Gas Hydrates and Greenhouse Effect

Gas Hydrate                   Non-flowing, ice-like, crystalline non-stoichiometric compound (a solid not having its component elements present in the exact proportions indicated by its formula) consisting of small gas molecules surrounded by and enclosed within a cage of water molecules that is similar to ice except that the crystalline structure is stabilized by the guest gas molecule within the water molecule cage. For that reason, these structures are also called clathrates, or cage compounds. They can exist only where high pressures and low temperatures squeeze water and methane into a solid form. Although many gases have molecular sizes suitable to form hydrate, marine gas hydrates are by far the most abundant. Gas hydrate can only form in the presence of sufficient amounts of gas and water and only under specific pressure and temperature conditions. In order to be stable, gas hydrate requires high pressures and comparatively low temperatures. Methane hydrate, which looks very much like ordinary ice, is stable in fairly shallow ocean floor sediments in polar regions and at water depths greater than 300 meters. At those depths it is known to cement otherwise unconsolidated sediments in a surface layer several hundred meters thick.

        Methane and other hydrocarbons trapped in marine sediments as hydrates represent an immense carbon sink. The worldwide deposits of carbon contained in gas hydrates are conservatively estimated to total twice the amount of carbon found in all known fossil fuels on Earth. Those resources have the potential of becoming dominant factors in the future analysis and development of unconventional and previously untapped energy resources. As analysis of those resources proceeds, the investigation of gas hydrate in terms of its interaction with climate as a so-called “greenhouse” gas will be a critical research issue. Other critical research topics include the role of gas hydrates in the carbon cycle and as a factor in the stability of sediments on continental slopes. Real World Examples: Recent mapping conducted by the USGS demonstrated large accumulations of methane hydrates off the coasts of North and South Carolina in an area called the Blake Ridge. Two large concentrations of gas hydrates were found, each about the size of Rhode Island. USGS scientists estimated that those areas contained more than 1,300 trillion cubic feet of methane, representing about 60 times the natural gas consumed in the entire U.S. in 2000. Gas hydrates are also found under the Arctic permafrost. In 2003 in the Canadian Northwest Territories, an international group of engineers drilled hundreds of yards below the permafrost in the Mackenzie River delta into hydrate deposits, pumped in hot water, and released the gas in a test to determine whether they could tap what may become a new energy source.

        Author’s Note: Originally discovered in 1810 in the laboratory of Sir Humphrey Davy, these compounds are found in nature and are stable under specific conditions of temperature and pressure. Very large amounts of natural gas can be stored in hydrate form and can be released to the atmosphere during hydrate decomposition in response to climate warming, undersea disturbances such as landslides or earthquakes, or changes in sea-level, particularly in coastal areas affected by contact with water of warmer temperature than the ground.

        Real World Problem: Sudden, large-scale releases of methane from hydrates can potentially cause rapid climate changes that may have catastrophic consequences for existing life, including animal, plant, and human especially through a drastic rise in global warming. Today, methane hydrates are stored naturally along continental margins where they are stabilized by water pressure and temperature. But the fear of scientists is that ocean warming or slope instability may result in methane hydrates becoming unstable and being released in large quantities to the atmosphere. The reason for that fear is that methane is 20 times more powerful as a so-called “greenhouse” gas than carbon dioxide. Gas hydrates also present hazards during exploration drilling, hydrocarbon production, and construction of oil and gas pipelines because they have the potential of becoming unstable during the drilling, production, or construction processes if the areas where hydrates are found become warmed and slope destabilization causes massive landslides that release huge amounts of methane, with potentially catastrophic global climatic consequences. Uncontrolled gas releases, blowouts, fires, and instability of sediments at well sites and along pipelines may occur without adequate safeguards.

        Today, gas hydrates constitute a largely unexploited means of energy recovery and in the future could play significant roles in climate change as well as energy consumption. The high risk of catastrophic release into the atmosphere makes hydrate exploitation one of the very realistic worries environmentalists have when energy companies talk about developing techniques to harvest methane hydrates on or below the sea-floor. For additional general information, see: http://woodshole.er.usgs.gov/project-pages/hydrates/ and for exploitation information see: http://emd.aapg.org/technical_areas/gas_hydrates/index.cfm

Greenhouse Effect             A terrible and fundamentally wrong physical analogy that no good geoscientist should use or accept uncritically. First of all, the atmosphere does not in any way act like a greenhouse, which works by trapping heat and suppressing convection. Think about it: if the atmosphere actually trapped energy and suppressed convection, the Earth’s surface temperature would continue to rise until all life would be cooked like lobsters in a pot. We know that’s not happening for many reasons but especially because the long-term average temperature of the atmosphere has been fairly constant (with exceptions that should be obvious) and, better yet, life still abounds on the Earth, which it would not if the so-called greenhouse effect actually existed.

        It is also not true to say that radiation is trapped by atmospheric gases and then is subsequently re-radiated or that so-called greenhouse gases act as a global blanket. That’s pseudo-scientific nonsense. So, if those claims are nonsense, which they are, what’s really going on? The answer is simple and straightforward. The Earth’s surface is warmer than it would be in the absence of an atmosphere because it receives energy from two sources, the Sun and the atmosphere, which receives energy from the Sun but mainly from the Earth via radiation, latent heat, and convection. In the end, NO greenhouse effect can be determined, only an atmospheric effect that warms the Earth’s surface. The energy emitted by the atmosphere is derived partly from energy received in the form of solar and terrestrial radiation but the energy emitted is not the same radiation nor is it even the same spectrum as that energy that might have been received previously. In other words, the Earth is heated because atmospheric gases absorb outgoing radiative energy and re-emit a portion of that energy back towards Earth.

        Author’s Note: Of course, the real problem is that the term is so enshrined in public consciousness by being repeated ad nauseam by the news media and in uncritical scientific publications that eradicating it is impossible. For more detailed discussions on this fascinating topic, all readers should consult a wonderful web site that was created by Alistair B. Fraser, Emeritus Professor of Meteorology, Pennsylvania State University. It is chock full of very useful information on greenhouses gases as well as numerous other topics: “Bad Meteorology” at: http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/BadMeteorology.html.

        The “greenhouse effect” was discovered by Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier in 1824, first reliably experimented on by John Tyndall in 1858, and first reported quantitatively by Svante Arrhenius in 1896.

        Early in his remarkable career, Fourier revolutionized the world of mathematics with equations that are now known as the Fourier series, which he created in a successful effort to elucidate heat diffusion and movement (On the Propagation of Heat in Solid Bodies and The Analytical Theory of Heat). But it was during his several travels to Egypt in the late 1790s and early 1820s that he began thinking about why the Earth’s heat remained close to the surface and was not re-radiated into space. After reflection, Fourier came up with a novel idea, that much of the energy failed to escape because the atmosphere, including its water vapor and clouds, worked like an invisible dome, or bell-jar, absorbing part of the heat and re-radiating it back to the Earth’s surface. His view of the atmosphere was that it functioned like a gigantic thermal envelope that prevented heat from escaping.

