Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Will the non-Evil Republicans Please Stand Up?
I harbor a secret hope of a revolt within the GOP. The GOP has been hijacked by forces of unmitigated evil, and I suspect that there may be Republicans out there who are not happy about it. I have to believe that there is at least a sizeable minority of Republicans who do not hate America and freedom. I reckon that there may be at least 25% of Republicans who are not completely corrupt, and they may be what is needed to force the GOP to return to paying lip service to the Constitution and to American values.
Outrage
My Republican conspecifics are not much concerned about the erosion of civil liberties, and their response to expressions of concern is to call me an “alarmist”. At what point will they concede that civil liberties are, in fact, imperiled? When the secret police invade their homes and “disappear” one of their family members? Keith Olbermann remarked last night that the “alarmists” who expressed concern about illegal warrantless eavesdropping now seem “prescient” in light of the administration’s claim to have authority to break into people’s homes without warrants.
I concede that, to my knowledge, I have not as yet been surveilled, had my phones tapped, or had my house broken into. I have not been “disappeared” as of yet. It is nonetheless cause for outrage that the Bush regime claims to have the authority to do all of these things with no accountability to anyone and no check by any other branch of government. That I have not been assaulted, invaded, kidnapped or killed is entirely due to the grace and mercy of the regime and not the civil rights that I grew up to cherish. I have given voluntary allegiance to the United States on the basis that the United States is the guarantor of my civil rights, and now that it clearly does not even recognize such rights, any allegiance that it gets from me is nothing more than acquiescence predicated on coercion.
The regime claims, and Congress and the courts have not gainsaid it, that it may order your murder, kidnap you, detain you, torment you, invade your home, seize your property, listen in on your conversations, read your mail, look at all your records, and do anything it damn well pleases in the name of the War on Terror. That an American President would even want such power renders him unfit for any office of trust. Claiming such power is, in and of itself, a breach of his oath of office to defend the Constitution. The smirking Attorney General who seeks to justify these claims makes a grotesque mockery of his office. The regime has declared itself outlaw.
Where is the outrage? The claim of unconstitutional power should enrage anyone who loves America.
I concede that, to my knowledge, I have not as yet been surveilled, had my phones tapped, or had my house broken into. I have not been “disappeared” as of yet. It is nonetheless cause for outrage that the Bush regime claims to have the authority to do all of these things with no accountability to anyone and no check by any other branch of government. That I have not been assaulted, invaded, kidnapped or killed is entirely due to the grace and mercy of the regime and not the civil rights that I grew up to cherish. I have given voluntary allegiance to the United States on the basis that the United States is the guarantor of my civil rights, and now that it clearly does not even recognize such rights, any allegiance that it gets from me is nothing more than acquiescence predicated on coercion.
The regime claims, and Congress and the courts have not gainsaid it, that it may order your murder, kidnap you, detain you, torment you, invade your home, seize your property, listen in on your conversations, read your mail, look at all your records, and do anything it damn well pleases in the name of the War on Terror. That an American President would even want such power renders him unfit for any office of trust. Claiming such power is, in and of itself, a breach of his oath of office to defend the Constitution. The smirking Attorney General who seeks to justify these claims makes a grotesque mockery of his office. The regime has declared itself outlaw.
Where is the outrage? The claim of unconstitutional power should enrage anyone who loves America.
Monday, March 20, 2006
Iraq Going as Planned?
The religious right should be celebrating about now, three years into the war in Iraq. Religious authoritarianism is on the rise in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. I heard today that a man in Afghanistan might be executed for converting to Christianity. While this superficially goes against the interests of the religious right in America, on a deeper level it represents a victory. Wouldn’t our American mullahs like to be able to keep the flock in the fold on pain of death? You bet they would!
The trend to secularism and modernism in the Middle East has been nipped in the bud thanks to the religious right and their man Bush. We won’t have to deal with millions of uppity Moslem women who don’t know their place, and that part of the world should serve as a model for what America might become if the religious authoritarians can manage to seize control. It’s not democracy Bush is looking to install, it’s religious totalitarianism. His strategy really is working after all.
The trend to secularism and modernism in the Middle East has been nipped in the bud thanks to the religious right and their man Bush. We won’t have to deal with millions of uppity Moslem women who don’t know their place, and that part of the world should serve as a model for what America might become if the religious authoritarians can manage to seize control. It’s not democracy Bush is looking to install, it’s religious totalitarianism. His strategy really is working after all.
Democracy and Tyranny Go Hand in Hand
I had every intention of seeing “V is for Vendetta” this weekend. Instead, I installed two chandeliers in our vaulted ceiling, and the death defying feat of climbing a ladder and doing the work took everything I had. The first chandelier took almost an hour because I kept screwing up and having to take everything apart. The second took five minutes. I can learn, it seems, even under the stress of a phobic reaction to being 8 feet up on a ladder working on a ceiling 14 feet off the floor.
I am overjoyed that the film did so well at the box office. In your face, Michael Medved! If the film helps create a legion of revolutionaries or even troublemakers, I will be even more grateful. The film was panned by a reviewer in the New Yorker. The main complaint of the reviewer seemed to me to be a quibble with V’s methods. Why, asked the reviewer, would V blow up Parliament, a symbol of liberal democracy instead of the dictator’s headquarters? The reviewer could not conceive of democracy as a fount of tyranny.
In this country, Congress is a serious threat to liberty, and the House of Representatives, the more democratic of the two chambers, is by far worse than the Senate at chipping away at freedom. Democracy, without a mechanism for limiting the scope of government, is no guarantee of freedom. Quite the contrary, the majoritarian tendency is to totalitarianism, and a democratically chosen totalitarian state is bolstered by the legitimizing myth that it reflects the will of the people. An elected dictator arguably embodies that will, and it is harder to demystify his rule than if he had seized power through some other means.
I am overjoyed that the film did so well at the box office. In your face, Michael Medved! If the film helps create a legion of revolutionaries or even troublemakers, I will be even more grateful. The film was panned by a reviewer in the New Yorker. The main complaint of the reviewer seemed to me to be a quibble with V’s methods. Why, asked the reviewer, would V blow up Parliament, a symbol of liberal democracy instead of the dictator’s headquarters? The reviewer could not conceive of democracy as a fount of tyranny.
In this country, Congress is a serious threat to liberty, and the House of Representatives, the more democratic of the two chambers, is by far worse than the Senate at chipping away at freedom. Democracy, without a mechanism for limiting the scope of government, is no guarantee of freedom. Quite the contrary, the majoritarian tendency is to totalitarianism, and a democratically chosen totalitarian state is bolstered by the legitimizing myth that it reflects the will of the people. An elected dictator arguably embodies that will, and it is harder to demystify his rule than if he had seized power through some other means.
Friday, March 17, 2006
KIss Me, Even if I am not Irish!
I first learned about St Patrick's Day in college when I had friends who were Catholics with Irish ancestry. Back in the Bible Belt, we didn't do saints' days; it smacked of idolatry and polytheism and, worse, Roman Catholicism. We didn't have many Catholics in my hometown, and I knew only one Irish family, the O'Donnels, who didn't make much ado about their heritage or religion. That was understandable in view of the anti-Catholic sentiment in the community. For some reason, folks who had never even met a Catholic disliked them vehemently. They were not even Christian, I was told on numerous occasions.
I chalk this up to the history of the people of my mountain community. They were mainly of Scots-Irish Protestant ancestry, and their forebears had doubtless fought Irish Catholics back in Ulster. They still had a tinge of "orange" in them so to speak despite two and a half centuries in North America. I reckon that I am about half Scots-Irish myself. (It's hard to tell the difference sometimes between English and Lowland Scots surnames). My Morrows and Mebanes and Dunlops and Callahans and Scotts are all definitely Scots-Irish.
