The Semantics of Santorum

A few weeks ago Rick Santorum made a pretty unusual argument against gay marriage in a video you can watch here: http://blog.spreadingsantorum.com/2011/08/santorum-fails-to-grasp-difference.html. Anyways, I suppose I would agree that a paper towel would not be the same thing as a napkin even if one were to call it that, but this argument does bring up some interesting questions about the relationship between words and what they have come to signify.

Now Santorum makes quite a few arguments against gay marriage here, but I’m going to focus my rebuttal on just one, which I think I can summarize here:

1. Napkins possess certain traits.

2. We call these things “napkins” in order to signify them as having these traits.

3. A paper towel does not have all of these traits.

4. Therefore, calling a paper towel a napkin would not make it a napkin in any way other than in name.

Santorum here is trying to point out the difference between a thing’s name and its character or essential, intrinsic traits. He intends for his argument about napkins to apply to gay marriages in this way, thus:

1. Marriage possesses certain traits.

2. We call this thing “marriage” in order to signify it as having these traits.

3. Gay marriage does not have all of these traits.

4. Therefore, calling a gay marriage a marriage would not make it a marriage in any way other than in name.

This argument certainly seems similar to the last one. The problem, however, is that there is a very fundamental difference between “marriage,” an abstract thing, and “napkins,” which are physical objects. Santorum seems to think that marriage is a concrete thing that exists independent of human thought and interaction, as napkins do. This is untrue. Marriage is a concept, an idea. It is like justice, mercy, or fairness; all good things, but they cannot exist without humans thinking about them. Imagine for a second that tomorrow everyone in the world would forget everything they knew about napkins and also everything they knew about marriage. Napkins would still exist exactly as they were before. They wouldn’t move, they wouldn’t change, and they wouldn’t cease to exist. We might be a little perplexed by their presence and we would be clueless as to what they are, but they would still be there. Marriage, however, would cease to exist. It cannot exist unless we think about it. Certainly marital contracts would still exist, and wedding rings, and marriage photos, but marriage itself would not. We might eventually relearn what we knew about marriage from dictionaries, legal records, stories, and other concrete sources, because these would be unaffected, but until then marriage would not exist. There is no concrete thing called “marriage” that you can go touch and with which you can interact.

Therefore, Santorum makes a false claim when he says we can call a thing marriage but that will not make it marriage. As a matter of fact, this will make it marriage. And this has been seen throughout different cultures for a long time. In early Hebrew culture, it was acceptable to have multiple wives, and this relationship was marriage. Until recently, marriage was more of a property agreement, and it was still considered marriage. Marriage has been constantly redefined throughout societies, and each time it was, the essential character of what marriage actually is changed.

There is an objection to this that I think Santorum might make that I would like to address next. He might say, “But that is not what I meant by marriage at all. A polygamous marriage practiced by the early Hebrews wasn’t marriage, they just called it that. It wasn’t actually marriage.” An interesting point, Rick, but again there is a problem. In order to best explain this problem, however, I think we need to separate the thing from its definition. When Senator Santorum says marriage, he means “a contractual relationship and property agreement between two people of the opposite gender.” So his objection can be rephrased as “A polygamous contractual relationship and property agreement between two people of the opposite gender practiced by the early Hebrews wasn’t a contractual relationship and property agreement between two people of the opposite gender, they just called it that. It wasn’t actually a contractual relationship and property agreement between two people of the opposite gender.” In translation, this objection makes sense. Of course a polygamous marriage wasn’t an agreement between two people of the opposite gender, because it involved multiple people. But Senator Santorum seems to think that his definition of marriage is the universal, concrete, and unchanging version of marriage, the real version. A quick look through history, however, will show that that is untrue. Marriage has been redefined and practiced differently in many different cultures.

So now that we know what Santorum is really saying, let’s take another look at his original marriage argument. This time, however, we are going to replace the word “marriage” with “Rick Santorum’s version of marriage.”