        Despite his wide-spread influence in mathematics, Fourier’s work on the atmosphere received scant attention from the scientific community and was soon regulated to the proverbial back burner. In the 1860s, Irish physicist John Tyndall began analyzing properties of the atmosphere, especially those of heat, light, and acoustics. Part of his lab work included construction of the first ratio spectrophotometer, an instrument he used to measure the absorptive powers of such gases as carbon dioxide, various hydrocarbons, ozone, and water vapor. Among his most important discoveries were the vast differences in gases and vapors in absorbing and transmitting radiant heat. He discovered that hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen are almost transparent to radiant heat, while other gases are very opaque. Tyndall’s experiments also showed that molecules of water vapor, carbon dioxide, and ozone were the best absorbers of heat radiation and that even in small quantities those gases absorbed heat much more efficiently than the atmosphere itself, a phenomenon that had great meteorological significance. He concluded that water vapor was the most important gas in controlling the Earth’s surface air temperature and later speculated that changes in water vapor and carbon dioxide could be related to climate change.

        About 30 years later that topic was revisited by the Swedish chemist, Svante August Arrhenius (1859-1927), whose earlier contributions on the conductivities of electrolytes had won him considerable standing among a select group of northern European scientists, several of whom became the first recipients of the Nobel Prize in chemistry. Arrhenius was captivated by the idea that ground temperatures might be influenced by heat-absorbing gasses in the atmosphere. His interest had been sparked by one of the then current scientific rages sweeping Europe: the cause of the prehistoric ice ages. He was well aware of earlier scientific work in the field, especially Tyndall’s, and wrote that Fourier had maintained that the atmosphere acted much like the glass in a hothouse, which was probably the first use of that inappropriate and unfortunate analogy, later referred to as the “so-called greenhouse effect” by the climatologist Glen Trewartha. Arrhenius was also familiar with research by the American physicist, Samuel Langley, that had demonstrated that if Earth’s atmosphere did not possess selective energy absorptive qualities then the surface temperature would fall to around -200° C. Locked in the grip of fierce determination to solve that puzzle, Arrhenius spent a full year (1895-1896) doing mathematical analysis so arduous and tedious that it would have numbed a stone, only to finally emerge with the first theoretical energy budget model that could be used to calculate the influence of the effects of carbon dioxide on the Earth’s surface temperatures.

        Arrhenius’s work in 1896 quantified the atmospheric CO₂ effects found by the geologist, Arvid Gustaf Högbom, one of the first serious investigators of the carbon cycle, but also demonstrated that variations in the CO₂ content of the atmosphere may have accounted for glacial and interglacial periods. His Heraclean mathematical effort had resulted in the construction of a series of tables that demonstrated how water vapor and carbon dioxide were responsible for warming the Earth. In particular, his now well-known Table VII demonstrated with mathematical rigor exactly how increases or decreases in CO₂ would affect surface temperatures (Arrhenius’s Table VII actually consisted of five tables arranged side by side, with each representing a different concentration of what he called “carbonic acid”).

Endolith

Rock boring microbe or extremophile organism (archaea, bacterium, or fungus) that lives inside rock or in the interstitial spaces between mineral grains in deep granitic and basaltic formations. Most endoliths are prokaryotic or mesoscale prekaryotes and are among the most common naturally-occurring life-forms known. Recently, it has been suggested that those species are relics of the Earth’s earliest life forms, from a time when the atmosphere contained little or no oxygen. It has also been suggested that the amount of “biomass” inside the Earth may be as great as or even greater than that in what has been traditionally portrayed as the biosphere.

        Three main types of endoliths have been identified. Cryptoendoliths live in rock at the Earth's surface and can tolerate extreme surface conditions; examples include lichen. Subsurface endoliths are found in aquifers or solution caverns and use nutrients in groundwater. Deep biosphere endoliths are found in rock miles from the surface in extremely hot (over 100° C) or cold (up to -15° C) conditions and also in deep mines under anoxic conditions, extreme temperatures, intense pressures, and without access to sunlight.

        Endoliths can survive by feeding on traces of iron, potassium, or sulfur. Whether they metabolize those elements directly from the host rock or excrete acidic solutions to dissolve them first remains unknown. Many endoliths are autotrophs that make their own organic compounds by using gas or dissolved nutrients from volatiles or water moving through joints, pores, and fractures in the rock. As water and nutrients are far from plentiful at depths, endoliths have a very slow procreation cycle, with cell division occurring only once every hundred years.
        Endoliths have been found as deep as two miles; though at this time no one knows if that constitutes a lower limit. Just think about the hyperthermophile organisms living around the black smokers in the ocean, whose temperature limit is at about 110° C. That would put the downward range of the endoliths at around three miles below the continental crust and not quite five miles below the ocean floor. Interestingly, endolithic organisms have also been found in regions of great cold and low humidity, including Antarctica.
        Author’s Note: When I was a young paleontology student some four decades ago, I was taught that the biosphere descended some several tens of yards or so into the Earth’s solid surface, where it stopped. According to theory then accepted by nearly everyone, heat and pressure beyond those depths created an inhospitable environment that was incapable of sustaining life. That idea existed well before rock cores that are brought routinely when drilling for oil and other goodies were analyzed and sterile handling of those samples demonstrated that lithotrophic (rock-eating) bacteria and even higher multi-cellular protozoa that fed on the bacteria live at great depths in the Earth’s interior — perhaps as deep as 12,000 feet. The lesson is simple: science truly is capable of astounding you, but only if your eyes and minds are open.

First-Born

When we found out that San was pregnant I was a tiny bit ambivalent at first since we had no money at all and supporting a baby wasn’t going to be cheap. But I was soon carried away by the great excitement of bringing a child into the world. Naturally, being the person I was then and am today, I went to the library and read every single thing I could find about newborns. That search took many, many weeks but I soon was a literal expert on what babies could and couldn’t do. To my considerable surprise I learned babies can focus their eyes even shortly after birth, but only within a narrow range. And that new mothers are better able to identify their newborn from smell rather than by sight. I learned what colors, shapes, and patterns attracted their attention the most. I learned about their reflexes, about feeding, about what they should be able to do and when. Until I became a walking encyclopedia of baby facts.

Back in those Stone Age days telling the sex of a fetus was akin to reading tea leaves or divining the future by scattering bones and understanding the patterns. The pediatrician thought it would be a boy but hedged his bet pretty well. Actually, I didn’t give a shit either way. Healthy is what I wanted.

As the day approached I told San it would be great if she had the baby on my birthday, May 17^th. All she wanted was to deliver. The sooner the better. She was ready.

