I am pretty sure that global warming is real and that this is going to have some serious consequences such as shutting down the ocean conveyor and putting Europe into an ice age. Also, sea levels will rise for a time. None of this is likely to hit real hard in my lifetime, and I don’t have children whose future might concern me. So bring on the catastrophe! There’s nothing that can be done to avert it anyway. Silly environmentalists.
If global climate change gives you lemons, make lemonade! Try to see the freezing of Europe as a business opportunity, not a disaster. Think of all the blankets, parkas, and insulation that will be sold. Of course, there won’t be any French wine, but Mexican wine will probably pick up the slack.
Also, once the rain forests of Central America die off in the permanent drought to come, think of all the retirement homes that can be erected in the new deserts there. Sure, we’ll lose a lot of monkeys and colorful birds, but Gila Monsters will flourish on an unprecedented scale. Species die out all the time. Heck, humans might die out, but that just leaves room for some other species to take over, so it all works out in the end.
Rising sea levels? Don’t worry; it just means the beaches will have moved. Some folks will lose, but others will win when their property becomes beachfront. Geography changes all the time. Plate tectonics will eventually move whole continents, and nobody’s talking about mitigating the impacts of plate tectonics, are they?
It’s economics, pure and simple, that will save the day. When the earth is almost all used up and it becomes too expensive for humans to live on earth, then it will become profitable to find other planets. Not to worry as long as the old invisible hand is pulling the strings.
Am I ready for Mises?
Friday, March 31, 2006
Detroit Prosecutor of "Sleeper Cell" Target of Grand Jury
The Washington Post reports that a former federal prosecutor who railroaded some men in a “sleeper cell” case in Detroit is under investigation by a grand jury for misconduct in the case: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/19/AR2005111900952.html
This is a truly amazing occurrence. Ordinarily, such zealous prosecutors are never held to account for their misdeeds, and they are frequently rewarded for them. It remains to be seen whether anything will come of this case, but I think that prosecutors everywhere could benefit mightily from a healthy dose of accountability. Let’s hope that the possibility of a grand jury probe will have a chilling effect on prosecutor wrongdoing. What am I saying? This will never happen.
This is a truly amazing occurrence. Ordinarily, such zealous prosecutors are never held to account for their misdeeds, and they are frequently rewarded for them. It remains to be seen whether anything will come of this case, but I think that prosecutors everywhere could benefit mightily from a healthy dose of accountability. Let’s hope that the possibility of a grand jury probe will have a chilling effect on prosecutor wrongdoing. What am I saying? This will never happen.
My $0.02 on Illegal Aliens
Mrs Vache Folle and I were talking about all the hullaboo over “illegal aliens”, and I suggested as a thought experiment that one solution might be to add up the societal costs of illegal immigration and pay Mexicans half that amount to stay in Mexico. We couldn’t think of any such costs, however. What we did come up with were costs associated with cracking down on illegal aliens. There are the costs of enforcement itself. There are increased costs all along the line for every service or product that Mexican labor is involved in. Sure, some non-Mexicans might get paid more for doing this work, but all the rest of us will pay more for the products and services. On the whole, “society” would gain nothing from the crackdown. The crackdown would in effect be a subsidy for certain categories of entry-level workers, a subsidy paid by all of us in higher prices. Why would we want to do that?
I suppose that you might not like Mexicans or that you might not like it much that your culture and language and values are being challenged by the presence of a competing culture, language and values. It might be worth it to you to pay more for things if you could also get rid of a lot of Mexicans. I understand the sentiment, although I do not share it. I don’t like what all those Ellis Island immigrants did to the country and many of their descendants are still doing, but I advocate deportation only in a tongue and cheek way. I would never advocate the use of force to interfere with the ability of people to migrate for work or other reasons. Perhaps folks who want a more Mexican-free America for aesthetic reasons could contribute money voluntarily to pay Mexicans to go home or stay there.
