No Handouts, Part 2

As we approach Christmas, the conservative and religious US is abuzz with tales of the "war on Christmas": the supposed sabotage by the godless left of America's most beloved holiday.

The UK has a slightly more secular version of Christmas, so many people here are shocked to learn that I never celebrated Christmas in the States, and are even more taken aback when I explained that I never received any Christmas presents.

"You didn't even get Hanukah presents?" they ask, horrified, as if a child not receiving gifts within a week of the winter solstice is one of the great possible human tragedies.

The truth is that I don't come from a very presents-centric family. I always got a birthday present, but other than that the general attitude of my parents was that gifts should be earned. If I wanted a new barbie doll, I had better pitch in with chores around the house. If I wanted a new pair of jeans, my homework better be handed in on time. There was no day of the year when I was showered with gifts just because other children in the western world also were.

The irony for me about this whole ordeal is that the "War on Christmas" people are also the faux-libertarian "no handouts" people - the conservatives who believe that under no circumstances should anyone ever be given something they haven't earned or worked for. "Get a job" they say to the recently unemployed who can't afford healthcare. "Why should we help you when you're not willing to help yourselves?"

These people will then go home and, on December 25th, for no particular reason (because a good deal of evidence points to the fact that Jesus was not actually born in December at all) give their kids a bunch of gifts that they in no way earned (sure, they say it's because Santa knows who's been naughty or nice, but do you know anyone who's given their kid a lump of coal?). If that's not a handout, I don't know what is. I'd like to see one conservative parent try to cancel Christmas and make their kids earn their gifts this year. Because if Christmas is truly an American holiday, and America is about working for what you have without any help from anyone else, then what's more un-American than indoctrinating kids into the handouts culture this early in life? Conservative parents should be ashamed.

There may be a war on Christmas, but only because Christmas is waging war on America.

No Handouts, Part 1

I stumbled across another conservative blogger's "no handouts" tirade against Occupy Wall Street the other day. Her argument was that she, an able-bodied, educated, white woman had worked for what she had (well, after she moved out of her parents' house) and that everyone else could do the same. Why should the government have to help out lazy, irresponsible people?

Let's assume for a moment that we do actually live in a world where hard work is rewarded reasonably and laziness is punished (and this is indeed the world that the "no handouts" people are professing that we live in). Now let's watch what happens when a lazy person has a baby. If we truly want a "no handouts" society, that lazy person is not entitled to healthcare for her child, not even when she is pregnant or in labour. She and her child could easily die in childbirth or shortly thereafter. Now ask yourself: does that child deserve to die or live in severe poverty just because it was born to a lazy parent?

If you are like most people, your gut reaction is no (and I should certainly hope it is, particularly if you are a member of the anti-abortion lobby who continually claim that a baby's life is sacred and worth saving. I gather this is true after it is born as well). Clearly in the no-handouts society there should still be some provision for children, right?

And if you still say no, consider this. Parents can sometimes not provide health insurance or healthcare for their children. In a no-handouts society, this means no vaccinations, which means that your kid could be going to school with a little boy or girl with measles or polio. Is that what you want?

Let's now make the assumption that you agree with me, and that in some circumstances, to protect the very vulnerable who cannot help themselves, that handouts are ok. Even if you think that the best course of action would be to take children away from parents who cannot provide for them, that still means public financing of things like orphanages and foster programmes, which is just another form of hand-out, right?

It's hard to know where to draw the line, though, because when do those kids who required assistance suddenly get the plug pulled? When do they become ineligible for support? Is it when they're 5? 10? 18? And what about their parents? How can a mother care for her son or daughter when she is struggling because she is plagued with an illness that she can't afford to treat? Is it ok for her to have a hand-out to allow her to care for her child? Or is that going too far?

So let's take a long, hard look at the no-handouts world.

If you are a hard-working, productive adult, but you suffer a horrible accident that makes it impossible for you to work, if you have not taken the proper precautions and saved up enough money to last you the rest of your life (and assuming that your savings have not been emptied by an irresponsible Enron-like corporation), you will be allowed to die, because as a non-working adult, you are not contributing to society and deserve nothing in return. It does not matter if you are caring for a child, spouse, or ageing parent. They will just have to learn to fend for themselves.

If a non-working parent has a child, that child has no right to health-care and will be allowed to die.

The minute a person becomes unable to work and their savings run out, they will be allowed to fall ill and potentially die.

Aside from the clear moral problems here, there are some logistical ones as well. Some people seem to have assumed that by minimizing handouts, you somehow maximise the productiveness of society. But just think about someone who has a parent fall ill. That person will spend a lot of their own money and time to help care for their parent because they cannot necessarily afford healthcare. They may even work fewer hours or stop working altogether in order to give their parent the care they need. What you have done in that case is make society less productive, whereas if some care were provided for the ageing parent, you would have two people in employment instead of none (the person caring for their parent, and the carer that would then be employed to help provide care). The no-handouts people so easily forget that there are other people in this system, and that depriving one person of help can have far-reaching ramifications.