I really liked my Irish Catholic friends in college, and I loved spending weekend evenings at the Four Provinces on Connecticutt Avenue. I developed a taste for Irish beverages and music and folklore, and I came to wish that I was even a little bit Irish, the green kind rather than orange. Thanks to James Webb, I now refer to myself sometimes as a "Celtic-American", especially when I need some dirt road cred. But it's not the same thing. I am not Irish as in St Patrick's day river dance potato famine fleeing 1860s draft riots Irish. Even my one possible Irish ancestor, Mary O'Brien from my Chastain Huguenot connection, was already in the North American hinterland in the mid18th century and probably was not Catholic.
I console myself on this day for my non-Irishness by acknowledging that my Lowland Scots ancestors originally came from Ireland in the first milennium and that they were Catholic for several centuries before they embraced Calvinism. Also, my Scots-Irish ancestors had a similar culture of hard drinking, brawling and merrymaking before the Baptists got hold of them. To all you Irish folks, let me say on behalf of my people that I'm sorry about that running your ancestors off their land thing back in the 17th Century. If it's any consolation, we got screwed, too, and had to leave for North America in pretty short order. We were just tools of the English. Let's make up and embrace what we have in common rather than fighting the Battle of the Boyne over and over.
Happy St Patrick's Day!
I chalk this up to the history of the people of my mountain community. They were mainly of Scots-Irish Protestant ancestry, and their forebears had doubtless fought Irish Catholics back in Ulster. They still had a tinge of "orange" in them so to speak despite two and a half centuries in North America. I reckon that I am about half Scots-Irish myself. (It's hard to tell the difference sometimes between English and Lowland Scots surnames). My Morrows and Mebanes and Dunlops and Callahans and Scotts are all definitely Scots-Irish.
I really liked my Irish Catholic friends in college, and I loved spending weekend evenings at the Four Provinces on Connecticutt Avenue. I developed a taste for Irish beverages and music and folklore, and I came to wish that I was even a little bit Irish, the green kind rather than orange. Thanks to James Webb, I now refer to myself sometimes as a "Celtic-American", especially when I need some dirt road cred. But it's not the same thing. I am not Irish as in St Patrick's day river dance potato famine fleeing 1860s draft riots Irish. Even my one possible Irish ancestor, Mary O'Brien from my Chastain Huguenot connection, was already in the North American hinterland in the mid18th century and probably was not Catholic.
I console myself on this day for my non-Irishness by acknowledging that my Lowland Scots ancestors originally came from Ireland in the first milennium and that they were Catholic for several centuries before they embraced Calvinism. Also, my Scots-Irish ancestors had a similar culture of hard drinking, brawling and merrymaking before the Baptists got hold of them. To all you Irish folks, let me say on behalf of my people that I'm sorry about that running your ancestors off their land thing back in the 17th Century. If it's any consolation, we got screwed, too, and had to leave for North America in pretty short order. We were just tools of the English. Let's make up and embrace what we have in common rather than fighting the Battle of the Boyne over and over.
Happy St Patrick's Day!
A Dog to its Vomit
Back in ought three, I visited Aberdeenshire and environs, and a number of castles were on the itinerary. In one of them, the wooden beams in an upper storey room were inscribed with verses from the Bible. Among the verses: "Like a dog to its vomit, so returneth a fool to his foolishness." From that moment, this became my favorite proverb. If I had a coat of arms, it would be the motto emblazoned under a pair of rampant retching hounds.
That proverb resonated with me on several levels. In the first instance, we have had a number of dogs over the years who seem to vomit just for the fun of it. Frankly, vomit is about the least offensive substance that ordinarily comes out of a dog, and as the proverb implies your dog might just take care of it for you. I have never understood why dogs do this. It's as if their bodies have said "this food does not meet canine nutritional standards and may be toxic" and their brains have replied "let's eat it anyway".
This sums up some aspects of my own life as well. I have been known to do the same foolish thing over and over again despite knowing the consequences. Thankfully, I have improved over the years, but wisdom comes slowly to me. The proverb is actually helpful in a couple of ways. First, a part of me recognizes that I am about to return to my folly and warns me off with the proverb as mantra. In the alternative, I go with the folly anyway but use the proverb to make fun of myself rather than going into a cycle of self loathing. I have come to think of a number of things as "dog's vomit", things that I have managed to put aside or that I am trying to avoid. This can be especially helpful in dieting, I am finding. That tube of chocolate chip cookie dough with my name on it? Dog's vomit.
The proverb applies even more to the world around me, especially the political sphere. We keep coming back to the same ideas and solutions that don't work and even do more harm than good. Government programs are all dog's vomit. Political parties and politicians are dog's vomit. Why do we reward government failure with more power and resources? We're vomit eating dogs.
Thursday, March 16, 2006
War With Iran Inevitable?
The US is headed to war with Iran. I would bet money on this if I didn’t have a scruple about profiting from evil. I also predict that this will be ramped up big time in advance of the mid-term elections. I hope that I am wrong.
Bush is already making justifications for the war. The nuclear program, which may or may not exist, has been harped on for months. Now Bush is blaming the Shia in Iran for the insurgency in Iraq, a pretty crazy notion since the Sunni minority comprises the Iraqi insurgency and Iran positively loves the new Shia ruled Iraq the US has set up. This is what convinces me of the inevitability of war with Iran, that Bush is making fantastic, illogical claims about Iranian wrongdoing that your average American voter can’t make any sense of. He has got to whip up anti-Iranian sentiment in the US so as to focus the hatred of the American people away from himself and Dick Cheney.
There is nothing like an enemy to get Americans worked up and diverted from what is really going on. Iraqis aren’t our enemies any more now that the US has conquered them, and we can’t seem to get excited about Iraqis and Afghanis. Even the most mindless yahoos tend to think of these folks as victims nowadays rather than enemies. Iranians will fill the bill nicely for at least a few more years.
Also, the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan are no longer exciting or interesting in the sense of providing spectacular examples of American success and prowess. The US is not so good at occupation, but it is real good at destroying things and killing people.
Face it; there would be no stopping the US military if it attacked Iran. Sure, the US is “tied down” in Iraq, but since the forces there aren’t doing anyone any good anyway, why not just redeploy them to Iran? The US has Iran surrounded.
Of course, there will be another insurgency after the invasion, but the conquest will divert and entertain us for months, and the regime will be able to deny the reality on the ground for many months. Meanwhile, the regime will rally the American people to it and be able to silence opposition as giving aid to America’s enemies.
Also, this will cost boatloads of money, but this will be borrowed money that will be paid for by our grandchildren (I hope they repudiate the debt as my nephews have threatened). Meanwhile, much of the money will go to friends of the regime with snouts in the military-industrial trough.
This will cost American lives. We have already seen that the electorate has a complete tolerance for casualties as long as they trickle in at a rate of about a thousand a year. It could be that Americans can handle a much higher casualty rate as long as there is no conscription. And there will be no need for conscription since the force levels already available are adequate to conquer Iran and hunker down. The point is not to succeed in stabilizing the region or governing it, just to smash it, so the US does not need a lot more troops. Besides, with the negative impacts on the economy permanent war entails, there may be more volunteers in the pipeline in the future.
This will cost hundreds of thousands of innocent Iranian lives. Americans don’t care about this. The military could kill every last Iranian man, woman and child, and this would leave the American masses unmoved.
This will alienate our remaining allies. Americans don’t care. Allies don’t motivate the electorate; enemies do. Allies complicate things and limit options and insist on adherence to international law and whatnot.
This will increase hatred of Americans abroad and increase the risk of terrorist attacks. That’s one of the main reasons for the war. Bush needs us to feel that we are in peril, and one way to assure this is to make the phoney baloney danger he has been feeding on these past 5 years into real danger. That way, he can seize more power in the name of protecting us.
This will weaken the US and lead to its downfall as a superpower. Yes, but not before the big power grab and feeding frenzy courtesy of the Treasury. It will take decades for the fall of the American Empire to be acknowledged, and the neocon architects of permanent war will be dead by then.
