A Fragile Republic

Posted on May 15, 2017 by David Roebuck

The American republic is fragile. It always has been. You probably recall that we killed about 700,000 or so of our own citizens between 1861 and 1865 over the issue of Constitutional power. While the Civil War was certainly America’s lowest point, it is not at all the only time our republic has been endangered. More on that later.

Here is a brief summary of the constitutional framework established by our Founders (I’m sure you all know this):

Three branches of government; legislative, executive, judicial. This idea was borrowed from the philosopher Montesquieu. As we all learned in our high school civics classes, Congress was to pass laws, the president would execute them, and the courts would apply the laws to specific cases. Each branch would have some control over the other two so that no branch could become too powerful. The Founders almost certainly expected Congress to be more powerful since it more closely represented the citizens. And yes, I’m being overly simple here because the Constitution was vague and, at times, contradictory.
The Federal Principle: a national government and state governments with each level having responsibility for certain governmental powers. The national government would, for example, be responsible for the military and coining money and states would take care stuff like roads and education.

Again, the Constitutional framework established by the Founders was much more complex than I make it sound, but you get the idea.

Here are the problems: The system only works when each governmental entity does as it was intended and when each entity doesn’t overly interfere with the responsibilities of the other entities. Then there is the fact that the responsibilities of each governmental entity are often unclear and open to interpretation, and the responsibilities of each branch and level of government have evolved over time.

The bottom line is that each governmental entity MUST respect the other entities’ powers to keep one branch from becoming too powerful. States cannot begin declaring war. The national government cannot assume responsibility for trash collection. Congress cannot assume responsibility for negotiating treaties, the president cannot overturn a law previously passed by Congress, the courts cannot pass laws, etc.

How nice it would be if it was all this simple. It isn’t. At times one branch of government will overstep its authority (the Supreme Court writing abortion guidelines in Roe v Wade, presidents issuing executive orders to circumvent Congress, etc.), and at other times it seems that one branch almost begs one of the other branches to do its work (Congress pretty much all the time during the last fifty years). Our constitutional fabric is easily torn or at least seriously wrinkled.

The Constitutional framework is currently in a state of chaos (OK, that may be a bit strong. Maybe “disarray”?) Who has benefitted? The president and the Supreme Court. Who has lost? The states and Congress.

States have lost because the national government figured out it could usurp state power using money (the feds give states money if the states do what the feds want and states are now hooked on federal money). This is not necessarily a bad thing because, for example, the national government ultimately accomplishes national goals such as school integration or improved air quality by offering state and local governments money to meet those standards. It is abused, in my opinion, when the feds force states to enforce such decisions as a uniform drinking age and No Child Left Behind. Also, occasionally the feds will impose an unfunded mandate on states, thus forcing states to find a way to cover the cost of the federal requirement. To be honest there isn’t much states can do to protect their power from the feds as long as Uncle Sam controls the presses that print our currency.
Congress has lost power because its members became more focused on winning reelection than on effectively running the country. I know that sounds cynical, but it is true. Beginning in the 1930’s Congress began allowing the president to attain greater power at Congress’s expense (a long story involving Franklin D. Roosevelt). Congress has also increasingly written laws that are very unclear and too vague, thus giving federal bureaucrats a great deal of authority to interpret and apply those laws. In The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), for example, the word “secretary” was used about 3,000 times in a bill that was 2,700 pages long. That means Congress was specifically letting the Secretary of Health and Human Services interpret and implement those provisions.

And?

Presidents have become increasingly powerful. This is a trend that goes back to the 1800’s. A 1974 book by Arthur Schlesinger argued that we have created an “imperial presidency”, a presidency that dominates Congress and has almost total control over foreign and military affairs. Schlesinger believed presidential power had evolved to the point it far exceeded the desire of our Founders. Example: The Constitution specifically gives Congress the power to declare war and it has done so only twice in the last 100 years (WW I and WW II). But how many times have we been in “war” during the last 100 years (FYI: Since 1776 America has been at war 93% of the time)? All other instances of military intervention in the last 100 years were initiated by the president. So presidents have become increasingly powerful during the last 200 years, and you may be assured that presidential power has continued to grow and Congress has continued to largely roll over and play dead since Schlesinger’s 1974 book was published.
The federal courts have become increasingly important. Alexander Hamilton argued that the courts would be “the least dangerous branch”, but that is not now the case and it has not been since the early 1800’s. However, the courts have been increasingly required to interpret poorly written and vague laws passed by Congress (they ruled on Obamacare at least a couple of times).
As I said earlier, the states have lost a great dal of their power to the national government. We could debate whether this is a good or bad thing (all you have to do is offer a comment to begin the discussion), but there is no doubt it has happened. The national government now tells states how to treat prisoners, tells law enforcement officers what steps to take to remain within the framework of The Constitution, tells states how to distribute welfare funds, forbids state from discriminating against those with disabilities, requires states to follow clean air and water standards, and much more.

What should change?

Congress should start doing its job. For all of my professional career I’ve opposed term limits, but that may honestly be the only way to move Congress out of its state of gridlock. As I’ve argued previously, the first thing we should do is take money out of elections so that members of Congress are not obligated to those who give them the most money.

One specific thing Congress can do is begin imposing limits on executive orders. Again, Congress has increasingly allowed the president to do Congress’s work because they do not restrict executive orders. Presidents can issue all the orders they want, but every penny spent of the national government must be approved by Congress (called the “power of the purse”). Congress should tighten the purse strings.

A national conversation on the division of national and state power should take place soon. Do we want the national government’s power to continue to grow? Should states regain their lost powers?

Finally, and this part isn’t so easy, voters MUST become better informed. Most American voters choose a candidate or party based on one or two issues rather than examining candidates’ and parties’ views on a broad range of issues. As a consequence a large number of voters actually vote for candidates who oppose policies that benefit those voters. People wind up voting against their own interests.

Our fragile republic is in danger if the branches of government do not begin performing their Constitutional duties and if voters do not become better informed.

Random Thoughts II

Posted on May 4, 2017 by David Roebuck

I feel sort of like Dug the Talking Dog from the movie “Up”. Like Dug who was easily distracted by squirrels, I’m having trouble focusing on only one thing after the end of the school year because my brain is moving at 90 mph in 120 different directions. So here are a few random and unrelated thoughts.

