What are Men Compared to Rocks and Mountains?

Painted for our living room.

Angel

I painted this for my grandma from a photo of a stained-glass window. I didn't get a very good photo... I couldn't get it straight.

Streetfront in Montreal

With colors edited to match my aunt's kitchen. Acrylic on canvas.

Attack of the Plaid!

I recently returned from a family trip to the mall. Every store was entirely filled with variations on this shirt:


It would appear that hipsterdom is obsessed with lumberjacks. I briefly poked into Hollister's and found that plaid was as thick inside as the atmospheric shadows and pretension.

The whole trip made me slightly ashamed of my pink plaid shirt. I'm working to shake off that shame by reminding myself that at least my shirt is comfy.

Magic vs. Technology

I enjoy fantasy fiction, always have. However, I've recently noticed a fantasy trope which bothers me, I think because it reflects the way some people talk about the world.

I am talking about the great conflict between magic and technology. Sometimes this takes the form of an actual war, one army dressed like Storm Troopers, the other like warlocks. In other stories, we have the magical land or zone where technology ceases to work. This first started to bother me when I was twelve or thirteen and reading one of the Harry Potter books.

No technology works at Hogwarts, Hermione explains to Harry, Ron, and the audience, because there's too much magic in the air. What? What counts as "technology"? A computer, obviously. But what about a clockwork watch? Or the wheel? As long as the laws of physics still hold, all of these should work. The same principle governs the electricity in your home and the human nervous system. The kids at Hogwarts can still feel pain and think, right?

In a world where magic actually existed, it would not be antithetical to science. Since science is the process of figuring out how things work, if magic is part of how things work, then magic is part of science. I imagine it as a discipline of science, like biology and physics. And, like biology and physics, it would bleed into the other disciplines.

I think the theme of technology or science vs. magic crops up in books because people see technology as something, for lack of a better word, magical. Or perhaps "unnatural" is a better word. Hmm... I'd better stop myself before I get into one of my rants about "unnatural."

So I'll be brief. I don't see anything as unnatural. It's just not part of my worldview. When, in chemistry class, I mix starting materials together to synthesize something new, the result doesn't seem unnatural to me, synthetic though it may be. It is what naturally occurs when those reactants are mixed together and follow the laws of physics.

I might not really understand how a computer works, but I know that it is an extension of that same principle. A computer works because it's components, specifically arranged, behave naturally. Rain falls, the sun burns, my iPod plays "Hesitating Beauty," and matter holds together. It is all part of the same whole.

High on the Mountain Top

means it's the Saturday before class starts, freshman year. The bishop has declared that the ward is hiking to the Y, and so we are climbing up a mountain in the near-dark of early morning.



I straggle behind, and if it weren't for the bishop and second counselor hanging back with me I would be the last in line. I miss Mississippi air with its moisture and sweet, sweet oxygen. I've only been in Utah a week, and I can't get used to the feeling of taking deep, desperate gasps of air without really breathing.

As soon as I reach the Y I lie down and close my eyes, waiting for the world to swim back into place. I'm still recovering when the others start to sing. After a few minutes lying on the rock the pain in my chest and sides subside and I'm able to sit up, join the hymns, and watch the sun rise over the mountains on the other side of the valley.

From here you can see the clear demarcation between dark and light. We watch the golden-red line of the sun move over the lake, then the city, then hit the tallest buildings on campus. I have missed the vibrant, pressing greenery of home, felt surrounded by brown. Now, for the first time, I see Utah as beautiful.

High on the mountaintop a banner is unfurled. Ye nations now look up; it waves to all the world.- "High on the Mountain Top"

In Defense of Evangelicalism

Most of the boys I knew freshman year are leaving for their missions over the summer. A few boys I knew fall semester are already living and working in Canada and Norway and France.

All of the mission calls pouring in over the last few months put me in mind of a boy I knew in high school, and a conversation we once had where I mentioned my brother--then on his mission in California. "No offense," said this boy, "but I don't agree with evangelicalism."

My first thought was that this boy was fooling himself if he thought he himself didn't evangelize. The word means "to preach the gospel," and while it has a Christian connotation, everyone has their own gospel and most everyone has the desire to spread it. The Mormon missionaries and Jehovah's Witnesses knocking at your door are equivalent to the guy trying to get your signature on his petition to save the polar bears. And while all of these people are seen as rude by some, I think it is not only a right but right to try to make the world a better place by sharing your views.