Bush is already making justifications for the war. The nuclear program, which may or may not exist, has been harped on for months. Now Bush is blaming the Shia in Iran for the insurgency in Iraq, a pretty crazy notion since the Sunni minority comprises the Iraqi insurgency and Iran positively loves the new Shia ruled Iraq the US has set up. This is what convinces me of the inevitability of war with Iran, that Bush is making fantastic, illogical claims about Iranian wrongdoing that your average American voter can’t make any sense of. He has got to whip up anti-Iranian sentiment in the US so as to focus the hatred of the American people away from himself and Dick Cheney.
There is nothing like an enemy to get Americans worked up and diverted from what is really going on. Iraqis aren’t our enemies any more now that the US has conquered them, and we can’t seem to get excited about Iraqis and Afghanis. Even the most mindless yahoos tend to think of these folks as victims nowadays rather than enemies. Iranians will fill the bill nicely for at least a few more years.
Also, the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan are no longer exciting or interesting in the sense of providing spectacular examples of American success and prowess. The US is not so good at occupation, but it is real good at destroying things and killing people.
Face it; there would be no stopping the US military if it attacked Iran. Sure, the US is “tied down” in Iraq, but since the forces there aren’t doing anyone any good anyway, why not just redeploy them to Iran? The US has Iran surrounded.
Of course, there will be another insurgency after the invasion, but the conquest will divert and entertain us for months, and the regime will be able to deny the reality on the ground for many months. Meanwhile, the regime will rally the American people to it and be able to silence opposition as giving aid to America’s enemies.
Also, this will cost boatloads of money, but this will be borrowed money that will be paid for by our grandchildren (I hope they repudiate the debt as my nephews have threatened). Meanwhile, much of the money will go to friends of the regime with snouts in the military-industrial trough.
This will cost American lives. We have already seen that the electorate has a complete tolerance for casualties as long as they trickle in at a rate of about a thousand a year. It could be that Americans can handle a much higher casualty rate as long as there is no conscription. And there will be no need for conscription since the force levels already available are adequate to conquer Iran and hunker down. The point is not to succeed in stabilizing the region or governing it, just to smash it, so the US does not need a lot more troops. Besides, with the negative impacts on the economy permanent war entails, there may be more volunteers in the pipeline in the future.
This will cost hundreds of thousands of innocent Iranian lives. Americans don’t care about this. The military could kill every last Iranian man, woman and child, and this would leave the American masses unmoved.
This will alienate our remaining allies. Americans don’t care. Allies don’t motivate the electorate; enemies do. Allies complicate things and limit options and insist on adherence to international law and whatnot.
This will increase hatred of Americans abroad and increase the risk of terrorist attacks. That’s one of the main reasons for the war. Bush needs us to feel that we are in peril, and one way to assure this is to make the phoney baloney danger he has been feeding on these past 5 years into real danger. That way, he can seize more power in the name of protecting us.
This will weaken the US and lead to its downfall as a superpower. Yes, but not before the big power grab and feeding frenzy courtesy of the Treasury. It will take decades for the fall of the American Empire to be acknowledged, and the neocon architects of permanent war will be dead by then.
Shortcuts
I have to confess that, while I decry various forms of stereotyping and profiling based on race and ethnicity and other suspect categories, I employ a number of shortcuts to help me navigate my social milieu.
One of these is that I try to see movies that Michael Medved hates. I will go to “V is for Vendatta” this weekend and spend extra money on concessions to reward the theater for showing it. I will do this mainly on the strength of Michael Medved’s disapproval. If Medved likes a movie, I am unlikely to see it. This strategy works pretty well.
Another shortcut is that when someone starts a sentence with “On the O’Reilley Factor last night….” Or “Rush said…” or “Sean Hannity reported…” or “Michael Savage…”, I immediately realize that I no longer need to keep listening to this person and that his opinions are not something that I should heed at all. Unless that person is a satirist or someone who has to follow these wingnuts professionally, I have come to affirm over and over again that the O’Reilley, Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage follower is an imbecile. No exceptions. This is as reliable an indicator of marginally normal intelligence as you could hope for.
In this busy world, you only have so much social capital to go around, and anything that weeds out folks who really aren’t going to be all that interesting or simpatico is a real edge. Motor vehicles can tell you a lot. Vanity plates are helpful. Thanks for marking yourselves. Bumper stickers can be good indicators since they can be either a basis for rejection or something that piques one’s interest. Ribbon magnets are highly suspect. Drivers of Hummers, Escalades, Navigators, Expeditions need not apply for admission to the Vache Folle social circle unless there is some mitigating factor.
McMansion dwellers will have a hard time cracking the Vache Folle social circle unless they have gigantic families and can show a need for the space. Otherwise, I can’t seem to make much of people’s houses. By the time you get to their houses, however, you don’t really need a shortcut since they have usually passed the early tests. Dog owners have a leg up right away; dog haters are out; ambivalence about dogs is suspect.
Your kids say a lot about you, especially the mouths as Jack Handey would say. Seriously, if your kids are really horrible and disrespectful of you, I am sorely tempted to write you off. I will at least know you are really, really lazy. I can live with lazy but not with the bizarre justifications for laziness as some kind of alternative childrearing philosophy. Surly and uncommunicative teenagers lose you points. I have a positive prejudice in favor of homeschoolers.
I wonder why we have so few friends?
One of these is that I try to see movies that Michael Medved hates. I will go to “V is for Vendatta” this weekend and spend extra money on concessions to reward the theater for showing it. I will do this mainly on the strength of Michael Medved’s disapproval. If Medved likes a movie, I am unlikely to see it. This strategy works pretty well.
Another shortcut is that when someone starts a sentence with “On the O’Reilley Factor last night….” Or “Rush said…” or “Sean Hannity reported…” or “Michael Savage…”, I immediately realize that I no longer need to keep listening to this person and that his opinions are not something that I should heed at all. Unless that person is a satirist or someone who has to follow these wingnuts professionally, I have come to affirm over and over again that the O’Reilley, Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage follower is an imbecile. No exceptions. This is as reliable an indicator of marginally normal intelligence as you could hope for.
In this busy world, you only have so much social capital to go around, and anything that weeds out folks who really aren’t going to be all that interesting or simpatico is a real edge. Motor vehicles can tell you a lot. Vanity plates are helpful. Thanks for marking yourselves. Bumper stickers can be good indicators since they can be either a basis for rejection or something that piques one’s interest. Ribbon magnets are highly suspect. Drivers of Hummers, Escalades, Navigators, Expeditions need not apply for admission to the Vache Folle social circle unless there is some mitigating factor.
McMansion dwellers will have a hard time cracking the Vache Folle social circle unless they have gigantic families and can show a need for the space. Otherwise, I can’t seem to make much of people’s houses. By the time you get to their houses, however, you don’t really need a shortcut since they have usually passed the early tests. Dog owners have a leg up right away; dog haters are out; ambivalence about dogs is suspect.
Your kids say a lot about you, especially the mouths as Jack Handey would say. Seriously, if your kids are really horrible and disrespectful of you, I am sorely tempted to write you off. I will at least know you are really, really lazy. I can live with lazy but not with the bizarre justifications for laziness as some kind of alternative childrearing philosophy. Surly and uncommunicative teenagers lose you points. I have a positive prejudice in favor of homeschoolers.
I wonder why we have so few friends?
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Why Are Democrats So Cowardly?
In a post at Battlepanda, Democrats are characterized as "craven": http://battlepanda.blogspot.com/2006/03/cowardly-cowards-d-cowardland.htm
This is dead on. The GOP screws up monumentally or works some egregious evil every single day, and the Democrats can't seem to take advantage of it. Sure, the President and the GOP have bad poll numbers, but is this helping the Democrats?