Ultimately, though, it seems we have lost sight of what the government is actually for.

If I have a great idea and I want to start a company, it doesn't just happen by magic. I might invest a little of my own money to get my idea started, but then I ask people to invest in my idea in order to really get it off the ground. I challenge you all to find more than a handful of successful companies that weren't reliant on investors in the initial stages of starting up (and probably after that as well). We recognise this as a completely natural model for turning high potential into high returns.

The government should exist as an investor, but what it should be investing in is its own citizens. It already does this to some extent. For example, we invest in our own safety with the military. We invest in commerce and communication with roads and other infrastructure. We invest in public health with sewage systems.

To some extent, we also invest in people directly. Public education, no matter how flawed, is meant to invest in the development of individuals to allow them to become productive members of society. These people, however, cannot take advantage of public education if they are sick, or if they are faint from hunger, or if they are secretly working to support their families.

Why is it that the same people who are so willing to give hand-outs to start-up companies, where the success rate is something like 1 in 10, are so reluctant for the government to give hand-outs to its citizens, where the success rate could be so much higher? How are we meant to build a stronger nation if no one is willing to invest in its machinery: the people?

If you look at countries that do invest in their citizens, you will notice that many of those countries are thriving. Those who wonder how China has become so dominant on the world stage need only look at the money the Chinese government has poured into things like education to understand that a short-sighted, tight-fisted view will help no one in the long term. So to the no-handouts people, I say this: it's time we all put a little bit into the investment pot so that we can start seeing the returns.

Rick Perry Strong

I was recently unfortunate enough to view Rick Perry's latest advertising abomination:

Click here to watch (for those with a strong stomach).

Perry's basic assertion is that it's unfair that gays can serve in the military but that children can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.

I barely know where to start.

First of all, Perry confuses active discrimination and freedom of religion. If gays could serve in the military but children who celebrated Christmas were not allowed to go to school, Perry's comparison might begin to approach fair. There has always been a difference, however, between rights we exercise publicly and those we exercise in our personal lives.

Let's briefly make the (in my opinion incorrect) assumption that being gay is a choice. Let's also throw it out there that being Christian is a choice. Actually, practicing any religion is a choice. Religious people make it very clear that their religious choices should not influence how they are treated outside their places of worship, so I see no reason why other personal choices should affect how people are treated outside the home. It makes it even worse that these people have made the choice to serve their country, protecting the very people who think their lives and rights are somehow worth less.

What I'd really like to do, though, is discuss this continual assertion that the school system has somehow made war on religion. This is just simply not true.

Children are free to pray in school, they are just not free to pray in class. At my middle school, there was a Muslim girl, and as our lunch period overlapped with one of the five daily periods of Muslim prayer, the teachers let her use an empty classroom for a few minutes while the rest of us talked about which boys we thought were cute over sandwiches and juice boxes. No one was really bothered by this since she did it in private and never pressured anyone to join her, nor was she ever prevented by the school from practicing her religion as long as it did not disrupt school activities.

My high school had a very strict dress code, including a ban on visible piercings and tattoos. However, this was relaxed to allow for a few nose piercings mandated by some students' religions. There was also a ban on death images, but Catholics were allowed to wear crucifix necklaces. A few Muslim students also worse head scarves to school in what would appear to be a violation of the "no hats" policy. None of these students, however, were prevented from wearing religious clothing or paraphernalia precisely because the school did not want to interfere with their religious choices.

America was founded on the principle of freedom of religion, and that means any religion, including no religion at all. Children are not prevented by schools from practicing their religion, but they are made to do it in a non-disruptive way. Since religion is a personal choice, it is subject to the same restrictions as other personal choices to make sure that the school environment is conducive to learning (for example, I can choose to walk around my house naked all day long, but I think everyone is grateful that myself and others are forced to put on clothes when they go to work or school).

If Rick Perry does want prayer in the classroom, he has to remember that it can be prayer from any religion. That means that while the Christians are saying Our Fathers, the Muslims can be reading from the Koran, the Jews can be lighting Chanukah candles (why should fire and safety regulations interfere with free practice of religion?), and I can be prancing around screaming a Satanist chant if I want to. Is that the public classroom that Rick Perry really wants?

If faith did indeed made America strong, it was the freedom to practice, or not practice, that faith that fed and continues to feed that strength. That means that schools cannot mandate or encourage any particular religion since they are extensions of the government (and indeed non-government schools are exempt from religious abstention). I will endlessly defend the right of others to practice whatever religion they wish, but I will also defend my right not to be encouraged or mandated by anyone, but particularly by our government, to have or practice a religion, because that is my America.

Welcome to the blog

I will fully admit that at one point I viewed personal blogs as narcissistic and unnecessary, but I've changed my mind. Largely, I've come to the realisation that I have thoughts and experiences that I'd like to share, and no one is under any obligation to read them. Hopefully some people will find them interesting or entertaining, at which point I think that my small contribution to the clutter of the internet can be deemed worthwhile.