Chubby Nickel Audio Vlog

Socrates and alcibiades

it seems the dilemma of laws over morals is a major one. Perhaps it is because it is one of those things that has no clear line. Somewhere between people who break the laws for fun and those who keep the laws without question there has to be a middle ground. From the center the view has to be a lot different from the views at either radical end. It would have to be one of a careful balance that has been thought out thoroughly and as unbiased as possible. It would be impossible to know that one point in the line could be the most centered point. It would also be impossible to claim that any one person has this perfect perspective because everyone has their own perspective. There are things in this life that are worth breaking the law for and there are cases where laws must be broken for the sake of morality.

The philosopher Thomas Aquinas said:

thomas aquinas

Law does not profit a man unless he obeys it. But the very fact that a man obeys a law is due to his being good. Therefore in man goodness is presupposed to the law. Therefore the law does not make men good.

This goes a long way into answering the question of always obeying the law or not. In the first sentence it is shown that the laws mean nothing and can be of profit to no person at all unless they are obeyed. There are some in the world who believe that laws are unnecessary and that man would be better off without the restrictions of law. They would be wrong because without laws and people to enforce them the weak would be overcome by the strong and the

dumb by the persuasive. Anarchy is in no way a natural setting either. Humans, animals and bugs all have some sort of social agreements with others of their species otherwise their species would not survive. Ants have queens, Animals have packs or other types of groups in which to maintain their species. Humans however because of the complexity of our species the social interactions are also made more complex. We have groups that start at siblings, friends, family, all the way to nation, world view and religion. It is because of the complexity of our species that we need law enforcement, governing bodies and legislators to provide the good of the people or at least as close to good as we can get.

The Thomas Aquinas quote at the end said “the law does not make men good”. This is true because of the fact that a good man is not good because of the law. The law is good or bad because of the man who made it. Even obeying the law is not a sign of a good man it may only signify a man who is scared of the consequences of the law and there is a difference between a good man and one who is scared of law enforcement. A good man obeys the laws because they are moral and follows his moral compass. A man who has no moral compass can still obey the laws. But because he is lacking in morals he won’t know when to break the laws if necessary and may cause harm in inaction.

The reasons for breaking the law must be good. That is, the benefit must outweigh the cost of breaking the law. Socrates said; “neither injury nor retaliation nor warding off evil by evil is ever right.” . In this many would not agree. The causing of harm to someone who would do you harm is not allowed by this principle. Though I would argue that my children who are in my care still should be protected by any means necessary from people who would do them harm. Of course I am not saying that someone who would do little harm deserves a great deal of harm done to him. That is not my case at all, though I would argue that those who would do evil to my mostly defenseless children would be deserving of as little evil as possible to stop them from harming the innocents that are in my care. For that matter it may be said that it would be moral to save someone who is not in your immediate care from harm by doing harm to the perpetrator.

The damage-benefit analysis is a tough one to measure when weighing the law against the moral. For one, if in breaking the law others may feel inclined to do likewise it may not be in the best interest to break it. Also as Socrates said “Do you imagine that a State can subsist and not be overthrown, in which the decisions of law have no power, but are set aside and overthrown by individuals?”. This would be chaos and anarchy. As previously stated it would not be a good thing for people to live that way. Without laws and enforcers only the strong and the smart would have the upper hand and equality would be a word without meaning. The morals of a man should be the first and foremost consideration and the laws perhaps a close second.

Morals could be misconceived in modern cultures to mean values given by our god(s) or holy writings. But I do not mean morals in this way though many do, but I mean morals in the view of a carefully measuring mind to find the value of actions such as do the most good. Things to keep the equation even or towards the good would be considered moral or at least not immoral. Even holy writings can fail the test of morality and more often than people think. The apostle Peter said that Lot was a just and righteous man yet in Genesis, Lot’s way of saving the angels that came to visit him is offering his two virgin daughters to the crowd of people insisting on raping the angels. I don’t think offering ones children to an angry mob to spare angels would be considered moral or should be for that matter.

