Tag Archives: Obama

Healthcare and the Human Body….

Posted on September 10, 2009 | 1 comment
 Last night I listened to President Barry Soetero — Barak Hussein Obama present his address to the Joint Session of Congress gathered to hear him adress the need and his pertinent plans for healthcare reform.  I also listened to Representative Charles Boustany M.D. who delivered the Republican response.  It was a worthwhile way to spend a little time as they left me more informed than I was before. I certainly have a clearer idea of what the parties are out to achieve and what they are   most opposed to at this time.
Representative Boustany is the member of Congress for my own Seventh Louisiana Congressional District. We do not really know eachother but we also have several close indirect personal connections. I think he is a fairly good and serious man.  He did discuss wellness and health which is very important in my proposal. The values of wellness and health have not gotten much attention in many other plans. Not in my view anyway.
I think an understanding of the body as more than a vehicle for disease and medical bills is essential to formulating good policy. So I am attaching an old Facebook post on the subject.  
This post first appeared on my Facebook page on
Wednesday, April 15, 2009 at 3:52pm
My physical health this week has been pretty bad while not being too bad for me to write a Facebook Note. It is probably mostly because of this kind of physical illness that I am writing about the body. My parents have each had some kind of cancer scare recently. I have no health insurance. A life time of adventures leaves my body mapped with scars and if I look around I can find lots of reasons to wonder how long my body will hold together. I worry too about others and take an interest both in sports and in many other forms of physical activity. So I am writing a rambling and incomplete note about the body.

Humanity and the human body have been discussed at very great length by a very great number of writers. I am writing this series of Facebook notes not so much becuase I am confident that my doing so will add greatly to the total dialog or body of knowledge but more because I must do all I can for reasons not always easy to explain. Although 44 is hardly ancient, I have reached a stopping place in a very long and arduous journey. This is drawing upon a year of writing these Facebook notes. About the time my birthday rolls around it will be a good time to have completed this series of My Thoughts about a good number of topics. In one year one can map out a good bit of one’s mental and spiritual landscape. My own journey through this year has been aided by writing these notes which have been more personal than anything else which I have treated as much like a publication.

One aspect of the human body which is among the most important I have addressed a bit in an earlier note adressing the subject of Manhood. I hope that I am soon able to address the subject of Womanhood in another note similarly devoted to the subject. It seems abundantly clear to me that among the most important things about the human body is that it comes in two types we call sexes which cut across or organize all other types very significantly. We call this pair of types the sexes. But in this note I am dealing with sexual differentiation only very incidentaly.

The human body is of course at the very personal level of things one can discuss. The problems and concerns of society are more removed from our most personal concerns and feelings. Life impinges upon us very distinctly when it is made physical. Most people, if they are honest even with themselves find rape a much more certain and definable crime than sexual harassment. They find battery more easily pictured and more likely to be fairly punished than “intentional infliction of emotional distress”. The fabulous wedding ceremony and public anouncement are all well and good but it is sexual intercourse that consumates a marriage in most societies. Sickness is recognized as an excuse for absence from work far more often than most excuses not involving bodily impairment. We live in an age of movies, the internet, telephones, faceless bureaucracies and corporations that deal with hundreds of millions of strangers and we still recognize how real things become when they affect our bodies. It seems very likely that people living through all of the many other human generations were far more tied to the significance of the body than most of us are today.

Any experienced proclaimer of the Christian faith knows that– while many Christians disagree on how to express what Christ was doing in the Crucifixion, why he was doing what he did and what it meant to God and Man– all are agreed that it is intrinsic and essential to the story that Jesus was in great physical pain and that he laid down his bodily life and was executed after being sentenced to death. Both death and a very physical suffering are essential to the redemptive mystery of Jesus Christ. Jesus who fed and healed so many bodies in the course of his ministry of teaching and preaching was subjected to the grim arts and sciences of those devoted to destroying bodily health and integrity. Had Jesus simply been humanely poisoned like Socrates then Christianity would be very different indeed. Perhaps it would be nearly unrecognizable.The horrific violence of his death and his ministry of peace and healing are so poetic a contrast that they can be somehow distorted and exagerated. We can and indeed have lost sight of the other violence on Jesus’s side of the picture and the violence of third parties. But the physical violence he suffered is indeed essential to the whole story.

