Is Cancel Culture Fundamentally Religious?

There was a time, when the Catholic Church ruled Europe, through threat of excommunication.  As time passed, and Europe became more enlightened, the Catholic Church lost most of its power, and individual countries chose their own religions.  Within each country, the state religion (or "establishment") was legally enforced to different degrees.  Even in the most free countries, there were penalties for adhering to beliefs and values opposed to those of the established religion, including losing your job and not being eligible for employment.  In the least free countries, you would just be killed for adherence to beliefs opposed to the established religion.  Over time, culture continued to evolve, and many countries began to tolerate other religions, so long as they were not too loud.  Religions that were not the national establishment did not necessarily have to hide, but if they started proselyting or causing any sort of unrest, members would often still be slaughtered or at least imprisoned, and even if they were not causing problems, it was often hard for them to find employment.  Once immigration to the Americas become feasible, culture was allowed to progress again, as many anti-establishment people immigrated to the Americas in search of religious freedom.  Despite the religious freedom in the Americas though, there were still problems with religious tolerance.  Now that there was an option for people to practice their beliefs without the oppression of religious establishment, many of the religious groups developed their own forms of punishment and intolerance for outside beliefs.  The foundation of the U.S. government put a stop to religious cities, where the local government would discriminate against people who were not of the primary religion in the city.  Religious freedom was Constitutionally protected, and for the most part, all governments complied.  This did not end religious intolerance though.

In the U.S. until fairly recently, a lot of religions practiced "public shaming" and ostracism of members that did not adhere to the standards of the religion.  This still happens in some isolated religious communities, notably including some Amish communities.  There are also reports of public shaming and ostracism in some Jehovah's Witness congregations, though it is not clear how widespread this is.  For the most part though, public shaming and ostracism as a form of religious punishment has become very uncommon, as humanity and U.S. culture have become more civilized.

Unfortunately, it looks like the less religious left never got the memo, that public shaming and ostracism are uncivilized and completely inappropriate punishments.  In fact, public shaming as a punishment for actual crime was abolished in the U.S. in 1905.  The pillory was a device used to subject the victim to public shaming.  Most of the U.S. outlawed the use of the pillory in the mid-1800s, acknowledging that public shaming qualified as cruel and usual punishment.  Delaware continued using the pillory until 1901 and finally outlawed it in 1905.  A hundred years after every U.S. state acknowledged that public shaming was similar enough to torture to outlaw its use as judicial punishment for serious crimes, many people on the left decided it was appropriate to revive it for use against people who merely had different opinions from their own.

Let's be clear: Cancel Culture is a religion.  It is a religion that publicly shames and ostracizes people who violate its beliefs.  It is a religion that is lobbying the government to make it the established religion of the United States.  Because it is not a registered religion and does not have any specific beliefs regarding deity, it is easy to overlook this fact, but the fact is, Cancel Culture is a religious movement that uses practices generally agreed upon for almost a century as morally corrupt to punish people who disagree with its beliefs.  Cancel Culture is a religion stuck in the 1950s and earlier, that is intolerant of beliefs that are not its own, and that has taken the abominable practices of public shaming and ostracism outside of its own congregations.  Cancel Culture is not only like 1800s to mid-1900s religions that used these disgusting forms of punishments against their own members.  It has reverted to practices used by dominant religions before the founding of the U.S., that punished anyone in their territory with these torturous punishments who disagreed with their beliefs, regardless of membership.  Cancel Culture has reverted to cruel punishments used by corrupt and intolerant religions over 230 years ago.

How can civilization revert by over 200 years in only two decades?  Simple, and bunch of self righteous tyrants take it upon themselves to abuse the power they have gained through social media to trample democracy and punish those who are guilty only of disagreeing with them.

Code of Ethics for Elected Officials

A lot of elected officials, especially at the Federal level, have started using social media, some fairly heavily.  This has been met with mixed feelings.  Some people see this as increased government transparency, while others have seen this as political propaganda.  Either way, participation in social media presents a serious conflict of interest for elected officials.  While it definitely can and probably should be used to increase government transparency, it can also be used to influence people and to spread propaganda, misinformation, and even downright lies, and it has actually been used this way.