Last year President Obama vetoed a bill co-sponsored by fellow Democrat Elijah Cummings that would have reduced former presidents’ pensions if they accepted at least $400,000 in income after leaving office. So a president would lose a portion of his pension if he accepted $400,000 of outside income. Remember… he vetoed that bill. Now president Obama has accepted an offer by Wall Street investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald to give a speech for…you guessed it: $400,000. This in spite of the fact that he and his wife Michelle have also reportedly signed a deal to write their memoirs with an advance of more than $60 million. He really doesn’t need that $400,000. Hypocrisy doesn’t favor one party more than the other. Didn’t President Obama criticize Wall Street for the last eight years?
The Republican House passed a repeal of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) after dozens of failed attempts. I don’t think the Senate will pass it but I’ve given up trying to predict the government’s actions. It appears the revised plan would harm the voters who helped elect President Trump and help the very wealthy. I obviously hope this is incorrect. Here is a quick comparison of the plans. Predicting the impact of legislation is almost impossible but the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office believed that the bill as originally introduced in March would leave an additional 24 million people uninsured within the next ten years. The House would not wait for the CBO’s assessment of the current plan before voting on it.
On the same day the House voted to repeal Obamacare President Trump praised Australia’s healthcare system, telling the Australian Prime Minister that “you have better healthcare than we do”. Well, Australia has universal healthcare guaranteed by the government so nobody there goes without medical care.
I openly admit that I’m addicted to coffee, professional tennis (Ok, I’m actually addicted to most sports other than golf and curling), The Chef’s Table on Netflix, chocolate, and the gym.
One of the most frightening potential consequences of our warming planet is that the currently melting permafrost may contain bacteria and viruses to which humans have not been exposed in thousands of years and against which current antibiotics and other drugs would likely be useless. The temperature in the Arctic circle is rising three times faster than on the rest of the planet, so we may find out fairly soon whether that threat is real.
I need to stop reading about stories such as that. .
I really don’t care about much celebrity news. I think its pretty much a waste of time but our culture seems obsessed with why Brad and What’s Her Name divorced, whether What’s His Name was abducted by aliens in an Iowa corn field, or whether that dude who plays baseball cheats on his wife. But show me a video of a parrot singing Margaritaville or baby goats chasing each other and you have my undivided attention. The same is true of ANY baby pictures or videos.
At the end of World War II the human knowledge base, the totality of what we know, was doubling every 25 years. And now by some estimates human knowledge is doubling every twelve or thirteen months and IBM estimates that soon our knowledge base will double EVERY TWELVE HOURS because of the development of faster processing and artificial intelligence. If we could harness and use all that information for only constructive purposes our potential to cure diseases, solve problems such as poverty and environmental decline, and ability to reach the stars should be easily realized. It’s too bad our artificial divisions (religion, ethnicity, income, greed, etc.) often sidetrack that opportunity.
A while back I started trying to write down the name of every single human I’ve ever met beginning with those who had the greatest impact on my life. I gave up after several pages because, as I said earlier, my mind tends to run off in multiple directions. Still, it made me realize that every human with whom I’ve ever come into contact has had an impact on my life. I appreciate them all, even those with whom contact was unpleasant.
In early March wildfires consumed large portions of the American Midwest. The fires killed at least seven people and thousands of cows and other livestock, led to the endangerment of some species of birds, scorched several million acres, and led to the evacuation of countless homeowners. Did you hear about that? I think the media was too busy reporting on whether What’s Her Name was wearing a new shade of lip gloss or What’s His Name bought a new mansion on Venus.
In 2015 about 43 million Americans lived in poverty and 42 million lived in a condition of food insecurity (not knowing about their next day’s meals). Globally about 700 million people are hungry. It is estimated that as much as 1/3 of all food produced throughout the world goes to waste. This is disheartening.
I think I need a new hobby to keep me from watching the news.

Confirmation Bias and President Trump

Posted on May 3, 2017 by David Roebuck

A few weeks ago I wrote about the tendency to ignore facts and accept our preconceived ideas regardless of evidence to the contrary, a phenomenon known as “confirmation bias”. We all tend to fall in to that trap, but that tendency has never been more clear than among those who continue to support President Trump in spite of all his paradoxical and contradictory behavior. And yes I do know that this is fairly common among supporters of the political class and it was absolutely true of President Obama’s supporters, but in my opinion the supporters of the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have taken it to a new level. To be clear before I begin, I WANT President Trump to be successful. To wish otherwise is unpatriotic and counterproductive. And remember that the title of this blog is “Fiercely Independent” because I take great pride in my independence.

I absolutely understand why people voted against Hillary Clinton and I discussed that issue a few weeks back. I voted against Secretary Clinton in the primaries, choosing instead to support a Republican candidate even though I disagreed with him on a large number of policy issues. And on election day I held my nose when I voted for Secretary Clinton. I wished with all my heart other options had been available.

What I cannot understand is how about 35-40% of the population still offer unyielding support for President Trump. It appears that his main goal was winning the election and that he had absolutely no idea what actually holding the office would require. Of course I thought things he said before and during the campaign were offensive enough to warrant rejecting him as a candidate. Mocking a handicapped reporter, bragging about molesting women, refusing to release his tax returns (which he promised to release later but now refuses), referring to a reporter’s menstruation period to explain her challenging questions during the debate, stating that John McCain was not a war hero because his plane was shot down and he was captured (stated by a man who avoided Vietnam with college and medical deferments), mocking the Muslim family of a son who died serving our country, the scandal over the failed Trump University, hinting that returning soldiers with PTSD might be weak, stating again that he was not sure President Obama was a natural born citizen (he finally did admit that fact later), bragging that he could kill someone and still not lose supporters, saying that Mexico sends rapists across the border, and criticizing a federal judge who just happened to have a Spanish sounding name as a “hater of Donald Trump” were all good reasons to reject Donald Trump as a candidate. I would add that as a candidate he was on his third wife, he had been unfaithful to the previous two, and he bragged about sleeping with other men’s wives. And before you say something about Bill Clinton, any students taking my classes in the mid 1990’s and any friend from that time will remember that I offered scathing criticism of President Clinton’s inexcusable infidelity and I did not vote for his reelection. I’m pretty darned consistent on that issue.

And, by the way, this is only a partial list of his gaffes and failures. I’m not even going in to President Trump’s previous unethical business dealings.

But perhaps the expectations I have for my presidents are just too unrealistic. Probably so. In the end I had to choose between someone with experience but who had made numerous mistakes in her public life and someone who was totally uninformed, unethical, inexperienced, and who offered not one single concrete policy idea.