Michel Foucault, who was among other things a French Philiospher and cultural critic of some note, has given us a number of books which show the bodily aspect of social and cultural development and of political history. One of his books “Sex, Power and the Politics of Identity” focuses on how sexual understandings of the person and the body create a set of connections between political power and sexuality. Two of the other books are “Discipline and Punish” and “Madness and Civilization”. Foucault takes care to show how power over bodies is a vital part of the development of all real power structures. I think that I am aware of my own body slipping away from its maximum and best capacities and uses in very many ways. I am just so very far from feeling good even at times when I do not feel bad. But I do relish the times and ways in which I do feel well. For me and for many of us the body provides a sort of counter which like an odometer in a car records the mileage put on the vehicle. On the other hand, like a counter to a space launch it counts down minutes of vitality. We may have fortunate times when we are not so aware of trhe aging process but mostly we are aware of it. Life gets harder and less comfortable and the potential for doing any good dimiishes. This is not everyone’s experience. Although all who survive age, not all perceive it the same way. “Life is hell” may be a sincere exclamation for many but certainly not all. If one is happy in other ways the small inconveniences of aging are not such serious detriments. If one is fully engaged then life seems to go on tolerably apace.

I am wrting part of this having no room that is an office of my own and lying across the bed in a room which has ankle braces, a variety of nonprescription medication, reading glasses and other things remind me of how much goes into the small and somewhat shabby production that is getting me into each day and through its list of demands. I am grateful for these helps and for the decent mattress which is better than some I have had over the years. I would love to live near a practically swimmable body of water every day (and if the water is right then swimming is more or less the only exercise I can do daily). But I do some walking on the days when my feet are not excessively swollen or otherwise out of form. Of course the more I am able to walk and do so the fewer times these feet are out of commission. With ear canals damaged by years of altitude changes, firearms, infections, loud music and loud cities I cannot swim in our fish pond. Only the salt seas and swimming pools will work for me.

I have felt a lot better than I do today. Today I am in a good amount of pain. When I can, I often take Glucosamine for my joints, saw palmetto for my prostate, at least one decongestant, sometimes cough syrup, aspirin and ibuprofen for pain, an herbal mix for weight loss, a coenzyme for cardio-vascular health and a mutli-vitamin. This routine of pill taking joins with my ankle braces and reading glasses as a daily reminder of how much I am struggling to maintain what is not a great level of health and fitness in the first place. I have had years when I was in better condition and years when I was in worse condition. However, the function and development and idea of the human body have long been of interest to me. I am much better for the time I devoted to athletic and fitness pursuits. However, I am not even average in a variety of ways. working out for me has always been something that produced mixed results. One of the fascinating things about having some distinct physical limitations throughout one’s life is that one is able to see the world through a separate lense.

I will probably mess up the classic formulation, but in China a scholar was expected to be able to play chess, master calligraphy, create brush drawings of hard to reach sites and master the martial arts. While such a classic Imperial formulation may have been cruel to those genuinely gifted in some areas but challenged in others it did produce a great deal of the beauty, balance and productivity of several of China’s golden ages. As with the Western Renaissance I think we need to re awaken those balanced forces as values. There have been times when I at least approached these ideals — perversely as I write this bit of advocacy I am very far from such wholeness. My body is on the whole a bit run down and it has never met everyone’s standards although it has proiven satisfactory to me and many others on many occasions and in various measures.

