Why is it that those who profess such great tolerance, are often the least likely to display it? Why is it that “tolerance,” from such people and groups who are highly driven by ideology, is only extended to those who believe the same way they do? Is that not actually the definition of intolerance? Because a businessman expressed his opinion (isn’t that called “free speech,” and protected by the Constitution?) the nation was this week subjected to a textbook display of intolerance, by those who seem to who claim it as their exclusive and private domain.

This past week Dan Cathy, President of Chick-Fil-A, a restaurant chain, said in an interview on a syndicated radio talk show, “We are very much supportive of the family – the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.” To any rational listener, that was an innocuous statement affirming a fundamental value based in historical, biological, and anthropological fact, and just happens to be reaffirmed in the Bible, since the building block of our society is the family unit that perpetuates the species. After all, how long would human civilization last if the basic family unit was anything different than that averred by Cathy?

But to some radicals, so intent on redefining (irrespective of biological fact) our interpretation of our basic social building block, this was perceived as a vicious attack on their ideology and their agenda. And since they are such a tolerant group, they proceeded to show us just how “tolerant” they are, by calling for boycotts, “kiss-ins,” and other types of protests against the family-friendly national chain of restaurants.

But that was just the beginning of the intolerant denunciations against Cathy. The Jim Henson group that created the Muppets showed how tolerant they are by announcing they were severing their commercial ties to the restaurant chain. "The Jim Henson Company has celebrated and embraced diversity and inclusiveness for over fifty years and we have notified Chick-fil-A that we do not wish to partner with them on any future endeavors," they declared. Apparently their standard for “tolerance” is not very “diverse” or “inclusive,” as it obviously excludes people of faith who think differently. Makes you wonder what bizarre dictionary they use to define “diversity” and “inclusiveness” to exclude 70% of the population!

Others in the Hollywood community added their voices to the echo chamber of intolerance. Paragons of social and moral consciousness, Miley Cyrus, Lindsay Lohan, Kim Kardashian, and other Hollywood celebrities displayed their immense tolerance by employing social media to denounce, attack, and castigate Cathy and calling for a boycott of his firm.

Those who are against “hate” in the public square and our cultural fabric should take special note of Roseanne Barr’s comments. She sent out death wishes on Twitter, saying,  "anyone who eats S--t Fil-A deserves to get the cancer that is sure to come from eating antibiotic filled tortured chickens 4Christ." And in typical social Hollywood class, she Tweeted that those at Cathy’s company are "chick filet- nazi chicken f---ing p****s." If I’m not mistaken, that sounds a great deal like “hate speech.”

Actually we can thank Ms. Barr. Not only did she aptly portray the ignorance and bigotry of those who think like she does, but also for illustrating in exemplary fashion that Nazi-like totalitarian tactics of intimidation, coercion, and forced conformity are on the left of the political spectrum, rather than on the right. Forced conformity through political correctness based on progressive ideals is an attempt to limit freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom of religion. Such coercion is antithetical to not only the principles of freedom our nation was founded on, but is an affront to tolerance itself.

The irony is rich when we realize that the progressive application of tolerance is limited to only their ideological conformity. To them, tolerance is demanded for their behavioral and ideological aberrance, but is disallowed for people of traditional values, especially Christians. Their freedom of speech and expression are absolutes to be respected and tolerated, while those who believe differently are disallowed those same privileges.

Tolerance, in practice, is not a universal quality to be collectively aspired to. Rather it has become a selectively applied form of intolerance, and hate speech, from people who talk so much about tolerating all views and religions, and condemn the very kind of speech they themselves employ.

The ultimate hypocrisy is to claim a standard of behavior yet fail to hold oneself accountable to that standard. If tolerance is a noble virtue to which our society must aspire, it must be applied universally, not just demanded of those who believe differently.

AP award winning columnist Richard Larsen is President of Larsen Financial, a brokerage and financial planning firm in Pocatello, and is a graduate of Idaho State University with a BA in Political Science and History and former member of the Idaho State Journal Editorial Board.  He can be reached at rlarsenen@cableone.net. 

By Cris Sheridan and Richard Larsen

Published – Idaho State Journal, 07/22/12

One of the indubitable effects of the secularization of our culture and our society is the debasement of our collective moral fabric, our social mores. The absolute and fundamental metrics of values which form the basis of our Judeo-Christian society have steadily eroded, and at an accelerated rate over the past few decades. This erosion of traditional values and standards has long contributed to an emergence of relativism that is profoundly symbolized through the uncertainty of our modern financial and monetary system. Just as moral relativism manifests a disintegration of society’s traditional values, the relativism we see permeating the financial system today portends a decline in the future viability of our global economic system.