On May 15^th she woke me around 3:00am and told me she was having contractions. She wanted me to time them. So, I looked at the clock and promptly fell asleep. A few minutes later she said she was having another contraction. How many minutes apart were they? Oh shit. Shamefaced, I admitted I had fallen asleep. Not a happy camper, she. I duly noted the time and promised I’d stay awake this time. And fell asleep again. That happened two or three times more until she timed the contractions herself. Seven or eight minutes apart and probably longer, or so sleepy-eyed me thought. A very nervous first-time mother, she called the OB-GYN. Turned out it was false labor. We finally both went back to sleep.

Nothing all the next day. Not a single twinge. I was working at Shell so called every hour or so. That night we went to sleep thinking the great event was a couple days away.

San shook me awake around 3:30 in the morning. “This is it,” she said. “My contractions are about five minutes apart.”

Suddenly wide awake I timed the next one. Five minutes on the nose. Excited, we got dressed, San called the doctor’s exchange and told then we were on the way. I grabbed the packed overnight bag that had been ready at the door for two weeks and off we went to St. Mary’s Hospital on Clayton Road.

The roads were empty at that hour so I flew there in record time. I stopped at the entrance to the Emergency Room, walked her inside, and then drove to the parking garage. By the time I had parked and made it up to the maternity floor, after first filling out insurance forms of course, she was already gowned and getting prepped. Unlike today, I was told to scram and go straight to the Maternity Waiting Room. Where I sat with five or six other expectant fathers and assorted family.

When 7:00am rolled around I called the Holiday Inn where two dozen or so Shell reps and reps-in-training were supposed to be assembling for a 7:30 rah-rah sales meeting. I got the meeting leader and told him I would be able to attend the meeting because my wife was having a baby. The guy, apparently a supreme asshole from somewhere in Southern California (don’t know for sure since we had never met) asked in a very sarcastic tone if she was going to deliver this week or next. I huffily informed him that she was in the delivery room right then but I would be happy to attend the sales meeting if Shell Oil thought that was more important than being in the hospital for the birth of our first child. He apologized and I hung up on him. What a prick. After that I called San’s mom and my mother. They promised to be there ASAP.

At one point I was allowed into San’s room and found her all drugged up. The doctor had given her what they called a “twilight” drug that cut down on the pain. She was really out of it. Groggy is too polite a description. I held her hand until she awkwardly sat up tried to turn over, looked at me with a jaundiced eye, and said, “Nevermore.”

She didn’t head me whisper, “Quoth the Raven,” to complete Poe’s famous line, though in reverse order.

Right around 1:00pm the delivery nurse came into the Waiting Room, spied me, and announced the birth of our son. I was absolutely ecstatic, jumping up and running around the room hugging and kissing first my mother, San’s mom, and then all the older women who were waiting for their daughters to deliver. I followed the amused nurse to the delivery area to see San and our new baby. Oh my God. He looked like a war victim, bloody and bruised under the eyes from the forceps delivery (thanks to that damned Twilight). But beautiful beyond words. The Dr Dryer told me his Apgar Score was 10 in the first minute after birth and also at five minutes, which he thought was as good as it got. And so did I since I knew 10 was the highest possible score and indicated a strong, healthy baby. I thought my heart would explode with happiness.

The rest of that day is a blur. About all I remember is calling work and telling the District Manager’s secretary to be sure to tell the guy who was running the marketing meeting that we had a baby boy and that he had been a jerk on the phone that morning. She and I had gotten friendly and I knew from her reaction she would slip a knife in the guy’s back when she told our news to the DM, who also liked me since I had scored the highest on all the tests taken by training reps in the Midwest. Another feather in his cap, of course.

Back then newly delivered mothers and the neonates were kept in the hospital for either five or six days. Insurance companies be damned. So, early the next morning I was standing outside the nursery where all the babies were imprisoned and put my blue card with the baby’s last name against the glass. One of the nurses wheeled his little crib to the window and I stared at him as if he was the only baby in the world.

Then, to my absolute amazement, David (David Andrew is the name we decided on) slowly raised his head and appeared to look around, and then slowly lowered his head, turning it in the other direction. I went crazy, knowing from all the baby literature I had read that a newborn’s neck muscles are very poorly developed. A few minutes later I ran to San’s room and found her talking to our pediatrician, Dr. Joseph Sato, who we both thought, then and now, was the world’s best pediatrician. I excitedly told the story of how David raised his head but Sato burst my bubble and said dryly it was all but impossible. His weak neck muscles couldn’t possibly support his head at only one full day old. I kept my mouth shut while he was in the room but later told San that that’s exactly what had happened.

When 6:30 rolled around the next morning I was back at the nursery window with my blue ID card. A few minutes later, as I was beaming at my son, Dr. Sato walked up and said good morning. After shaking hands we turned back to look at David. That’s when he picked up his head, looked around, turned it, and slowly laid it back so he faced in the other direction. Sato was stunned. Speechless is a better word. After a minute of staring with his mouth open he finally stammered that he had never seen a two-day-old baby strong enough to raise his head and turn it over. Twice, I reminded him. At least once yesterday and now this morning. We both went to San’s room where Sato himself told her what we had seen.. It was the first of many remarkable physical accomplishments for our son.

I took the next week off work and spent the whole time taking care of David. San was a wreck. She treated him like he was a porcelain doll that would break if she held him the wrong way. So, even though I had had zero experience with babies I just took over and did everything, from changing his nasty cloth diapers to feeding him. Several weeks before that I had cut out wheels made of stiff, white paper decorated with designs featuring bright colors and geometric shapes. The wheel had a cut out that allowed it to slide over the bottle and I would turn the wheel every minute or so and give the baby something else to look at as he sucked away.

San’s relatives thought I was crazy until they saw for themselves that David would stop sucking and his eyes would follow the shapes as they moved around the bottle until a new shape came into view. As soon as the new shape became visible he would start sucking again but at a much faster rate than before. It was obvious to anyone with eyes that he could see the colors and shapes. Despite being one week old. And that started the wonderful relationship I had with our young son.

St. Louis University Grad School 02

Difficulties, financial and academic, characterized the next year of grad school. The financial part was simple. Without the teaching assistantship, Sandy and I weren’t going to make enough teaching part-time at Harris for us to live. So, I had to take out several small loans to cover the tuition. I hated to do it but had no other choice. Towards the end of the semester (some time in late March or early April), I was so worried about money that I began looking for a job. One of my professors told me the CIA had contacted him a day or so previously and asked if he could recommend a student for a job. He wondered if I would be interested. After thinking for a few seconds I said I would. And so began my short and strange dance with the spooks.

Perhaps a week later I had a brief interview with a CIA rep I barely recall. He gave me an application and said if I was interested in being considered I should fill out the application and mail it. Which I did. It was the longest and most detailed application I would ever see.