I myself am an immigrant in a very real sense. I live and work in New York, although I was born in Tennessee to Georgian parents and raised in Georgia. If things had gone differently at Gettysburg in 1863, I might have needed a passport to get into New York and a green card to work here. By happenstance, Georgia is considered the same country as New York, and the imaginary dotted lines that divide New York from Georgia have less significance than the border with Mexico. When I first came to New York, I had an acquaintance from Barbados who mentioned that he been to “the island” over the weekend. I assumed that he meant Barbados, when he actually meant Long Island. He had a place in the Hamptons. He was a hundred times more a New Yorker than I will ever be even though he came from a “foreign” land. I was more of an immigrant newcomer than he was, his having lived in New York for 20 years.
I suppose that you might not like Mexicans or that you might not like it much that your culture and language and values are being challenged by the presence of a competing culture, language and values. It might be worth it to you to pay more for things if you could also get rid of a lot of Mexicans. I understand the sentiment, although I do not share it. I don’t like what all those Ellis Island immigrants did to the country and many of their descendants are still doing, but I advocate deportation only in a tongue and cheek way. I would never advocate the use of force to interfere with the ability of people to migrate for work or other reasons. Perhaps folks who want a more Mexican-free America for aesthetic reasons could contribute money voluntarily to pay Mexicans to go home or stay there.
I myself am an immigrant in a very real sense. I live and work in New York, although I was born in Tennessee to Georgian parents and raised in Georgia. If things had gone differently at Gettysburg in 1863, I might have needed a passport to get into New York and a green card to work here. By happenstance, Georgia is considered the same country as New York, and the imaginary dotted lines that divide New York from Georgia have less significance than the border with Mexico. When I first came to New York, I had an acquaintance from Barbados who mentioned that he been to “the island” over the weekend. I assumed that he meant Barbados, when he actually meant Long Island. He had a place in the Hamptons. He was a hundred times more a New Yorker than I will ever be even though he came from a “foreign” land. I was more of an immigrant newcomer than he was, his having lived in New York for 20 years.
Jesus as King
I have been thinking lately about the metaphors that Christians use to talk about Jesus and how reification can be problematic. One metaphor, that of Jesus as “king”, seems to be a potential source of confusion rather than erudition, especially for folks who don’t really have much experience with monarchy. What might early Christians have meant by describing Jesus as king and talking about the Kingdom of Heaven?
Certainly, the modern constitutional monarch of the sort we have in Western Europe could not have been meant. In what way could Jesus be said to be like such figureheads? I suppose if you have a symbolic Jesus that you use for certain occasions, particularly in service of the state, that you might regard the constitutional monarch as the metaphorical equivalent of Jesus.
What about the kings of the Dark Ages, those bandits who ran protection rackets and lived as parasites on their subjects? That doesn’t sound much like Jesus at all. Jesus doesn’t need serfs to support him, and Jesus has the heart of a servant, not an overlord. Jesus does not rule by force and fraud.
What about the kings of the first century? Surely, Herod was not the template. Herod was a puppet of Rome and a tyrant. Caesar was not even a king, he was simply “Imperator”, the ultimate leader, who maintained the basic form, if not the substance, of the Republic. Imperators did not assume the title of “king” that had been abolished with the rise of the Republic. Besides, the Imperators were a sorry lot, many of them epitomes of evil, and it would be blasphemous I think to liken Jesus to a Caesar or a Tsar or a Kaiser.
Are we meant to look to the monarchs of Israel and Judah? How is Jesus supposed to be like them? Many of them were evil and experienced the wrath of God, or so the Old Testament stories tell us. Even the good ones, David and Solomon, were mighty flawed. And didn’t God, through his prophets, express disapproval of a monarchy for Israel and reluctance to endorse a king?