I wonder how many of the 40% still offering strong support for President Trump would have been as forgiving of President Obama (and remember that I also did not vote for him) if he had said or done even one of the things I listed above or if, after becoming president, President Obama:

Was unable to push one piece of legislation through Congress in his first three months even though his party controlled both houses. Remember that candidate Trump promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act on his first day?
Had said things like “nobody knew that health care was so complicated”.
Had accused his predecessor (George Bush) of wiretapping his phones.
Had filled his administration with corporate executives and lobbyists (almost all of whom were men) after promising he would “drain the swamp”.
Complained that he missed his former life after being in office less than 100 days.
Had spent about $3 million of the taxpayers’ money every weekend by flying to one of his private properties while proposing budget cuts to agencies serving the poor. President Trump has spent more than $80 million in travel just in the first three months in office. He criticized Obama for traveling at the taxpayers’ expense but is far outpacing the former president’s travel expenditures.
Had played golf nineteen times during his first 100 days after criticizing his predecessor for doing just that.
Had refused to turn over documents related to the relationship his first national security adviser (Michael Flynn) had with Russia thus delaying an FBI investigation.
Had a daughter whose company received trademarks from China on the same day he met with the president of China.
Had supported a healthcare bill that would have harmed a large number of the people who voted for him.
Made money off his weekend taxpayer-funded travels by having guests stay in his private resorts.
Had reversed positions on China, the wall (thank goodness; it is a silly idea), NATO, the Paris Climate Accords, and more.
Embraced dictators and despots such as Egypt’s el-Sisi, Turkey’s Erdogan, and Duterte from the Philippines while offending traditional allies like Australia and Britain.
Tweeted incessantly about being mistreated by the media, his predecessor’s failures, bragging about his IQ (a certain sign of insecurity), etc.
Signed 25 or 30 executive orders after criticizing his predecessor for bypassing Congress using such orders.
Confused Andrew Jackson as a president relevant to The Civil War and actually said people have never considered that war’s causes. There are only about 10,000 books on the subject but reading is also hard.

I somehow doubt most current supporters of President Trump would have forgiven President Obama even one of these failings, and that is the definition of confirmation bias.

Yes, President Trump has had successes such as the nomination of a Supreme Court Justice, bombing a Syrian airstrip in response to their horrid treatment of their own citizens, and installing possibly the most intelligent and thoughtful national security team of all time. He has also fulfilled a few other campaign promises. I’d still say the gaffes and mistakes far outweigh the successes.

We need meaningful tax reform. We need meaningful healthcare reform. We need meaningful infrastructure funding. We need so much more but those needs will never be met until the country’s leader learns to focus and installs good advisers around him and listens to them.

By now I’m sure diehard supporters of President Trump have stopped reading this and have unfriended me on Facebook (it won’t be the first time since I started this blog). I encourage civil response to the evidence presented here, but it cannot be “well at least we don’t have Clinton or Obama”. I understand concerns my fellow citizens have about those Democrats, but that in no way justifies blindly supporting our current president. And the response also cannot be “well…we need a change” because I absolutely agree. We just need thoughtful and constructive change.

The only way President Trump will change is if people STOP ignoring his failures and his approval ratings fall even further. He thrives on support and approval. Why else would he still be holding large public rallies after winning the election or giving almost everyone who visits the Oval Office a copy of the electoral college map while ignoring the fact that he lost the popular vote by a large margin.

I’m not very optimistic about the next four years, and many Republicans are very nervous about the 2018 Congressional elections because their current leader is hurting their chances for reelection. It won’t be long before his own party begins running away from him.

NOTE: There are only a couple of linked sources because research wasn’t required to compose this post. If you find that anything I posted is false I will accept responsibility and apologize.

The End of the World as We Know It

Posted on April 26, 2017 by David Roebuck

I’ve occasionally offered some pretty depressing stuff in this space the last few months, so I thought I might as well take it to the next level. Remember that I am generally optimistic and rarely do I let things over which I have no personal control get me down. Even the possible collapse of society as we know it. I might lose my serenity if I mistakenly miss an appointment, if I gain five unwanted pounds, or if I feel I did not deal with an issue as professionally as I would prefer because I have control over those things. I can’t personally stop the forces of history (but collectively we can).

Predicting the future is an uncertain science, or art, because humans rarely behave the way we expect. Still, although the comparisons are far from perfect we do know that the Persian Empire, the Roman Empire, the British Empire and others eventually collapsed. Can contemporary Western society escape that fate? Might there be a future without flat screen TVs, highways filled with automobiles, people living in poverty, drug abuse, environmental degradation, or all the other characteristics of society as we know it?

Several years ago political scientist Francis Fukuyama argued that capitalism and contemporary democracy, the current state of affairs in Western nations, are the “end of history”. In other words this is a good, or bad, as it gets. I disagree. For better or for worse, I don’t think our current state of affairs is humanity’s permanent future and I think concluding otherwise is pretty darned egotistical (and more than a little depressing). The future offers a number of possible scenarios leading to the end of Western society as we know it. For example, although nuclear war is unlikely it is still a possibility when nine different countries possess 14,900 nuclear warheads. And of course there is always that potential plague of locusts. Or a giant meteor. Or huge alien ships like those in Independence Day. Other possible causes of collapse are less obvious, however.

A 2014 study funded by NASA and others addressed just this issue. The research introduced a new mathematical model, referred to as Human and Nature Dynamics (HANDY), to explain the rise and fall of past empires and predict the collapse of existing or future ones. Importantly, the model could also be used to prevent collapse if governing bodies or people address several critical factors. I know it sounds dry, but unlike 98% of the scholarly publications these days, this one is actually sort of interesting (if you skip all the math and focus on conclusions). The authors found that during the last 5,000 years the collapse of advanced civilizations has resulted from “the stretching of resources due to strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity, and the division of society into Elites (rich) and Commoners (poor).” So…two common factors in social collapse: 1) Environmental degradation and 2) a society increasingly divided into rich and poor.

Several weeks ago I addressed our current environmental policies. My concerns regarding environmental destruction and the impact that may have on future generations are clear: we are slowly destroying the only planetary home on which we have to live. I do not believe this will cause human extinction, but without drastic change it may cost a large number of our planetary citizens their lives. I can see no way current Western society could survive rising seas and severely depleted natural resources such as oil and coal (but I also don’t foresee a “Waterworld” future).

The second cause of historical social collapse identified by HANDY is a society divided into elites and commoners. This is honestly not a new idea. Well-known writers such as Charles Dickins, Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau identified the loss of individual worth and other similar themes. Of course Karl Marx offered the most well-developed account of the division between the classes and the consequences of that division. Now don’t freak out; I’m not a Marxist. However, Marx’s analysis of 19th century industrial capitalism was right on target because he demonstrated how workers barely survived in factories and other workplaces while creating massive wealth for the owners (remember how Ebenezer Scrooge treated Bob Cratchit in Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”?).