When Jesus healed people it is mentioned sevderal times that those around him asked whether the person was sick or injured because of the injured person’s own sin or because of the sin of their parents. It seems to have been one of Jesus’s principal preoccupations as a teacher to distinguish physical infirmity from moral turpitude. Jesus’s own stance and examle is scandalous at times to a world which in so many ways is medically defined and dominated. He did order people to receieve the certified medical examoinations, did encourage exercise, warmth and full stomachs for many who would not have had them. However, there is no doubt that the historical Jesus was aware and a bit defensive about the fact that in someways he encouraged lower standards of hygiene than other religious leaders in his tradition. Despite exigent circumstances this is the one part of his legacy where I in good conscience have found something to agree with in the claims and criticisms of his critics and even enemies. I believe Jesus brought a lot of clean order to a messy world but he also exposed many to meesy and filthy parts of the world they might otherwise have been able to avoid. Jesus was far beyond almost anyone else’s courage and engagement with the wastes of the world in many senses. He must be portrayed as someone who rejoiced in and understood the body. He lived a life in the world of feasts, the desert, the seashore, grain felds, capentry, fishing boats, The Great Temple, woman and children. His body was engaged in his life, work, thought and ministry. It was not by turning off the body and the brain that he would find his way to heaven and lead his flock to heaven. Rather he said to those living active lives, the kingdom of heaven is within you.

His cousin John he often praised and John may well have spent some of his life as an Essene Monk. These wouldbe among the very few Jewish Monks in the history of Judaism. Jesus himself would often slip off alone to pray. But just as Jesus does manifest some of the qualities and experiences of the type of king who lives all his life in a palace and yet he is nothing like them in many ways so it is with monasticism. Jesus is the monk-like seeker of prayer and solitude who endures fasting. But Jesus integrates this with much more of his life’s many assets and aspects. He is in the world but not of it. But he is no less in the world. Jesus is no libertine but is sometimes thought to be one, he is very much one committed to living his life through physical experience. I myself was once very attracted to the life of Christian monasticism and I respect many teachings learned from Buddhist monks. The great Kung Fu and Zen traditions of Buudhist Monks in China and Japan respectively are powerful examples of the Body being magnificently developed even as it is constrained and disciplined.

When I taught in China I often tried to discuss the connections, contrasts and similarities between China’s ancient martial arts regimes and the Olympic Games which had just been played in Greece and would next be played in China. Watching the Olympics in Beijing was a powerful eperience even though I watched on television from the United States. I saw China struggling to find the fullness of what it can be in the future drawing on what it has been and what it can see as possible. I still love the Olympic tradition. As much as I enjoyed the recent NCAA Men’s basketball championships we call March Madness the Olympics is so much more. Amid so many idealistic and varied stroies we are bound to find one that inspires us.

Today my foot pain and fatigue and the last edges of some respiratory illness nag at me. I wonder if the nails, dog’s teeth, exotic insects, snake’s venomed fangs or crushing wheels which have injured my already imperfect feet during my life have left some additional microbial or neurological injuries or conditions which are going to show forth in new and mysterious ways. Few people succumb to rare diseases picked up long ago and forgotten but if one were to create a likely candidate for such a death it would be I. From world record setting drmant rabies, to tetanus to parasites with long and obscure names I could always be surprised within the realm of medical possibility. What is certain is that I hurt and feel poorly now. So I seek in memory and in other places for Olympic types of inspiration. Whatever shall be shall be. I may not be Michael Phelps but I can rush out to meet whatever challenges my life holds. At least I hope that I can.

Christians are the only existing great religious community whose sacred scriptures refer repeatedly to the Olympics. The Olympics celebrate all of humanity  human nature but do so through celbrating the body. China’s recent olympics connected with its monastic martial arts tradition but saw the body celebrated openly and publicly in a different Olympics tradition. The New Testament discusses winning prizes, racing, boxing, the training of athletes in themselves and more strongly as metaphors for the spitiual life. Today I drag my body along a bit. Sometimes my body fuels my race through life. I wish all of you good and appreciated health.

