Bunker Mulligan "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." ~Mark Twain

If a Muslim dies in the cause of jihad, he supposedly receives 72 virgins in Paradise.

What if he’s homosexual?

Now that the flu vaccine issue has played itself out, it’s time for rational evaluation.

About 20 years ago, the Air Force, and I must assume the other services, made flu shots mandatory for all military personnel. Every year we all got the shot. Last year when I went to Kuwait, I had to get one again. Not once did I ever want one. I still don’t.

Now, perhaps the vaccines have improved to the point where they will protect me from every strain extant. I doubt it. But in the past, it was a crap shoot. Each year a new vaccine would be developed to counter what health officials (whoever they are) deemed were the most likely viruses to be prevalent that year. Most times they were about half right.

In other words, the chances were about 50-50 you might be protected from getting a flu virus if you had the vaccine.

Again, I don’t want to get the vaccine. If I get the flu, it lasts several days and I’m inconvenienced.

The very young and infirm are at some risk if they contract the flu, but the danger is more in not treating it than in contracting it. Getting the flu is not a death sentence. If you get the flu, you see a doctor and get some medication to relieve the symptoms and provide some relief. If you have major medical issues, more drastic action may be necessary.

For some reason, people who refuse to take an anthrax or smallpox shot are insistent that they get a flu shot. Folks, every new year brings a new flu vaccine. It is, by definition, experimental.

Our friends in MSM used to scoff at flu vaccine, and viewed it as a government program gone amok. Now they view it as a necessity which the government is responsible for furnishing. Next, they will insist it should be required of everyone. That may be good. Then the drug companies would know how much to make.

But it would be yet another personal freedom gone away.

Mark Steyn has more on flu vaccine, and Kerry’s plans for government health care, and the war.

Speaking of which, if there’s four words I never want to hear again, it’s “prescription drugs from Canada.” I’m Canadian, so I know a thing or two about prescription drugs from Canada. Specifically speaking, I know they’re American; the only thing Canadian about them is the label in French and English. How can politicians from both parties think that Americans can get cheaper drugs simply by outsourcing (as John Kerry would say) their distribution through a Canadian mailing address? U.S. pharmaceutical companies put up with Ottawa’s price controls because it’s a peripheral market. But, if you attempt to extend the price controls from the peripheral market of 30 million people to the primary market of 300 million people, all that’s going to happen is that after approximately a week and a half there aren’t going to be any drugs in Canada, cheap or otherwise — just as the Clinton administration’s intervention into the flu-shot market resulted in American companies getting out of the vaccine business entirely.

As a Canadian, Mark knows of what he writes.

Every now and then I go back over to see what Noam has to say. Today there are 24 posts on his site going back to May. I have a link for him on my “All My Links” page if you are interested.

I was. After about two days of posting when he first began his blog, he decided to take down the comments capability. He was flooded. Some of it pretty irrational–but that goes with his territory. All that I read that were reasonable took him to task on some portion of his opinion, and many did it quite respectfully and with some thought involved. He never answered a single challenge. He doesn’t have to–he’s Chomsky.

Since then he has added the capability to comment on his posts. You simply pay a small fee, and you are granted the privilege. I thought that was a pretty good idea for an anti-capitalist.

As of today, there is not a single comment on any of his posts.

All his readers must also be anti-capitalists.

What is a sworn oath? Does it have any value?

A friend of mine helped his Boy Scout Troop with a voter registration booth in the local shopping mall. We talked about it in relation to the current registration drives being run by various groups around the country. He said that every adult who handled registration forms was required to swear an oath before participating. They swore to follow the legal directives, and handle the applications properly, and to do nothing to influence people in their party choice or voting options.

He followed the rules completely, and couldn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t. “We had to take an oath! We swore to do it properly.”

For this man, the value of his word is inestimable.

Neal Boortz has a lot to say about this election. In particular, he’s been discussing voter fraud this week–and DNC plans to cause some if it doesn’t appear on its own:

In a Drudge exclusive, the 66-page Democratic mobilization plan says “If no signs of intimidation techniques have emerged yet, launch a ‘pre-emptive strike.'”

I would like to now point out something we all need to consider. I seem to remember that one of our Presidents was impeached for lying under oath. His entire Party rallied behind him, including all of their Senators and Congressmen. Lying under oath was no big deal. We needed to move on. A sworn oath really wasn’t all that important.

Those supporters are many of the same ones who are now out registering people to vote. They are swearing an oath to follow the laws.

Can we really believe they take that oath seriously?

Boortz believes, as I do, that there are still people in this country who value their own oath:

George Bush takes seriously the oath he took when he was sworn in, an oath to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” To protect the Constitution is to protect our country. George Bush believes that the Constitution and his oath of office is all the permission he needs to defend America.

James Arlandson, an educator specializing in world religions, writes today in The American Thinker about Islam and trying to reconcile the violence we all see with the concept of Islam as a religion of peace.

He can’t.

It seems the terrorists and assassins are terrorized by this logic:

(4) If A, then B. If Muhammad was a perfect prophet, he would never order the assassination of poets, poetesses, singing-girls, and an innocent Jewish bystander.

(5) Not-B. But Muhammad did order their assassinations.

(6) Therefore, Not-A. Muhammad was not a perfect prophet.