As such, we need a code of ethics for elected officials, that includes but is not limited to the use of social media.  I would like to suggest a set of ethical rules for elected officials.

1. Elected officials should always specify whether a social media post, video, recording, or other publication is being produced in an official capacity.  Ideally, elected officials should always use separate accounts for official and personal communications, and the personal accounts should not reference the elected office of the official in any way.
2. Social media content published in an official capacity should stick to facts.  It should not contain propaganda, personal opinions, campaign advertisements, promotion of political or personal agendas, or anything else not directly related to the job the person has been elected to.  Statements of intent to vote on a particular bill in a particular way are appropriate but should avoid any explanation except, "This is what my constituents want".  (And even that explanation might come back to bite you, if it turns out they don't want that.)
3. Official publications that contain information later discovered to be incorrect should be amended whenever possible, noting the error and resolution, and if it is not possible, an official retraction should be published as soon as the mistake is discovered, and reasonable effort shall be made to direct all past, present, and future consumers of the original publication to the retraction.
4. Official publications should generally be reviewed by advisors and/or peers before being published.
5. Official publications should adhere to any standards, regulations, and policies set by the government body the elected official is a member of.
6. Unofficial publications should avoid any and all implication that they might be official in nature or otherwise represent anything other than the personal views of the official, including but not limited to using a separate account for that does not mention the office of the user in the username, profile, or any other publicly accessible information associated with the account.
7. Unofficial publications should avoid accidentally or intentionally using the public profile, fame, wealth, or any other benefit afforded by the public office to endorse or promote any particular political agendas, and indeed, elected officials should generally limit unofficial publications to sharing facts and personal opinion in neutral ways that do not promote or otherwise argue in support of any particular position or platform, even if adherence to this rule feels like it hampers freedom of speech and freedom of expression.
8. Unofficial publications should not be produced or published during time an elected official may reasonably be expected to be working, including any time the body the official is a member of is in session, for bodies that are not active constantly.  For bodies that are constantly active (including the Executive Branch), officials should not produce or publish unofficial publications at any time where doing so would interfere with the work or take time away from the work that would cause even minor negative effects, and ideally any such personal projects should be worked on only during specifically scheduled time off (for example, vacations).
9. Elected officials should surrender access to any and all social media accounts used for official publications upon retirement (whether voluntary or through the loss of an election or expiration of a term limit) from the position.  Ideally, the account should transferred to the ownership of the government body the official was a member of, which will act as caretaker to preserve the account and its contents for consumption by the public.  If the official is later elected to office again, ownership may be returned for the duration of service.
10. Retired elected officials should continue to abide by the terms of this code of ethics with regards to their private social media accounts, with the exception that they may engage more fully in the endorsement of personal political opinions, so long as they continue to avoid using the fame and other benefits associated with having held public office to gain an unfair advantage over other figures who have not had the benefit of holding public office.
11. Retired and current elected officials should never take advantage of the benefits of holding or having held public office for profit or personal benefit of any kind, including the use of official publications for gaining advertisement revenue, the use of official publications in campaign advertisements, the use of official publications for endorsing or advancing personal political agendas (or personal agendas of any kind), the leverage of experience in elected office to claim any manner of authority or special expertise on any matter (including paid speaking engagements), or the engagement in any kind of compensated work for any entity that the official has accepted any form of lobbying from.

Each element of this code of ethics is designed to avoid specific problems that are common today, as outlined below.

