Jury Summons

I thought I should let you know that this is a new project in the works.  You can see some of my older work at http://judgeright.blogspot.com which has been essentially abandoned and http://judgeright.vox.com is the one I’ve been most active on lately.  If this project works, I hope to have started a small, knowledgeable community of nine justices to discuss current events in the news.  A self appointed think tank to judge ideologies or worldview, if you will, based on morality and historical consequences of policies.

I’ve been featured on VOX’s front page with an article entitled “The World does NOT Hate America” and I’ve had another article reach nearly a thousand hits in a single day called, “Liberals Redefining Hate”  This to say that I am capable of drawing an audience and want to use some of your posts/articles as arguments or briefs.  I do ask that we keep the language clean and respectful to make knowledge acceptable.  Other than that you don’t have to do anything different than what you’re doing now.  If you make the pool, I will simply cross post the relevant articles with links back to the jurors’ sites.  The alternative is to give jurors authority to author directly to the JudgRight blog albeit, limited to the pages section rather than the front page.  As the votes come in, the most effective articles are posted on the front page as majority and dissenting briefs.  Current jurors are samples of how your blogs are to be featured.

Issues are raised in articles written by Dennis Prager, Michelle Malkin and others (conservatives) and Howard Zenn and others (liberals) as though presenting their cases from opposite sides on the same issues.  The jurors then submit their opinions and vote for the best of the pool for majority opinion and dissenting opinion, building an archive of verdicts.  Comments open to anyone with limited moderation to keep them clear of spam and abuse.  The general purpose being, we encourage people to be informed and think through major issues of our times and in order to do that, generate traffic to our varied websites.

I have put the same information on my StumbleUpon page to widen my search for jurors.  Feel free to spread the word.  I am collecting applications for the moment and we’ll see how many want to jump in.  If there are very many, I may set up ‘lower’ courts with 5 and 3 members in keeping with circuits and whatever is beneath the circuit courts.  Everyone is eligible until further notice.

Any bloggers interested in participating should private message me with the following information.

If the private message link doesn’t work, you can post it in the comments here.  (These applications will not be made public)  All comments are being moderated for now.

Your First Name:

(will be used as site ID.  Example: Judge Bob)

Your Site URL:

(will be used to link back to your site)

Estimate of attention/time/wordcount you can dedicate to this project.  (Example:  Minimum 400 words per issue raised, 1 issue per week)

We vote on which issues to take up, so I am looking for a group with like interests (politics, religion, strong opinions, and odd behaviors) and varied backgrounds to provide a wide array of perspectives to draw from.

Motives

One of the liberal ideological splinters generating problems is their attempt to judge motives.  For instance, the argument was made by the liberal intelligentsia after the attacks on 9/11/1, “Arabs and Palestinians are angry because they suffer under terrible poverty while the West wallows in its riches.  Therefore they strap improvised bombs to their bodies and walk into crowded markets and blow themselves up.  If only we could address their economic needs, we could solve their violent tendencies”  Folks, this conclusion ignored all the evidence and, in fact, the testimony of the attackers themselves.  This is a fundamental flaw in liberal thinking which lengthens the struggle between good and evil and greatly increases the losses of life and resources.  The same thinking is what allowed Hitler to advance his forces while the members of Parliament in Great Britain wrung their hands over Hitler’s reasons for making such aggressive moves.  The following is a chapter from Dennis Prager’s short book, “Think a Second Time.”

I hereby offer a simple proposal that could profoundly enhance the quality of all our lives:  a one-year moratorium on assessing other peoples’ motives.

Assessing motives is usually pointless, and often destructive.

It is pointless because motives are almost impossible to determine.  We often don’t know our own, let alone others’, and it is destructive because we almost always exaggerate the purity of our own motives and assign nefarious motives to others.

The solution to this problem, in fact the solution to much of humanity’s problems, is this:  We should judge actions–our own and those of others–not motives.