The late Alan Bloom, professor of philosophy at Cornell, Yale, and the University of Chicago, wrote some twenty years ago in The Closing of the American Mind, “There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.” If all truth is relative, all morality becomes relative as well, for the elimination of absolute truth claims absolute morality as its first victim.

This moral relativism has coincided predictably with the secularization of our culture. The secular concept that there are no absolute truths has gradually yet effectively eroded our collective value system in such a way as to alter and distort our social value system.

A common interpretation of moral relativism, regardless of the source, is the view that “ethical standards, morality, and positions of right or wrong are culturally based and therefore subject to a person's individual choice. We can all decide what is right for ourselves. You decide what's right for you, and I'll decide what's right for me. Moral relativism says, ‘It's true for me, if I believe it.’” Essentially, nobody is objectively right or wrong. Fixed standards of value don’t exist aside from the changing whims of society and government.

William McGuffey, who authored the McGuffey's Readers, which were the mainstay of America's public school system for nearly a century, wrote: "Erase all thought and fear of God from a community, and selfishness and sensuality would absorb the whole man." We observe today with certitude, the veracity of his statement.

Moral relativism weakens our collective cultural conscience. It weakens our ability to identify evil and our resolve to confront it as such. It leads to the perfidious exoneration of individual responsibility and culpability for perpetrators of evil, and seeks blame for such actions in social, parental, and educational failures. It prevents us from recognizing the evil in our midst that threatens our families, our neighborhoods, our culture, and our nation. And if allowed to continue unabated, it perpetuates the continued erosion of our collective value system.

The displacement of absolute standards and values affects other aspects of our lives, as well, perhaps most notably in the world of finance. The financial world today—a world to which we are all connected whether we like it or not—is plagued by a similar erosion of value. Consider money, for example—a symbol of a nation’s willingness to maintain and uphold value through honest weights and measures. Even the word credit, which forms the basis of our modern global financial system, is based on the latin word credere, meaning “to believe.” That is, to believe in the other party to honor their contract and use honest scales.

In what is referred to as the Bretton Woods agreement, the dollar was originally chosen as the world reserve currency for international finance due to America’s reputation and economic integrity. This was done by giving the dollar a fixed and objective value (in terms of gold) upon which all other currencies were priced. In essence, this was the establishment of a monetary “golden rule”: Do unto others as you have them do unto you—a fair and equitable exchange through a common standard of value. With dollars held abroad redeemable for a fixed amount of gold, the exchange of goods internationally was anchored in the certainty of an objective monetary value.

However, over time the U.S. began to print too much money to pay off its growing deficits (hence, many other nations redeeming more gold) and thus, faced with a rapid decline in its gold reserves, broke free from the fixed limitations of the gold standard to allow the unrestricted debasement of monetary value here and abroad.

Regarding that fateful day in 1971, referred to as the “Nixon Shock”, BusinessWeek wrote last year, “Milton Friedman’s prediction that, left to the market, currencies would regulate themselves with only gradual adjustments proved wildly incorrect. The dollar plunged by a third during the ’70s, and currency volatility has threatened several national economies since; in 1997, Asian and Latin American countries were wrecked by currency runs. To this day, [former FED Chief Paul] Volcker regrets that Bretton Woods was abandoned. ‘Nobody’s in charge,’ he says. ‘The Europeans couldn’t live with the uncertainty and made their own currency and now that’s in trouble.’ The effect on America’s domestic economy was even worse.”

All is now relative, particularly among currencies. What this means is that various nations can now set, change, or alter their standard of measurement and value—by inflating the money supply—with much greater flexibility. Steve Forbes was recently asked in an interview: “Don’t we need a flexible money supply?” to which he replied, “That’s like saying that changing the number of minutes in an hour would be a great tool to increase productivity in the economy. Manipulating weights and measures, whether it’s the number of ounces in a pound or minutes in an hour, is a false way to think that you can achieve prosperity. All gold does is serve as a yardstick to measure the value of your currency.”

With the yardstick removed—or constantly changing in size—there is no fundamental basis for value. This highly unstable system is continually managed, however, as governments attempt to control the fluctuation of their currencies by intervening in the foreign exchange market and buying or selling the currencies of other nations. In lieu of the new reality, BusinessWeek stated, “Floating currencies unleashed a new world of risk and instability. For the first time, investors could bet on the direction of interest rates or the Swiss franc. New financial instruments, new speculative tools, proliferated. The world gravitated from the certainties of Bretton Woods to the dizzying market cycles we’ve lived with since.”

As mentioned, the financial system has adapted by developing increasingly complex financial instruments—options, swaps, derivatives—to either eliminate or capture the massive volatility coursing through the markets. Rather than promote long-term stability and investment, massive amounts of capital are now redirected towards hedging and speculation.