1.  Many elected officials, especially those in Congress, are currently using their position to gain fame, for future personal benefit and for the purpose of advancing personal political agendas.  This is not the purpose of elected office, and it is a misuse of taxpayer money that pays the wages of these officials.  Separating official communications from personal communications will help regular citizens separate legitimate concerns related to the job from the personal politics and agendas of the officials.  Public office was never intended to be used as a stage from which to endorse a political platform or other personal agenda.  Public officials are elected to represent the will of the people, not to preach or impose upon the people their own wills.
2. As with 1, the separation of the job from personal opinions is important, and without that separation, elected officials can and do abuse their positions to promote their own platforms, instead of doing their job, which is to represent the will of the people.  The only valid reasoning for voting in a particular way on a bill is that it is what one's constituents want or is otherwise more consistent with the will of those who the official represents than the alternative.
3. Accuracy is critical to transparency.  The people cannot make informed choices when voting, if the information they have is not accurate and up to date.
4. Oversight is wise and necessary in ensuring this code of conduct is adhered to.  It is clear that not all elected officials understand the difference between personal opinion and their job.  Oversight may help them to learn that difference, and if it doesn't, at least it may prevent more egregious violations of this code of conduct.  Oversight will also help to catch factual errors before publication, avoiding the need for excessive retractions.
5. Again, oversight is wise and necessary.  This provides governing bodies with the ability to more narrowly define what is and is not appropriate in an official publication.  This includes censorship of sensitive material that could pose a security threat if published, as well as general rules of civility and propriety in official publications.  Official publications will reflect on the quality of the governing institutions, thus they have a right to regulate the nature of those publications.  (For example, a Representative angrily swearing in a statement about the President reflects very poorly on the House in general, as well as on her constituents and on the U.S. as a nation.)
6. The use of elected office to promote personal political agendas is a serious abuse of power that needs to be stopped.  Again, the purpose of elected office is to represent the will of the people, not to promote one's own political agendas.  Using the benefits of public office to help promote personal agendas is an abuse of power and a theft of taxpayer money.  No elected position should be used to gain an unfair advantage in promotion of personal agendas over those who do not hold any elected position.  To do so is unethical and undemocratic.
7. Merely seeing the title of an elected official in the username or profile text of an account could imply that the publication is official in nature, and it will definitely provide an unfair advantage based on the elected office of the person.  Those seeing an unofficial account for the first time, who do not already know the name of the official, should not be able to tell from the account that the account is owned by an elected official.  It is impossible to enforce complete fairness, as it is unreasonable to require elected officials to use pseudonyms for their personal accounts, but as much as possible, fair practices should be observed, which is why it is suggested that elected officials should generally avoid active promotion of personal agendas on their private accounts, even if doing so seems like it gives up certain rights.  (Note that it is also traditional for the President to release his or her tax records, despite the fact that the privacy of such personal records are generally regarded as protected by the Constitution, so this is not an unprecedented ethical rule.)
8. The time an elected official is being paid to work should never be used for personal activities.  Elected office is a job, and the wages payed to elected officials are payment for labor rendered.  An elected official who is working on personal projects during work time should rightly be fired, just like any other employee who did the same thing would.  It is completely and entirely inappropriate for any elected official to be spending paid work time on personal projects, and accepting full payment for work time partially spent on personal projects is theft against one's employer, in this case the American people.
9. Official publications of elected officials legally belong to the employer of the officials, which is the American people, and thus should be preserved for the use of the people as desired.  In addition, allowing retired officials to retain control of official accounts would allow them to abuse those accounts.  Thus, all official accounts that are not currently in active use should be preserved by the body those accounts are accountable to, both to minimize opportunity for abuse and to ensure the preservation and public availability of the contents of those accounts.  A government cannot remain transparent when ex-officials retain the power to destroy official publications.
10. Retiring does not absolve an official of ethical responsibilities.  Retired officials should not be restricted in public participation in political discourse and promotion of personal agendas, as they are no longer bound to the job of representing the will of the people, but they still should not be allowed to abuse or otherwise leverage their status as retired public officials to gain an unfair advantage over those who have not served in elected office.
11. Abuse of power of this nature is rampant in our government currently, and it interferes seriously with the democratic process.  It is common practice for elected officials to cultivate special relationships with for-profit businesses and other profitable organizations to create future opportunity for themselves once they leave public office.  This results in the drafting and passage of laws and policies designed specifically to benefit special interests, often at significant cost to the general public, purely for the personal benefit of the elected officials.  This is an abominable and wicked practice that undermines democracy, violates the will of the people, and causes significant harm to the people.  This should be regarded as blatant bribery, and all elected officials guilty of this practice should be impeached and thrown out of office, then tried for the high crime of bribery (and/or solicitation of bribery) and sentenced to long prison sentences, without options for house arrest, intermittent imprisonment (like nights or weekends only), or parole.  (And maybe if high profile, wealthy people actually had to pay the same price for their crimes as poor people, our prisons would be less cruel and abusive to prisoners.)  Elected officials should be legally and permanently barred from working for any company or organization they have ever been lobbied by, and they should also be barred from taking any sort of payment or compensation for any work they do that they would not have had without serving in an elected office.  In addition, any official content produced while in office was paid for and thus belongs to the people, making it a violation of copyright law to use it for personal profit or benefit without the express permission of the people.