In my heart, I think the metaphor involves the ideal king, a benevolent monarch who, like the mythical rather than real Lionheart, works justice for Norman and Saxon alike, who embodies rather than makes the law of the realm, who is merciful and compassionate, who guards the widows and orphans, who champions the poor and meek, who insures the rights of all men. Perhaps I am reversing the metaphor and imposing on kingship a requirement that a king be Christ-like rather than having Christ be kingly.
How is Jesus like a king? Does this metaphor serve a useful purpose in American society where the idea of monarchy is almost anathema? Christians may need some better metaphors. Jesus is unlike any officeholder in the modern state. Is Jesus like the Constitution, not as it has been interpreted, but as it was intended as a limit on the power of the state? Or do we avoid blasphemy by eschewing metaphors that involve the state at all?
Certainly, the modern constitutional monarch of the sort we have in Western Europe could not have been meant. In what way could Jesus be said to be like such figureheads? I suppose if you have a symbolic Jesus that you use for certain occasions, particularly in service of the state, that you might regard the constitutional monarch as the metaphorical equivalent of Jesus.
What about the kings of the Dark Ages, those bandits who ran protection rackets and lived as parasites on their subjects? That doesn’t sound much like Jesus at all. Jesus doesn’t need serfs to support him, and Jesus has the heart of a servant, not an overlord. Jesus does not rule by force and fraud.
What about the kings of the first century? Surely, Herod was not the template. Herod was a puppet of Rome and a tyrant. Caesar was not even a king, he was simply “Imperator”, the ultimate leader, who maintained the basic form, if not the substance, of the Republic. Imperators did not assume the title of “king” that had been abolished with the rise of the Republic. Besides, the Imperators were a sorry lot, many of them epitomes of evil, and it would be blasphemous I think to liken Jesus to a Caesar or a Tsar or a Kaiser.
Are we meant to look to the monarchs of Israel and Judah? How is Jesus supposed to be like them? Many of them were evil and experienced the wrath of God, or so the Old Testament stories tell us. Even the good ones, David and Solomon, were mighty flawed. And didn’t God, through his prophets, express disapproval of a monarchy for Israel and reluctance to endorse a king?
In my heart, I think the metaphor involves the ideal king, a benevolent monarch who, like the mythical rather than real Lionheart, works justice for Norman and Saxon alike, who embodies rather than makes the law of the realm, who is merciful and compassionate, who guards the widows and orphans, who champions the poor and meek, who insures the rights of all men. Perhaps I am reversing the metaphor and imposing on kingship a requirement that a king be Christ-like rather than having Christ be kingly.
How is Jesus like a king? Does this metaphor serve a useful purpose in American society where the idea of monarchy is almost anathema? Christians may need some better metaphors. Jesus is unlike any officeholder in the modern state. Is Jesus like the Constitution, not as it has been interpreted, but as it was intended as a limit on the power of the state? Or do we avoid blasphemy by eschewing metaphors that involve the state at all?
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Best. Steak. Ever.
On Monday, I had the best steak ever. We were at the Rex in Billings, Montana, and we all ordered the 9 ounce bacon wrapped filet mignon. We all had it medium rare or rare. I am a medium rare man myself. The steak was perfect. It was a good 6 inches thick and yet perfectly cooked. It was topped with onion rings and butter and surrounded by thick rashers of bacon. It was perfect. If the animal had mad cow disease, it would still be worth it to have eaten that steak.
I also got a spinach salad with bacon and egg topped with bacon grease dressing. I got extra vegetables rather than a potato, so the meal was South Beach qualified. And no dessert, just scotch, so all in all I made healthy choices. Thank God for Vytorin.
I will dream about that steak and think of excuses to go to Billings more often. I hope I can enjoy regular steaks and that the perfect steak has not ruined the steak experience for me. Mrs Vache Folle is an expert steak cooker who always gets it just right, but I can’t get meat like that 9 ouncer in my town. I am going to ask her to butter my steak next time rather than marinating it in chipotle tobasco.
I also got a spinach salad with bacon and egg topped with bacon grease dressing. I got extra vegetables rather than a potato, so the meal was South Beach qualified. And no dessert, just scotch, so all in all I made healthy choices. Thank God for Vytorin.
