Government Broadband

Continuing the FCC theme from the prior post. I stumbled across a great article on ZDNet demonstrating a handful of negative effects of the FCC controlling cost and infrastructure of broadband. The following is an excerpt from that article by the David Gewirtz, the executive director of the U.S. Strategic Perspective Institute, founder of the ZATZ technical magazines, and the cyberterrorism advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals:

But there is a dark side. First, you gotta know that the minute FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski mentioned providing broadband to another 100 million DVD-buying-cause-they-can’t-watch-Hulu-yet Americans, some movie industry executives somewhere went full-goose bozo.

And that’s even before Julius mentioned those juicy upload speeds of 100 megabits per second. Can you say BitTorrent? Sure, I knew you could. Now, think about the FCC’s stated goal of “access to at least 1 gigabit per second broadband service to anchor institutions such as schools.”

In schools all across America, there will be armies of teenagers who’ll use their schools’ increased bandwidth to share every movie and every TV show ever digitized. After all, if it takes less than ten minutes to download a full-length movie, why not? Yes, I know, there’s software to prevent that. Do you seriously think any security software can stand up to an army of teenagers who want free movies?

Somewhere in Hollywood, an accountant in an overpriced suit just screamed into his latte.

Where else could this thing go off the rails?

Right and Wrong and Free Speech

I came across this today which amazingly continues on the theme of my Right and Wrong post. This is from an article in response to Obama's U.N. Anti-Free Speech resolution; as USA Today stated "the Obama administration has joined a U.N. effort to restrict religious speech." From the John Birch Society, "It has been pretty clear that the Obama administration does not look with particular favor on the second amendment, but it is also becoming increasingly evident that the President is not much of a ‘fan’ of the first one, either...The Obama administration has marked its first foray into the UN human rights establishment by backing calls for limits on freedom of expression."

Apparently, Obama described the measure as a method to stop blasphemy and to protect religion. Yet why, world wide, are people being persecuted for saying "homosexual," being "anti-gay," by classifying disagreement with abortion as "hate speech," etc? These things may show intolerance, but they do not deal with religion or blasphemy.

So what is the common thread running through all these speech prohibitions? The standard being applied is not one of blasphemy.
It is offensiveness.

Thus, what’s happening here is not religious but quintessentially secular. After all, blasphemy is predicated on the idea that external, universal, unchanging laws (God’s laws, the Truth) dictate that certain things really are sacred and that we must respect them, that we must, in a manner of speaking, avoid “offending” God. Yet [they] are only concerned about offending man. And in making “man the measure of all things,” they are guilty of a typical atheist mistake. That is, if there is no Truth (a notion that reduces morality to opinion) who is to say it’s wrong to offend people?

Moreover, making man god and then saying “Thou shalt offend no god” is far scarier than anything Mideastern Imams conjure up. This is because blasphemy prohibitions are actually fairly limited, only pertaining to impious utterances relating to a certain religion. Yet, since the secularists are using that which “offends man” as the yardstick, and since man comprises thousands of groups the world over, there conceivably is no limit to the number of speech prohibitions such a standard could spawn (Selwyn Duke).

Obama says he is stopping blasphemy, but his blasphemy has nothing to do with God. Looking at his war on Fox News, Obama seems to define blasphemy as anything that contradicts him. He has out rightly attacked Fox News, attempting to stop their reporting. The other major news agencies, having watched the circus the last few weeks, have finally banded together with Fox.

Now, I know all the articles I have quoted are extremely conservative. I apologize for that. I actively sought for a balanced perspective on this UN Free Speech discussion. Shockingly, none of the larger media other than Fox have touched this; but it is moving like wild fire on the smaller sites and blogs. And obviously my support for an eternal Right and Wrong only comes from conservatives. As Selwyn Duke put it:

An atheist would say that religionists' reasoning is based on a silly assertion; namely, that the divine exists. I won’t argue that here but will only say that the secularists’ offensiveness-based speech laws are silly regardless of the facts. After all, while secularists’ relativism dictates nothing can be wrong, they claim it’s wrong to offend others. They also claim nothing can be sacred but yet would have us treat certain people’s feelings as sacred.

They just don't make sense...

