My Beloved Beatrice,#

I have recently learned something that has required me to put our relationship in a new perspective and I can only relate this to you in a written form, due to the emotions it elicits. Before I reach the main purpose of this letter, I would like to revisit and relate what I have come to love so deeply about you. In these paragraphs I will take Aristotle's classification, if for no other reason then to impress those who are so impressed, on friends: those of interest, of love, and of contemplation. This division is not always perfect, and thus many components could easily be rearranged, but how many books are in the Bible is much less important than their complete message--so I press onward. #

As the epitome of perfection in a companion, you have excelled more than any other in these ways. I will attempt to reach a similar degree of accomplishment in describing your personality.#

Interest#

An essential realization that must occur in any relationship is that a person need not only be charming, beautiful, funny, or any other adjective that appears in a personal ad, but also someone with whom one can share the responsibilities of life and parenting with. I see these traits as those pertaining to my personal interest in the kind of life I would like to lead and provide for my children.#

In order to minimize the number of important disagreements over what kind of life we'd lead, it would be necessary for my partner and I to share the same basic moral foundations. While our hairs may be split slightly differently, you and I always agree on what sort of actions were good and sorts were evil; what traits are virtues or vices. And equally as important, we both work hard to meet this self-set expectation and requirement.#

This hard work of yours that I write of is not only executed in the domain of morality and personal honor, but in all aspects of your life. One cannot watch you work at home or hear of your effort at work without recalling how you quoted about the sin of sloth. But like a hand that would be deformed if it was always open _or_ always closed, you are not an obsessive worker and can leave for tomorrow what should wait for tomorrow. For these reasons I would never have to worry about our family feeling neglected or unprovided for.#

Above all, you are a role model for myself and would be for our children. You are trust worthy, moral, dedicated to all your responsibilities, and an honor to the memory of the thousands who made our life possible.#

Love#

By describing the way you exemplify the necessity of love, I cannot enumerate the things that make me love you, or that I find essential in a future lover; nor would I enumerate such things even if I could. The creator of love hides his materials from our eyes and has placed the secret of one from of happiness beyond a curtain. Suffice it to say that the magical spark of interest in love is present in our relationship and that this is essential quality of the ideal woman, you. #

Instead of describing these indescribable causes, I will describe what makes the embodiment of our love--the pleasure and romance we share--the best it can be.#

Firstly, our mutual satisfaction is more easily satiated by the basic interests that we share. When a man is still a boy he often wishes to find a girl just like himself so he can have the perfect partner, but this feeling soon fades with the realization that a repeated task becomes tedious and a constantly evolving lifestyle is enriching and exciting. For you and I, we have chosen the second lifestyle. On occasion we will entertain each other with a new idea of our individual making, but if those situations don't work out, our basic interests provide us with many options.#

Secondly, I love that you are naturally upbeat and cheery person. This makes even the most mundane activities with you a spring of enjoyment. Related to this is your important lack of a quality that can only be described as 'clingy-ness.' I have dated women who are constantly searching for happiness and completeness outside themselves, whether in new consumables or relationships, rather than being internally happy. Often times, this conception of happiness as emanating from an external source manifests itself in an overly protective and clingy attitude towards people and possessions, while preventing the realization of true happiness. It is admirable and delightful that you do not succumb to this common problem and are truly happy.#

And finally, you espouse the virtue of confidence. A confident woman is always beautiful because she has reason to be and believe in her self. A confident woman is never unnecessarily shy, which aides in interesting activities. A confident woman is an active partner, rather than a passive fellow traveler. These maxims and more apply as equally to you as to any woman with a similar state of mind.#

Contemplation#

The noblest form of pleasure is that of contemplation and the gradual attainment of a more perfect understanding of truth, in all its forms. For this reason, the attributes that you possess with regards to aiding contemplation are among the greatest that exist.#

The central activity that enables contemplation is debate or discussion. For this reason, your skills and qualities, as they relate to being an operative debater, are those that caused Aphrodite to tremble.#

Firstly, you and I share a similar basic philosophy. Again, like with interests, is it not the best situation to find a replicate, but instead someone with similar sorts of beliefs and axioms so that disagreements are not severe, yet exist. Your earlier mentioned quality of confidence provides these disagreements fresh air, where we can both learn from each other in the impending discussion.#

