The elasticity of liberal pick-and-choose morality

Justice Anthony Kennedy delivered the Opinion of the Court in Kennedy v. Louisiana (the plaintiff being of no relation to the Supreme Court justice), the case to determine the constitutionality of using capital punishment as the legal consequence of child rape. Justice Kennedy expressed concern throughout the hearing and wrote in the majority opinion that using the death penalty to punish child rapists would be contrary to "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society." This holds true only if you believe that the death penalty is an indecent punishment for those who commit the most heinous crimes. Who can really argue that cold-blooded murder is more heinous that brutally and repeatedly stealing the sexual innocence of children under the age of twelve? Surely the long-term effects, both physical and psychological, are extremely significant in the pubescent development of adolescents. Why would the child also have to die to make the crime a capital offense?

While Justices Kennedy, Stevens, Souter, Breyer, and Ginsburg are against the death penalty for child rapists on grounds of moral indignation, presidential candidate Barack Obama wants to govern according to the "lowest common denominator of morality," suggested James Dobson last week. What Dobson said of Obama is very apparent when one considers the senator's far-left platform, which includes the permission of partial birth abortions (which even Justice Kennedy opposed in Gonzales v. Carhart, in which his swing vote was the deciding factor in upholding the 2003 Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act). Sometimes liberals defend moral progress (from their twisted position of always looking out for the perpetrator), but other times they oppose laws on grounds that enacting them has a moral appeal without sufficient legal justification. I'm still looking for the legal justification for offering the sustenance of life in prison to those who defile little children. The majority opinion's kumbaya version of the law sure doesn't suffice in the legal realm.

It would be wrong to ban same-sex marriage on moral grounds, but it is okay to offer same-sex marriage on moral grounds. It would be wrong to ban abortion on moral grounds, but it is okay to offer abortion on moral grounds. It would be wrong to ban gun control on moral grounds, but it is okay to enact gun control on moral grounds. These are the arguments of liberals. Of course, their version of "morality" is always something along the lines of "hugs, not drugs" in philosophical strength. Liberal morality is very elastic, too. It expands and contracts just enough here and there to justify its own causes while throwing stones at causes they don't authorize.

In a recent speech, Obama appealed to the Sermon on the Mount to justify his disgust for the Department of Defense, but imagine the indignant response that President Bush would receive from liberals if he were to justify his position on embryonic stem cell research with his Christian faith. Oh wait, that already happened.

Supreme Court upholds Second Amendment

The Supreme Court today upheld the Second Amendment. This is a good day for civil liberties. Thirty years of infringement finally overturned by the highest court in the land. The vote was 5 to 4,  based entirely on conservative versus liberal interpretations of the Constitution, with the swing voter, Justice Kennedy, voting with the patriotic justices. Good work to the Supreme Court, for helping return to Americans freedoms they rightfully had. The Founding Fathers would be grateful for this decision.

This PDF contains the Syllabus, Opinion of the Court, and Dissenting Opinions for District of Columbia v. Heller.

No dollar left behind (in your wallet)

Barack Obama has been talking a lot about the economy: criticizing John McCain for his support of NAFTA, condemning mortgage companies for their recent subprime spree, and expressing his hope that "the rich" will soon pay increased taxes for Social Security and other entitlements. What does Senator Obama really want? He has a real fancy for the idea of the government keeping more of your paycheck than you do.

Obama supporters want "change," and that's about all they can count on once Obama's IRS gets ahold of them. Jerry Funk of Americans United for Change (pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters!) said the following of Social Security:

But our primary mission as an organization, unlike Bush and McCain, is keeping privatization off the table, which would dismantle Social Security as we know it.

I'm having trouble finding the con in dismantling a system that is on the fast track to bankruptcy. From the February 4, 2005, statement from the White House Council of Economic Advisers, which draws upon data reported by the Social Security Trustees, we read that the Social Security Trust Fund will incur operating losses (outputs exceeding inputs) beginning in 2018.  The statement also says that the fund will continue to dwindle until 2042, when it will be bankrupt. This is the system that the Americans United for Change fears dismantling. Privatization is a common sense solution to the financial troubles of Social Security, but Obama supporters are unwilling to accept that the people may have a better idea of how to invest their own money than the government does; to admit such an obvious factor would work against Obama's campaign theme of bigger government, FDR-style.

Privatization, of course, would put more pressure on the wage earner to seek out responsible investment opportunities. This is something that Obama probably does not trust the American people to do on their own, so he rejects the idea of privatization. However, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reports that the expected real (beside inflation) rate of return on government bonds (which are used to expand Social Security earnings) will be 3.3 percent. Meanwhile, the expected rate or return on stocks is 6.8 percent. Furthermore, the Trustees reported that the chance of the Trust Fund stabilizing even with the suggested changes (outside of complete overhaul, or dismantling) is 2.5 percent. It takes a lot of audacity to find hope in those odds.

So what is Obama's plan? By Hillary Clinton's calculation, it includes a tax hike of $1 trillion. Obama claims that his plan only increases taxes on "the rich," but we should know better than to interpret that term intuitively when the Democrats say it because they consistently exaggerate who is counted as wealthy. It would seem that anyone not using a clothesline to dry their laundry is "rich" in the eyes of the Democratic Party.

Inside Obama's economic plan:

• Eliminating the federal income tax for 10 million Americans.
• Increase the minimum wage and bind it to inflation.
• Increase the Earned Income Tax Credit.
• Expand the rights of labor unions.
• Force taxpayers to fund up to 50 percent of daycare expenses for "low income families."
• Force and encourage various programs that function in increasing paid leave from work
• Limit the rights of citizens and credit card companies to form contracts concerning the issues of interest, fees, and payments, instead imposing a "Credit Card Bill of Rights."
• Build a fund to prevent home foreclosures.
• Force taxpayers to help pay the mortgages of 10 million families who mostly earn less than $50,000 per year, the tax credit being $500, the total being a $5 billion loss in taxes from those who probably also qualify for other programs intended for the bottom 10 million families in America.
• Refer to lenders as "predatory" to take away accountability from people who refused to analyze their income and budget prior to signing a contract with a mortgage company.
• Amend NAFTA.
• Simply tax forms, with the promise that they can be completed in five minutes, with an expected decrease of $2 billion in earnings for tax preparation firms. (That sort of detracts from his promise of job creation!)
• Criticize the Bush tax cuts for giving more money back to those who pay more. (Even "duh" does not convey the message well enough.)

Many other aspects and details are not included, but this gives a general idea of what Obama wants to do to America and its economy. He wants to charge "the rich" with the responsibility of caring for "the poor," especially the bottom 10 million families in the nation. His ideas are fundamentally communistic in nature, and they rehash very painfully the FDR/toying-with-Stalinism phase that we should be grateful to have behind us.

The specific effects Obama's tax plan would have on "the rich" (whoever they are) is alarming, even from the perspective of someone who is very unlikely on that list of envied individuals.

• Some wage earners in high-tax states paying up to 60 percent of their incomes in taxes to one government or another.
• Replace the $104,000 Social Security tax cap with removal of the cap above incomes of $250,000.
• Accompany the Social Security tax hike for "the rich" with an increase in other entitlement taxes.

I'm all for people paying their fair share, but I see nothing fair in a system that requires well-to-do people to toss away more than half of their hard-earned monies into a pot that only the allegedly destitute get to eat from. It's Stalinism, no matter what you think of it. It's communism, and there is nothing that you or anyone can do to get me to vote for Obama. I have aspirations for my future that are wholly incompatible with the Obama tax plan. I plan on working hard for my family and my posterity, not so I can be another family's baby daddy.