For example, the VIX is an index that measures the level of volatility in the market. Through exchange traded funds, you can go long, short, double long or double short volatility. That is, one can invest or speculate on volatility for volatility’s sake! Reminds me of a saying: “Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.” (Oh, by the way, there’s an option for that too. It’s called a “weather derivative.”)

Entire financial industries, asset-classes, and hedge funds have now sprung up offering services based not on providing economic value to society, but on one thing alone: volatility. Options, derivatives, futures contracts and high frequency trading of rapid fluctuations in price of various commodities, stocks, or currencies now comprise a massive share of trading volume.

What is the result of all this, you may ask? Chaos. Plain and simple. The global financial system is being tossed to and fro by massive amounts of cheap, electronically created, monopoly money that is constantly in search of the best yield, the most bang for its buck, and a quick fix. By removing the “limitation” of a fixed standard for the unrestricted manipulation of monetary value, governments and central banks are playing God over the financial system with, ironically, trillions of dollars they’ve created speculating on whether they will succeed or fail.

Consequently, relativism dominates not only as a reflection of declining absolute values  today, affecting the morality of our culture, but as a chaotic financial sea from which many have seen their entire life-savings wrecked under the crashing waves of speculation. There are ways for the individual investor to partially circumnavigate these troubled relativistic waters, but they are diminishing. Could a return to moral absolutism reverse the financial relativism in the investment world? It’s unlikely, for that ship has long since left the harbor. The only way to turn that ship around would be a return to a monetary “golden rule” like the one abandoned 41 years ago.

Cris Sheridan, is the Senior Editor of Financial Sense, a San Diego based company dedicated to financial education. Cris graduated from Cal State San Marcos with a degree in Mathematics and is currently pursuing a designation as Chartered Financial Analyst. He can be reached at cris@financialsense.com

AP award winning columnist Richard Larsen is President of Larsen Financial, a brokerage and financial planning firm in Pocatello, and is a graduate of Idaho State University with a BA in Political Science and History and former member of the Idaho State Journal Editorial Board.  He can be reached at rlarsenen@cableone.net. 

Published – Idaho State Journal, 07/15/12

“All countries of the world are coming together in New York to negotiate what is seen as the most important initiative ever regarding conventional arms regulation within the United Nations,” according to the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA). They’re working on a new treaty throughout the month that will provide a framework for regulating, controlling, registering, and tracking all conventional small firearms in the world. If signed by our president, it could be the most direct and overt effort to annul the 2^nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, for treaties take supremacy over the Constitution, per Article VI.

In 2006, the UN passed a resolution, “Towards an Arms Trade Treaty,” with a stated objective of establishing “common international standards for the import, export and transfer of conventional arms.” The rationale was that terrorism and gang violence could be thwarted by establishing international standards regulating small-arms proliferation.

The Bush administration did not support the 2006 resolution, maintaining that each nation is best in a position to monitor and regulate arms sales rather than a one-size-fits-all approach assumed by the UN. But in 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton indicated the U.S. was no longer opposed to such an arms treaty, and in 2010, President Obama reversed the Bush administration objection to the earlier version.

Timing of this incarnation of a small arms treaty has been accelerated by the UN in hopes it can be signed by our current president and ratified by the senate before the November election, which could significantly alter the outlook for U.S. participation.

The UNODA has published a document titled, “Disarmament: A Basic Guide,” which lays out for the public the concerns regarding small arms. On page 68, we read, “Counting such weapons is difficult, as the majority are owned by civilians.

The trade in small arms is not well regulated and is the least transparent of all weapons systems. Due to the lack of regulation and controls, in many countries it is too easy for small arms to slip from the legal into the illicit market—through theft, leakage, corruption or pilferage.” On the next page we read, “Ammunition should be a key part of any discussion on small arms control.”

The UN clearly intends to address legal gun ownership within member states along with the trade of small arms. One of their many research and statement pieces on the UNODA website, states unequivocally, that arms have been "…misused by lawful owners and recommends that arms trade therefore be regulated in ways that would ... minimize the misuse of legally owned weapons."

Former UN ambassador John Bolton has affirmed this intent, and indicates that the UN “is trying to act as though this is really just a treaty about international arms trade between nation states, but there is no doubt that the real agenda here is domestic firearms control.”

While it’s uncertain what exact terms and provisions will be included in the new Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), the archive of documents on the UN Office of Disarmament Affairs website provide ample indications. From their own documents, it’s clear that they want to accomplish the following, as published by Forbes Online last week:

“1. Enact tougher licensing requirements, creating additional bureaucratic red tape for legal firearms ownership. 2. Confiscate and destroy all “unauthorized” civilian firearms. 3. Ban the trade, sale and private ownership of all semi-automatic weapons. 4. Create an international gun registry, clearly setting the stage for full-scale gun confiscation. 5. Control distribution and availability of ammunition for small arms.”

