should they commit a criminal offense. Anyone willing to come to America to make a better life for themselves is our kind of people. Respect and rejoice!

Crime and Overcriminalization. We are greatly overcriminalizing! At the very least, we need to observe a clear difference between what kind of laws we are creating and how we should respond when that law is violated. The first, criminal behavior with criminal intent. These are people who hurt other people on purpose. They should, as is done, be tried by government agents and through proper Judicial procedure have their rights as citizens abridged. Criminal behavior without provable criminal intent should be handled the same as with criminal intent with punishment possibly suspended or even deferred. Laws designed to curb socially harmful behavior that have monetarily detrimental effect should be tried as civil cases only, tried appropriately and punished with nothing greater than the provable cost to the harmed party. Finally, laws (if society deems them necessary) designed to curb behavior that does not directly harm other people should only be enforced by social groups whose authority is voluntarily agreed upon by members of the society they serve. The results of violating those laws should not exceed corrective action that brings the perpetrator into compliance. That means, in effect, an armed sheriff should not show up to tell you your hedges exceed local policy. You should not be fined or arrested for it either. The same should be said of smoking pot in your living room.

Citizenship and Constitutional Rights. Citizenship should not be a right, but a privilege. Children should grow up protected. All adult immigrants (everyone not a citizen should be considered an immigrant except Native Americans on tribal properties) should have universally recognized rights. You want more rights? Like owning firearms or engaging in political activity? Become a full citizen. 2 years military service and a citizenship test! There are more immigrants who know what it means to be an American citizen than there are American citizens (not fact checked, just throwing in my wild estimation). Don't get all scared-y cat on me. Not the same military service as our wonderful, all volunteer service. Basic training, drill, learning a skill useful to defending the society you value. Give it two years and then move on to enjoy the civilian side of the society you served or re-up into the full voluntary service that might get you killed.

Capitalist or Socialist. I endorse socially responsible policy. Even though it comes with some soul-searing strings attached, I support the desire for freedom, independence and self-reliance typically characterized by parties in a free market. I am a product of one of the most socialist sub groups in America, the Armed Forces. Although a high number of the membership is paid at or near poverty levels, every member enjoys housing, the utilities necessary for housing (such as electricity, gas, water and sewage), food, unobstructed access to free health care, dental care and eye care. Plenty of other services are also provided such as free training, legal assistance and security. It works really well, but it's not for everyone.

Post is long enough. If you really want to know, ask. I will tell you my real opinion on any topic. I'm not that shy. But if you try to guess from the arguments I post, you are likely to misthink you know who I am.

Sucker Punch

I hate it when people get suckered by emo-political editorials. Therefore, I feel compelled to examine an article that has had that effect on thousands.

The article in question is Why Americans are so Angry written by Senator Sanders in the Huffington Post.

I won't argue whether his editorial is spot on about why American's are angry or not because I would have to be able to read minds, 308 million minds, to be sure. Let's just assume that everything he says really does make Americans angry. Is what he says makes them angry true? Or, more importantly, is he really on our side?

In my opinion, this article serves only one purpose. It feeds into the popular hate myths of Americans to make you feel that Senator Sanders deserves your support. He is on your side, feeling your pain. It is a political maneuver and it deserves to be resisted on those grounds.

First, I will give a readers digest condensed version of what he says. Republicans and Democrats are all wrong and messing up the country. I'm on your side. Yep, that's it.

Specifics:

The rich are getting richer. Their effective tax rate, in recent years, has been reduced to the lowest in modern history. Nurses, teachers and firemen actually pay a higher tax rate than some billionaires. It's no wonder the American people are angry.

The popular straw man, 'the rich.' A poorly defined target for the common man to funnel his angst against. There are two things to point out about this paragraph. First, while the rich are getting richer (and there really can be found nothing wrong with that) Americans in general are getting richer. Our poor are wealthier. Our middle class is wealthier and our rich are wealthier. Second, the paragraph shifts from generalities to specific cases while leading the reader to feel the statements still apply generally. While I am sure there are some billionaires who found loopholes that allow them to pay a lower effective tax rate than nurses, teachers and firemen this is generally not true and is not something that should generate ire at all wealthy people.

Many corporations, including General Electric and Exxon-Mobil, have made billions in profits while using loopholes to avoid paying any federal income taxes.

This is true and are specific cases that can be addressed. The senator could do more for Americans by proposing bills that close these loopholes than drumming up empty support for a politician proposing no bills to address this issue at all.

