The New Standard: Some Tips and Tricks of Web Design

I recently started helping build a website for a friend of mine, and I thought it might be fun to talk a little bit about web design, HTML5 and CSS. As with all modern web browsers, HTML5 and CSS are the standard for markup language used on the web today. The best part about it is that with the new elements that have been added thing that you could only achieve with scripting before are pretty easily done just with using the language the way it is.

The Website I’ve been working on for reference. In case you are interested, check it out: The Hunter Supply Outlet

The Old Days

In The Old Days you could build a webpage in a few minutes slapping just a few lines of code together. It wasn’t pretty but it never needed to be. Back when I first got interested in the Internet, most of the world wide web was covered in black text on a white background.

It was pretty basic, but it worked well because people never expect anything more. Soon, images became part of the web, and web pages were flooded with them, but not always in a good way.

The web started to look like a bad bulletin board system, with lots of advertisements, little content, and a whole lot of nothing. But standards began to emerge and people started obeying them, and real development began to take hold. Soon the web began to look amazing, and people took notice. It was no longer the ugly little place where you got your porn anymore, it could be used for some pretty amazing web sites, and now in the Web 2.0 years we have loads of competing browsers, but a standard that most of them stick to, and thus a designer can design most of his code once, and it will remain compliant throughout.

Of course this wasn't always the case, often times you would code something that worked great in Internet Explorer for example, and it would look terrible, or not work entirely in Netscape. But those days are pretty much gone, and with them a lot of the old code has become defunct. In this tutorial of sorts I will show you some simple techniques to brighten up your website with Cascading Style Sheets, and the newest standard of HTML markup code. Hopefully I can pass along some tips that will make it easier for even the greenest web coder to build something pretty nice.

Basic Tools

First you are going to need something to write your code in, I’d recommend getting a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editor. These editors will allow you to write the code in HTML if you choose, or design the site using a more manageable interface, one where you can see the elements as you put them in. The best kinds of editors are those that allow you to do both. My preference is Adobe Dreamweaver. Coming in at around $399, it can be expensive for your average person, especially someone who just wants to learn how to build their own website for the first time. However, it’s one of the more advanced editors I've used.

There are tons of free or low cost editors out there. Three free editors I would recommend are: Kompozer, Alleycode, and Amaya. The reason I use Dreamweaver is that I do a lot of coding that is not always in HTML, sometimes its in JavaScript, or PHP, and Dreamweaver easily allows me to transition into that. Also it’s one of the first WYSIWYG editors I actually used, having originally coded everything in Notepad or Vi, so I like to stick with what I know.

You are probably going to need some kind of image editing software as well. I use Adobe Photoshop for everything. This is also extremely pricey at $699 and can be terribly difficult for the average user to learn, however its without a doubt the most powerful image editing tool in existence. If you don’t have the $699 to fork over try: Gimp as an alternative, it’s free and it has many of the same features as Photoshop.

You’re going to need a webserver to test your code as well. Now you can purchase space just about anywhere, it’s usually inexpensive and you get a lot of it. GoDaddy comes to mind as a good choice, but Bluehost is also a nice hosting company. You can also run a local webserver if you are so inclined, however, remember, you will have to configure all the elements you might need to run your code. If you plan on basic HTML then a standard webserver like Apache should work just fine. Apache is really powerful, and you can configure it to load additional plugins that will make your website much more powerful, but it requires more complex configuration, so choosing the inexpensive hosting may be a better option.

You are going to need a modern browser. This means if you are still using Internet Explorer 6, 7, or 8, it’s time to update. I personally use four browsers in windows for testing purposes: Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and IE. On my mac, I also use Safari. I wouldn't recommend Safari for windows, without the security of the mac, it’s been pretty exploitable, and having it is just overkill. My personal recommendation, and preferred choice is Chrome or Firefox, I use them both, although Chrome a bit more.

Also Chrome comes with a built in Inspection tool for looking at code, learn it, use it. You can alternatively download the firebug extension for Firefox.

A Basic Tutorial

Now that you have everything you need, let’s start out by trying some basic HTML.

Each webpage will need to be opened with an <HTML> tag and closed with a corresponding </HTML> tag. In fact, with the exception of a few, all tags must be closed. I will explain further along as I go.

So our initial page should look like this:

<html> 
<head> 
<title></title> 
</head> 
<body> 
</body> 
</html>

You will see in the example above I have opened four tags, and have closed four tags. These four tags are all you need to start your HTML page. The first tag is the HTML tag. This tag let’s the browser know that the language of the page is HTML. The second tag used is HEAD, and this tag let’s the browser know all the elements that describe the page. The third tag is the TITLE and it’s used inside the HEAD tag because it’s used to describe the title of the page. The fourth and final tag is the BODY, and it’s used to display all the content of the page. This is essentially the location where everything the viewer sees on the page, will be located.

You notice every one of these tags is opened, and then closed. If you forget to close a tag, the browser will not display the tag properly, and leave the tag open as text instead. In this case, as these are required elements of a page, it can render the page unreadable.

So this won’t really show you anything special about HTML, so we need to add something to this code to make it actually display content. So first we need a title. We accomplish this by placing our title in between the opening and close TITLE tags. And then we need something for the body, in this case, I will use a simple line of text to show you what it would look like. You will notice, text by itself requires no special tag, though there are some that can be used to add style.
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<html> 
<head> 
<title>This is our example title</title> 
</head> 
<body> 
This is our example body text. 
</body> 
</html>

You will notice in the preview that you cannot see the title, that is because the title is hidden from normal view, and can only be seen normally on the title of your browser window.

Now that we've created a very basic HTML page, we can add an image to see what that will look like. To do this we need to make use of the IMG tag. The IMG tag is self closing, and is one of only a handful that do this. Although it is unnecessary in pure HTML, I will add the closing / to it for conformity. I’m also going to use the BR tag to display a line break between the text and image. So it should now look something like this.
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<html> 
<head> 
<title>This is our example title</title> 
</head> 
<body> 
This is our example body text. 
<br/> 
<img src="examplebird.gif" />
</body> 
</html>

There is plenty of more you can do with the IMG tag like add height and width parameters, or make use of the alt parameter to add display text to the image search engines can read. But for this basic tutorial, its unnecessary.

The next thing you might want to do is add some color to your page, maybe either by adding a color to the background or changing the color of the text. Either is an easy change to make, and I’ll show you examples of both. But first you have to know a little something about how colors are handled with a web browser. The W3C standard require the use of HEX Code to display corresponding colors. You can find a list here. I’m going to make a change to the color of the text and the color of the body in the example below.
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<html> 
<head> 
<title>This is our example title</title> 
</head> 
<body bgcolor="#00FF00" text="#FF0000"> 
This is our example body text. 
<br/> 
<img src="examplebird.gif" />
</body> 
</html>

Now a webpage just wouldn’t be complete without some links. So the first thing to do is choose the color we want to use for the link color, then we can add a link to the body by either linking around text or linking around an image. I’m going to create links for both.  For the purposes of the example, I will also add the target parameter so you can see how we can open a link into a new window. The use of the A tag is used to start a link, the parameter HREF is used to reference the actual url itself, and the TARGET parameter is used to specify a target window. As you can see we close the A tag around the linked text or image we have created.
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<html> 
<head> 
<title>This is our example title</title> 
</head> 
<body bgcolor="#00FF00" text="#FF0000" link="#FF00FF"> 
This is our example body text. 
<br/> 
<a href="http://www.wwf.org" target="_blank"><img src="examplebird.gif" /></a> 
<br/> 
<a href="http://www.wwf.org" target="_blank">www.wwf.org</a> 
</body> 
</html>

That’s basically it to creating your own simple webpage. Now obviously there is a lot more that can be done, but this was just a simple tutorial on how to do it. Now I could spend a lot of time and a lot of writing to show you every single thing you can do with HTML but I’m going to reserve the rest of this article for the more advanced stuff like CSS, because its really the stuff that makes the web so beautiful today. If you are really interested in an in-depth lesson on HTML, I recommend W3Schools.com tutorials, as they have everything you will need to build your own website.

Cascading Style Sheets

Probably my most favorite part of the modern web are the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) element. It is by far the best way to modify HTML outside of using a CMS (Content Management System) like Wordpress to manage your website. Don’t get me wrong, if you are going to blog, or require something that will constantly need to be updated, you should use a CMS. If you intend to have a hundred pages on your website, you should definitely invest in something that is a little more dynamic, because although HTML can be powerful by itself, it is very static in nature, even with the use of something like CSS.

Using a CMS that relies on something more advanced like PHP to power your site gives it that dynamic ability to change on the fly. But understand that it is not for the faint of heart. Learning PHP can be a handful, luckily something like Wordpress is fairly easy to use, because it has a backend dashboard that does most of the work for you. It’s essentially plug &play. But even Wordpress which is designed in PHP still relies on static code in the form of HTML and CSS that display its pages, because even though the pages are created dynamically, the code that is displayed is of a static nature.

So I’m not going to go any further into the use of Wordpress or any other CMS, you can Google that stuff and learn if you like. I’m here to talk about the Style elements.

So what does styling actually do?

Well the use of Style sheets can add a style to an element that already exists in HTML but may lack the ability by itself, or expand that style globally to all elements more easily.

In the example below, I’ll show you how to basically style text you are going to add to a page by adding the style to the <P> paragraph tag so applies style to all text within that element.
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<html> 
<body style="background-color:#C63;">
<h1>These are some styles and colors.</h1>
<p style="font-family:arial;color:#C9F;"> 
I've styled this text with the arial font in a light purple color.</p>
<p style="font-family:Georgia;color:#CCC;"> 
And here is the Georgia font on gray.</p>
<p style="font-size:12px;">This text is 12 pixels high</p> 
<p style="font-size:16px;">This text is 16 pixels high</p> 
<p style="font-size:20px;">This text is 20 pixels high</p> 
<p style="font-size:24px;">This text is 24 pixels high</p>
</body> 
</html>

That is a simple fun way to modify the style of text. But it gets even way more advanced than that. Text alignment is another thing I like to have fun with because it allows me to create a page that has divided sections that exist in all areas of the page. Without the ability to align the text element, text would all be aligned to the left side of the page. So even if you have an element that resides on the right side of the page, the text within that element may be aligned to the left within that DIV tag. By aligning the text however you want you can do some pretty awesome stuff with it. See how examples below of text alignment and padding.
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<html> 
<body style="background-color:#FFF;">
<h1>Now for some alignment!</h1>
<p style="text-align:left">As you can see this text is aligned to the left.</p> 
<p style="text-align:center">As you can see this text is aligned to the center.</p> 
<p style="text-align:right">As you can see this text is aligned to the right.</p> 
<p style="padding-left:160px">Now here I'm going to pad the text 160 pixels from  the left so it's not quite in the center.</p> 
</body> 
</html>

Another element you see used a lot is the text-decoration style, which specifies how the text will be stylistically displayed. Although this can be used to stylize normal text, it is more effectively used in linking URLs because it allows the user to create links that have no underline by default. You can also use the effect of coloring the link, a great replacement effect for the normal colored, underlined, HTML link element.
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<html> 
<body style="background-color:#FFF;">
<h1>Text Decoration</h1>
<p style="text-decoration:blink">Blinking(Doesn't work in Chrome)</p> 
<p style="text-decoration:line-through">Line Through</p> 
<p style="text-decoration:overline">Overline</p> 
<p style="text-decoration:underline">Underline</p> 
<p style="text-decoration:none">None</p> 
<a href="#" style="text-decoration:none;color:#F00">Undecorated Colored Link</a> 
</body> 
</html>

So now that you've seen some of the cool things you can do with CSS, I’m going to show you some really cool advanced techniques that you can use, as well as give you some tips and tricks on web designing with it.