Of course, we were in Mississippi, heart of the Bible Belt, where "evangelicalism" is the domain of Evangelical Christians with a capital E (Mormons are not Evangelicals though we are famous for our evangelizing.) This boy probably associated evangelicalism with the Man, who, where we grew up, is usually a Southern Baptist, and the Man is by definition close-minded and intolerant. But you can spread your views without attacking those of others, and if you want to have a civil conversation that's exactly what you have to do. I believe in civil conversations--they're good for the soul.

I try to be receptive to the evangelicalism of others just as I would like those others to be receptive to the message of my brothers and friends. That's why I have a slim book on my shelf called "The Perfection of Yoga" by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, which I took from a man on a New York street. Let's all listen to each other. Let's evangelize away.

It's All Relative

Learning about relativity in physics, it's struck me that many of the things we assume to be true--like the idea that velocities add--are just illusions caused by living in a slow world. Last semester in chemistry I learned about quantum mechanics and realized that we only think we can know exactly where things are because we live in such a massive world.

It makes me wonder what assumptions we make--about science, about philosophy, about everything--just because we live in a very limited sphere.

Dear Kristian and Kennedy

I realized that you have no way of knowing that I fulfilled my responsibility to comment on two blogs this semester. Here are the relevant links:

http://meandblue.blogspot.com/2009/02/few-thoughts-on-equality.html#comments

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3575751491068070568&postID=1730374354117317171

Amber Waves of Grain

Americans have always romanticized the farmer. Thomas Jefferson wrote:

"Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth. Corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators is a phenomenon of which no age nor nation has furnished an example."*

Children are doused with farm stories. At one and two I sang "Old MacDonald" and "The Farmer in the Dale." As I grew older, my mother read me reams of picture books set on farms and, later, Charlotte's Web and Farmer Boy. When I was eight years old I declared that I would marry a farmer when I grew up.

I don't know how much other countries romanticize farming and farmers, but to me farming seems to fit the American ideal, as defined by Americans. We imagine the family farm, self-sustaining, self-made, the triumph of the individual. Of course, most farms in the United States today are factory farms.

And, honestly, I don't see anything wrong with that. Perhaps this is because I romanticize industry instead (I think my father's plant looks like fairy land; I took the heart the words of my engineering professor: "Industry is what allows you to be at a university instead of picking turnips.") There is nothing intrinsically more moral about an agricultural society, and nothing that makes a farmer more noble than a factory worker or manager or owner.

In fact, I think we need to de-emphasize agriculture by eliminating farm subsidies. This would be immensely more fair to farmers in other countries such as Mexico, whose goods can't compete against heavily subsidized United States crops.

In this case, at least, I disagree with Thomas Jefferson.

Not Everything Happens for a Reason...

...and yes, I do believe in God.

It seems strange to me that the same people who believe fervently that God gives man freewill believe that God orchestrates every single event in our lives as part of his apparently intricately-precise plan.

But these two things are inconsistent. If I get fired, is it because God wanted me to have a learning experience? Or is it because my boss exercised his free agency to fire me if he felt like it? It's true that God might have impressed on him, "Fire her," or "Don't fire her," but there's no reason to assume my boss is in tune with the promptings of the Spirit.

While there might not be a reason for everything, there's a reason for Everything. Life as a whole has meaning and purpose, man are that they might have joy, and this holds true even if God doesn't always specifically pick out what college we'll be accepted to or who we'll meet or when the people we love die. I believe that everything, including the random vagaries of human agency, has the potential to lead us to fulfill the overarching divine purpose of our lives.

But we're not going to grow into our purpose if we lie around like dead fish, waiting for God to slap us with Meaning. Life is an active process, where we take whatever is handed to us and, with the help of divine inspiration, turn it into something meaningful, building a path to the Purpose, the glorious Reason for it all.

Buy American (If You Feel Like It)

So we have been urged to buy American to help our compatriots out in these troubled economic times.

I've never gotten the "buy American" thing. Why does a struggling American businessman deserve my money more than a struggling Japanese businessman? I don't get the "buy local" thing, either. Why should I support local farmers more than farmers somewhere else?

I felt the same way back when everyone was griping about outsourcing, grumbling that foreigners were "taking our jobs." They're not our jobs. They belong to whoever balances their own need for a living with an employer's need for someone competent.