Folks I talk to (who aren't all that bright, by the way, but they're all I've got) have a couple of explanations for Democrat wimpitude:
1. They're letting the GOP beat itself up. This makes no sense as long as the GOP is still also beating up on Democrats, and the GOP beating would be a lot worse if the Democrats landed some blows. Also, letting the GOP frame the issues is not helpful, and letting the GOP repeat the mantra that its evil and incompetence are not significant next to the terrorist threat just insures that more folks will believe it.
2. They're afraid negative politics will backfire. As far as I can tell, this has never happened before in the history of the world. The GOP is all negative, all the time, and this got them control of the government. The negatives don't even have to be true to work, the GOP has shown. Nobody is ever held accountable for negative politics, and Americans like their politics mean and dirty. Positive message? Who cares? Go negative while you still can.
My explanation is that the Democrats are playing not to lose. If they get the GOP on the ropes, all the GOP has to do is start another war or allow a big terror attack in the US. Suddenly, Americans rally behind the ruling party and blame the Dems for being obstructionists. Dems want to look tough on security and to characterize the GOP as bad on execution rather than being wrong on fundamentals. This may be a good strategy, but it doesn't do much for the country. If we get Dems in power, it may be just more of the same of everything with no recovery of freedom. The Democrats of 2006 are showing how meaningless the notion of opposition is in this country and that we really are a single party system in all but name. Fortunately for both parties, we Americans are too stupid to notice.
This is dead on. The GOP screws up monumentally or works some egregious evil every single day, and the Democrats can't seem to take advantage of it. Sure, the President and the GOP have bad poll numbers, but is this helping the Democrats?
Folks I talk to (who aren't all that bright, by the way, but they're all I've got) have a couple of explanations for Democrat wimpitude:
1. They're letting the GOP beat itself up. This makes no sense as long as the GOP is still also beating up on Democrats, and the GOP beating would be a lot worse if the Democrats landed some blows. Also, letting the GOP frame the issues is not helpful, and letting the GOP repeat the mantra that its evil and incompetence are not significant next to the terrorist threat just insures that more folks will believe it.
2. They're afraid negative politics will backfire. As far as I can tell, this has never happened before in the history of the world. The GOP is all negative, all the time, and this got them control of the government. The negatives don't even have to be true to work, the GOP has shown. Nobody is ever held accountable for negative politics, and Americans like their politics mean and dirty. Positive message? Who cares? Go negative while you still can.
My explanation is that the Democrats are playing not to lose. If they get the GOP on the ropes, all the GOP has to do is start another war or allow a big terror attack in the US. Suddenly, Americans rally behind the ruling party and blame the Dems for being obstructionists. Dems want to look tough on security and to characterize the GOP as bad on execution rather than being wrong on fundamentals. This may be a good strategy, but it doesn't do much for the country. If we get Dems in power, it may be just more of the same of everything with no recovery of freedom. The Democrats of 2006 are showing how meaningless the notion of opposition is in this country and that we really are a single party system in all but name. Fortunately for both parties, we Americans are too stupid to notice.
I'm Not as Evil as I Used to Be
JL Wilson links to a test of how evil you are: http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2006/03/evil-quiz.html
I scored 38% evil, more than I expected, so I went back and retook the test and qualified my answers as relating to "the last 10 years". I was considerably less evil, having in the last few years repented of many of my more problematic activities. What a relief.
I have been paying the wages of sin the last couple of days. I smoked like a fiend for over 20 years until September 1999 when I quit for the last time. In 2000, I was diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, a malady I have been fighting ever since. Among other things, it gives me repeated bouts of bronchitis with which I am laid up these past two days. Although I like to relate my COPD to exposure to the tons of mosquito poison dropped from helicopters in Westechester County in summer of 2000, my smoking did not help the matter. Also, recently (within the last 2 weeks) partaking of a certain product of Jamaica through inhalation probably contributed to my current troubles.
Most of my sins today are sins against myself. I genuinely do not wish harm to others, and I am a far more charitable and forgiving person than I used to be. Chalking up a few spectacular failures along the way has a way of humbling one. Unfortunately, I am more in the mode of not doing others harm than in the mode of doing anyone any positive good, but I am working on this. Some of this has to do with my energy level, and I hope that recent changes in lifestyle and diet will help me manage COPD, depression, anxiety and social phobias better so that I can be a more active member of my community.
I scored 38% evil, more than I expected, so I went back and retook the test and qualified my answers as relating to "the last 10 years". I was considerably less evil, having in the last few years repented of many of my more problematic activities. What a relief.
I have been paying the wages of sin the last couple of days. I smoked like a fiend for over 20 years until September 1999 when I quit for the last time. In 2000, I was diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, a malady I have been fighting ever since. Among other things, it gives me repeated bouts of bronchitis with which I am laid up these past two days. Although I like to relate my COPD to exposure to the tons of mosquito poison dropped from helicopters in Westechester County in summer of 2000, my smoking did not help the matter. Also, recently (within the last 2 weeks) partaking of a certain product of Jamaica through inhalation probably contributed to my current troubles.
Most of my sins today are sins against myself. I genuinely do not wish harm to others, and I am a far more charitable and forgiving person than I used to be. Chalking up a few spectacular failures along the way has a way of humbling one. Unfortunately, I am more in the mode of not doing others harm than in the mode of doing anyone any positive good, but I am working on this. Some of this has to do with my energy level, and I hope that recent changes in lifestyle and diet will help me manage COPD, depression, anxiety and social phobias better so that I can be a more active member of my community.
Monday, March 13, 2006
Darbyites Should Not Drive
If you claim to be a Christian and think that you might be “raptured” at any moment, it would be sinful for you to drive a motor vehicle or pilot an aircraft or do anything where your presence is required to prevent potentially catastrophic results. Heck, you shouldn’t even be left alone with small children since they would be unsupervised and potentially endangered if you got “raptured” all of a sudden. Leaving a careening driverless bus or airliner is not a very loving act.
For this reason, I predict that God will use this as a test for deciding who gets “raptured”. Anyone driving or flying or babysitting while believing he or she could be "raptured" will be disqualified as inadequately loving and unchristian and left behind.
For this reason, I predict that God will use this as a test for deciding who gets “raptured”. Anyone driving or flying or babysitting while believing he or she could be "raptured" will be disqualified as inadequately loving and unchristian and left behind.
Incrementalists and Hard-Liners
JL Wilson posts about incrementalists and hard-liners http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2006/03/incrementalist-hard-liner.html. Wilson sees both as having their uses and reckons that he is a little of both at times. I am a Georgian, and our state motto is “moderation in all things”, and I used to strive to be an “extreme moderate”, a living oxymoron like the man who won a medal for humility and had it taken away because he wore it.
Wilson lists some attributes of a libertarian that he regards as essential:
1. Pro-peace/anti-intervention in the affairs of other countries2. Pro-freedom of speech/anti-censorship3. Pro-self-defense/anti-gun control4. Pro-self-determination on health choices and lifestyle/anti-Drug War5. Pro-freedom of association6. A general and substantial decrease in the tax burden.7. A general and substantical descrease in our dependence on government for health, education, and income.8. General and non-prejudicial freedom of commerce and trade.
I agree with him on these points, but I believe that they can all be reduced to a commitment to non-coercion and non-aggression. This is the one value about which I cannot be a moderate. I take a hard line against coercion and aggression. That said, I favor reductions in aggression and coercion over increases of them. In that sense, I am an incrementalist.
Some hard-liners seem to me to engage in catastrophic thinking. It’s either the perfect outcome or nothing for them. Anything less than everything is nothing to them. I am pro-choice as an extension of my commitment to non-aggression/non-coercion, but I acknowledge that folks might have a serious scruple about abortion and I have nothing against non-coercive efforts to reduce the number of abortions. But many of the hard-liners I know on the womb control front are bent on one thing: criminalizing abortion. Nothing other than the use of force to end the practice of abortion will satisfy them.