The Good Stuff

Now CSS is seriously awesome, if you haven’t realized it by now. But I’m about to show you some of the coolest things you can do with it, you might not have even realized.

Gradient Effects

So you may or may not have seen this trick before, but its surely a good one and one of my favorite tricks to do with pure CSS. Creating gradient backgrounds used to be one of the toughest things to do, reserved mostly for those with an image editor like Photoshop, but now it can be achieved merely with a little CSS Code in the background.

The only issue you will note is that this feature is implemented differently in each browser type, yes slightly annoying, but it does work on all modern browsers. If someone manages to use a browser to view this without support, they will instead get displayed a violet solid-colored background. (If you are still using something like IE 6 or IE 7, get something more modern. You are denying yourself a vibrant web experience. And you probably cannot see many of these elements.)
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<html> 
<body>
<style type="text/css"> 
.gradient { 
background:#E01BD3;
background:-moz-linear-gradient(top,#00FF44,#F6FF00);    
background:-webkit-gradient(linear,left top,left bottom,from(#00FF44),to(#F6FF00)); 
filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr='#00FF44',endColorstr='#F6FF00');  
color:#000000;  
height:auto;  
padding:50px;  
} 
</style> 
<div class="gradient" style="height:70%"> 
<h1>Background Gradient</h1> 
<p>CSS Gradient Green to Yellow</p> 
</div> 
</body> 
</html>

Text Shadowing Effects

So I know why I love these effects so much. It’s because again, these used to be relegated to image editing software like Photoshop, and now you can apply them to your elements with CSS. Like gradient, these effects no longer require expensive software to produce, and look equally as unique and amazing. Be warned, some of this may or may not work with Internet Explorer. To be sure, you should be using the latest version, version 10 anyway.
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<html> 
<body style="background-color:#333"> 
<p style="background-color:#CFC;text-shadow:2px 3px 3px #000000;font-size:26px;font-family:'Times New Roman'">Drop Shadow</p> 
<p style="background-color:#3C0;text-shadow:-1px -1px 1px #fff, 1px 1px 1px #000;color:#993366;opacity:0.3;font-size:26px;font-family:'Times New Roman'">Embossed</p> 
<p style="background-color:#000;color:#fff;text-shadow:0 0 5px #fff,0 0 10px #fff,0 0 15px #fff,0 0 20px #ff2d95,0 0 30px #ff2d95,0 0 40px #ff2d95,0 0 50px #ff2d95,0 0 75px #ff2d95;letter-spacing:5px;font-size:26px;font-family:'Times New Roman'">The Night Life</p> 
<p style="background-color:#CFF;color:#fff;text-shadow:1px -1px 3px white, 0px -2px 6px yellow, 0px -2px 8px #ff8000,0px -8px 10px red;font-size:26px; font-family:'Times New Roman'">Flames</p> 
<p style="background-color:#9F6;color:#fff;text-shadow:0px 1px 0px #999, 0px 2px 0px #888, 0px 3px 0px #777, 0px 4px 0px #666, 0px 5px 0px #555,0px 6px 0px #444,0px 7px 0px #333,0px 8px 7px #001135;font-size:26px;font-family:'Times New Roman'">3D Text</p> 
</body> 
</html>

Icon effects

An interesting feature I have used before is Icon effects. You can link icons directly with their file type in CSS, or you can stylize lists. It’s a tool that comes in handy when you want to add something special to some otherwise ordinary text. There is a slight issue when aligning an icon to a list, if the icon is too big. The way to fix this I have found is to reduce the size of the icon to exactly 16x16px. Then it’s super important you remove the list-style by setting its type to none. If you do not do this, it will display the default type for the list, in this case being that its an unordered list, it defaults to a dot.

Another thing to remember is that the default style has to be removed, otherwise it won’t line up properly, image to text. When you use an image as a list icon, the image is always slightly higher than the text. This can be rectified by setting the background-position of the image. Once this is done, padding-left can be used to modify the text position. Doing this is tedious work, which is why you can use the numbers I've already figured out.
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<html> 
<body> 
<style type="text/css" media="screen"> 
a[href$='.zip'] { 
background:transparent url('images/icon_zip.gif') center left no-repeat; 
padding-left:25px; 
} 
ul.social { 
list-style-type:none; 
padding:0; 
margin-left:0;
}
.social li { 
background-repeat:no-repeat; 
background-position:0.1em; 
padding-left:1.5em; 
}  </style> 
<a href="foobar.zip">Foobar.zip</a><br/>
<ul class="social"> 
<li style="background-image:url('images/facebook.png')">Facebook</li><br/> 
<li style="background-image:url('images/gplus_variation2.png')">Google+</li><br/> 
<li style="background-image:url('images/twitter_old.png')">Twitter</li><br/> 
<li style="background-image:url('images/youtube_variation.png')">YouTube</li><br/> 
</ul> 
</body> 
</html>

Flipbook Effects

This is a cute little effect that works with most modern browsers, and it relies on almost entirely on the DIV tag, and how it is used to separate the content of the page. Basically, once you have your div tags separated, CSS is used to make each div colored separately, helping to define the separation between the tags.

By nesting the sectional div colors under the original flipbook, this allows us to create a default state for #flipbook, and a state for each #flipbook div that is nested beneath. All that is needed then is the hover effect added to the div to allow movement between the tags when the mouse is moved over it.

Lastly, the overflow:hidden property is used to clip and hide any content that is not the active div tag. While hovering over the link below will show you the page, only by clicking it can you fully experience the glory.
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<html> 
<style type="text/css"> 
#flipbook {width:500px} 
#flipbook div {height:50px;overflow:hidden} 
#flipbook div:hover {height:300px} 
#red {background-color:#FF0000} 
#green {background-color:#00FF00} 
#violet {background-color:#FF00FF} 
#yellow {background-color: #FFFF00} 
p {color:#000000;font-weight:bold} 
</style> 
<body> 
<div id="flipbook"> 
<div id="red"> 
<p>This is the color red. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color red. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color red. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color red. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color red. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color red. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
</div> 
<div id="green"> 
<p>This is the color green. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color green. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color green. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color green. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color green. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color green. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
</div> 
<div id="violet"> 
<p>This is the color violet. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color violet. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color violet. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color violet. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color violet. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color violet. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
</div> 
<div id="yellow"> 
<p>This is the color yellow. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color yellow. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color yellow. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color yellow. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color yellow. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
<p>This is the color yellow. Hover over me to see what happens.</p> 
</div> 
<div style="float:none;clear:both;height:0;"></div> 
</div> 
</body> 
</html>

Rounded Corners

One of the coolest little tricks you can do with CSS is rounded corners on windows. Now of course this feature is supported differently by each browser, and you can forget IE, without external help in the form of a behavior file. I’m unsure if IE9 supports a built-in function for rounded corners, although I’m sure IE 10 will. But the trick to making this work is border-radius property that is now built-in to CSS3. Chrome and Safari use –webkit and Firefox uses –moz, but both support it. As far as I know, Opera 10.5+ supports CSS specifications directly and do not require the additional prefix to operate.
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<html> 
<style type="text/css"> 
div { 
border:2px solid; 
padding:10px 40px; 
background:#8CBF75; 
width:300px; 
border-radius:50px; 
}
.roundup { 
-webkit-border-radius:50px; 
-moz-border-radius:50px; 
border-radius: 50px; 
} 
p {text-align:center;color:#ffffff} 
</style> 
<body> 
<div id="roundwindow" class="roundup"> 
<p>Rounded Corners!!!!!</p> 
</div> 
</body> 
</html>

Some things to remember, and some helpful tips

• Always have a good grasp of the properties you are working with, its fundamental to understanding how everything will work together. So if you are unsure, study up, there is a ton of knowledge out there, and Google is your friend.
  
• Until you become an expert in coding, I recommend you always comment your work. I know it seems kind of lame, right? NO! Commenting is extremely helpful in determining your place, knowing where something should go, or just readability. It’s also very helpful to others who would like to know how your did something, or why you did it. If you are just beginning, it can be a valuable tool to figuring out how you did something, if you leave and come back.
  
• Now one thing I did not talk about, is inline coding. You will notice in all my examples, I've used it. I don’t recommend it. I only did it to show an example of what the code looks like. Instead, you should take all your CSS code, everything inside the <style> tags and instead create a .css file and link to it from within your <HEAD></HEAD> tags. I like to put all my CSS into one common file called common.css and link to it. An example of this would be: <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/common.css" />
  
• Try to make your code as compatible as possible. It should work with all modern browsers, I would ignore IE 6, 7, and 8, as they lack compliance and diverged off using their own markup at times. Newer versions of IE, especially version 10 are standard compliant, meaning code that works on Chrome and Firefox should work with IE 10 just fine. Having said that, test, test, test! Just because it works great in your browser does not mean everyone will be so fortunate.
  
• Now some people will recommend to you that you build code for older browsers, text-based browsers, or just the random 1%. Do it if you want, but remember it usually means doubling, or tripling, or even quadrupling up on code. So when I write something, I target around 90% of people, and hope that’s good enough.
  
• Try to validate your code if you can. You can do this by visiting the CSS-Validator run by the W3C. If your code is badly written, it can cause all sorts of problems for browsers, so validate it. It only takes a few minutes and it can be an invaluable resource.
  
• When you're building a website, try to keep everything well organized if you can. I find it makes things a lot easier to find. Keep all your images, scripts, and stylesheets in separate folders, and just link to them from your pages.
  
• When creating new style sheets, use grouping to combine elements that have the same properties and separate them with a comma. For example: h1, h2, p, div { color:#000000;text-align:center}
  
• Figuring out the height and width of particular elements can be frustrating, but take the time, do the math and remember that when calculating the width of something be sure to include the border, padding, and margins. Width constitutes the whole, not just the parts.
  
• Get opinions, its important. Knowing how easy it is for you to navigate your code is worthless, get friends or family to test your code and ask them how easy it is to navigate. If they have difficulty, chances are most people will. Not everyone is an expert, assume they are not, do not over complicate things when you don’t have to. Simplicity is often overlooked and under used. Whenever possible, do not intentionally use an element that does not bring value to your page.
  