I will dream about that steak and think of excuses to go to Billings more often. I hope I can enjoy regular steaks and that the perfect steak has not ruined the steak experience for me. Mrs Vache Folle is an expert steak cooker who always gets it just right, but I can’t get meat like that 9 ouncer in my town. I am going to ask her to butter my steak next time rather than marinating it in chipotle tobasco.
More Fun with Infanticide
I had fun yesterday thinking up scenarios where you could kill a baby and get a medal for it, so I decided to come up with some more unlikely scenarios for use in future arguments.
Suppose you had a freezer full of human embryos, and they would thaw out and die unless you killed a baby that was about to cut off their power supply. There is only one baby and a thousand frozen embryos, each a “potential human being”, and your only chance to save the embryos is to shoot that baby with a cross bow. You have only one dart, so you can’t chance anything but a kill shot. Do you shoot the baby? What if it is a really whiny toddler? A sullen teenager? An incontinent old man?
There are suspected terrorists holed up in the mountains. A local warlord has them in his power and agrees to turn them over to you if you will sacrifice a dozen children to his deity Moloch. Moloch requires that his sacrificial victims be burned alive in a furnace. There is no other way to get the terrorists who will go on to kill more people in their terror campaign. Do you shovel babies into the furnace? If a dozen babies were in a house where the terrorists were hiding, would you firebomb the house and chalk up the dead babies to “collateral damage”? What is the difference between the two scenarios?
Your country is at war with another country. You suspect that you can get the other side to surrender if you make a show of your brutality. To get the desired impact, you reckon that you will have to kill everyone in an entire city. Do you order the systematic shooting of every single man, woman, and child in a city you have in your power? What if you could drop a single bomb and kill them all at once? If you had to strangle everyone, would that make a difference? Did I mention there are lots of cute babies in the city? Would you do two cities?
A man is wanted for failure to appear in court on a weapons charge. You suspect that he might be armed and might resist apprehension. Do you shoot and kill his wife and baby while trying to apprehend him? A religious group refuses to turn over its leader who is wanted on a warrant and holes up in its compound. Do you set fire to the compound and kill a lot of them, including some babies to save time?
Suppose you had a freezer full of human embryos, and they would thaw out and die unless you killed a baby that was about to cut off their power supply. There is only one baby and a thousand frozen embryos, each a “potential human being”, and your only chance to save the embryos is to shoot that baby with a cross bow. You have only one dart, so you can’t chance anything but a kill shot. Do you shoot the baby? What if it is a really whiny toddler? A sullen teenager? An incontinent old man?
There are suspected terrorists holed up in the mountains. A local warlord has them in his power and agrees to turn them over to you if you will sacrifice a dozen children to his deity Moloch. Moloch requires that his sacrificial victims be burned alive in a furnace. There is no other way to get the terrorists who will go on to kill more people in their terror campaign. Do you shovel babies into the furnace? If a dozen babies were in a house where the terrorists were hiding, would you firebomb the house and chalk up the dead babies to “collateral damage”? What is the difference between the two scenarios?
Your country is at war with another country. You suspect that you can get the other side to surrender if you make a show of your brutality. To get the desired impact, you reckon that you will have to kill everyone in an entire city. Do you order the systematic shooting of every single man, woman, and child in a city you have in your power? What if you could drop a single bomb and kill them all at once? If you had to strangle everyone, would that make a difference? Did I mention there are lots of cute babies in the city? Would you do two cities?
A man is wanted for failure to appear in court on a weapons charge. You suspect that he might be armed and might resist apprehension. Do you shoot and kill his wife and baby while trying to apprehend him? A religious group refuses to turn over its leader who is wanted on a warrant and holes up in its compound. Do you set fire to the compound and kill a lot of them, including some babies to save time?