The End

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Politics and the lost cause of a woman from Alaska

Posted on September 3, 2009 | Leave a comment
I have a lot on my mind today. It seems that there are a lot of political issues on my mind and these are seen in light of a good number of other factors, influences and issues.  One thing is that I like to think of myself as having a fairly high degree of intellectual honesty. I look for occasions and opportunities to test my basic honesty and to evaluate how honestly I have assessed previous situations. In that vein of assessment there has been an obvious opportunity for me to test my instincts. That is my chance to see how long it would seem to me that President Obama had been President of the United States by the time that the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks came around. I think my feeling is not totally off base from my earlier frame of reference. However, it does seem that he has been POTUS for a while. I am icreasingly willing to blame him for the bad things that happen on any given day.
That is relevant. Because when I voted for George W. Bush for his first term as President it seemed clear to me that he had not been President long enough to be really the president principaly  responsible for the tragedy of that day. I still see that Bush inherited a mess and I still see Obama as mostly working on an inherited economic problem but I am able to see thepercentage of blame for each president increase in my own mind as regards problems which emerge in the middle of September in their first year. Not a real clear definite change in opinion but it is some of that change which Obama was talking about during the campaign.
I did not vote for George Bush for his second term because I could not get to the embassy in Beijing during the allowed time period when I was teaching in China that year. I would very probably have voted for him if I could have voted at all that year. I tend to believe that it takes a while to really formulate and put in place a program of governance.  It seems likely to me that President Obama will be most effective following his re-election if that happens in 2012. That is the structure of the American Presidency today. I would have wanted to give Bush 2 a chance to really establish Homeland Security initiatives and to see if he could come up with a working program for Faith Based Initiatives  in reaching out to communities and populations most in crisis.
I was a solid Bush supporter who had once been a Democrat voting for Dukakis. I had left the party when Clinton was trying to start a war on Catholics, was barbecuing wierd religious kids in Waco and shooting families at Ruby Ridge for wanting to be left alone. I have never wanted to rejoin.  I have friends in many parties throughout the world. Conservatives in Britain and Communists in China are among the  groups with whom I have had the most dialog in the last decade. I do not belong to either.
However, the candidacy of Governor Sarah Palin  really excited me. I think she had a lot to offer. I am reproducing below some of the thoughts I had before last year’s election.   
The post reproduced first appeared on Facebook on my page on October 15,2008.
It is a season of winning and losing. I returned from a weekend at the Southern Historical Association Annual Meeting and have watched Tampa Bay beating the Red Sox, NFL teams struggling to win and the prognosticators saying that Obama is likely to win the election. The election is different than the sporting events. It occurs in a political arena where we either are or should be trying to build something to make our world and nation better. Once a President is elected there will not be such clear standards as to who must be beaten. It will not be so clear what a win is and how to measure it. If you think the wrong guy won it is harder to lose gracefully becuase more than pride and one’s salary is at stake. Nobody can ever say exactly what is at stake. Even historians have trouble deciding what came of an election after the fact. The President has no magic wand for remaking the coutnry according to dreams he may have. But we know a successful President will shape the way all of us and future generations live to some real extent.

I have decided to write a note exploring both the idea of success and the idea of losing gracefully in one piece of writing. It is true that we all live within a great number of pre-set limits and conditions. Most people at least claim not to be worried by most of them. We know some insects can live in suspended animation for years at a time, sperm whales can swim unaided into deep ocean trenches to hunt the giant squid, some trees live with their neighbors and relatives in peaceful adult coexistence for venturies if they can survive the traumas and trial of youth wheteher a male or a female most of us can find other living creatures which seem to have more sexual fun and a better deal than any humans we associate with of our gender. Except for artists (in the broadest sense),shamans, a few saints and the occasional lunatic most of us don’t empathize enough with other creatures to really feel the sense of watching some animal or being and knowing the sense of not having somethng they take for granted. Beyond interspecies differences, we can be aware that Charlemagne, Alexander the Great, Plato and Sun Tzu were all completely unable to win the World Series or the NASCAR trophies that we watch others compete for or avoid watching people compete for each day. The world rushes by each of us according to the age and space in which we live and there are no persons who have all human options open to them. Thus, whenever we speak of success and even of the most extreme kind of success we are speaking of a limited and relative kind of thing.