• Content heavy sites are great for search engines, and people like them too, however giant blocks of text are hard to read if your color scheme is terrible. Validate your color contrast and fix any errors you find, of course you want to have way more elements than errors.
  
• With the use of styling, you can now use almost any font on your website. In the old days, you were limited by the fonts that windows supported, this is no longer true. Take advantage of the all the available free fonts on the web, especially in the Google webfonts. Through the use of the @import function in CSS or the standard link through HTML, you can now include a link to most web-accessible fonts, and just style with them as part of the font-family.
  
• If you must support IE specific styles, do so using the conditional comments <!—[if IE]> <![endif] –> You do not want to build an entire site and try to support all the differences in IE, so instead create a site using compliant standard styles, and then using the conditional comment, create a single style sheet for IE, and load it that way.
  
• When setting link states, the order must be maintained. For whatever reason, it’s a requirement so don’t forget it: a:link, a:visited, a:hover, a:active
  
• Understanding and remember containment height differences is important. Know that when you use CSS to specify a height of 100%, it actually refers to the container’s height, all elements within would then need to be specified to 100% as well. So the easiest thing to do is rather set the hierarchy of container height by specifying the outermost first like so: html, body { height: 100%} It’s also important to remember that the container should then be set to a minimum height of 100% as well to prevent overflow. Do so by specifying the elements with {min-height:100%}
  
• Use a CSS Reset style sheet whenever possible to help maintain cross browser compatibility. Doing this will reset all values to 0, so they may then be specified by your CSS.
  
• Mobile browsing is taking off, whenever possible try to support them by creating a style sheet that offers styles that can be browsed on a mobile platform.

Final Thoughts

Remember that designing a website should take you more than 5 minutes. Do not go into it expecting a masterpiece an hour later. It can take weeks, even months to develop a well designed site. As I suggested before, a CMS is a good solution if you need a dynamically updated content system, and there are many to choose from. You should also not discount the use of templates for making life easier. It’s often unnecessary to spend 50 hours coding something someone else has already done for you. If you find something you like, use it.

I should also say that the use of CSS to stylize your content makes maintaining a site a lot easier, if you contained the CSS to single linked .css files, as I suggested earlier, and it has the benefit of allowing you to make one code change, that has a global effect, so don’t discount its value. Global changes are much more effective than local changes, and anytime you can change one thing and have it affect the whole site, the better off you will be, because ultimately you will spend less time coding. But you should not go into this believing it will be easy, its not, if it were, everyone would be a web designer.

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What Would Jesus Say…To The NRA.

Those of you who know me and read my writings know that I’m an atheist. But I thought it might be fun to have a little thought experiment about what Jesus might say to the NRA if he were real and wanted to have a talk with them. Recently as probably everyone knows there has been another mass shooting at a school that left 27 dead including 20 little boys and girls, whose lives were abruptly ended by a mentally ill young man with a semi-automatic Bushmaster .223 army style assault rifle with high-capacity magazines. What shocked the nation even more, was the response of the NRA.

While the nation was mourning the loss of these beautiful children, and the teachers who gave their lives to save many more kids from being murdered, the NRA announced they would be making an important statement. Political pundits began speculating what the NRA could be making a statement about? In light of the shooting, many had come out of the woodwork in favor of gun control, petitions began popping up, and many Americans even gun owners began asking the question: Maybe enough, is enough?

We know that after Columbine, the NRA remained steadfast in their opinion that Americans needed more guns. We know that after the shooting death of six-year old Kayla Rolland by a fellow six-year old student in Flint, Michigan, the NRA sent gun enthusiast and president of the NRA at the time Charlton Heston to respond famously: “From my cold dead hands…”

Since the massacre at Columbine High School in 1999, there have been 25 school shootings in the United States. Each a teacher or student is either seriously wounded or more often fatally wounded, and each time the NRA responds with: More GUNS!

Then on December 14th, 2012, Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook elementary school, in Newtown, Connecticut  with his Bushmaster .223 and  fatally killed teachers, the school principal, a school psychologist, and 20 first-grade six and seven-year old aged students, then killing himself. Lanza who had suffered from mental illness, tried to purchase the weapons at a gun store previously, but refused the background check. Instead, he went home took the weapons that his mother legally owned, shot and killed her, and proceeded to the elementary school.

Although America has suffered through many modern school shootings, and even the deaths of children, never so many, or so young, and it was this that began the debate on gun violence in America. So when the NRA announced it was going to make an important statement, many speculated that they would finally come out in favor of some kind of gun control. Those hopes were shattered when Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the NRA announced that the NRA would like to arm all schools with guns, increase gun sales, and make sure every American had at least one gun.

It was a little shocking in light of the events of the preceding days.

So I wondered with so many gun owners in this country, and almost all of them being Christian, what would Jesus really think about the NRA and guns in America or anywhere for that matter? It seems to me that the people who consider themselves Christians have no idea what religion they are subscribing to if they believe in the right of gun ownership. I think most Christians have never read their bible or they would know Jesus was not the man they imagine him to be. Although only Christians could see themselves with a bible in one hand and a gun in the other, Jesus would have none of that.

 

Who was Jesus?

Now remember, I’m an atheist, so this is merely a thought experiment, but it’s a good one because those who believe in this stuff, should pay attention to that holy book they put all their faith in.

According to the bible, Jesus Christ was born into a terribly violent world. King Herod the Great, the self-appointed Roman king of the Jews, according to the book of Matthew, ordered that all young male children be executed in the town of Bethlehem, an attempt by Herod to find and murder the newborn king of the Jews. What is known as the massacre of the innocents in Matthew 2:16–18, (don’t even get me started on the violent massacre of the children in the bible) is celebrated annually by the church today as the Massacre of the Holy Innocents.

So Jesus was born into this violence, he lived in it, he grew up in it, yet he rebelled against it, taught those around him to practice pacifism, and spoke clearly of his intention of violence.

Matthew 26:52 - Then Jesus said to him, "Put your sword back into its place;  for those who live by the sword, die by the sword.”

Jesus also spoke clearly of what he believed to be the importance of forgiveness, and to not resort to violence against sinners.

Matthew 18:21-22 - Then Peter came up and said to him, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?" Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven..."

Wait a second, forgive your enemy? Do not use violence to solve violence?

Luke 6:27-32 - But I say to you that hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.   If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?   For even sinners love those who love them.   And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?  For even sinners do the same.

What the hell? Is this Jesus some kind of weak socialist or something?

Romans 12:17-21 - Do not return evil for evil. Avenge not yourselves, but rather give way to wrath; for it is written, vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord. Therefore if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsts, give him drink: for in so doing you shall heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

So according to Jesus only God has the privilege of prosecution. Only God has the right to bring violence, that men do not have this right. But not only is he saying violence is wrong, he says we must treat our enemies with respect and decency, feed them if they are hungry, give them drink if they are thirsty. Clearly Jesus abhors violence, and believes in love and respect.

So the words of Jesus could not be more clearly understood, he did not like violence, he believed in non-violence, and even refused to retaliate against those who wanted him dead. That’s right, Jesus went to the cross, he didn’t strike them dead, or ask his father the Lord to do so, instead begging his father to forgive them.

Luke 23:34 - And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Surely, if it were God’s wish he could have struck dead all those who opposed Jesus, those who would wish his death, and those who would crucify him. But God did not do this, he allowed his son to be crucified, because Jesus refused to act violently in response to violence. His belief in non-violence is so strong, he gave his life for it.

 

What might Jesus think of Christians today?

If Jesus suddenly appeared, I imagine most Christians would run away in fear, knowing they created a religion around this man, created dogmatic ideologies, and then refused to stick to them. As an atheist I find it all very interesting, because I choose to live morally without a necessity of God as a basis for my moral sense, instead knowing the brain is fully capable of that without invisible deities to teach us the difference between right and wrong.

I imagine the catholic church would have a very difficult time remaining viable after Jesus steps in and fires all of them.

In Matthew 19:14, Jesus tells all: “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”

So Jesus basically states that children  should not be hindered, they are the property of God. So you think Jesus might have a few things to say to the Catholic church concerning their overwhelming attitude toward pedophilia in their own churches, and their intentional cover-up. It’s clear from their own actions the lives of these priests are more important than the lives of the children of God. So I wonder what the Pope might say to that, if Jesus had a little talk with him?

What I wonder Jesus might say to members of the Westboro Baptist Church who tried to picket the funerals of those fallen children, whose attitudes toward homosexuals, would be in direct opposition to the words of Jesus himself. As I have already shown Jesus believed in non-violence and pacifism, but he also believed in forgiveness, and non-judgment.

John's Gospel (7:53-8:11) tells the story of a women caught in adultery who was brought before Jesus. The religious leaders say to him, "The law commands that she should be stoned to death, what do you say?" Jesus bends down and draws with his finger in the dirt, and then says to them "Let the one who is without sin throw the first stone." One by one they all leave until he is there alone with the woman. Jesus says to her "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" "No one, sir," she answered. "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared.

This is important, because Jesus believes that no one has the right to condemn anyone else, and further more Jesus himself, he who is in fact without sin, cannot. The text further states Jesus asks the woman to go forth and live without sin, something preachers would say tells us Jesus did not approve. However, this does not matter, in fact, it only goes to show that even if Jesus believed her life was sinful, he still could not condemn her, that intolerance was not tolerable, and as Jesus has stated love even your enemies.

How I wonder what Jesus would say to Christians who so strongly hold close their bible to their chest, while they fill their closets and basements with an arsenal of violent weaponry?

Though Christianity is founded on the principles of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, strangely the book of Abraham, the Old Testament is included in the modern Christian bible. Most people would see this book as the law of the Israelites, and the New Testament the book of Christianity, under which Jesus preached non-violence, pacifism, and tolerance of all. But even in the book of Abraham we find this clear quote of non-violence that applies here.

Isaiah 2:4 "And He will judge between the nations, And will render decisions for many peoples; And they will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, And never again will they learn war."

Strange that such a passage would exist in the bible along more violence, but it does. And stranger still is the callous nature of those who devote themselves to Christian teachings, who do not follow Jesus, but even the words of God in this passage who clearly speaks of peace, and end to violence, and a dismantling of weapons. Wait a second? Dismantling of weapons? Yes, for this passage refers famously to the Swords to plowshares notion of peaceful disarming.

So how could any Christian instead willfully arm himself? Does he not understand the words of Jesus, who speaks of non-violence? Or the Words of God to command disarming? Clearly something is out of whack here.

 

Words for the NRA

I want to for a second clearly juxtapose the biblical slaughter of innocents against the events of Sandy Hook elementary, for as Joseph and Mary, and many others with them, celebrated the birth of newborn son Jesus, many fathers and mothers cried in terrible grief at the murder of their children at the hands of King Herod. And so do we cry with parents of those children slaughtered in the horrible events of that massacre at the elementary school, people like the NRA, and gun toting whackos, joyfully glee and defend their right to bear arms, to own vices of tremendous violence, in spite of the deaths of those children.

Even before all these children were placed in the ground, the NRA began calling for more guns. So what might Jesus say to this?