1. Rick Santorum’s version of marriage possesses certain traits.

2. We call this thing “Rick Santorum’s version of marriage” in order to signify it as having these traits.

3. Gay marriage does not have all of these traits.

4. Therefore, calling a gay marriage a Rick Santorum’s version of marriage would not make it a Rick Santorum’s version of marriage in any way other than in name.

Changing his argument in this way actually makes it valid. It is true that a gay marriage is not the same thing as Rick Santorum’s version of marriage. Naturally, then, it is makes no sense for us to call a gay marriage an example of Rick Santorum’s version of marriage. But guess what Mr. Santorum? The gay community and its supporters don’t really have any desire to call it that. In fact, I think that most would agree that the gay community’s definition of marriage is different than Rick Santorum’s version of marriage. Admitting this makes no real difference in the debate. So congratulations, the gay community will concede that gay marriage is different than your definition of marriage. But they will not concede that it isn’t marriage in character. They want a version of marriage that best allows people to be joined in a loving relationship, and unfortunately, yours doesn’t really allow for that.

Ultimately, Santorum’s argument doesn’t really have anything to do with the morality of gay marriage but the definition of gay marriage. This is just a silly argument over semantics, but I don’t think Santorum has realized that yet. I think it would help him a lot to be able to understand the difference between abstract and concrete objects, and to learn to separate a thing from its name. After all, a quick Google search of the word “santorum” will show how easily and drastically the definition of a word or a name can change.

More Boeh-bama Squabbles

This has been going on for a while. It's almost like Boehner and Obama don't like each other very much, like the mysterious turtle-esque face of Boehner does not care so much for the over-sized Obama ears. So far, they've kept their squabbles contained to debates over minor issues like the fate of the nation and the destabilized economy teetering on the brink of destruction. You know, kids' stuff. But now, it's personal--they've overstepped their boundaries. Yes, Obama's long awaited job-creating speech has been deferred a day by His Petulancy, who rejected Obama's proposal to speak before a joint session of Congress.

This has never actually happened before; usually, Congress you know, allows the president to speak before them. The request is something that is merely a formality, for the date is usually pre-arranged, as the White House claims it to have been. Boehner's gestapo cabinet, on the other hand, claims that the Supreme Turtle heard nothing of the letter before it arrived and declined on innocent grounds--it was too much of a hassle on the day Obama requested and would be much simpler on the day afterwards.

Children fighting

There was a lightning exchange of annoyed letters that went back and forth thereafter. Why the controversy? Many think that the disagreement is derived from the fact that Obama asked to speak before Congress on the same day as the Republican debates, and that it was a political move on Obama's part to try to scrounge in some news time this news cycle, and Boehner didn't want to detract from the possibility of Republican viewership. The hot date is September 7th, which just so happens to be a day where nothing else significant is happening. September 8th, the date for which Boehner wishes to reschedule Obama's long-awaited speech, is the kickoff NFL game between the Saints and the Packers and, no offense to Obama, but I'm guessing the general public is going to be significantly more interested in that.

The White House agreed to Boehner's insidious terms and this speech, which was supposed to be a big deal, will simply be usurped by the superior entertainment value derived from grown men chasing a piece of leather up and down a pasture.

Why the G.I. Bill was so successful

After millions of drafted Government Issues returned home as World War II closed, the American Legion fiercely lobbied Congress to pass the G.I. Bill of Rights, or the Serviceman's Readjustment Act. This bill was passed in Congress and signed by F.D.R. in 1944, investing billions in the education for returning War Veterans. It has since been estimated that every dollar invested in the G.I. Bill pumped $7 in returns for the U.S. Economy. It was a dazzling success, and conservatives have since used it as a reason to invest additional funds in military, arguing that it has historically returned into the economy. I will do my best to rebuke that argument.

The Interstate Highway system, carried out primarily
 in the post-WWII era.

