Chris Berman Foreign Policy

Ever notice how schizophrenic our US foreign policy is?  Like a bad politician, we were always "for that dictator before we were against him"!  It's not like our foreign policy is "evil" or the product of bad intent though - the United States has always been well-intentioned enough when it comes to our dealings with other nations.  It's just that we really don't know enough about what we're doing.  There always seem to be a slew of unintended consequences to our foreign entanglements (of course the same can be said for all manner of central planning!)

Take Iraq for instance...  We went there to eradicate Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction" and to stop him from "handing them over to Al Qaeda".  Then, when it turned out that neither of those reasons were valid, we changed it to a Wilsonian "spreading of democracy".  All of those things are well intentioned and noble on their face, but unfortunately, like every big government intervention into volatile areas, reaped all manner of unplanned consequences (more oil contracts for China and more dead Iraqi Christians to name just two.)

And, have you ever noticed how every time we slap sanctions on a country, Russia and China step in and start trading with that country?  Is it because Russia and China are our sworn enemies?  Or is because they are smart enough to recognize large untapped markets when they see them?  I have to think it's the latter.  Of course this leaves all the "experts" scatching their heads and wondering "why do Russia and China always oppose us?"  Well DUH!! 

In truth, our foreign policy can only be described as---to paraphrase ESPN's Chris Berman---"bumblin', stumblin', foreign policy!"

Why Are Conservatives Such Pussies?

I was listening to Mark Levin on my way home from work and he made a statement to the effect that "when conservatives get into office they try to shrink government but when liberals get in they try to grow it".  All I could think was "why are conservatives such failures?"  Nobody's shrunk government in decades!  In fact, government grew exponentially with Republicans in charge of everything!!  It immediately hit me that the reason conservatives are such dismal failures is because they fail to embrace any sort of radicalism for their cause.

Take the debt ceiling debate last year: conservatives had the chance to make a radical change in the way government works... all they had to do was vote against raising the debt ceiling and immediately the federal government would have been forced to live within its means.  But did they do it?  Hell no!  That would be "too radical!"  And the debt spirals out of control.

Now look at the Republican presidential candidates: only one of them is proposing anything close to "radical" spending cuts and the entire Republican establishment can't do enough to distance themselves from him.  All I can say is WTF?  Ron Paul proposes a trillion dollars in real spending cuts and the "conservatives" run and hide!  "It's too radical!"  "We need someone electable!"  And the debt spirals out of control.

What are Romney's proposed spending cuts?  How about Gingrich's?  Santorum's?  Nobody knows because every conservative journalist, every conservative talk-show host, every conservative debate moderator will not ask the question!!  "We can't talk about spending cuts - that's too radical and it might scare people!"  And the debt spirals out of control.

Does God Have Any Potential?

(Disclaimer: These are the ramblings of an amateur philosopher and thus these thoughts -- while new and exciting to me -- have probably been answered thousands of times already by real philosophers throughout the ages.  That said, I’m just going to say them anyway!  So here goes…)

Question:  Would something that is pure actuality necessarily have all active potentiality?

Aristotle defined two types of potencies: active and passive.  Active potency is that which is intrinsic to the thing because of its nature – it requires no external source of activation (an acorn has the active potential to be a full grown tree.)  Passive potency requires an external source of activation in that it is not in the nature of the thing to actualize (a tree has the passive potential to be a chair.)

My thoughts on that are these:  When an acorn becomes a tree -- although it exhibits many physical changes -- its nature does not change.  Thus active potency entails no change of nature.  In fact active potency is derived entirely from the nature.  The two are inseparable.  A thing’s nature entails all that it is and all that is in its nature to do or be.  In fact, it can be argued that the nature is the 'being' and the changes are not 'new beings' or 'changes of being' but rather actions stemming from the 'actual being'.  Thus, when an acorn ‘changes’ into a tree, it is not a change of being at all but rather the acorn acting according to the active potency of its nature.  The development into a tree is the nature of the acorn in action.

Now God is shown, through the five ways, to be a necessary, purely actual being whose essence just is to exist.  God is said to have no potential – active or passive.  This doesn’t make sense to me.  While it is certainly true that God can have no passive potential, I think the case can be made that -- because of his purely actual nature -- God necessarily has all active potential.  If active potency encompasses all that a being can do, then God -- who can do anything that is possible -- has the active potency to do all things.  In other words God has pure active potency.  The acorn can only do the things necessary to grow into a tree, it cannot do things to cause itself to play golf, nor can it read a book.  God, on the other hand could conceivably do all these things.  What’s more, if God has no active potency, then his ability to do anything is incoherent unless he is actually doing all possible things at all possible times – which is itself incoherent.  If God is not actually doing all possible things, all the time, his ability to do so when he chooses must be described as “pure unlimited active potential”. 

Thus, I’d argue, the nature of God -- which is purely actual -- necessarily possesses all active potential. 

[Postscript:  I brought this up in a post over at Edward Feser's blog and he confirmed that, not only has this issue been hashed out a long time ago, but none other than Thomas Aquinas himself said the same thing I'm saying!!!  (See Summa Theologiae I.25.1:)  Thank you Dr. Feser!]

US Foreign Policy: More Big Government

Why is the US taxpayer paying for the "defense" of Germany, Japan, and South Korea?  Aren't these all prosperous countries capable of paying for their own militaries?  Why then is the US taxpayer saddled with the bill? 