Right and Wrong and Math

Here are the principle points of People’s Law as practiced by the Anglo-Saxons…[point number three] The laws by which they were governed were considered natural laws given by divine dispensation, and were so well known by the people they did not have to be written down (5000 Year Leap, p 13).

It is interesting how the more I read about the Constitution and early US Government, the more I hear about Natural Law. Our Founders, and the majority of people at the time, believed in Natural Law which, simply and roughly put, is God’s unalterable Law. It is a divine, eternal right and wrong. Today, Natural Law has been erased almost completely. Modern dogma states that there is no way to know absolutes, and it is inappropriate to judge others by your belief. In example, why is homosexuality wrong if there is no eternal law on sexual reproduction? Why is anything wrong, for that matter? Who said cheating, or lying, or stealing, or killing is wrong? If not God then society. You may say, “but I make up part of society, and I really see no reason for those things to be wrong. And why deny physical desire? I want it now. Who came up with abstinence, tolerance, patience? If not God then society; my friends and I say ‘wait no more.’ In the words of Better Than Ezra, ‘If it feels good, do it. If it tastes great, drink’ (Teenager).”

I feel the battle in our society is not whether this or that is right or wrong, but whether there is right or wrong. If there is no wrong, then whatever the majority desires is correct. However, if there is no wrong, there is no right. No right, no good; no good, no bad.

This argument just seems ludicrous to me.

Abraham Lincoln said, "When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion." Why did he feel good when he did good or bad when he did bad? Why do you? For that matter, why does charity and service exist in the world at all? Why does the general populous not lie, steal, and kill? It makes no sense for us not to do any and everything we can to get gain. So there has to be something more at play here. Example: if the government stopped punishing murder, that would not suddenly make man, woman, child, willing to go out and kill. Yes, I’m confident the murder rate would soar. But I believe that those increased murders would be primarily committed by the same few who now kill. The majority would still be horrified at the idea of taking life. Why is that so, if there is no absolute right and wrong?

I find solace in mathematics. In math, there are rigid laws set in place that function under all conditions and through all time. As you undoubtedly know, 1 + 1 can only equal 2. It did so six thousand years ago. It does so today. It will tomorrow. Saying there is no absolute right and wrong, no Natural Law, is like saying the natural law of math allows for 1 + 1 to equal 2, 3, 271, or whatever the public majority feels like this certain year. ‘Who are you to say that it equals 2 and all the rest of us are wrong for saying it equals 271?’



This argument is far larger than I care to make at this point; far larger, in truth, than I have yet thought out. But it seems to me that since there is a law that clearly states mathematically that there is a right and there is a wrong, and that law is the foundation of everything in our existence, then it seems odd to ignore its implication in human interaction and ethics. It was the mathematical law that allowed the Egyptians to build the pyramids. It is this same law that today thrusts humans into the void of space. It is this same law that dictates the decoding of DNA and the formation of cells within us. It is the same law that shows when, say, chemicals inhaled from cigarettes reach a certain threshold, a chain reaction occurs within the body. Or that cells die in the absence of oxygen after so much time. It also dictates the formation of planets, the movement of their paths, and the fusion in stars.

The natural law of mathematics is the basis of everything and it empirically points out the validity of absolute rights and wrongs.

Our nation was built upon Natural Law, despite what the prevalent thought de jour may claim. On July 4th, 1776, Congress declared that they were “to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them,” (Declaration of Independence, para 1). Again, who said there is wrong and there is right? Who said that free sex, drugs, and killing babies is wrong? If not God, then who? Our founding fathers knew these things were wrong. Just as the 1776 congress and Lincoln, I surmise that when I do good, I feel good and that Natural Law decrees it; just as 1 + 1 equals 2.

The Good Life

So, I've been living the good life lately. That is why I have not blogged for a while. I am putting in sixty hours of work last week, and this week. Perhaps this is but a little taste of Wendy's life. No end in sight, though. Once I finish this Art On a Grand Scale project I have a wedding to finish and several segments of momumo to edit. This is all good, but exhausting.

This brings me to my quote of the week.

The quality of life depends upon the choices we make, moment by moment, to do exactly what we sense is right...I would like to call [this] a life of goodness (p.319, Bonds That Make Us Free).

Listen to your heart. It will tell you what you really want to do. Do it. It will lead you to a Life of Goodness which, so I hear, really is the Good Life.