Has that changed? Many countries have improved the working conditions of laborers thanks to unionization and government regulation. In the United States, for example, coal miners’ lives are now protected by a government agency (MSHU) and factories and other places of employment are made safer by OSHA, etc. Still, many countries don’t provide such stringent regulations and their workers sometimes die in horrific fires, children are harmed by working in what is often a dangerous environment, or employers are allowed to put their workers into otherwise poor working conditions. But the topic of this post is the possible decline of Western society and almost all the worst offenders are non-Western, so we are OK. Right? Well…

The amount of wealth on the planet has been increasing steadily in recent years. In 2014, for example, global wealth grew by 7%. The wealthiest of countries enjoy what we might refer to as western capitalism (China is the one possible exception, but it too is now very capitalistic although certainly not democratic). For perspective, in 2014 the United States possessed 41.6% of all wealth on the planet while the next nine nations combined only held about 42% of the collective wealth (and yes, that means the other 185 or so countries held only about 6% of planetary wealth). So in terms of humans living on this planet, wealth is certainly concentrated in the hands of a few countries with those of us in the USA possessing the lion’s share. This obviously means that most folks on the planet live in much poorer societies. There is, therefore, a clear line between the wealthier and poorer nations. But the story doesn’t end there.

A country’s income gap between rich and poor is calculated using the Gini coefficient (named for an Italian statistician who developed it). Very simply, the Gini coefficient is an index where a value of 0 indicates a nation has absolute equality (everyone lives the same quality of life and possess equal wealth) and 100 would be perfect inequality (one person would possess ALL the country’s wealth). Guess which country has the highest Gini score? Yep. The United States (80.56). This means that the gap between rich and poor is greatest in the country possessing the largest amount of wealth.

By now I’ve bored you to the point of tears with all the statistics. I apologize. Let me offer a quick summary. If the research resulting from the HANDY model is accurate, and it does appear to accurately explain the collapse of past empires, our current way of life may be in jeopardy. The continued damage to our environment and the increasing gap between rich and poor do not bode well, at least according to the model. Of course only a relatively small number of our fellow Earthly inhabitants actually enjoy the lifestyle you and I enjoy, so I assume a good many of those folks would be OK with the collapse if something better for them emerged.

Are there ways to avoid this possible collapse? Of course, but the hour is late and we seem to be sitting on our hands. The environmental tipping point beyond which there may be no point of return may be near (or already reached). We probably need a massive global focus on the environment, and it needs to take place now.

What about that gap in wealth equality? That one may be even more difficult, to be honest. I don’t foresee the wealthy voluntarily sharing their wealth with those who have less (although the examples set by Bill and Melinda Gates and others are pretty cool). How can the gap otherwise be addressed? Education. Those who tend to be better off are almost universally better educated (this does not necessarily include folks who inherit their wealth), so providing quality education for everyone is at least one solution. The more controversial solution is having governments apply the Robin Hood principle by increasingly taking from the rich and giving to the poor, and this solution is also problematic for a number of reasons.

I would be interested in your ideas.

Paranoia the Destroyer

Quote

Posted on April 15, 2017 by David Roebuck

Why is it that people tend to focus on imagined or highly unlikely threats but ignore more serious dangers? Fear permeates our society, or at least a sizeable segment of it, and this fear results from a near paranoid distrust of everyone and everything. That paranoia is being manipulated by the media and those holding political power.

As I’ve said previously, much of this is a result of society’s growing anti-intellectualism and rejection of “authority”. Under this new paradigm beliefs mean more than facts, pundits and politicians are given greater credibility than scientists or experts, and much of the public is easily swayed to accept falsehood as truth.

Examples:

A fear that we are all going to die from something. Without really giving it much thought I can recall times when people were almost in a panic over bird flu, swine flu, Ebola, Mad Cow Disease, AIDS, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and other perceived epidemics. Yes, some people do contract these diseases and yes, some people die from them, but the likelihood of that happening is statistically very small. Headlines such as Bird Flu Could ‘Make Ebola Look Like a Picnic’ from Newsmax (an unreliable news source) really are counterproductive.
“They” are planning to take our guns away. Who are “they”? The Supreme Court has allowed some restrictions on gun ownership over the years, but in 2008 the Court affirmed individuals’ rights to gun ownership for lawful purposes, and that included the ownership of handguns. There are an estimated 310 million guns in the United States. How can anyone actually believe the government plans to take them away?
A fear of immigrants. As I’ve stated previously, immigrants do not kill Americans but we do a pretty good job of killing each other. Like it or not, credible research indicates that illegal immigrants are actually good for the American economy. In fact a very large portion of our food is produced or picked by illegal immigrants. By one estimate, for example, the cost of American milk would increase about 60% were it not for the immigrant workers. And most research indicates that the taxes immigrants pay outweighs government benefits they receive.
Fear of a terrorist attack. A little more than 40% of Americans say they fear a terrorist attack. Yes, in all likelihood America will eventually suffer another such attack, but the odds of dying at the hands of terrorists is 1/9.3 million. Your chances of dying in a bathtub drowning, car accident, choking on food or a dog bite are much, much higher but media’s constant reporting on terrorist activities leads us to believe otherwise. Media should be warning us about the dangers of scalding tap water because that is more likely to kill us than is a terrorist act.
Fear of Islam. A couple of weeks ago the city zoning board in Bayonne, NJ rejected an application to build a mosque. The public hearing was nasty with one woman asking “How many children have died under this so-called religion?” A whopping 47% of Americans believe Muslim values are at odds with “American values” and way of life even though 83% say they know nothing about Islam. These views are promoted by politicians such as President Trump who proposed banning Muslim entry into the U.S. and Ben Carson denigrating Islam in public statements.

There is seemingly no limit to our irrational fears and paranoia and we have become easy prey for those wanting to manipulate our opinions. An unscientific review of stuff folks have posted or re-posted on their Facebook walls should be enough evidence that we are pretty darned uninformed, but polls validate the argument.