When we discover that we have hurt someone’s feelings, our first reaction usually is “I didn’t mean it.”  And because few of us do consciously set out to hurt another person, we feel that this exonerates us.  By judging our motives rather than our actions, we can assuage guilt over any action or inaction.

What we do, not what we intend, is what counts.

On the global level, assessing motives rather than actions has led to serious moral distortions.  Take, for example, the differing assessments of capitalism and Communism.

Communism resulted in the loss of freedom by more nations, and the deaths of more individuals, than any other doctrine in history.  Yet because it was perceived by many people as emanating from good motives–abolishing poverty, achieving greater equality, etc.–many people refused to accord it the revulsion that its deeds deserved.

On the other hand, capitalism has enabled more people to experience freedom and prosperity than any other economic doctrine.  It should therefore be widely admired.  Yet it is often vilified.  The reason?  It is based on selfish motives–profit.

Defenses of Communism and opposition to capitalism have emanated from the same flawed logic–judging motives, not deeds.

Nearly all of us fall into this trap.  Like most people, I long tended to judge negatively the motives of people with whom I disagreed.  Only after years of hosting a radio talk show in which I speak daily with people whose views oppose mine did I learn the great lesson that people with whom I disagree are just as likely to have teh same good conscious motives that I ascribe to myself.

In addition to enabling me to mature, this attitude had an enormous unforeseeable benefit–people who disagree with me listen to what I have to say.  When you belittle your opponents’ motives, they can only become defensive.   But when you ascribe to them moral conviction, they only have to defend their views, not themselves.

The practice of ascribing bad motives to one’s ideological adversaries can be found throughout the political spectrum.  Many conservatives have ascribed the foulest of motives, even murderous conspiracies, to one of their adversaries, President Bill Clinton.  But I have been particularly saddened by how often liberals ascribe mean or selfish motives to their opponents.  For example, voting Republicans means voting with your pocketbook, whereas voting for a Democrat is voting idealistically.

During the Cold War, those of us who supported a large defense budget and the building of nuclear weapons were accused at various times of loving war, having a psychological need for enemies, hating Russians, supporting the military-industrial complex, having a Rambo mentality, and suffering from missile envy.  The possibility was rarely considered that we were motivated by love of peace and justice.

Yet we who supported a strong defense during the Soviet Union’s heyday believed that our motives–ensuring peace by remaining strong, protecting democracy, opposing Communist tyranny, and helping small nations survive against Soviet imperialism–were quite idealistic.

So, please, no more assessments of motives.  In matters of public policy, let’s debate results, not motives.  And in interpersonal relations, let’s assess ourselves and others by actions, not intention.

Introducing Judge Bob Yeah, That’s Me

All right.  I’m just getting started on WordPress, so bear with me as I get familiar with the tools and options.  What follows is my profile.  So, this information will always be available on my profile page.  I’ve been blogging over at blogspot and then VOX for several years and I’m only here because I bought domain space and am required to use WordPress to post there.  I still haven’t figured out how to use this tool there, but hope to have that site up and running soon.  So, you can view my previous work at:

http://judgeright.blogspot.com

http://judgeright.vox.com

Judge Bob

This whole judging theme got started because I was on Yahoo’s Answers and, aiming to answer serious questions by kids who maybe were using the anonymity of the setting to ask embarrassing questions or questions that were politically incorrect, I quite often would be condemned for being critical of certain faiths, certain behaviors, and certain individuals.  I’d even been reprimanded for ‘hate speech’ by the Yahoo moderators.  So, I went hunting for a venue where I could publish my answers offsite then send the kids to that sight for complete answers to their troublesome queries in polite company.  Now that’s how I got started but the blogs have developed into their own thing.  They have become a place for debate, discussion, entertainment, and education.  I have enough different pages online now that I can sort of focus them on various topics.  One for politics/current events, another for morality issues and yet another for self improvement/happiness.  I haven’t yet determined which should be which yet, but I’m leaning toward VOX for the happiness topic and this one for morality issues.  If that works then I’ll make the paid space the general home with links to the rest for trackbacks.  This way one crowd won’t be drowned with information they’re not interested in.