Wayne LaPierre said, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

Since we know Jesus preached non-violence and love thy enemy, we know he might not be too happy with such a statement. Because violence begets violence, only peace begets peace. One of my favorite quotes is from Martin Luther King, Jr. and he eloquently states:

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.

Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.

Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.

 
Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes.

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

 

In a time when children see violence everywhere--in their homes, on the streets, on television, violence is everywhere it seems--now more than ever children need a safe haven, a place without violence, a place where kids can just be kids. Yet under a nation ruled by the NRA Mr. LaPierre would have you arm every teacher, and police every school, turning every school into a prison.

Because let’s get this straight people, if the NRA would have its way every one of these:

 

Would instead look like one of these:

 

The bible refers to in many passages a sense of false prophecy and false idolization. But if much of the bible is philosophy and metaphor like many contend, and not literal translation, then what can we assume from this. That believing in people who tell others they know what God wants is false, sounds great, but if it merely metaphoric than we can observe from it something entirely different. Misdirection is the notion that someone would have you believe something else instead of what they don’t want you to believe, and if we look at the context of the bible in these passages and the messages of false anything, then we see the metaphor.

When LaPierre stood before the press and told people that it wasn’t guns that were the problem, it was violent video games, violent movies, and violent media, it seemed somewhat coherent. After all, there are violent video games, movies, and news. But let’s not be fooled, because if he’s right the numbers should bare this out. So let’s take the number of deaths from gun violence compared to violent video games, movies, and news and compare them. So let’s see more than 12,000 people die each year in the US from gun violence, and zero die from video games, movies, and the news.

But wait a second, Mr. LaPierre said it was the games, not the guns that were the source of violence? If this were true I’d expect that the XBOX would be responsible for at least 13,000 deaths a year, but not even 1? No one has ever hit someone over the head with a game disk and killed them? If it’s happened, its never been reported.

Misdirection is the name of the game, and I think if Jesus were to have words with Mr. LaPierre he might say: “Really? Video Games? But not the guns, they don’t kill people?” He might wonder if Mr. LaPierre consulted the bible before he tried to convince others that the false idolatry that is the firearm, is a violation of God’s law. That’s right, it’s a sin bitch. It’s not even one of the stupid ones that men said God hates like eating shellfish, or hating homosexuals, no according to Moses, it came from the words of God himself.

Jesus who we are taught is the son of God, but an avatar of God himself, thus Jesus is God in human form. So obviously when Jesus is born he is surrounded by Angel bodyguards, and where ever Jesus goes he is surrounded by his entourage of secret service-like men willing to take a sword or two for him, right? Wrong! Jesus was certainly born into a violent world, where violence was the solution to violence, but he never preached such a thing, he never walked with an army of loyal soldiers of God, or punished those infidels? How easy would that have been?

None of that happened, and as it turned out with no army of bodyguards, Jesus was taken into custody, and crucified. But still, he did not hold it against men, he did not hate them for their crime, he loved them and asked that no violence be brought against those who condemned him. Seriously, this guy really lived non-violence. So what makes you think that Jesus, and God--if we are to believe that his sacrifice affected his father--would support this notion of violence can only stop violence, when we know Jesus believed directly the opposite?

When the romans come for Jesus, to bring him to his execution, one of his disciples raises a sword and strikes one of the men. Jesus scolds his disciple and heals his persecutor by touching him, saying to his disciple, “Put your sword away, those who would live by the sword would die by it…there is always another way.” Matthew 26:52.

This lesson is supreme because Jesus is clear, and its fundamental to why the NRA, and the gun lobby, is simply wrong. Jesus was clear, violence does not reduce violence, it only increases it. Put the sword away, in the time of Jesus sword violence would not be reduced by the sword. And to Mr. LaPierre, gun violence would not be reduced by the gun. So when Mr. LaPierre says that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, he is clearly wrong, and if you believe in the teachings of Christianity, it is in defiance to God.

Some might say that guns are needed to kill those who would otherwise do the same.  There is a term for this: Redemptive violence, though you may have heard, its merely a myth. Because as it would seem, the idea is that violence against those who commit violence is necessary, or divine, after all you may have heard the idiom: “Eye for an Eye, and a Tooth for a Tooth.” Those who would support the stance of the NRA, especially Christians would use this as a means to show that it’s biblically approved violence, thus arming oneself against violence could be nothing short of God’s justice.

But Jesus himself thought this quip senseless, and spoke of it in Matthew 5:38-48 when he says unequivocally, “You’ve heard it said ‘an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth… but I tell you…” He states that if someone were to take something from you, give it to them, and give them more. If they wish to do you harm, let them, if they must, do them no harm in retaliation. He isn’t anymore clear. Jesus believes there is always another way. Killing to show that killing is wrong, is equivalent to trying to prove abortion is a sin, by blowing up a clinic full of pregnant women.

There is never any doubt to what Jesus believed, and though the bible is clear about: “thou shalt not kill,” if this were really a Christian nation, and the center of all Christian values, why does the bible not mention at any point the idea that “the right to bear arms” is a divine right? I mean, if it were truly God given, or even presumptively important at all, it would be mentioned, if obviously not by firearms, but armament at all. Obviously if your right to protect yourself even by sword, were important, one passage could be found to tell it, yet no such passage exists.

 

And now some important perspective about the second amendment…

People who believe in the second amendment, and refuse to even consider gun control, should consider a few things.

The constitution guarantees each person the right to own and carry weapons. It does not grant the people of this country the right to make them, import them, or otherwise get them. There is no amendment that says, the right of the people to buy assault rifles shall not be infringed. In fact, I feel it necessary to give context to the second amendment, and try to dispel some of the misconceptions that seem to exist around it.

An argument I continue to hear from the right and especially Tea Party nutcakes is that armed citizens are necessary to prevent governmental tyranny. The problem with that is its nonsense. For one, if the government wanted to shake up this country and impose drastically less libertarian laws upon us, no gun would stop this. Our government has in its possession an arsenal unlike anything you could imagine, along with an army of elite soldiers trained in effectively removing threats if necessary. Not to mention any uprising would be seriously curtailed by a carpet bomb dropped from an F-22 flying overhead.

Get your heads out of your asses, your gun, even that assault rifle would be ineffective in stopping a government like ours from not only taking away your liberties, but shooting you and taking away your guns if they wanted to.

It should also be noted there is only one reason the second amendment even exists at all, and it has nothing to do with tyranny. It has everything to do with protecting the government from civil unrest, what???

After the liberation of the United States from England we were as of yet really unformed, and quite a weak nation without any kind of structure. On several occasions after the war, Washington speaking to some of the founders clearly talked about his anger and fear of civil unrest that while they had won their liberty from England, that it could be undone at home if not careful consideration be taken to protect it. Adams and Jefferson met on several occasions to discuss this, for they knew that it would be the people now that would demand new power, for until this point none had existed.

The first clause of the second amendment was directly written for this reason: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State.

Consider for a moment that there were no police, that only the army could protect the government, so a ‘well regulated’ militia would make sense, because like the police of today (or national guard), they are a perfect example of what such a militia would be. But then there is the second clause: …the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The problem is one that only those infatuated with guns can’t see, this clause isn’t separate from the first. It should be read as one. Remember again that men like Jefferson, and Adams and all the other founders were wealthy land owners. The necessity of a well regulated militia was more important and sensible than the notion of arming every citizen. It is then we can presume more important to have a militia (police) that can protect those who need protecting, than to simply give every citizen a gun, and say, “Let shit happen as it must!”

We also know as a fact that while Jefferson believed in arming individuals, he did not approve of violence as a means to solve anything, nor did he believe that arming everyone was necessary. He wrote as much several times over the years. His indifference to war was well established, and the notion that arming everyone equally would somehow guarantee peace is pure ignorance, and even those who clearly show an ignorance themselves would never agree that Thomas Jefferson would be one of them.

The founders have been long since dead, and their real intentions are gone from us now, and all that is left is speculation and assumption, and wanting. We as a society must be better than our predecessors.

Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it - George Santayana

We can continue to take two steps backward, or we can be contrary and take one step forward. I began this article by trying to show Christians that the symbol for their religion would not support this idea of armament, that violence was ugly to Christianity, and I believe I have done that. Having said that, as I have mentioned I am an atheist, and believe that none of this should be necessary to know that guns are bad, that violence begets violence, and that peace cannot be made at the end of a sword. I am a man without religion but it should be profoundly notable that unlike most Christians, my morality is not structured around the existence of a God.

I thought that it’s an incredible statistic that more than 12,000 people die every single year in the US from gun violence (violence committed against a human, by another human using a firearm). For every 100 people in this country there are 90 firearms. This is important because with only 5% of the entire population of the Earth being in the US, we have more than 50% of all guns in this country.

There are currently more places in America to purchase a gun, than there are to purchase food: There are 51,438 gun retailers and 36,536 grocery stores in this country. For a little perspective, there are only 14,098 McDonalds restaurants in the US. In 2010, 5.5 million guns were manufactured in the US and 95% of them were sold in the US, but another 3.3 million were also imported. High-capacity magazines with no actual advantage, other than increasing the amount of humans killed are sold legally. Assault rifles with no actual use other than murder, are also legal.

We can choose to be a nation of violence, or choose to be a nation of peace. Violence does not beget non-violence, only peace can do that. The answer to gun violence can never be, and should never be more guns.

I’m not a believer in faith, for a better term, I have no faith in it. What I do have faith in, is human stupidity, because thus far it’s the only thing that hasn’t failed to entertain me or let me down.

I’m in no way a Christian, but I have lived my life more Christian-like than many Christians I know, and who like to tell themselves they are Christian. Just believing in Christ doesn’t make you a Christian. By that rationale, anyone who believes in Christ even a serial killer, or if you believe in Satan, would be a Christian. It’s not merely the belief, it’s the following, the strict dogmatic teachings that make you Christian, though as I have pointed out, I believe in most everything he believed in, and yet I’m no follower of Christ. But if you do than it should be overtly apparent that Christ would abhor this nation.

He consistently taught that we can disarm violence without mirroring it, and that we can rid the world of evil without becoming the evil we abhor. Jesus truly believed that only love cures hate, and in the words of the late John Lennon, “All you need is love…”

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The Moral Question

I often hear from the religious side that morality is objectively founded in the existence of God. In this article I will attempt to put to rest this issue of moral objectivity, as well as the notion of “deity” requirement for moral behavior. I will also try to explain some of the science that helps delineate the source for morality, its nature, and why its important whether you believe in a God or not. It is often a matter of contention that morality without God cannot exist, that atheism per se has no need of morality, an argument I will attempt to artfully disassemble.

Objective Morality: Is a God necessary to understanding its value?

When speaking to people about morality, I often get into a debate that leads to the question of objective, rather than subjective, or relative morality. This is trigged by the belief of most Christians that an atheist who cannot believe in objective morality has no foundation for a belief in good or bad. That if our morals are not objective—meaning behavioral rules that are without diversity, than what’s to stop a person from establishing his own set of morals. An example of this might be a man who believes its ok to murder children, because it makes him feel good to do so.