In The Apology Socrates said that even if his life was saved and his freedom guaranteed he would not give up philosophy and his investigations. He would not give up his life’s work for the last remnants of his life. Or in other words he would rather give up his life rather than admit to doing wrong where he feels he did none. That decision contributes to the truthfulness and morality of his life. The fact that he would rather die than to break his morals is testimony of his conviction to his beliefs.

In conclusion, morality is more important than law. Law is for a base morality that sometimes does more evil than good but for the most part laws are in place to keep the majority of people on a basic morality. But one’s morality should be paramount to the laws of his nation. The choice between obeying the law and being true to one’s morals is by no means an easy question. But with contemplation and a good moral compass the truth is that the law has and will need to be broken. The morals that one lives by should never be compromised for the sake of the law or the sake of one’s life.

Poor Richard

This first way to begin to save the country is to make all publicly elected officials have a term limit. Have you ever wondered why someone would want to be in public service for most of their life? ’cause it’s not really hard. You only work part of the year and you just have to keep your homosexual extramarital affair even more carefully guarded while in public service.

It would make the government more susceptible to public opinion and would at least keep our supply of crap rotating out. Instead of having this program where people are constantly recycled back into the system and pretty much making it a lifetime career instead of moving on to something better which is what the founding fathers would have predicted would happen, but they couldn’t see the large amount of money senators make and how little they have to work for it.

The life of a public servant should be in service to the public. Not listening to lobbyists and special interest groups, their constituency should be the deciding factor, yet the most powerful people in government are the corporations with the most money which brings me too the next chapter on how to save the country that i will save for another day, ban lobbyists and special interest groups.

If you paid someone to mow your lawn, and they decided that they didn’t want to but kept the money, would you agree that it is fair or lawful?

If you paid a grocery store for groceries, but instead of giving you the groceries they decided to keep them and the money, is that fair or lawful?

If you paid a company to cover your expenses in case of injury or to provide medication at a reduced cost but they instead decided not to pay your medical bills or help with medication, is that fair or lawful?

We all know it is illegal for someone to be paid to provide a product or service but decided not to and kept the money anyway. So why do so many people think it is perfectly ok for health insurance companies to do this?

Here is my scenario: I am a software developer, I have had 5 different jobs in the last 7 years. Every time I get a new job there is a 60 day waiting period for the companies insurance to kick in. I can’t afford health insurance for my wife and I on my own. So I use the companies discount. Because of the 60 day waiting period at each company, my health insurance is not considered “continuous coverage” so all my pre-existing conditions are not covered. I have been paying for insurance for most of the 7 years, but only got to use it for about 7 months. So I am paying for a service that is not being provided. This is wrong and needs to change.

I should have been smart and just saved up the money I wasted on health insurance to pay for what I was also paying for out of my own pocket. $300 a paycheck for, let’s say 6 years = $300*26*6 = $46,800. I paid the same amount one would for a decent car, but got almost nothing for it. In fact I only saved about $1,500 from using my health insurance. The reason I kept paying for it was because I don’t want to get injured and have to pay for that out of my pocket, but what my health insurance companies promised to provide was a lot more than just injuries.

So if you tell me that the U.S. has the best health care, I’ll beat you to a bloody pulp… rhetorically.

I keep hearing people say that the U.S. protects freedom of religion and not freedom from religion. How is this possible? This is a self defeating concept. If people are not protected from religion, how would they be able to have their freedom of religion? If a religion is able to walk all over people because those people are not protected from religion, what is protecting their freedom of religion? I know I asked the same thing twice and I do personally hate repetitive argument tactics, but I feel this is a very important question.

These people that don’t want people protected from religion are happy because they think their religion is the one that is right. They don’t need protection from religion because it is their religion that is the one that others need protection from. I am talking about the U.S. and Christianity. The religion of the majority doesn’t need protection from itself, but they want to go a step farther and start pressing their religion into laws and onto everyone that believes differently.