I fervently believe that free trade will bring the best for everyone involved. The entire world is going through a rough patch, not just us, and this is no time to hunker in on ourselves. It's not that I'm not proud of being American, but I don't think pride in your own country requires you to see the rest of the world as Them in a bitter, impersonal game of Us vs. Them.

So buy high quality. Buy inexpensive. Think of it as giving peace a chance.

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

means it's a week before finals, and we spend our days on the grass in front of the girls' dorm. By we I mean the entire school, two-hundred sixteen-to-eighteen-year- olds spread beneath the heat of a Mississippi May.

The couples have blankets to themselves and work steadily at getting us all a Reputation among passing college students. Most of us, though, gather in clots to laugh and talk and read and nap. It's against the rules to be outside without shoes, and the grass is filled with stickers, but we kick off our sandals anyway.

I brought out my books, swearing I'd do homework, but instead I use my bookbag as pillow. Sam plays music off her laptop, Leslie shoots video for her vlog, and I have class in an hour. But maybe, by then, we'll have evaporated and become part of the air.

Someday we will die and our ashes will fly from that aeroplane over the sea. But for now we are young; let us lay in the sun and count every beautiful thing we can see. - Neutral Milk Hotel, "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea"

On Budgets

The new federal budget is titled "A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America's Promise."

It's a slogan. I feel like, to read it aloud, I'd have to have my teeth whitened and stand in front of an American flag with a fan aimed at my face. I hate slogans. They are inherently meaningless and manipulative. They are flash and fluff. They are designed to set the pleasure centers of the average voter brain chiming without even touching the rational thought centers. And, sadly, modern politics couldn't succeed without them.

I didn't even know budgets had titles. I checked and found that all of President Bush's budgets but the first one were titled "Budget." The first was called "A Blueprint for New Beginnings: A Responsible Budget for America's Priorities." I couldn't find the title for Clinton's first budget, but the last two presidents at least gave their first budget a slogan title. At least Bush's budget, while it also used "Responsible" as a meaningless buzzword, left out patronizing mentions of "Renewing America's Promise." Federal budgets do not renew America's promise. Americans renew America's promise.

Someday a politician will win my heart by promising to name his very first budget "Budget."

For the Lightning

"Go on and be good peasants, safe peasants, superstitious peasants--or have worlds to conquer again. To control the lightning again."

That speech is from the climax of Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. In the novel, a comet hits the earth and society crumbles. However, a nuclear power plant survives intact. The heroes have a chance to take control of the plant, but first they must fight the combined forces of a band of cannibalistic army men, an inner-city gang, and a maniacal preacher (really).

The heroes are about to back down before one man, an astronaut, stands up and inspires them to rise up "for the lightning." I read Lucifer's Hammer when I was fourteen, picking it out from the bookshelf in the room where Dad kept his tools. The astronaut's passionate, fictional speech struck me, then, and stuck. It comes into the back of my mind every time I'm astounded at technology, and it comes to mind when I think about nuclear power.

And what I think (about nuclear power) is that it's important. It's cheap and efficient. It'll be there once oil runs low and it doesn't produce carbon dioxide. My dad likes to say that the only things that cost anything are people and energy, so a good way of providing energy opens the doors to... everything.

That's why I'm considering going to grad school to become a nuclear engineer, once I graduate. It would be amazing to make lightning.

Thoughts on Federalist 51

I just finished reading the Federalist Papers numbers 10, 51, and 57 for class. For some reason, a couple of points in 51 caught at me more than the rest of the documents.

The first is Madison's statement that "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." Not only does this strike me as true, it reminds me of my roommate, who wistfully wishes that we didn't have to have laws.

However, while it's true that if men were angels, no government would be needed, if men were demons, no government would work. In fact, the whole principle of government depends on most people being basically decent and honest. It would be impossible to enforce laws against say, stealing, if 90% of people ran around robbing each other blind. Our society depends on most people following laws and honoring contracts without coercion. The fact that society continues to click along is a wonderful testament to the innate goodness of mankind. We are, if not angelic, at least humane.

The second thing that struck me is one of the methods Madison proposes to keep a majority from trampling on the rites of a minority. He says that in the Republican government of the United States "the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority."