A study by University of Chicago researchers determined that 37% of Americans believe that the Food and Drug Administration suppresses “natural” cures for cancer and other diseases because of pressure from pharmaceutical companies. Another 20% still believe children’s vaccinations can lead to autism, 12% believe the CIA deliberately infected African-Americans with HIV and another 37% had no opinion either way.
A 2013 poll found that 37% of Americans believed global warming was a hoax, 21% believed an alien ship crashed in Roswell, NM in 1947 and the government was covering it up, 28% believed Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks, 7% believed the moon landing was faked, and 28% thought there was a secretive global conspiracy to create a “new world order” under authoritarian rule.
An older poll (1999) found that 18% of Americans believed the universe revolved around the Earth. That statistic hasn’t changed much because a 2014 study found that 25% of Americans believed the Sun revolved around the Earth.
A 2010 study found that 1/3 of the folks living in Texas believed humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time. Another 30% wasn’t sure.
A 2014 Annenberg survey found that only 35% of Americans could name one branch of government and about 65% could not name all three branches. About 21% thought that a 5-4 Supreme Court decision would be sent to Congress for consideration. similar polls have demonstrated that Americans can identify the judges on The People’s Court (a TV show) but have no idea that John Roberts is America’s Chief Justice.
In 2012 1/3 of Americans could not pass the citizenship test administered to naturalized Americans and 63% could not name one of their state’s senators.

As usual, I could continue with the depressing statistics, but you get the idea. If we are uninformed we are easily manipulated, and a fairly sizeable number of Americans is uninformed. So…instead of paranoia over bird flu or terrorists, Americans really should fear one thing above all others:

IGNORANCE

(Three personal notes: 1. The end of the school year is crazy busy so I’m not posting to the blog as often, and I apologize. 2. There is no way to know how many people are actually reading my posts so I never know if ANYONE actually reads it. I understand if readers don’t want to comment, but if you could otherwise let me know that you are reading it I’d really appreciate it. 3. I would also appreciate your suggestions for topics and, if you do enjoy reading the blog, I wish you would share it with others. THANK YOU!!!)

A Desensitized Society

Posted on April 8, 2017 by David Roebuck

I apologize in advance if this rambles a little. I’m struggling with my own views these days.

I had just turned 14 years old the first time I recall being exposed to raw violence in the media. It was 1968. I’m not sure where or how I saw it, but I remember it vividly. I’ll bet most of you also remember or have seen old photographs of a South Vietnamese officer raising his sidearm and summarily executing the leader of a North Vietnamese death squad who had killed several police officers and or their family members. I’m quite a bit older now but I still consider that a pivotal point in my life. Other such pivotal points were 9/11, the numerous videos of Syrian parents trying to get their children to safety, the slaughter in Rwanda, other news videos from Vietnam, the Oklahoma City Bombing videos, stories of systematic rape as a tool of war in places like Bosnia and Congo, and countless more news stories reporting death and violence over the years. Then add in all the cowboys and Indians I saw killed in movies and on TV growing up, the number of people I watched John Wick and other movie characters kill, the number of deaths and incidents of violence I’ve witnessed in video games and books, and…you get the idea. I’ve been exposed to a great deal of violence and death, and violent deaths, during my lifetime. So have you.

I believe this desensitizes us to mass violence. There is an interesting phenomenon referred to as “mountain climber syndrome”. If one mountain climber is stranded on the wall of a rock face with a broken rope and no way to climb up or down, our news media will constantly report on the progress of rescue efforts, we will expend almost unlimited resources to rescue the climber, and we all sigh relief when the climber is rescued. On the other hand a bomb in Afghanistan can kill dozens of people, large numbers can be killed by an earthquake, or a bus crash results in death for fifty passengers, and we either ignore it or forget about it quickly.

This obviously matters because it makes ignoring mass genocide possible. In 1994 as many as 1.5 million Rwandan’s died and another two million became refuges because of a war between the Hutus and Tutsis. As many as 300,000 people have died since violence erupted in Darfur in 2003 (of course the Sudanese government’s estimate is much lower) and 2 million more displaced. Estimates are that 6 million people have died in The Democratic Republic of the Congo since war there broke out in 1996 (possibly the most deadly conflict since WW II). And now close to 500,000 Syrians have died and another 5 million displaced since the civil war started there in 2011. Why is it that we largely ignore those statistics until we are confronted with images such as those of children suffocating from sarin gas dropped on them by their own government? After all, only a few dozen died in this attack, a small drop in that very large Syrian death bucket.

All of this just bothers me. It makes me begin to question a lot of things about myself and my fellow citizens and it makes me wonder how we should respond. This year I’ve had the chance to teach my favorite course sequence, Classical and Contemporary Political Philosophy (with some very cool students, by the way). One of the themes we discuss is human nature because a writer’s conclusions on that subject determine her or his structural and procedural solutions. In other words, if a writer believes people are genuinely good and can be trusted, less governmental controls are necessary. However, if a writer believes people are essentially driven by passions, are greedy, are selfish, and cannot employ reason when making decisions, government must be more controlling. Sorry…that’s a long way of explaining why I’ve been contemplating human nature a good bit lately. It also forces me to consider my own beliefs on related subjects such as our obligations to each other.

I believe people are essentially good. As I’ve said previously, I’ve never been anywhere in this country or in any other country where that was not true. However, that doesn’t help me understand how the leader of a people can easily kill a number of those people for political gain. I can’t understand how ethnic or religious differences justify murdering masses of people. It doesn’t help me understand how someone can become so angry with his political leaders that he consciously sets of a bomb outside a courthouse knowing innocents would die. It doesn’t help me understand how someone could be so filled with racist hate that he could sit in on a prayer meeting for an hour then stand up and slaughter the other congregants.

The easy conclusion is that some people are just evil by nature. Maybe. But some are probably evil because of the things to which they’ve been exposed throughout life. Either way they are, as John Locke would argue, declaring war on society. They have demonstrated an inability to play nice with the rest of the world. Unfortunately they are also the ones who receive the most media coverage so we think they are the majority. They are not!

How do we respond to these people? If they are irrational should we try to deal with them rationally? If I happen upon a scene where an adult is attacking someone who cannot defend him or herself, am I to walk up to the attacker and try to reason with him? Years ago I read a story about a man attacking a child in a park while people walked by and ignored it. Nope! Wrong response! I’m not a big guy and I’m 63 years old, but I’m pretty confident I would try to rescue a defenseless child, woman, or man if necessary.

The above analogy isn’t perfect, obviously, but how should we respond to international bullies who are raping, killing, and torturing defenseless and innocent people?

Should we ignore the abuse and say it isn’t our problem? This works for the random racist (such as the lady who kicked two of my friend’s workers off her property this morning because they don’t speak English) or sexist (guys bragging about their sexual exploits) as long as they are not directly hurting others. It doesn’t work for tyrants on a larger scale.
Should we try reasoning with them? Is it possible to reason with Kim Jung-eun? With Bashar Al-Assad? With the likes of Adolph Hitler or Joseph Stalin? With Pol Pot?
Should we intervene?

