We all knew that this election would be a catfight if Hillary were involved. After Hillary was eliminated from contention, it seemed as if the whole process might degenerate into an “old boy” get-together, Obama’s age notwithstanding.

McCain has changed everything by choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Sarah is young, energetic, and most important, Sarah is a woman. Women all over this country perked up and paid attention when Sarah invited them to “Join us.” Predictably, the abortion advocates were appalled to discover that Sarah believes in the dignity of human life, but it is truly amazing to discover the lengths they will go to in order to make Sarah Palin look bad. I thought it was disturbing when they accused Sarah of making a bad choice to give birth to a child with down syndrome. I was shocked when they accused Sarah of not getting adequate pre-natal care, thereby causing the disability. I could not even believe that they would allege that the baby was actually her daughter’s, thereby accusing Sarah of staging an elaborate cover-up. These are the people who allege to believe that people with disabilities should be mainstreamed and respected. Where is that respect now? These are the people who hand out condoms in high schools. Where is the openness to adolescent sexuality now? These are the people who screamed on national TV that Bill Clinton’s sexual adventures in the Oval Office were nobody’s business. Where is all that concern for personal life now?

It’s all about winning and losing. Liberal Democrats see Sarah for exactly what she is: a threat to the anointed one. Sarah Palin stands for everything ordinary Americans value, and she doesn’t whine.

Sarah Palin hit the public stage on the day after the end of the most over-rated spectacle in the history of American politics. The Democrat convention was a constant parade of people in tears. They sat around multiple kitchen tables wringing their hands over the sad state of affairs in the USA. They whined that life is unfair. They cried that everybody is poor. They whimpered that some get better health care than others. They mourned that unions have a hard time bludgeoning people into membership when employees are allowed to vote by secret ballot. The convention culminated in a stereotypical speech with all the usual clichés that say that the only hope for fixing the mess that is America is socialism. It was enough to drive the whole country into a deep psychological depression. People felt hopeless and worthless.

The McCain/Palin team, in rich contrast, makes people feel strong and powerful This team reminds us that we are a strong, free people, who have traditionally faced and defeated many challenges to our freedom and prosperity. The history of the USA demonstrates that a minimally-invasive government encourages free people to engage in free enterprise and produces opportunity for motivated, hard-working people to accomplish things undreamed of in other countries. The team of McCain/Palin represents this tradition.

The Democrat candidates cannot let this happen. The claws have come out in a vain attempt to destroy Sarah Palin’s credibility. For liberal politicians to invade a family’s privacy and try to make political hay out of someone’s personal life would be comical if it weren’t so despicable. It displays the complete inadequacy of their platform to inspire and motivate people.

Democrats make their case by demeaning people and making them feel needy. John McCain and Sarah Palin will win in November by honoring people and making them feel powerful.

As oil prices spike beyond anyone’s wildest imagination a year ago, there is an outcry for increased production. The president of the United States asked Saudi Arabia to pump more, but he was rebuffed. The current G8 countries are asking the oil producers to pump more. Increased demand needs to be met by increased supply, or the prices will continue to rise.

The impact of skyrocketing crude oil prices is hitting American consumers at the gas pump. A year ago, nobody envisioned that today gasoline would cost $4 per gallon. And rising. Our Congress has suggested that we sue OPEC, a proposition that would be laughable except for the fact that it so dramatically points out the ignorance of our elected representatives. Congress has also slapped the oil companies around, accusing them of price gouging and demanding that they come up with alternatives to oil by tomorrow morning. This exercise is also ridiculous and another example of ignorance.

What will help? What could possibly help reduce the price of gasoline for US consumers? One part of a good solution would guarantee an increase in supply for at least sixty years, and the increase in supply would reduce prices, unless Congress in the meantime institutes price controls. That solution is to drill in the proven reserves that the United States possesses. Drill in ANWR. Drill offshore of Florida. Start work to recover shale oil. Do all these things right here right now.

The other part of the solution is to build more refineries and increase the capacity of existing ones. The oil companies have been trying to do that for a long time, but the process for approval of a request to build a refinery is usually derailed by some environmental concern. I completely believe that humans must live in harmony with nature. However, I do not believe that humans must always give way to snails and fish. There is a middle ground, and we must use our common sense.

