MY VIEWS ON THE WAY
THINGS OUGHT TO BE
Michael T. Griffith
Revised on 03/22/2008
Let me begin by saying I'm neither a Republican nor a Democrat. I'm an independent traditional conservative with conservative leanings on most issues and less conservative views on a few issues. I think the standard labels of "liberal" and "conservative" are too broad, if not inaccurate, in many cases. Must all conservatives oppose all forms of affirmative action? Must all liberals oppose tax cuts? Must all conservatives rubber-stamp whatever big corporations want? Must all liberals support the disgusting practice of partial-birth abortion? Must all conservatives downplay or deny the bad treatment that African Americans have received for decades, especially prior to the 1980s? Must all liberals oppose school choice (i.e., school vouchers or tuition tax credits)? Must all conservatives support the death penalty, with no exceptions? Must all liberals support bigger and bigger government? Must all conservatives support so-called "free trade" policies? Must all liberals believe the Boy Scouts should be forced to allow homosexuals to be troop leaders? Must all conservatives ignore the violations of constitutional rights in the Patriot Act, as well-intentioned as the act might be? Must all liberals oppose voluntary prayer at high school sporting events? I don't think so.
Our Morality
Thirty years ago you would never hear foul language on TV. Forty years ago you wouldn't even hear words like "damn" and "hell" on TV. Hollywood used to produce inspiring, wholesome movies like "Ben Hur," "King of Kings," "The Singing Nun," "It's A Wonderful Life," "A Christmas Carol" and other classics, not to mention the dozens of clean, entertaining movies that Walt Disney produced in the '50s, '60s, and '70s. Back then it was almost unheard of to see men and women living together out of wedlock. Back then most people understood that pre-marital sex was wrong. It wasn't too many years ago that our children prayed in school and were taught basic moral values of right and wrong. The Ten Commandments could be posted in classrooms and hallways, reminding children of basic moral values. The gravest problems facing teachers were students who talked or chewed gum in class. Now look where we are. And what do we have to show for it? What has been the result of our departure from traditional moral values? Broken homes, broken hearts, AIDS, abortion, school shootings, a growing pornography industry, calls for homosexual marriage, and schools that can't even post the Ten Commandments in hallways and that can't even have a voluntary prayer before a sporting event. If we don't return to Judeo-Christian moral values, our society will fall apart and we will lose our freedom. If history teaches us anything, it is that societies that become corrupt and immoral eventually collapse.
The entertainment industry could help by producing
more wholesome movies and TV shows and by cutting back on the amount of
violence, sex, and foul language in movies and on TV. When someone complains
about
I can hear the argument now: "
I'm not saying
Homeland Security and the
I'm critical of certain provisions in the
USA Patriot Act, the bill passed shortly after 9/11 that was designed to give
law enforcement added tools to combat terrorism. Even former conservative
Congressman Bob Barr of
Taxes
Taxes are too high. I favor phasing out the income tax. The argument that the federal government couldn’t function if we abolished the income tax is false. If we abolished the income tax today, the federal government would have the same level of funding that it had about ten years ago because it would still get funding from tariffs, fees, and so forth. I don’t think most people would argue that the world would end if we shrunk back down to the size it was about ten years ago. In order to reduce taxes, we need to shrink the size of government at all levels. We didn't have an income tax until 1913. Some states still don't have an income tax. Taxes should be at the point of consumption, not production or earning. The capital gains tax is an ill-conceived tax that should be markedly reduced, if not abolished. The inheritance tax is unethical and should be abolished. Just because someone dies, the government should not be able to take nearly half of the deceased's estate. Until the income tax is abolished, tax increases should require a 2/3 majority of both chambers of Congress.
It's time to reject the notion that we can balance the federal budget if we just “tax the rich” more heavily. Wealthier taxpayers already shoulder most of the tax burden. For example, according to IRS data, the top 1 percent of taxpayers earn 17 percent of all Adjusted Gross Income (AGI), but they pay 33 percent of total income taxes, and that's not counting the state taxes that they pay. The top 5 percent of taxpayers pay 53 percent of all income taxes while making 32 percent of total income. The top 25 percent of taxpayers pay 83 percent of total taxes while earning 65 percent of total AGI. For their part, the bottom half of taxpayers pay only 3.9 percent of total federal income tax receipts.
Affirmative Action
Most people get jobs through networking, not on the basis of their merits, and everyone knows it. There is still too much racism in our society to do away with all affirmative action. Most white Americans have no idea about what many African Americans deal with on a daily basis even today, much less about what they went through in the '50s and '60s. Yes, we have indeed come a long way, but we still have a long way to go. The ugly problem of racial profiling and the scandal of police brutality against African Americans are proof of this fact. I don’t favor affirmative action for the private sector, since the federal government has no right to tell a business who they can and can’t hire, but I do believe that government jobs should continue to include affirmative action in the hiring process.