That said, I want to make clear that I have no letters beside my name.  I haven’t earned an MBA or a PhD and I’ve never served as any form of legal adviser or advocate.  The title comes from folks commenting on the blogs calling me Judge because of the blog title.  My only authority to advise comes in the form of the school of hard knocks.  I’ve bumped around this old rock long enough to have learned a few things and made enough mistakes to know some of what doesn’t work.  As one shade tree philosopher put it, “Good judgment comes from experience.  Unfortunately, experience usually comes from poor judgment.”

How do you know what is true and right and good?  You use your judgment.  When you hear truth, if you contain your prejudices, (feelings) you know it in your spirit.  (conscience) — That one’s from me, though I doubt I’m the first to utter those words.

“After a while you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul and you learn that love doesn’t mean possession and company doesn’t mean security.  And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts and presents aren’t promises and you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and your eyes ahead with the grace of an adult not the grief of a child.  And you learn to build your roads today because tomorrows ground is too uncertain for plans and futures have ways of falling down in mid-flight.  After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much so you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.  And you learn that you really can endure that you really are strong and you really do have worth…and you learn and you learn.” –Veronica A. Shoffstall

The following is my response to a commenter hypocritically condemning me for judging people, specifically homosexual behaviors.

I demand an apology from leftist hypocrites or anybody who’s ever condemned a Christian for judging.  I and my entire faith have been labeled hypocrites for exercising our God given responsibility to use good judgment. You have managed to convince nearly all of pop culture to judge and condemn us for judging.  By mis-application of our scriptures, you take one verse out of context and reduce thousands of years of wisdom to a three word bumper sticker slogan, “Don’t Judge People” or “You Shouldn’t Judge”  effectively hijacking the lesson it was meant to teach and twisting it to fit your self centered agenda to continue in whatever sin you feel judged for.  I’d be shocked if any of you could name the verse you so glibly quote to justify this charge against us.  Even if you could, you wouldn’t be able to quote the next verse or any other verse that supports it, yet you have the nerve to quote our Holy Book to us without any understanding of its proper application.
I will rip your self righteous prejudiced condemnation of us to shreds and expose your hypocrisy before God and everybody if you try doing that to my face.  If you ever do decide to read a scripture, try this verse; [John 7:24 “Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.“]  Oh my God, open these hearts to the truth and make them face their shame for shaming the righteous.  Don’t snort! We know we are not perfect, neither are we wrong about this.  Righteousness is one of those buzz words you hypocrites, who don’t like being judged, but enjoy judging us for.  If you had any idea what righteousness we speak of, you’d know your judgment of us is unfounded and just plain wrong.
I suppose you’ll try to judge and condemn me for being angry next.  When I am wronged, and especially when my entire faith is condemned on the basis of a prejudice, I have, not only a right, but a responsibility to be angry.  Its called righteous anger and the Bible reference for that is Eph 4:25-27.  [25 Therefore, putting away lying, each one speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.  26 Be angry, and do not sin” do not let the sun go down on your wrath,  27 nor give place to the devil.]  It means I have to speak the truth, it means I have to say it in the face of those indulging in self delusion. It means I shouldn’t bottle it up because that would give place to the devil using it in me to create my own prejudice.  So if you don’t like being judged with righteous proper judgment, tough, that doesn’t give you license to judge us with prejudice and unrighteous improper judgment.

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Now I am generally a happy person, but nothing pushes my buttons like the leftist hypocrisy of condemning Christians’ judgment.  Not because Christians judge well, but because it has turned into such an anti-wisdom mantra that our kids are walking out into life with the belief that their own common sense is an evil bigotry that needs, indeed must be fought off.  How on earth are they going to survive if they think their preference for one friend over another, or one mentor over another, or one religion over another is bigotry?  Here, listen to this preacher present it better than I ever could.  And here you can listen to Charles Barkley repeat that anti-wisdom prejudiced mantra on TV!   What a case of perfected wisdom and insight, that one?  And he wants to be a leader in this nation?