The outcome, if adopted by the UN General Assembly, and ratified by the U.S., would result in “Overriding our national sovereignty, and in the process, provide license for the federal government to assert preemptive powers over state regulatory powers guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment in addition to our Second Amendment rights,” according to Forbes.

Not only has the White House indicated support for the ATT, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has vowed to push it through the Senate for ratification. Until now, the administration’s attempts to diminish 2^nd Amendment rights to bear arms have been under the radar, except when botched, as in the Fast and Furious gun walking incident which can only be logically explained away as an effort to create a crisis that they would capitalize on to this end.

We've seen all too many times how the Obama administration bypasses congress and implements its agenda through executive orders. Don’t be surprised if the White House attempts to circumvent the Senate’s ratification of the treaty altogether, and declares the ATT “in effect” by Executive Order. After all, constitutional limitations on government, and our constitutional rights, are only valid if honored and upheld, something this administration fails at when it conflicts with their agenda.

AP award winning columnist Richard Larsen is President of Larsen Financial, a brokerage and financial planning firm in Pocatello, and is a graduate of Idaho State University with a BA in Political Science and History and former member of the Idaho State Journal Editorial Board. He can be reached at rlarsenen@cableone.net. 

Published – Idaho State Journal, 07/08/12

At the NATO Summit in Strasbourg, France, in 2009 our president said, "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."

Contrary to what some among us erroneously assume, American exceptionalism is not some obtuse reference to Americans being any better than anyone else in the world. It doesn’t mean that our products are somehow superior, or that we’re any more erudite than the inhabitants of any other country. It simply means that, as a nation, America was exceptional in how it was founded and the precepts upon which it was established are unique and unparalleled in all of human history.

There has never been anything so unique and exceptional in the rising up of a new nation than one being established according to declared inalienable individual and collective rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In an era when monarchs, rulers, autocrats and aristocrats governed according to their whims and disposition based primarily on caste or bloodline, a motley collection of men steeped in classical-liberal principles led a revolution and established a nation dedicated to individual freedom.

Those precepts were the foundation to the Declaration of Independence, which states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” There is nothing more exceptional in human history than those two sentences and the nation that resulted from their utterance: a nation that derived its “just” powers from the “consent of the governed.”

A decade later, a structural document creating the governmental framework by which the tenets articulated in the Declaration of Independence were codified, was ratified by the colonies. That document, our Constitution, stated specifically what our national government would do in no uncertain terms, and whatever powers were not specified or enumerated, were “reserved to the states respectively or to the people.”

That concept of limited governmental power and maximum individual freedom is the embodiment of American exceptionalism and is the reason for our holiday this past week.  It is a time for us to reflect on the historical significant of a nation being so founded, intentionally constructed in such a way as to prevent tyrants, despots, and bureaucrats from usurping the authority and power of the people. While we may seem so far removed from those ideals today, the poignant reflection on the historicity of the day should stir something deep within our souls for a return to such principles.

We can also reflect upon, and celebrate the lives and contributions of those who fought and died for those principles. Not just in our revolutionary era, but with each successive generation from that time. None have given more, and sacrificed more, than our men and women in uniform, who have carried high the banner of freedom onto foreign lands to defend life and liberty, and vanquish tyranny.

Those who don the nation’s uniform take an oath of fealty to the Constitution, and that they will defend it against all foes, foreign and domestic. I often reflect how all of us, as citizens, should take a similar oath. For if we did, the abuses of power, usurped and purloined from the citizens, would be so much less likely to occur than we observe on a nearly daily basis in news emanating from our seats of government.

In our reflection of the historical significance of the day, may we catch a glimpse of the fervor that filled the hearts and souls of those earliest of patriots. They were so willing to give all that they had, including their very lives, for the freedom for which they yearned. Yet collectively, we allow that very liberty to be frittered away on a daily basis by ostensibly well-intentioned politicians who, through new legislation, laws, and Acts, limit individual freedom and liberty, and engorge government with ever increasing power to harass, subjugate, and rule over us. With each such law, we become less citizens of a republic based on freedom, and increasingly subjects to an omnipotent and omniscient government.

If we are to truly celebrate Independence Day, let us recommit to those principles for which our forebears struggled that we might enjoy the fruits thereof. Let’s not allow their sacrifices to have been in vain, but let us take up the torch of Lady Liberty, with the fire of freedom burning within our souls, and recommit to those founding doctrines that made America unique and exceptional in all of human history.

AP award winning columnist Richard Larsen is President of Larsen Financial, a brokerage and financial planning firm in Pocatello, and is a graduate of Idaho State University with a BA in Political Science and History and former member of the Idaho State Journal Editorial Board. He can be reached at rlarsenen@cableone.net.