A couple weeks after mailing it I received a phone call setting up a time on the next Saturday for me to come to the University and take a pre-employment exam. I agreed. The exam was complex and took four hours. Afterwards, I turned it in to the proctor and left. Two weeks later I received another call setting up a second exam for the following Saturday. That one took eight hours, not counting an hour lunch break. A couple weeks after that I was invited to a long interview with another CIA representative. I though it went well. He told me that if the evaluation was positive I would be hearing from him. Shortly after that he called and told me the Agency had tentatively approved me for a national security background check, which was for a Top Secret clearance. Whoa. The FBI would interview my family, past and present neighbors, teachers, professors, and friends. I had to call everyone I knew and warn them.

The FBI did interview everyone I had listed on the application and then some. For damned sure. After a couple months I received a call from the CIA agent who had conducted the second interview. He offered me a job as a photogrammetry analyst and said I would spend the first six months getting advanced photo and satellite analysis training at a CIA installation somewhere in Indiana and then would start working at the headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

That’s when I told him I had changed my mind and was no longer interested in working for the CIA. Oh, shit, the man didn’t take rejection well. He raised his voice and told me the government had wasted $50,000 on the interview process and how dare I lead the Agency on a wild goose chase. He was royally pissed off and let me know in no uncertain terms. I told him I had re-thought my interest and decided the Agency wasn’t right for me, especially considering what was happening in Vieetnam and hung up before he could further erode the lining of my inner ear.

The academic difficulty centered on a course in techniques of geographic research taught by Jack Licate, a young professor who had a BS from SLU and was fresh from doctoral studies the University of Chicago, one of the most prestigious Geography departments in the country. He was extremely intelligent and more than a bit squirrely. Today, the word would be geeky but back then squirrely hit that nail on the head. His course was really stimulating and I liked it the best of all my courses. I earned all As on the many papers that were due, one a week as I remember it. But when the final paper came due I was not in the right frame emotionally, worrying about money was one of the numerous more important things on my mind, so I decided to sort of blow it off. Seeing that I had a sure A by that point. So I turned in what I knew was a mediocre effort.

Several weeks later the grades were mailed home. I opened the letter, read the report, and went ballistic. Licate had given me a C. It was the only C I had ever received in any geography course. After ranting and raving in what amounted to a blind rage, I called his number at the university. To my surprise he answered and I sort of calmly asked him why the grade. He gave me some song and dance about me not taking the course seriously and maybe I should come in to his office the next day and we could talk about it face to face.

When I showed up at his office I was still steaming. He started with the same bullshit about me not taking the course seriously and I interrupted and demanded to know how all As in every paper other than the final could possibly equal a C. He told me the grade was a reflection of my understanding of geographic research as was demonstrated by the final assignment. He said that I was coasting and not putting in the effort graduate school demanded.

That’s when I lost it and started yelling at him. I literally told him he was full of shit and that he didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. After about fifteen minutes of me ranting and cursing and him just calmly sitting there, probably dazed that a student would speak to him like that, I told him I would take the issue up with the Dean of Arts and Sciences because the final mark he gave me couldn’t be supported by the grades I earned throughout the course. And stormed out.

Even though I was hugely pissed off I knew deep down that he was right. I had been coasting and had blown off that assignment. After stewing about it over the summer I decided not to go to the dean after all but to enroll in whatever course Licate was going to be teaching the next semester and do well. Which I did. On that first day of class, when he walked into the room and saw me sitting in the first row, his eyes opened wide. I knew he was more shocked than surprised. To make a long story short, I received an A in that course and in the next one I took from him. And the letter of recommendation he wrote almost certainly was part of the reason I was accepted into grad school for a PhD.

The next semester I enrolled in only one more grad course and started working full-time as a marketing representative for Shell Oil Company. Dick Patterson, who at that time owned eight or nine gasoline service stations in the St. Louis area and the largest Shell station in the Midwest outside of Chicago, was responsible for getting me the interview with the District Manager.

I did well on that interview and was invited to Chicago for the next one. A week later I was hired to work in Shell’s Central Region (Chicago) but they decided to have me go through a year of training in St. Louis before moving to the Windy City. That situation suited me perfectly since my goal was to get into a good grad school for doctoral work and to hell with Shell.

For the next ten months I worked in Shell’s St. Louis District Office, learning the oil business. I did everything from working in a station for a week, to spending a week at the Wood River Refinery, to a week riding in a delivery truck holding 8,000 gallons of product, two months working in the office with the financial manager and the TBA (tires-batteries-accessories) guy, a month with the real estate guy, and four or five months shadowing first one than another marketing rep.

The only interesting thing that happened in the hugely boring ten months occurred one day when the real estate guy (who I had known from grade school) turned up sick and I was at loose ends. The Assistant Manager gave me a bunch of make work to keep me busy and out of his office. Around 3:00 he told me to read the lease agreement for the new district office the company was moving into within three months. I was irritated since I knew it was just bullshit until 5:00 rolled by and I would be out of his hair. But I sat at the small desk and carefully read the entire document, start to finish, including the lengthy appendices. That’s when I perked up and turned back to the main body of the lease. I re-read one part, turned to the appendix I had just read, and re-read it. Both sections referred to extensive storage space and how the cost was to be calculated in the yearly rent since that space could expand or contract as Shell required more or less space.

In short, the two passages contradicted themselves. The initial part calculated the rent one way while the appendix calculated it in another, totally different manner. It didn’t take a genius or a business major to see the two sections were at odds. Actually, the way the main part of the lease was written, Shell would pay almost double for the storage space when compared to the way the cost was calculated in the appendix.

I took the lease to the Assistant Manager and told him about the problem. He laughed and said in a condescending tone there was no way. The lease had been approved by the Central Marketing Division HQ in Chicago, the North American HQ in New York, and the international HQ in London. It was a done deal. He gave me a patronizing smile and said not to worry about it.

Instead of departing with my tail between my legs I opened the lease to the part describing the storage space and asked him to read it. Then I turned to the appendix and pointed to the formula and didn’t say a word. He read it, read it again, and then turned back to the original clause. “Son of a bitch,” was his only comment before thanking me and hurrying to his boss’s office.

Several months after I left the company, Dick Patterson showed me a Shell marketing brochure. One of the things it covered was a Shell Oil awards banquet in New York. A picture in the brochure showed the Assistant Manager receiving a check and a plaque from the North American CEO for finding a mistake in a lease that could have cost Shell several hundreds of thousand dollars. Oh well.

All throughout the time I worked at Shell I thought about applying to grad school. Sandy was not supportive since she was adamantly opposed to leaving St. Louis. After considerable reflection, I had requested and filed out applications to five grad schools for a doctorate in geography: Chicago, Wisconsin, Kansas, Michigan, and Florida. Each required a payment of $25 for processing. You might not think that a significant sum but $25 in 1967 had the same buying power as $166 in 2011. So, effectively I would have had to lay out the equivalent of about $830 in today’s money. And we were poor as church mice.

One night in anger and depression after a fight with Sandy over money I tore up four of the five applications and the checks I had included and threw them in the trash. The fifth, to the University of Florida, I had mailed the day before or it would have been destroyed as well. And was depressed as hell since teaching at the university level was the only life I wanted.