What struck me about this is that it seems to strike against the constant calls for "unity" in our current political situation. I think that there is a constructive sort of unity, involving respecting each other despite political differences and treating everyone fairly and with courtesy. This is probably what most people mean when they say we need more "unity."

However, there is a second form of unity, a destructive form and one which Madison warned about. In this form, people surrender their principles purely for the sake of becoming "unified." I fear that, as we recognize the need for the first sort of unity, we sometimes couple it with the second sort, and this could be dangerous. It's bad enough that we currently only have two major political parties. Let's not insist that they agree on everything, 'kay?

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

I take issue with the way that people talk about jobs. I especially dislike the idea that the government can "create" jobs. Jobs aren't created, they grow, like mushrooms springing from the soil of unmet need. To try to create one would be like trying to piece together a mushroom out of artificial proteins. I hear that Obama wants to "create green jobs," but a job that has to have government money fueled into it continually is not sustainable. It's make-work, like when the teacher has you spend all your classtime copying vocabulary words from the back of the book. I do believe that governments can encourage the growth of jobs, most likely by stepping back, lifting regulations, and letting things run their course.

And then, besides "creating jobs" there's "destroying jobs." I recently had a conversation with someone I deeply respect about Wal-mart. She contended that Wal-mart is bad because it moves into small communities and destroys jobs by driving out small businesses. I, on the other hand, remember when Wal-mart moved out of my small town and set up shop in the next town over. There was weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth, and lots of bitter muttering about how Amory stole our Wal-mart.

But setting aside the fact that Wal-mart provides cheaper shopping for small, poor communities like my hometown, what is its effect on jobs? Well, if Wal-mart gets the same amount of selling done as small businesses with fewer employees, I guess it does destroy jobs. But is that actually bad?

Let me explain. A long time ago, 100% of humans were employed as hunter-gatherers. Then, one day, someone thought, "Hey, I can move these berry bushes into a field beside my cave and take care of them all!" Agriculture decreased the number of people it took making food in order to support a population, thus destroying thousands of jobs. Our jobless ancestors, then, looked around at each other and said, "Hey! We can do other stuff." Or, more probably, it took a generation for the children of unemployed hunters and gatherers to begin making clothing and learning about medicine.

Flash forward to the Industrial Revolution. The Luddites were scared out of their wits of new textile machines, which were putting them out of work. In the long run, however, the loss of factory jobs was good for everyone. Since the economy needed fewer factory workers, less urgent needs grew up, like so many spotted mushrooms, into new jobs. If it weren't for the Industrial Revolution we wouldn't have as many social workers or research scientists or professional athletes.

In the end, Wal-mart and weaving machines "destroy jobs" by increasing the output for person, making the whole world worth more. And that, increasing the worth of the world, is the secret to fighting poverty and disease and saving the environment and generally polishing life to a silvery luster.

A Brief History

I didn't vote in the presidential election. Yes, I know, I should be ashamed of myself. I like to say it was because I didn't apply for my absentee ballot on time, but that was only because I was too apathetic to look up the deadline. And so I sat out on my first election since turning eighteen.

If I could have voted when I was ten, I would have been a Democrat. I soaked in the videos they showed at school, the ones that exhorted us to write our senator and tell him to save the otters or ozone or oceans. I read books where the heroine struggles against a patriarchy which wants to keep her from becoming a knight/mage/writer just because she's a girl, and I felt awful outrage on her behalf. My mission, then, was to take down the Man.

By thirteen, I had morphed into a staunch Republican. I read conservative blogs obsessively. My favorite were social-conservative posts detailing the outrageous liberal offenses of NOW or NEA or a whole host of other acronyms.

And then, when I was finally old enough to actually participate in the political process, the thought of voting for either Obama or McCain made me feel a little annoyed, a little queasy, and a lot tired. I couldn't even tell which was the lesser of two evils. I sort of wish I'd voted Libertarian, but I haven't lost sleep over it.

I think my partisanship died along with my love of being offended. I haven't felt righteous indignation in years. Nowadays my list of Things You Should Never Do When Angry includes posting anything anywhere on the Internet, ever, and voting.

Humor

To me, humor is like photography. I say as many off-kilter things as I possibly can, and people only remember the 5% they find funny.

Truth and Freedom

I found this painting in my Government textbook. It's called "Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences," and was commissioned by an abolitionist society in the late 1700's, and shows the personification of Liberty displaying books to freed slaves.