Let me tell you (and go ahead and please research this), it was a hell of a lot different when the U.S. declared independence from England. They were not allowed to practice what ever religion they wanted because they didn’t have protection from religion. Yes, without protection from religion, unless you want to practice the major religion, you will not have the freedom of religion. Let’s say that we take away the protection from religion in the U.S., what flavour of Christianity should the state support? Southern Baptists? Catholic? Seventh Day Adventists? Born Again? Mormonism? Jehovah’s Witness? Well you better be ready to convert because if there is no freedom from religion, then one of these is going to be the one you will not be protected from.

Freedom from religion is not just about protecting the minorities rights, it’s about protecting everyone’s right to practice or not practice any religion or lack of. Because if you don’t protect the minority, then the majority calls the shots. This is one reason why the U.S. is a republic and not a democracy. Yes we have democratic elections, but we elect those people into a republic. The founding fathers could see, by the example of the Britain they freed themselves from, that a monarchy didn’t work anymore, they also could see that a democracy could not work. So they decided to create a completely new form of government, a democratic republic.

If you say that Muslims cannot go to a school and spread their word, then Christians also don’t get to go to school and spread their word. Because if you say that Muslims can’t spread their word in schools but Christians can, that is a law respecting a religion (read the first amendment). However, if you say that no religion can spread their word in schools, then that is a protection from religion that protects the peoples freedom of religion. In order to comply with the first amendment, you need to either spread the word of all religions or not allow any religion to spread their word.

Freedom from religion is the most important way to protect peoples freedom of religion. Also, remember any right you take away from someone else is also a right that you take away from yourself. In the U.S., everyone’s rights are affected by taking away rights. So quit being idiots and understand that in order to protect your freedom of religion, you need to provide protection from religion.

This will be a fairly short post though I feel it serves it’s purpose…

God, you know him he’s the guy in the sky to cares about billions of people’s prayers, sins, and services. If you pray to be better in school he hears your prayers right? wrong, the symptom you get after prayer sometimes can be good, and this placebo effect in leaving your problems to another person can actually be good for the outcome of things like school. but that’s not what this post is about.

If God was just and good, then the righteous would be getting some sort of special treatment, now i know that the scriptures say that everything that happens is for your own good but that’s an escape clause and here’s why: a just and good person does not treat good people who have done nothing wrong poorly, he would be extra kind and giving ask Job if that happened for him… thought not.

A just God would not punish the righteous for the sake of the wicked where is the justice in that? the most perfect person on the planet ever is supposed to have died for their sins? but only if you say you believe in him and call him your savior… and give to the donation plate that’s the really important part. Where is the goodness in punishing the good so that the evil will know that when they’re good they too will be punished? but after your dead and gone to where no one can take advantage of you anymore THAT’S when you’ll get your reward of course… I’ve got a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow I’ll sell you if you just one, believe in leprechauns and two, believe that your gold will actually be at the end of the rainbow and don’t believe those scientists and skeptics who tell you that the rainbow is really an optical illusion brought on by the prism effect of the liquid in the air and you can never ever reach the end or your reward, so thanks for the donation.

Stop calling atheists proud and that they think they’re their own God… they don’t they don’t have this sick center of the universe idea that a God would care about every time they picked their nose and lied about it you’re going to hell bugger picker liar! The humble ones are the ones who admit that there may be no ultimate plan for the universe, it may be just a big accident and our only purpose here is to continue the species.

Poor Richard.

There is a misunderstanding going on about competition and businesses. One set of deceptive, dishonest people will say that no company is against competition because competition is good for business and fight to remove regulations, laws and punishments for those companies that seek to abuse the system. The other set of deceptive, dishonest people want a lot of regulation under the guise of protecting the people.

First to clarify: competition is good for business, but not good for a company. Competition results in higher quality products and services at lower costs. This is good for the people purchasing the products and services, but not so good for the companies providing the products and services. A company wants the biggest piece of the consumer pie they can get, and they try to provide high quality services for less than their competitors to attain that goal. This is good for the consumer. What happens if there is no competition? No competition means that a company can provide the same service for as much as they want and do not need to improve their product or service. This is good for the company and bad for the consumer. So competition is good for business but bad for companies.