Secondly, you possess a desire to learn and teach that pushes you to be engaged and create these discussions at any opportunity. This is further evidenced by your desire to read about my work, even though you are not employed in the same area. This is evidenced by the encouragement I receive from you to do the same. This is evidenced by the same spark being detected in the eyes of our children who are voracious readers and thinkers.#

And finally, you know how to debate in a mild manner that is to the benefit of yourself and your sparing partner. Too often a person seems to think that the purpose of debate is not to grow and to mutually persuade, but to crush an 'opponent' to the ground and reap the rewards of victory. You and I do not let our occasional philosophical disputes get in the way of our general happiness and good regard for one another, but see them as an opportunity to return to study with some additional persuasive material.#

Conclusion#

I have catalogued with my broadest strokes the way you uplift my imagination with possibilities at every thought of our future together, but such platitudes of your greatness cannot capture the true essence that must be experienced. And with this I have reached my closing, upon which I will describe the dreadful realization that provided the impetus for this letter.#

You do not exist.#

How could I have been so foolish to suppose that Earth contained the perfection only possible within the plane of the angels? For the majority of my life I had been in one relationship after another, some for short stretches of time, some for long, moving ever closer to what I imagined and thought was realized in you. Naturally there were a few back steps because of the inability to predict many things about a person before you are thoroughly involved, but the trajectory was ever upwards as like so many stairs.#

I now understand that the pursuit of perfection in this way is nonsensical and can only leave one tired and alone. One can never be truly satisfied with an imperfect partner if one is constantly evaluating the degree of perfection of every possible candidate. I have resolved that instead of conquering new shores, I must find someone like you by some approximation and we must cultivate our gardens, slowly _becoming_ the ideal, rather than seeking a short-cut.#

I am truly writing this letter to end the love affair we've had over these last few years. It was a great time to wonder together what could be if we ever found each other, but it turns out to be a time fraught with foreshadows of failure.#

With best regards,#

Jay McCarthy#

In this article I offer an experiment than may satisfy those who are questioning the existence of God or would like to have intellectual artillery in such debates.#

The Experiment#

It is first noted that this experiment cannot actually be attempted with current technology and it is unlikely that it ever will be workable, but it may be interesting to think about the experiment and its potential results.#

Assume there is a simulator that can simulate the universe that is perceivable by humans. Secondly, assume this simulator can simulate humans themselves in some way, i.e. it is not defined whether they must develop inside the simulation or their DNA is uploaded.#

Now, we run this universe and monitor the humans' thoughts and speech as they develop from prehistoric man-apes.#

If they develop a polytheistic or monotheistic faith, then one could assert that since we did not install those thoughts in them they are a defense mechanism against the world. Basically, because the operators of the simulation are essentially "God" and if the operators do not inform the humans of their existence, then the humans created the notion on their own.#

However, what if they do not develop a faith for some amount of time? (And suppose the simulation can branch with each intervention and runs infinitely faster then the "real" universe, so we can run many experiments) At this point, if we must install into their brains the idea of God, or gods, then a conclusion may drawn: If God is not an idea that is natural to humans and must be implanted, then because "real" humans have a concept of God, this fact may be offered as proof that God does exist, for if not how was the idea put in the minds of "real" humans?#

Critiques#

Obviously this would not settle the question for many who would deny that its conclusions could be drawn or it could be feasibly attempted. But it also has a few theological problems:#

It offers no consolation to those who do not believe in divine intervention or those who would claim that God would exist whether anyone realized it or not. In fact, this second case would be proved in the instance that the humans did not develop the idea because the operators obviously exist.#

It has no way of protecting against the "real" God intervening in the operation of the simulation (or the structure of our universe, if you prefer) in order to skew the results one way or the other. i.e. If you believe in a God that intervenes, you can't trust the simulation. Actually, one could say that because such a simulation is impossible (by AI or physics arguments) God HAS structured the universe in such a way as to "rig" the results of the experiment.#

Conclusion#

This was an interesting thought I had on a run. I felt like sharing it. I don't think it really proves or could prove anything, but it is best explained when described in that manner.#