I’m a pacifist by nature. When I was a kid I got whipped a few times because I didn’t like to fight. I haven’t really changed much as an adult but I do question whether we as a society should sit by and watch bullies harm the innocent just for their own political gain. I’m hoping some of you will help me find clarity on this issue.

Freedom of Religion

Posted on April 5, 2017 by David Roebuck

One of my areas of academic interest is Constitutional law. Yes, I know half of you just fell asleep and the other half turned on the TV. Sorry, but this is exciting stuff! Constitutional law includes the actual wording in the Constitution and how that wording has been interpreted since 1789, but mostly how the Supreme Court has interpreted it since 1801 when John Marshall became Chief Justice. I admit openly and without shame that I chose this topic because I’m sort of busy these days and I needed something that did not require much effort, but it is still a topic worth exploring.

Almost every passage in the Constitution is open to interpretation, and many passages have been interpreted numerous time. The first passage of the First Amendment is no exception: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”. There are two distinct passages addressing “freedom of religion”, the first saying Congress cannot make laws respecting the “establishment” of religion and the second saying Congress may not interfere with the “free exercise” of religion. Both are open to interpretation.

The Establishment Clause: Most Americans believe the Constitution specifically creates “separation of church and state”, but it does not. One of our most important Constitutional principles…is not in the Constitution. Weird, huh? The phrase “separation of church and state” actually came from an 1802 letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to The Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut in which he stated that the Establishment Clause “…builds a wall of separation between church and state…”.

So what does separation of church and state mean? It obviously means that Congress cannot prohibit the establishment of a religion, and it also means Congress cannot create a national religion (though, interestingly, states were not prohibited from doing so). Does it also mean that government may have absolutely no interaction with religion and vice versa? Does it mean that government may provide benefits to religious groups so long as it doesn’t favor one over the other? Does it mean that religious groups should have no influence over government?As with most Constitutional issues, this one has been decided by the Supreme Court.

The phrase was ignored for decades, but in 1878 the Court stated that Jefferson’s interpretation “may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the amendment “. In other words, Jefferson’s interpretation was the one the Court would use thereafter. In 1947 Justice Hugo Black stated that “The First Amendment has erected ‘a wall of separation between church and state.’ . . . that wall must be kept high and impregnable.” A long line of case law using this interpretation followed, but since the Court is almost always divided the decisions have led to an inconsistent result. The Court has used this interpretation to declare a broad range of governmental activity unconstitutional including mandatory school prayer, teaching religious principles in school, having nativity scenes on government property, a state’s decision to deny unemployment benefits to a Seventh Day Adventist worker who lost her job for refusing to work on her Sabbath, hanging the Ten Commandments in public buildings, and much more. Many or most of these decisions were made by a divided Court, so there is no unanimous acceptance or interpretation of Jefferson’s “wall”.

The “Free Exercise” Clause: This clause obviously means that Congress cannot prohibit citizens from exercising their religious beliefs, but does that mean that a Satanist should be able to perform human sacrifice or a fringe Mormon minister should be able to marry a twelve year-old girl? Again, this clause eventually required interpretation.

In 1879 the Court ruled that free exercise meant that we can believe what we choose, but the government may regulate our religious actions. This case dealt with a Mormon wanting multiple wives in violation of federal law restricting marriage to one wife/one husband; the Court said he could believe in multiple wives but could only marry one. The Court has used this interpretation to require Christian Scientist parents to immunize their children, to keep Native Americans from using peyote in their religious ceremonies (even though some had been doing so long before we took their land), to allow Jehovah’s Witness children to opt out of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, invalidated state laws banning schools from teaching about evolution, and more. (I can provide citations for all these cases, but I’m just being lazy. Ask and I’ll provide them)

Where does this leave us in regard to freedom of religion? As I’ve said previously, we must follow the Constitution as our guiding document, but it was written in 1787 for a much different society. By now it should be clear that the Supreme Court ultimately decides how to interpret the two passages related to freedom of religion, so going forward the composition of that Court will be significant for interpreting this and numerous other passages as well. A changed Court could permit the government to break down some of those barriers now erected between church and state. Here are a few scenarios I find disconcerting:

The Court again allows organized prayer in school. As I stated earlier, the Court has never ruled prayer in school unconstitutional; the appropriate adage is that as long as there are exams there will be prayer in school! Organized prayer is different, however. When I was a kid our principal required us to recite The Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of the class day (this was before the Court ruled that practice unconstitutional). America is a diverse nation which includes people of all faiths, and if administrators or other governmental officials are permitted to select a prayer they will certainly choose one based on their personal faiths. This excludes children from other faith communities.
If the Court reversed decisions regarding the teaching of evolution our children could finish public (government-funded) schools without being exposed to scientific research accepted by 98% of scientists affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. I personally want children exposed to scientific evidence whether or not that evidence supports my personal beliefs.
During WW II The Court permitted the relocating of American citizens of Japanese heritage to camps because of their perceived threat. This decision has been largely discredited as racist and xenophobic. What if future leaders decided to do the same with, for example, Muslim groups strictly because of their religious convictions (this is, at least seemingly, an unlikely scenario but so was interring Americans of Japanese descent)? The Court must be able to stand up to such actions and protect the rights of those in the minority. Doing so is, by the way, a primary role of the Court.
What if a religious or political group that opposed all reproductive rights (birth control and abortion) based on their religious beliefs gained the majority in Congress and the White House and tried to impose restrictions? I’ll not argue abortion in this blog (too sensitive with no way to compromise), but I’ll bet most Americans are not aware that until 1965 some states did prohibit the sale of birth control devices. In that year the Court struck down as unconstitutional a Connecticut law prohibiting people from using “any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception”.
Marriage equality. I know some disagree with me on this, and I understand that, but in my mind government should not be imposing restrictions on adults making life choices with other adults if those choices do not harm others. In a 2015 decision the Supreme Court by a 5-4 vote declared marriage a fundamental right that extends to same-sex couples. It is pretty clear in my mind that most of the objections to this decision were based on religious principles, and those principles should not be the basis of public policy decisions.