The sum of all the revenue collected by the Treasury today totals just 14.8% of our gross domestic product, the lowest in about 50 years.

Again, what is wrong with this? Nothing exactly, but it is lumped with other material that would lead you to believe that we are drawing too little revenue because of tax loopholes. Not true at all. Senator Sanders may be innocent of deliberately misleading his readers, but it is misleading. As a percentage of our GDP, our revenue is lower because our tax rates are lower. Tax rates have dropped over the last 50 years because we are wealthier and can afford to function on a smaller percentage of our productivity. This year, our revenue will be 14.4% of GDP, the lowest it has been since 1950. 50 years ago, in 1961, it was 17.8%. However, actual tax revenue has risen from 94.4 billion current dollars to 2.1 trillion current dollars.

So...we are taxed less but have more. Is that really something to stir up animosity about, Senator Sanders?

In the midst of this, Republicans in Congress have been fanatically determined to protect the interests of the wealthy and large multinational corporations

The Republicans in Congress have been fanatically determined to protect the interests of all tax paying Americans. While Democrats have spun the extension of tax cuts to the middle class as 'The Obama Tax Cuts' and the extension to cuts for the wealthy as Bush Tax Cuts, they were all Bush Tax Cuts. They were all extended during the Obama administration's term.

A lot of confusion has been sewn about the issue but Republicans introduced tax cuts for everyone. Democrats want to end some of the tax cuts. No one made unilateral tax cuts for the wealthy. This segues into...

If the Republicans have their way, the entire burden of deficit reduction will be placed on the elderly, the sick, children and working families.

More hogwash. Not a single fact supports this. In 2007, the last year for which I have reliable data and four years after the Bush tax cuts, the tax group identified by Senator Sanders paid only 3% of tax revenue. 85% of the tax revenue was paid by the top 25% earners. Republicans want ALL Americans to pay less taxes, not just the wealthy. The wealthy, even with tax breaks, still carry the country's tax burden on their shoulders.

The Republican plan with the tax cuts was to give people a chance to do more with their money, hopefully causing an overall increase in revenue with a lower overall tax rate. It actually worked. From 2003 to 2006, the tax revenue from the wealthy doubled even though their overall tax rate was reduced.

President Obama and the Democrats have been extremely weak in opposing these right-wing extremist proposals.

Obama and the Democrats have been weak in resisting proposals they are not in favor of, which is puzzling as they have had the numbers to bulldoze through whatever bills they want. However, while it is largely in the eye of the beholder, I would not consider tax cuts to be 'right-wing extremism.' Sometimes people use terms so much they loose their meaning like the prolific use of terms like rape, slavery and terrorism.

Although the United States now has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major industrialized country...

While this may be true, again it is not a problem on it's own. If the poor were getting poorer so the rich could get richer, that would be morally reprehensible. However, everyone is getting wealthier in America, generally speaking. Humans have an innate sense of fairness. We perceive that the system is unfair if some people have more than others. However, our system was set up to allow people to achieve to the best of their abilities. Through skill, environment, luck, whatever, some people are achieving a great deal. Instead of hating them for achieving more than us, we should congratulate them on what they achieved. If we are actually unhappy with our own achievements, we should recognize that as an unrelated circumstance that we can personally address without attack other people.

Democrats have not succeeded in getting any new revenue from those at the top of the economic ladder to reduce the deficit.

If he means that Democrats have not succeeded in get new revenue as a percentage of their income, that is true. If he means that they have not gotten more revenue in terms of real dollars, that is not true on a federal level. Now at a state level, exactly what you would expect to happen happened. Some states increased their local tax rate on the wealthy and the wealthy moved to another state, lowering their overall tax revenue while increasing the tax rate. Why that lesson from the states does not trickle up to the federal Democrats is beyond me. It is a special kind of naive to say "This doesn't work anywhere else, but it will work for me!"

Instead, they've handed the wealthy even more tax breaks. In December, the House and the Senate extended President George W. Bush's tax cuts for the rich and lowered estate tax rates for the wealthiest Americans.

The extension to 'The Bush Tax Cuts' (which I remarked on earlier in this post) is not 'even more tax breaks.' They are the same tax breaks since 2003. The estate taxes were lowered, as they have been over and over, from a max of 55% in 2001 to 35% this year. But again, the tax cuts are for everyone, not just the wealthy. The wording only serves to stir hate for the wealthy, Republicans for pushing tax cuts and Democrats for not successfully resisting tax cuts. But again, on it's face, their is nothing inheriting bad about tax cuts. Not only does it mean more money in every tax paying pocket, but it has been shown to actually increase overall revenue in the past.