This painting struck a chain reactions of associations with me. It reminded me of "And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." This, in turn, reminded me of my Chemistry teacher on the first day of class, who quoted Mormon Scientist, the biography of Henry Eyring. "We are required to believe every true thing," said my teacher. And this made me think of the Darwin Week posters plastered all over the Marb, advertising lectures titled "An Approach to Understanding the Creation" and "The Legacy of Charles Darwin: Seeking Grandeur in the View of Life." Then I remembered my rural Mississippi high school, filled with noise and the built-up resentment of four-hundred students.

Then I realized I strayed far from the topic of slavery in post-Revolution America, which was what my reading was actually about and what I had to take a quiz on. I wish I could better articulate the significance all those linked words and images have to me. Suffice it to say, I believe in fighting tooth and nail for an education. And I believe (or maybe I say it because it sounds nice, I'm not sure) that truth and liberty are inextricably connected, and that people need them both like water.

Abomination!

We watched two movies in my science fiction film class this week, The Invisible Man and The Bride of Frankenstein. Both movies have the same, clear-cut message.

There's the moment at the end of The Invisible Man when said man lies in a hospital bed, dying, as his beloved Flora holds his hand. He tells her something along the lines of "I meddled in things Man is not supposed to know," and dies. The chemical mixture which turned him invisible, you see, also turned him mad, and he went about most of the movie murdering and causing mayhem.

But here's the thing... Another scientist character had read an article in an obscure German journal about the dye on which the invisibility chemical was based. In that experiment, the dye was injected under the skin of a dog. The dog went raving mad. So if the Invisible Man had, while still a Visible Man, either asked his supervisor for advice on his experiment or decided to try it on a hamster first, everything would have been fine.

In The Bride of Frankenstein, Mary Wollstencraft Shelley explains to Percy Shelley and Lord Byron (seriously) that "The publishers did not see that my purpose was to write a moral lesson. The punishment that befell a mortal man who dared to emulate God." Later, Henry Frankenstein lies in a bed after nearly dying, while his beloved Elizabeth holds his hand. He muses to her that perhaps he could find the secret to eternal life. She exclaims "Henry, don't say those things. Don't think them. It's blashpemous and wicked. We are not meant to know those things."

But elsewhere in the movie the monster meets an old, blind man and becomes his friend. This man teaches the monster to talk in a stunted, Tarzan-like way, showing that the monster is intelligent and self-aware. He only goes on the rampage again when some hunters show up and are, like, "Agh, the monster! Kill!"

In the original book, Frankenstein, the moral was even more clear. Mary Shelley subtitled the book Modern Prometheus, and she clearly didn't like Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods. And yet even in that book, the monster only starts getting all rampage-murder-y to get his revenge on his creator, who rejected him because of his hideousness. And he even learns to talk well and clearly. The monster in the book is outright articulate.

So if everyone had just been nice to the monster, everything would have been fine!

To me, the moral is less "Don't meddle in things man is not meant to know" than "Don't meddle incompetently."

Yagh! Going down...

There is a moment, every time I fall, when I've passed the balancing point, and feel gravity getting to me. Even though the rush to the floor hasn't quite begun, I know, at this point, that there's nothing I can do to stop it, and can only try to make the way down as graceful as possible.

I fall a lot, especially since I moved out here and, for the first time in my life, there's enough snow to pack into a slippery death trap on the sidewalks. Every time I slip, and have that moment of resignation, I think it would make a great life metaphor. But I don't have any actual life experience to match the metaphor, so I stash it away with my other half-metaphors, all waiting for me to live the life part.

Obnoxious and Disliked

John Adams is my favorite founding father.

I wish I had formed this opinion thoughtfully, after considering his lifelong devotion to his wife and to God, his opposition to slavery, etc. He's certainly less confusing than Thomas Jefferson. But really, it's all because of 1776.

Growing up, we watched the musical every fourth of July. I realize that it isn't the most historically accurate retelling of the writing of the buildup to American independence--the characters are distorted to make heroes and villains and comic relief, exaggerated in the style of any self-respecting musical extravaganza.

And yet, still, when John Adams sings Is Anybody There at the climax--"I see Americans - all Americans / Free forevermore"-- it embodies every fuzzy, patriotic feeling I've ever had.