A couple of weeks ago I posted a statement by the Islamic Society of Southern Texas. They condemned the violence ongoing in the Middle East as an affront to Islam. I asked some of my compatriots in Homespun Bloggers to link to it, and asked for follow-up questions to ask these gentlemen. The folowing blogs answered the call:

Wandering Mind
MuD&PHuD
Mamamontezz’s Mental Rumpus Room
Emigre With Digital Cluebat
The Commons at Paulie World
Solomonia
Serenade
Daisy Cutter
Mr. Minority
Considerettes

I’ve been disappointed with the response. Very few people have offered questions, and I wonder if there is even a reason for continuing to generate a dialogue. Perhaps we have all really concluded, with the dearth of statements such as the one here in Corpus Christi, that Muslims aren’t really sincere in their exhortations that Islam is a religion of peace. I have read the Quran (years ago) and many of the Hadiths. I draw the same conclusion as Dr. Arlandson. That doesn’t please me.

I hate to think it is so. I will continue if Jim wants to. I don’t know if my heart is really in it, now.

One of my favorite sites is Varifrank. Today’s post is one of his best. He speaks of something Alex has covered before, and adds his own touch to.

Europeans, as Mark Twain noted, don’t have any grasp of the soul of Americans. Our system of government is unique in this world. Even our closest allies, Britain and Australia, are governed through a Parliamentary system which awards national leadership to the party in power. And our government is established to make things as difficult as possible for the government to change.

We also have a system where anyone can become President. And Europeans don’t really grasp that.

The audience of the people of Missouri, simply felt they could walk up to have their hats and t-shirts signed and their hands shook by a guy named George.

Who just happened to be – The President of the United States.

One of his commenters added his own touch.

It reminds me of the old joke about a European asking an American in Texas to take him to his master. The Texan spate and said, that son-of-a bitch ain’t been born yet.

I’ve spent a little time thinking about the concepts of left/right, and decided to do some research on the web to find out why we define people one way or the other, and what that really means. I’ve come across a couple of discussion groups weighing the different things that determine where one sits on some graph. And everyone wants to have a graph. For example, the Nolan Chart and others attempt to define axes which place a person’s individual philosophy in a field relative to their strength. Nolan used Economic Freedom and Personal Freedom as his measures, as if the two were distinct. His version of Libertarianism is at the maximum for both, which makes him pure, I guess. I don’t see how any freedom is separated from any other. Without economic freedom, do you really have personal freedom?

The best I can come up with after observing many different cultures, societies, and governments is a one-dimensional plot. Collective is on the left, and individual is on the right. I know the theorists will be disappointed. It should be at least two-dimensional, with maybe even three or four. I agree that probably ten dimensions would be inadequate to explain human philosophy. So, I’ll settle for the simplest way to describe what I see.

I think it fits quite well. The far ends have little to do with the original left vs. right, which was merely a description of where the Revolutionaries and Aristocrats sat in France’s government. And it shatters a few conceptions we’ve all grown to know and love.

For example, I am religious in the same way Dubya is. I have some strong beliefs. Instantly, some would jump up and scream, “Right-wing fanatic!” Hmmm. Perhaps. But religion, to me, is a personal thing. Individual. That does put me to the right on my scale. But my religion is different from that of Jerry Falwell or Osama bin Laden. Theirs are group religions–the collective. That puts them together on the LEFT. Organized religion moves that direction because it is run by human beings. Humans are social, and church is a social affair. And with that, you sometimes end up with folks who like power, and the group environment breeds that. Any group. Union, church, PAC, 527, NAACP, NOW, faculty group. Any group.

Government becomes wrapped up in this for the same reason.

Individuals are often shunned in our society. We don’t know how to deal with them. We want them to JOIN. But people who are individualistic aren’t joiners. In my day, kids rebelled with long hair. Today they do it with tatoos and piercings. Each thinks he is being a radical individualist. No. They’re joining. Just like the “suits” they may profess to hate. But they are free to think they are being individualists.

Our Constitution was written to protect the individual from government interference in his life. The ideal of that document would be my definition of far right. Yet the Founders knew there was no Utopia. So the Constitution provided for a government while limiting its power. That, in itself, moves our nation to the left of ideal. Some cooperative effort was necessary to “provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare.”

Communism, the final goal of socialism, will be attained once a socialist world exists and the need for government “withers away.” Communism and socialism are the same. One has a government, one doesn’t. Both would fall on the extreme left as the collective is everything in those systems. Individuals do not exist. A person is simply a part of the whole. That becomes less and less an issue as you move farther right on my scale. Fascism is the opposite side from Communism of the socialism coin–strong government in a socialistic environment.

So, where do our current political parties lie on this axis? Both are far from the right, as each requires some modicum of group interaction and cohesiveness. Yet the Democratic Party is more apt to celebrate group identification and a person’s merits as defined by their group. “It Takes a Village to Raise a Child.” And it is not surprising that the Democrats have far more groups who support them. They believe that the government is better able to provide for the common welfare–not just promote it. In this way they are closer to the socialist parties in Europe.

Republicans fall somewhere between Democrats and the Constitutional mandate, although they also promote many things which could be called collective.

So, when I write about the left or right, understand that my perspective has more to do with a person’s view of individual rather than group liberties. I find groups abhorrant, and avoid them whenever possible. I’m not a joiner.

And when it comes to politics, on my scale I’m farther right than either political party.