The fact is, a significant amount of the corruption in our government could be quelled, merely by enforcing a code of conduct addressing these elements.  This does not exhaustively cover all possible forms of corruption (for instance, the practice of earmarking funds for states as a tacit bribe for the passage of some unpopular bill), but it covers some of the most destructive and most common types of and motivations for corrupt behavior.  Hopefully by restricting elected office from being an engine for politicians to promote their personal political platforms and build relationships with special interests for future profit, the motivation for corrupt people with ill intent to seek elected office will be significantly reduced, and the tendency toward corruption for those who originally had purer motives will be decreased significantly, giving us a more democratic government that is more concerned with the will of the people than with their own personal profit.

Work to Live: Death, Divorce, and Crime

The work to live ideology results in 700 deaths per year from freezing.  It is a major contributer to domestic violence as well as high divorce rates in the U.S.  It is highly likely that it also is a major factor in illegal drug use.  Of course, this does not even count the cases of starvation and other shelter related deaths.  Frankly, this work to live thing is imposing what amounts to serious cruel and unusual punishment on around 600,000 people (the government claims that this is how many people are homeless each night on average).

This is a shame, in a country that produces almost five times what it consumes of nearly all basic necessities (shelter may be an exception).  Even during the recent recession, we had a thriving economy, producing enormous amounts of nearly everything, and only a very small portion of that is necessary for survival.  A vast majority of our labor goes into producing things that we do not need.  We have too much of nearly everything (half of the food produced in the U.S. that is not exported gets thrown away), and yet, we are just letting people starve and freeze to death on the streets.  Why?

The problem is "work to live."  At the same time the U.S. is making great strides to abolishing the death penalty.  Last year, there were only 35 executions in the U.S. total.  The grand total since 1976 is 1,407.  Each year, 20 times as many people as were executed last year die from freezing alone.  It only takes two years for enough people to die from freezing to match the total number of executions since 1976.  The death penalty is not a significant source of death in the U.S., and more innocent people die every year in accidents than the grand total of innocent people that have died to the death penalty in all of U.S. history.  Why are we so vocal about the death penalty while huge numbers of people are dying constantly because of some outdated ideology that is based largely on a situation that never actually existed in known history?  We are evidently hypocrites.


Domestic violence, divorce rates, and drug abuse all go together.  These are all problems that are limited primarily to the lower class.  Domestic abuse in middle or upper class households is extremely rare compared to those living in poverty.  The most common cause of divorce is financial disagreements that stem from not having a high enough income.  Drug abuse is far more common among the homeless and poor than any other class.  In fact, crime in general (especially petty theft and violent crime) is most frequently committed by the poor.  The worst part is that a vast majority of poor people are not poor by their own choice, but they are punished for it and treated as if it were.  As with the death penalty, innocent people are being punished for not being able to work to live.  They largely have no choice, and multiple studies have shown that giving them sufficient money, even straight cash with no strings attached (the opposite of work to live), will alleviate most of these problem, and it will give them the means and motivation to permanently escape them.

Work to live has become a toxic ideology on our society.  It was the root cause of the recent recession, because even during the recession, goods were plentiful.  It causes people to keep jobs they hate, preventing other people who want those jobs from getting them.  It causes a great deal of death, far more than the death penalty.  It causes economists to make nonsensical statements revolving around the idea that reducing unnecessary work is bad.  It causes people to oppose valuable economic advances, again based on the idea that reducing necessary work is bad.  It is a major factor in  divorce, drug abuse, and crime.  Eliminating the work to live ideology (with, for example, a basic income) would do far more to reduce unnecessary death than eliminating the death penalty, and it would likely reduce crime far more effectively than the death penalty or any other law enforcement ever has.