I am currently reading Jimmy Carter’s “Our Endangered Values”, and he writes at length about the issue of abortion. As the only practicing Christian to serve as President in my lifetime, it is interesting to read how he reconciled his religious beliefs with his responsibilities as a public official. Carter obeyed Roe v Wade as the law of the land but objected to public funding of abortions. He also thought it would be appropriate to address the causes of unwanted pregnancies and the issues that led women to have abortions instead of bringing pregnancies to term. Among the things he promoted was facilitation of adoption.
I disagree with President Carter on the propriety of the government’s spending money to influence the number of abortions one way or another, but I agree that there are ways short of criminalizing abortion and ceding control over women’s bodies to the state to reduce by a lot the number of abortions. My hard-line womb control authoritarians want none of it, however. The fact is that education about contraception results in a reduction in the number of unwanted pregnancies. Teenaged American women, who learn about contraception from each other, are many multiples more likely to get pregnant than their more well informed European counterparts. My hard-liner womb control enthusiasts are against teenagers’ having information about contraception. It’s abstinence or nothing. This stance breeds more unwanted pregnancies which in turn leads to more abortions. This is a pretty bizarre outcome for anyone who thinks abortion is wrong.
Carter reports that close to two thirds of women who have abortions cite an inability to afford the child as a reason for their decision. Any number of non-coercive things might be done by charitable concerned folks to make childrearing more affordable or attractive or to make adoption easier. If women contemplating abortion could be assured that they would have sufficient resources to raise the child or that they would be helped through an adoption process, that would probably have a significant impact on their decision. My womb control authoritarians don’t give a dime to such programs, but they give money gladly to candidates who seek to criminalize abortion. They want to spread the costs of fulfilling their preference that nobody ever have an abortion to society as a whole rather than putting their own money where their mouths are.
I don’t mean to pick on womb control enthusiasts, however. Any position can be subject to catastrophic thinking. I don’t like drug laws, but I would support incremental decriminalization as superior to increased criminalization. I hate taxes, but I prefer tax cuts to tax increases. I hate war, but I would support an incremental withdrawal of troops from Iraq over an escalation or no withdrawal at all. I hate government and regard it as illegitimate, but I would favor abolishing some agencies over adding new ones.
Wilson lists some attributes of a libertarian that he regards as essential:
1. Pro-peace/anti-intervention in the affairs of other countries2. Pro-freedom of speech/anti-censorship3. Pro-self-defense/anti-gun control4. Pro-self-determination on health choices and lifestyle/anti-Drug War5. Pro-freedom of association6. A general and substantial decrease in the tax burden.7. A general and substantical descrease in our dependence on government for health, education, and income.8. General and non-prejudicial freedom of commerce and trade.
I agree with him on these points, but I believe that they can all be reduced to a commitment to non-coercion and non-aggression. This is the one value about which I cannot be a moderate. I take a hard line against coercion and aggression. That said, I favor reductions in aggression and coercion over increases of them. In that sense, I am an incrementalist.
Some hard-liners seem to me to engage in catastrophic thinking. It’s either the perfect outcome or nothing for them. Anything less than everything is nothing to them. I am pro-choice as an extension of my commitment to non-aggression/non-coercion, but I acknowledge that folks might have a serious scruple about abortion and I have nothing against non-coercive efforts to reduce the number of abortions. But many of the hard-liners I know on the womb control front are bent on one thing: criminalizing abortion. Nothing other than the use of force to end the practice of abortion will satisfy them.
I am currently reading Jimmy Carter’s “Our Endangered Values”, and he writes at length about the issue of abortion. As the only practicing Christian to serve as President in my lifetime, it is interesting to read how he reconciled his religious beliefs with his responsibilities as a public official. Carter obeyed Roe v Wade as the law of the land but objected to public funding of abortions. He also thought it would be appropriate to address the causes of unwanted pregnancies and the issues that led women to have abortions instead of bringing pregnancies to term. Among the things he promoted was facilitation of adoption.
I disagree with President Carter on the propriety of the government’s spending money to influence the number of abortions one way or another, but I agree that there are ways short of criminalizing abortion and ceding control over women’s bodies to the state to reduce by a lot the number of abortions. My hard-line womb control authoritarians want none of it, however. The fact is that education about contraception results in a reduction in the number of unwanted pregnancies. Teenaged American women, who learn about contraception from each other, are many multiples more likely to get pregnant than their more well informed European counterparts. My hard-liner womb control enthusiasts are against teenagers’ having information about contraception. It’s abstinence or nothing. This stance breeds more unwanted pregnancies which in turn leads to more abortions. This is a pretty bizarre outcome for anyone who thinks abortion is wrong.
Carter reports that close to two thirds of women who have abortions cite an inability to afford the child as a reason for their decision. Any number of non-coercive things might be done by charitable concerned folks to make childrearing more affordable or attractive or to make adoption easier. If women contemplating abortion could be assured that they would have sufficient resources to raise the child or that they would be helped through an adoption process, that would probably have a significant impact on their decision. My womb control authoritarians don’t give a dime to such programs, but they give money gladly to candidates who seek to criminalize abortion. They want to spread the costs of fulfilling their preference that nobody ever have an abortion to society as a whole rather than putting their own money where their mouths are.
I don’t mean to pick on womb control enthusiasts, however. Any position can be subject to catastrophic thinking. I don’t like drug laws, but I would support incremental decriminalization as superior to increased criminalization. I hate taxes, but I prefer tax cuts to tax increases. I hate war, but I would support an incremental withdrawal of troops from Iraq over an escalation or no withdrawal at all. I hate government and regard it as illegitimate, but I would favor abolishing some agencies over adding new ones.
Fun With Ideal Types
I am a big fan of Max Weber, the pioneering sociologist. He had very good advice for would be social engineers. Sociologists, he wrote, could inform public policy by helping to explain what unforeseen impacts proposed legislation or regulations might have, or helping policymakers to calculate the costs of proposals, or rendering opinions on whether policy would have the desired effects. Sociologists could not, however, tell you whether any particular policy or outcome was desirable. In other words, sociology is about what is, not what ought to be.
Another valuable contribution of Weber was his method of constructing Ideal Types as devices for generating sociological questions. An Ideal Type is not ideal in the sense of being desirable; rather, it is ideal in the sense of being unreal, a heuristic useful for thinking about social structure. For example, Weber wrote extensively about what a bureaucracy or a number of other social structures would look like if they conformed to their Ideal Types. In constructing Types, Weber assumed perfect rationality, and research questions arose whenever the actual social structure deviated from what perfectly rational human beings would produce.
I find Weber’s Ideal Types useful for thinking about society even now that I no longer engage in social science except of the strictly armchair variety. I am just another “folk” social scientist trying to navigate a complex social environment. One of the problematic aspects of the device, and what makes it fun, in my view, is that, in order to determine what a perfectly rational human being would do, you have to make some important assumptions about the goals of your theoretical humans. What do you reckon your ideal bureaucrat wants to accomplish? Having decided that, you then determine what a perfectly rational bureaucrat would do under the circumstances to reach those goals. If your real bureaucrat does something different from what you predicted, you have some explaining to do.
One of my favorite mental games is to think about human action that deviates from type by assuming that I got the goals wrong. If you assume that the actor intended the outcome he got, that is one way to explain deviations from type. For example, think about the debacle in Iraq with the assumption that the Bush regime intended everything to happen pretty much as it did. Instead of theorizing that Bush and his minions were incompetent, picture them as evil geniuses. We can’t know what is in another’s mind or what motivates him, but we can judge him by the fruits of his actions, and I find that the evil genius assumption helps me make sense of the actions of the regime. If they were just incompetent, wouldn’t you expect them to get something right occasionally purely by accident? And how is it that every major “failure” of the regime results in increased resources and power for the very people who failed?