In fact, a rather well known line of poetry encourages us to see our limits in achieving the greatness we percieve in a good and happy way. “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp else what’s a Heaven for?” On a clear night the naked eye can see Arcturus many billions of miles away while a naked and unaided body can leap and grab an object not much over twenty feet from one’s naked resting eyeballs. Therefore, there does seem to be rather a disparity between the reachof purely physical perception and the grasp of grip. However, its hard to measure exactly how much further away is the farthest thing we can touch with our finger tips from the farthest thing we can grasp in our hands. Such a difference seems subpoetic somehow. So perhaps reach is meant in its broadest literal meaning as the underlying foundation of this metaphor. Some of us compare our actual achievements to goals analagous to those objects just at our fingertips and others of us tned to compare our achievements to goals as practically remote as Arcturus is distant. While I don’t think loftier goals always mean a less happy person they may certainly break down smugness and self satisfaction.

What about all the many how-to books of the self-help variety that tend to promote success as a goal which is relatively universal and easily identified? Can success reaslly be at all ambiguous or mysterious if so many agree on what is meant in the writing, publishing and purchase of all these books?

Perhaps one reason that sports and other games are so widely enjoyed by so many kinds of people is that in these games success can be identified more easily than in life. While in practice winning may not be the only goal that players and coaches address it is certainly one of the major goals in everygame. And even when a team or player is involved in a game or competition where winning is not a realistic goal and is not reall sought, winning remains the standard by which their efoorts are measured and assessed. This sort of game theory applies readily war. One hopes for and should seek victory but often it is best to put up a great fight and lose utterly than simply to lose utterly. The conqueror’s desire for revenge will not often cause as much harm as will be avoided by having taught them to fear renewed hostility, having reduced their forces, having proved unpredictable and having proven that one can stand strong for commitments given. The way one achieves these secondary objectives however is usually by trying to win.

In some kinds of play winning is not so clear and not so important. Often there are still victories involved but they are the victories of the type whiich actors describe in doing a scene. They are subtle kinds of plays for and calculations of dominance and position. Some forms of feminism have tried to hide the fact that in most cases and at most times women will avoid forms of direct contest in zero-sum competition with their husbands, potential husbands and potential sons-in-law. There are very good reasons for that. Nonetheless, in Greek which was so dominant over so much of culture for so long the women had their Heraklion games as a counterpart to the Olympic games and competed fiercely in athletics with one another. I think society is much richer when women speak the language of competition as men experience it. A little man to woman competiton in formal systems can add some spice as well. But men competing directly with women in hard fought games will never be the main course of a healthy society. Danika Patrick enhances INDY racing’s appeal because she is the sexy, good-looking woman who gives the guys a good run for their money. Other women come and go and she keeps the door open for them. INDY could probably handle another ten women of her caliber or better. But another 25 women like her would hurt its appeal. I watch the sport more because of her, but I enjoy watching her and the men compete in a man’s sport.

Coed soccer with little boys and girls is laying a foundation for a better future I think. Any good future will involve a lot of single sex competition. Cheerleading is a kind of sport and artform used to emphasize the really maco qualities of a given sport by accenting the fit and able females cheering for it. Male cheerleaders exist and can be important but they support and supplement the women involved. Men can also benefit from learining some female-dominated skill sets. It can be refreshing to everyone if old Widower Fred puts on a good social event as his wife once did. If men are throwing most of the dinner parties then that group of dinner parties will surely be in decline.

All of the kinds of success that I have mentioned are distinct from the big life-defining measure of overall success. Those seem different as well from the suceess measures of a society. I think that in my own life there has been a pretty good level of mixture between success and failure, winning and losing. I have had more than a few victories of various kinds. However, most of my life I have felt very aware that I could not overcome many of the difficulties that seemed most important to me. By most of the standards I value my life has been largely a failure. In may ways, things have gone mostly from bad to worse. I would describe myself as divorced, childless, unemloyed, not really solvent, physically challenged unhappy and without much rapport with people. While sincerely mean all of those things they are not the whole story. My situation is actually very complex. Even as a young child however I began to calculate that I was not likely to have a very happy life. My experiences and studies since then have mostly made me believe that as a child I was insightful rather than pessimistic or emotionally or mentally damaged. I think that the modern era has so much literal and metaphorical blood on its hands that it must take refuge in the idea of depression as mental illness. Modern society cannot begin to make ammends for all the evil it does, therefore it must say that thoses it injures have something wrong with the apparatus that records and evaluates injury. Painkillers are given when really the assault causing the pain and the wounds resulting should be the focus of attention.