I could continue, but I’m losing the attention of the one person still reading. Here are points to consider:

The Constitution never uses the word “God”, instead giving authority to the people.
Some folks often claim that the Founding Fathers were all Christians and, consequently, that America was founded as a Christian nation. Yes, most (but not all) of the Founders did claim some type of Christianity as their personal faith, but that doesn’t really tell us a lot about their personal faith because, like today, some were much more devout than others, and many opposed large, organized religion. They saw faith as more personal than public. It is also worth noting that about half of the Constitution’s signers owned slaves or promoted the slave trade, so their beliefs of more than 200 years ago may lack contemporary guidance. America was not founded as a “Christian nation”. Remember that many of those who came to America during colonization did so to escape religious persecution in their own countries.
Many of our Founders argued for religious tolerance. Thomas Jefferson and Richard Henry Lee forcefully argued for accepting Muslims, Jews, pagans, and people of other religions. George Washington stated that he would gladly welcome Muslims to Mt. Vernon if they were good workers!
Article VI of The Constitution states that “…no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States” (again, this only applied the federal officials, not those on the state or local level). The Founding Fathers were very careful to remove religion as a qualification for holding office.

Believing in freedom of religion is not being anti-religion. Far from it. I am not anti-religion at all, I just think my personal spiritual beliefs should not control others’ rights. Supporting separation of church and state simply favors an idea that began developing among Christian writers in the 12th century and wound its way through much philosophical literature during the last 800 years. If you want to read an early American writer supporting separation of church and state and religious tolerance, I suggest reading this piece written by Roger Williams, a 17th century theologian and founder of The First Baptist Church in America. For other arguments regarding religious tolerance you might want to read about Anne Hutchison and others.

…that all men are created equal

Posted on March 31, 2017 by David Roebuck

The second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence begins: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”, a sentiment borrowed from philosophers such as Locke and Rousseau. The Constitution never mentions equality in the same way as does the Declaration, but the 14th Amendment mentions “…equal protection of the laws…”, a nod to the notion of legal equality.

So how are we doing with that equality thing? Women’s History Month ends today so I want to focus on gender equity since I’ve previously written about socioeconomic and ethnic issues.

In 1776, when America was fighting for independence from Britain, Abigail Adams wrote a letter to her husband John urging the members of the Continental Congress to “remember the ladies” while deliberating independence. The Congress instead chose to forget the ladies, a precedent often followed in the years since. The Constitution, written in 1787, did not mention gender but referred to “persons” and “citizens”, seemingly gender neutral terms but ones that in fact applied to men because of common law. Women were not given the right to vote in any elections until the 1860s when a few states began permitting them to vote in state elections. The 19th Amendment, passed in 1920, finally granted equal voting rights in all American elections. Interestingly, however, this amendment gave women the right to vote precisely fifty years after the 15th granted that right to former male slaves.

In this and other ways women have had to fight for every right gained. In the 1800’s the Supreme Court allowed states to interpret the term “citizens” to apply only to men, so women’s attempts to gain rights through the courts usually fell flat. Attempts to add an “equal rights amendment” to the Constitution beginning in the 1920s were also unsuccessful. Even in the 1960s the Supreme Court allowed states to eliminate women from juries, to prohibit women from serving or selling liquor, and to enforce other similarly discriminatory laws. And in 1967 the Boston Marathon attempted to keep a woman from running the race!

So that is all in the past. Correct?

I’m sure you are familiar with statistics related to pay inequity. As of 2015 women were paid 80% of the average man’s salary. Hispanic women earned 54% and African-American women earned 63% of the average white male salary. As women age the pay gap increases steadily, and women earn less than men in almost every occupation category. The most optimistic projection is that the pay gap will not close until 2059, but numerous factors can impact that projection.
A 2013 study found that girls around the world outperform boys in science at age 15…but not in the United States. It seems that American girls are more likely to be channeled into traditional women’s roles that focus less on science and math, and this places them at a disadvantage when choosing a career. Interestingly, the same phenomenon holds true for Canada and Britain but not most for Middle Eastern and Asian countries, and in Russia.
Women hold 104/535 seats (19%) in the U.S. Congress. Although this has increased significantly in recent decades, this is still far below the 50.8% of Americans who are female. Oh…and of the thirty-four positions appointed by President Trump at this point…five are women. In case you are interested, 64% of the legislators in Rwanda are female.
Only twenty-one CEOs of Fortune 500 companies (4%) are female. These numbers are obviously troubling for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that 60% of college degrees and 60% of masters degrees are currently being earned by women, and a higher percentage of women hold college degrees than men.
The United States is the only country among forty-one surveyed that does not guarantee paid maternity leave for mothers of newborns. In fact, The United States is one of only three countries in the world not providing that leave.
More than 23 million American women have been raped. Almost half of those women were under the age of 18 when the assault occurred. By the way, until 1993 there were states that provided a “marital exemption” stating that husbands could not be charged for raping their wives.
Other examples of unequal treatment of women are numerous. Some are subtle (name calling, other lingering stereotypical behavior and hidden sexism), and others more blatant (a boss demanding sexual favors).
Interesting fact: In 1979 The United Nations adopted the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. To date 186 countries have ratified that convention. The seven that have not? Iran, Palau, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tonga and The United States.

These facts apply only to American women. Women across the planet face these and other more serious forms of discrimination and abuse. Approximately 59% of people forced into human labor or sex trafficking each year are women and 17% are girls. As many as 8,000 girls suffer genital mutilation each day to destroy their ability to enjoy sex as adults. In many countries women cannot sue for divorce, own property, or drive automobiles. Some young girls have either no or limited access to education.

Merriam-Webster defines feminism as “the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes“. A feminist is one who accepts this theory. I’m a feminist and you should be as well.

We Have Nothing to Fear… but Fear Ourselves

Posted on March 28, 2017 by David Roebuck

OK. The title is a slight exaggeration but I thought this play on FDR’s words was catchy. This post is about our current efforts to ensure that foreign terrorists don’t slip in to our country and repeat 9/11/2001 or worse.

Is foreign terrorism our greatest threat?

The likelihood of being killed by a terrorist is .00003%. I’m not really good at statistics but I do know that is pretty darned low. I’m certain you’ve all heard that the number of previous terrorists from the countries on President Trump’s current immigration ban is … zero, nor have any people admitted to the U.S. as refugees ever engaged in acts of terrorism. Although terrorists have attacked our citizens since 9/11 causing the deaths of about thirty Americans, these attacks were perpetrated by people already in the U.S. (some of whom were citizens) who became radicalized.

I know the counter argument: More Americans have not been killed by terrorists because of the U.S. government’s vigilance. This is certainly true, at least according to Wikipedia. The diligent work of the FBI, CIA, and other intelligence gathering and law enforcement agencies has certainly saved many lives. Still…is this our greatest threat?