Jack Licate approached me in mid-winter and asked if I had been considering applying to graduate schools to work on a doctorate. I sighed and told him the sad story. He said that if I was still interested in pursuing an education he would contact Marvin Mikesell, his advisor at the University of Chicago. Holy shit, I nearly fell on the floor.

First, although fairly young, Mikesell was a huge name in cultural geography, one of the brightest stars in that constellation. He was one of the geographers who were at the forefront of changing how the academic world looked at geographers. Second, Licate was the guy who gave me a C in his course on geographic methods and still would recommend me to Mikesell. Jesus.

Of course, I would be VERY interested. Jack said he would see what he could do and would get back to me. When I left his office I was walking on air. Literally.

Probably two months went by before Jack asked me to come to his office. Once I was seated he told me that Mikesell was interested in my coming to Chicago. But all the TA and RA slots had been allocated for the Fall Semester because I had not applied within the appropriate time period. Shit, I didn’t know that I had applied at all. But, Jack continued, if I could enroll as a grad student in the Fall Semester Mikesell was certain I would get departmental financial support in the Winter Semester and from there on.

I didn’t know whether to breath or die on the spot. The University of Chicago was easily in the top five schools of geography in the world. Its reputation was stellar. Graduation with a Chicago PhD was a near guarantee of a good job at a first-class institution, or so I thought at the time. Going there had been a dream of mine for many years. I must have mumbled something to Jack on the order of thanks for going to bat for me and I’ll get back to you after I talk to my wife and ran straight to the library. Before the days of the internet, that’s where you went to dig up information. The recollection makes me smile.

The first thing I did was locate a Univ. of Chicago grad catalog and look up the tuition. My eyes nearly popped out. Annual graduate tuition was between $5,000 and $6,000, depending on the number of hours you took. My heart dropped like a stone. [Author’s Note: In today’s dollars that would have been anywhere from $40,000 to $70,000] No way in hell could I afford even one semester’s tuition. Even if I enrolled in the minimum number of hours the tuition would be close to $2,500. And that didn’t count the outlay for books and fees, which universities always hit you with. No possible way. Even if both San and I worked full-time it would be close. And since she was already pregnant and expecting in mid-May we would have three mouths to feed and no family in Chicago to babysit while we worked.

That afternoon I took the bus home rather than wait for San to pick me up from the campus. I was too dejected to talk to her. I had come face to face with my dream and the bubble popped almost before I could revel in the possibilities. Years later San told me she thought I held it against her for not being able to go to Chicago. In a way I did because if I hadn’t torn up that application to Chicago I might have had a strong shot at a fellowship. But, you never know. Life is filled with uncertainties. And, if I was upset about not going to that Mecca of geography, that resentment faded many decades ago.

Four months later I received a letter from James R. Anderson, chairman of the Florida Geography Department, offering me a grad teaching assistantship. I was in heaven. Although Sandy was distinctly not happy, I called Anderson the next day and accepted. We were on our way to Florida. Yes!

Progressive vs. Conservative Worldviews

Well before the November 2010 elections I thought the time was appropriate to reflect on what political labels mean in the real world while ignoring increasingly ugly aspersions cast by ideological opponents. My purpose was to take a no-nonsense look at the traits and ideals that are characteristic of Americans who hold conservative and liberal world views. I was eager to understand why people in both camps who appear to be rational in other aspects of their lives hold political points of view that they seldom analyze. What I found is very briefly summarized in the following pages.

At their core, political conservatives base their ideology on what social psychologists have recently identified as five moral standards: harm/care, fairness/justice, hierarchy/authority/respect, loyalty/tradition, and purity/sanctity. That ideology is individualistic by nature and positioned in staunch opposition to a strong national government. Liberal ideology is largely based on two moral standards: harm/care and justice (fairness, reciprocity, rights, and equality leavened with compassion and tolerance) and is more collective than individual.

Conservatives are more committed to individual liberty and curing society's ills through individuals’ choices to better themselves and others. Liberals are more committed to individual equality under the law and seek to ameliorate society's ills through targeted government intervention. Because of those and other critical differences, conservatives view powerful centralized government with deep suspicion and even loathing. Liberals, on the other hand, see centralized government as a marvelous opportunity to affect change for the greater good.

As a life-long leftist, I must admit both to a curiosity about and an almost visceral distrust of political conservatism. Please note that while intellectually I understand the concepts of in-group loyalty/distrust of outsiders, purity/sanctity, and hierarchy/authority, recognizing them as part of the defining foundations of conservatism, I have relatively little sympathy for them. Which, of course, is a reflection of my personality and innate principles since I respond much more strongly to moral issues associated with protection/care and fairness/justice.

Author’s Note: A fascinating test that will indicate where you fit on the modern political spectrum can be found by following the link below. For full disclosure, my scores are: Economic Left/Right: -7.75 and Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.64. http://www.politicalcompass.org/test. As a step toward self awareness I highly recommend taking the test. Another web site that explores where individuals stand on numerous moral and political issues may be found at: http://www.yourmorals.org/.

The problem is both conservatives and liberals are strongly convinced they, and only they, are on the side of the angels. As a direct result of those deeply held convictions, both sides spout “facts” that support their positions while ignoring or denigrating other “facts” that do not. If you pay attention to the travesty that constitutes cable news commentary on Fox News, MSNBC, and occasionally CNN, you know the salient reality: the louder you shout and the more effectively drown out your opponent, the greater likelihood you will “win” the argument and be proved “right.” Which is idiocy, pure and simple, whether your name is Bill O’Reilly, Keith Olbermann, or Joe/Jane Lunch-Box.

We have stopped talking to each other and, far worse for our future, we no longer listen to those with whom we disagree. We shout our points of view with little regard for rationality or civility. From my vantage point, the critical political problem for the U.S. in 2010 and coming years seemed straightforward: if our myriad problems have any chance of being positively addressed both sides need to engage in genuine civil discourse and acknowledge that no single political ideology has a lock on "truth" or moral rectitude.

When I first embarked on this effort, I was convinced both conservatives and liberals must, as a first step, understand what their opponents believe. That conviction meant we all must work hard at stepping outside our protective shells of self-righteousness and certitude to see the full dimensions of the other’s viewpoint. Regardless of what we believe as individuals, our political opponents are like us, convinced our position is the only correct one. To admit the slightest weakness or uncertainty regarding a specific policy or program (like Social Security or payments to the unemployed) is to invite attacks from opponents as well from like-minded ideologues intent on toeing the party line. I thought that only open and honest dialogue could take us past the present impasse to a middle ground that does not require either side to abandon deeply held beliefs.

After nearly two months of reading and reflecting about what it means to be conservative and liberal, I was blindsided by an insight not previously considered. Four very significant problems contradict the seemingly sage position cited above. First, in terms of practicality, almost no one will do it. Second, doing so would run against key conservative personality traits. Third, political ideologies are not based on rationality thus their adherents will not respond to interactions that rely on reason or logic. The fourth issue also involves rationality and is discussed below.

