Just to start some controversy

I think overall I've been relatively uncontroversial in my ideas. So I thought I'd throw something out there, and leave it out there for people to look at and maybe get angry at and I'll explain it later.

While I believe that embracing the ideal of love is probably the most important guide to salvation, I believe different churches rank as different value in their ability to guide people to salvation.

Here's my ranking of religions (this says nothing about the people who belong to these religions, or the fact that all these religions are valid belief systems, but rather it's a matter of my philosophical and religious agreement with the religions):

Christianity > Judaism > Islam > Sikhism > Hinduism > Buddhism > Agnosticism > Atheism > White power churches

Within Christianity, I have another ranking system:

Catholicism > Eastern Orthodox/Oriental Orthodox > Protestants > Mormonism/Jehovah's Witnesses

Now there are a lot of other religions out there, they tend to fit somewhere on my scale but almost all are above Atheism except those that are explicitly based on hate like the White power churches.

I'm a devout Roman Catholic, but I'm not one casually. I believe that while you should take in your parents' religion and the religion of those you look up to as a kid, at a certain age (probably starting around 7 (the age of reason by Roman Catholic standards when you start understanding the rituals that you do) and intensifying around 13 (when a lot of kids get Confirmed)) you have to really start looking at your religion. Now I don't mean throwing away your previous beliefs with no reason. After all, since you have motivations to do things in life you always have some beliefs, even if they're implicit, so why not start out with some explicit beliefs that you can actually examine and mold. What I'm really trying to say is you look at your beliefs, find contradictions, see if you can resolve them, if you can't discard one of the beliefs that caused the contradictions. Then you extend the beliefs to create new conclusions, again this will generate contradictions. Then you look at the beliefs that form the core of your beliefs, again this process will generate contradictions: resolve them. Finally you take the sum of that whole matter and decide what is the best course for you religiously.

I say this not with the idea that everyone should develop a complete religious philosophy all by themselves. Look, when you're having trouble with a math problem, what do you do? You consult a math textbook. But what if there are different schools of thought about that mathematics problem? You find an expert in math who you trust and respect. Math actually has a lot to do with religion since they're both based on axioms (basic beliefs) extended by logic (for those of you who scoff, I'd like to point out nearly all of modern logic is based on the work of the Catholic Church (CATHOLICS RULE! WOOOOOO!), and at this moment theologians are pouring over religious texts and applying the logic to explicate them). A lot of religious topics are hard to understand, don't be afraid to take guidance from people you respect and trust. Still you have to see if the commitment you make to a religion agrees with your basic beliefs and the ideas that you were able to work out. Moreover, if you have the time, look through and analyze the beliefs of the religion you adopt, and also others if you have more time. Of course, it could be you can't find any organized religion that agrees with your basic beliefs, I'd probably argue that's a flaw in your basic beliefs, but that's a philosophical matter in which I acknowledge that many rational, thoughtful people can come to different conclusions, and then you would have to take no organized religion.

Well, I sort of went back on my I'm not going to explain this rule. And to go back on it even further, I'd like to throw in a session I did earlier explaining some of my religious thoughts (most notably my problems with reincarnation and Buddhism). But I'm not going to explain everything (although you might have noticed that the religions I hold in higher esteem are those that are closer to Christianity, and the denominations of Christianity I hold in greater esteem are those that are closer to Roman Catholicism, but still there are additional reasons for my rankingology). Still I think this is enough to start some controversy.

Get mad or get Catholic! Come on!

Bush and the reorientation of the world

So this is not the long poem promised in my last session, but that will come, probably later tonight. But George W. Bush is a big figure in international politics and I thought I'd give him a little analysis, because I do think of international politics a lot. Let me start out by saying, I'm not going to demonize Bush and I don't think he's an idiot, but I do think he's made some serious and sometimes catastropic mistakes (as well as a few good moves) and he has in many ways led to a collossal change in the world of international politics, but on the other hand I think a lot of the changes in international politics he has made are in many ways accelerations of already beginning trends.

Let's start with what his foreign policy intended to do. I think when he was first elected Bush was honestly an isolationist. He ran on an isolationist platform and his party was highly isolaitonist except for the neo-cons who were background at most. Granted he did appoint neo-cons, but he also had a lot of old-fashioned conservatives like Dick Cheney, who really only became a neo-con after 9/11. The neo-cons I think at the time were loved by the intellectuals in some circles of the conservative movement and I think that prompted this move. But we should also remember before 9/11 the focus of the neo-cons was not on Iraq but on China. Our first big foreign policy squabble was not in the Middle East but with China. Yes, I've heard that the neo-cons prepared battle senarios with Iraq before 9/11, but remember when Bush was elected it was 2 years since we had given Iraq a bombing (under Clinton in 1998 for not allowing UN inspectors in and for suspected WMDs, when I first heard Bush's WMD claims were bogus I wondered about the 1998 claims given no evidence of the disposal of the previous supposedly huge stockpiles of WMDs, but then I started hearing that Clinton's intelligence men (led by George "slam-dunk" Tenet) were just as prone to pressure to tell Iraq had WMDs as Bush's) and heck, I'd prepare contingency plans for potential wars even if the actual chances were pretty low.