Another favorite sociologist of mine is the late MG Smith, whom I consider Weberian to the core. Smith criticized the way sociologists speak about the “function” of social structural elements as if there were some collective motivation at work. For Smith, it was more appropriate to speak of the “effects” of such elements, and he regarded “effects” and “functions” as synonymous. It is fun to think about organizations as functioning to produce some perverse effects. For example, is it the function of the Homeland Security apparatus of the US to render the US less secure by diverting security resources to useless activities? Is a primary function of the US military to redistribute the treasure of the American people to various well-connected contractors? Do political parties function primarily to reduce the number and ideological diversity of candidates for public office?
To me, the world makes so much more sense when I assume a relatively high degree of rationality even when that means acknowledging a lot more evil in the world than I would like to.
Another valuable contribution of Weber was his method of constructing Ideal Types as devices for generating sociological questions. An Ideal Type is not ideal in the sense of being desirable; rather, it is ideal in the sense of being unreal, a heuristic useful for thinking about social structure. For example, Weber wrote extensively about what a bureaucracy or a number of other social structures would look like if they conformed to their Ideal Types. In constructing Types, Weber assumed perfect rationality, and research questions arose whenever the actual social structure deviated from what perfectly rational human beings would produce.
I find Weber’s Ideal Types useful for thinking about society even now that I no longer engage in social science except of the strictly armchair variety. I am just another “folk” social scientist trying to navigate a complex social environment. One of the problematic aspects of the device, and what makes it fun, in my view, is that, in order to determine what a perfectly rational human being would do, you have to make some important assumptions about the goals of your theoretical humans. What do you reckon your ideal bureaucrat wants to accomplish? Having decided that, you then determine what a perfectly rational bureaucrat would do under the circumstances to reach those goals. If your real bureaucrat does something different from what you predicted, you have some explaining to do.
One of my favorite mental games is to think about human action that deviates from type by assuming that I got the goals wrong. If you assume that the actor intended the outcome he got, that is one way to explain deviations from type. For example, think about the debacle in Iraq with the assumption that the Bush regime intended everything to happen pretty much as it did. Instead of theorizing that Bush and his minions were incompetent, picture them as evil geniuses. We can’t know what is in another’s mind or what motivates him, but we can judge him by the fruits of his actions, and I find that the evil genius assumption helps me make sense of the actions of the regime. If they were just incompetent, wouldn’t you expect them to get something right occasionally purely by accident? And how is it that every major “failure” of the regime results in increased resources and power for the very people who failed?
Another favorite sociologist of mine is the late MG Smith, whom I consider Weberian to the core. Smith criticized the way sociologists speak about the “function” of social structural elements as if there were some collective motivation at work. For Smith, it was more appropriate to speak of the “effects” of such elements, and he regarded “effects” and “functions” as synonymous. It is fun to think about organizations as functioning to produce some perverse effects. For example, is it the function of the Homeland Security apparatus of the US to render the US less secure by diverting security resources to useless activities? Is a primary function of the US military to redistribute the treasure of the American people to various well-connected contractors? Do political parties function primarily to reduce the number and ideological diversity of candidates for public office?
To me, the world makes so much more sense when I assume a relatively high degree of rationality even when that means acknowledging a lot more evil in the world than I would like to.
Friday, March 10, 2006
Men's Right to Choose?
Angelica at Battlepanda has an interesting post on the argument raised by some advocates of “Men’s Rights” that men ought to be able to state a preference for abortion and thereby avoid any child support obligation if the woman chooses to carry the pregnancy to term anyway http://battlepanda.blogspot.com/2006/03/lindsay-beyerstein-is-brilliant.html .
In my view, while there is some similarity between the right of a woman to control her own body (this involves personal sovereignty) and the imposition of support obligations (this involves property, an aspect of personal sovereignty), the two issues are about two distinct rights and two distinct exercises of power by the state.
In a perfect world, support would be a matter decided by contract between the parents. Neither parent has a “right” to the property of the other absent an agreement, and a child has no “right” to the property of its parents or to any other person. Of course, we don’t live in such a world; rather, we live in a world where the state exercises power over everyone’s bodies and property with few theoretical limits. Our “rights” are of almost no consequence to the state when it deliberates how it will rule over us.
The perfect world I have described would doubtless be troubled by instances of parents who declined to support their children, but I reckon that there would be plenty of volunteers and charitable folks who would intervene and that coercion would not be necessary to solve this problem. The state wants us to believe that it has the solution to this problem: force.
Child support laws are ostensibly designed to provide for the maintenance of children, whether wanted or unwanted, and some states have apparently decided that it is easier to put the burden on the parties most intimately involved with the child rather than on society as a whole. The state could, and does, tax everyone and provide support for children in need and who have inadequate support from parents or volunteers. Perhaps our rulers consider that socializing care for children with parents who are financially capable of supporting them would meet with more public resistance than the exercise of such power would be worth.
The state concerns itself with the support of children in the first place as part of maintaining the illusion that the state exists to serve its subjects. If it did not provide for its most vulnerable subjects, this would be highly visible to the proletariat and raise questions about the propriety or necessity of all the other things the state undertakes. The basic premise of the total state might be undermined and become problematic to the herd. At the same time, every dollar the state spends on ordinary people, such as poor children, is one dollar less for the programs that enrich our rulers.
I would not find a child support scheme that allowed men to opt out before birth any more objectionable than the existing scheme. The upside would be that it would require a recognition that people have a choice about parenting. The downside would be that more children would probably be supported by taxpayers. Other effects might be a change in the number of children born out of wedlock since the cost-benefit calculus would be changed with a concomitant change in the number of abortions.
In my view, while there is some similarity between the right of a woman to control her own body (this involves personal sovereignty) and the imposition of support obligations (this involves property, an aspect of personal sovereignty), the two issues are about two distinct rights and two distinct exercises of power by the state.
In a perfect world, support would be a matter decided by contract between the parents. Neither parent has a “right” to the property of the other absent an agreement, and a child has no “right” to the property of its parents or to any other person. Of course, we don’t live in such a world; rather, we live in a world where the state exercises power over everyone’s bodies and property with few theoretical limits. Our “rights” are of almost no consequence to the state when it deliberates how it will rule over us.
The perfect world I have described would doubtless be troubled by instances of parents who declined to support their children, but I reckon that there would be plenty of volunteers and charitable folks who would intervene and that coercion would not be necessary to solve this problem. The state wants us to believe that it has the solution to this problem: force.
Child support laws are ostensibly designed to provide for the maintenance of children, whether wanted or unwanted, and some states have apparently decided that it is easier to put the burden on the parties most intimately involved with the child rather than on society as a whole. The state could, and does, tax everyone and provide support for children in need and who have inadequate support from parents or volunteers. Perhaps our rulers consider that socializing care for children with parents who are financially capable of supporting them would meet with more public resistance than the exercise of such power would be worth.
The state concerns itself with the support of children in the first place as part of maintaining the illusion that the state exists to serve its subjects. If it did not provide for its most vulnerable subjects, this would be highly visible to the proletariat and raise questions about the propriety or necessity of all the other things the state undertakes. The basic premise of the total state might be undermined and become problematic to the herd. At the same time, every dollar the state spends on ordinary people, such as poor children, is one dollar less for the programs that enrich our rulers.
I would not find a child support scheme that allowed men to opt out before birth any more objectionable than the existing scheme. The upside would be that it would require a recognition that people have a choice about parenting. The downside would be that more children would probably be supported by taxpayers. Other effects might be a change in the number of children born out of wedlock since the cost-benefit calculus would be changed with a concomitant change in the number of abortions.
I Don't Want to Trade with Evil Corporations (and is there any other kind?)
BW Richardson http://bwrmontag.blogspot.com/2006/03/something-to-take-comfort-in-as-we.html praises BB&T for its refusal to lend to developers who benefit from eminent domain. I would like to be in a position to reward companies like BB&T for such socially responsible actions and policies. I long ago concluded that my power as a consumer is much more significant than my power as a voter.
Back before Mrs Vache Folle and I sunk all our money (and then some) into our house, we had almost all our savings in a “socially responsible” mutual fund. The fund declined to invest in blatantly evil companies, like tobacco or arms makers, or companies that did not meet the fund’s criteria for social responsibility. The fund did pretty well, and we got to comfort ourselves that we weren’t hurting anyone through our investments.