As far as the first problem is concerned, we’re very happy disliking, demeaning, and attacking people with whom we don't agree and bonding with those with whom we do. We seem disinclined to change those behaviors. Each side knows they are right and their opponents are a combination of dishonest bastards and dumb fuckers. It’s that simple, especially where politics are concerned.

For a fascinating but, for me, ultimately disappointing evaluation of the moral basis of politics and what has been proposed as a way out of our present dilemma, see: http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html. See also the work of psychologists Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Graham, "When morality opposes justice: Conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize." Online source: http://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/articles/haidt.graham.2007.when-morality-opposes-justice.pub041.pdf.

Here's a real world example of people happily attacking those with whom they do not agree and in the process irrationally denying part of the moral foundations that supposedly define who they are. Many millions of conservatives claiming to be God-fearing, church-going, fundamentalist Christians vigorously applauded the U.S. Justice Department's definition of torture as only actions that "must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." Here's what that definition means in real life: when I attach one electrode to an enemy combatant's penis and the other to his nipple and then deliver one severe electrical shock after another or shove bamboo splinters under his fingernails and set them on fire, those same self-professed, God-fearing Christians fervently profess not to believe that I'm committing acts that are torture, illegal/immoral, or prohibited by international treaties to which the U.S. is signatory. If those scenarios do not blow your mind then you already must have realized that people who have intense loyalty to members of their in-group (in this case patriotic fellow Americans) have little to no regard for the personal well-being or safety of members of an out-group (potential Muslim terrorists) and that intense patriotism/loyalty is a far more significant and deeply held “moral” precept than their vaunted Christianity. Anyone wonder what Christ would think of that “reasoning?” Actually, many conservatives would say, "Yeah, Jesus would OK that." Seriously.

With respect to the second reason for my change of mind, it may come as no surprise that I disagree entirely with Jonathan Haidt’s well-meaning conclusion that the wall separating conservatives and liberals can be taken down brick by brick by each understanding the other’s concerns. The major problem Haidt fails to recognize or address is that conservatives as a group have never valued open-mindedness or tolerance for diversity of opinion. So, asking them to be open-minded or tolerant with respect to liberal beliefs or to be positive about changing the world for the better flies in the face of the very personality traits and "moral precepts" that make them conservative in the first place. Thus, dialogue would be a waste of time and effort unless liberals alone would be expected to compromise their values. Which is the precise position political conservatives have taken in Washington. Witness what is happening in Washington as of mid- to late-July 2011.

The third reason I believe dialogue between conservatives and liberals would prove non-productive in terms of achieving genuine understanding is political ideologies are not based on reason. According to Haidt and many other social psychologists, ideology is based on innate moral principles that enable adherents to distinguish between right and wrong. Most conservatives are moral realists who believe in the existence of true moral statements that report objective moral facts and deny that cultural norms and customs define morally right behavior. Most liberals are moral relativists who believe that right behavior has no correct or universal definition and that morality can only be judged with respect to the standards of particular belief systems and socio-historical contexts. In either case, attempts to use reason and understanding as a basis for effective communication are bound to fail since, for conservatives, the dialogue comes down to good v. evil.

The fourth reason that constructive dialogue is impossible is that when people, for whatever reasons, refuse to recognize reality, meaningful exchange will never occur. Black is white, white is black. Waterboarding is not torture. Our healthcare system is the best in the world. Trickle-down economics and the free market work financial miracles. Evolution is a figment of Darwin's imagination. The Earth is between 6,000 and 10,000 years old. America does not have a handgun problem. Global warming/climate change caused by humans doesn't exist. Scientists are all charlatans and liars. No amount of evidence will change those beliefs because they are not based on objective rationality. And liberals are supposed to dialogue with people who believe and spout such ridiculous nonsense? Hello Alice in Wonderland.

Does hope spring eternal in the hearts of conservatives or are they willfully blind and deaf to reality because doing so suits their ideological bent and deeply held personality characteristics? The latter is my personal assessment. Therefore, what possible good would it do for leftists/liberals to put effort into understanding their political opponents’ points of view? None. What. So. Ever.

Here’s a personal example. A man I respect and regard as a friend and who I worked with for nearly ten years is a very conservative Republican. About two or so years ago, when the debate over some sort of national healthcare system was firing up, my conservative friend and I engaged in a lengthy e-mail discussion of the problems with healthcare in America. Naturally, given my leftist convictions, I argued that we needed a government-regulated system, a position he adamantly opposed. After I ranted about the historically abysmal ranking of the U.S. in a broad array of medical statistics with respect to other industrialized nations, my friend wrote back that the best way for adequate healthcare to be delivered to all Americans was through free market functions. I was astounded and aghast. His email was written after collapse of the economy in the Great Recession of 2007-2008 and even after the once venerable Alan Greenspan recanted his previous Milton Friedman look-alike economic ideology, hung his head in public ignominy, and admitted to Congress that the market was in obvious need of more stringent government regulations to control Wall Street’s immeasurable greed.

In my eyes, then and now, our present healthcare system can only be characterized as fatally flawed, condemning the poor and uninsured to suffer illness and death at rates far higher than any other major industrialized nation and far higher than would be the result even if the fictitious “Death Panels” would have been organized and run under the new government-sponsored healthcare program (a vicious slander perpetrated by conservatives). Yet, my friend saw the same system as highly efficient, providing the best medical technology in the world.

Even though I readily admitted my friend was right about the technology aspect and post-diagnosis efficacy, at least for those who have employer-based medical insurance or Medicare, he refused to acknowledge our present system was characterized by flaws and constraints in access to healthcare that callously and regularly result in denied coverage and excess illnesses and deaths. No matter how many decades of medical statistics documented how poorly and consistently we have performed as a nation, those flaws either were figments of my leftist imagination or just didn't matter in terms of our world-class healthcare system. He simply refused to see the inequities.

I’m convinced that attempts by conservatives and liberals at dialogue, no matter how well intentioned, will do no good whatsoever in terms of an open exchange of ideas. After all, what good is it if l understand the conservative point of view since I do not find it credible or even based on rationality or on real-world honesty? Because for all too many conservatives rationality plays no part in the discussion. That said, as a professional urban/regional planner whose work was always grounded in rigorous data collection and analysis, I have never based my political or socioeconomic beliefs on a refusal to honestly examine and engage real-world conditions. That is why it astounds me that many of not most conservatives refuse to accept any number of evidence-based positions (evolution, global warming, the age of the universe/Earth, dating of geological materials, etc.). It has gotten to the point where millions of conservatives believe science itself has been politicized and must be attacked as a bastion of liberalism.