I'd Rather be a Libertarian Lover than a Compassionate Conservative
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Wednesday, March 29, 2006
HIV doesn't cause AIDS?
The same issue of Harpers that I referred to in the last post had an article about the politics of AIDS and its impact on research and the approval of drugs. Not surprisingly, politics trumps science at the FDA. I was surprised, however, to learn that the connection between HIV and AIDS has never been established by the usual scientific criteria. I had always been under the impression that this was a solid fact, that there was simply no controversy about the connection. It is taboo to question the HIV/AIDS connection, and anyone who does so will lose funding and face ostracism. An HIV denier is treated like a lunatic Holocaust denier.
The much decried epidemic of AIDS in Africa is also less well established as fact than I had previously been led to believe. It turns out that all kinds of sickness in Africa get classified as AIDS even in the absence of testing for HIV or solid differential diagnoses. This probably generates more foreign assistance than your run of the mill cholera or dysentery problem, but it also leads to the squandering of that assistance on potentially useless drugs to combat HIV. The money would be better spent on sanitation and other public health measures.
What drives this deception and refusal to brook dissent? Why would activists in the US not want to explore the actual etiology of AIDS even if the HIV hypothesis had to be abandoned or modified?
The much decried epidemic of AIDS in Africa is also less well established as fact than I had previously been led to believe. It turns out that all kinds of sickness in Africa get classified as AIDS even in the absence of testing for HIV or solid differential diagnoses. This probably generates more foreign assistance than your run of the mill cholera or dysentery problem, but it also leads to the squandering of that assistance on potentially useless drugs to combat HIV. The money would be better spent on sanitation and other public health measures.
What drives this deception and refusal to brook dissent? Why would activists in the US not want to explore the actual etiology of AIDS even if the HIV hypothesis had to be abandoned or modified?
Ticking Time Bomb, My Ass
There was a brilliant piece in Harper’s about torture and the “ticking time bomb” justification for it. The whole issue, including a case for the impeachment of GW Bush and a story on the politicization of science by the AIDS industry, is fantastic, but I can’t seem to find it on their site. Just buy the magazine. Trust me, it’s great.
Whenever I hear the “ticking time bomb” argument, I am pretty sure that I am dealing with an idiot and that pointing out the utter illogic of the argument will be a waste of time. Seriously, when would such a scenario ever happen? You know there’s a time bomb, and you know that the guy you have in custody knows about it. Under those circumstances, if you tortured the guy and got the information needed to thwart the bombing, no jury would ever convict you of anything. No prosecutor would ever charge you. There is really no need for a law legitimizing torture in the case of the ticking time bomb scenario, and the scenario serves only as a red herring to soften us up to the idea of torture as legitimate under any circumstances.
It does not follow that because one might feel justified in taking extreme measures under extreme and highly improbable circumstances that the measures should somehow be considered other than extreme. I summarize the ticking time bomb argument as follows: “If one can imagine a scenario when an evil act might be justifiable, then that evil act is always justifiable.”
Let us imagine a scenario in which the only way to save a trainload of people from certain death is to throw a switch diverting the train onto a siding where a baby is playing in the new path of the train. You might decide that killing the baby is justified under the circumstances, but it does not follow that baby killing becomes less heinous because one might imagine an extreme situation in which it might be a suitable choice. I concede that once you kill your first baby, it probably becomes easier. Perhaps once you imagine killing a baby, it becomes easier to imagine killing them.
Let us imagine that a baby has wandered into a room where it has access to the enabled launch controls of nuclear missiles and that the baby is about to launch the missiles unless you shoot her in the head at once. The baby does not know what she is doing. She is a good baby and very cute, not unlike the Gerber baby. Unless you shoot that baby, millions will die in a nuclear holocaust. Shooting the baby would be understandable, wouldn’t it, but should we by this logic condone shooting babies as policy in less dire circumstances? What if she is about to launch a conventional weapon that will kill at most 10 people? Should you still shoot her? What if she is endangering only a single person or property or government secrets? What if she is crying in a theater?