If these rules are not objective than there is no real defense to the relative notion, and maybe Christians are right. However, even if this were true, it still does not lead to God or any other deity as a source of objective morality. The claim can be most often made that objective morality works because it has authoritarian backing. This means that we establish rules around someone who governs us in someway. Now this is somewhat true, after all, when a police officer requests to see your driver’s license it is his authority that convinces you to show him respect.

So Christians would then take the leap to the “ultimate authority,” thus God is injected, and if we take our instructions from less than godly figures who just happen to be authoritative over us, than we must also accept that the word of God being the “ultimate authority” and so where could those morals really come from, after all, it is implied in “ultimate” the source is known. So for Christians that authority is God, and it is there they believe that morals come from, objective not because they feel these behaviors but more so because of a book, or belief in the failure of these morals.

So then its easy to see where they are going with this argument, because as Christians they believe that a book (God) has told them to follow his word and not commit sin, and doing otherwise will result in eternal damnation. So here we have morality, forced, but still morality in some sense and certainly objective if the word of God is meant to be the “ultimate authority.”

So when the Christian attacks the atheist with a question of moral source, if not for God, it is with a sense that without a God to be that “ultimate authority” there is no reason that choosing right over wrong holds value. To put it another way, if I do not fear eternal damnation because I lack a belief in God, than what is to stop me from just picking the first random person I see every morning and hitting them on the back of the head with a hammer, what is there to stop me, if not the threat of punishment from an all knowing, all powerful God?

I would answer such a question by stating the obvious: Governments have long established authority over the domain of morality and punishment from committing acts of violence against one another are at least a certainty, in opposition to what is only a possibility of punishment if a God exists. Having said that, even if punishment alone were in fact a deterrence for violence, which it most certainly is not, than its still difficult to argue the notion of morality as one of a religious source, because if the premise for morality for which Christian belief were true, then prisons would only be filled with atheists.

Instead, prisons are filled with a vastly diverse group of individuals whose only commonality isn’t their abject disbelief in a deity, but rather their predisposing condition to commit acts of violence against others. And of course prisons are filled with all sorts of criminals, those who commit violent crimes, those who do not, those who commit crimes without a victim, and even those who have committed no crime, but are merely a victim themselves of a flawed justice system. This is not the time for debating such issues and I will refrain from doing so further in this section.

What this really boils down to is whether morality can be objective, if there exists no authority to impose such constraints? I believe that it can. There are various ways to get to this without too much effort and I will try to explain this now.

Most of us would agree that murder is wrong. Most of us would agree that the rape of a child is wrong. Most of us would agree that beating a little girl into submission for the crime of literacy is wrong. Most of us would agree that shackling chains to a person’s leg and falsely imprisoning them is wrong. But why? What is it about these examples, and the thousands of others I could have used, that allows all of us to all draw the same conclusions? Is it eternal damnation? The threat of punishment from an authority? Certainly not, after all, these are merely examples, thought experiments to draw conclusions. And even if they were not merely examples, they were actually taking place right now, unless you are taking part in them, there should be no fear of reciprocation. So what is it?

If morality is merely fear of authority as established by biblical doctrine, or even imprisonment by a government, than it surely only applies when participation occurs. So therefore, none of the examples I have given you should afflict your sense with more than a passing thought, but you know as well as I do, that the suggestion of such acts causes distress of your senses, and so morality is something more than mere authoritarian nature.

If you are a normal human being with a normally functioning brain and you are asked to picture in your head the rape, torture, and strangulation of a seven year old girl at the hands of a sadistic child killer, as jury members are often asked during these kinds of trials, or asked to view pictures, your normal functioning brain will feel terrible distress at the thought of such a crime, and worse still at the perception through your eyes of having to view such graphic images.

If such morals are merely relative, than anyone looking at these photos might not feel anything, or may feel something but find no fault in what they have seen. Rationality however, tells us this isn’t so easy, that we do feel, we do not want to think or see such things, nor would we ever want to commit them ourselves. But then is that again because we fear reprisal? Or is it something else?

I believe morality can be objective whether it holds to authoritarian standard or not, whether such an authority is based in religion or governance. We all possess within each of us the knowledge of what is right and what is wrong, and because of this, it is intrinsic to humanity. So it is quite easy to see why intrinsic objective morality is essential to human development, human survival, and even human suffering. And as I will try to explain further, suffering is essential to understanding the question of morality.

The Moral Argument: If not for God, for what reason would we need morals?

This for me is a conundrum for which little time needs to be spent, and it’s a simple and irrefutable example. I am the leader of a tribe of people. I need food collected in the way of hunting, and gathering. I am also going to need someone to cook the food that is gathered. We need bowls, plates, utensils, instruments with which to eat the food with besides our hands. After we are done eating we need a place to sleep, so we need people to build homes that each of us can use to shelter us. Winter is coming, so we need clothing, since our naked bodies won’t survive the harsh conditions. Our children need to be taught how to continue the ways of the tribe so they can grow up and continue to keep the tribe growing.

We must all work together socially, to reach an end that justify the means of getting there. Now we continue to work together because it is beneficial to do so. However, what would happen if suddenly one of the males of the tribe decided he didn’t want to share his hunted meat with another, so he jabbed a blade into his skull? In fact, he jabbed the blade into the skull of one of our cooks, and now we are with one less cook, making it harder to feed everyone each night. What if that man decided he wanted to have sex any woman in the tribe he wanted to, and forced himself upon any of them without restraint?

Now you can imagine that long ago before laws were established just such a thing may have been a possibility, and in such a case what would have been done? Ok let’s imagine instead this man is a psychopath, he enjoys murdering people, and systematically begins murdering members of the tribe. If nothing is done, this man will eliminate the valuable members of your tribe, and soon your tribe will die off.

Without morality, then civilization isn’t even possible. So for example when you consider the first hominids to use tools and build fire, homo erectus, somewhere between 300,000 and two million years ago, you can understand evolutionally how it would make no sense that they could get from that point to homo sapiens if they lacked morals. These people lacked any civilization and relied heavily on the tribe mentality, and so its hard to imagine a situation where humans could have developed civilizations if the social necessity and moral development were lacking causing these people to hunt each other down and kill one another.

Now that’s not to say that murder did not exist as I’m sure it did, and we must distinguish murdering from simple killing. Animals kill each other, but you would never contend that a lion who kills a zebra has murdered that zebra, and so we must make this distinction because its evident. But looking back to such a time before literacy, and rational language, pervasive beliefs like deities would have been secondary to nature, and so the idea of morality could not have been founded in a notion of punishment by a deity, and so we most look for a more realistic source for such a contention.

In civil societies its even easier to comprehend the moral dilemma because laws are often established that protect one person from another. These laws of course come from societal moral definitions and constructs, but understandably from the minds of individuals with morality, not from a place of the supernatural, or through some other extreme. Such laws are simple to understand from the standpoint of the individual. I am a person who would not like to be murdered today, so I am in favor of establishing laws that help protect me from this.

I am not a woman, but males could be raped as well, but rape is intolerable for the same reason murder is, no one, male or female wants to be raped, so we have established laws to protect people. In all fairness, the protections granted presuppose the condition of the individual committing violence, or their will to do so. In a sense such laws do not really protect you from harm, but merely act as a reasonable way to protect others from further harm. Thus if an individual murders your neighbor, and is arrested, than he can’t very well murder you, thus you have been protected.

Our laws are really the moral compass for a nation, established to protect everyone with equal discretion, and maybe prevent crime against individuals through authoritarian punishment. Now going back to the arguments of objective morality, this would seem to support the notion that authoritarian punishment has some assemblance in the creation of morals, except that it does not explain as I have said why crime happens at all in the first place. If authoritarian punishment was sufficient, than it alone would be enough and morality would be unnecessary.

Instead people coexist peacefully all over this world, with or without the fear of punishment. So explanation of this is either that morality is innate in us, objective as it is, or it is not. It would seem that dissuasion of deism as an establishing principle in morality is easy and concise if even one atheist is found to have never harmed another person. If this is true, and of course it is, than we must toss aside the notion of deity-based morality requirements and look elsewhere as a source for moral doctrine.

The Moral Mind: A Look into The Moral Center of The Brain

Located toward the back of the brain where the temporal and parietal areas of the brain come to together is an area of the brain called the right temporoparietal junction (TPJ). This area of the brain is essential to the moral decision-making sense of the brain. In terms of importance, a damaged TPJ can result in an inability to make moral choices. In a study done at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT) researchers fired heavy magnetic signals at this area of the brain and then subjected individuals to an array of questions involving moral dilemmas. In all cases the individuals were unable to make the right choices.

This study is important because it explains how perfectly normal individuals who have never committed an act of violence or any crime for that matter in their lives, have suddenly done so out of the blue, after experiencing some kind of brain damage to this area. There have been cases of people who have never harmed a sole in their life, suddenly raping a minor, or beating someone with no reasonable explanation.

Aneurysms in this area have also been shown to cause deep moral issues in individuals that have resulted in criminal activity after a long life of normalcy. Can we simply ignore such things? So I pose to you a question: If such a brain were damaged through no fault of their own, would this person be responsible for making a choice that could have gone no other way? If you establish that morality is just brain chemistry, something science has and can, and it can be easily shown that it can be disrupted, something science has and can, than the choices we make are they really our own, moral or not?

It begs a more interesting question, if our choices are as chemical in nature as the morality of said choices, than what choice do any of us really have, especially considering that you may regard yourself as good person who would otherwise never harm a person, and through no fault of your own your TPJ becomes damaged, and you murder someone?

It’s easy to assign blame to others, but when it affects you, its not as easy. It’s also more difficult to imagine that you might hurt someone if you have never done so before, but it happens all the time, and people just like you never imagined they could do such a thing.

Researchers in Zurich in a study, began looking at the brain trying to discern altruistic behavior, and not surprising activity involving this behavior seemed centered on the TPJ area of the brain. This points to a causal link between morality and altruism, because in at least someway, functionally, the brain uses the same area to handle these functions.

It would of course make sense that these areas are linked, because altruism is a sense of empathic need, of which morality in some way plays its part. Those who lack empathy, lack altruism because they see no value in helping others, they lack the ability to empathize with their situation thus they are incapable of doing the right thing. Now that is not to say that they won’t do the right thing, don’t be confused by that, those who have this kind of behavior also have a higher self-worth, in direct opposition to altruism.

Narcissism fuels these ends by allowing acts of good will, only when it serves the needs of the individual. For example, if a person committed an act of violence and was being chased by police, he might help the old lady cross the street, if he believed that by doing so it would lead the police to look elsewhere for the criminal who committed the violence. This should not be confused with an act of morality however, because the choice to make a good decision is only moral if it is done so because you belief it’s the right thing to do. In contrast, such an individual would likely walk past the old lady in any other situation.