Today, we occupy a mind-warp in which an enormous number of Americans have stopped thinking and only react to political stimuli on a visceral/primitive level that excludes, overrides, or minimizes rationality. We no longer are concerned with anything that could be identified as "objective truth" but only with selective so-called "facts" that support our position. That way we can defend Charlie Rangel's outrageous actions because he's a life-long Democrat and needs liberal support. Or defend Tom DeLay's outrageous actions because he’s a life-long Republican and needs conservative support. Or champion the astonishingly empty-headed Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann or Jim DeMint for whatever pseudo-reasons people trump up. It's an utterly bizarre world when we are convinced, deep in our hearts, that shit is 24-carat gold.

Although people today seldom read plays, especially those written 50 years ago, Eugène Ionesco's "Rhinoceros" has an eerie, contemporary feel. In that play, people are transformed into rhinoceroses and start following the rhinoceritis political movement. They can no longer speak but bellow and delight in trampling humans. What better metaphor could we have for our contemporary situation with Republicans eager to drive the country into default rather than to compromise on taxes?

Today, to complete the irony—or is it absurdity?—Tea Party supporters see liberals as unthinking rhinoceroses. Hello Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi; the list goes on and on. And liberals see anyone they classify as right-wing nut jobs as unthinking rhinoceroses. Hello Jim DeMint and John Boehner; the list goes on and on.

With unerring accuracy, Ionesco put his finger on the problem:

People allow themselves suddenly to be invaded by a new religion, a doctrine, a fanaticism . . . At such moments we witness a veritable mental mutation. I don't know if you have noticed it, but when people no longer share your opinions, when you can no longer make yourself understood by them, one has the impression of being confronted with monsters—rhinos, for example. They have that mixture of candor and ferocity. They would kill you with the best of consciences.

That's where we are today. Even though I know on a theoretical plane it's appropriate to engage my right-wing friends in dialogue, I am convinced such actions would be absolutely counter-productive. The only result may likely be for them to hold their conservative beliefs even more strongly.

Of course, I have other problems with conservatism. Here's a big one. Understanding the well-documented characteristics of conservatives to be closed minded, prefer tradition over change, and believe in authoritarianism, gender hierarchy, and social dominance will never lead me to accept the implications of those values, which I reject outright and regard as suspicious at every level and verging on the flat-out immoral. Needless to say, I do not recognize those beliefs as having significant moral values, especially since their practice has historically resulted in one group wielding power and dominion over others, usually with the dominant group using violence or the threat of violence to control subdominant-groups. People who strongly believe in authority, order, and stability, even with adverse costs to “others” not included in their in-group, are highly unlikely to change their belief system simply because they want to "understand" where liberals are coming from. All of which I believe points to the weaknesses of the moral foundation position of psychologists like Jonathan Haidt.

Only now do I understand the invisible wall separating liberal and conservative ideologies. No way can I bridge that separation. Fundamentally, my conservative friends and I have nothing more to say to each other. We no longer communicate on a meaningful level, if ever we did.

Of course that impasse has filled me with ambiguity. I still have affection and respect for many conservative friends. But that didn't and doesn't make me rush to the phone or e-mail, to reach out to heal the wounds. In my heart I know those actions would not result in substantive changes to our respective political positions or in our convictions. I cannot understand their point of view and they, obviously, cannot fathom why I believe what I do. I see the world one way, my conservative friends see it another. Perhaps those differences arise from personality traits, though I firmly believe they are even deeper seated. In any case, it is as if we live on parallel universes that do not intersect or interact. So be it.

The conclusions reached above, combined with my judgment that the American political system is one of the most inherently corrupt and morally bankrupt on Earth, have led to a decision to pull back from political interactions. Regardless of what that charming chameleon, Obama, has said, for meaningful political change to occur, the America we live in will have to wait until a monster tsunami-like wave flushes away the current political system wherein oceans of campaign money corrupt nearly every elected representative at state and national levels. A hypothetical that, of course, has extraordinarily little chance of seeing reality.

So, why just stop talking to your political opponents, indeed, why vote? It's a meaningless charade when your only option is to vote for the least horrible choice. Then hold your nose while waiting for the inevitable piece of shit to be dropped on your dinner plate and pretend it's something else entirely. Tax breaks for the filthy rich are great for the entire country and for the economy. Try changing that steaming turd into a palatable morsel. Yeah. Better to give up false hopes and find solace waiting for Godot.

Like Mark Twain, I am supremely confident of one thing: Washington politicians on both sides of the aisle will continue bending over backward to prove they are conscienceless hypocrites who gleefully pad their pockets and those of their base and campaign contributors at the nation's expense.

*     *     *

While I was in the initial stages of investigating the differences between the two main opposing American ideologies, I compiled the following summary of what it means to be conservative and liberal. It should be noted that the points presented are brief rather than lengthy and are not meant to be all-inclusive. Many of those points, if not most, have been culled directly from web sites devoted to explaining differences between conservative and liberal ideologies. Despite my avowedly leftist nature, in describing conservatism I have made an effort to be objective and not load up on pejoratives or knee-jerk labeling. If you are conservative you should be able to find plenty in the first list that pleases you. If you are strongly leftist or merely lean left, many of the points in the list of progressive values should strike a resonant chord. Independents should find much to like and detest on both lists.

Remember, such lists are never perfect, no matter who compiles them.

Specific Positions Many Conservatives Advocate

• Reduce national and state governments, slash Federal spending, balance the budget, cut the deficit, and deregulate business.

• Conservatives want to lower taxes across the board for individuals and businesses and eliminate the “Death” Tax and thus shrink government at all levels. It would be better to bring down the government than to raise taxes.

• A powerful centralized government threatens the individual, family, and private institutions and seeks uniformity and absolute compliance. Government, by its very nature, tends to be inefficient, incompetent, wasteful, and power hungry.

• An originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution should be adopted.

• America is truly exceptional, a shining city on a hill—a place apart where a better way of life exists, one to which all other peoples and nations should aspire.

• Repeal or revise drastically Obamacare; strongly support free market mechanisms in the healthcare effort.

• Restructure Medicare and Social Security as required by fiscal necessity and open both to significantly more free market functions (privatization).

• Strengthen the military and the nation by increasing defense spending.

• War—or the credible threat of first-strike military action—is an acceptable solution to many of America’s international problems.

• Vigilant patriotism is a must—America, right or wrong. America first. Support the troops. America, land of the free, home of the brave. America, love it or leave it.

• Dissent is not patriotic. Criticizing America while we are engaged in armed conflict is betrayal or treason.

• Government should emphasize law and order to control the unruly, lawless, and godless elements in society.

• Liberal efforts to increase government regulation of business and the economy are forms of socialism that must be resisted.

• Individual liberty is strongly preferred over individual equality.

• Duty, respect, and obedience are critical civic virtues. Bumper stickers that urge people to "question authority" and protests that involve civil disobedience are antisocial, un-American, and dangerous, not heroic.

• Equality is best sought through exercise of the free market, not through government laws, regulations, or programs that restrict those who are in superior positions.