Self Worth

During sacrament meeting last Sunday I pondered what has worth? I spend my life worrying about my time, now forced to devote it to ARUP. Or how I need more money. How am I going to make ends meet? I also want to buy more and more cool gadgets. I love gadgets. They make me feel more masculine or something. I don’t know, but I have rooms full of them.

Is any of this of worth? Do my possessions add to my worth? Does making more money than you add to my worth? No. It is of no importance. It is all illusory fluff that distracts me from the one and only thing that has any importance whatsoever: myself. What matters is how I perform my job, earn my money, and grow personally. “There's nothing of any importance in life - except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are will come from that. It is the only measure of human value” (p.99, Atlas Shrugged).

It suddenly appeared odd to me how desperately I cling to all those other modes of worth. I cling to my physical possessions. I cling to my habits. Charles Du Bos advises “to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.”

Am I too caught up in my accumulated ‘worth’ to now see the way to what I can become? I think that is worth thinking about. What do you think?

New American Rights

I have posted this verbatim from my buddy, Thomas Sowell. He has more authority than I, and says it better besides. My source for the text is here, and I originally read this published in Utah's Deseret News.

Take it away Mr. Sowell:

Among the many new "rights" being conjured out of thin air, a new one seems to be a "right" to win.

Americans have long had the right to put their candidates and their ideas to a vote. Now there seems to be a sense that your rights have been trampled on if you don't win.

Hillary Clinton's supporters were not merely disappointed, but outraged, when she lost the Democrats' nomination to Barack Obama. Some took it as a sign that, while racial barriers had come down, the "glass ceiling" holding down women was still in place.

Apparently, if you don't win, somebody has put up a barrier or a ceiling. The more obvious explanation of the nomination outcome was that Obama ran a better campaign than Hillary. There is no reason to doubt that she would have been the nominee if the votes in the primaries had come out her way.

As the election approached, pundits warned that, if Obama lost, there would be riots in the ghetto. We will never know. But since when does any candidate have a right to win any office, much less the White House?

The worst of all the reactions from people who act as if they have a right to win have come from gay activists in the wake of voter rejection of so-called "gay marriage," which is to say, redefining what marriage has meant for centuries.

Blacks and Mormons have been the main targets of the gay activists' anger. Seventy percent of blacks voted against gay marriage in California, so racial epithets were hurled at blacks in Los Angeles -- not in black neighborhoods, by the way.

Blacks who just happened to be driving through Westwood, near UCLA, were accosted in their cars and, in addition to being denounced, were warned, "You better watch your back."

Even blacks who were carrying signs in favor of gay marriage were denounced with racial epithets.

In Michigan, an evangelical church service was invaded and disrupted by gay activists, who also set off a fire alarm, because evangelicals had dared to exercise their right to express their opinions at the polls.

In Oakland, Calif., a mob gathered outside a Mormon temple in such numbers that officials shut down a nearby freeway exit for more than three hours.

In their midst was a San Francisco supervisor who said, "The Mormon church has had to rely on our tolerance in the past, to be able to express their beliefs." He added, "This is a huge mistake for them. It looks like they've forgotten some lessons."

Apparently Mormons don't have the same rights as other Americans, at least not if they don't vote the way gay activists want them to vote.

There was another gay activist mob gathered outside a Mormon temple in Orange County, California.

In the past, gay activists have disrupted Catholic services, and their "gay pride" parades in San Francisco have crudely mocked nuns.

While demanding tolerance from others, gay activists apparently feel no need to show any themselves.

How did we get to this kind of situation?

With all the various groups who act as if they have a right to win, we got to the present situation over the years, going back to the 1960s, where the idea started gaining acceptance that people who felt aggrieved don't have to follow the rules or even the law.

"No justice, no peace!" was a slogan that found resonance.

Like so many slogans, it sounds good if you don't stop and think -- and awful if you do.

Almost by definition, everybody thinks their cause is just. Does that mean that nobody has to obey the rules? That is called anarchy.

Nobody is in favor of anarchy. But some people want everybody else to obey the rules, while they don't have to.

What they want is not decisive, however. It is what other people are willing to tolerate that determines how far any group can go.

When the majority of the people become like sheep, who will tolerate intolerance rather than make a fuss, then there is no limit to how far any group will go.