This really brings me to another topic of which I find interesting and others may find disturbing, but I am compelled to bring up. It is important because it brings up notions of control, and the illusory nature of it. I feel its something that needs to be talked about, and discussed because its implications are so important. It is merely a matter of the mind, but an important one.

The Moral Answer: The Man behind The Curtain, or Who’s Driving this Car?

No subject I talk about more than this, brings about such heated debate with people, than the notion of illusory choices. The idea that free will exists only as a constructive notion, but lacks any real participation in the decisions that we make. It’s important to know that all of the choices that we make are certainly our own, but in knowing this, we must understand what that really means. As conscious creatures in a perceptive world, we make, or think we make choices all the time. Our choices, are sometimes simple: chocolate or vanilla, windows or mac, good or evil.

But we never question whether the choices we make are truly conscious. We assume they must be, after all, we make a decision and live with it. But science is beginning to reveal some interesting things about the brain, and one of them involves an area called the parietal cortex.

What is interesting about this part of the brain is that it is responsible for taking in much of the brains sensory information and processing it. During experiments done on this area of the brain using magnets, a person could be forced to wag his finger, or stomp his foot, or do other things with his body that normally would require some thought.

Its an easy assertion to say that stimulation of the brain could cause action, however its important to mention, this kind of stimulation only affected parts one would normally consider to be voluntary. Thus you raise your arm when you want to, it does not simply happen on its own, therefore such an action is considered voluntary, a result of choice.

What becomes important about this research isn’t that someone can force someone else to wag their finger, but rather that voluntary motion becomes involuntary upon interference in brain function. This would suggest that all functions can be manipulated, and if this is true, than the notion of free will becomes illusory. More important, is that brain scans taken during a study on free will have shown that there is a small delay between the time we act and the time we become conscious of it. Because of this, it leaves no doubt to this fact because it means the brain is making choices for us because those choices enter our consciousness.

So now that I have established that choice is illusory, then we have to examine morality in regard to said choice. Because although choice is illusory, morality is not, since we are conscious of the differences between right and wrong, as well as empathize with those who have been wronged or will be. So now that we understand that our decisions are just made for us, what happens in the mind of someone whose choices are made, but made without a moral sense, made say in the damaged part of the TPJ. This produces quite a problem for those who believe criminals should be punished, after all, if the choices made were not their own to make, and they ended up being amoral, how can we punish them for a choice they had no real choice in making?

The serial killer who lacks empathy for his victims, who was born with a less than functioning moral center, while dangerous, is as much a victim of circumstance as those who he has killed. It has been suggested by many that if we are truly unable to find such individuals responsible for their crimes, than what are we to do? Will they simply not just kill again if given the chance? Most certainly they will. So then what is the answer? I believe the answer to this question isn’t punishment, but containment. For it has never been suggested by me that those who commit violence against others should not be prevented from doing so again, only that they should not be punished for something they cannot control and have no responsibility in.

Estimates are that there are between three and four million psychopaths living in the US right now, some commit terrible acts of violence others do not. But they all lack the ability to make moral decisions, and they will all kill someone if forced to. It is important to know that these people are your neighbors, your boss, your lawyer, someone you work with or know personally. They don’t come off like everyone else, but they don’t act like someone you’d expect to be a murderer. The capacity for murder isn’t within everyone, despite what you may have been told.

You may have heard that anyone can kill, and in someway this is true. But not everyone has the capacity to murder someone else. That is a very specific kind of action, requiring careful planning, and execution, but more importantly a lack of empathy, because its this lack of empathy that allows an individual to not understand their sadism. Sadism is the ability to be overly cruel, cause pain, and harm others with the intention of gratification, sometimes and especially sexually. But those who have empathy cannot be sadistic, because to cause pain to others causes pain to oneself, and this is contrary to what the sadist feels.

Much like the feeling you might get when you eat a piece of your favorite chocolate, the sadist feels by causing pain to others. Unfortunately, there is no treatment for a lack of empathy, and those without it, would tell you they would not want treatment. Imagine for a minute that you did not suffer when someone you knew died, or you saw pictures of murdered children, and instead that which caused you pain instead made you feel good, now this last part might make you cringe because you know where this goes, but for those who were born without empathy, they do not have this foreknowledge, for them this is normal.

If we begin to look at morality in this sense, in the same sense as hair color, or eye color, or that extra toe, or overbite you have, then we can begin to understand that like our choices, its as natural to have or not have, and thus out of our responsibility. You should no more blame the psychopath for his lack of morality than you would want to be blamed for your red hair or brown eyes, and again though I suggest that criminals should no less be locked up for their crimes, punishment is not the answer. Understanding and treatment are really the only things we should be doing to help these individuals.

Now of course there is no real treatment for psychopathy, but not all psychopaths as I have mentioned actually murder other people, which means that while they lack morality and empathy, they do not lack necessarily intelligence or fear, and its possible that such a person could be reasoned with, or even taught to understand right and wrong.

This is where you do a double-take. Because while a person without morality will not be able to make a good moral decision, it does not mean they cannot be taught the differences. The problem with the psychopath is that they simply don’t care either way, so this implies that if a reason be given that makes them care, then you could dissuade violence from occurring. This is evident in many psychopaths who have had a good upbringing raised by good parents, and have had a good education. These psychopaths tend not to hurt other people, but most of them do not know why.

This can be attributed to the fact while nature has seen fit to give them a bad set of genetic circumstances, nurture has provided them with everything they need to be useful to society, and part of that is not harming others. Because of this fact alone, we already know that even if you lack the brain function of moral decision making, you can be taught to at least know if what you would be doing is right or wrong, and once you become conscious of this fact, nurture can take over, and hopefully stop any violence.

Although this has yet to be tested effectively, some scientists using magnets wondered if conditioning could be used to force action, or better yet, force inaction. Research has already been performed on subjects who have compulsive personalities, or compulsions like smoking, or OCD-like behaviors. Subjects were asked to recall something they are specifically compulsive about, and while doing so they were subjected to intense magnetic pulses. After six weeks of treatment some subjects no longer had these compulsions.

This would seem to suggest that we indeed can affect the mind, and such a tactic if it were ever used on a criminal would be an interesting study, because it might be shown that someone who has a compulsion to kill, or rape, or even think sadistically, could be conditioned to not have these urges. Furthermore, it suggests that long after the study ended, these compulsions did not come back, smokers stopped smoking permanently for example, and that is very promising for those in need of such a treatment.

This of course brings up a moral question of its own: If we begin to interfere in the minds of others, at what point are these no longer the same people?

A killer who is no longer a killer, is he really the same person? And in what sense can we rationalize altering a person’s mind so they are no longer recognizable to even themselves?

More importantly, if the person who committed that crime, is gone in mind, can the body be punished?

If the true reason for imprisoning people for their crimes was the protection of society, than wouldn’t a subject whose ability to commit violence having been removed, be unjustly imprisoned if he could be proven to never commit such violence again?

I believe that our justice system is horribly flawed because it punishes people for committing violent crimes for which they may be incapable of doing otherwise. We severely punish those whose defective brains cause them to commit the most heinous crimes through no fault of their own, while we slap those on the wrist or lightly punish those whose intention it was to never commit a crime, but did so anyway. Now I’m not suggesting that accidents should be treated in court with more vigor, in fact, I think even less is needed. True accidents, are accidents and should be treated as such, and no punishment should be needed.

However, it cannot be easily excused that some people even with a moral sense, commit crimes, maybe not violent, but still harmful, so long as they are unable to have to empathize with those affected. This is often the case with bankers, people on wall street, and others in charge of money. People in these positions often commit terrible crimes affecting lots of people, but for which they have no need to empathize, because they deal entirely in money, not people.

Not that it is impossible, but its harder to steal from someone in person than to simply take it out of a faceless bank account. And if ever there were cases where punishment were needed most it would be in just such these cases, because these are people who have a moral sense but do the wrong thing anyway, and unfortunately for all of us, these crimes are given the lightest sentences, though they often do the most harm.

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To Secede, or Not To Secede, That Is The Question: Red States, Sore Losers, and Racism

Recently, a petition was created by a Louisiana man requesting that Louisiana be allowed to secede from the Union. According to the rules on the White House website, any petition that receives over 25,000 votes will get a response. Within days the petition had more than 12,000 signatures. Then suddenly other petitions having similar requests for secession began to appear, and as of writing this article, petitions for secession have reached more than 20 states.

What I find to be disturbing is the connotation that secession has, the feelings it brings up, and the old ideas that continue to give rise to amoral behavior. When Southern States seceded from the Union to protect and preserve their way of life, i.e. slavery, it was with the intention of preserving amorality, inequality, and evil, because if ever there could qualify something as truly evil, slavery is that act.

 

Secession vs. Revolution: How they differ

Most of these petitions, like the original tend to use the language of the founding fathers to bolster their intent to secede. Specifically a line in our Declaration of Independence is used over and over again:

 

“…That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness…But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

 

It seems when people with hate in their core need a reason to justify it, they look first to community around them, and if that doesn’t solve their dilemma, they look further back, to the founding fathers. Typically, they take the words of the Constitution or Declaration, and distort it, conform it to their situation, to whatever fits their particular hate, giving them reason and an ability to present evidence in support of their assertions.

In this case, the words of Jefferson have been bastardized into something that has nothing to do with its original intent. So let’s first talk about the Declaration of Independence, what its intent was, and what its message was all about.

 

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and 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, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

 

When Jefferson wrote these words, it was clear in the intent to mean a few specific things:

• The Declaration is the last straw, it is meant to be the end, a response to repeated abuse. This is meant to be civil insurrection.
• The inflection in Jefferson’s words show this was not taken lightly, there was no other choice.
• When he refers to Nature’s Laws, he is speaking of liberty, the natural state of humanity.

 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

 

Again, this is the natural state of humanity, that liberty is absolute, and that when Government abuses this state, then action must be taken.

 

“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

 

Jefferson’s intent is to make it clear that Governments are powerless if they have no one to govern, and that when any such government seeks to become destructive, they can and should be abolished. But much more can be derived from Jefferson’s words here if the rest of the document is taken into context. Jefferson is again strictly speaking to liberty, and that which protects liberty, safety and happiness, because it is through safety that liberty can be guaranteed and happiness that it is most protected. When Jefferson is pushing the point across, it is to state that people just want to be free to live, be safe and happy, and any such government that is unable to guarantee this, should be replaced to protect those ideals.

 

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

 

And now we come to the most important part of this document thus far, and the part that is either left out, or manipulated to one’s own agenda. You see Jefferson makes his intent absolutely clear because he states that men have long since suffered at the hands of bad governments, and that this per se does not manifest reason to revolt alone. That indeed men not only suffer evil, but that they should suffer evil as long as evil can be suffered. This is meant to state that bad things happen, people do evil things all the time, revolution should not be taken lightly. He specifically states that just because a government does something you consider evil, does not give you the right to revolution, indeed causes considered light and transient, those you might not perceive as moral.

Again his words specifically bolster the notion that only when liberty is at stake, and only as a last resort, when all other options have been exhausted, should you throw off such a government and replace it.