• Inequality is the natural order of things. Human beings, in terms of innate talents and personal attributes, are inherently unequal and a social hierarchy is a natural consequence of that inequality.

• Poverty is largely caused by negative individual personality traits and character defects—including laziness, poorly developed intellectual ability, complaisance, and the lack of competitiveness, frugality, self-discipline, and self-reliance, etc.—not by structural socioeconomic conditions.

• By their nature human beings need structure and constraint to flourish; institutions like organized religion, marriage and the family, authority/law and order, and social hierarchy, etc. provide those benefits.

• Chaste, spiritually minded, and religious people are virtuous and morally superior to those who are not.

• Homosexuality is an unnatural abomination, a lifestyle choice people freely make; those who practice it commit inherently repugnant and evil acts. Morally, homosexual acts are much the same as incest and bestiality. Same sex unions are a direct threat to marriage and the family.

• A worldview that proposes "If it feels good, do it" is the philosophy of the devil.

• Conservatives are generally much more favorable of control and punishment than of personal freedom and diversity.

• The Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is a foundational element as long as such possession does not threaten national security.

• Evolution is either a flawed theory or an unsubstantiated fiction; Intelligent Design and Young Earth theories should be taught in public school science classes as viable/valid alternatives to evolution.

• No chain of causality links legal, easily-obtainable handguns and high murder rates. People kill people; guns are merely one of many instruments of violence.

• Border security and immigration laws should be tightened because of the adverse effects of illegal immigrants on American society. People who immigrate to America must live by our laws and by our way of life (culture).

• Global temperatures are completely unaffected by fossil fuel emissions, which means the current climate change/global warming issue is, at best, a myth since its causes are natural, or, at worst, an out and out lie foisted on a gullible public by corrupt, liberal scientists.

• The best way to manage the environment is to open natural systems to the actions of the free market; meaning logging companies should be able to clear-cut anywhere they please and oil companies should be able to drill where and when they like without governmental restrictions, etc.

• Corporations never purposely injure anyone to make money and, given the appropriate free market environment, will take excellent care of their employees. Even if the actions of corporations might inadvertently injure people or they might treat their employees less than benevolently, the proper corrective measures should be meted out by an even-handed free market, not by government or by lawsuits brought by greedy trial lawyers. As a corollary, reform of the present tort system is a must.

• The National Rifle Association is good for the country because it supports and affirms the Constitution; the American Civil Liberties Union is bad for the country because it distorts and weakens the Constitution.

• Abortion is morally wrong since it kills human life and should be illegal.

• U.S. involvement with and financial support of the United Nations should be greatly reduced.

• The national news media (with the exception of Fox News) are systemically biased toward liberalism.

• Repeal strict environmental laws, regulations, and enforcement since they cost too many jobs and damage the economy by reducing corporate profitability.

• End all government public assistance and welfare programs; replace them where necessary with private individual, institutional, and corporate charity.

Specific Positions Many Liberals Advocate

• Adopt a single-payer, national healthcare system.

• Concepts like pluralism and toleration contribute to the development of liberty and should be promoted.

• Strengthen Medicare and Social Security as required by fiscal prudence but prevent the privatization or gutting of those programs.

• Reduce Social Security benefits for individuals with annual incomes greater than $250,000; eliminate benefits for individuals with annual earnings in excess of $1 million; for taxing purposes raise the annual income ceiling to $1 million.

• Tightly regulate and make transparent all political campaign spending by wealthy individuals, corporations, unions, and special interests.

• Oppose interventionist American foreign policies as well as first strike military action.

• Reform U.S. immigration policies to effective enforcement, improved legal/approval processes for workers and employers, and a fair way to deal with those who are already in the U.S.

• End the war in Afghanistan and bring the troops home (from Iraq as well).

• Decrease current levels of defense spending by cutting unnecessary programs, downsizing overseas troop levels across the board; reduce the nuclear arsenal and end the space-based missile defense program.

• Issue Presidential Orders forbidding the use of torture (water boarding and other similar techniques most other countries acknowledge as torture under the Geneva Convention), secret renditions of suspected terrorists, electronic surveillance absent court order, and targeted assassinations overseas.

• Close the Guantánamo prison camp.

• Abolish "Don't ask, don't tell" in the military.

• Support disarmament treaties and the United Nations.

• End the heinous practice of Presidential “signing” statements.

• Normalize relations with Cuba.

• Take a harder position with Israel with respect to the “Two State” solution and pressure Israel to remove settlements in the West Bank.

• Support science-based regulation/enforcement by the EPA.

• Support science-based regulation/enforcement by the Food and Drug Administration.

• Significantly increase government policies and financial incentives to corporations for sustainable energy and pass legislation that would curb emissions of heat-absorbing gases.

• Institute more federal regulations for Wall Street and the major banks to insure the economic collapse that led to the Great Recession of 2007-2008 never happens again.

• Abolish the death penalty; make it more difficult to try children and youths as adults.

• Liberals want to revise the tax code through progressive taxation to fund government. Which means adopting a code that is fairer and simpler than what is currently in place with lower corporate tax rates similar to what are currently in force in Western Europe.

• Support labor unions and “union shop” laws.

• Prohibit the teaching of Intelligent Design and Young Earth ideas in public school science classes.

• Interpret the Constitution as a "Living" document, not one frozen in time.

• Support more stringent state and local gun control laws.

• Support government programs to rehabilitate criminals in society; reduce the number of the incarcerated.

• Support taxpayer-funded public education system.

• Establish a higher minimum wage and higher poverty level thresholds.

• Support laws that combat prejudice, discrimination, and intolerance of differences and diversity (sex, race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, age, etc.); legalize same-sex marriage.

• Legalize and regulate drugs in much the same way alcohol is today.

• Eliminate government censorship of speech, publishing, news media, and the internet.

• Restrain the exercise of government power in the "political" realm, such as the freedom of expression or right to privacy.

• Seek expansive governmental powers in "economic" and "social" arenas in the name of protecting disadvantaged and less powerful groups that otherwise find themselves at the mercies of entrenched institutions and influential groups that historically have run roughshod over the weak and disenfranchised.

• The government has no right to control your body so abortion and a voluntary decision to end your life should be legal.

• Promote government policies to protect the less powerful. As a foundation of those policies, liberals believe a country is evaluated on the basis of how it cares for those of its citizens who struggle to care for themselves.

• Free people from “oppressive” institutions, including governments, religious institutions, social caste or class, customs and traditions, or powerful financial/commercial interests.

• Liberals embrace progressive societal and governmental change as both necessary and desirable for the betterment of the people.

• Government is the only agent capable of applying rational problem-solving techniques to trenchant socioeconomic difficulties and having the authority to carry out such policies at the societal level.

• Social and economic development ought not to be left to chance or to power-wielding groups that have been known to dominate political-economic systems.

• A totally unregulated market economy runs counter to both equality and freedom from domination by business/financial interests.