We watched part of the John Adams mini-series in Government, and it made me think about historical fiction. We watched the part of the mini-series covering the Declaration of Independence, and I'm sure it was far more factual than the musical. John Adams the series is based on John Adams the intensely researched book by David McCullough. That is one of those books, by the way, which everyone claims to have read. I read the beginning of the book and really did enjoy it, though I still trailed off right around the Boston Massacre. However, if the topic of the book ever comes up, I make sure to widen my eyes and say, "Oh, that's a great book, you need to read it," implying I devoured it from cover to cover.

So, obviously, John Adams was more factual than 1776. I was especially struck by the different interpretations of John Dickinson. In the musical he is pompous and unlikeable, and his Quaker religion isn't mentioned once. In the mini-series he's soft-spoken, his speeches heartfelt, and a large part of his opposition to independence is attributed to Quaker pacifism. He's still the antagonist, but he's not a villain at all.

But John Adams is still fictionalized. The film-makers had to make up all sorts of things, little snippets of dialogue and the precise tone of voice in which Benjamin Franklin delivers his famous witticisms and the look on everyone's face. Therein, I think, lies the value of historical fiction. It helps you believe that the people in history books were, in fact, real people.

I sometimes have the feeling that the world didn't exist before the early 90's, which is when I start to remember it. This is related to the feeling that the world doesn't exist outside your home town/state/country, or even that you are the only real person in the world. These are all bad, foolish feelings, dangerous even. And if I actually see Abigail Adams holding her child while he's inoculated against small pox, it's easier to feel that she really lived, and by extension so did the rest of the long-ago world.

This holds true even if, afterwards, she gets up and sings.

Ion Means Wanderer

For my first two years of high school, I never ate lunch. The cafeteria was chaotic and greasy, and I preferred to spend my lunch hour in the library where I would chat with Mr. Brown, fiddle around the Internet, read in the corner, or wander through the stacks looking at titles.

That was how I first found Atom: Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos by Isaac Asimov.

The book is, essentially, a history of the discovery of the atom and its associated bits, describing each theory and experiment along the way in layman's terms. So it was written for laymen, but not fourteen-year-olds, and though the book fascinated me, it flew straight over my head.

Since then I've taken my first actual science classes. This past week I looked Atom up in the BYU library, and have been reading it. And I follow it now, I do. It makes me feel so grown up.

Things I like about Atom: 1 - Asimov gives the Greek origin for scientific terms, which is mostly obvious but sometimes interesting. 2 - He pays a lot of attention to scientists as people, especially how their human failings affect the course of scientific discovery. 3 - He details the ways atomic theory developed, from philosophizing to equations to experiments, and uses this to talk about theories in general, what they're for and what they mean. 4 - He carefully explains the exact mechanisms of experiments and the circumstances of accidental discoveries, which helps you to follow the thought processes of all those dead scientists.

I don't know all the details of atomic theory that have changed since Atom was published, and in fact the book so far has made no mention of orbitals or electron clouds, leaving me with the impression of electrons traveling in waving loops around the nucleus. Still, it's a clearly written interesting, history of physics and I like it.

Life, Liberty, and Whatnot

So we read the Declaration of Independence, this week, for Government. One of the revolutionary ideas of the Declaration, according to Dr. Holzapfel, is the concept of natural rights, inalienable rights that exist whether or not a government chooses to bestow them on you.

But, wait, if these truths are "self-evident" why do so many people disagree as to what's a right and what's not? I, personally, don't believe in positive rights, things the government is obliged to do for you. I don't believe in a right to health care, for example. You don't need resources to provide rights, you don't have to pay for them, you can't give a right. They're in the fabric of the world.

But then again, some people do believe in positive rights like health care, and who's to say I'm right and they're wrong? If I continue down that line of reasoning, though, I get knotted up inside and feel the urge to go down to the bottom floor of the library and lay down between the shelves in political science where I'm alone and deep underground. Who's to say this, who's to say that... Who's to say there are inalienable rights at all?

I'm to say, that's who. And millions of other people too, but I believe that even if no one in the entire world believed in the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness those rights would still exist. I believe that God built them into the bones of the world, and even if you can't see God you can see those bones. I believe in Truth even if I don't know what it is.

So, yeah, rock on Thomas Jefferson.

Hello, world!

I'm here. Pay attention at your leisure.