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GregStevens,Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EDITORIALBOARD How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@red bluffdailynews.com Phone: 530-527- 2151ext. 112 Mail to: P.O. Box 220, 545 Diamond Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS Are religious people as equally prone to immoral acts as nonreligious people? Theanswer is yes accord- ing to a new study, "Morality in Everday Life," which I read about in the Daily Mail. Daniel Wis- neski and Wilhelm Hofmann, the study's lead authors, re- cruited 1,252 adults between ages 18 and 68 using Craigslist, Facebook, Twitter and other outlets. Participants down- loaded an app to their smart- phones that allowed research- ers to text them five times a day. The participants then re- ported any moral or immoral acts — things they did them- selves, witnessed or heard about — and rated how in- tensely they felt about those acts on a scale of 0 to 5. Participants filed 13,240 re- ports, describing everything from arranging adulterous en- counters (immoral) to giving a homeless man a sandwich (moral). Researchers spent weeks reviewing the com- ments and identified six moral principles: care for others, fair- ness, liberty, loyalty, authority and sanctity. Researchers also found that the participants' judgment reflected two other moral behaviors: honesty and self-discipline. "They found that conserva- tives were more likely than lib- erals to report acts involving sanctity and respect for au- thority, and liberals were more likely than conservatives to talk about fairness," accord- ing to Science magazine, which published the study. But their findings on reli- gious people were interesting. According to the Daily Mail, religious people in the study had more pride and joy when they committed moral acts and were more disgusted with themselves when they com- mitted immoral acts — over- all religious people were just as moral or immoral as nonreli- gious people. It is certainly true that non- religious people can be very principled and that regular churchgoers can be crooks in their business dealings. But what is different about many religious people is they have a framework and a com- munity to help them lead more moral lives and seek redemp- tion and forgiveness when they slip up — they have a method- ology, if you will, to help them navigate good and bad. Greek philosophers had names for what is good. They believed that prudence, temper- ance, courage and justice were virtues that all people longed for and should strive to master. And while we're striving for good, we need to fight the bad: excessive pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed and sloth. These are known as the seven deadly sins — activities I save for the weekend. Religion can help us navi- gate good and evil. I have cer- tainly found this to be the case with Catholicism, my religion. We Catholics have a lot of guidance to help us navigate what's moral and immoral. We have the Bible, which of- fers plenty of instructions. We have the Ten Commandments, which, as columnist George F. Will once noted, are not called the Ten Suggestions. We have coaches we can go to — people who have been ed- ucated and trained to help oth- ers understand their religion and use it to achieve good out- comes. A good coach can help an individual improve his per- formance — just as true in spiritual matters as it is in ath- letics. Harvard University Moral Psychologist Fiery Cushman told science that a weakness of the study is that it is based on subjective, rather than objec- tive, assumptions. It's based on the view that the participants have of themselves, which "may color how they report their own behavior." Whatever the case, it's not really so complicated to me. We all long for beauty and de- test ugliness. We all long to be- come good and root out evil. And, in a general sense, I think many people who practice their faith have a slight advan- tage at being more moral by being part of something much larger than themselves — a community that is struggling to do good and avoid bad. To paraphrase the great Dear Abby, church is not a mu- seum for saints, it's a hospital for sinners. TomPurcellisaPittsburgh Tribune-Review humor col- umnist. Send comments to Tom at Purcell@caglecartoons. com. Tom Purcell On religion and morality A good coach can help an individual improve his performance — just as true in spiritual matters as it is in athletics. Cartoonist's take Even though it ultimately failed at the ballot box, the re- cent campaign for Scottish inde- pendence should cheer support- ers of the numerous secession movements springing up around the globe. In the weeks leading up to the referendum, it appeared that the people of Scotland were poised to vote to secede from the United Kingdom. Defeating the referendum required British political elites to co-opt seces- sion forces by promising greater self-rule for Scotland, as well as launching a massive campaign to convince the Scots that se- cession would plunge them into economic depression. The people of Scotland were even warned that secession would damage the international market for one of Scotland's main exports, whiskey. Consid- ering the lengths to which op- ponents went to discredit seces- sion, it is amazing that almost 45 percent of the Scottish people still voted in favor of it. The Scottish referendum re- sult has done little to discour- age other secessionist move- ments spreading across Europe, in countries ranging from Nor- way to Italy. Just days after the Scottish referendum, the peo- ple of Catalonia voted to hold their own referendum measur- ing popular support for seces- sion from Spain. Support for secession is also growing in America. Accord- ing to a recent poll, one in four Americans would support their state seceding from the federal government. Movements and organizations advocating that state governments secede from the federal government, that lo- cal governments secede from state governments, or that local governments secede from both the federal and state govern- ments, are springing up around the country. This year, over one million Californians signed a ballot access petition in support of splitting California into six states. While the proposal did not meet the requirements nec- essary to appear on the ballot, the effort to split California con- tinues to gain support. Americans who embrace se- cession are acting in a grand American tradition. The Dec- laration of Independence was written to justify secession from Britain. Supporters of liberty should cheer the growth in sup- port for secession, as it is the ul- timate rejection of centralized government and the ideologies of Keynesianism, welfarism, and militarism. Widespread acceptance of the principle of peaceful secession and self-determination could re- solve many ongoing conflicts. For instance, allowing the peo- ple of eastern Ukraine and west- ern Ukraine to decide for them- selves whether to spilt into two separate nations may be the only way to resolve their differ- ences. The possibility that people will break away from an op- pressive government is one of the most effective checks on the growth of government. It is no coincidence that the transforma- tion of America from a limited republic to a monolithic welfare- warfare state coincided with the discrediting of secession as an appropriate response to exces- sive government. Devolving government into smaller units promotes eco- nomic growth. The smaller the size of government, the less power it has to hobble free en- terprise with taxes and regula- tions. Just because people do not wish to live under the same gov- ernment does not mean they are unwilling or unable to engage in mutually beneficial trade. By eliminating political conflicts, secession could actually make people more interested in trad- ing with each other. Decentral- izing government power would thus promote true free trade as opposed to "managed trade" controlled by bureaucrats, politi- cians, and special interests. Devolution of power to smaller levels of government should also make it easier for in- dividuals to use a currency of their choice, instead of a cur- rency favored by central bankers and politicians. The growth of support for se- cession should cheer all sup- porters of freedom, as devolving power to smaller units of gov- ernment is one of the best ways to guarantee peace, property, liberty — and even cheap whis- key. Ron Paul is a former Congress- man and Presidential can- didate. He can be reached at VoicesofLiberty.com. Ron Paul Scottish referendum gives reasons to be hopeful Another view By Dick Polman Now that Scotland has voted to stay in the United Kingdom let's talk about the issue of statehood for Wash- ington, D.C. You probably don't get my segue. D.C. statehood came to mind while I was reading ac- tor Alan Cumming's plea for a Yes vote on Scottish inde- pendence. He wrote: "Scots feel they've been patron- ized and disrespected far too long... Scotland is weary of be- ing ruled by governments it did not vote for. The Conserv- ative Party has virtually no democratic mandate in Scot- land, yet too often, Scotland has been ruled by a draconian Tory government from Lon- don." Well, that sounded familiar. Washington, D.C. is a deep- blue city whose denizens are essentially ruled by a Con- gress (most notably, a right- wing House of Representa- tives) they didn't vote for. Dis- trict residents pay federal taxes, but they have no voting members in the federal legis- lature. Their city government can't set its own budget and enact its own laws without Re- publican congressmen stick- ing their noses in. That does seem unfair. The District has more people than Wyoming and Vermont, but both get two senators and a congressman. What the Dis- trict gets, mostly, is grief — especially on hot-button is- sues. Whenever it has tried to enact local progressive laws — to legalize medical mari- juana, to establish a registry of gay domestic partners — conservatives on Capitol Hill have gummed up the machin- ery, delaying implementation for years. That explains why advo- cates of statehood packed a Senate hearing room a few weeks back to support a bill, sponsored by Delaware Sen- ator Tom Carper, that would make the District our 51st state — with a snazzy name, New Columbia. This kind of hearing doesn't happen very often; the last time Congress heard a statehood bill, there was no Internet. And who knows if there will ever be a next time, because, in truth, D.C. statehood wins the Jude the Apostle Award. Jude the Apostle is the pa- tron saint of lost causes. Carper was the only sena- tor to sit through the entire hearing; virtually nobody else showed up. Probably because everybody knows that if state- hood ever reached the Repub- lican House, it would be dead on day one. Vincent Gray, the D.C. mayor, pleaded, "We're not asking for special treat- ment. We're asking for the same treatment other Amer- icans get" — but I'll go way out on a limb here and pre- dict that no House Republican would vote to create a new state that would send two ad- ditional Democrats to the U.S. Senate. Plus, there's another hur- dle, the U.S. Constitution. Ac- cording to the Founders (Ar- ticle 1, Section 8), Congress has the power to create "the Seat of Government of the United States, and to exer- cise like Authority over all Places" therein. Granted, we have tweaked the Constitution many many times over the years (to enfranchise women, etcetera), but I'll go out on a limb again and suggest that a Congress barely capable of keeping the government lights on is unlikely to sing Kum- baya for statehood. Meanwhile, the District re- cently passed a law decrim- inalizing pot possession; for less than an ounce, it's a $25 civil fine. The law went on the books in July, with strong sup- port from District blacks, be- cause the vast majority of those arrested for possession are black. But a Republican congressman, Andy Harris, decided that he disliked the law. So he has inserted a line in the next federal budget, barring the District from spending any money on ad- ministering said law. So, alas, the District's 646,000 residents will con- tinue to live under the federal heel, to be taxed without rep- resentation. Whoever said that life was fair? Certainly not Jude the Apostle. Dick Polman is the national political columnist at News- Works/WHYY in Philadelphia (newsworks.org/polman) and a "Writer in Residence" at the University of Philadelphia. Email him at dickpolman7@ gmail.com. Praise for a lost cause Tom Purcell What the District gets, mostly, is grief — especially on hot-button issues. OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Wednesday, October 1, 2014 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6