What if the baby is the child of your suspect and the only way to get him to talk is to torture that baby in front of him by burning it with a soldering iron? What if you were only 10% sure that the suspect had the information you needed? 1%? 0.00001%?
Is there really a continuum along which baby killing on one end is evil and must be avoided and on the other end baby killing is a moral and civic duty? Is there a point on this continuum, the location of which it is reasonable to argue about, where baby killing ceases to be morally objectionable? I submit that it is not useful to think in such terms and that the continuum is an argumentative con job. Baby killing is only appropriate in extreme and improbable examples such as the ones I have described, and, what’s more, it is still a bad thing to have to kill the baby.
As far as I know, nobody tortured by the US or its proxies is believed to have had information about a ticking time bomb. Rather, some thugs suspect, based on God only knows what information, that their victims might know something about something and that torture might get them to talk about it. This is a long way from the ticking time bomb scenario.
So why condone torture? First of all, there is a certain constituency among slack jawed yahoos who think that torturing is manly and that scruples about torture are wimpy. The GOP is going for the votes of the morally handicapped. Secondly, some folks get off on torture. Thirdly, torture is part of a program of terror. One tortures prisoners to frighten others who might become prisoners. None of these is a morally legitimate reason to condone torture.
Whenever I hear the “ticking time bomb” argument, I am pretty sure that I am dealing with an idiot and that pointing out the utter illogic of the argument will be a waste of time. Seriously, when would such a scenario ever happen? You know there’s a time bomb, and you know that the guy you have in custody knows about it. Under those circumstances, if you tortured the guy and got the information needed to thwart the bombing, no jury would ever convict you of anything. No prosecutor would ever charge you. There is really no need for a law legitimizing torture in the case of the ticking time bomb scenario, and the scenario serves only as a red herring to soften us up to the idea of torture as legitimate under any circumstances.
It does not follow that because one might feel justified in taking extreme measures under extreme and highly improbable circumstances that the measures should somehow be considered other than extreme. I summarize the ticking time bomb argument as follows: “If one can imagine a scenario when an evil act might be justifiable, then that evil act is always justifiable.”
Let us imagine a scenario in which the only way to save a trainload of people from certain death is to throw a switch diverting the train onto a siding where a baby is playing in the new path of the train. You might decide that killing the baby is justified under the circumstances, but it does not follow that baby killing becomes less heinous because one might imagine an extreme situation in which it might be a suitable choice. I concede that once you kill your first baby, it probably becomes easier. Perhaps once you imagine killing a baby, it becomes easier to imagine killing them.
Let us imagine that a baby has wandered into a room where it has access to the enabled launch controls of nuclear missiles and that the baby is about to launch the missiles unless you shoot her in the head at once. The baby does not know what she is doing. She is a good baby and very cute, not unlike the Gerber baby. Unless you shoot that baby, millions will die in a nuclear holocaust. Shooting the baby would be understandable, wouldn’t it, but should we by this logic condone shooting babies as policy in less dire circumstances? What if she is about to launch a conventional weapon that will kill at most 10 people? Should you still shoot her? What if she is endangering only a single person or property or government secrets? What if she is crying in a theater?
What if the baby is the child of your suspect and the only way to get him to talk is to torture that baby in front of him by burning it with a soldering iron? What if you were only 10% sure that the suspect had the information you needed? 1%? 0.00001%?
Is there really a continuum along which baby killing on one end is evil and must be avoided and on the other end baby killing is a moral and civic duty? Is there a point on this continuum, the location of which it is reasonable to argue about, where baby killing ceases to be morally objectionable? I submit that it is not useful to think in such terms and that the continuum is an argumentative con job. Baby killing is only appropriate in extreme and improbable examples such as the ones I have described, and, what’s more, it is still a bad thing to have to kill the baby.