The world has always been a place of great suffering and much that is wrong and evil has often happened here in every age of humankind. But I do think that as a species there are almost always fewer chances for the best tmes and structures of the human race to reassert themselves. The most squalid slums and refugee camps endure for generations now. Vast mountains of waste are produced by the rich and inflicted upon the environment. The healthiest expressions of each religion are often driven out and held out by the pincer action of secularism and fanaticism. I think a lot of things are getting worse.I favor the advance of technology and I don’t blame all problems on technological change. However, I think that it is less of an offset than some people technical advancement is probable in many scenarios. Knowledge tends to expand we should not celebrate ourselves too much as a result.

If we had a culture building sustainable seamount and undersea colonies on a big scale, turning waste into energy, colonizing mars and creating vast parks near all major megalopolises then I would say that such a technostorm was offestting most of the evils of the modern age. Instead, I see the human race as getting poorer over all.

In the coming Election I will be very glad to vote for Sarah Palin and won’t mind voting for McCain. If they lose I will see the election of Obama as a very bad thing for the futrure. I have discussed why in other notes. I believe that we will be losing some thing that cannot be quickly remedied.

However, it does not seem much worse or as bad as many other events that shaped history. I think that from a philosophical point of view I am getting more and more accustomed to losing gracefully. At a personal level I find that society exists as a place where my values are often destined to lose. When I do have a play to make I often think that I am in a situation where even a solid win will be a loss. But of course I may lose and often do. I have not been very active in this campaign season and I have not regretted not being a Republican. Yet I will be sad to see the lady from Alaska lose no matter how gracefully she does it.

 The End.
I see the Palins struggling with notoriety and am wondering how they will deal with it all. So many people have injuries in this administration. I hear that Robert Gates, Justice Alito, Jusitce Sotomayor, Hillary Clinton and many others have had injuries and I see the Governor of Alaska resigning. If I was paranoid I would see a pattern of limited mayhem marking the administration of President B. Hussein O.  Life is hard all over and I am able to see that Obama supporters have things to change. But I am still sad that the little lady from Alaska is not bringing her lovely smile to the Naval Observatory and the world stage. That is one area that has not changed within my mental framework about politics.
For now I will just muse, blog and think. Maybe one day I will do more.  But we will be in a very different place than we would have been. Where we will be standing remains to be seen.   

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Senator Edward Kennedy

Posted on August 26, 2009 | Leave a comment

This is a brief original blog to note the passing of Edward Kennedy the Senior Senator from Massachussettes.  His father served as Ambassador to the Court of Saint James. His brother Joseph was killed in an experimental aircraft in the midst of World War II.  His brother John Fizgerald was President of the United States of America after having been a Senator and was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.  His brother Robert was Attorney General and a United States Senator who was gunned down during his bid for the Presidency of the United States. His sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver  and her husband founded and oversaw the Special Olympics. His niece Maria Shriver Schwarzenegger is the First Lady of California. His nephew John Fitzgerald Kennedy Junior was a publisher of “George” a political magazine and died in a plane crash. Given the wealth of his father it is not surprising that with this record of untimely death and public service  many people have called the Kennedy family America’s royal family. While I do not see that as an apt description they are certainly a special family which deserves some recognition.  

Edward Kennedy was a strong and committed voice in the legislation of our country.  He played a significant role in electing Barak Hussein Obama to the Presidency. He was an example of leadership in an era in which leaders are rare. Kennedy was the kind of man who becomes a national monument no matter how one feels about any of his ideas or policies.   

Edward Kennedy is going to be buried in Arlington National Cemetary. My cousin Severin Summers III who was killed in Afghanistan will also be buried there very soon. So he will be linked in my mind by this coincidence to my own family.