On her radio program the other day, Rachel Maddow interviewed a woman who was involved in the development of the “Blue Pages”, a listing of companies whose actions and policies are consistent with “progressive” values. I think this is a great idea, and I would love to see similar compilations or ratings of businesses on the basis of libertarian values. If possible, I don’t want to trade with folks who benefit from eminent domain, who use government to disadvantage competitors, who feed at the government trough, who gain from slave labor, who are complicit in murder or torture, or who violate any number of my deeply held values.
Does such a compilation/rating already exist? If not, what might it take to get one going? I would pay for a subscription to such a service.
On a somewhat related note, Dr Lenny wonders why corporations even exist: http://www.howdt.com/blog/2006/03/corporations-why.html#comments. As a corporate tool, I have observed that the corporate form doesn’t seem to provide much in the way of real benefits to investors. Limited contractual liability could be had in other ways, and as often as not the corporate form carries with it tort liability for the acts and omissions of long departed predecessors. Moreover, the added costs of administration, loss of transparency and bizarre incentives that accompany the corporate form eat up any benefits that one might derive as an investor. It does enable executives to enrich themselves and legions of administrators like me to earn a living doing nothing with any bearing on the bottom line.
I confess that I am not all that clear on the basis of left libertarian objections to the corporate form in principle except for the embiggening that it facilitates.
Back before Mrs Vache Folle and I sunk all our money (and then some) into our house, we had almost all our savings in a “socially responsible” mutual fund. The fund declined to invest in blatantly evil companies, like tobacco or arms makers, or companies that did not meet the fund’s criteria for social responsibility. The fund did pretty well, and we got to comfort ourselves that we weren’t hurting anyone through our investments.
On her radio program the other day, Rachel Maddow interviewed a woman who was involved in the development of the “Blue Pages”, a listing of companies whose actions and policies are consistent with “progressive” values. I think this is a great idea, and I would love to see similar compilations or ratings of businesses on the basis of libertarian values. If possible, I don’t want to trade with folks who benefit from eminent domain, who use government to disadvantage competitors, who feed at the government trough, who gain from slave labor, who are complicit in murder or torture, or who violate any number of my deeply held values.
Does such a compilation/rating already exist? If not, what might it take to get one going? I would pay for a subscription to such a service.
On a somewhat related note, Dr Lenny wonders why corporations even exist: http://www.howdt.com/blog/2006/03/corporations-why.html#comments. As a corporate tool, I have observed that the corporate form doesn’t seem to provide much in the way of real benefits to investors. Limited contractual liability could be had in other ways, and as often as not the corporate form carries with it tort liability for the acts and omissions of long departed predecessors. Moreover, the added costs of administration, loss of transparency and bizarre incentives that accompany the corporate form eat up any benefits that one might derive as an investor. It does enable executives to enrich themselves and legions of administrators like me to earn a living doing nothing with any bearing on the bottom line.
I confess that I am not all that clear on the basis of left libertarian objections to the corporate form in principle except for the embiggening that it facilitates.
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Let's Have More Daylight in Winter
It makes no sense to me that the government grants us an extra hour of daylight in the summer when there are already plenty of daylight hours. Wouldn’t it be better to give us that extra hour in the winter? It’s dark when I get home and even when I leave in the morning most of the time in winter, and I can’t do a whole lot during the dark season.
I realize that the extra hour was added in summer so that crops can benefit. It is another kind of farm subsidy. On the other hand, there is no question that the main cause of global warming is the annual extra 180 hours or so of daylight that Americans use. Accordingly, the program cancels itself out. Any extra crop growth is wiped out by bizarre weather and drought.
It’s time for a change.
I realize that the extra hour was added in summer so that crops can benefit. It is another kind of farm subsidy. On the other hand, there is no question that the main cause of global warming is the annual extra 180 hours or so of daylight that Americans use. Accordingly, the program cancels itself out. Any extra crop growth is wiped out by bizarre weather and drought.
It’s time for a change.
Why Would I Care About What Substances Barry Bonds Took?
I can’t seem to get worked up about the possibility that Barry Bonds used “performance enhancing drugs”. It’s not as if they endowed him with superpowers. He could have gotten much the same effect by working out for hours on end in the gym. That would have enhanced his performance just as much, but nobody seems concerned about athletes who work out or who use hypnosis or technological training aids. The drugs were just a shortcut.
What about a guy who practices more than usual? That would enhance his performance and give him an advantage over other players who did not practice so much. Maybe MLB should require all players to eschew practice, stretching, working out, eating healthy, or anything that might give them an edge. All players should have to come to the games equally out of shape, hung over, and out of practice. That would be fair. Then only the most naturally talented players would succeed.
In any event, I reckon it’s up to MLB whether they care about steroids and such. If Congress would stay out of the issue, it would get resolved just fine. If the fans really care, perhaps a competing all-natural league would emerge and succeed.
What about a guy who practices more than usual? That would enhance his performance and give him an advantage over other players who did not practice so much. Maybe MLB should require all players to eschew practice, stretching, working out, eating healthy, or anything that might give them an edge. All players should have to come to the games equally out of shape, hung over, and out of practice. That would be fair. Then only the most naturally talented players would succeed.
In any event, I reckon it’s up to MLB whether they care about steroids and such. If Congress would stay out of the issue, it would get resolved just fine. If the fans really care, perhaps a competing all-natural league would emerge and succeed.
How Can We Deal With Gender Differences in Classroom Discussions or Meetings?
I consider myself a feminist in that I love women and believe that they ought to have all the same choices and privileges as men. Neither sex should be privileged over the other to the extent that it is not an inescapable function of human sexual dimorphism. Dimorphism entails some differences in capabilities and dispositions that may work to the advantage or disadvantage of either sex in any particular situation. The fact of sexual dimorphism does not have any particular normative implications, however, and I recognize that dimorphism may be abused as justification for policies that unnecessarily privilege one sex at the expense of the other. I also recognize that the plain fact of the matter is that males are privileged over women much more often than the other way around.
Armed with more or less this degree of feminism, I signed up several years ago for a course on feminist anthropology by a doyenne of the field, Sherry Ortner, MacArthur genius and apostle of the great symbolic anthropologist Clifford Goertz. Overall, it was a great experience, and I was exposed to some different schools of feminist thought from the “kill all the men and reproduce by parthenogenesis” school to individualist feminism. Sherry fell somewhere in between, but I’m not sure where since she did not seem to treat the class as a forum for promoting her personal views.
The class was a senior level course, and there were two male doctoral students (I was one of them) and about twenty female undergraduates. Discussion was invited and encouraged, but we male grad students contributed 90% to every class discussion for the first several weeks. Then Sherry announced that she was concerned that the discussions had become “gendered” and let it be known that she thought the guys should be quiet. We accepted that our participation might have intimidated the female students either because we were male or because we were older doctoral students or because of both, and we stopped participating in discussions. In fact, discussions stopped almost altogether for the rest of the semester.
At first, I surmised that the undergraduates weren’t intimidated; they just weren’t all that interested. They wanted to do what was necessary to get a good grade and class discussion, according to some I talked to, just seemed like too much of a chance to say something stupid and attract the negative attention of the professor. They were intimidated by Sherry, her godlike status, and her authoritativeness on the issues presented. They felt that they had nothing to offer to a discussion and had too little grounding in the field to articulate intelligent questions. The male grad students, on the other hand, were keen to get all they could out of their limited access to Sherry and weren’t intimidated by her nearly as much.
I concluded in the end that Sherry was partly right. The discussion was “gendered” in that the female undergrads were intimidated by Sherry while the male grad students were not. There were no female grad students or male undergrads so as to help to rule out age and experience as contributing factors in the different behaviors. In any event, silencing the males/grad students was not enough to solve the problem. That just left space for females/undergrads to speak up, but the intimidation factor was still present and apparently overwhelming.
