Memories of the 28th Century

or Some Are More Equal Than Others

I read the news last month (oh boy), and this is the result.
There were two stories (links below) that got my attention for the same reason, and eliminating the issues would be very easy. (Actually, there was a third story that interested me, but for a very different reason.) One had the headline “Judge rules Texas same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional”, and the other bore the headline “Dim prospects for House Republican plan to overhaul tax code.” You would have to read the article to know the details, but both relate to some people getting privileges that not everyone gets. That means that there are violations of the Fourteenth Amendment or Due Process in both.

I may have written (O.K., I certainly did) something before about the problem with the brouhaha about marriage between homosexuals, but the heart of the matter is that married people get privileges that are not given to unmarried people, and that is wrong. Everyone should get the same privileges. There is a side issue in that; to wit, marriage is a matter of state regulation, and the feds have no business getting involved. It is perfectly valid for one state to have no regulation of marriage and another state allowing it only between third cousins. But the easy way to eliminate the problem is to completely eliminate governmental regulation of marriage. I don’t believe that it is. or should be, a concern of government who is interacting with whom. If they produce children, then they should be held to account, but that should not give them move privileges.

Next:
The dim prospects for overhauling the tax code involve which extra privileges they (Congress) will be able to give to whom. If they were to simplify the tax code so that there were no special breaks, then it would work better for everyone, but nothing passes Congress unless everyone gets special treatment. That suggests that Congress should eliminate more special deals, so that things could get passed. I fail to understand why there are any unequal taxes. It seems obvious that if everyone paid an equal rate on everything, then it would be fairer and easier to determine whether anyone was cheating. It would be so easy, that some people who avoid taxes as much as they can would start paying, because it would be so easier to pay than to evade. It could be worded so that it would seem like you, and I were being treated better than those others, but those others would interpret it that they were getting a deal that you and I weren’t getting, too simple for words.

The third article was about a court ordering Youtube to remove trailers for the movie “Innocence of Muslims”, which is a poorly done broad attack on Islam and Mohammed. Apparently it was made by Christian Egyptians, so there are some real problems that underlie the movie, but the movie is amateurish and not well thought out (see link below). It is my opinion that reinterpretation has turned Islam from an excellent answer to Christianity into something that is foreign to the Koran, just as a beginning. I don’t like censorship, but that movie is bad in pretty much every way that I can imagine and in a few ways that I wouldn't have dreamed of. When we get a working time machine we will be able to make a much better movie about the birth of Islam. If the link doesn’t work, when you try it, then wait a while, and it may return. If that doesn’t work, then try Google to see if there are any new locations for it. The link was working a few days after I first copied it, so it may continue to work. The court decision was based on copyright claims by someone who appeared in the movie, so cutting that person completely out should get the whole thing up again.

That was then, and some time later, the matter of the U.S. Civil War (Second War of Independence) came up, as a peripheral matter, and the fact that it wasn't about slavery until Mr. Lincoln started freeing slaves was brought up. That in opposition to the view that has been popularized more recently that the War to Suppress Yankee Arrogance was all about slavery.

Apparently it has become fashionable for the federal government to assume that its powers include everything, regardless of whether the power was given it by the people. This sort of attitude is common among tyrannical regimes, but it is anathema to republics. Vladimir Putin espouses the concept of ever widening powers, and Adolf Hitler was also enthusiastic about it, but Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Calvin Coolidge, James Madison, and many other truly patriotic Americans were, or are, disgusted by government overstepping its powers.

As an individual I prefer that government that governs least, but having no government at all would be inconvenient. There is a big difference between strict constructionism and anarchy, but the federal government seems to see no difference between fact and dream. The federal courts are defining state laws regarding marriage, even though the federal government has no power over marriage. The federal courts are applying prior restraint against a work of art on the basis of a minor matter of possible copyright violation in a small part of the complete work. There has been an ever widening gyre of federal powers since the Civil War that has dragged in more and more powers from the states and the people, and there is no sign that that tremendous whirlpool will be slowing. It would be overkill to mention obamacare in this regard, but most of it continues to go in practice, even though it favors only the insurance companies and has no constitutional basis.

I’m sorry i didn’t post this earlier. I would have, but I spent most of March defeating Influenza and derivative maladies, and I am stronger for having defeated them.



Gay marriage
http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/0...A1P0GI20140226
Tax code
http://www.latimes.com/nation/politi...#axzz2uTXFNXvx
“Innocence of Muslims”
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=cda_1347507079
It appears that all copies have been removed, but I will look again someday.