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Conservative Ideas in America and the Day of Obama’s Election

Posted on August 21, 2009 | 2 comments
 This blog post was firstposted in Politico when Obama was elected to the Presidency Conservatism it is worse than you think if you are one, but you probably aren’t!
Content: I feel a certain amount of sympathy for Barack Obama. I choose to start with that line because I consider myself to be one of the people most opposed to Barack Obama within the spectrum of legitimate politics. However, I don’t think that there is any doubt that we have reached the point where Conservatism can be looked at as something which has merited the term “crisis”. America is in a crisis and I believe that it will prove to be a very grave crisis. However, conservatism is in a far greater crisis. For argument’s sake let us say that the terms right and left, Democrat and Republican describe a real political dynamic which matters in this country. I would argue that on the right in this country we have lots of politicians who use the label “conservative” but actually we have a collection of Libertarians, Tax Avoiders,  Moderate Neo-Fascists , Ultra-Reformed  Protestant Theocrats, and Anglophile Antiquarians who collectively squeeze a weak and demoralized conservative group of Americans who hardly matter at all.  Some of these five never discussed groups would be Conservatives if there really was a Conservative Movement for them to be part of , on the other hand many fundamentally despise Conservatism.I voted for George Bush the first time and almost certainly would have voted for him the second time if I could have made it to Beijing’s American Embassy in time to vote. However, I missed that election. I voted for Mcain-Palin in the most recent election. I also voted for Mary Landrieu a Democrat this year. Through my life I have voted for a collection of Democrats, Republicans and Independents.  My sympathy for Barack Obama comes into play in this regard. Like Obama (and a lot of other people)  I have had to make the best choices I could at any given time. By the time I was old enough to vote I had forged a lot of bonds and relationships which included fundamentalists, communists in other countries, resentful Moslems, white supremacists, black radicals and lots of other people who don’t fall into the neat safe categories that President mills like mid century Yale Law normally produce in quantity.  If I were to have made a run at the US Presidency there would be people some folks would like as little as I like Rev. Wright and David Ayres. Despite all that colorful background I have lots of self-respect and more oddly yet, I think of myself as an authentic American Conservative. Arguably, I am one of the only American conservatives who could be optimistic abpout the Obama example. Beacuse if such an oddly positioned person of such a background as Barack Obama can be President of the United States then maybe I could at least get elected parish assessor, city dog-catcher, county councilman, water-district representative or something else somewhere in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Somehow I don’t think Obama’s election signifies anything nearly that hopeful for someone like me.  I am able to accept that there is not likely to be a government paycheck in my future. That is unless you include the kinds of fellowships and part-time job checks form school boards and universities which I have gotten in the past. I don’t hate liberalism but I know that Liberals are more likely to take a political interest in those with odd and quirky backgrounds than conservatives are. I am able to say that I have won a few elections. I won a seat on Dorm Council in College, I was elected as Outstanding Graduate in my department , college and university for that particular commencement exercise at a different school. Then In China  a few years ago I organized elections among my student for various class and subgroup offices. Then there are a couple of elections where I was elected to post that I can’t discuss here by groups that like their privacy.  None of those races seem very much related to the Presidency or even a governorship however. In most of these races my political philosophy was not a central aspect of what people were electing me for or voting against. Many people hold office for other reasons than political philosophy. People vote for friends, members of their race or class, to keep seniority in a legislature or because they are personally opposed to the candidates opposition. But in  the big leagues there are always some questions of political philosophy that become important. I would argue that Conservatism is usually not on the menu.I think that a coherent expression of American Conservative political philosophy would require at leason very long book. If someone hasn’t read any of the books which have helped to from my opinions then an article or two would not make the great sweep of ideas stand clear. Here I am going to do someting very different. I am going to propose ten unthinkable planks in a platform in an agressive conservative movement. I don’t think that conservative means passive. Some of these would even require constitutional ammendments. I believe that these planks would probably unpopular and are largely undemanded but that is because Conservatism is largely dead. I think that passing something along these lines would be essential to setting our country on a good conservative path. I believe struggling for something like this would be essential for rebuilding a conservative movement.