While I was at Cato University two subjects often came up: whether voting was a natural right, and democracy as mob-rule. I had a few thoughts about these this morning and hope to share them.#

Voting: A Natural Right?#

First, what are these terms "voting" and "natural right" that I am referring to? The definition of Natural Rights is fairly easy: "Rights that belong to people simply because they are human beings."#

But the definition of "voting" is more difficult. For the clarity of this argument I will use "A regular say in the government that you live under." But perhaps a clearer definition is "A regular in the government that you are citizen of." The importance of the second will become clear.#

So, I will now say that voting is not a natural right, defined as such. This is because the role of government is to protect natural rights, therefore a natural right cannot pertain to government, because it does not exist when natural rights are defined.#

This is more clear from the second definition, it implies that voting is contingent on being a citizen of a government, rather than a human being. Thus voting is a civil right that may, or may not, be granted by a government depending on how it defines 'citizen.' For example, we have seen the definition of citizen change in many ways from Athens, to Rome, to England, to the early United States, etc.#

For those screaming in the back that a human being must be allowed to choose how his government operates, I say no, he must allowed to choose his government. Because a government must protect natural rights this is not troublesome for a person may reject his government and choose another while retaining his life, liberty, and property--natural rights.#

This right to choose government is derived from natural rights. Basically, and I won't go into too much depth because it has been done before, the government exists to protect our natural rights on our behalf. We can protect these rights on our own but often times it is useful to help one another out, this free association is an early form of government. Refer to Locke, Bastiat, or Rand, for details of this argument.#

Democracy: Tyranny by the Majority?#

Democracy: A government controlled by the people governed through voting, either directly on decisions or on representatives. (Note: For the purpose of this section, government does not refer to a just limited government, but a government like those found in the "real world"--for example, the United States or Canada.)#

One argument against democracy is that it enables the majority to command the minority and harm the protection of their natural rights. The case goes from the extreme of all the whites voting that the blacks do not have rights worth protecting to the more mild case of the majority voting away a store keeper's freedom to not associate with certain individuals, i.e. not allow them in his store.#

It has recently occurred to me that in many cases democracy actually serves as a tool for one minority to command another minority or the majority. I do not look at specific examples but identify the desire for this end in the political agendas of certain groups.#

The argument: Take for instance, the call by certain groups to cease the sale of product X in market Y (cigarettes to children, for example.) These groups would like to command the government, through democracy, to make this illegal. However, they could do this without the government if they truly represented a majority of X purchasers* simply by boycotting and hurting the company's bottom line. By calling for government intervention they acknowledge that the majority does not agree with them and they are a minority with a special agenda.#

* A second thing to notice is that in the absence of government on those actually involved in market Y or the sale of X are concerned.

Democracy, it seems, is a tool that is most powerfully used by minority groups to meddle with the natural rights of other groups, minority or majority. The effectiveness of such a minority seems to stem primarily from the package deals offered by parties in most democracies.#

Notice, of course, if the government is sufficiently limited to be unable to ignore natural rights indefinitely then the problem is moot because the demands of the minority cannot be met by the government.#

However, even constitutional limited governments like the United States were vulnerable. I attribute this to an initial case of a majority voting away the rights of minority--either by an Amendment to the Constitution or a law that remains in place--thus setting a precedent for future abuses by smaller groups. This fits nicely with the theological principle that evil is only borne of evil.#

Conclusion#

I offer no resolution to these problems or interpretations. My point is simply to state an idea, not to say that a democratic government with universal suffrage** as a civil right is undesirable, merely that a practical limited government like the one described by the U.S. Constitution is not an iron-clad protector of liberty. Instead, liberty must be constantly re-won and defended against those Statists and dictators who would try to rob us of it.#

** Another short note on universal suffrage. When the Constitution states that human beings have some right that is to be protected and thus not infringed upon or some law that may not be based, does this essentially remove suffrage from the supporters of such a law? They may vote on the law, but they are ignored because the Constitution precludes its passing. (Of course, this is not the case in real life with Constitution Amendments and the ability of Congress to pass laws that are only later revealed to be un-Constitutional. But, is such a thought interesting?)#