Before World War II, the United States was in a crippling economic depression, known as The Great Depression, that had persisted for decades. As the War economy ensued and the nation rallied behind a single cause (and women began to work, and rampant deficit spending occurred), the economy shifted back into gear and powered forward. As WWII ended, however, a sickening economic slump seemed to spell recession in the couple of years immediately following the war. Most people of the time worried that faux wartime economy would not persist, and the Depression would return. Curiously, however, skilled workers were suddenly dropped from the sky (after the required amount of time for trade school or an Associated Degree, just coincidentally) and the economy again surged forward. With continued projects for the betterment of the nation (most notably the Interstate Highway), the economy continued to accelerate, at the expense of the Federal Budget, which continued to deficit spend. All of the money invested in that nation sustained a powerful U.S. economy for years to come from the advantages derived from this legislation. Many ask, how did this economic boom emerge from the Great Depression?

Contrary to popular belief, it was not completely World War II that did the job. World War II was merely a medium behind which the country could unify. What really solved the problem was a major investment in education for those who wouldn't normally be able to afford what used to be an exclusively gentleman's enterprise--a college education. Most people look at the economic boom as a product of the war. Let's look, however, at the historical trends. These are graphs of the U.S. Economy over the last few hundred years:

Notice that the economy plunges in 1776 and in 1812, the two years where War breaks out.

Notice how the economy was badly damaged by the Civil War and how continuous growth in interrupted by the Spanish-American War and turns downward initially during the outbreak of WWI.

Notice that in the years between WWI and WWII, the economy was growing anyway, on its way to stabilization.

So, as you can see, history shows that war is generally damaging to an economy, as, of course, would be expected if you didn't focus solely on WWII. If you look closer at the data, look at the sharp economic increase in 1870 (the year all states had public elementary schools). Although education has been more of a trend than singular implementation, progressive-era trends (see the sharp increase between 1903 and 1907) and educational expansion times always seem to be accompanied with economic growth.

So what was the real value of the G.I. Bill? Was it the money spent on the war, or the money invested in public education? The answer, historically and factually, is clear. Where should we put our money? Where it will help our economy most--in the classroom, investing in the future.

A Growing Distrust of Science in America

Global Warming: a serious climate problem due in large part to human activity or an elaborate hoax by scientists to fool governments into giving them more funding? Now, I imagine most people, myself included, usually roll their eyes and pull their hair when they read that sentence, but I opened with that absolutely ridiculous question to bring to your attention a humbling truth about our society: we live in a nation where there are people that actually think that global warming is a hoax.

To dispel any doubts there may still be (it’s shameful that I have to do this), there is a strong scientific consensus that global surface temperatures have increased over the past several decades and that the trend is mainly caused by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases. No scientific body of national or international standing disagrees with this view, though a few organisations have maintained neutrality. There are the facts, plain and simple. But a startling high number of people refuse to believe in global warming nonetheless. Why is this? Why is there this deep seeded distrust with the scientific community, this strand of American anti-intellectualism?

Let me just begin by saying that science-denial is not a completely new thing. Copernicus got a lot of crap for his theories. Post-Enlightenment, however, reason and science grew more and more esteemed in Western society, and pseudoscientific theories were pushed off, for the most part, where they belong: on the fringes of society, presumably somewhere near Roswell. It seems that lately, however, this distrust with science and the academia in general has gained more and more favour with the mainstream. Though there are many reasons why it’s grown, there seems to me one spot where it has grown the most: the religious Right.