So here are my unthinkable Ten:

1.The Aboriginal Americans Ammendment: The Eskimos, Indians, Hawaiians, Chamorros and Samoans should be given a single grant in treaty of one or two percent of all Federal Governmnent lands (not state or private lands) . These lands should be under a perpetual and largely green treaty which would allow some activities and not others in perpetuity.  The American Indians should have several federal territories with representation in the House of Representatives and not in the Senate. The other four groups should  have one relatively contiguous teritory with representation in the House of Represnetatives but not in the Senate. Each of these Territories should award one transitional elector for each member of the House of Representatives an also one long-term elector who  would serve in at least three Presidential elections and who would have standing to join together and have several specific perogatives in the Senate. Those elgible to vote as Aboriginal Americans could choose tov ote either as Aboriginal or generic American Citizens. At the time of this creation a final trust fund should be st up and there should be included some bonds and securities maturing over time. Then there would be a final treaty settlement of all  grievances between the United States and aboriginal peoples.

2.The First Lady Ammendment: The First Lady should be recognized as a junior but joint Head of State. She should receive a perpetual constitutional earmark of revenues  for use in grants and programs for women and mothers. She should be specifically authorized to undertake purely ceremonila diplomacy any where in the scope of American diplomacy. Whenever a woman is President of the United States then the majority of the ear-marked funds should go to a trust and earn interest. A skeleton amount and skeleton tasks only be reserved for the Presidential consort husband.

3. The Defense Department should be required to allot a greater percentage than ever before to its Junior ROTC program. These programs should be able to be chartered by public and private schools. Students would take a class a day, would go to camp two weeks a year with their State or Aboriginal Territory National Guard Unit and would spend a month  with the Americorps each summer. In return for this volunteers would recieve healthcare, have a varied scholarship account and eat at a training table at school. 

4. Puerto Rico Should be made our fifty-first state and the last admitted without a constitutional ammendment. A part of Puerto Rico anda part of the US Virgin Islans should be set aside for a Fedral Carribean territory similar to but separate and less represented than the Aboriginal Territories. Those elible to vote as Old Carribean Americans would have to choose not to vote as generic Americans.

5.The State of Utah should receive a Charter rescinding the requirement that it abolish Polygamy. It should be given ten years to set up a domestic regime of polygamy that will answer for all serious concerns such as underage marriage and would recognize plural marriage responsibly in Utah without exagerated full-faith and credit elsewhere.

6. States with highly regulated casinos and a history of vigorous related law enforcement should be allowed to develop a regime for licensing the use of recreational drugs with physicians present and federally license detox-release requirements. Casinos would collect both a high state and federal tax for this drug use.

7.The Federal Racial Classification scheme should be abolished. Especially the not very popular and mostly made up Hispanic race based mostly on one’s father’s last name. There should be a recoginized Permanent Committe on Race, Ethnicity and Kinship. The US Census Bureau should be put under the direction of this body which should also have the authority draw up congressional districts. All retired Presidents generally and Vice Presidents over 70 years old would be lifetime members of this committee. Americans would all have the right to transfer one percent of their income tax witholding and four percent of all their property taxes to family associations which would be chartered by this commitee. These family associations would all share in a seireis of federal programs providing surpluses, grants and loans for them to use especially in stting up daycare, healthcare and eldercare programs.  These family’s would self identify their race and ethnicity.

8.The Navy should develop a Navy One Program . This would be a sailing longship on which the frist family would entertain and a permanent destroyer escort. This ship would also  offer high honor Junior ROTC, regular ROTC and  Naval Academy work study positions on this ship.

9. A working Federal Death penalty program should be developed and it should be applied regularly when required or clearly indicated. Piracy and Terrorism should be principal causes for its use.

10.The federal government should create a full scale set of Mother’s Incentives working with but not entirely dependent upon the First Lady’s bureaucracy. Companies, cities, towns, and States would receive generous incentives for providing small gardens, job-sharing programs, cottage industries and very flexible positions for mothers with young children. These programs would provide a further annual bonus to married mothers with young children.

Yes I am aware most of you think that thses things have nothing to do with conservatism. Unfortunately that is because most Americans no longer have any idea what Conservatism. I don’t mind so much if these things make you want o hurl ridicule or even vomit. However, if they do then maybe you should consider not calling yourself a conservative. 

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