The Size of Government
The Federal Government is far too big. Billions of our tax dollars are wasted each year. In 1913, federal, state, and local governments combined only spent an amount equal to 6 to 7 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Now, the federal government alone is spending an amount equal to at least 19 percent of the GDP. Total government spending--that is, total federal, state, and local government spending--now equals 35 percent of the GDP. This is a huge drag on our productivity and on our economy as a whole. The number of federal employees has also exploded. The federal government is performing many functions that could and should be done by the states, as the founding fathers intended. I was astounded a couple years ago to see the Democrats in Congress argue that we couldn't afford to reduce federal spending by 1 percent. We could afford to cut spending by 10 percent and still maintain all vital functions of government. Even Jimmy Carter thought about abolishing the Department of Commerce. The Department of Education is another unnecessary agency--it didn't even exist until the late 1970s.
Abortion
Abortion is a disgrace to our country. We don't have much ground to condemn genocide in other nations when we allow hundreds of thousands of innocent unborn children to be killed each year simply because they weren't "expected" or "planned." Only a small percentage of abortions are performed for reasons of the mother's health, rape, incest, or severe deformity. Most abortions are performed simply because the child isn't wanted by one or both parents. Many abortion clinics make it a point not to show the mother a sonogram image of the living child in her womb, so she won't be faced with the reality that she's not just doing away with a lifeless piece of tissue. The abortion lobby, while professing a concern for women, says little about the risks of an abortion nor about the painful emotional side-effects that many women experience after having an abortion. The argument that abortion is not really taking human life because aborted unborn babies aren't "viable" is chilling, if not depraved. Many elderly persons are not "viable" since they can't survive without significant medical assistance. Should they lose their right to life as well? Doctors are able to deliver babies at increasingly earlier times in pregnancy. This doesn't stop most abortion rights advocates from defending the disgusting practice of partial-birth abortion.
Separation of Church and State
For the last 30 years or so, the Supreme
Court has grossly distorted the original intent of the First Amendment of the
Constitution, the so-called "Establishment Clause." The First
Amendment was never intended to be used as the basis for banning prayer and
Bible reading from our public schools. Nor was it ever intended to mean public
schools couldn't hold nativity plays and display the Ten Commandments. Nor was
it ever intended to mean the Ten Commandments couldn't be displayed on and in
other government buildings. The founding fathers never intended to divorce God
and faith from government. Their intent was to prevent any one denomination
from becoming the official church of the state. It is revealing that the first
Supreme Court to ban prayer in school, the
If you want to gain an understanding of
Government Corruption
I reject the view that it's unpatriotic to expose or discuss government corruption. We should ever be alert to exposing government wrongdoing so that our government runs ethically and efficiently and so as to inspire confidence in our public officials. I think we have serious problems with corruption in the Justice Department, in the FBI, in the covert operations division of the CIA, and in the BATF. However, I reject the view that government scandals and misconduct prove our form of government should be changed. I also reject the view that government corruption is justification for violence against the government. We should always remember that it's not the whole government that engages in wrongdoing, but rather agencies or individuals in those agencies who do so. We should also keep in mind that the FBI and the CIA perform valuable missions for our nation, and that most CIA and FBI agents are not corrupt. When we find corruption in those agencies, let's expose it and take care of it, but let's don't get carried away and tar brush all the good people in those agencies who haven't done anything wrong.
It's time to end the sanctions against
Foreign Deployments and Commitments
We should have long since pulled out of
the Balkans. The Cold War is over, but you'd never know it to look at our overseas
commitments. It's time that other large, wealthy nations carry their fair share
of the role of peace keeping in their regions. They'll never do so as long as
we continue to act as the world's police force. I'm not talking about
"isolationism." I'm talking about a common sense approach to foreign
policy that would have avoided the debacles in
Gun Control
I oppose most forms of gun control. I see
no problem with background checks. However, I'm skeptical of the value of gun
registration. Criminals aren't going to register their guns. I reject the
assumption that the availability of guns causes or contributes to higher crime
rates. Recently over a dozen students were stabbed to death by a nut in
Pornography
I was sickened by the recent Supreme Court decision that struck down laws against virtual child pornography. I'm sure the founding fathers never dreamed that the First Amendment would be twisted and misread to protect pornography, especially child pornography, virtual or otherwise. There was a time in this nation when we had tough laws against pornography and when its peddlers were fined or even jailed. Pornography has destroyed lives and ruined marriages. Pornography is addictive. Pornography leaves its viewers with warped, perverted ideas about sexuality and human intimacy. Pornography encourages and glorifies treating women as nothing but mere sex slaves, as mere objects of erotic pleasure. Pornography is eating away at our nation's moral fiber. In a very real sense, pornography is a dangerous, toxic form of pollution. We need to outlaw pornography, period. We used to have tough anti-pornography laws in this country. In the fonding fathers' era, indecent and obscene publications were outlawed, so there can be no claim that getting tough on pornography would be unconstitutional.