The rest of the document goes into detail the crimes of which the King of Great Britain is being accused of:

Refusal to accept laws that protect the common good. Refusal to allow the representation of people in the legislature. Dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing his invasion of rights on the people. He forced legislative bodies to comply with his measures. Used his powers to interfere with elections. Obstructed the administration of Justice. The use of mock trials to protect murderers of the people of the colonies. Cut trade off between the colonies and the rest of the world. Establishing a standing army, without consent. Depriving citizens of fair trial. Abolishing the free system of English law in favor of arbitrary government. Imposing taxes without consent.

There is a long list, of which those are some of the things contained therein. Jefferson also details occurrences when free citizens are taken into arms and forced to insurrect against their own people, or execute friends, and fellow citizens in the name of barbarism and absolute cruelty. He then goes on to explain that when petitions to the government for redress of grievance go ignored, and injury, and death continue to be repeated, that it is to be assumed that these are the acts of a tyrant, and not someone fit to lead free people. Again Jefferson states that liberty is the key here. In everything it is paramount, and only when those who would seek freedom as their right as a person, and find at every opportunity to take away liberty, a government, a tyrant with arbitrarily vicious intent, should that government be tossed asunder in favor of new government.

So the words of the Declaration of Independence are clear: in times of great despotism, dissolution of liberty, and arbitrary law, and injustice, the power of the governed to throw off such government is absolute.

But none of that applies here, nothing in those words can be used to grant secession from the Union, furthermore, secession itself is amoral because it negates the liberties of the governed by dividing its parts up into slices of society, decreeing some to be something, and others to be something else. The foundation of liberty is not fueled by inequality, inequality that is created by separation.

There is quite a difference between secession and revolution. Revolutions have been described as a criminal conspiracy by which a small group of individuals through murder, rape, torture, any means necessary, remove a government and replace it with their own. Although it is hard to imagine that a free people could look back at history and see our own American Revolution in such a light, the possibility is certainly true. There was definitely murder, probably rape, and certainly torture, however perspective plays a vital role in this, because for the colonists all of these things happened prior to the start of the revolution, and the revolution did not change them, at least not until it was over. So from the perspective of the victors, revolution was necessity.

There are three types of revolutions that have dominated modern political motivations. The first type of revolution is one of a restorative nature, one in which a people believe their liberties have been usurped, and they must remove those usurpers in favor of new government. The second is one in which the people have given government power to protect their lives, and liberty, and to grant to their posterity the same. When this type of government fails to hold up to these ideals, it is overthrown.  This is referred to as right of revolution, or Lockean revolution, after John Locke. And the third type of revolution can be referred to as Jacobin, because the Jacobin club was instrumental and ultimately responsible for the development of the French Revolution.

Jacobinism is about transformation, both politically and socially, to form a new government built on the egalitarian philosophy. Marxism, feminism, the civil rights movement, marriage equality, all of these are in a real sense movements toward that philosophy. All three of these philosophies presuppose a modern concept of sovereignty.

Secessionists are not attempting to restore government, in fact, secession is about dismemberment to the contrary, in favor of self-governance. Secession is also not Lockean in nature because there is almost never a reason to believe that the government for which they are seceding from has in some way violated their trust. But even if such a thing were true, secessionists do not attempt to overthrow said government, only demand sovereignty. And last, secessionists have no interest in necessarily changing or transforming the political or social structure of their government, only separating themselves from it.

So it is clear to see based on the examples given that the use of the Declaration of independence, as a source for moral legality in favor of secession is an incorrect one. For not only does it specifically state that revolution is the duty of those citizens, but only in cases where it is absolutely necessary to do so. In the Two Treatises of Government, Locke describes necessity as being absolute only when a majority is affected. Thus a man who feels unjustly treated by his government has no right to overthrow such a government, and only when its effects are felt by a majority of people can such action be taken.

Because Locke believed that liberty was the natural right of people, to protect that right, revolution was obligation, and ultimately a safeguard against tyranny. Locke’s influence can be felt in the words of the Declaration of Independence, and Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to John Trumble: “Bacon, Locke and Newton I consider them as the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception, and as having laid the foundation of those superstructures which have been raised in the Physical & Moral sciences"

When Samuel Adams wrote in an effort to gain support for the rebellion, it was the words of John Locke he used from Two Treatises. So with respect to the American Revolution, it was Lockean revolution, the principles for which our founding fathers based their claims. After all, there are many who suffer greatly, under far worse dictators, and yet they do not revolt and toss aside their subjugators. It is possible they themselves have not come to the same conclusions as Locke did, that all men are created equal, that life, liberty, and property are rights and not privileges. It is possible that even if few feel as he did, they do not favor the support of others, and as Locke has written, revolution is not necessary.

The Legality of Secession

As I have shown, revolution as supported by the principles of the founding fathers as well as the evidence in documentation left behind show that it is the only legal remedy to tyranny. And that is important to state, that it is tyranny alone that grants citizens the right to take back that which has been taken away, unjustly of course. Secession on the other hand having to be shown as not a revolution, and not wholly based on libertarianism, is not so legally sound a course of action. For one, precedence is on the side of the government here. When Lincoln took action against the confederacy he set permanently for this nation the notion that secession was not tolerable, and illegal, and that war was necessary to reassemble the Union as a whole.

Second, in Texas vs. White, 1869, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that Texas was legally a state and could not have seceded from the Union because the Constitution did not permit states to unilaterally secede from The United States and that the ordinances of secession, and all the acts of the legislatures within seceding states intended to give effect to such ordinances, were "absolutely null. (legally void)” This case dealt with whether Texas was legally obligated to pay back war bonds to those who supported the confederacy, under this ruling no state could have legally seceded from the Union, and doing so was a criminal act.

Chief Justice Salmon Chase wrote that necessity had brought the colonists to perpetual unity, and that their constitution declared that Unity to be a more “Perfect Union.” It is difficult to convey the idea of indissoluble unity more clearly than by these words. What can be indissoluble if a perpetual Union, made more perfect, is not?

What Chase was describing was the idea that these people had come together to form a perpetual union of states, and by that if it is perfect as the constitution suggests, than nothing as such can break it apart. Because of this whenever a state is added to this Union, by contract, it accepts the perpetual notion of a Perfect Union, and becomes part therein. What is solid, can never be broken, and so at issue here: Texas, was the notion that even if Texas called itself confederate in nature, it was wrong to do so because it had no legal standing, and neither did any other state which joined in such action.

Because of this, no state has the right to be anything but part of the United States.

This then brings us back to the notion of revolution because as I have pointed out, although revolution is legal, secession is not.

When is Revolution Necessary?

It is hard to imagine that anyone would be disenfranchised with an election enough to request secession, but that seems to be the only real reason for this nonsense, and it is nonsense. First, this talk of secession proceeded the election. Second, it was started in red states, those states that identify themselves as conservative in nature, southern states. Third and probably the most important, none of this seemed centered around detracting rights. No one has said that they woke up the morning after the election and found their hands had been shackled, their property had been fenced, or their neighbors had been murdered.

Remember revolution being the only legally sound option available must be weighed carefully to establish justification. There is no legal remedy to “sour grapes” that allows one to throw off their government. We are a nation founded on the principles of republicanism and representative democracy. When you lose an election, you persevere to get your message out to more of the electorate. You run for office yourself, not happy with those who have thus far been elected. You do not start wars, murder, rape, or torture. You do not incite others to commit acts of violence or engage in activity that further pushes us to institute laws that protect the population from the sort.

Investments in criminal disobedience are the primary reason for the destruction of libertarian ideals under a civil population. That is, those who remain civil must be protected from those who do not, and it is through laws that such protections are made. People see laws as a way for government to subjugate under their will a population, which is furthest from the truth. Governments that do not support liberties have no reason to commit to paper laws of any kind, since tyranny is the dictation of usually a sole individual, whose whimsy may favor cruelty one moment and compassion the next, but never forget for why this is so: that compassion under cruelty begets languor and inaction, the tools of tyranny.

Governments that commit to paper laws, do so to protect from harm those whose intentions are to be civil at all times, from those who intentions are not.

Now very few people can argue that the American government always does the right thing. In fact, many would argue they often do the wrong thing, however we still have a constitution, people are still free to speak, and write of what they want, and if civil, allowed to petition the government with grievances. No one can claim that after the election all guns were banned, or all churches were burned, and no one can claim that the following day anything of significance were any different than the day before, exception being a few new elected officials were selected, and the day of the week changed from Tuesday to Wednesday.

So under these circumstances revolution being the only legal remedy, is unnecessary.

When Racism drives policy

It’s difficult to believe that secession would be a notion entertained by anyone, considering the connotation it has with slavery, but here we are discussing this nonsense, and so I must discuss racism. Most people would have you believe that racism no longer exists in this country. Conservative author Ann Coulter has written in her book “Mugged” that: “whenever the Democrats are in trouble, they accuse Republicans of 'racism.' For decades, the Left has been putting on a play with themselves as heroes in an ongoing civil rights movement – which they were mostly absent from at the time. Long after pervasive racial discrimination ended, they kept pretending America was being run by the Klan and that liberals were black America's only protectors.”

Unfortunately for Coulter she misses the mark here because her accusation that racism is merely character assassination against conservatives only holds true so long as conservatives maintain an anti-racist attitude. However, when we examine attitudes in Southern states we still find that these states hold racial bias. It is by no small measure that all Southern states voted for Mitt Romney and not the black guy, and we should take this as an indication of personal as well as political policy in those states. It is very difficult to suggest that racial motivation has nothing to do with electoral choice, after all Samuel L. Jackson has stated, he voted for the black guy, because he was also black, so then why could we not assume the same is also true of whites?

We must assume that people despite the color of their skin make choices for their own reasons, and although they are entitled to vote purely by ethnicity, it speaks volumes to the kind of attitudes one holds on to, especially in the South where racism and slavery have predominately existed since the inception of this country. So I find Ms. Coulter’s words disingenuous in nature, considering how her party votes, and where her parties majority of votes come from. It is hard to argue your view that racism does not exist when your own party accepts a majority of its votes from those who support its existence.

We only need to look at those elected officials to know the kinds of people that elect them. And in states where Tea Party officials have been elected, we find mostly racist white men, whose dominance over their views has left for example family values pushed aside in favor of political favor. It is there for example that females are more likely to be single mothers. It is also more likely that these places will also have racially divided sections like the segregated places of old, but mostly due to self-segregation, blacks wanting to be away from whites, that this happens. So in places like this, it is of no surprise that these white males elect to office those people who support their agenda, while females too busy working and supporting their children and blacks too disenfranchised with their environment, refuse to take part in the electoral process. This however, leaves open the ability for those with an agenda a way to achieve their goal.