Regulations are good for the people and small business but are bad for large companies and big business. Regulations do limit the power of big businesses which on a surface common sense level of understanding seem bad for business. Without any regulations, then any company can do whatever they want. Lead painted baby toys, disgusting old rotting meat for dinner and strong arm tactics to remove the competition. So to protect the people and small business, regulations are necessary.

Regulations are a way to relieve the legal system of law suits towards companies and also help to protect competition. Regulations serve to provide a system to prevent companies from doing things that would otherwise result in a law suit. If a company is prevented by a regulation to not allow lead based paint on childrens toys, then that prevents many law suits that would have resulted from making children sick. Regulations also prevent big companies from using their money and influence to wipe out small companies that compete with them.

When is regulation taken too far? That is not such an easy question to answer. My freedom loving side feels that no freedom should be taken unless that is the only way to prevent someone from taking freedom from another.  So my belief is that regulation goes too far when it is taking the freedom from a company for any purpose other than protecting the freedom of people or other companies. Regulation should never be used just for the sake of limiting freedom.

There is no “death panel,”  “illegal immigrant coverage” or “total government control” in the bill. While if it had these in the bill, it would be something every American should be against. I was going to do a satire piece to show how ridiculous some people are when arguing the bill, but I think I will refrain from most sarcasm and humor in order to just explain the basics of the bill.

The so called “death panel” is nothing more than people trained to explain end of life care to people so that they know what their options are. Say for instance you are 80 years old and have terminal cancer that will kill you in about 2 months. These people may explain that if you go for treatment you will likely only get a few weeks more life but that each day of the end of your life will be spent being sick with little energy and throwing up often. They will also explain that there is a tiny chance that you may get cured from the treatment. They will also explain that without treatment you will feel much healthier for the first month. Informing people of their choices is in no way telling the people that they should die. Knowing your options and the consequences of those options is more about giving you choices rather than taking them away. This is of course an extreme example. Most of the time, the trained people will just be informing people of their options and will not be as death oriented.

No illegal immigrants will be covered under the health care bill, there is an entire section devoted to preventing illegal immigrants from receiving health insurance. However, without a drastic change in the system, no one can prevent any one from receiving emergency medical treatment. This had been put in to protect people from being left to die in the hospital waiting room. So even without the health care bill, illegal immigrants can receive emergency medical treatment because hospitals are forced to not discriminate.  I will rant later about the misuse of the term “health care” when people are referring to either health insurance or medical care.

The government will never be able to tell you which doctor you can or can’t see as your private practitioner. Nothing in the bill says anything about some group of people gaining the power to refuse certain treatments to people that need that treatment. This is something that has been blown way out of proportion. The bill covers watching and collecting data about treatments to remove the ones that are less effective. So if you are taking a pill that is doing nothing for you while there is a pill that is helping people with the same condition as you, the government will eventually weed out the pill that is less effective for the pill that is more effective. However if the pill you are taking is helping you, then you get to keep taking that pill.

Now onto my rant about the misuse of the term “health care.” People from countries with socialized medicine do come to the U.S. and other countries for heath care. Now be careful about what I am saying about this. They are not going to the U.S. for our medical insurance, they are coming to the U.S. for our medical treatments. Two things that are very different but still fall under the term “health care.” So when the argument is about health insurance and some one says that countries like Canada send people to the U.S. for health care, understand that they are two different things. The problem with the U.S. health care system is not the treatment, it’s the insurance. Every one agrees that medical treatments in the U.S. are very good, but the discussion is about the cost of treatment and the cost of insurance.

Example of a flawed system: I have had to get a new job about every year, each new company waits for 60 days of the date of hire to start their insurance coverage. Even if I get a new job instantly after losing one, the time between coverage is too long to be considered continuous coverage. So every new job I have to wait eleven months until I can use the service I am paying for. Sure if I found some new medical problem it would be covered, but all my pre-existing conditions are not covered for eleven months. So after six years of paying for health insurance I got to use the service about 8 months. It is unlawful for a service provider to take payment from a customer and then not provide the service, and this is exactly what insurance companies do.