Science and religion have always had a strange sort of opposition with each other, agreeing on some points, compromising on others, and remaining staunchly opposed on a few others. For the most part, science tends to win out in these disagreements, but there is one issue in particular that, more than a century after its initial theorizing, many religious folks haven’t given up on yet. I speak, of course, about evolution. Schools have long debated whether or not to teach creationism or evolution in their schools, and even in 2005 the Kansas State Board of Education decided to permit the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in public school classes. This was luckily overturned in 2007, but the fact remains that public school officials actually voted to allow it and one board member even went so far as to say that “Evolution has been proven false. ID (Intelligent Design) is science-based and strong in facts.” It goes without saying that that is just a silly thing to say, especially since this link – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment – will take you to an article about a scientist that actually witnessed the evolution of E. coli bacteria through studying 50,000 generations of the bacteria over the span of 22 years. How can there still be disbelievers? Obviously, the vast majority of disbelievers in evolution do so because it contradicts their literal interpretation of the Bible, but I would not say that religion itself is the problem. Rather, the problem is people failing to separate their faith from their secular lives.

The entire premise of religion is belief by faith, believing in something that does not necessarily have empirical or scientific evidence supporting it. I would argue that this is fine on a completely personal level. If it were completely personal, it likely wouldn’t harm anyone else, even if it were the most ridiculous belief imaginable. And if it makes you feel good, offers you solace, provides spiritual nourishment, then it is perfectly within your rights to believe in it. The problem arises when belief by faith ceases to be a personal issue, when people apply faith or personal feeling to any issue other than religion, whether it is science, law, politics, or education. Religion is a wonderful tool with which to construct your own life but a terrible one with which to construct the life of anybody else. Many people, however, believe that faith, feelings, some kind of Holy Spirit, or simply intuition is a good way to make decisions about science and politics. This is not the case. No matter how fervently one believes in something, even unto the very depths of their heart, that belief alone does not make the thing true. You believe in things because they are true, they aren’t true because you believe in them.

This brings us to the crux of the issue. Many Americans distrust academics because they either contradict their religion or they see them as a sort of academic elite, and many of those same Americans trust their feelings more than reason, evidence, logic, and science. Mix this all together and you have the perfect environment for the growth of American anti-intellectualism. It is unreasonable, it is dangerous, and it hinders human progress.

It goes without saying that this is something that needs to change. We can’t combat global warming effectively when there are so many people that don’t believe in it. Science is hindered in its advancement when people try to replace empirical evidence with faith and feelings. What can be done? To be honest, I don’t really know. That’s an article for another time; this one is already pretty long. I guess that for now, I can only say that we need to recognize that there is a time for faith and a time for reason and that their Venn diagram has significantly less overlap than many people think it does.

I would just like to close by sharing a definition. Delusion: a false belief held with absolute conviction despite superior evidence. And though a delusion is technically pathological, I think an appropriate name for this unreasonable denial of science I have discussed is “voluntary delusion.” Despite superior evidence supporting human-induced global warming, evolution, and even the theory of relativity (yes, some people even disbelieve that one. See http://www.conservapedia.com/Theory_of_relativity), a startlingly large number of Americans still cling to their seemingly delusional beliefs, and many of them do so intentionally. I just hope that intelligence, science, reason, evidence, and logic cease to be stigmatized in our society so that our race can continue moving forward along the tracks of human progress.

The '50's are Over, People.

See the picture? It's great. They look really happy. Really. There's Dad, with well-kept hair, dressed in a tux at home, because that's what people do, of course, and Mom, in her excessively modest top backed by her blonde, White Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASP) daughter in a sun dress, and a boy that looks innocent, beaming with potential. Everything is black and white, because things were black and white back then--it was too perfect for color. The facade of jubilation is rock solid. Those who lived it romanticize the time they spent therein, those who didn't are led to believe that it was a time of rainbows, lolly-pops and daisies. While I have no idea whether or not these assertions are true, I can tell you with certitude, unlike Anthony Weiner, that those times are, indeed, over and we Americans have to step up and face that reality.

I'm not going to argue that the fifties weren't great. The American standard of living was the highest in the world, the G.I. Bill of Rights brought college education to men everywhere, women stayed in the kitchen and everybody stuck strictly to the straight-and-narrow-minded. Milkshakes and drive in movies highlighted existence, and all-American girls were to be found on every street corner--for free! Certainly, it bears little resemblance to America today (with the exception of isolated suburban communities that shut the rest of us out). I mean, look at this show that literally DEFINES a modern family: it's comprised of an inter-racial couple with a significant age gap, an overweight child, a less-than-upstanding child and a homosexual couple that defies God's golden glory by adopting a baby so they, too could be parents. It's awful!

But in all seriousness, there was an explosion of economic boom, perpetuated by oppression abroad but hey, it worked and great nations had been doing so for thousands of years. Americans are constantly searching for 'the next big thing' that will bring about economic boom, expansion and economic prosperity. Indeed, the American dream is no longer to strike it big as an entrepreneur, but rather to live on a stable upper-middle echelon paycheck in the secluded suburbs as an accountant. This is because Americans are no longer the trailblazers and pioneers they used to be, no more than a neutered chihuahua is a wolf. Yet they still expect to feast like a wolf, regardless of personal output or economic climate. We as a people believe that we all deserve plasma screen TV's, that we are endowed with the right to own one by our creator, the same one our forefather's thought only granted us life. This culture of consumerism and laziness can be traced directly back to the 1950's and the ideal so many still expect to find on a single income, with a modest education and no risk whatsoever.

I don't really care what we do next, as long as Americans realize that we'll either have to abolish a minimum wage to bring industry back to America and, as a side effect, yield a fat cat upper class crushing (under their enormous obesity) an impoverish poor with wages significantly worse than the "five dollars a day" first introduced by Ford in Detroit, or else we all resign to be like Europeans, living in relative economic prosperity and isolation, but without really bothering with the international superpower thing. I'd be cool working as an oppressed underclassman or commuting every day by high speed rail, whichever people deem better, just as long as we stop living with the mentality that every single person can earn a house with a lawn in the quaint suburbs and a flat screen TV. Grow some balls, America, and live like the Irish did in the 1850's or else like the Europeans do now, but the prosperity of the 1950's does not define a culture permanently any more than Caesar's manly conquests defined the empire as a whole four hundred years later.

Hurricane Irene... Ahh!!

An image of Hurricane Irene from yesterday. This photo
belongs to National Geographic. I think it might be a little
illegal to use this image, but since I doubt National
Geographic would dare to stand up against our sister site,
Rational Geographic and her army of lawyers, I'll take my
chances.

Hurricane Irene is coming. In fact, it's already hit the continent and is moving continuously on upwards. It's thrashed through North Carolina and continues its wicked ascent toward Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey--even the great city of New York is threatened, and has closed down the biggest public transit system in the world. The hurricane is expected to go as far north as New England and was as far inland as West Virginia.

The poor East Coast is getting slammed continuously by natural disasters to which they are unaccustomed. Seriously, first the semi-serious quake in D.C. that caused considerable damage to monuments and archives, now the largest recent hurricane hurdling toward them? It seems disasters are no longer confined to the Carribean; they're making their way for the States. This is concerning a lot of people as it his now hitting a lot more people. Not only that, it's hitting people that rich people are closer to, namely Americans.

The question that I'm posing is simply this: is this hurricane a bigger or smaller deal than a, say, Katrina sized hurricane that would hypothetically strike off southeast coast of rural China? The basic question is whether it would be a more solemn loss to see the Chrysler building fall or to see a hundred family huts with no backup blown away.

NASA No More

Forty-two years, one month and six days ago, Neil Armstrong spoke his immortal words: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Neil Armstrong, on that day, extended the reach of the star-spangled banner to alien worlds, capturing the imagination not only of Americans, but also of human beings in general around the Earth. It seems that for a while, nine out of ten American kids aspired to be an astronaut, and for good reason. They are the modern explorers, charting the vast expanses of what has as of yet remained decidedly uncharted.

Well, these dreams were dashed away recently, as the impending budget crisis forced the reevaluation of the importance of NASA and, after the investigation took place, manned space flight effectively ended. It was a sad day for many.

A friend of mine--a Brit--once told me that, in stark contrast to every atrocity carried out by the United States' supposed benevolence, NASA was the single, unequivocally philanthropic project carried out by the United States for the benefit of mankind a whole. Although the stoppage of Communism is popular regarded as positive, not everybody would agree. However, most people would agree that to have factual knowledge is a good thing--and what factual knowledge NASA brought! The Hubble Space Telescope, allowing us to see worlds and galaxies afar, the International Space Station, allowing the aspirations of children everywhere to skyrocket (pun intended), Skylab, allowing experiments to be carried out that otherwise simply couldn't, even the capacity to feasibly put man-made satellites into orbit for our own exploitation! Truly, NASA has done a wonder for the world. And now its manned space program is gone. Is it better that way?

Here are some nice facts that you may be curious to know, when mulling over whether or not this spending cut was worth it.

1. We are in debt. We are deficit spending. Our economy is tanking. Seriously, every dollar we save is of utmost importance.
2. There are very few job openings, and unemployment is shooting through the roof. If we cut spending at NASA, we will throw away hundreds of employees working in engineering, maintenance, even janitorial work. It may not be the most prudent thing for the unemployment rate to leave even more people unemployed.
3. According to G. Scott Hubbard of Stanford University, every dollar put into space exploration pumps eight dollars into the U.S. economy. (This is due to inventions: NASA invented everything from Velcro to cordless power tools. For more, see http://wyrk.com/everyday-items-invented-by-nasa-dales-daily-data/)

Whether or not we can establish permanent bases off of Earth, seeing as it's far-fetched and idealistic, should not be considered. Also, the innate desire as a human race to explore is not something that should be considered; if we governed ourselves completely by innate tendencies, we would all be gallivanting serial rapists.

When it comes down to it, does the manned space program actually help the American people to the tune of $7 billion? My answer would be: no.

Space exploration is great. It's scholarly, it's interesting, it captures the interest of every young mind--but it's honestly not worth the immense cost. Establishing self-sustaining permanent human bases elsewhere is, at best, centuries off, regardless of how much money we pour into it. Our desire to explore can be swallowed temporarily while we wait out the recession's storm; honestly, when you're starving, it shouldn't be your top priority to climb to the top of Everest. Although the inventions derived from NASA may, in some cases be beneficial to the economy, it's very difficult to prove the numerical assertions made by Mr. Hubbard, and it's likely that NASA will continue to develop products, as this new spending cut did not dismantle the organization as a whole, rather pruned a small bit off. In the midst of the crisis, it's simply silly to cling to an old program sentimentally when slashes are being made across the board. Obviously, it's not the only program that needs to be cut and cuts are not the only solution, but it's certainly a step in the right direction, and manned space flight is seriously superfluous--nearly all other nations seem to be getting along just fine without it. Landing on the moon was probably one of the most patriotic things ever done, but that doesn't mean that it derived any direct benefit besides prestige, and when we're faltering so badly as we are now, it's better to sell the facade for the good of the building than to watch it crumble from behind while maintaining a translucent front of productivity to other nations that know better anyway.

So goodbye, manned space travel via NASA. We will miss you, but don't worry; we'll probably get along just fine.

The Rational Post

ROTTERDAM--We're going to try very hard to remain ridiculously serious in this blog. As in, so serious you can't tell for sure that we're being serious because of the gravity of our seriousness. It will weigh upon you, keep you up at night, our seriousness will.

But before we get serious, let's talk about the purpose of this blog. This blog, The Rational Post, is intended to within a week become a serious rival of The National Post (have you heard of them? They're rather inconsequential when compared to The Rational Post--we're a really big deal). Anyway, we'll work hard to bring you an article every day from news, present whatever societal ill it displays, and attempt to write a solution to that ill. By reading our blogs, you will literally become a better person as you do, slowly becoming less like you and more like me and, trust me, I'm who you want to be.

News is objective. We, by contrast, are not.