Will this solution permanently solve our petroleum problems? Absolutely not. Even though we can confidently predict good supply for many years, the supply is finite. We will still need to develop alternative energy solutions for automobiles, homes and businesses. Furthermore, drilling in US reserves starting today, won’t put gas in anybody’s car for several years. It takes years to build new gasoline refineries, too. Politicians who choose to reject both of these options say that it will take ten years to see the results, even if we move immediately. I say, that it will take ten years to see the results, which means we must move immediately. No matter how long we delay drilling and the construction of refineries, it will still take years between decision and result.

Our nation has a wealth of oil easily in reach, and another treasure of oil which new technology can extract. Advancements in both oil well technology and refinery technology make it possible to do both kinds of activities with minimal environmental impact to wildlife and human beings. If the Kennedy Space Center can be a wildlife refuge, I don’t know any reason that a productive oil field or a new refinery shouldn’t also exist in harmony with living things.

The USA has been the most free and the most prosperous nation in the history of the world. Today, our freedom to develop our own resources is highly restricted, and the consequence is that our prosperity is at risk. We can be free of dependence on foreign oil by drilling in our own reserves. We can reduce high gasoline prices by increasing the availability of domestic crude oil and by building new refineries to increase gasoline production. If we fail to take care of ourselves, we can be sure that no country in OPEC is going to care what happens to us. Our freedom and our prosperity are ours to lose. That is what will happen if we fail to address this threat.

Drill here. Drill now.

Preserve and protect the freedom and prosperity of the USA.

 DRILL HERE!   DRILL NOW!

During the campaigns leading up to an election, candidates spend a lot of time and effort telling voters what they can expect after the election. Right now, John McCain and Barack Obama are busy explaining what they will do if elected. Sometimes they address problems we all agree on and sometimes they try to persuade us that we should recognize a problem they want to solve. At the most basic level, they want us to believe that in any situation they will do the right thing for the country. As voters, this is what most of us want. The trick is to know what the right thing is.

I recently learned two fifty-dollar words for some common-sense ideas. I came across them in an article about ethics.

The first word is teleological. In ethical situations, a teleological thinker will ask, what is the expected outcome of this choice? This person judges whether a decision is right or wrong entirely on the basis of the fallout. To do that requires that the person believe he knows what the fallout will be, which is a different problem. Teleological thinkers usually feel pretty certain that “if A” they can predict “then B.” This is a very common way of approaching ethical choices in political discourse.

The second word is deontological. Given an ethical choice, a deontological thinker will not worry about the outcome, because that person believes that morality is a choice among absolutes. Deontological thinkers believe that murder is wrong. Absolutely, unequivocally wrong. They may dispute the definition of the word murder in order to get around problems with situations such as self-defense and protection of innocent bystanders, but for true deontologists, if the question is the morality of murder, then the answer is that murder is wrong. Political discussions are pretty scornful of the idea of absolutes, especially moral absolutes.

One hot topic in politics that touches many people’s lives is abortion. Teleologists approach the question of abortion by asking whether the outcome of an abortion is good. They will ask if it is right to compel a woman to give birth to a baby when the woman does not want the baby. They wonder if a baby should even be born into a family that cannot or will not take care of it. The moral questions associated with conception do not enter into the discussion, because teleologists only concern themselves with the outcome. They won’t judge the wisdom of a person who carelessly or ignorantly or willfully becomes pregnant without a commitment to protect and care for the baby. A teleologist simply says that the decision to abort or not abort the pregnancy should be based entirely on the morality of the outcome. The proponents of “a woman’s right to choose” believe that a woman has a right to evaluate the impact of a birth and make her choice to continue or end the pregnancy on that basis. The position that there is a natural right to choose abortion is based on a teleological approach to the ethical choices associated with abortion.

There is an opposing viewpoint that asserts that from the moment of conception, a baby has the right to life. This point of view asserts that the absolute right to life trumps any evaluation of the outcome of a birth. A deontological thinker disregards the impact of a birth in a family that does not want the child. From the deontological point of view, a woman who is pregnant does not have a right to ask if she wants the baby; the baby’s life absolutely trumps any consideration of the impact of a baby in her life. In fact, because life has absolute priority, the life of the mother may not even be considered. As with teleological thinkers, some deontological thinkers define their terms in order to consider unique situations, but a strictly deontological viewpoint considers that life is an absolute value that transcends the worth of any other consideration.

Looking at the question of abortion this way may help us to imagine how these two distinct approaches to ethical questions will make it difficult for any candidate to assume that he knows the “right” solution to any of our national problems. Most political solutions to problems are quite obviously teleological. They deal with outcomes. Nothing is absolute. Both sides of an issue may be accommodated to some degree, but in a political solution, nobody gets to be completely whole. It is teleology that allows us to make any progress at all in political solutions.