That said, all the plans for his foreign policy that he had before 9/11 completely changed after 9/11. Afghanistan was a move that anyone would have made. Gore would have made it, Kerry would have made it, McCain would have made it. It was sheltering and helping to train a global organization that was actively at war with us, it had in short declared an alliance with someone we were at war with, this made them a fair target for invasion. I know that sounds very glib and does not perhaps treat war with the gravity it deserves. War is hell, and should only be declared in cases where we are attacked or perhaps when another country is attacked (depends on the identity of the country being invaded and the country invading, for example it would be ridiculous to defend the Khemer Rouge when it was invaded by Vietnam, yes Vietnam was a bad regime but the Khemer Rouge was one of the most monsterous governments in history, on the other hand when Iraq invaded Kuwait we were justified in defending it, Kuwait's king might have been a dictator, but he was a decent one (he has since become a relatively good dictator and has been leading important democratizing intiatives although his government is far from a democracy) while what Iraq was doing to the Kuwatis was absolutely horrible), but in this case we were attacked and thus we were justified in attacking a vital ally of our attacker. Some might link this to Iraq and say Bush only attacks countries with oil, but in addition to my point above I'd like to say 2 cases is not enough to draw conclusions.

And then Iraq was attacked. I don't think most powerful politicians are directly greedy (this is more of a case with smaller case politicians) (especially since most politicians could get far more better paying jobs with lobbyists or as corporation heads). But I think the influence of greedy friends, of old memories (like remembering your father being threatened), and of old rivalries tends to exert a big influence. I also think a lot of corruption stems from the idea to the victor belongs the spoils philosophy (government posts are distributed according how useful you were poltically and to old friends (this is how I think the FEMA director got his job)) and I think idealism can blind us. I think all of this played a role in Iraq, coupled with faulty intelligence (led by the idea that what the president wants in his intelligence he should get). (I'd like to point out although I do not think that politicians are immune to greed, I rather think their greed comes in the form of power hunger and legacy craving, after all they have taken positions of power, it makes sense that that is what they want, a lot their corruption isn't because their primary motivation is money (although occassionally in history and around the world and country and in certain offices it is different) but because they feel a certain something belongs to them because of their position of power (and occassionally because they feel that they're serving the public and not getting enough payment for it)). The current situation I think was not inevitable though even after the invasion if better steps had been taken and I think that if we had overthrown Saddam after 1991 the situation would be better but I'll save that for other sessions.

This is about international politics. The Iraq War badly polarized international politics (in addition to domestic politics), it provided a rally point for anti-Americanism. But too all those who blame Bush alone for anti-Americanism forget that anti-Americanism has been going on for a long, long, long time. Anti-Americanism in the Islamic world itself has been going on for a long, long time, remember that Bid Laden declared Jihad against the US in 1991, not in response to Palestine or in regards to George W. Bush but because US troops were on Saudi Arabian soil, which in his view tainted it. And why? Because the United States is a special sort of symbol. In many ways it is a symbol of liberalism, and by liberalism I mean it in the classical sense, free trade, capitalism and large amounts of civil rights. It doesn't matter if you consider the United States the leader in those fields, it is a symbol of those things and all the good and bad things that are associated it with those (like more sex, less religion, looser ethnic ties, etc.). To Islamic extremism liberalism is a deadly virus that is spreading throughout the world, like Communism to us it seems like something that is threatening to completely destroy all their ways of life. However, that is not to say US foreign policy hasn't played a role. But we should understand that traditionally US foreign policy has not been promoting liberalism but rather undermining it, under the belief that Muslims are too violent, fanatical and ignorant to handle freedom, and so if they want any progress they must be dragged forward by authoritarian regimes. And the Muslim world hates us for supporting these authoritarian regimes. If there's one thing that can unite Islamists (not necessarily extremists, I think it's valuable to make a distinction between moderate Islamists and extremists, an Islamist just being someone who wants Islam to play a large role in government) and liberals it is their hatred for authoritarianism. So don't think that supporting the Muslim tyrants of the world is going to win us points with Muslims, it won't.

So I didn't get to my grand thesis that I was planning to, well not yet, but I need to do other stuff (part of my problem before with posting regularly is I always wanted to complete incredibly lengthy trains of thought before ending my sessions), but I'll revisit the topic later. I think I still covered a lot of ground about Bush, and so this isn't quite a waste. Anyways, I plan to start posting stuff from my epic poem later, but for now, take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks!