This post by Melissa McEwan and the comment thread was a real eye opener. Apparently, if Cosmopolitan magazine publishes an article about the 5 places where sexual predators most prefer to strike, that constitutes “rape apology”. It puts the burden on women not to get raped instead of expecting the rapist to eschew rapine. I learned from the post and comments that American culture is infected with a “culture of rape” that tacitly or even explicitly condones sexual assault.
Putting on my sociologist’s hat and looking at the situation in as detached a manner as I can helps me get past the offence I might take at having my entire sex indicted for rape apology. I remind myself that being male means being part of a category, people with penises, and that we don’t necessarily have to answer for what other males do, although some might make normative assertions to the contrary. I also observe that the differences between men and women on this issue of rape and rape avoidance/prevention appear to center on what constitutes consent.
There is a strain in the culture that recognizes certain behaviors as implying consent to sex. I’m not saying that this is right or good. I’m saying that it is an observable cultural phenomenon, a social fact, that many people deem it appropriate to take into consideration a woman’s dress, demeanor and other circumstances in evaluating whether a sex act was consensual or nonconsensual notwithstanding the testimony of the woman. Moreover, the subjective beliefs of the man as to whether he thought the woman consented are considered central to determining the criminality of the act.
There is a countercultural strain, manifest especially among feminists, that regards unequivocal and enthusiastic verbal consent as necessary and that regards sex in the absence of such consent as rape. In this value system, a woman may dress as provocatively as she can, go to a frat party, flirt like a fiend, shake her booty, and get roaring drunk and pass out with nobody so much as laying a hand on her lest they be rapists. In contrast, under the other cultural value system, that woman might be considered as having signaled her willingness to have sex by her dress and behavior. The same situation can be viewed in two entirely different ways. Both value systems decry rape. They just don’t agree on what constitutes rape. I would argue that our current legal system recognizes the frat party scenario as rape; however, cultural factors make it extremely unlikely for such victims to come forward.
Of course, there is yet another countercultural strain which condones rape outright, but I’m not familiar with it other than to know it exists.
The comments to Melissa’s post reminded me of the many conversations I have had over the years with feminists about this very issue. Some of the scenarios which have been characterized as rape by them have included:
1. Pestering a woman into having sex with you until she finally relents to appease you.
2. Sweet talking a woman into having sex with you when you don’t really mean it. Her consent was fraudulently obtained.
3. Having sex with a woman who, despite not really being into it, goes ahead and reluctantly has sex with you. She consents, but you know her heart’s not in it.
4. Any sex act that has not been explicitly negotiated in advance with the woman’s announcing her consent to each stage. “May I place my right hand on your left breast and fondle your nipple?” “Why yes, you certainly may.”
These definitions of rape are quite a bit removed from the cultural norm, and they shift the burden substantially to men. Who should bear the burden is culturally in dispute. The issue is not necessarily pertinent to the scenario on which a sexual predator lurks somewhere and forces himself on a stranger. There is little doubt in anyone’s mind that a rape has occurred in those circumstances. Where the issue comes into play is when the woman is acquainted with the man whom she accuses of raping her. In those cases, you are apt to have circumstances which the man may attempt to use in his defense to establish that he believed that the woman had consented. What kind of circumstances and facts ought to be considered? Should some kinds of facts, past acts of the accuser for example, be excluded?
It is a challenge to balance the rights and interests of the accuser, the accused and society at large in such cases. At present, the accuser is going to be put through the wringer in many cases, and many will be reluctant to press charges.
The dilemma for those who would like to see more of the burden shifted to men is that this requires significant cultural change, something which is hard to pull off. It requires vigilance and total intolerance for anything that smacks of rape apology or victim blaming. If it seems as if your feminist friend is going nuts over something that seems trivial to you, like the Cosmo article, it’s because she’s fighting a whole cultural strain of which the example of the moment is only a small manifestation. If she takes an extreme position on the issue that seems crazy to you, she’s working against what seems to her to be a culture that puts the onus on her not to get raped.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Childfree = Free Riding?
A commenter on my post about being childfree accused me of being a “free rider” and referred me to this post at deepthoughtblog where this is explained:
“Actually, the childless-for-economic-reasons are taking money – from the next generation. Despite all the talk of ‘lockboxes’ not so long ago, the fact is that current taxes go to pay for the Medicaid, Medicare, social security, etc. of people who are (mostly) already out of the workforce. My father’s taxes went to the social security of his own parents, etc. back to the New Deal. When the current generation retires they will depend upon the next one to pay enough taxes to fund all the social programs they expect to enjoy. In effect, welfare programs collectivize children. But it is done so badly that parents shoulder all the short-term burden of raising children while the long-term economic benefits of children are distributed at-large. All of the economic incentives are to not have children and free ride on the backs of those economically foolish enough to be parents.”
I see deepthought’s point , but I disagree with it for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I pay a lot of taxes that benefit other people’s children. My property taxes are mostly devoted to public schools that other people’s kids attend. I am regulated and taxed in a thousand ways all for the benefit of some mooching parents and their offspring. So the ride ain’t free by a long shot. I expect to pay out a lot more and bear opportunity costs that far exceed anything I might get from the next generation if I retire.
Secondly, deepthought ignores a big part of the value of children to their parents. People have children because they expect to be amused and entertained or otherwise satisfied in some mysterious way by them. This has subjective value just like any other act of consumption, and even though it is not usually discussed in terms of monetary value it is nonetheless part of the economic calculus that goes into reproductive decision-making.
I keep dogs as one of my hobbies. I have a fish tank, too. There are entire industries that cater for my pet keeping proclivities, and I consume (in the economic rather than dietary sense) not only the pets themselves but pet related items such as squeaky toys and plastic castles. I decided that the cost and trouble of having pets were more than offset by their entertainment value. Parents make the same kind of calculation when they decide to have kids or to add another kid to their family. The kids have economic value to them. What’s more, that value inures almost entirely to the benefit of the parents. I get nothing. Parents get at least as much satisfaction and amusement from their kids as the costs. If it were not so, reproduction would be utterly irrational.
I at least do not expect my neighbors to subsidize my hobbies. I wish I could say the same about parents.
“Actually, the childless-for-economic-reasons are taking money – from the next generation. Despite all the talk of ‘lockboxes’ not so long ago, the fact is that current taxes go to pay for the Medicaid, Medicare, social security, etc. of people who are (mostly) already out of the workforce. My father’s taxes went to the social security of his own parents, etc. back to the New Deal. When the current generation retires they will depend upon the next one to pay enough taxes to fund all the social programs they expect to enjoy. In effect, welfare programs collectivize children. But it is done so badly that parents shoulder all the short-term burden of raising children while the long-term economic benefits of children are distributed at-large. All of the economic incentives are to not have children and free ride on the backs of those economically foolish enough to be parents.”
I see deepthought’s point , but I disagree with it for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I pay a lot of taxes that benefit other people’s children. My property taxes are mostly devoted to public schools that other people’s kids attend. I am regulated and taxed in a thousand ways all for the benefit of some mooching parents and their offspring. So the ride ain’t free by a long shot. I expect to pay out a lot more and bear opportunity costs that far exceed anything I might get from the next generation if I retire.
Secondly, deepthought ignores a big part of the value of children to their parents. People have children because they expect to be amused and entertained or otherwise satisfied in some mysterious way by them. This has subjective value just like any other act of consumption, and even though it is not usually discussed in terms of monetary value it is nonetheless part of the economic calculus that goes into reproductive decision-making.
I keep dogs as one of my hobbies. I have a fish tank, too. There are entire industries that cater for my pet keeping proclivities, and I consume (in the economic rather than dietary sense) not only the pets themselves but pet related items such as squeaky toys and plastic castles. I decided that the cost and trouble of having pets were more than offset by their entertainment value. Parents make the same kind of calculation when they decide to have kids or to add another kid to their family. The kids have economic value to them. What’s more, that value inures almost entirely to the benefit of the parents. I get nothing. Parents get at least as much satisfaction and amusement from their kids as the costs. If it were not so, reproduction would be utterly irrational.
I at least do not expect my neighbors to subsidize my hobbies. I wish I could say the same about parents.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Another Idiot Op-Ed Writer at WaPo. Where do They Get Them?
Michael Gerson in WaPo reckons that it is unseemly to criticize General Petraeus. He concludes:
“Despite real military progress, the situation in Iraq remains difficult. Gen. Petraeus is a skilled leader, but we do not know if even he can win. We know, however, one thing: If he is slandered, his advice is dismissed and Congress cuts off funding for the troops he commands, defeat in Iraq will be certain.”
Frankly, it’s about time some of the Bushevik hacks were called to task. Gerson seems to be setting it up so that he can blame defeat in Iraq on the critics of the latest pet general.
“Despite real military progress, the situation in Iraq remains difficult. Gen. Petraeus is a skilled leader, but we do not know if even he can win. We know, however, one thing: If he is slandered, his advice is dismissed and Congress cuts off funding for the troops he commands, defeat in Iraq will be certain.”
Frankly, it’s about time some of the Bushevik hacks were called to task. Gerson seems to be setting it up so that he can blame defeat in Iraq on the critics of the latest pet general.
More on Why I'm Childfree
The last post about family size got me to thinking about my own experience. I used to get some flack for being childfree and was told that I was selfish or immature or foolish. How could I voluntarily forego the joys of parenthood and the many benefits thereof? Some infertile couples would kill for a child, and here we were wasting our eggs and sperm. Nowadays, being childfree is much more accepted.
Frankly, I just never saw the attraction, and the costs and pains seemed to me to outweigh the potential amusement that I might derive from having children. Besides, Mrs VF’s and my siblings didn’t seem reluctant at all for us to take their children off their hands any time we wished and to be entertained by them free of charge. That the nephews were, for the most part, godawful children reinforced our decision to live childfree. We did not want to take a chance that we might get stuck with even one child like them.
Being an uncle is way more fun than being a parent. The kids behave better with me than they do with their folks, because they soon come to realize that I don’t have to like them and that I will stop being so fun and generous with them if they piss me off too much. I can enjoy them a lot more knowing that I will have them around only for a very limited time.
My own childhood doubtless played a role in how I weigh the costs and benefits of parenthood. My father abandoned us, so he clearly didn’t value us very much, and my mother made it known that we had “ruined” her life. I think I reminded my mother of my father, because she never liked me very much. Right out of the gate, I was prejudiced against being a parent.
Also, I find children a little creepy. When they are babies, I don’t much like to be around them what with their drooling and stewing in their own urine and excrement much of the time. They’re as much fun as someone in a persistent vegetative state. And when they start walking around with their grubby little fingers and constantly running noses, they seem to me to be little more than vectors for various pathogens.
Once they become proto-sentient, which happens as early as five or so with some kids, I can abide them fairly well in small doses. I try to treat them as if they were people and to talk to them just as I would anybody else. Ironically, I am pretty good with children, and they seem to like me a great deal. I would have made a great father, many tell me. They’re wrong. I would have been a lousy father. I would have been a wonderful uncle, which I sometimes was and am, or acquaintance, but I would not have been much good at being responsible for the development of another human being. I admire those who chose fatherhood, but I wouldn’t want to trade places with them. I’m not that heroic.
Frankly, I just never saw the attraction, and the costs and pains seemed to me to outweigh the potential amusement that I might derive from having children. Besides, Mrs VF’s and my siblings didn’t seem reluctant at all for us to take their children off their hands any time we wished and to be entertained by them free of charge. That the nephews were, for the most part, godawful children reinforced our decision to live childfree. We did not want to take a chance that we might get stuck with even one child like them.
Being an uncle is way more fun than being a parent. The kids behave better with me than they do with their folks, because they soon come to realize that I don’t have to like them and that I will stop being so fun and generous with them if they piss me off too much. I can enjoy them a lot more knowing that I will have them around only for a very limited time.
My own childhood doubtless played a role in how I weigh the costs and benefits of parenthood. My father abandoned us, so he clearly didn’t value us very much, and my mother made it known that we had “ruined” her life. I think I reminded my mother of my father, because she never liked me very much. Right out of the gate, I was prejudiced against being a parent.
Also, I find children a little creepy. When they are babies, I don’t much like to be around them what with their drooling and stewing in their own urine and excrement much of the time. They’re as much fun as someone in a persistent vegetative state. And when they start walking around with their grubby little fingers and constantly running noses, they seem to me to be little more than vectors for various pathogens.
Once they become proto-sentient, which happens as early as five or so with some kids, I can abide them fairly well in small doses. I try to treat them as if they were people and to talk to them just as I would anybody else. Ironically, I am pretty good with children, and they seem to like me a great deal. I would have made a great father, many tell me. They’re wrong. I would have been a lousy father. I would have been a wonderful uncle, which I sometimes was and am, or acquaintance, but I would not have been much good at being responsible for the development of another human being. I admire those who chose fatherhood, but I wouldn’t want to trade places with them. I’m not that heroic.
Feminists for Voluntarily Going Extinct
Amanda Marcotte often seems reasonable to me, but then she writes this piece in which she advocates population control in the US because Americans are polluting resource hogs who should just go ahead and die out. The most disturbing proposition is that coercion to achieve this should not be off the table:
“First of all, dismissing coercion out of hand in a situation as dire as ours concerns me. Not that one should conclude that coercion is the best bet, but desperate times should at least allow for the consideration of desperate measures.”
I don’t know that I would characterize the risk that Americans might continue to exist as “dire”, but I suppose that I should at least be grateful that Ms Marcotte thinks coercion is a “desperate measure” and not the first resort.
Ms Marcotte sees other difficulties with coercion:
“First of all, it’s best not to make an assault on human dignity right out of the gate without trying other measures. Coercion is unlikely to work, anyway, since people would rebel and create all sorts of nasty problems. You just don’t want to go there if you can at all help it.”
That said, she reckons that voluntary population control would be the best bet. For some reason, Ms Marcotte thinks that there is tremendous social pressure to have lots of babies. Perhaps she is relating her own personal experience, because I have found the opposite to be true. The perfect family size is two children, a boy and a girl. One child is perfectly acceptable, and the childfree lifestyle is more cromulent than ever. Three kids are ok if your first two are the same sex, but more than that is going to raise eyebrows. The Duggars, that family with the 17 kids, were newsworthy not because they are admired for their fecundity but because they are freaks.
Our population growth, factoring out immigration, is negative already, so Ms Marcotte may eventually get her wish and anticipate the extinction of Homo americanus.
The “voluntary” plan:
“We could make contraception and abortion free, and have bike messengers hand out condoms and emergency contraception like they do in France. We could restructure our tax system so that being childless or even sticking to one gets you a tax credit. The government could run ads…to drive home the message that having children is something you should only do if you’ve put a lot of thought into it.”
It’s coercive in the sense that it takes resources from citizens in order to propagandize them into having fewer children, but she is at least not suggesting direct use of force to limit family size. Frankly, this is a nonstarter. What government would advocate the extinction of its own subjects?
I don't see what's feminist about this idea, either. Wouldn't it be a more feminist position to advocate complete reproductive freedom so that women could have as many or few kids as they liked without let or hindrance? I probably just don't get it.
Ms Marcotte and I seem to live in two different realities. She sees America as extremely pro-natalist, and I see it as the opposite. I would prefer that the government do nothing to influence family size and that we all just mind our own business about other people's reproductive choices.
“First of all, dismissing coercion out of hand in a situation as dire as ours concerns me. Not that one should conclude that coercion is the best bet, but desperate times should at least allow for the consideration of desperate measures.”
I don’t know that I would characterize the risk that Americans might continue to exist as “dire”, but I suppose that I should at least be grateful that Ms Marcotte thinks coercion is a “desperate measure” and not the first resort.
Ms Marcotte sees other difficulties with coercion:
“First of all, it’s best not to make an assault on human dignity right out of the gate without trying other measures. Coercion is unlikely to work, anyway, since people would rebel and create all sorts of nasty problems. You just don’t want to go there if you can at all help it.”
That said, she reckons that voluntary population control would be the best bet. For some reason, Ms Marcotte thinks that there is tremendous social pressure to have lots of babies. Perhaps she is relating her own personal experience, because I have found the opposite to be true. The perfect family size is two children, a boy and a girl. One child is perfectly acceptable, and the childfree lifestyle is more cromulent than ever. Three kids are ok if your first two are the same sex, but more than that is going to raise eyebrows. The Duggars, that family with the 17 kids, were newsworthy not because they are admired for their fecundity but because they are freaks.
Our population growth, factoring out immigration, is negative already, so Ms Marcotte may eventually get her wish and anticipate the extinction of Homo americanus.
The “voluntary” plan:
“We could make contraception and abortion free, and have bike messengers hand out condoms and emergency contraception like they do in France. We could restructure our tax system so that being childless or even sticking to one gets you a tax credit. The government could run ads…to drive home the message that having children is something you should only do if you’ve put a lot of thought into it.”
It’s coercive in the sense that it takes resources from citizens in order to propagandize them into having fewer children, but she is at least not suggesting direct use of force to limit family size. Frankly, this is a nonstarter. What government would advocate the extinction of its own subjects?
I don't see what's feminist about this idea, either. Wouldn't it be a more feminist position to advocate complete reproductive freedom so that women could have as many or few kids as they liked without let or hindrance? I probably just don't get it.
Ms Marcotte and I seem to live in two different realities. She sees America as extremely pro-natalist, and I see it as the opposite. I would prefer that the government do nothing to influence family size and that we all just mind our own business about other people's reproductive choices.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
The Reluctant Environmentalist
I have done my part to perpetuate the local population of Great Blue Herons, otherwise known as those “f***king gray birds”, by providing them with several fish feasts. Mrs Vache Folle set the dogs on a heron on Sunday, but it apparently came back while we were at church and helped itself to all it could eat. The population of comets was noticeably reduced. Last night, a heron circled our yard and alit in a maple tree but left because we were standing by the pond. This morning, I awoke to see a heron standing on the lawn rubbing his belly and enjoying a postprandial aperitif. By the time I set the dogs on him he had taken off. I couldn’t see a single comet in the pond, although I harbor a slight hope that some were hiding under the aquatic vegetation.
Oh well. It’s the circle of life. The comets are only a dime apiece, and they had a good run in the pond instead of being fed to a cichlid. I suspect that some of the comet fry survived the onslaught of the heron, but I won’t know until a sunny day when I can see them.
This event got me to thinking about my other contributions to the environment. I feed songbirds and hummingbirds and mitigate the impact of habitat loss and housecats. Squirrels, chipmunks and voles also gain. I maintain four acres of forest that I could chop down or set afire if I wanted to. That’s got to count for something toward offsetting my carbon footprint. I keep a perennial garden, some items in which seem to be favorites of white tailed deer. I refrain from killing the deer and turkeys that travel across my property.
I let my lawns be as weedy as they are because I don’t want to add herbicides and pesticides or fertilizers to the environment. I keep a pond for the frogs and salamanders and crawdads and water snakes. I regularly expose myself to flies and mosquitoes that they might feed and prosper. I hypermile in my car and carpool.
And on top of all that I feed the herons. I’m a regular environmentalist.
Oh well. It’s the circle of life. The comets are only a dime apiece, and they had a good run in the pond instead of being fed to a cichlid. I suspect that some of the comet fry survived the onslaught of the heron, but I won’t know until a sunny day when I can see them.
This event got me to thinking about my other contributions to the environment. I feed songbirds and hummingbirds and mitigate the impact of habitat loss and housecats. Squirrels, chipmunks and voles also gain. I maintain four acres of forest that I could chop down or set afire if I wanted to. That’s got to count for something toward offsetting my carbon footprint. I keep a perennial garden, some items in which seem to be favorites of white tailed deer. I refrain from killing the deer and turkeys that travel across my property.
I let my lawns be as weedy as they are because I don’t want to add herbicides and pesticides or fertilizers to the environment. I keep a pond for the frogs and salamanders and crawdads and water snakes. I regularly expose myself to flies and mosquitoes that they might feed and prosper. I hypermile in my car and carpool.
And on top of all that I feed the herons. I’m a regular environmentalist.
Friday, September 07, 2007
Schwartz On the Iron Law of Institutions
Jonathan Schwartz explains why the Democrats don’t give a crap about anti-war advocates. It’s the “Iron Law of Institutions” at work.:
“…the people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution ‘fail’ while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to ‘succeed’ if that requires them to lose power within the institution.
This is true for all human institutions, from elementary schools up to the United States of America. If history shows anything, it's that this cannot be changed. What can be done, sometimes, is to force the people running institutions to align their own interests with those of the institution itself and its members.”
The Democratic establishment isn't really keen to have a bunch of activists and folks in the grassroots mucking up the works.
This also explains the Bush administration. They don't care if the US fails at everything it does as long as they hold on to power.
“…the people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution ‘fail’ while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to ‘succeed’ if that requires them to lose power within the institution.
This is true for all human institutions, from elementary schools up to the United States of America. If history shows anything, it's that this cannot be changed. What can be done, sometimes, is to force the people running institutions to align their own interests with those of the institution itself and its members.”
The Democratic establishment isn't really keen to have a bunch of activists and folks in the grassroots mucking up the works.
This also explains the Bush administration. They don't care if the US fails at everything it does as long as they hold on to power.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Why I am a Multi-Culturalist
Cultural relativism is an analytical stance taken by social scientists to examine cultural phenomena. Insofar as it is possible to do so, it permits them to analyze culture without making normative judgments and to compare cultural differences without remarking on the scientists’ personal cultural preferences. Cultural relativism is not a prescription for living in the world, and I don’t know anyone who lacks subjective preferences and values. Having such and such preferences and values instead of others implies that the possessor regards them as superior to others, at least for the possessor.
To the extent that I am willing to tolerate differences in preferences and values in others, I am a proponent of diversity and multiculturalism. Everyone is, and only a madman would wish for everyone to be exactly alike in all respects. We vary in our degree of tolerance for differences. I am willing to tolerate just about any practice or norm that does not involve any imposition on me or violence or coercion of others. By tolerate, I mean that I will under no circumstances forcibly interfere or condone forcible interference by others. I don’t necessarily approve of or embrace other people’s practices or values, but I take the default position that (a) it’s none of my business and (b) I might not be in a good position to judge the matter in view of the circumstances of other people.
Being an advocate of individual freedom necessarily involves a very high degree of willingness to tolerate differences. That doesn’t mean that I hold all values and practices in equal esteem, but it means that I don’t even bother making judgments about a lot of things that people do and say. To each his own. There’s no accounting for taste. Live and let live. That’s what I say, up to a point.
Some wingnuts, like that Atkinson character, dislike multiculturalism and frame the issue in the most extreme terms. “Either you condone honor killings or you don’t.” “Either you stone homosexuals or you don’t.” That’s quite true but a pretty meaningless way of looking at the issue. By this reasoning, if there is some point on the continuum at which toleration ceases, then the concept of toleration is a sham. You might as well impose your values and preferences on others right down to the most minute detail.
Debates about multiculturalism are not really about whether it is a good thing to tolerate differences. They should be about where the line is drawn and why one reckons that it should be drawn there instead of at some other point. For my part and in keeping with my preference for liberty, I take the position that it is better to err on the side of toleration. I recognize more than one point on the line. To the far right (if toleration increases rightward) is the point where forcible interference would be justified (I would stop the honor killing if I could). Somewhere to the left of that point is the point where voluntary, non-coercive actions such as advocacy or boycotting or shunning might be appropriate (I don’t contribute to the Boy Scouts because of their discrimination against gays and atheists and their authoritarianism). To the left of that might be a point where avoidance would be reasonable (I don’t watch Fox News).
Liberty will lead to diversity. To embrace liberty is to embrace diversity.
To the extent that I am willing to tolerate differences in preferences and values in others, I am a proponent of diversity and multiculturalism. Everyone is, and only a madman would wish for everyone to be exactly alike in all respects. We vary in our degree of tolerance for differences. I am willing to tolerate just about any practice or norm that does not involve any imposition on me or violence or coercion of others. By tolerate, I mean that I will under no circumstances forcibly interfere or condone forcible interference by others. I don’t necessarily approve of or embrace other people’s practices or values, but I take the default position that (a) it’s none of my business and (b) I might not be in a good position to judge the matter in view of the circumstances of other people.
Being an advocate of individual freedom necessarily involves a very high degree of willingness to tolerate differences. That doesn’t mean that I hold all values and practices in equal esteem, but it means that I don’t even bother making judgments about a lot of things that people do and say. To each his own. There’s no accounting for taste. Live and let live. That’s what I say, up to a point.
Some wingnuts, like that Atkinson character, dislike multiculturalism and frame the issue in the most extreme terms. “Either you condone honor killings or you don’t.” “Either you stone homosexuals or you don’t.” That’s quite true but a pretty meaningless way of looking at the issue. By this reasoning, if there is some point on the continuum at which toleration ceases, then the concept of toleration is a sham. You might as well impose your values and preferences on others right down to the most minute detail.
Debates about multiculturalism are not really about whether it is a good thing to tolerate differences. They should be about where the line is drawn and why one reckons that it should be drawn there instead of at some other point. For my part and in keeping with my preference for liberty, I take the position that it is better to err on the side of toleration. I recognize more than one point on the line. To the far right (if toleration increases rightward) is the point where forcible interference would be justified (I would stop the honor killing if I could). Somewhere to the left of that point is the point where voluntary, non-coercive actions such as advocacy or boycotting or shunning might be appropriate (I don’t contribute to the Boy Scouts because of their discrimination against gays and atheists and their authoritarianism). To the left of that might be a point where avoidance would be reasonable (I don’t watch Fox News).
Liberty will lead to diversity. To embrace liberty is to embrace diversity.
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Not a Good Argument for Home-schooling
I’m not a big fan of public schools, and I am an advocate of home-schooling, but this article at Taki’s is over the top.
“But amidst the chirpy greeting card mentality that accompanies this familiar rite of passage is another message that won’t get any meaningful airtime: It’s also that time of year when vulnerable youngsters are required to leave their homes to being nine long months of subjection to statist agitprop. As Alan Caruba, founder of the National Anxiety Center, observed in a recent commentary: ‘From the Head Start program to the International Baccalaureate, the whole purpose of ‘education’ today is to create new generations of Americans who think that the United Nations should govern the entire planet and who uncritically accept politically correct beliefs about gender issues, diversity, multiculturalism, and environmentalism.’
No kidding. Abetted by mandatory education laws, many modern schools now serve as de facto indoctrination centers where little kids, tweens, and teens are compelled to listen to half-truths about everything from the Founding Fathers to the free market. The kiddos are ‘taught’ by folks who are largely too lazy, too liberal, too inexperienced, or too illiterate to teach phonics, history, economics, or mathematics with any degree of rigor or intellectual honesty.”
The author need not worry herself so much. Even if the purpose of public education is to create a generation of One Worlders, and I doubt this very much, public schools are not capable of pulling it off. Frankly, they are mainly just places to park the kids during much of the day. And if you are looking for intellectual rigor and honesty, you are not likely to find many parents who have those attributes. I reckon that public schools do their share of inculcating statist propaganda, but religious schools do the same thing, and parents are just as guilty.
If your kids are in public school and get their values and information solely from the school, that’s your fault as a parent. You still have a responsibility to educate your kids and point out when the curriculum is inconsistent with your views. Those parents who don’t bother to educate their children in addition to what they get at public school probably wouldn’t be very good home-school teachers, either.
And you don’t have to be a UN-phobic, sexist, racist, ethnocentric polluter to favor home-schooling and to problematize public schooling. Public schools are going to reflect the hegemonic dominant culture, and a public school teacher who taught that women were inferior to men, that races should keep to themselves, and that different cultures were evil would be in a lot of hot water. A teacher who advocated littering and despoiling the earth would also run counter to prevailing attitudes.
I am all for education. I don’t even think schools are bad. I just don’t think that they should be coercively managed and financed. Also, I would prefer to see parents and the proprietors of schools exercise control over all aspects of schooling. Under those conditions, the author of the article could choose a school for her children where they could be taught to believe in absolute sovereignty, sexism, racism, ethnocentrism and the disposability of the planet. Or she could just teach them at home and avoid exposing them to anyone different from themselves in any way.
“But amidst the chirpy greeting card mentality that accompanies this familiar rite of passage is another message that won’t get any meaningful airtime: It’s also that time of year when vulnerable youngsters are required to leave their homes to being nine long months of subjection to statist agitprop. As Alan Caruba, founder of the National Anxiety Center, observed in a recent commentary: ‘From the Head Start program to the International Baccalaureate, the whole purpose of ‘education’ today is to create new generations of Americans who think that the United Nations should govern the entire planet and who uncritically accept politically correct beliefs about gender issues, diversity, multiculturalism, and environmentalism.’
No kidding. Abetted by mandatory education laws, many modern schools now serve as de facto indoctrination centers where little kids, tweens, and teens are compelled to listen to half-truths about everything from the Founding Fathers to the free market. The kiddos are ‘taught’ by folks who are largely too lazy, too liberal, too inexperienced, or too illiterate to teach phonics, history, economics, or mathematics with any degree of rigor or intellectual honesty.”
The author need not worry herself so much. Even if the purpose of public education is to create a generation of One Worlders, and I doubt this very much, public schools are not capable of pulling it off. Frankly, they are mainly just places to park the kids during much of the day. And if you are looking for intellectual rigor and honesty, you are not likely to find many parents who have those attributes. I reckon that public schools do their share of inculcating statist propaganda, but religious schools do the same thing, and parents are just as guilty.
If your kids are in public school and get their values and information solely from the school, that’s your fault as a parent. You still have a responsibility to educate your kids and point out when the curriculum is inconsistent with your views. Those parents who don’t bother to educate their children in addition to what they get at public school probably wouldn’t be very good home-school teachers, either.
And you don’t have to be a UN-phobic, sexist, racist, ethnocentric polluter to favor home-schooling and to problematize public schooling. Public schools are going to reflect the hegemonic dominant culture, and a public school teacher who taught that women were inferior to men, that races should keep to themselves, and that different cultures were evil would be in a lot of hot water. A teacher who advocated littering and despoiling the earth would also run counter to prevailing attitudes.
I am all for education. I don’t even think schools are bad. I just don’t think that they should be coercively managed and financed. Also, I would prefer to see parents and the proprietors of schools exercise control over all aspects of schooling. Under those conditions, the author of the article could choose a school for her children where they could be taught to believe in absolute sovereignty, sexism, racism, ethnocentrism and the disposability of the planet. Or she could just teach them at home and avoid exposing them to anyone different from themselves in any way.
Just Stuff About Me
Things are not so bad as I had thought. Mrs Vache Folle might stick around after all, and I might not get canned. In that case, I get to keep my house and garden. Of course, this is all still up in the air, and there isn’t much I can do to influence events.
Mrs VF and I went into New York on Saturday night and took in a show at Caroline’s on Broadway, a comedy club. The headliner was insult comedian Jeffrey Ross. He was insulting alright, but he didn’t limit himself to the insult schtick. He was pretty good, as were the warm up acts, whose names escape me. We had an overpriced and mediocre dinner in the Supper Lounge of the club, but having dinner on site meant we didn’t have to worry about timing and that we got very good seats for the show. Caroline’s is very comfortable, and the service is first rate.
We want to try to get out more, and I aim to get us tickets for Bill Maher at the Beacon for November 10. I am also going to be on the lookout for events in the Hudson Valley closer to where we live. Nest week my grand uncle is coming into the city from Malibu, and we are meeting him and his wife and my cousin for dinner in Manhattan. It is hard to pry me away from my garden, but once I get out, I find that I enjoy myself after all.
Our church is celebrating its 250th anniversary, and I am participating in a pageant by playing a town crier and the church clerk who leads the psalm singing. I met with a nice Dutch lady who taped my lines and helped me with pronunciation. There are no other Dutch folks in the church, so I could be speaking Klingon as far as they know. I had ancestors in the Lower Hudson Valley back in the 17th and 18th centuries, and I am interested in learning more about how they lived. My ancestor Jan Franse Van Hussum, settled in Claverack just north of where I now live in the 1600s. A cadet branch of the family, from whom I descend, moved south in the 1700s.
Mrs VF got hooked on Harry Potter, and she has got me reading the series. I am one book behind her, on the Prisoner of Azkaban, and danged if I am not enjoying them. If these had been around when I was a kid, I’m sure I’d have been a fan. I was into A Wrinkle in Time and the Lloyd Alexander books at that age.
The voles have been leaving their calling cards all over the house, and Mrs VF ordered some electronic varmint repelling apparatus. I hope it works. Maybe that cat that has been hanging around could do us a favor and nab them for us. Jasper doesn’t seem much interested in going after the voles. He seems to have a size limit to what arouses him except in the case of frogs, and anything smaller than a squirrel is not worth his while.
Mrs VF and I went into New York on Saturday night and took in a show at Caroline’s on Broadway, a comedy club. The headliner was insult comedian Jeffrey Ross. He was insulting alright, but he didn’t limit himself to the insult schtick. He was pretty good, as were the warm up acts, whose names escape me. We had an overpriced and mediocre dinner in the Supper Lounge of the club, but having dinner on site meant we didn’t have to worry about timing and that we got very good seats for the show. Caroline’s is very comfortable, and the service is first rate.
We want to try to get out more, and I aim to get us tickets for Bill Maher at the Beacon for November 10. I am also going to be on the lookout for events in the Hudson Valley closer to where we live. Nest week my grand uncle is coming into the city from Malibu, and we are meeting him and his wife and my cousin for dinner in Manhattan. It is hard to pry me away from my garden, but once I get out, I find that I enjoy myself after all.
Our church is celebrating its 250th anniversary, and I am participating in a pageant by playing a town crier and the church clerk who leads the psalm singing. I met with a nice Dutch lady who taped my lines and helped me with pronunciation. There are no other Dutch folks in the church, so I could be speaking Klingon as far as they know. I had ancestors in the Lower Hudson Valley back in the 17th and 18th centuries, and I am interested in learning more about how they lived. My ancestor Jan Franse Van Hussum, settled in Claverack just north of where I now live in the 1600s. A cadet branch of the family, from whom I descend, moved south in the 1700s.
Mrs VF got hooked on Harry Potter, and she has got me reading the series. I am one book behind her, on the Prisoner of Azkaban, and danged if I am not enjoying them. If these had been around when I was a kid, I’m sure I’d have been a fan. I was into A Wrinkle in Time and the Lloyd Alexander books at that age.
The voles have been leaving their calling cards all over the house, and Mrs VF ordered some electronic varmint repelling apparatus. I hope it works. Maybe that cat that has been hanging around could do us a favor and nab them for us. Jasper doesn’t seem much interested in going after the voles. He seems to have a size limit to what arouses him except in the case of frogs, and anything smaller than a squirrel is not worth his while.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
My Religious Beliefs are Irrational; So Are Yours
Occasionally, I will get into a discussion with an atheist who wants to discuss my religion in rational terms. Or I’ll encounter a Christian whose apologetics for the faith are couched in the language of rationality and logic. I don’t think that you can depend on rationality. I took this test and this test at TPM and found the results quite frustrating since the tests are designed to test the consistency and rationality of religious beliefs.
My religious beliefs are not based on empirical evidence, nor are they derived from logic. They are, I reckon, the gift of God and are not voluntarily adopted. I believe what I believe because I believe it. There’s no arguing the point. The atheist may or may not recognize that his own belief that there is no God no way is as irrational as my belief in a God. It may be predicated ultimately on the arbitrary normative proposition that belief should be predicated on empirical evidence. It may be that he simply believes, with no underlying reason, that there is no God in the same way that I believe that there is.
I know that I can’t prove that my belief is true, so I don’t do a whole lot of apologetics. I’ll talk about my belief to anyone who is interested, but I know that persuasion is pointless. I’ll admit that my belief may seem foolish to the rational mind. If God loves the world, why is there so much suffering? It’s a mystery that I expect will be revealed to me in due course, or not. I sometimes think that we are incredible ingrates. “Thanks for the Universe, God, but a little less suffering would have been nice.”
My religious beliefs are not based on empirical evidence, nor are they derived from logic. They are, I reckon, the gift of God and are not voluntarily adopted. I believe what I believe because I believe it. There’s no arguing the point. The atheist may or may not recognize that his own belief that there is no God no way is as irrational as my belief in a God. It may be predicated ultimately on the arbitrary normative proposition that belief should be predicated on empirical evidence. It may be that he simply believes, with no underlying reason, that there is no God in the same way that I believe that there is.
I know that I can’t prove that my belief is true, so I don’t do a whole lot of apologetics. I’ll talk about my belief to anyone who is interested, but I know that persuasion is pointless. I’ll admit that my belief may seem foolish to the rational mind. If God loves the world, why is there so much suffering? It’s a mystery that I expect will be revealed to me in due course, or not. I sometimes think that we are incredible ingrates. “Thanks for the Universe, God, but a little less suffering would have been nice.”
Crticizing Israel Anti-Semitic?
This British MP writes in WaPo about rising anti-Semitism in Europe and elsewhere. I can buy that anti-Semitism is bad, but the writer conflates criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews:
“Today there is still denial about the universal ideology of the new anti-Semitism. It has power and reach, and it enters into the soft underbelly of the Western mind-set that does not like Jews or what Israel does to defend its right to exist.”
Maybe I missed the announcement where criticism of Israel was determined to be anti-Semitic. I wish someone would let me know, because I wouldn’t want to be labeled an anti-Semite because I didn’t lump all Jews and the Israeli state into a single category incapable of being unpacked.
“Today there is still denial about the universal ideology of the new anti-Semitism. It has power and reach, and it enters into the soft underbelly of the Western mind-set that does not like Jews or what Israel does to defend its right to exist.”
Maybe I missed the announcement where criticism of Israel was determined to be anti-Semitic. I wish someone would let me know, because I wouldn’t want to be labeled an anti-Semite because I didn’t lump all Jews and the Israeli state into a single category incapable of being unpacked.
I'm as Good a Church Member as I Can Be at the Moment
Sunday’s sermon was based on Romans 12. The preacher exhorted us to give our bodies as a living sacrifice in whatever we do. We have no priestly caste, where the pastor and church leaders are the religious people in the community. Rather, each of us, whatever we are doing, should do it for God. As usual, I felt sheepish about the fact that I don’t do all that much for the church. I sing in the choir, and I occasionally volunteer for something, but that’s it. There are lots of very active members who really put me to shame.
Then I looked more closely at the reading:
“1Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. 2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. 3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. “ (Emphasis added).
I have been given only so much faith by God, and while I pray that it will be magnified, what I am doing now is all that I am prepared to do within the church at this time. I have not so far felt a call to step forward and participate more actively. Perhaps I will at some point, buy not yet. So I aim to stop beating myself up over being less active than some of my co-religionists.
Also, to be fair to myself, a lot of the most active members are retired or are housewives. And those who work aren’t long haul commuters. They work locally and can get away for meetings and events in the daytime or early evening. In my life, the church is not necessarily the center of gravity due to my circumstances as a commuter. Home and work and going to and fro between them take up most of my time.
Also, at least I'm not one of those "pew potatoes" as the even more minimally active are derisively called.
Then I looked more closely at the reading:
“1Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. 2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. 3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. “ (Emphasis added).
I have been given only so much faith by God, and while I pray that it will be magnified, what I am doing now is all that I am prepared to do within the church at this time. I have not so far felt a call to step forward and participate more actively. Perhaps I will at some point, buy not yet. So I aim to stop beating myself up over being less active than some of my co-religionists.
Also, to be fair to myself, a lot of the most active members are retired or are housewives. And those who work aren’t long haul commuters. They work locally and can get away for meetings and events in the daytime or early evening. In my life, the church is not necessarily the center of gravity due to my circumstances as a commuter. Home and work and going to and fro between them take up most of my time.
Also, at least I'm not one of those "pew potatoes" as the even more minimally active are derisively called.
Friday, August 31, 2007
More on the Demographic Transition
H&R links to an American Conservative piece about how the demographic transition might affect warfare. In societies where families don’t have a lot of back up children, it may be harder to send your kids off to war. If it turns out that declining fertility leads to peace, then I’m all for it. Of course, the writer at AmCon figures that internal demographic dynamics may threaten internal security as the younger, non-European population displaces the less fertile descendants of Europeans.
The demographic transition, where more developed, wealthier societies see a fertility decline relative to poorer societies, has been observed for a long time. It also shows up in lower fertility in wealthier classes within a society relative to the poorer classes. Even Augustus had to deal with a fertility crisis among patricians and equestrians some 2000 years ago.
A lot of explanations have been advanced. It has been argued that fertility rates are a function of intergenerational floes of wealth. If wealth flows from children to parents, fertility will be high. If, on the other hand, it flows from parents to children, fertility will be low. I would argue that the investment in children almost always exceeds the return and that the wealth flows model is unpersuasive. Another model centers on capital investments. Wealthier folks’ kids are costlier, so they have fewer. The usual argument is that wealthier folks invest more in each child presumably because they are more valuable to them than poor kids are to their parents.
I reckon that the central factor in this phenomenon is higher opportunity costs for women which makes children more costly to wealthier and more highly educated women. If we assume that people calculate whether the satisfaction expected from another child will offset expected costs, then differences in opportunity costs will be among the biggest cost factors leading to differential fertility rates across classes. A woman who stands to lose $100,000 a year in salary and a degree of seniority by staying home with a child for the first two years of its life will have a different calculation than a woman who is giving up $20,000 a year.
And it’s not just the monetary costs at work. It’s other opportunities that must be foregone. While it is possible to breed and go to college or grad school, it isn’t easy to do so. Educated women have lots of outlets and opportunities that might be incompatible to some degree with mothering a large brood of offspring. For less well educated women, there might not be as many attractive choices for deriving satisfaction.
So the way to solve the dilemma of cultural and demographic change caused by the lower fertility rate of educated women is to: (a) deny women education or opportunities for satisfying careers so that they will have lots of children, or (b) see to it that the immigrant populations and developing countries afford education and opportunities to women so that their fertility will decline as well.
Frankly, there are so many anti-natalist policies in America that I am surprised that anyone can afford to breed. The biggest is confiscatory taxation. You need two earners in many cases just to get by thanks to the chunk the government extracts form you, and you can’t afford too many kids and costs of care or costs of being out of work to care for them yourself. And if you can’t care for them yourself, it kind of takes the shine off the whole undertaking.
The demographic transition, where more developed, wealthier societies see a fertility decline relative to poorer societies, has been observed for a long time. It also shows up in lower fertility in wealthier classes within a society relative to the poorer classes. Even Augustus had to deal with a fertility crisis among patricians and equestrians some 2000 years ago.
A lot of explanations have been advanced. It has been argued that fertility rates are a function of intergenerational floes of wealth. If wealth flows from children to parents, fertility will be high. If, on the other hand, it flows from parents to children, fertility will be low. I would argue that the investment in children almost always exceeds the return and that the wealth flows model is unpersuasive. Another model centers on capital investments. Wealthier folks’ kids are costlier, so they have fewer. The usual argument is that wealthier folks invest more in each child presumably because they are more valuable to them than poor kids are to their parents.
I reckon that the central factor in this phenomenon is higher opportunity costs for women which makes children more costly to wealthier and more highly educated women. If we assume that people calculate whether the satisfaction expected from another child will offset expected costs, then differences in opportunity costs will be among the biggest cost factors leading to differential fertility rates across classes. A woman who stands to lose $100,000 a year in salary and a degree of seniority by staying home with a child for the first two years of its life will have a different calculation than a woman who is giving up $20,000 a year.
And it’s not just the monetary costs at work. It’s other opportunities that must be foregone. While it is possible to breed and go to college or grad school, it isn’t easy to do so. Educated women have lots of outlets and opportunities that might be incompatible to some degree with mothering a large brood of offspring. For less well educated women, there might not be as many attractive choices for deriving satisfaction.
So the way to solve the dilemma of cultural and demographic change caused by the lower fertility rate of educated women is to: (a) deny women education or opportunities for satisfying careers so that they will have lots of children, or (b) see to it that the immigrant populations and developing countries afford education and opportunities to women so that their fertility will decline as well.
Frankly, there are so many anti-natalist policies in America that I am surprised that anyone can afford to breed. The biggest is confiscatory taxation. You need two earners in many cases just to get by thanks to the chunk the government extracts form you, and you can’t afford too many kids and costs of care or costs of being out of work to care for them yourself. And if you can’t care for them yourself, it kind of takes the shine off the whole undertaking.
Death Will Come Soon Enough
I have been a fan of the Wilson brothers ever since “Bottle Rockets”. I especially liked Owen, and I was saddened to hear that he tried to kill himself. I’m glad that he failed, and I wish him a full recovery. I expect that he will continue to be successful in the movie business.
I have been very depressed at times in my life, but I have never actually gotten to the point of trying to kill myself. Sure, it’s a comfort to know if things get really tough that sweet, sweet death is there to embrace you and make it all go away. I’ve just never gotten even close to the point where I even considered the option. I haven’t even thought out how I’d do the deed other than to imagine some comedic possibilities like setting it up so that I’d be framing someone I don’t like for my “murder” or some such thing.
When I was a lad in the Bible Belt, many of the most rousing hymns that we sang were about looking forward to that wonderful day when we’d die and get to leave this miserable world behind. Life was probably hard when a lot of those songs were written, and I could see how you’d get weary of life as a dirt farmer, especially if you expected to go to a paradise without pain or toil. It’s hard to be somber when you sing “I’ll Fly Away” even though the theme of the song is the happy anticipation of sweet, sweet death.
The generations that preceded mine were marked by large families, so we had a lot of kinfolks. That meant going to a lot of funerals and visiting funeral homes, and those songs embracing death were quite a comfort to them as mourned. They still are when I go home to the mountains when a kinsman dies. Up here in Yankee land, they sing different songs, but I don’t go to as many funerals.
I have been very depressed at times in my life, but I have never actually gotten to the point of trying to kill myself. Sure, it’s a comfort to know if things get really tough that sweet, sweet death is there to embrace you and make it all go away. I’ve just never gotten even close to the point where I even considered the option. I haven’t even thought out how I’d do the deed other than to imagine some comedic possibilities like setting it up so that I’d be framing someone I don’t like for my “murder” or some such thing.
When I was a lad in the Bible Belt, many of the most rousing hymns that we sang were about looking forward to that wonderful day when we’d die and get to leave this miserable world behind. Life was probably hard when a lot of those songs were written, and I could see how you’d get weary of life as a dirt farmer, especially if you expected to go to a paradise without pain or toil. It’s hard to be somber when you sing “I’ll Fly Away” even though the theme of the song is the happy anticipation of sweet, sweet death.
The generations that preceded mine were marked by large families, so we had a lot of kinfolks. That meant going to a lot of funerals and visiting funeral homes, and those songs embracing death were quite a comfort to them as mourned. They still are when I go home to the mountains when a kinsman dies. Up here in Yankee land, they sing different songs, but I don’t go to as many funerals.
I Want to Practice Economic Democracy, But I Don't Know How
Kevin Carson announces the Solidarity Economy Network which is supposed, inter alia, to be kind of clearinghouse of information about movements and institutions devoted to “economic democracy”. Perhaps this will be a step toward overcoming the fragmentation of the movement. Writes Carson:
“Cooperatives and other alternative economic ventures find themselves swimming in a capitalist sea; because of their fragmentation from each other, their minimal systemic influence bears no relation to their actual numerical importance.”
I regret that I find myself so far out on the fringes of the movement that it is all but invisible to me. I share the values of the movement, but I don’t know how to live them. Because I am not competent about it, the particpants in my part of the world are not salient to me. A whole world of cooperatives and alternative economic ventures could be around me, and I wouldn’t even know it. Perhaps this SEN will be helpful in drawing me in. I hope that they will have something like an Economic Democracy for Dummies function for folks like me who are sympathetic but clueless.
My main problem is that my fee time is precious to me thanks in part to my long commute. While I want to patronize alternative ventures and cooperatives, I need to be directed to them. I just don’t have the time or energy to seek them out.
“Cooperatives and other alternative economic ventures find themselves swimming in a capitalist sea; because of their fragmentation from each other, their minimal systemic influence bears no relation to their actual numerical importance.”
I regret that I find myself so far out on the fringes of the movement that it is all but invisible to me. I share the values of the movement, but I don’t know how to live them. Because I am not competent about it, the particpants in my part of the world are not salient to me. A whole world of cooperatives and alternative economic ventures could be around me, and I wouldn’t even know it. Perhaps this SEN will be helpful in drawing me in. I hope that they will have something like an Economic Democracy for Dummies function for folks like me who are sympathetic but clueless.
My main problem is that my fee time is precious to me thanks in part to my long commute. While I want to patronize alternative ventures and cooperatives, I need to be directed to them. I just don’t have the time or energy to seek them out.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Defending Craig
Mrs Vache Folle clued me in to this brilliant defense of Larry Craig.
“In short, the crime he was arrested for ought not be a crime. If they are going to include among punishable offenses the act of wanting sex, and asking for sex, but not actually getting any sex ... there aren't enough cells in all the jails in America.”
“In short, the crime he was arrested for ought not be a crime. If they are going to include among punishable offenses the act of wanting sex, and asking for sex, but not actually getting any sex ... there aren't enough cells in all the jails in America.”
Wm N Grigg On Illegal Immigration
Wm N Grigg is my hero. His take on the “immigration problem” is the most sensible that I have been exposed to. Writes Grigg:
“As in so much else, the key to solving the immigration problem is to define the problem correctly, while bearing in mind another of Burnham's Laws: Where there is no solution, there is no problem.’
Grigg suggests that we treat the concrete problems that have been attributed to illegal immigration as discrete issues in and of themselves instead of packing everything together under the “illegal immigration problem”. Restrictions on immigration haven’t worked so far and have inevitably led to criminality. If we lifted the restrictions altogether and addressed the concrete problems themselves, that might have a chance of working.
Then again, I suspect that for many who favor restrictions and consider that we have an “immigration problem”, the immigrants themselves are the problem. They just don’t like Mexicans.
“As in so much else, the key to solving the immigration problem is to define the problem correctly, while bearing in mind another of Burnham's Laws: Where there is no solution, there is no problem.’
Grigg suggests that we treat the concrete problems that have been attributed to illegal immigration as discrete issues in and of themselves instead of packing everything together under the “illegal immigration problem”. Restrictions on immigration haven’t worked so far and have inevitably led to criminality. If we lifted the restrictions altogether and addressed the concrete problems themselves, that might have a chance of working.
Then again, I suspect that for many who favor restrictions and consider that we have an “immigration problem”, the immigrants themselves are the problem. They just don’t like Mexicans.
Free Will Is a Sham
In JL Wilson’s list of 8 Things , the item that stood out for me was the following:
“I don't understand the concept of free will. It seems to me that anything I chose to do was the only thing I was capable of choosing in that moment of decision. Most of the time I "should" have made a better decision, but that wouldn't have been me making the decision. Everything that happens - including everything I make or let happen - happens for a reason. “
It’s good to know that I’m not the only one who has problems with “free will”. I think of it as a useful fiction rather than something that we really exercise. It is helpful to act in some cases, e.g. in allocating blame, as if we had free will, but let’s not forget that it is a heuristic device.
I believe that everything I have done or ever will do is determined by a multitude of causes beyond my ken and that everything that happens was laid down in the Mind of God from the beginning of time for God’s unfathomable Purposes. That does not mean that my heart does not break. Moreover, it does not make me a practicing fatalist. I don’t know what is going to happen or what choices I may make, so it’s all a big surprise to me, and I hope that it will turn out that I one of the folks who made the right choices at least some of the time.
My freedom from the concept of free will has helped me in my spiritual life and to understand grace. I believe that I am a beneficiary of God’s infinite Grace. I am free from bondage to sin. My sins don’t count against me. God loves me just the way I am. Sunday before last, one of the back up preachers sermonized about this freedom. He did what preachers always seem to do. He announced our freedom from sin and then took it back! Good news, everybody, we’re free from sin, but you are going to have to struggle not to sin anyway. Wrong, wrong, wrong, say I. The Holy Ghost working within you will transform you into a new person who won’t even want to sin. You need not worry about rule breaking. All you need to do is let yourself act out of love.
Getting past free will also helps me with my problem with guilt. Thanks to the Baptists and other fundamentalists and my mom, I feel a lot of guilt and shame. I feel this not only for the bad stuff I do but also for the good stuff that I don’t do! I am ashamed that I am not as generous and loving as a saint, and I feel twinges of guilt about stupid things I said or did decades ago. But when I ponder that I am the person that I was meant to be, that I was made only to be so good and no better, that I didn’t really have any choice but to say or do the stupid things, I can repress my feelings of guilt and shame for a while. Mrs Vache Folle once encouraged me to be more like Homer Simpson who never regrets anything and to compare myself to an ax murderer rather than to Mother Theresa. I’m trying.
Like LJ Wilson, I find that getting past free will allows me to be less angry with others and to be more patient and understanding.
“I don't understand the concept of free will. It seems to me that anything I chose to do was the only thing I was capable of choosing in that moment of decision. Most of the time I "should" have made a better decision, but that wouldn't have been me making the decision. Everything that happens - including everything I make or let happen - happens for a reason. “
It’s good to know that I’m not the only one who has problems with “free will”. I think of it as a useful fiction rather than something that we really exercise. It is helpful to act in some cases, e.g. in allocating blame, as if we had free will, but let’s not forget that it is a heuristic device.
I believe that everything I have done or ever will do is determined by a multitude of causes beyond my ken and that everything that happens was laid down in the Mind of God from the beginning of time for God’s unfathomable Purposes. That does not mean that my heart does not break. Moreover, it does not make me a practicing fatalist. I don’t know what is going to happen or what choices I may make, so it’s all a big surprise to me, and I hope that it will turn out that I one of the folks who made the right choices at least some of the time.
My freedom from the concept of free will has helped me in my spiritual life and to understand grace. I believe that I am a beneficiary of God’s infinite Grace. I am free from bondage to sin. My sins don’t count against me. God loves me just the way I am. Sunday before last, one of the back up preachers sermonized about this freedom. He did what preachers always seem to do. He announced our freedom from sin and then took it back! Good news, everybody, we’re free from sin, but you are going to have to struggle not to sin anyway. Wrong, wrong, wrong, say I. The Holy Ghost working within you will transform you into a new person who won’t even want to sin. You need not worry about rule breaking. All you need to do is let yourself act out of love.
Getting past free will also helps me with my problem with guilt. Thanks to the Baptists and other fundamentalists and my mom, I feel a lot of guilt and shame. I feel this not only for the bad stuff I do but also for the good stuff that I don’t do! I am ashamed that I am not as generous and loving as a saint, and I feel twinges of guilt about stupid things I said or did decades ago. But when I ponder that I am the person that I was meant to be, that I was made only to be so good and no better, that I didn’t really have any choice but to say or do the stupid things, I can repress my feelings of guilt and shame for a while. Mrs Vache Folle once encouraged me to be more like Homer Simpson who never regrets anything and to compare myself to an ax murderer rather than to Mother Theresa. I’m trying.
Like LJ Wilson, I find that getting past free will allows me to be less angry with others and to be more patient and understanding.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Undercover Bathroom Footsy Police
I don’t care if Larry Craig plays footsy with strangers in airport lavatories. Since he is the kind of guy who advocates laws against gays, it is ironic justice that he should be taken in an undercover bathroom footsy sting operation.
You know you have too many cops when you can devote one or more to bathroom footsy patrol. I guess all the real crime in Minneapolis was eradicated, so the cops are now focusing on issues further down on the priority list. Durkheim warned us that this would happen.
You know you have too many cops when you can devote one or more to bathroom footsy patrol. I guess all the real crime in Minneapolis was eradicated, so the cops are now focusing on issues further down on the priority list. Durkheim warned us that this would happen.
The 8 Things Meme
Brewrunner tagged me with a meme. Here are the rules:
"People who are tagged need to write these rules in their own blogs & share eight things about themselves that others might not know. At the end of the their blog post, they need to tag six people and list their (blog) names. Leave a comment on the blogs of the people they’ve chosen telling them they’ve been tagged and encouraging them to come over and read the eight things you’ve written on your blog."
I don't have anything better to do, so here goes.
Thing the First. I have the distinction of being the only person ever cut from my high school football team. On a lark, I went out for football in spring training before my senior year to see what the fuss was about. I made up for my ineptitude with my lack of speed. The coach said I could be a manager but that I would probably get killed if allowed to play.
Thing the Second. I sang in the Official Stay and See America in Georgia First Bicentennial Singing Group. Yes. That was our designation. We were twelve clean cut Baptist teens who toured around in a bus and performed at Bicentennial events and in churches. It was sickening. It was a lot like Up With People but with a more religious twist. I got to sing the national anthem at a Braves game and to meet Hank Aaron.
Thing the Third. I published, with some others, an article based on my masters’ thesis on birth intervals in a migrating Mennonite community. I reckon that makes me a real physical anthropologist. My thesis went a lot further than the article in that I found that the correlation between birth intervals and infant mortality appeared to come into play even in the case of miscarriages and stillbirths. This lends weight to the proposition that metabolic costs to the mother are the underlying causative factor.
Thing the Fourth. I have double rooted bicuspids.
Thing the Fifth. I was once a rabid Mariners fan, and I listened to, watched or attended every game of the season for a number of years when we lived out west. I almost started to believe that I had magical abilities to influence the outcome of games and that, if I were home listening to the game, I had to kick a soccer ball around the yard whenever Norm Charlton was pitching. Mrs Vache Folle got into it, but not in a crazy way. She once suggested that we attend a particular game because the “Big Eunuch” was pitching. That’s what she thought Randy Johnson’s nickname was. She liked to go to the ballpark whenever Dave Fleming was pitching, because she knew there would be lots of offense.
Thing the Sixth. I am a leg man. I have always had a thing for a nice set of pins.
Thing the Seventh. When I was in my twenties I changed my name legally in order to distance myself from my deadbeat dad who had abandoned us when I was eleven. I really resented him and his new family, so I dropped his name for a made up name (the island of St George where Mrs VF and I had honeymooned). When I was in my forties, I reconciled with my father, and now I regret the name change.
Thing the Eighth. I was the recipient of the Rob Hess Memorial Award for Courtesy and Christian Character when I was a high school sophomore. I got my name on a plaque and was mercilessly derided as a dweeb. Rob Hess had been a nice kid who had been killed in a car crash, and his parents had set up the award. There may have been $50 involved as well.
I now tag Lemme Howdt, Iceberg, GGI, Steve Scott, bpsycho, and Steve.
"People who are tagged need to write these rules in their own blogs & share eight things about themselves that others might not know. At the end of the their blog post, they need to tag six people and list their (blog) names. Leave a comment on the blogs of the people they’ve chosen telling them they’ve been tagged and encouraging them to come over and read the eight things you’ve written on your blog."
I don't have anything better to do, so here goes.
Thing the First. I have the distinction of being the only person ever cut from my high school football team. On a lark, I went out for football in spring training before my senior year to see what the fuss was about. I made up for my ineptitude with my lack of speed. The coach said I could be a manager but that I would probably get killed if allowed to play.
Thing the Second. I sang in the Official Stay and See America in Georgia First Bicentennial Singing Group. Yes. That was our designation. We were twelve clean cut Baptist teens who toured around in a bus and performed at Bicentennial events and in churches. It was sickening. It was a lot like Up With People but with a more religious twist. I got to sing the national anthem at a Braves game and to meet Hank Aaron.
Thing the Third. I published, with some others, an article based on my masters’ thesis on birth intervals in a migrating Mennonite community. I reckon that makes me a real physical anthropologist. My thesis went a lot further than the article in that I found that the correlation between birth intervals and infant mortality appeared to come into play even in the case of miscarriages and stillbirths. This lends weight to the proposition that metabolic costs to the mother are the underlying causative factor.
Thing the Fourth. I have double rooted bicuspids.
Thing the Fifth. I was once a rabid Mariners fan, and I listened to, watched or attended every game of the season for a number of years when we lived out west. I almost started to believe that I had magical abilities to influence the outcome of games and that, if I were home listening to the game, I had to kick a soccer ball around the yard whenever Norm Charlton was pitching. Mrs Vache Folle got into it, but not in a crazy way. She once suggested that we attend a particular game because the “Big Eunuch” was pitching. That’s what she thought Randy Johnson’s nickname was. She liked to go to the ballpark whenever Dave Fleming was pitching, because she knew there would be lots of offense.
Thing the Sixth. I am a leg man. I have always had a thing for a nice set of pins.
Thing the Seventh. When I was in my twenties I changed my name legally in order to distance myself from my deadbeat dad who had abandoned us when I was eleven. I really resented him and his new family, so I dropped his name for a made up name (the island of St George where Mrs VF and I had honeymooned). When I was in my forties, I reconciled with my father, and now I regret the name change.
Thing the Eighth. I was the recipient of the Rob Hess Memorial Award for Courtesy and Christian Character when I was a high school sophomore. I got my name on a plaque and was mercilessly derided as a dweeb. Rob Hess had been a nice kid who had been killed in a car crash, and his parents had set up the award. There may have been $50 involved as well.
I now tag Lemme Howdt, Iceberg, GGI, Steve Scott, bpsycho, and Steve.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
I Sometimes Have Doubts
JL Wilson has a point when he argues that the monopolization of the legitimate use of force by the state would be preferable to the situation in which individuals ran amok and imposed their will on others by force. Norbert Elias referred to the monopolization of violence by states as the “civilizing process”. Another part of this was the diffusion of bourgeois values to the lower orders of society. The murder rate, if you don’t count murders by states, has fallen over the last 800 years or so coincidental with state formation.
I prefer to think of this process as “domestication” rather than civilization because it involves making us both more governable and self governing. This leaves us less exposed to the predations of our neighbors but more exposed to the predations of our rulers.
I like to think of my fellow human beings as basically cooperative and kind, and my desire for anarchy is based to some degree on my conviction that most people don’t need to be governed. On the other hand, if I am wrong and most people are bad, then I wouldn’t want to be governed by bad people. So I get right back to anarchy as my preference.
I understand how some people might be frightened of the prospect and would fear that anarchy would mean chaos and unfettered violence. I frequently hear arguments to the effect that we would all have to be armed to the teeth and constantly at war if we had no government. I reckon the ax murderers and thugs get so much press and attention that we forget the thousands of acts of kindness and solicitude that enable us to get through the day. We live relatively atomistic, isolated lives and don’t really know our neighbors. They might be murderous bastards for all we know, and the police are all that stands between us and their depravity. And what about those urban gangs? They’d come upstate and vandalize our homes and rape our women if it weren’t for East Fishkill’s finest.
I confess that I have some reservations and doubts about my vision of a free society. Would the “private defense agency” that I subscribed to be more like a feudal warlord than a business sensitive to my demands as a consumer? And what about all the reliance on insurance contracts in the free society? Have you ever dealt with an insurance company? They are regulated out the wazoo now, and they still don’t pay claims as they are supposed to.
I have been totally steeped in bourgeois values, but I try to see things from the perspective of working class or lower class people and to recognize their different values and norms as resistance to the dominant culture. But I just can’t embrace so much of it. Dogfighting, cockfighting, bearbaiting, blood sports, demeaning of women in rap and popular culture, child beating, domestic abuse and a host of other aspects of life among the riff raff frighten or disgust me. All the guests on Jerry Springer or the folks who make guest appearances on Cops undermine my regard for my fellow human beings. That people spend gazillions of dollars on the WWE causes me to question the sanity of many. Seriously, there are still people who think that the fights on the WWE are real.
I have to keep reminding myself that these folks with the scary or repugnant tastes are a small proportion of the population and that most working class or lower class people really are the salt of the earth. They love their families and their dogs, and they are just trying to get by in a world that is stacked against them. I’d take my chances living among them in a free society.
I prefer to think of this process as “domestication” rather than civilization because it involves making us both more governable and self governing. This leaves us less exposed to the predations of our neighbors but more exposed to the predations of our rulers.
I like to think of my fellow human beings as basically cooperative and kind, and my desire for anarchy is based to some degree on my conviction that most people don’t need to be governed. On the other hand, if I am wrong and most people are bad, then I wouldn’t want to be governed by bad people. So I get right back to anarchy as my preference.
I understand how some people might be frightened of the prospect and would fear that anarchy would mean chaos and unfettered violence. I frequently hear arguments to the effect that we would all have to be armed to the teeth and constantly at war if we had no government. I reckon the ax murderers and thugs get so much press and attention that we forget the thousands of acts of kindness and solicitude that enable us to get through the day. We live relatively atomistic, isolated lives and don’t really know our neighbors. They might be murderous bastards for all we know, and the police are all that stands between us and their depravity. And what about those urban gangs? They’d come upstate and vandalize our homes and rape our women if it weren’t for East Fishkill’s finest.
I confess that I have some reservations and doubts about my vision of a free society. Would the “private defense agency” that I subscribed to be more like a feudal warlord than a business sensitive to my demands as a consumer? And what about all the reliance on insurance contracts in the free society? Have you ever dealt with an insurance company? They are regulated out the wazoo now, and they still don’t pay claims as they are supposed to.
I have been totally steeped in bourgeois values, but I try to see things from the perspective of working class or lower class people and to recognize their different values and norms as resistance to the dominant culture. But I just can’t embrace so much of it. Dogfighting, cockfighting, bearbaiting, blood sports, demeaning of women in rap and popular culture, child beating, domestic abuse and a host of other aspects of life among the riff raff frighten or disgust me. All the guests on Jerry Springer or the folks who make guest appearances on Cops undermine my regard for my fellow human beings. That people spend gazillions of dollars on the WWE causes me to question the sanity of many. Seriously, there are still people who think that the fights on the WWE are real.
I have to keep reminding myself that these folks with the scary or repugnant tastes are a small proportion of the population and that most working class or lower class people really are the salt of the earth. They love their families and their dogs, and they are just trying to get by in a world that is stacked against them. I’d take my chances living among them in a free society.
Dolphins With Spears on Their Heads
Digby at Hullabaloo reports on a professional journalist’s crack reporting.
According to MSNBC, Rev Al Sharpton jumped to the defense of Michael Vick and blogged the following:
“If the police caught Brett Favre (a white quarterback for the Green Bay Packers) running a dolphin-fighting unit out of his pool, where dolphins with spears attached to their foreheads fought each other, would they bust him? Of course not.”
The post MSNBC quoted came from the parody site NewsGroper where “Rev Al” blogs with Lindsay Lohan, George Bush and the president of Iran.
According to MSNBC, Rev Al Sharpton jumped to the defense of Michael Vick and blogged the following:
“If the police caught Brett Favre (a white quarterback for the Green Bay Packers) running a dolphin-fighting unit out of his pool, where dolphins with spears attached to their foreheads fought each other, would they bust him? Of course not.”
The post MSNBC quoted came from the parody site NewsGroper where “Rev Al” blogs with Lindsay Lohan, George Bush and the president of Iran.
Monday, August 27, 2007
My Suggestions for AG
Who will Bush pick to replace the disgraceful Gonzo? How about this guy? He has experience in the administration and he managed to work his way up as a military lawyer despite having been disbarred for 23 years. That’s a clever fellow, and he’ll be grateful for the job and willing to do whatever it takes to hold on to it for the full remainder of Bush’s term.
Or how about this guy? He was disbarred “for being an asshole”, so he’d fit right in with Cheney and the rest of the gang.
Or how about this guy? He was disbarred “for being an asshole”, so he’d fit right in with Cheney and the rest of the gang.
Where Do We Get Evil JAG Officers? Falwell's Law Talking School?
When I was in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, I took my responsibilities very seriously, particularly when it came to briefing combat soldiers on the law of land warfare. I worked very hard to persuade them of the rightness of the law and the importance of adhering to it as a matter of honor, as a matter of duty, and for practical reasons. I found, however, that efforts in this regard had usually been undermined by the NCOs, commanders, and the soldiers’ own exposure to war movies. Most of them promised to violate the laws of land warfare and reckoned that my instruction was helpful only insofar as it would be useful in evading prosecution.
This was pretty depressing. Even more depressing has been the stance of the Bush regime about the law of land warfare. The civilian leadership has been hostile to the law, and the military has violated it on numerous occasions. I don’t see how any self respecting Judge Advocate could continue to serve under this regime. Perhaps some consider it their duty to stand in the way of the more egregious violations. Donald Rumsfeld aimed to cut the number of military lawyers since he considered them as obstructions. Perhaps the more conscientious officers have been purged and replaced by tools who are happy to facilitate lawbreaking. God knows that the upper echelons of the Justice Department have been filled with such creatures, so there seems to be an ample supply of evil lawyers to fill these posts.
This was pretty depressing. Even more depressing has been the stance of the Bush regime about the law of land warfare. The civilian leadership has been hostile to the law, and the military has violated it on numerous occasions. I don’t see how any self respecting Judge Advocate could continue to serve under this regime. Perhaps some consider it their duty to stand in the way of the more egregious violations. Donald Rumsfeld aimed to cut the number of military lawyers since he considered them as obstructions. Perhaps the more conscientious officers have been purged and replaced by tools who are happy to facilitate lawbreaking. God knows that the upper echelons of the Justice Department have been filled with such creatures, so there seems to be an ample supply of evil lawyers to fill these posts.
Another Post About BIrds and Such
Things may not be as bleak as I had expected them to be, and I am considering some unusual observations as positive signs. Last Thursday, I spotted a catbird in the side yard by the small shed. On Wednesday in the city, I spotted two falcons on the balcony outside the meeting room I was in. Yesterday, there was a red tailed hawk in the apple tree by the pond, and a flock of blue jays came down and chased it away. This morning, a bald eagle flew right in front of my car as I crossed the reservoir!
On Saturday, I saw one of our comets in a pool by the road about a quarter mile downstream from our pond. It seems that at least one of the fish we lost in storms survived or that some eggs hatched downstream. Mrs Vache Folle (who came back from her mother’s) wants to retrieve it, but I’d just as soon leave it be.
The hummingbirds have been going through a quart of sugar water a week lately, and I have seen as many as eight females by the feeder at one time. I have seen up to four females feeding cooperatively. More often, however, I have observed aerial combat.
A week or so ago, I spotted an injured sparrow by the pond-side feeders. It probably had a run in with the feral cat that has been hanging around. I put some food on the ground for it but expected that it would not last long. But it healed up gradually and managed to fly again fairly well over several days. There’s lots of hiding places by the pond, so it could evade the cat, and the dogs pay no heed to small birds at all. The snakes rarely come out of the pond lately. Still, I was overjoyed that the hopeless sparrow recovered. I reckon God does have His eye on the sparrow after all.
Since the days have been getting shorter, I have had more occasion to sit outside after dusk. I don’t remember seeing so many bats in years past. There are hundreds of them in the back yard over the meadow and pond, and I don’t know how they avoid collisions. Perhaps there is an air traffic control tower for bats somewhere. I don’t know where they go in the daytime, but I would not be surprised to find that Hosner Mountain had caves.
The deer have been boldly grazing inside the fence right up to the house, and the dogs get to chase them every morning first thing when I let them out. The grazing is good since it has been so wet this summer. Perhaps some of the other unusual conditions are related to the increased rain. Usually by this time, the creeks have been dried up for weeks, and the pond is only half full. But this year, the creeks have been running for all but about ten days here and there, and I have only had to water the garden a single time. The garden is lush and the lawn wants mowing constantly. On the downside, the deer fly season was extended for a couple of miserable weeks.
On Saturday, I saw one of our comets in a pool by the road about a quarter mile downstream from our pond. It seems that at least one of the fish we lost in storms survived or that some eggs hatched downstream. Mrs Vache Folle (who came back from her mother’s) wants to retrieve it, but I’d just as soon leave it be.
The hummingbirds have been going through a quart of sugar water a week lately, and I have seen as many as eight females by the feeder at one time. I have seen up to four females feeding cooperatively. More often, however, I have observed aerial combat.
A week or so ago, I spotted an injured sparrow by the pond-side feeders. It probably had a run in with the feral cat that has been hanging around. I put some food on the ground for it but expected that it would not last long. But it healed up gradually and managed to fly again fairly well over several days. There’s lots of hiding places by the pond, so it could evade the cat, and the dogs pay no heed to small birds at all. The snakes rarely come out of the pond lately. Still, I was overjoyed that the hopeless sparrow recovered. I reckon God does have His eye on the sparrow after all.
Since the days have been getting shorter, I have had more occasion to sit outside after dusk. I don’t remember seeing so many bats in years past. There are hundreds of them in the back yard over the meadow and pond, and I don’t know how they avoid collisions. Perhaps there is an air traffic control tower for bats somewhere. I don’t know where they go in the daytime, but I would not be surprised to find that Hosner Mountain had caves.
The deer have been boldly grazing inside the fence right up to the house, and the dogs get to chase them every morning first thing when I let them out. The grazing is good since it has been so wet this summer. Perhaps some of the other unusual conditions are related to the increased rain. Usually by this time, the creeks have been dried up for weeks, and the pond is only half full. But this year, the creeks have been running for all but about ten days here and there, and I have only had to water the garden a single time. The garden is lush and the lawn wants mowing constantly. On the downside, the deer fly season was extended for a couple of miserable weeks.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Stress and the Bryant Park Urine Collectors
I drove into Manhattan a couple of mornings this week, parked on the West Side and walked through the Theater District to meetings on the East Side. Travel across town is glacial, while up and down town is relatively swift.
For the first time since I visited as a twenty-something rube, I found the city exciting rather than stressful. The noise, the soot, the hullabaloo didn’t really bother me. On the contrary, I thought about how nice it would be to come into the city more often and take in some shows and such like.
I reckon that my trick of parking (in a lot) and making my way across town on foot rather than fighting impossible cross town traffic allowed me to experience the city without being in my usual fog of seething homicidal rage. Also, I had allowed myself ample time to get where I was going and to meander through the streets, and I had set it up so that I would not be desperate to find a bathroom, something which can be a challenge in NYC.
On Wednesday, I passed by Bryant Park outside the Library to and from my meeting where one of the few public restrooms can be found. I recalled a few years ago when I used those facilities as being one of the strangest moments of my life in le Pomme Grande. As I used a urinal, a man to my left was pissing into a gallon jug and eating a sandwich from a container resting on the flushing mechanism of his urinal. When I got outside, I noticed a group of rough looking men sitting around one of the tables in the park. Each of them had a plastic gallon jug filled to some level with what I figured, based on recent observations, was their own urine. They were all smoking cigarettes and drinking Big Gulps or the NYC equivalent monster sodas. I didn’t ask them why they were collecting massive quantities of their own urine, and I have regretted it ever since.
For the first time since I visited as a twenty-something rube, I found the city exciting rather than stressful. The noise, the soot, the hullabaloo didn’t really bother me. On the contrary, I thought about how nice it would be to come into the city more often and take in some shows and such like.
I reckon that my trick of parking (in a lot) and making my way across town on foot rather than fighting impossible cross town traffic allowed me to experience the city without being in my usual fog of seething homicidal rage. Also, I had allowed myself ample time to get where I was going and to meander through the streets, and I had set it up so that I would not be desperate to find a bathroom, something which can be a challenge in NYC.
On Wednesday, I passed by Bryant Park outside the Library to and from my meeting where one of the few public restrooms can be found. I recalled a few years ago when I used those facilities as being one of the strangest moments of my life in le Pomme Grande. As I used a urinal, a man to my left was pissing into a gallon jug and eating a sandwich from a container resting on the flushing mechanism of his urinal. When I got outside, I noticed a group of rough looking men sitting around one of the tables in the park. Each of them had a plastic gallon jug filled to some level with what I figured, based on recent observations, was their own urine. They were all smoking cigarettes and drinking Big Gulps or the NYC equivalent monster sodas. I didn’t ask them why they were collecting massive quantities of their own urine, and I have regretted it ever since.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Sexually Active Oldsters
This WaPo article about sexually active octogenarians was heartening. The lead: “Many people maintain rich, active sex lives well into their 80s, according to the first detailed examination of sexuality among older Americans.” I thought old guys were taking all the Viagra just to help keep them from falling out of bed.
But buried several column inches down comes this reveal: “Being sexually active was defined as having had mutually voluntary sexual contact with another person within the past 12 months.”
Seriously, having sex once a year makes you “sexually active”? I feel like some kind of sex addict now what with my crazy quarterly sex.
But buried several column inches down comes this reveal: “Being sexually active was defined as having had mutually voluntary sexual contact with another person within the past 12 months.”
Seriously, having sex once a year makes you “sexually active”? I feel like some kind of sex addict now what with my crazy quarterly sex.
More Wisdom of Philip Atkinson
Check out his e-mail in defense of his call to kill all the Iraqis. He reckons that the 9/11 perps were a “barbarian war band”. That’s right, they were just like the Visigoths or the Alans testing the borders of the Roman Empire.
I Hope She Isn't Calling Herself a Libertarian
Now I understand why Megan McArdle wrote under the pseudonym Jane Galt. What I don’t understand is why she is using her real name now to write stuff like this piece critiqued at Sadly, No!
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
More Philip Atkinson
Dirt Rhodes Scholar dug up another crazy article by Philip Atkinson of Family Security Matters. He has the final solution to America’s immigration problem:
“The very least that must be done to halt the Hispanic invasion is the mass enslavement, or execution, of the invaders, which must be followed by an American invasion of Mexico to enforce American language and values upon the Mexicans”
Note that this is "the very least that must be done". Presumably, Philip Atkisnon would go much further but was probably worried about offending the editirs at Family Security.
Which of the GOP candidates will embrace the Atkinson Solution?
“The very least that must be done to halt the Hispanic invasion is the mass enslavement, or execution, of the invaders, which must be followed by an American invasion of Mexico to enforce American language and values upon the Mexicans”
Note that this is "the very least that must be done". Presumably, Philip Atkisnon would go much further but was probably worried about offending the editirs at Family Security.
Which of the GOP candidates will embrace the Atkinson Solution?
If the US Doesn't Want to Follow the Law, It Should Change the Law
If the US aims to abrogate its signing on to the UN charter, it should just do so instead of maintaining membership and violating the charter at every turn. Whatever you might think of the UN as an institution, the idea of outlawing the use of force across international boundaries except as authorized by the Security Council or in self defense from an immanent attack was a pretty good one. What with the veto power of the permanent members, there has to be a broad consensus among nations before the use of force will ever be approved. In any event, it’s better than having individual nation states decide unilaterally to use force. The US has a pretty crappy track record in following the charter and has advanced some ludicrous arguments over the years. The right of pre-emptive self-defense is one of the most ridiculous justifications ever put forward, and to accept it would completely render the UN charter null and void. Thankfully, the concept is a complete non-starter except with a few nut jobs and bed-wetters.
President-for-Life?
Via Attaturk at Rising Hegemon I read this crazed essay:
Author: Philip Atkinson
Source: The Family Security Foundation, Inc.
Date: August 3, 2007
The wisest course would have been for President Bush to use his nuclear weapons to slaughter Iraqis until they complied with his demands, or until they were all dead. Then there would be little risk or expense and no American army would be left exposed. But if he did this, his cowardly electorate would have instantly ended his term of office, if not his freedom or his life.The simple truth that modern weapons now mean a nation must practice genocide or commit suicide...
If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results: popularity with his military; enrichment of America by converting an Arabian Iraq into an American Iraq (therefore turning it from a liability to an asset); and boost American prestiege while terrifying American enemies.
He could then follow Caesar's example and use his newfound popularity with the military to wield military power to become the first permanent president of America, and end the civil chaos caused by the continually squabbling Congress and the out-of-control Supreme Court.
President Bush can fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God, by becoming “ex-president” Bush or he can become “President-for-Life” Bush: the conqueror of Iraq, who brings sense to the Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Then who would be able to stop Bush from emulating Augustus Caesar and becoming ruler of the world? For only an America united under one ruler has the power to save humanity from the threat of a new Dark Age wrought by terrorists armed with nuclear weapons.
Great googly moogly! I’m not one to worship at the altar of democracy for democracy’s sake, and I will readily accept that democracy has its problems, but obstructing genocide and unchecked tyranny are not among them. Those are features, not bugs.
And once you start the killing and enslaving, where do you stop? Did Laffer have a curve describing optimal purging and murdering and oppressing? President-for-Life Bush is going to have to kill just about everyone who opposes him, including most Americans. Then who is going to colonize the conquered provinces? Answer me that, Philip Atkinson.
Attaturk reckons the GOP candidates should be asked if they endorse this idea (assuming only that they would be the President-for-Life):
Democratic candidates are constantly asked about whatever Cindy Sheehan or Al Sharpton said -- I'd love to have the current GOP Candidates have to deal with this filth.
"I LOVE NUKING ARAB COUNTRIES!" - Mitt Romney
"Forget Iraq, nuke Mecca" - Tom Tancredo
"Why not both?" - Rudy Giuliani
Author: Philip Atkinson
Source: The Family Security Foundation, Inc.
Date: August 3, 2007
The wisest course would have been for President Bush to use his nuclear weapons to slaughter Iraqis until they complied with his demands, or until they were all dead. Then there would be little risk or expense and no American army would be left exposed. But if he did this, his cowardly electorate would have instantly ended his term of office, if not his freedom or his life.The simple truth that modern weapons now mean a nation must practice genocide or commit suicide...
If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results: popularity with his military; enrichment of America by converting an Arabian Iraq into an American Iraq (therefore turning it from a liability to an asset); and boost American prestiege while terrifying American enemies.
He could then follow Caesar's example and use his newfound popularity with the military to wield military power to become the first permanent president of America, and end the civil chaos caused by the continually squabbling Congress and the out-of-control Supreme Court.
President Bush can fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God, by becoming “ex-president” Bush or he can become “President-for-Life” Bush: the conqueror of Iraq, who brings sense to the Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Then who would be able to stop Bush from emulating Augustus Caesar and becoming ruler of the world? For only an America united under one ruler has the power to save humanity from the threat of a new Dark Age wrought by terrorists armed with nuclear weapons.
Great googly moogly! I’m not one to worship at the altar of democracy for democracy’s sake, and I will readily accept that democracy has its problems, but obstructing genocide and unchecked tyranny are not among them. Those are features, not bugs.
And once you start the killing and enslaving, where do you stop? Did Laffer have a curve describing optimal purging and murdering and oppressing? President-for-Life Bush is going to have to kill just about everyone who opposes him, including most Americans. Then who is going to colonize the conquered provinces? Answer me that, Philip Atkinson.
Attaturk reckons the GOP candidates should be asked if they endorse this idea (assuming only that they would be the President-for-Life):
Democratic candidates are constantly asked about whatever Cindy Sheehan or Al Sharpton said -- I'd love to have the current GOP Candidates have to deal with this filth.
"I LOVE NUKING ARAB COUNTRIES!" - Mitt Romney
"Forget Iraq, nuke Mecca" - Tom Tancredo
"Why not both?" - Rudy Giuliani
Monday, August 20, 2007
How to Get a Job as a WSJ Editorial Writer
Chris Kelly at Huffington Post has hit on the formula for the perfect conservative pundit:
“That's how you get a job as a conservative pundit. Figure out what makes you different from a white, male, protestant businessman, and hate your own guts for it.
If you're black, hate civil rights. If you're a woman, hate feminism. If you grew up poor, despise the poor. If you're a visible minority, demand more profiling. If you're gay, say you're cured. If you're Jewish, praise anti-Semites, if you're Christian, praise war. If you're Michelle Malkin... I don't know where you start with your problems if you're Michelle Malkin.
Just take a good, long look in the mirror, and ask yourself: Who am I? And how am I failing to be Neil Bush?”
I also like his take on the weird juxtaposition bewteen quality reporting in the WSJ and its batshit crazy editorial page:
“It's a little like buying Playboy for the articles, but instead of also getting pictures of naked girls, some trust fund scumbag lectures you about meritocracy.
It's like Cracker Jack, only instead of a prize with your popcorn, you get a human thumb.
I accept that. The way, in The History Boys, the students don't mind that their favorite teacher also molests them.”
“That's how you get a job as a conservative pundit. Figure out what makes you different from a white, male, protestant businessman, and hate your own guts for it.
If you're black, hate civil rights. If you're a woman, hate feminism. If you grew up poor, despise the poor. If you're a visible minority, demand more profiling. If you're gay, say you're cured. If you're Jewish, praise anti-Semites, if you're Christian, praise war. If you're Michelle Malkin... I don't know where you start with your problems if you're Michelle Malkin.
Just take a good, long look in the mirror, and ask yourself: Who am I? And how am I failing to be Neil Bush?”
I also like his take on the weird juxtaposition bewteen quality reporting in the WSJ and its batshit crazy editorial page:
“It's a little like buying Playboy for the articles, but instead of also getting pictures of naked girls, some trust fund scumbag lectures you about meritocracy.
It's like Cracker Jack, only instead of a prize with your popcorn, you get a human thumb.
I accept that. The way, in The History Boys, the students don't mind that their favorite teacher also molests them.”
Some Doubt that Taxation is Theft
In a comment thread inspired by Mona at Unqualified Offerings Donald Johnson had this to say about my analogy of taxation to sending goons to shake down your neighbors:
“Equating taxation to support government programs with sending goons to shake down your next door neighbor is the sort of thing that I had previously encountered. The problem with the analogy is that it expects us lefties to accept the equation “taxation = theft” in order to see any point to the analogy at all. I think taxation is the price one pays for living in a society as opposed to anarchy and if you accept the minimal state (which I guess some libertarians do not), then you’re still going to have to send those goons next door to cough up the money to run the justice system. And if you don’t, then you send privately hired goons to enforce your rights when the neighbor violates them.
Actually, it’s analogies and arguments of this sort that drive most of us lefties away from any sympathy with libertarianism. You’re much better off sticking to real world criticisms of failed government policies and actual government crimes if you want to reach us, I think.”
The “taxation is theft” meme gets countered with the “taxation is the price one pays for living in a society”. It’s a price that is involuntarily extracted with the threat or actual application of force. Maybe Mr Johnson would prefer “taxation is extortion”. My point was that it is important to think about the violent and coercive nature of government whenever one proposes a governmental solution and that each person has to decide at what point he is willing to dispatch the goons. For some, perhaps Mr Johnson, lighted softball fields for the benefit of softball enthusiasts is important enough to them to use force. Of course, liberals are turned off by analogies like this. So are conservatives. They should evoke a great deal of shame.
“Equating taxation to support government programs with sending goons to shake down your next door neighbor is the sort of thing that I had previously encountered. The problem with the analogy is that it expects us lefties to accept the equation “taxation = theft” in order to see any point to the analogy at all. I think taxation is the price one pays for living in a society as opposed to anarchy and if you accept the minimal state (which I guess some libertarians do not), then you’re still going to have to send those goons next door to cough up the money to run the justice system. And if you don’t, then you send privately hired goons to enforce your rights when the neighbor violates them.
Actually, it’s analogies and arguments of this sort that drive most of us lefties away from any sympathy with libertarianism. You’re much better off sticking to real world criticisms of failed government policies and actual government crimes if you want to reach us, I think.”
The “taxation is theft” meme gets countered with the “taxation is the price one pays for living in a society”. It’s a price that is involuntarily extracted with the threat or actual application of force. Maybe Mr Johnson would prefer “taxation is extortion”. My point was that it is important to think about the violent and coercive nature of government whenever one proposes a governmental solution and that each person has to decide at what point he is willing to dispatch the goons. For some, perhaps Mr Johnson, lighted softball fields for the benefit of softball enthusiasts is important enough to them to use force. Of course, liberals are turned off by analogies like this. So are conservatives. They should evoke a great deal of shame.
Topsy Turvy
For the past few years my life has rested on three pillars: my unhappy (as it turns out) marriage, my soul-destroying job, and my money pit of a home and garden. Now everything is turned upside down. Mrs Vache Folle left me and went to live with her mother. I am about to be jobless thanks to a divestiture. In either case, divorce or unemployment, I won’t be able to keep the house and garden. There is a remote possibility that Mrs Vache Folle will have a change of heart and that I will be able to transfer to another entity within the conglomerate, but I can’t really hold out much hope, and these contingencies are completely out of my hands. It sucks that all this is happening when the real estate market is in the crapper. If we could have held out until an upturn…
Anyhoo, the getting left by the Mrs part just happened yesterday, and I am still reeling from it. I got through denial, anger, and bargaining all within a few hours thanks to half a bottle of single malt. Now I’m way into depression and starting to think about what to do. The soon to be former Mrs Vache Folle is more sensible about a lot of what must be done, but she’s not making any suggestions right now.
I am a very lazy person, so all these changes and the effort that they entail are unwelcome to say the least. Moreover, the prospect of starting over on my own somewhere without my companion of 23 plus years makes me anxious. Perhaps at some point it will seem exciting, and I will be able to embrace the opportunities that I face. Who knows what kind of future I might have? Maybe I’ll drift from town to town solving problems and mysteries. Maybe I’ll end up a hermit in the backwoods and write a bizarre manifesto. Maybe I’ll be a hobo. The possibilities are endless!
Anyhoo, the getting left by the Mrs part just happened yesterday, and I am still reeling from it. I got through denial, anger, and bargaining all within a few hours thanks to half a bottle of single malt. Now I’m way into depression and starting to think about what to do. The soon to be former Mrs Vache Folle is more sensible about a lot of what must be done, but she’s not making any suggestions right now.
I am a very lazy person, so all these changes and the effort that they entail are unwelcome to say the least. Moreover, the prospect of starting over on my own somewhere without my companion of 23 plus years makes me anxious. Perhaps at some point it will seem exciting, and I will be able to embrace the opportunities that I face. Who knows what kind of future I might have? Maybe I’ll drift from town to town solving problems and mysteries. Maybe I’ll end up a hermit in the backwoods and write a bizarre manifesto. Maybe I’ll be a hobo. The possibilities are endless!
Friday, August 17, 2007
I Wish Paul's Dog Had Eaten Romans 13:1-7
Steve Scott could tell the authoritarian preachers that I read about in a post by Steve at Iasconius was a fish a thing or two about Romans 13. These preachers participate in a government program to encourage obedience to authority during crises. They’ll use Romans 13 to persuade the faithful to march peaceably and cheerfully to the detainment camps.
The passage definitely does not constitute a command to obey blindly any governmental decree, no matter how stupid or evil, and to do so gladly. Interpreting it that way just plain contradicts the core principles of Christianity. Imagine that you are a Christian in Germany in the 1940s, and you are conscripted into working at one of the Nazi death camps. Would Romans 13 give you license to whistle a happy tune while you gas Jews to death? After all, the Nazi regime is ordained by God and does God’s will. Obviously God wills that those Jews be gassed, and they are not going to gas themselves, are they?
I’m not even sure that the passage refers to civil government at all or that it pertains in any context except that of the church at Rome at the time the letter was written. Paul would not want the fledgling church to invite extirpation by pissing off the Emperor on the eve of his big mission trip there. He’d want them to play it cool. In any event, such resistance by the few Christians would have been utterly futile. Clearly, the martyrs that Rome made of the saints in the next few centuries did not read Romans 13 as requiring blind obedience. They died rather than recant or worship the Emperor which they were obliged to do by duly enacted laws and decrees.
I also suspect that Paul was being ironic and that his readers in Rome would have had a little chuckle at the part about the Emperor’s doing justice and rewarding good. (Caligula the Just. That’s what we call him. Defender of goodness and punisher of evil. That’s our Nero.) Had the letter been intercepted by the authorities, there would be nothing in it to offend the state, and under the circumstances the advice was pretty good, nudge nudge wink wink. Keep a low profile. Don’t make waves.
It is my suspicion, in the end, that this part was added later as part of the authoritarian stance the “orthodox” bishops would take when they became partners of the state. It doesn’t make a lot of sense in the flow of the rest of the letter and seems way out of context. I’m going to assume for now that Paul didn’t write it and I’m going to ignore it henceforth.
The government is an act of God in the same sense that a plague or a hurricane is an act of God. There are evil bastards in the world who aim to rob you and enslave you, and most of them will do so under color of law. It pleased God to subject us to these challenges, and we are obliged to endure them as best we can. I pay taxes to which I object because I know that resistance is futile and that my imprisonment or death won’t advance the Kingdom a bit. If I am asked to gas a bunch of Jews or murder some brown people, however, I pray that I will have the courage to resist and that any consequences I suffer will be a testimony of my faith and a light shone on the evil of the government. Then again, I have never been so tested and I might very well reconsider Romans 13 rather than face martyrdom.
The passage definitely does not constitute a command to obey blindly any governmental decree, no matter how stupid or evil, and to do so gladly. Interpreting it that way just plain contradicts the core principles of Christianity. Imagine that you are a Christian in Germany in the 1940s, and you are conscripted into working at one of the Nazi death camps. Would Romans 13 give you license to whistle a happy tune while you gas Jews to death? After all, the Nazi regime is ordained by God and does God’s will. Obviously God wills that those Jews be gassed, and they are not going to gas themselves, are they?
I’m not even sure that the passage refers to civil government at all or that it pertains in any context except that of the church at Rome at the time the letter was written. Paul would not want the fledgling church to invite extirpation by pissing off the Emperor on the eve of his big mission trip there. He’d want them to play it cool. In any event, such resistance by the few Christians would have been utterly futile. Clearly, the martyrs that Rome made of the saints in the next few centuries did not read Romans 13 as requiring blind obedience. They died rather than recant or worship the Emperor which they were obliged to do by duly enacted laws and decrees.
I also suspect that Paul was being ironic and that his readers in Rome would have had a little chuckle at the part about the Emperor’s doing justice and rewarding good. (Caligula the Just. That’s what we call him. Defender of goodness and punisher of evil. That’s our Nero.) Had the letter been intercepted by the authorities, there would be nothing in it to offend the state, and under the circumstances the advice was pretty good, nudge nudge wink wink. Keep a low profile. Don’t make waves.
It is my suspicion, in the end, that this part was added later as part of the authoritarian stance the “orthodox” bishops would take when they became partners of the state. It doesn’t make a lot of sense in the flow of the rest of the letter and seems way out of context. I’m going to assume for now that Paul didn’t write it and I’m going to ignore it henceforth.
The government is an act of God in the same sense that a plague or a hurricane is an act of God. There are evil bastards in the world who aim to rob you and enslave you, and most of them will do so under color of law. It pleased God to subject us to these challenges, and we are obliged to endure them as best we can. I pay taxes to which I object because I know that resistance is futile and that my imprisonment or death won’t advance the Kingdom a bit. If I am asked to gas a bunch of Jews or murder some brown people, however, I pray that I will have the courage to resist and that any consequences I suffer will be a testimony of my faith and a light shone on the evil of the government. Then again, I have never been so tested and I might very well reconsider Romans 13 rather than face martyrdom.
Turns Out I'm Not a Stalinist After All
Thursday, August 16, 2007
I Just Found Out I'm a Stalinist
Via Crooks and Liars, I came across this political map that purports to show where the presidential candidates stand on a grid with two axes, authoritarian/libertarian and communist/neoliberal. I was surprised to see that all the candidates except Kucinich and Gravel were clustered in the upper right quadrant as business friendly authoritarians. Even Ron Paul was in this cluster. So was Hitler. Romney appears to be the most Hitler-like.
I followed the links to the site of Political Compass and took the test myself. I came out as a collectivist authoritarian in company with Stalin. I reckon that the test is seriously flawed, not least by an apparent assumption that agreement or disagreement with a premise means that the test taker supports government action to make it happen or keep it from happening as the case may be. For example, I agree that globalization should benefit individuals more than multinational corporations, but I don’t propose to make this happen by force. And I could see where someone might think that fornication was immoral but would not propose to do anything about it. I don’t see that having an opinion on a lifestyle issue necessarily means that you want to impose that opinion on others.
I followed the links to the site of Political Compass and took the test myself. I came out as a collectivist authoritarian in company with Stalin. I reckon that the test is seriously flawed, not least by an apparent assumption that agreement or disagreement with a premise means that the test taker supports government action to make it happen or keep it from happening as the case may be. For example, I agree that globalization should benefit individuals more than multinational corporations, but I don’t propose to make this happen by force. And I could see where someone might think that fornication was immoral but would not propose to do anything about it. I don’t see that having an opinion on a lifestyle issue necessarily means that you want to impose that opinion on others.
But who am I to argue with science? I reckon I'll go start a famine somewhere.
UPDATE: Good news! It turns out that the graphic I was looking out was not my personal score, just an exemplar, so I might not be a Stalinist after all. I'll have to retake the test and see if I still hate it. Meanwhile, I would like to extend my sincere apologies to any kulaks and other peasants I may have purged during my Stalinist episode.
I Quit Libertarianism
JL Wilson of Independent Country and Mona at Unqualified Offerings both touch on the often silly and unfair criticisms of libertarianism from the right and the left. JL Wilson addresses paleo-conservative criticism, while Mona addresses criticism from liberals. In each case, the critics frequently attribute positions to libertarianism that aren’t necessarily held by all or even most libertarians.
I blame the Vulgar Libertarians so aptly described by Kevin Carson in his series of posts. They’ve done a lot of damage to the brand. And when Rudy Giuliani can be called libertarian, if only by Eric Dondero and his ilk (if he has an ilk), the brand has no value at all. The co-opting of the brand by the GOP finished it off. I’m not sure it’s redeemable at this point. I am going to stop calling myself a libertarian. Doing so evokes too many inaccurate presuppositions in my liberal and conservative conspecifics, and I spend way too much effort disabusing them of these.
My politics derive from my religious beliefs. Jesus commanded us to love our neighbors, and I don’t see how I can do this by applying coercion or using force against them or supporting the use of or threats of force against them by others even for their own good or for some widely perceived common good. It is my preference that all good things inure to the benefit of my neighbors and that this be accomplished in all cases through non-coercive means. I suppose that I could call myself a Christian when asked to categorize myself politically, but this leads to problems itself because that brand has been so debased by the religious right. Maybe I’ll just describe the basic principle outlined above and leave it at that.
All I ask of my conspecifics is that they acknowledge that government action ultimately involves coercion and the threat or actual use of force and that they consider whether their proposed government action or program is important enough that they would be willing to see their neighbors hauled away to jail or dispossessed from their homes to accomplish it. I realize that this is asking a lot. I don’t bother with problematizing the state itself except to point out its coercive nature because that just leads to arguments about a hypothetical stateless society and what kind of dystopia it would be. I aim to stick to arguing about real proposals or existing programs.
So I ask a few questions about every proposal or program: 1. Is it important enough to you that you would set goons on your neighbor to bring it about? 2. If so, is it really necessary to organize and finance it coercively, or is there a way to accomplish it through peaceful means? Or, like Montgomery Burns, do you just like the personal touch of a good old-fashioned goon? 3. Have peaceful means even been tried or considered and on what basis have they been ruled out? 4. Does the program also include free ponies and a monthly allowance for their upkeep? 5. What has filled you with so much hate? 6. What if Clinton/Bush had proposed this? 7. Did you know that Hitler had the same idea? 8. Why stop there?
I blame the Vulgar Libertarians so aptly described by Kevin Carson in his series of posts. They’ve done a lot of damage to the brand. And when Rudy Giuliani can be called libertarian, if only by Eric Dondero and his ilk (if he has an ilk), the brand has no value at all. The co-opting of the brand by the GOP finished it off. I’m not sure it’s redeemable at this point. I am going to stop calling myself a libertarian. Doing so evokes too many inaccurate presuppositions in my liberal and conservative conspecifics, and I spend way too much effort disabusing them of these.
My politics derive from my religious beliefs. Jesus commanded us to love our neighbors, and I don’t see how I can do this by applying coercion or using force against them or supporting the use of or threats of force against them by others even for their own good or for some widely perceived common good. It is my preference that all good things inure to the benefit of my neighbors and that this be accomplished in all cases through non-coercive means. I suppose that I could call myself a Christian when asked to categorize myself politically, but this leads to problems itself because that brand has been so debased by the religious right. Maybe I’ll just describe the basic principle outlined above and leave it at that.
All I ask of my conspecifics is that they acknowledge that government action ultimately involves coercion and the threat or actual use of force and that they consider whether their proposed government action or program is important enough that they would be willing to see their neighbors hauled away to jail or dispossessed from their homes to accomplish it. I realize that this is asking a lot. I don’t bother with problematizing the state itself except to point out its coercive nature because that just leads to arguments about a hypothetical stateless society and what kind of dystopia it would be. I aim to stick to arguing about real proposals or existing programs.
So I ask a few questions about every proposal or program: 1. Is it important enough to you that you would set goons on your neighbor to bring it about? 2. If so, is it really necessary to organize and finance it coercively, or is there a way to accomplish it through peaceful means? Or, like Montgomery Burns, do you just like the personal touch of a good old-fashioned goon? 3. Have peaceful means even been tried or considered and on what basis have they been ruled out? 4. Does the program also include free ponies and a monthly allowance for their upkeep? 5. What has filled you with so much hate? 6. What if Clinton/Bush had proposed this? 7. Did you know that Hitler had the same idea? 8. Why stop there?
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Disappearing Bees
Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker had a very informative article about the decline of honeybees in America. It appears that they may have developed a heretofore unknown immune deficiency disorder, a kind of bee AIDS. In any event, if pollinators continue to decline, this may threaten our food supply. Many food crops rely on bees to facilitate reproduction. I was fascinated to learn about traveling beekeepers who rent out their hives to farmers around the country and who move them around on flat bed trucks from crop to crop.
I have observed only a single honeybee on our property this year, even when the clover was in full bloom. There have been lots of other kinds of bees, but just the one honeybee. Evidently, wild honeybees are a thing of the past. We have a neighbor about a quarter mile away who supposedly keeps a couple of hives, so I would have expected to see at least some of her bees in the garden.
I have contemplated keeping bees on our property, but I reckon that this would just attract bears unless I put the hive way up a tree. In which case, what’s in it for me?
I have observed only a single honeybee on our property this year, even when the clover was in full bloom. There have been lots of other kinds of bees, but just the one honeybee. Evidently, wild honeybees are a thing of the past. We have a neighbor about a quarter mile away who supposedly keeps a couple of hives, so I would have expected to see at least some of her bees in the garden.
I have contemplated keeping bees on our property, but I reckon that this would just attract bears unless I put the hive way up a tree. In which case, what’s in it for me?
Small Blessings
Every day, I bestow small blessings on others and receive them in turn. I might bless or be blessed with “Have a good day” or “Have a good weekend” if the weekend is approaching. Sometimes folks are more parsimonious with their blessings and limit them to parts of the day. “Have a good evening” or “Enjoy the rest of the morning” are examples. Why so sparing in your blessings? They cost nothing. Indeed, they are really of no consequence whatsoever, although a curse instead of an expected blessing might be disturbing. I am expected to thank people for bestowing their blessings on me and to bless them right back.
Suppose that I began to dole out my blessings in smaller increments. “Enjoy the next fifteen minutes.” “Have a nice early afternoon.” At what point would people notice? What if I engaged in beatific one-upmanship and responded to “Have a nice day” with “Have a nice day and a half”? Would this cause people to take notice?
I have already experimented with doling out more generous blessings. “Live long and prosper” amuses because it is so recognizable. “Have a wonderful life”, on the other hand, takes people by surprise and might get you a “What do you mean?” It seems to alarm the recipient of the blessing rather than comfort them.
I am thinking of also of experimenting with blessings that aren’t related to the enjoyment of increments of time. “May jackals slake their thirst on the blood of your enemies” is probably over the top, but I might try “May your adversaries be confounded at every turn” or “May your children be always a joy to you” or some such thing and see where that goes.
If I am going to be giving out and getting blessings all day, I reckon that I ought to do so mindfully.
Suppose that I began to dole out my blessings in smaller increments. “Enjoy the next fifteen minutes.” “Have a nice early afternoon.” At what point would people notice? What if I engaged in beatific one-upmanship and responded to “Have a nice day” with “Have a nice day and a half”? Would this cause people to take notice?
I have already experimented with doling out more generous blessings. “Live long and prosper” amuses because it is so recognizable. “Have a wonderful life”, on the other hand, takes people by surprise and might get you a “What do you mean?” It seems to alarm the recipient of the blessing rather than comfort them.
I am thinking of also of experimenting with blessings that aren’t related to the enjoyment of increments of time. “May jackals slake their thirst on the blood of your enemies” is probably over the top, but I might try “May your adversaries be confounded at every turn” or “May your children be always a joy to you” or some such thing and see where that goes.
If I am going to be giving out and getting blessings all day, I reckon that I ought to do so mindfully.
More Musings on Blasphemy
Blogger indicates that this is my 1000th blog post. I aim to continue posting regularly and promise my imaginary readership many more posts about my pond, my dogs and my new string trimmer.
When I was a kid, I was taught that thinking of a sin was just the same as doing it. Moreover, there was an unforgivable sin, blasphemy of the Holy Ghost, which was a ticket straight to hell, no passing Go and no collecting $200. When I thought about the unforgivable sin, however, I found myself worrying that I was blaspheming the Holy Ghost right then in my mind and that it was all hopeless. If you tell yourself not to think about a green elephant, you can be damn sure a green elephant image will pop up in your mind. The same goes for mental blasphemy, especially if you have a rather broad view of what it means to blaspheme.
I have since come to believe that it takes a lot more to blaspheme the Holy Ghost than involuntarily conjuring up some insult in your mind. Blasphemy must be broadcast and is akin to slander. I reckon that those who blaspheme the Holy Ghost most egregiously are those who give the Holy Ghost credit for or blame for evil. The Holy Ghost doesn’t work evil or inspire it, so anyone who claims that the Holy Ghost is at work in acts of violence is a blasphemer. Warmongering preachers of the religious right come to mind as blasphemers of this sort. Murder and mayhem are not fruits of the Holy Ghost; rather, love and mercy are such fruits.
These defamers have enabled the neo-conservative death cult by lending the imprimatur of religious legitimacy to their murderous program. The neo-cons believe that religion is the “opiate of the masses”, but unlike Lenin and Stalin are willing to use religion to influence and control the masses for their own pursuit of power. They themselves believe in nothing beyond their own striving for power, and they doubtless laugh at the defamers and their followers who distort and pervert the teachings of Jesus in such a blatant manner. They need not concern themselves that the tenets of the religion that they are exploiting utterly contradict their agenda and program because the blasphemers are so obliging and their followers so clueless.
These defamers have brought the Church into disrepute and have invited ridicule and censure. On the day of judgment, they will be given the gift of shame which now is lacking in them. On that day, they will be given the gift of self awareness and discernment of what they have wrought.
When I was a kid, I was taught that thinking of a sin was just the same as doing it. Moreover, there was an unforgivable sin, blasphemy of the Holy Ghost, which was a ticket straight to hell, no passing Go and no collecting $200. When I thought about the unforgivable sin, however, I found myself worrying that I was blaspheming the Holy Ghost right then in my mind and that it was all hopeless. If you tell yourself not to think about a green elephant, you can be damn sure a green elephant image will pop up in your mind. The same goes for mental blasphemy, especially if you have a rather broad view of what it means to blaspheme.
I have since come to believe that it takes a lot more to blaspheme the Holy Ghost than involuntarily conjuring up some insult in your mind. Blasphemy must be broadcast and is akin to slander. I reckon that those who blaspheme the Holy Ghost most egregiously are those who give the Holy Ghost credit for or blame for evil. The Holy Ghost doesn’t work evil or inspire it, so anyone who claims that the Holy Ghost is at work in acts of violence is a blasphemer. Warmongering preachers of the religious right come to mind as blasphemers of this sort. Murder and mayhem are not fruits of the Holy Ghost; rather, love and mercy are such fruits.
These defamers have enabled the neo-conservative death cult by lending the imprimatur of religious legitimacy to their murderous program. The neo-cons believe that religion is the “opiate of the masses”, but unlike Lenin and Stalin are willing to use religion to influence and control the masses for their own pursuit of power. They themselves believe in nothing beyond their own striving for power, and they doubtless laugh at the defamers and their followers who distort and pervert the teachings of Jesus in such a blatant manner. They need not concern themselves that the tenets of the religion that they are exploiting utterly contradict their agenda and program because the blasphemers are so obliging and their followers so clueless.
These defamers have brought the Church into disrepute and have invited ridicule and censure. On the day of judgment, they will be given the gift of shame which now is lacking in them. On that day, they will be given the gift of self awareness and discernment of what they have wrought.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
VFT Keeps Us Earthbound
H&R links to a story that surmises that the universe is probably a computer simulation run by some geek from the “future”.
I say it’s impossible. Long before the technology to create an entire universe with virtual people who think that they are alive becomes available, the technology to have pretty realistic virtual sex will come on line. At that point, all the geeks will stop working on anything else, and all progress will be arrested forever. I refer to this as the Vache Folle Threshold.
The VFT also accounts for the apparent lack of interstellar space travel by advanced alien species. They all invented pretty good virtual sex before they came up with Warp drives.
I say it’s impossible. Long before the technology to create an entire universe with virtual people who think that they are alive becomes available, the technology to have pretty realistic virtual sex will come on line. At that point, all the geeks will stop working on anything else, and all progress will be arrested forever. I refer to this as the Vache Folle Threshold.
The VFT also accounts for the apparent lack of interstellar space travel by advanced alien species. They all invented pretty good virtual sex before they came up with Warp drives.
My Mini Vacation
I took Friday and Monday off and had myself a nice four day weekend. It rained all day Friday, but Mrs Vache Folle, who also had the day off, and I cleaned out the smaller of our two sheds and made it usable for storage. Ninety five percent of the contents of that shed was useless crap that we had no business holding onto. It cost 90 bucks to have the carter haul it away. I had been storing in that shed some clothes from my thinner days in the expectation that I would one day fit into them again, but voles destroyed them. That saves me from having to wear 1990s fashions as I lose weight.