Her Choice

This is about domestic abuse, but it is also about economic abuse.  "It was her choice," is a common phrase applied to domestic violence victims.  "She chose to stay with him," and "After last time, what did she expect?" are also common.  If you seriously thought that she got up one morning and said to herself, "I think I want to get beat up by my boyfriend," you are an idiot.  Yes, her choices might have lead to the situation.  This does not mean that she knew it would turn out this way.  In fact, every relationship is a risk.  It might last for a lifetime, but it might end with being dumped in an especially cruel manner.  It might end with some "Community Property" law that results in one party walking away with far more than he or she put into the relationship.  Every relationship carries risk.  This does not make it fault of the victim when that risk is realized.  Violence in a relationship is never appropriate, and it is never the fault of the victim.  Maybe she chose the relationship, but she did not choose the abuse, no matter how many time it happens.

The is a problem with rape as well.  Even judges, who should know better, frequently assume that the woman was "asking for it."  I can agree that she should have dressed more modestly, but that should have no bearing on the result of the case.  The rapist is the one who committed rape, not the victim.  The rapist is the one at fault for the crime, not the victim.  The victim could have been walking around town naked, and the crime would still be the rapists fault (though, indecent exposure laws do apply here, but they do not apply to the rape case).  How the woman dressed or acted has no bearing on whether rape is a crime or not.  If she did not consent, nothing else about her behavior and dress matters.

Victim blaming is a major problem in the U.S., especially with regards to domestic violence and rape.  Let me make it very plain what victim blaming is: Victim blaming is claiming that the behavior of the victim justified the crime.  Is dressing in skanky clothing really such an awful crime that it justifies the emotional harm and tearing away of personal freedom associated with rape?  Further, does wearing immodest clothing exempt a person from the legal right to representation, trial by a jury of peers, and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment?  Likewise, does making a error in judgment of the character of a person justify physical and emotional abuse, again, without legal representation and the rest of due process?  Even if it was the victims fault, vigilantism at this level is illegal, regardless of the supposed crime committed by the victim.  The fact is, in neither case has the victim broken the law, and in both, the abuser has.  Legally, it makes no difference whether the victim somehow "asked for it."  The behavior of the abuser was illegal.  Rape and domestic violence are both wrong, regardless of the situation.  Any person committing these crimes is a threat to society, and they should be treated as such.  When individuals or courts accept arguments about the victim "asking for it," they reinforce the bad behavior of the criminal.  This makes the abuser a bigger threat to society.  Victim blaming only makes the situation worse, and it punishes the person who deserves it the least.

Now, this also applies to economic abuse.  When I have discussed economic abuse with other conservatives, the most common reaction I get is, "Well, the employees agreed to those conditions, so there must be nothing wrong with it."  This is seriously wrong.  This is equivalent to saying that the abused woman agreed to the abuse by sticking around, so the abuser is not doing anything wrong.  Claiming that paying minimum wage is ethical, even though no one can survive on it, because the employees agreed to it is just another face of victim blaming.  This applies equally to those who are unemployed because they cannot find a job, or who are in poverty because they are not paid enough by their current job.  In case you are rich and have never had to find a job all on your own, giving up a job to look for another is not an option when you do not have any money, and many poor people work 40 hours a week at minimum wage (and statistically, they are working harder at their job than you have ever had to work in your entire life).  Most poor people do not have time to find a new job, when they already have one.

The point here is that being victimized is not the fault of the victim.  When another person chooses to act violently or unfairly, that person is the abuser, not the victim.  The fault of abuse belongs entirely to the abuser.  A victim that is forced or otherwise coerced into an abusive situation does not bear any fault for the abuse.  Our legal system is about protecting the innocent.  A rapist, a wife beater, and an unfair employer all harm the innocent.  We don't even bother protecting against the last one, but rapists and domestic abusers who are allowed to remain free frequently cause additional harm.  It does not matter how the victim was dressed, and in domestic abuse cases, it frequently does not even matter of the victim abandons the relationship.  Blaming the victim never helps protect society from additional harm.  Instead it makes the blamer look incompetent, it does further harm to the victim, and it reinforces the bad behavior in the abuser.