In teaching and as a student, it had already become apparent to me that females on average spoke up less than males and that they tended to be more tentative in their assertions (except in law school). I don’t know why this is so or whether it is inherent or culturally conditioned or both, but there must be some way to make sure that the contributions of women in class or in any meeting for that matter are fully elicited.
I’m not sure that silencing males is the solution, however, especially in front of the women. That just validates their silence and makes for awkward relations going forward. I have never been sure that the women were intimidated by the men or that the men used up all the air in the room, so to speak. Rather, it seemed to me that the format and structure of seminars or other discourse were problematic and more suited to men than to women. It is, I think, incumbent on instructors to develop the skills required to provide more value to female students and encourage them to talk more openly about their ideas.
One method that I have been toying with is treating questions and tentative statements differently. Instead of providing an answer or confirmation, I examine the question/disguised question/assertion as a topic in its own right. How is it framed? What are the broader implications of framing the question in this manner? We are now discussing, often at length, ideas generated by the student herself and legitimizing those ideas. I have found that this, like any exercise in active listening, helps any student of either sex open up and speak more freely. Moreover, to the extent that the instructor can position himself as a facilitator, I have found that this helps students open up more than when the instructor acts as an authority figure. Also, the instructor should pay attention to the ground rules of civil discourse and help to insure that speakers are not interrupted or cut off, that common courtesy is observed.
I would welcome suggestions about how to deal with this issue in teaching, training and in business meetings.
Armed with more or less this degree of feminism, I signed up several years ago for a course on feminist anthropology by a doyenne of the field, Sherry Ortner, MacArthur genius and apostle of the great symbolic anthropologist Clifford Goertz. Overall, it was a great experience, and I was exposed to some different schools of feminist thought from the “kill all the men and reproduce by parthenogenesis” school to individualist feminism. Sherry fell somewhere in between, but I’m not sure where since she did not seem to treat the class as a forum for promoting her personal views.
The class was a senior level course, and there were two male doctoral students (I was one of them) and about twenty female undergraduates. Discussion was invited and encouraged, but we male grad students contributed 90% to every class discussion for the first several weeks. Then Sherry announced that she was concerned that the discussions had become “gendered” and let it be known that she thought the guys should be quiet. We accepted that our participation might have intimidated the female students either because we were male or because we were older doctoral students or because of both, and we stopped participating in discussions. In fact, discussions stopped almost altogether for the rest of the semester.
At first, I surmised that the undergraduates weren’t intimidated; they just weren’t all that interested. They wanted to do what was necessary to get a good grade and class discussion, according to some I talked to, just seemed like too much of a chance to say something stupid and attract the negative attention of the professor. They were intimidated by Sherry, her godlike status, and her authoritativeness on the issues presented. They felt that they had nothing to offer to a discussion and had too little grounding in the field to articulate intelligent questions. The male grad students, on the other hand, were keen to get all they could out of their limited access to Sherry and weren’t intimidated by her nearly as much.
I concluded in the end that Sherry was partly right. The discussion was “gendered” in that the female undergrads were intimidated by Sherry while the male grad students were not. There were no female grad students or male undergrads so as to help to rule out age and experience as contributing factors in the different behaviors. In any event, silencing the males/grad students was not enough to solve the problem. That just left space for females/undergrads to speak up, but the intimidation factor was still present and apparently overwhelming.
In teaching and as a student, it had already become apparent to me that females on average spoke up less than males and that they tended to be more tentative in their assertions (except in law school). I don’t know why this is so or whether it is inherent or culturally conditioned or both, but there must be some way to make sure that the contributions of women in class or in any meeting for that matter are fully elicited.
I’m not sure that silencing males is the solution, however, especially in front of the women. That just validates their silence and makes for awkward relations going forward. I have never been sure that the women were intimidated by the men or that the men used up all the air in the room, so to speak. Rather, it seemed to me that the format and structure of seminars or other discourse were problematic and more suited to men than to women. It is, I think, incumbent on instructors to develop the skills required to provide more value to female students and encourage them to talk more openly about their ideas.
One method that I have been toying with is treating questions and tentative statements differently. Instead of providing an answer or confirmation, I examine the question/disguised question/assertion as a topic in its own right. How is it framed? What are the broader implications of framing the question in this manner? We are now discussing, often at length, ideas generated by the student herself and legitimizing those ideas. I have found that this, like any exercise in active listening, helps any student of either sex open up and speak more freely. Moreover, to the extent that the instructor can position himself as a facilitator, I have found that this helps students open up more than when the instructor acts as an authority figure. Also, the instructor should pay attention to the ground rules of civil discourse and help to insure that speakers are not interrupted or cut off, that common courtesy is observed.
I would welcome suggestions about how to deal with this issue in teaching, training and in business meetings.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Pit Bull Blogging
William Jasper Stone after an exhausting round of Monkey in the Middle. He's always the monkey.
Still More on the Church and Authoritarianism
I didn’t intend to “liveblog” my reading of Elaine Pagels, but learning about the early church has been such an eye opener for me. It turns out that the early church was way more accepting of women as participants and leaders in worship and the community of the faithful than the later church. One of the main complaints of the orthodox bishops about the Gnostics was that they suffered women to teach and lead and serve on an equal footing with men. They also employed a set of feminine metaphors in talking about God that undermined the notion of male dominance.
Pagels implies, or at least I inferred, that the orthodox church adopted a number of “pseudo-Pauline” epistles that represented Paul as commanding that women be kept silent in church and that validated the supremacy of men over women.
I am thankful that my own church encourages women to be leaders and take active roles in church despite Paul’s supposed decrees to the contrary. Nonetheless, at least one of my literalist fellow congregants believes that women should be silent and that their activities are tolerable to him only because men have “abdicated their responsibilities”.
Even in the Bible Belt where I grew up, most of the churches I knew about had women in active roles. Some even had women preachers. All had women Sunday School teachers. How did they reconcile this with Paul’s alleged dictates about the inferiority of women and their disqualification from such roles? They didn’t, as far as I could tell. Then and now, it was unlikely that such a passage would be featured in worship or Bible study, and if the issue came up it was dismissed as an artifact of the socio-cultural and historical context within which Paul wrote. That was good enough for me when I was a child, but as an adult Christian I have never been able to reconcile the idea that Paul advocated domination by males over females or that he supported slavery with the teachings of Jesus. If Paul never actually wrote the troublesome passages, all the better as far as I am concerned.
The more I learn about the early orthodox bishops and their authoritarianism, the less inclined I am to trust that their selection of texts for the canon was inspired by the Holy Ghost.
Pagels implies, or at least I inferred, that the orthodox church adopted a number of “pseudo-Pauline” epistles that represented Paul as commanding that women be kept silent in church and that validated the supremacy of men over women.
I am thankful that my own church encourages women to be leaders and take active roles in church despite Paul’s supposed decrees to the contrary. Nonetheless, at least one of my literalist fellow congregants believes that women should be silent and that their activities are tolerable to him only because men have “abdicated their responsibilities”.
Even in the Bible Belt where I grew up, most of the churches I knew about had women in active roles. Some even had women preachers. All had women Sunday School teachers. How did they reconcile this with Paul’s alleged dictates about the inferiority of women and their disqualification from such roles? They didn’t, as far as I could tell. Then and now, it was unlikely that such a passage would be featured in worship or Bible study, and if the issue came up it was dismissed as an artifact of the socio-cultural and historical context within which Paul wrote. That was good enough for me when I was a child, but as an adult Christian I have never been able to reconcile the idea that Paul advocated domination by males over females or that he supported slavery with the teachings of Jesus. If Paul never actually wrote the troublesome passages, all the better as far as I am concerned.
The more I learn about the early orthodox bishops and their authoritarianism, the less inclined I am to trust that their selection of texts for the canon was inspired by the Holy Ghost.
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