Well, it turns out the answer is pretty simple: Like every other government program, our military bases overseas (there are around 900 of them!) are just a symptom of a bloated federal government's constant overreach.  Installing military bases all over the globe is nothing more than big government trying to solve the world's problems.  That's right, not content with solving all domestic problems, our wonderful government has decided that it, (and only it), can solve all of the world's problems as well!  If you're for small government, you should be against the ever expanding role of the federal government - including its expansion into the affairs of sovereign nations around the world that are, truth be told, none of its business!  (Just like most of the domestic problems it is "solving".)

Here's the truth about our military bases overseas: The countries who want us there, don't need us there - they can afford to pay for their own defense; and the countries who don't want us are not worth defending anyway!  In fact there's ample evidence that a lot of our terrorism problems around the globe are generated from blowback due to our heavy handed interventionism.  We would actually be safer if we closed all our foreign bases.  If you doubt this, think of Canada: They are not being attacked by terrorist organizations like we are.  And why is this?  They have the same freedoms and lifestyle the world supposedly hates us for - so it can't be that.  The difference is that they have no foreign bases (that I know of anyway) and a non-interventionist foreign policy so they are not constantly inserting themselves into other nation's affairs.  (Even Canadian big government does not stretch to foreign lands!)

If any of the candidates for President are serious about ending BIG government (and only one of them is), they will pull the theiving hand of government out of our pockets, stop the spread of government into foreign lands, and keep OUR money here at home!

Why I Support Ron Paul

1.       Politics:

Ron Paul doesn’t play politics.  He’s unique in that he has principles that he doesn’t veer from – whether it is politically expedient for him or not.  He’s been saying the exact same thing for over 30 years (the political world just finally caught up to him!)  In short – he won’t flip/flop and he can’t be bought.

2.       Monetary Policy:

Ron Paul wants to restore the US dollar to a fixed value (the gold standard) and end the Federal Reserve’s power to print (inflate) money.  He argues that every time more money is printed, the dollar is devalued and everybody loses!

3.       Size and Scope of Government:

Ron Paul is the only candidate who I can guarantee would shrink the size and scope of government.  He is a strict constitutionalist who believes that the federal government should not be involved in half of the things it has involved itself in.  He is advocating ending whole departments.  He would end the Department of Education (created in the 70’s… just look at our test scores to gauge its effectiveness!) and a whole host of other departments.  His budget plan calls for $1 trillion in cuts the first year.  And these are not “cuts in growth” that politicians falsely call “cuts”; these are real cuts in spending.

4.       Foreign Policy:

Ron Paul is a non-interventionist (he is not an isolationist.)  What that means is that he wants the US to butt out of other nations affairs, but he does not advocate that we restrict trade between private US businesses and other countries.   He is also against all foreign aid. 

5.       Militarism:

Ron Paul would end our military presence in all 130 countries we are currently in (almost 900 bases!) and bring all the troops home to defend our own borders.  He also would not deploy troops unless there is a constitutional declaration of war (something that hasn’t happened since WWII!)  Once there is a constitutional declaration of war however, he would fight that war to WIN IT!!  There would be no long troop deployments with undefined mission goals under a Ron Paul presidency.  (This is probably why he receives more donations from active duty military than all the other Republican candidates combined!) 

6.       Israel:

Ron Paul would end all aid to Israel’s enemies and agree to never sell weapons to a nation hostile to Israel.  He would also cut the apron strings and quit trying to control Israel.  Many have called him “anti-Semitic” because he would end foreign aid to Israel as well, but they don’t consider how our foreign aid hinders Israel’s efforts to attain peace on its own terms.  He is the only candidate who would honor Israel’s sovereignty and allow the Jewish nation to live in its region, amongst its neighbors, in a way that only the people of Israel have a right to decide.

7.       Drugs:

Ron Paul would end the federal “War on Drugs” (States would still have the right to do as they wish regarding drugs.)  His policy would end ridiculous situations like the one in California where federal drug agents are raiding medical marijuana facilities that are legal in the State of California.  One lesson that we failed to learn during prohibition is that whenever you outlaw something popular, a black-market will immediately pop up to profit from it.  When we outlawed alcohol, gangsters made money running booze.  As soon as we legalized it again, the black market disappeared.  We have spent trillions on a war we can’t win and drug cartels are the only entity to profit from it.  It’s time to end the war on drugs.

8.       Other:

There are lots of other reasons I support Ron Paul, but I’ll leave it at that for now.  Any discussion on these issues is welcome!

On "Spending Cuts"

Right now the congressional "super committee" is negotiating over a series of (what Washington calls) "spending cuts".  What they won't tell you is that these are not cuts at all - they are reductions in the growth of government.

The truth is that even the "deepest" cuts being negotiated would cut less (far less as a matter of fact) than a simple spending freeze!!!

They are negotiating an estimated $1.2 trillion in spending reductions over the next ten years - a period in which government spending will automatically grow by somewhere around $6 trillion!!!  So a $1.2 trillion "cut" is actually a $4.8 trillion increase in spending!  By this logic, a spending freeze would be a 6 trillion dollar cut!!!

No wonder nothing gets done in Washington!

A Reasonable Faith

It is reasonable, (as shown extensively by Thomas Aquinas and others), to believe in God.

It is reasonable to believe that God is absolute goodness.

It is reasonable therefore to conclude that all other beings are necessarily less good than God.

It is reasonable to believe that a God who is absolutely good would have to be absolutely just.

It is reasonable to believe that an absolutely just God would have to punish every instance of evil (i.e. lack of goodness.)

It is reasonable to believe that an absolute good and an absolute just God would also be an absolutely forgiving God.

It is reasonable to believe therefore that God would offer a solution that would satisfy both His justice and His forgiveness.

It is reasonable to believe in Jesus.