The reason for that is that while there are many people who think of ethical problems as if there were an absolute right answer, there are usually many different perceptions of the absolute right answer. Using the subject of abortion as a sample of this problem, we can all recall more than one point of view on the side of “right to life” and more than one on the side of “a woman’s right to choose.” Some who believe in preserving “life” at all costs recognize that two lives are at risk in some pregnancies; they acknowledge that it is not always possible to save both the mother and the baby, and in their accommodations of this truth, they temporarily allow themselves to think teleologically. In such a case, even the most fervent absolutists will concede that someone must decide whether the outcome is better if the mother survives or if the baby survives. As for those who advocate freedom of choice, most of them recognize that repeated abortion is detrimental to a woman’s health and will advocate for the woman to make a choice about the desired outcome long before conception takes place. They won’t say that it is absolutely wrong for a woman to refuse to plan, but the whole push for sex education in schools grows out of their recognition that there really is a better outcome when conception is prevented than when it is aborted. In the public forum on the topic of abortion, it would be tough to strictly classify the people in the various camps as teleological or deontological, but understanding those terms helps to understand the way adherents participate in the discussion.

To recap, in a discussion of a national problem which must be resolved by government leaders, people picture solutions largely based on their own perception either that there is an absolute right thing to do or that the right thing to do depends on how we get to the right outcome. This is the reason that everyone can agree that a person sick with leukemia “needs” medical treatment, but there is a huge question and disagreement about whether that person has a “right” to medical treatment. Is healthcare a fundamental human right? Any individual will see the answer to that question within a personal frame of reference that decides right and wrong as either a teleological problem or a deontological problem.

There are other pressing questions in the public forum.

On the subject of petroleum:

Why is the price of gasoline rising so fast? Has something evil happened that produced this result or is it the natural consequence of market processes? Should government take some action to prevent gasoline prices from rising so high? Should oil companies be allowed to drill in ANWR? Would drilling in ANWR have a bad outcome for wildlife there? Should the outcomes for wildlife trump the outcomes for people? Is there any absolute right and wrong in the petroleum market?

On the war in Iraq:

Was the US right to invade Iraq? Does it any longer matter whether the US was right to invade Iraq? Was there an absolute moral imperative to invade Iraq? Does the outcome that eliminated Saddam Hussein as a threat to world peace have greater value than the perceptions of some Iraqis that we invaded and occupied their country for no reason? How is Iraq related to worldwide terrorism? Does it matter if Iraq harbored and supported terrorism? Is there a number of military casualties that is one too many? If so, have we passed that number? Does the number of casualties have any bearing on the moral rectitude of our campaign in Iraq? Is our campaign right for Iraq? For the US? For the world?

On the subject of the economy:

Is it true that the US is on the verge of a recession? Already in a recession? Headed for a disastrous depression? What is a recession? A depression? Should the government rescue homeowners who can’t pay their mortgages? Should the government rescue lenders who made loans to people who can’t pay? Is it good for the citizens if the government takes action to stimulate and manage the economy? Is the outcome good? Is there a morally absolute right thing for the government to do here?

All this conversation about the issues is completely disconnected from the Constitutional considerations. When we consider the Constitution as we consider the moral issues, the discussion becomes even more complex.

I have said all of this in order to say one more thing. People need to have sorted out their own thoughts on these subjects before they begin to evaluate the candidates. People need to know how they themselves approach moral, ethical and Constitutional questions before they try to evaluate the candidates. If a voter has no position on an issue, then the candidates run the conversation. That should not happen. When a candidate speaks, voters should already have a foundation on which to determine if the candidate is proposing solutions that are acceptable within moral, ethical and Constitutional boundaries. The voter must think before asking what the candidate thinks.

I have done this homework, and I will be voting for John McCain. I have concluded that even though I don’t agree with him on all the absolutes, his personal history and public life give me some hope that I will agree with his leadership more often than not. There is no other candidate who meets that standard. I consider that Obama has demonstrated profound emptiness of moral standards. He has repeatedly dropped positions and dumped associations as they became unpopular, not as he made reasoned moral choices. He advocates a completely socialist agenda for his actions if he is elected, an agenda in direct conflict with the concept of government written into our Constitution. I reject Obama completely. I will vote for John McCain. I recommend that you do the same.