Free Trade and Globalization
I'm all for trade, but not at the expense
of our industrial base and not if it means forcing our factories to compete
against foreign sweat-shop factories that pay dirt wages and that have few if
any safety regulations or health codes. Our factories can’t possibly
compete with dirt-wage foreign factories, and they shouldn’t have to do
so. Some large corporations see
Education
As long as there is no competition in our education system, American public education will continue to get worse. The answer is not to continue to pump more and more money into public education. Rather, the answer is to let parents decide how to spend the education dollars that are allocated for their children.
Countries that spend half of what we spend per student have better schools than we have. Most private schools spend considerably less per student than do most public schools, yet private schools provide a better education, and they do so in a moral, safe atmosphere. Yes, teachers should be paid more, but we should also drastically cut administrative costs. There is far too much overhead in most public school systems, not to mention outright fraud. Take a moment some time and compare the administration of a private school association with that of a public school district. In nearly all cases you will see that the private school administration is much smaller than the public school administration, even in relation to the number of teachers and students in the system.
We should make public schools compete for
our tax dollars. At the very least, as a start, we should allow choice within
public school districts.
The Death Penalty
In principle, I'm not opposed to the death penalty. However, I'm opposed to it at this time because of how it's being administered and because of the problem of corruption in law enforcement, which has become so apparent in the last decade. In recent years dozens of people who were on death row have been proven innocent. No one knows how many innocent people were put to death in years past. The death penalty is applied to African-American convicts much more often than it's applied to white convicts. Until our law enforcement system undergoes major reform and improvement, the death penalty should be suspended, if not abolished, except in cases where there is absolute certainty of guilt and where the murder is particularly vicious and brutal, such as in the case of the D.C. snipers.
Patriotism
It has been encouraging to see the
outpouring of patriotism that has occurred all across
Missile Defense
We should continue missile defense tests and research. This research should be verified as valid and cost-effective. If we ever reach the point where we can deploy a missile defense shield, then we can make a judgment at that point as to whether a threat exists to justify deploying the system. We should be prepared to deploy a missile defense system if a threat develops, but let's don't rush to deploy a system that ends up being flawed and wasteful.
Our Two-Party "System"
Neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party is mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. They're not mentioned in the Bill of Rights. They're not mentioned in any of the constitutions of the fifty states. While I'm not willing to say there's "no difference" between the two major parties, I think it's fair to say there aren't a lot of differences between them. At the state and local level, there are often marked differences between the Republican and Democratic parties, but at the national level the two parties are virtually identical on many issues. No matter which party has controlled Congress and/or the White House, wasteful federal spending has continued to spiral out of control for most of the last two decades. In addition, neither major party has taken any substantive steps to end corporate welfare or to curb illegal immigration. Both parties continue to support so-called "free trade" policies like NAFTA and GATT. Both parties support continued funding for the useless Department of Education, which didn't even exist until Jimmy Carter created it in the late 1970s. And both parties continue to do everything in their power to exclude third parties from the political process and even to bar them from taking part in televised debates. Many Americans were outraged that third-party candidates like Ralph Nader, Pat Buchanan, Howard Phillips, and Harry Browne were excluded from all the presidential debates in the 2000 election. These candidates received a combined total of over three million votes (that equals at least 60,000 citizens in every state). I think it's shameful that the presidential debate commission, which controls access to the debates, is controlled by members of the two major parties. I believe that any third-party candidate who is on the ballot in enough states to win the election should be allowed to participate in all presidential debates, or at least in one presidential debate. Ballot-access laws should be fair and reasonable, and not designed to keep the two major parties in power. The Republican Party itself started off as a third party.
The Environment
We've allowed some big corporations to get away with outrageous violations of our environmental laws. We've created glaring loopholes that permit some corporations to pollute and poison at will. Big business interests aren't always in our best interests. Some big companies are absolutely immoral when it comes to taking care of the environment. I see protecting the environment as a valid, constitutional function of government. I believe the EPA needs to be stronger and more aggressive in some cases but also saner and more reasonable in other cases. And it's time to break our dependence on fossil fuels. It's time to start investing some major money into developing alternative sources of energy, such as hydrogen power. I'm certainly all for seeing American businesses grow and prosper, but that doesn't mean we turn a blind eye when it comes to how they treat our environment.