So yeah, we need health care reform in the U.S. and we need it soon.

Health Care Bill

Now I know that many of you will undoubtedly be true believers and will probably not be swayed, but let’s have a little faith shall we? The genealogy of Jesus is important to note because if he were not of the line of david then he would surely not be fulfilling the prophecy as put in Jeremiah 23 5 saying “Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth.” Now, lets first put to rest that his line to David is seriously in danger according to the contradicting genealogies of Matthew 1 and Luke 3. Matthew has 28 generations and Luke has 43! you can’t call that a typo there’s seriously something smelly there… now lets also consider the fact that the names in the accounts have almost no names in common! read for yourself it’s despairingly inaccurate and it is really doubtful that each translation of the bible would correspond with this inaccuracy.

Oh and did I mention that both Matthew and Luke place Jesus’ adopted father Joseph as the descendant of David and if you’re a Christian you know that Mary conceived without Joseph’s help so, that would place him nowhere on the line of David because there was no donation from Joseph to Mary’s egg. So how you ask could he be of the line of David as prophesied in Jeremiah that’s a toughy… oh yeah it’s because he’s NOT OF THE LINE OF DAVID and the lineage connecting him to David is made up lies by disciples after the fact trying to make him fit into the prophecies of the old testament so, sorry your bible is either fallable and therefore not worth the read because you can’t be sure of the facts or because it’s all just fairy tales and old wives tales about things that either didn’t happen or happened and then were expounded upon to make them supernatural.

Attempting to enlighten the misguided,

Poor Richard

Remember the 8th of September of 2009… do not let your kids go to school, don’t let them watch T.V. don’t let them marry out of the covenant. This coming Tuesday there will be a broadcast to your kids school by a black man so evil so scary, so incredibly slow talking, we made him president.

As it turns out this man who forced the majority of the country to vote for him with his despicably intelligent speeches though I’m sure that if he had not had his prompter he wouldn’t have been able to hypnotize so many people and bend them to his whim. The most terrible thing about this man who calls himself president, Ha! president he hasn’t even declared war without a good reason you can’t call that a president now can you?

When he begins his speech or death panel hypno talk he’ll act like he’s just giving a regular speech to the kids but ohhh no, he’s going to be sending subliminal messages of communistic fascism and socialism so strong your kids will likely pledge on the Koran to become a suicide activist, well not really suicide but activists and that’s worse. It may seem that your kid is perfectly normal for weeks years or even decades but when they start acting strange, and nothing happens for a while, then when nothing happens for a little while longer you can most definitely blame it on Obama and his Hitlerisms.

You have been warned…

Poor Richard.

Tiv are a quaint group of west African people who, in an article by Laura Bohannan called “Shakespeare in the Bush”, presume to know the meaning of a Shakespeare play, perhaps you’ve heard of it… It’s called Hamlet, now despite the low profile of the author (after all who’s heard of Shakespeare?) when the play was described to the Tiv elders they decided that they would tell her what the play was about.

Though the Tiv elders are hearing this third hand and have no prior knowledge of the underlying culture behind Hamlet they found entirely different meanings than a westerner would have… not to say they’re wrong but you’ll just have to read the article at This link.

The kind of assumptions are very different from their prospective and found that Hamlet’s mother should have remarried so soon after the death of her husband, not in the least bit precocious or non ordinary, queer, weird, odd, awe-inspiring, awful, creepy, curious, dreadful, eccentric, eerie, far-out, fearful, flaky, freaky, funky, ghastly, ghostly, grotesque, haunting, horrific, inscrutable, kinky, kooky, magical, mysterious, occult, oddball, ominous, outlandish, peculiar, preternatural, queer, secret, singular, spooky, strange, supernal, supernatural, uncanny, uncouth, unearthly, unnatural or crazy do you get my point? they thought it was normal.

I wonder if we could learn something from this…

Poor Richard