It must not be forgotten that slavery, until the 13th amendment was ratified, was perfectly legal in this country. We must also not forget that although it may have been tolerated throughout the North in some parts, its predominance in the South cannot be denied, and that eleven states whose intention was to condone slavery as biblically permitted, seceded from the rest of the Country with the intent on continuing to support their infrastructure with slave labor. Slavery is by its very nature the worst criminal act, because it is by its nature the antithesis of liberty. If liberty as I have suggested is the natural state of humanity, than any attempt to detract it, is evil in nature. Those who would have preferred death to slavery attest to the power of liberty, and its consequential relation to life. The two are synonymous, and one without the other is meaningless, as Patrick Henry famously stated: "Give me Liberty, or Give me Death!"

There seems to be little that can be done to change the attitudes of men, however time changes everything, for it is the only human institution for which escape is impossible and as a consequence, death is certain. That being said, given enough time, attitudes change because people change, as the old die off, and the young begin anew, less of the old world is left to torment the young, and the ignorance of old can die off without mourning, and we can begin to heal as a nation.

It does seem as though attitudes have changed quite a lot from the 60’s during the civil rights movement, after all we did elect the first black president, and then re-elect him, an amazing accomplishment. However, there does seem to be those who continue to push bad ideas, and incite others to act upon their hate, and in spite of them, we soldier on with listful promise, and a mission to fight those things we see as amoral, and ultimately harmful to society.

Only The Losers

It seems that society has changed quite a bit over time. Throughout history battles have been waged between two sides ending with one side victorious and the other side not so lucky: And to the victors, go the spoils. As humans became more civil, dropped our swords in favor of quills and parchment, we began to debate our issues in a non-violent way that resulted again in one side being victorious, but the other side being a little more lucky, surviving to fight another day. And it is in this civil notion that we elect our political system. We vote for which ever side we want to win, and the majority convinced by one argument over the other declares victory. And for a long time, this has been the way we run this country.

However with the rise of egalitarianism philosophies, something else has forced its way into the minds of some, the principle of fairness, and although I myself subscribe to this notion generally, it has no place in contestation, because by its nature its unfair, hence one side wins, while the other side loses. This has pervasively found itself filtering through our sporting events now for some time, and children are mostly taught now that “it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, its how you played.” And although this does have some value, its not in contestation that its value can be best realized. After all, someone still has to win and someone still has to lose.

What’s striking isn’t that we teach our children this notion, but that adults have begun to believe it as well. And in a political system, such an idiom has no place. Such a thing has given rise to the “sour grapes” mentality that has swept over this nation, unsatisfied with an outcome, they are unwilling to accept and move on, instead fighting back, and even suggesting kiddie-like responses that make us look like a nation of imbeciles. “My candidate lost, so I’m moving to Canada,” or “The black guy won again, its time to secede.” These sound a little familiar, oh because I have heard them before: “You took my dolly, I’m telling mommy!” or “I wanted chocolate, not vanilla, I’m going to hold my breath!” Seem familiar? Maybe because those individuals who have suggested secession as a means to justify their dissatisfaction are feeling nostalgic, seeking a more innocent time, when everything could be settled on the school yard, or in a game of hopscotch.

Lest we forget the connection of secession to slavery, and racism, we are doomed to repeat our failures. Even if those imbeciles suggesting secession do so without racial bias, the lessons we have learned preclude us from taking such action, and that our reasonability as civil beings must outweigh and resist our intent to dispute each other through violence. Those who have elected to take part in the electoral process should remember the lesson inherent in it: that violence is unnecessary to establish change. So for those people who stood in line, waited patiently to see if their candidate was victorious and soured afterward at the prospect of a loss, remember, that so long as there is a process you can make a difference, maybe not all the time, but sometimes.

It is those who do not elect to participate and complain after the fact that we should fear the most, not because they have any assemblance of forcing change, but that they are not actually interested in change, at least not a kind that anyone with civil intent would consider worthy. And so for these people their only interest is condemnation, dissent, and incitement.

The only true act of terrorism on this country that will ever be victorious is one in which we throw away our constitution, and it is the only act of terrorism that we can inflict upon ourselves.

 

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. – Abraham Lincoln

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Is Red or Blue, Merely a State of The Mind?

In two studies done on the brain in 2011, one in California and one in London, researchers looking for the same thing wanted to know if political affiliation could be discerned with a brain scan, or a simple test.

Researchers in London tested subjects who either stated themselves as being liberal or conservative in their views. Those who considered themselves as conservatives showed under MRI that an area of the brain called the amygdala, responsible for primitive emotional responses like fear, were quite larger than average.  Under the same kind of MRI scan, those who considered themselves to be liberals, showed a larger area in the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex, responsible for rational cognitive functions, such as decision-making, conflict-handling, empathy, courage, and optimism.

Researchers in California who wanted to test for the same kind of political affiliation tested subjects with a computer program. Subjects were asked to press a key on the keyboard of the computer whenever they saw an ‘M’ and refrain from pressing a key when they saw the letter ‘W’. Subjects were not told that the letter ‘M’ would appear four times more frequently than the letter ‘W’.  The results showed that liberals made fewer mistakes than conservatives indicating that liberals were better equipped at making decisions, and handling conflicts.

Although the tests confirm what I already suspected, that while brain chemistry is responsible for so many things, it comes as no surprise to me that ideological views are one of them. But it begs the question: Considering the increased size of the amygdala in the brains of conservatives tested, could this also point to a reason why most conservatives are religious in nature? Because fear is a chief component in indoctrination, the process by which people are subjugated into religion, this seems completely plausible, and provocative in nature. Telling people that they are religious, because their brain has a slightly larger amygdala than most, could at first sound positive to those people, for example the idea of a larger brain. However, upon closer inspection, and understanding where the amygdala is located, it actually doesn't sound better at all. The amygdala is located in a very primitive part of the brain called the R-complex, or reptilian brain, a part of the brain that has existed through millions of years of evolution. And understanding that this area is larger, and not smaller, as you might expect from evolution, it might tend to bring up some amount of resentment from the side of those who consider themselves as conservatives.

Another thing to consider in this area is the tendency for those on the conservative side to be more partial to racism, bigotry, hate, and amoral decision-making. When you consider that most racial, and sexual discrimination tends to be born out of fear, it makes sense that a brain with a larger amygdala might also be a brain that expressed racial or sexual discrimination, or the discrimination of homosexuality.

It is most often fear of homosexuality that causes those who discriminate against them to express their bigoted view of their sexual orientation. You can often hear it right from the mouth of the bigot who tells you that homosexuality will ruin traditional marriage, that homosexuals are all pedophiles, and homosexuals think dirty thoughts about the same-sex, often those who are not homosexual themselves. These views only extend the communal belief that help to create this fear culture, giving rise to bigotry and hate.

It should not, however be as simply limiting as hate toward those with same-sex orientation, no indeed, it affects those who hate women, or those of a different color as well.

In the modern America women are no longer subjected to the life of a stay-at-home caretaker, the good wife who takes care of the kids, and has dinner on the table every night when her husband comes home from work. Although this was a notion of a more archaic time in America, it is one that the conservative believes best fits the position of women in society. This view of women is supported by the treatment of women of that era, when spousal abuse went unpunished, and women could not divorce. Although it is simple to consider this to be just a societal norm of the time, evidence suggests that this was about the underlying need for male dominance and control of women, a view which hasn't changed much in spite of the modern feminist movement.

Although it is now easier for women to report spousal abuse, the control an abuser has on his victim often allows him to unconsciously get his victim to recant or deny the abuse she has suffered.

Many would have you believe that Christians do not do these types of amoral things, research shows differently. What seems absolute is that those men who fear the condemnation of God for their actions, will continue to abuse their victim, asking for absolution only later, after the abuse has taken place. The correlation between a larger amygdala and a smaller anterior cingulate cortex may suggest a reason why such abuse continues, resulting from a lack of empathy, poor decision-making and overall irrationality, and at the same time explains why the motivation of fear leads the abuser to seek absolution or forgiveness of their sins. It should also be considered that continued abuse, leads to reinforcement–type behavior, that allows a woman to forgive her abuser, thus absolving, and allowing the fear to subside, giving the abuser back their power again.

The more modern American woman is one that supports herself, maybe with or without kids, and holds a more independent belief. It is not that such a woman could not have a boyfriend or be married, only that she has the confidence that women of an earlier era lacked. And it is this independence that conservative men fear the most, because an independent woman is a woman that is less likely to be controlled. And controlling women, if not the most important value a conservative male holds, it is at the top of the list, even if it would never be opinionated in public. It should be apparent by the views of most conservative men concerned with abortion, a subject they have little knowledge or decision-making in, but one that all seem, willing to take a position on, that control is always in the mind of the conservative male.

The insidious nature of racism that finds itself pervasively interwoven into our culture could easily be attributed to fear as well, because it is fear, and not reason that leads to irrational conclusions about those of a minority. Although racists will surely claim they do not fear those of color, it is fear that leads to ignorance, which ultimately causes the racist to hold his belief. When fear is allowed to impact our decisions about race, it is then we build irrational paradigms that perniciously lead to hate.

Fear of the black man, led to him being enslaved, because it is through slavery, he could be controlled. It is fear that led the South to secede from the union, fear of empowering the blacks, fear of losing control, and fear that the South could not survive without its slave labor. It was fear that led the South to institute segregation laws during the post-reconstruction era, and fear that sparked a nation to turn on its citizens of color. And it is still fear even now, that enables the hatred of President Obama in the southern states. When white voters in the South were asked if the color of Barack Obama factored in their decision to vote for Romney, more than 60% of those asked, acknowledged it did. It should be of no surprise then that it wasn’t really the white vote that factored high in favored of President Obama for re-election, although he certainly held his own with liberal whites, but the fact he gained ground with African-American and Latino voters, and women of course, conservative or liberal minded.

The conservative woman, a rarity I’m sure, considering the view of the modern male Republican Party, while also part of this research study, has a brain that functions differently.

It should be of no surprise that men and women think differently, and MRI scans prove this to be true, at least in how their mind is structured, and how it relates to liberalism or conservatism. What researchers began to suspect is that the male minds of those who considered themselves to be of stronger, more warrior-like, held more conservative views, and those that considered themselves more intelligent, well rounded, held more liberal views. Of course, when women were tested, it was apparent that physical strength had little to do with the view of the conservative woman, because strength in women is atypical, and rarely comparable to even the average male.  So it is not strength of muscle and bone that women possess, but strength of mind. There was no indication that similar structure in the female brain produced the same results as a male brain, leaving many to wonder what ideologies do factor into a woman’s decision on whether to lean to the left or to the right. Some have postulated that these decisions have less to do with primitive impulses in women and more to do with the effect changes in policy might have on their lives and the lives of those they love most. This would suggest that even women identifying themselves as conservative, had a larger functioning anterior cingulate cortex, even if they also had an enlarged amygdala.

This might also suggest something positive about women that men seem to clearly lack, that women in spite of fear, make better decisions, and maintain an empathy that surely leads to love. So although fear leads men to irrationality, it leads women to love, and maybe that means there is still hope for America, because it will be in the mothers that teach their children how to think, not what to think, and more importantly, to give them a reason to love, instead of hate.

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