The rest of the long weekend was very pleasant, and I did a lot of puttering in the garden. There was a big to do around the hummingbird feeder as Swifty fought off at least six invaders. The hummers managed to down a quart of sugar water in less than a week.
Jasper has discovered the fish in the pond and, whenever any stray into his side (the shallow side is permitted to him) he chases them around. The pond is an even greater attraction to him now that he has frogs, snakes and fish to molest. He also has to make sure that no squirrels get on the woodpecker feeder and that the feral cat that has been hanging around gets chased or at least barked at whenever he appears. Also, no deer or turkeys are allowed in the yard or anywhere near the fence, and ducks and herons are absolutely prohibited from landing on the pond. These responsibilities keep Jasper occupied most of the time, but he does not neglect to attack the lawn mower or the vacuum cleaner when these are in use.
I went to the gym every day except Monday when I realized that I have been overdoing it. I need more time between weight training sessions to recover than I used to, so I have decided to weight train only four days a week instead of six (I alternate large muscles and small muscles).
We ate the rest of the meat that we had bought at the farmers’ market. This was a t-bone from a free range, grass fed bovine, a large free range roasting chicken, and a pork loin with the bone attached from a free range hog. We have got to get to the farmers’ market next Saturday to stock up on meat. If I had room for a freezer, I’d buy everything Farmer Abraham had to sell.
Summer is great chez nous. There is no place I would rather be in summer than on the deck looking out over the garden and listening to birdsong and eating the flesh of once contented animals.
The rest of the long weekend was very pleasant, and I did a lot of puttering in the garden. There was a big to do around the hummingbird feeder as Swifty fought off at least six invaders. The hummers managed to down a quart of sugar water in less than a week.
Jasper has discovered the fish in the pond and, whenever any stray into his side (the shallow side is permitted to him) he chases them around. The pond is an even greater attraction to him now that he has frogs, snakes and fish to molest. He also has to make sure that no squirrels get on the woodpecker feeder and that the feral cat that has been hanging around gets chased or at least barked at whenever he appears. Also, no deer or turkeys are allowed in the yard or anywhere near the fence, and ducks and herons are absolutely prohibited from landing on the pond. These responsibilities keep Jasper occupied most of the time, but he does not neglect to attack the lawn mower or the vacuum cleaner when these are in use.
I went to the gym every day except Monday when I realized that I have been overdoing it. I need more time between weight training sessions to recover than I used to, so I have decided to weight train only four days a week instead of six (I alternate large muscles and small muscles).
We ate the rest of the meat that we had bought at the farmers’ market. This was a t-bone from a free range, grass fed bovine, a large free range roasting chicken, and a pork loin with the bone attached from a free range hog. We have got to get to the farmers’ market next Saturday to stock up on meat. If I had room for a freezer, I’d buy everything Farmer Abraham had to sell.
Summer is great chez nous. There is no place I would rather be in summer than on the deck looking out over the garden and listening to birdsong and eating the flesh of once contented animals.
Biofuels Will Save America
The more I think about the plan to move to biofuels, the more cunning it seems. As corn gets shifted to biofuels, less of it goes into food for both humans and livestock. Accordingly, food, especially fattening carbohydrate snack food and burgers, becomes increasingly expensive. Americans won’t be able to afford to overeat as much and will lose weight. Thinner Americans make for smaller payloads in motor vehicles with a concomitant reduction in fuel consumption. Voila! Energy independence and a victory in the war on obesity in one fell swoop. Now that’s what I call policymaking.
Another benefit is that more young Americans, being thinner, will be more easily whipped into fighting shape to participate in the perpetual war we will be involved in until the Empire collapses.
On the down side, these policies will have some adverse consequences for the budget. Maimed veterans and payments to survivors are costly, and thinner Americans are likely to live longer and strain the Social Security system.
Another benefit is that more young Americans, being thinner, will be more easily whipped into fighting shape to participate in the perpetual war we will be involved in until the Empire collapses.
On the down side, these policies will have some adverse consequences for the budget. Maimed veterans and payments to survivors are costly, and thinner Americans are likely to live longer and strain the Social Security system.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Iowa Straw Poll
Josh Fruhlinger at Wonkette tells us just how significant the Iowa straw poll is:
“FOR GOD’S SAKE THIS THING IS A FARCE DON’T BELIEVE IT OR PAY ATTENTION NO NO NO”
“FOR GOD’S SAKE THIS THING IS A FARCE DON’T BELIEVE IT OR PAY ATTENTION NO NO NO”
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
All Hail the Grand Multiparous Woman!
At lunch, I heard about an American woman who just recently gave birth to her seventeenth child and aims to have as many more as she can. My companions were appalled, but I applaud the woman. There are not enough grand multiparous women these days, as far as I am concerned. I’ll admit it. I just like to use the expression “grand multiparous”.
Once you hit ten kids, the impact of newcomers on the existing kids becomes vanishingly small. If you have one kid, the second kid means a 50% reduction in attention and resources available to the firstborn. A third kid costs the first two only about 33%, and the fourth costs the first three about 25%. See where I’m going with this? By the time you get to your eleventh child, the first ten barely feel it. What the hell? You might as well go for a record. An eighteenth kid might not even be noticed by its siblings, some of whom will have grown up already.
Fertility drugs would have been the way to go for this family. They have been limited in the number of children they can have by doing it the old fashioned way with mainly single births. Imagine if the woman had been pumping out litters of six at a time. She might have had 100 plus kids by now.
Once you hit ten kids, the impact of newcomers on the existing kids becomes vanishingly small. If you have one kid, the second kid means a 50% reduction in attention and resources available to the firstborn. A third kid costs the first two only about 33%, and the fourth costs the first three about 25%. See where I’m going with this? By the time you get to your eleventh child, the first ten barely feel it. What the hell? You might as well go for a record. An eighteenth kid might not even be noticed by its siblings, some of whom will have grown up already.
Fertility drugs would have been the way to go for this family. They have been limited in the number of children they can have by doing it the old fashioned way with mainly single births. Imagine if the woman had been pumping out litters of six at a time. She might have had 100 plus kids by now.
Free Veterinary Care for the Free Ponies the Government Will Provide
I caught some of the Democratic candidates at the AFL-CIO forum on the TeeVee last night. The candidates were promising ponies for everyone. I can’t wait to get mine.
One concept on which the candidates seemed to agree was providing health care for every American, although there are some differences in how they would go about this and how fast they would move. This is a serious problem for a lot of Americans. When my stepmother was in her last illness, her meds alone cost almost $4,000 a month. My father, severely disabled himself, had to keep working in the factory at personal risk until his seventies to keep insurance coverage to extend her life. A lot of folks’ employers have them by the short and curlies because of the leverage of health insurance. The only medical care that a sizeable number of people get is when they are in prison.
I suppose I should be a good “vulgar libertarian” about this and advocate free market solutions. Why should the consumption of health care, say life saving cancer surgery, be treated any differently from the decision to buy a stereo? I have pretty good insurance, so this is easy for me to advocate.
But I just can’t get all worked up about the prospect that working class folks might receive an entitlement like this. When I think of all the money that gets funneled through the government to the military industrial complex and the surveillance and security apparatus and other forms of corporate welfare, I think that I would much rather have the money stolen from me go to working men and women than to spats wearing tycoons. I’m getting taxed one way or another. I’m going to have to live in under a massive welfare/warfare state, and I would rather the spending be tilted to welfare than warfare. I’ll take the Democrats and their promise of a pony in every paddock any day over the Republicans and the corporate feeding frenzy that they oversee. At least I have a shot at getting the pony.
Except if Ron Paul gets the nomination, of course. Then it’s a different story. I hope he does, but I suspect that the ticket will be Rudy McRomney/Huckleberry Brokeback.
I know, I know. Universal healthcare provided by the government will be an excuse to regulate all aspects of our lifestyles. They don’t need an excuse! They already claim this. There is nothing beneath the state’s notice.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating for any government program or for universal health care provided by the government. I’m just saying that I’m not as incensed about entitlements as I am about other spending.
One concept on which the candidates seemed to agree was providing health care for every American, although there are some differences in how they would go about this and how fast they would move. This is a serious problem for a lot of Americans. When my stepmother was in her last illness, her meds alone cost almost $4,000 a month. My father, severely disabled himself, had to keep working in the factory at personal risk until his seventies to keep insurance coverage to extend her life. A lot of folks’ employers have them by the short and curlies because of the leverage of health insurance. The only medical care that a sizeable number of people get is when they are in prison.
I suppose I should be a good “vulgar libertarian” about this and advocate free market solutions. Why should the consumption of health care, say life saving cancer surgery, be treated any differently from the decision to buy a stereo? I have pretty good insurance, so this is easy for me to advocate.
But I just can’t get all worked up about the prospect that working class folks might receive an entitlement like this. When I think of all the money that gets funneled through the government to the military industrial complex and the surveillance and security apparatus and other forms of corporate welfare, I think that I would much rather have the money stolen from me go to working men and women than to spats wearing tycoons. I’m getting taxed one way or another. I’m going to have to live in under a massive welfare/warfare state, and I would rather the spending be tilted to welfare than warfare. I’ll take the Democrats and their promise of a pony in every paddock any day over the Republicans and the corporate feeding frenzy that they oversee. At least I have a shot at getting the pony.
Except if Ron Paul gets the nomination, of course. Then it’s a different story. I hope he does, but I suspect that the ticket will be Rudy McRomney/Huckleberry Brokeback.
I know, I know. Universal healthcare provided by the government will be an excuse to regulate all aspects of our lifestyles. They don’t need an excuse! They already claim this. There is nothing beneath the state’s notice.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating for any government program or for universal health care provided by the government. I’m just saying that I’m not as incensed about entitlements as I am about other spending.
Libertarians for Nuking Civilians
According to Cathy Young at H&R, if you condemn the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as immoral, you are just being lazy. And unpatriotic.
The comment thread is reminiscent of something you might read at Little Green Footballs.
Cathy’s conclusion: “When anti-Americanism becomes so extreme that it turns the U.S. into the bad guy of World War II, that's truly frightening and depressing. As for whether the bombing was indeed the least evil of all available options: again, I don't know. I'm sure there is room for legitimate debate on this issue. But that debate is almost entirely drowned out by hate and self-righteousness. The insistence on moral purity has turned to moral blindness.”
I’m not sure what Cathy means by “morality”, but I can unequivocally say that bombing those people was immoral, as were a lot of things done in World War II. That’s because my moral values, admittedly arbitrary as all such values are, preclude murdering people for the purposes of terrorizing other people.
Were there other even more evil alternatives that might have been pursued? The US government could have bombed three cities or built enough bombs to kill every single Japanese person. Should the US get credit for not doing worse? If so, then Hitler gets a medal for not killing 7 million Jews.
Were there less evil alternatives that might have been pursued? Actors are free to refrain from evil or to establish a limit on just how evil they would ever let themselves become. There are always less evil options if you care about whether you are evil. Hitler could have decided not to murder the Jews, an admittedly less evil alternative, but then he would have had to forego goals associated with extirpating non-Aryans.
Identifying “good guys” and “bad guys” in WW2 is a matter for propagandists. There is very little in the way of “good” that can be said to have come of that horrible conflict.
It is not “moral laziness” to apply one’s moral values consistently and universally and to hold oneself to the same standards as one holds others. It is quite simply a moral stand that one might take. That Cathy Young chooses to eschew moral purity is her privilege, but there is no basis for her assertion that such a stance is any sense morally superior to that of the purist.
The comment thread is reminiscent of something you might read at Little Green Footballs.
Cathy’s conclusion: “When anti-Americanism becomes so extreme that it turns the U.S. into the bad guy of World War II, that's truly frightening and depressing. As for whether the bombing was indeed the least evil of all available options: again, I don't know. I'm sure there is room for legitimate debate on this issue. But that debate is almost entirely drowned out by hate and self-righteousness. The insistence on moral purity has turned to moral blindness.”
I’m not sure what Cathy means by “morality”, but I can unequivocally say that bombing those people was immoral, as were a lot of things done in World War II. That’s because my moral values, admittedly arbitrary as all such values are, preclude murdering people for the purposes of terrorizing other people.
Were there other even more evil alternatives that might have been pursued? The US government could have bombed three cities or built enough bombs to kill every single Japanese person. Should the US get credit for not doing worse? If so, then Hitler gets a medal for not killing 7 million Jews.
Were there less evil alternatives that might have been pursued? Actors are free to refrain from evil or to establish a limit on just how evil they would ever let themselves become. There are always less evil options if you care about whether you are evil. Hitler could have decided not to murder the Jews, an admittedly less evil alternative, but then he would have had to forego goals associated with extirpating non-Aryans.
Identifying “good guys” and “bad guys” in WW2 is a matter for propagandists. There is very little in the way of “good” that can be said to have come of that horrible conflict.
It is not “moral laziness” to apply one’s moral values consistently and universally and to hold oneself to the same standards as one holds others. It is quite simply a moral stand that one might take. That Cathy Young chooses to eschew moral purity is her privilege, but there is no basis for her assertion that such a stance is any sense morally superior to that of the purist.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Madmen for President?
One of my conspecifics said something shocking to me. He said that the president of the US should never declare the use of nuclear weapons “off the table”, that to do so would be “naïve”. Evidently, it is important for the rest of the world to think that the president is crazy as hell and itching to unleash destruction on a massive scale at the slightest provocation. This is supposed to make us “safer” than a world in which the president can be assumed to be a rational actor and subject to some rudimentary moral guidelines.
I don’t see how the perception of the US as led by a madman helps make me any safer. On the contrary, that just provides incentives for the proliferation of nuclear weapons and their early use. I want countries, including the US, to disarm, not build up vast arsenals, and to work to reduce the likelihood of a global catastrophe. That would make me safer, and I wouldn’t have to pay for the damned weapons.
At a minimum, a presidential candidate should be willing to declare the use of nuclear weapons “off the table” in most circumstances. For example, can we agree that the use of nuclear weapons on domestic targets would be “off the table”? We won’t want to use nukes to combat illegal immigration or to engage in the “War on Drugs”. We don’t want to use nukes to target criminal or terrorist suspects, no matter where they are, because that would be all out of proportion to the object and would inflict gratuitous collateral damage. A candidate’s itchy nuclear trigger finger really should be a disqualification for office.
For the president as madman ploy to be effective, the president must be plausibly mad, and the public can’t know whether they are getting a candidate playing at madness or one who is actually mad. In fact, the adoption of the president as madman ploy is, in my view, a manifestation of a severe deficit in reasoning capacity and a sure sign that the candidate really is a monster.
I don’t see how the perception of the US as led by a madman helps make me any safer. On the contrary, that just provides incentives for the proliferation of nuclear weapons and their early use. I want countries, including the US, to disarm, not build up vast arsenals, and to work to reduce the likelihood of a global catastrophe. That would make me safer, and I wouldn’t have to pay for the damned weapons.
At a minimum, a presidential candidate should be willing to declare the use of nuclear weapons “off the table” in most circumstances. For example, can we agree that the use of nuclear weapons on domestic targets would be “off the table”? We won’t want to use nukes to combat illegal immigration or to engage in the “War on Drugs”. We don’t want to use nukes to target criminal or terrorist suspects, no matter where they are, because that would be all out of proportion to the object and would inflict gratuitous collateral damage. A candidate’s itchy nuclear trigger finger really should be a disqualification for office.
For the president as madman ploy to be effective, the president must be plausibly mad, and the public can’t know whether they are getting a candidate playing at madness or one who is actually mad. In fact, the adoption of the president as madman ploy is, in my view, a manifestation of a severe deficit in reasoning capacity and a sure sign that the candidate really is a monster.
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