Labor Unions
I'm concerned about the drop in labor union membership. We need strong labor unions, but unions must be ethical as well. Too many companies, if left on their own, will not deal fairly with their employees. Yes, labor unions have a bad reputation among many segments of society. This is because too many labor unions have been corrupt and have been linked to organized crime. Some unions have even squandered the hard-earned pension funds of their members. Many labor unions deserve their bad reputation. But not all labor unions are corrupt. When run properly, a labor union can be a powerful force for good pay and good benefits for its members. I don’t favor forcing workers to join a union. Compulsory union membership only encourages corruption, because then the union leaders know they have a monopoly on the work force. Monopolies are never a good thing, whether they're in education or in private industry. On the other hand, governments need to ensure that private companies don't take unfair advantage of right-to-work laws and that they don't engage in union busting. Too many conservatives dwell on union corruption but say little if anything about corporate corruption, which is often just as bad as union corruption, if not worse in some cases.
Truth in History
I say let's have the truth about our
history and let the chips fall where they may. Myths about our history have
been created by both liberals and conservatives. It's becoming clear there are
serious problems with the traditional versions of events like Pearl Harbor, the
JFK assassination, the
The Boy Scouts and Homosexuals
Twenty or thirty years ago, this issue would have been a non-starter. It is not "discrimination" for the Boy Scouts to want to enforce their legitimate, long-standing moral code. The fact that the Boy Scouts have come under strong attack from some segments of society is one more indicator of just how far we have strayed from basic morality and decency. Homosexuality is unnatural. The Bible condemns homosexuality as a serious sin in God's eyes. I have nothing personal against homosexuals. I've known several homosexuals and have been on cordial terms with them. In fact, a few years ago I had a gay man working in my department. He was a great worker, and he got along well with everyone in the department. I think most of us counted him as a friend. But if he had wanted to be a Boy Scout troop leader and had asked me for my view on the matter, I would have told him his lifestyle was incompatible with the Boy Scout code and that if he really wanted to be a troop leader he should change his lifestyle so as to qualify to hold that position. Again, I have nothing against homosexuals personally, but this doesn't mean I have to justify or excuse their conduct. "Love the sinner, hate the sin" applies here. It's amazing to me how so-called "liberals" who trumpet "choice" on other issues want to take away the Boy Scouts' "right to choose" and want to force the Scouts to allow homosexuals to be troop leaders. What's next, forcing churches to hire gays as priests? The Boy Scouts of America is a private organization and should be able to set its own rules for moral conduct. By any rational, common-sense understanding of the word "moral," homosexuality is immoral. The Scout prohibition of homosexuals is a sound, moral, Bible-based regulation. Homosexuality is a lifestyle--people choose to be homosexuals. The fact that hundreds of homosexuals, if not thousands, have abandoned homosexuality and have become happy, well-adjusted heterosexuals refutes the claim that homosexuality is genetic. No one is "born gay." It is not genetic; it's a sexual behavior in which a few men choose to engage. If the Boy Scouts don't want homosexuals as troop leaders, they have every right to make that rule, and they should be applauded for doing so.
Gay Marriage
Government should not sanction, much less reward, unhealthy, unnatural, immoral behavior. That's why historically western civilization has not granted gay couples marital rights--in fact, rarely has this possibility even been discussed. Marriage, by definition, is between a man and a woman. That's how marriage has always been defined by every major culture, and for good reasons.
If a minor league team "sincerely" wanted to be granted major league status and benefits, the answer would be, "No, sorry, you might be sincere, but you don't meet the criteria for being a major league team." Now, the minor league team would have two choices--either go live in another country or try to have the definition of "major league team" changed to include *any* baseball team that wanted major league status. That's what gays and some liberals are trying to do to the definition of "marriage."
Children deserve to be raised in a loving, normal family, i.e., a family with a husband and a wife. There are certain emotional supports that only a woman can give, and certain other emotional supports that only a man can give. That's why divorce is often so devastating to children. Kids need a mom and a dad. How could we even think of allowing children to be adopted by gay couples? Do we really want young children seeing “mom and mom” or “dad and dad” kissing each other?
"But," the argument goes, "you're denying gay couples the right to live as a married couple like other people." But gay couples don't have any right to be married because they're not man and woman. If gay couples want to live together, that’s their business. If they want to leave each other their fortunes in their wills, they can do that. If they want to grant visitation rights and property disposal or management rights to each other, they can do that with a power of attorney. But marriage is for a man and a woman.
This debate is a crucial test of American morality. Are we still "one nation under God" or are we an amoral country where there are no moral absolutes and where anything goes?
If one believes homosexuality is wrong, then one will most likely oppose gay marriage and will support defending the traditional family unit. But, if one believes homosexuality is okay, then one might see no reason that gays shouldn't be allowed to marry.
Do we as Americans care what God says to us in the Bible anymore? Do we care that God plainly says in the Bible that homosexuality is unnatural and immoral, and that it's a very serious sin? Do we? Or does anything go? Does the Bible not matter in our "public" lives anymore?