In April, to avoid the Republican effort to shut down the government, they allowed $38.5 billion in cuts to vitally important programs for working-class and middle-class Americans.

What is a vital program and how much it deserves to be funded is food for another blog meal. I would like to point out the clever crafting of words. 'Republican effort to shut down the government." There is not a complete capitulation on either side of the isle. Why is it not referred to as a Democrat effort to shut down the government?" Or an Obama effort, he is actually working out the plans to shut down the government. My protests hardly matter. Not only do I think the Republicans do share an enormous part of responsibility for this issue, Democrats are much better at spin and will always make the Republicans look like they are on the bad side of an issue. Republicans, in this way, are like the parents of the country. They accept that if they are doing their job right, they won't be appreciated for it for years to come. Right now, however, both sides of the isle are more interested in succeeding against each other than they are in the substance of what they are succeeding at. I mention this in my previous post Universal Health Care.

Now, with the U.S. facing the possibility of the first default in our nation's history...

Word games. America is always facing the possibility of it's first default. The fact that we are still waiting for our first is a testament to how well we are doing.

the American people find themselves forced to choose between two congressional deficit-reduction plans.

If we were a Democracy, this would be true. We are a Republic and Americans are not faced with any choice at all. That, I believe is the real source of American frustration. We are powerless. Even when we think we are voting into office representatives who will act in our interests, we find this not to be true and we are powerless to do anything about it. We can either face up to our share of the blame for putting wankers in office and let them get away with what they are doing or we can channel our frustration at convenient targets, like Republicans, talk show hosts, the wealthy, a sibling with different political views, a Humvee owner...

The plan by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, which calls for $2.4 trillion in cuts over a 10-year period, includes $900 billion in cuts in areas such as education, health care, nutrition, affordable housing, child care and many other programs desperately needed by working families and the most vulnerable.

I haven't read the plan but if it's true, it's despicable and very un...Democrat. I don't bother grumbling too much about proposed bills though. It is pointless. Let's see what bill gets past, after debated and amended. That is what counts.

The Senate plan appropriately calls for meaningful cuts in military spending and ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But it does not ask the wealthiest people in this country and the largest corporations to make any sacrifice.

Exactly what sacrifice does Senator Sanders suggest? If he is referring to tax revenue, far from '[not] any sacrifice', they already pay most of the tax revenue to pay for American excesses. Does he want to harvest rich women's embryos for stem cell research? Oh, no, his voting record shows he is against that.

The Reid plan is bad. The constantly shifting plan by House Speaker John Boehner is much worse. His $1.2 trillion plan calls for no cuts in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

A shifting plan is a sign of a responsive planner. However, both plans are obviously too flawed to be passed. But is Senator Sanders correct in the eyes of Americans? Not cutting funding to two wars is much worse than cutting funding to Americans in need? Although I would like to see both wars end, we desperately need to take good care of Americans, their education, health care and welfare.

While all of this is going on in Washington, the American people have consistently stated, in poll after poll, that they want wealthy individuals and large corporations to pay their fair share of taxes

Promoting more myth. Yes, polls show that American say they want wealthy individuals to pay their fair share. However, wealthy Americans actually pay more than what the average American considers fair, they just don't know it. Instead of speaking truth, he promotes the myth. I discussed this in a previous post called Blame it on the Rich where Sam Harris tried the same intellectual dishonesty.

In other words, Congress is now on a path to do exactly what the American people don't want. Americans want shared sacrifice in deficit reduction. Congress is on track to give them the exact opposite: major cuts in the most important programs that the middle class needs and wants, and no sacrifice from the wealthy and the powerful.

Congress is going to do what it always does. It is going to drum up constituent support by either proposing bills that make them look better or make other people look worse. It is our responsibility to stop feeding into the emotional game and sternly remind our representatives what we want of them, what we are paying them to do. No where does Senator Sanders suggest any solution at all, even contacting your representative. Instead, he wraps up his article with the real clincher...

Is it any wonder, therefore, that the American people are so angry with what's going on in Washington? I am too.

His "I'm with you guys!" Now that we are all on the same side, he has 7,674 Facebook 'likes' and the American people have ... nothing. We are just reminded of all the angst politicians have been feeding into for the last couple of years. At least there is another clear winner. The company that makes ant-acids.