I’m sure you will expect me to compare the number of American deaths by terrorists to the number killed by gun violence, and since I don’t want to disappoint my loyal readers I’ll mention it briefly. In the first three months of 2017 alone 3,514 Americans died from gun violence. Of these, 140 were children under the age of twelve and 718 were between 12 and 18 years of age. So in the first quarter of 2017 about as many of our fellow citizens died from gun violence as died from terrorism in the last 20 years. About 440,095 people died because of firearms from 2001 through 2014. By comparison, approximately 400,000 Americans died defeating Germany and the Axis powers in World War II. I’m a gun owner who enjoys target shooting, but I believe we need sensible restrictions on gun ownership (the topic of a future post).

Here are some other ways we kill each other:

Someone is killed every 53 minutes and more than 9,000 die each year because of drunk drivers. Our laws on impaired driving do not work.
Since 1964 about 2,500,000 non-smokers have died from exposure to second-hand smoke.
In 2013 researchers at MIT calculated that 200,000 Americans die from air pollution each year. About 53,000 of those are from auto pollution and 52,000 result from power generation. Industrial smokestacks, railroads, heating and cooling systems, and other factors also play a role.
The CDC estimates that more than 3,000 of us die annually from foodborne illnesses.
In 2015 4,317 workers were accidentally killed on the job.
Parents murder their own children about 450 times each year.
More than 700 Americans are killed annually by drivers running red lights.
By some estimates more than 400,000 Americans die each year because of a preventable medical error. These include overmedication, infections, unnecessary procedures, and more.
More than 40,000 die each year from accidental poisoning.
Coal miners die from black lung disease, people die because their water supplies are tainted by chemical spills, a number die for lack of health care or insurance, and more than 4,000 pedestrians are killed each year.

I’ll stop adding to this morbid list, but I think you get the point. Do we need to be protected from foreign terrorists? Absolutely! Our government’s primary responsibility is ensuring our safety.

I just wonder why we think foreign terrorists are our greatest threat when statistical data say otherwise. Most of the deaths from the causes listed above could be significantly reduced if we showed the same resolve as with our current attempts to protect us from terrorists, and in my mind that threat is much lower than other perils we face daily.

PS: I apologize for the infrequent and short posts recently; life became sort of hectic. Thanks for your understanding.

The 2016 Presidential Election

Posted on March 23, 2017 by David Roebuck

I’ve been ignoring this topic because I know how distressing it is for many voters (understandably so). I plan to offer my honest opinion so I may offend everyone!

The 2016 candidates for the major parties were two of the most flawed candidates in American history (of course they don’t compare to Horace Greely who actually died prior to the Electoral College vote in 1872). As I’ve said previously, there are about 330 million Americans and these were the two best among us? I don’t think so.

Both the Democratic Party and the media effectively made Hillary Clinton the party nominee before the race even began. She was favored to the point that Joe Biden and other Democrats with national name recognition didn’t even enter the race, and those who did enter did not have a fighting chance. Martin O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland, probably had much to offer the Democratic Party but he lacked name recognition. Bernie Sanders made a go of it, but most Americans are still turned off by the term “socialism” even with the word “democratic” in front of it.

So the party served Hillary Clinton to the public on a silver platter in spite of her long history of scandals and questionable responses regarding her emails and other issues. Questions regarding the Clinton Foundation alone should have been a huge red flag. The veracity of her public statements on the campaign trail remained questionable throughout 2016. Still, even with her faults she won 2.9 million more votes than Donald Trump but she lost the Electoral College.

At least seventeen Republicans sought the Party’s nomination in 2016, and a dozen or so of those candidates were viable and qualified (I personally supported one of them), but the Republican primary voters unfortunately selected one of the unqualified candidates. Donald Trump had no political experience (that can be an attribute but it requires an extraordinary individual, and that he is not), his past business dealings were questionable at best, his warped views regarding women were well documented (and validated in a recorded conversation with a reporter), his views on issues seemingly changed on a whim, and he had been embroiled in as many scandals as had Hilary Clinton. Yet he won the Republican Party nomination and went on to win 306 votes in the Electoral College (270 required to win).

So we had two flawed candidates running to be the most powerful individual on the planet. We could have predicted the consequences. The campaigns were nasty and filled with fabrications and falsifications. The Toronto Star fact-checked Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric and determined that he offered, on average, twenty false statements per day during a six-week period leading up to the election. Although they found that Trump offered false statements more frequently, Clinton uttered at least thirteen false statements during the debates.The candidates’ campaign ads were also over the top.

How do we keep this from continuing to happen in future elections? I’ve previously argued that we need to create an environment conducive to third-party development and success. I have also presented evidence that money has a terribly corrupting influence on American politics. No single fix will suffice, but there are certainly some things we should try:

Simplify voter registration. Registration procedures vary from state to state and even vary by county within some states. We should also update our voting processes to make sure all votes are counted accurately and that recounts are possible. Some states allow early voting, others do not. Some allow voting via mail, others do not. Creating more uniformity is just a simple, necessary reform that would modernize our system and remove doubt regarding election outcomes. It will be difficult to accomplish, however, because the processes are determined by each state.
Overturn Supreme Court decisions making money the equivalent of speech. I’ve argued this previously. Money must be removed from the election process to encourage qualified candidates to compete regardless of their financial status.
Amend the Constitution to allow someone to serve only one term as president, but lengthen that term. Six or eight years seems reasonable. Stop this constant election cycle (people are already beginning to build campaign committees, or at least think about them, for 2020). I understand concerns that this might put a poor president in office for a longer period of time, but Congress has the power to impeach and should be willing to use that power to remove duds (I do live in a dream world).
Limit campaigns to five or six months. Other countries do it. British campaigns for Parliament (and thus the Prime Minister) last thirty days. And yes, I know we have different governmental structures but there must be a way to limit our perpetual campaigns.
Change the current primary process. It is insane that New Hampshire (the state with the first primary) has more choices than does California (one of the last) because candidates drop out during the five months between the first and last primaries. I tend to favor dividing the country in to regions, have a “primary day” in all states in a particular region on the same day, and rotate the order in which regions vote every election cycle. That way no state or region has a perpetual advantage.
The most controversial suggestion? Eliminate the Electoral College and rely on the popular vote. The Electoral College was created at a time when mass communication was impossible so voters were largely uninformed. It was also created to ensure small states would be protected from dominance by the larger states. However, beginning about 200 years ago the states gradually started allowing their citizens to vote in the presidential elections and informally influence the Electoral College. Twice in the last seventeen years (2000 and 2016) the Electoral College has chosen a candidate who lost the popular vote, the last time by a large margin. In my mind this violates the first three words of the Constitution: We the people.

Feel free to post questions in the comment section if you want me to explain any of my weird ideas in more detail.

Until we change our process we will not get the best presidential candidates, or president, America has to offer.