As far as I know, nobody tortured by the US or its proxies is believed to have had information about a ticking time bomb. Rather, some thugs suspect, based on God only knows what information, that their victims might know something about something and that torture might get them to talk about it. This is a long way from the ticking time bomb scenario.
So why condone torture? First of all, there is a certain constituency among slack jawed yahoos who think that torturing is manly and that scruples about torture are wimpy. The GOP is going for the votes of the morally handicapped. Secondly, some folks get off on torture. Thirdly, torture is part of a program of terror. One tortures prisoners to frighten others who might become prisoners. None of these is a morally legitimate reason to condone torture.
Ticking Time Bomb, My Ass
There was a brilliant piece in Harper’s about torture and the “ticking time bomb” justification for it. The whole issue, including a case for the impeachment of GW Bush and a story on the politicization of science by the AIDS industry, is fantastic, but I can’t seem to find it on their site. Just buy the magazine. Trust me, it’s great.
Whenever I hear the “ticking time bomb” argument, I am pretty sure that I am dealing with an idiot and that pointing out the utter illogic of the argument will be a waste of time. Seriously, when would such a scenario ever happen? You know there’s a time bomb, and you know that the guy you have in custody knows about it. Under those circumstances, if you tortured the guy and got the information needed to thwart the bombing, no jury would ever convict you of anything. No prosecutor would ever charge you. There is really no need for a law legitimizing torture in the case of the ticking time bomb scenario, and the scenario serves only as a red herring to soften us up to the idea of torture as legitimate under any circumstances.
It does not follow that because one might feel justified in taking extreme measures under extreme and highly improbable circumstances that the measures should somehow be considered other than extreme. I summarize the ticking time bomb argument as follows: “If one can imagine a scenario when an evil act might be justifiable, then that evil act is always justifiable.”
Let us imagine a scenario in which the only way to save a trainload of people from certain death is to throw a switch diverting the train onto a siding where a baby is playing in the new path of the train. You might decide that killing the baby is justified under the circumstances, but it does not follow that baby killing becomes less heinous because one might imagine an extreme situation in which it might be a suitable choice. I concede that once you kill your first baby, it probably becomes easier. Perhaps once you imagine killing a baby, it becomes easier to imagine killing them.
Let us imagine that a baby has wandered into a room where it has access to the enabled launch controls of nuclear missiles and that the baby is about to launch the missiles unless you shoot her in the head at once. The baby does not know what she is doing. She is a good baby and very cute, not unlike the Gerber baby. Unless you shoot that baby, millions will die in a nuclear holocaust. Shooting the baby would be understandable, wouldn’t it, but should we by this logic condone shooting babies as policy in less dire circumstances? What if she is about to launch a conventional weapon that will kill at most 10 people? Should you still shoot her? What if she is endangering only a single person or property or government secrets? What if she is crying in a theater?
What if the baby is the child of your suspect and the only way to get him to talk is to torture that baby in front of him by burning it with a soldering iron? What if you were only 10% sure that the suspect had the information you needed? 1%? 0.00001%?
Is there really a continuum along which baby killing on one end is evil and must be avoided and on the other end baby killing is a moral and civic duty? Is there a point on this continuum, the location of which it is reasonable to argue about, where baby killing ceases to be morally objectionable? I submit that it is not useful to think in such terms and that the continuum is an argumentative con job. Baby killing is only appropriate in extreme and improbable examples such as the ones I have described, and, what’s more, it is still a bad thing to have to kill the baby.
As far as I know, nobody tortured by the US or its proxies is believed to have had information about a ticking time bomb. Rather, some thugs suspect, based on God only knows what information, that their victims might know something about something and that torture might get them to talk about it. This is a long way from the ticking time bomb scenario.
So why condone torture? First of all, there is a certain constituency among slack jawed yahoos who think that torturing is manly and that scruples about torture are wimpy. The GOP is going for the votes of the morally handicapped. Secondly, some folks get off on torture. Thirdly, torture is part of a program of terror. One tortures prisoners to frighten others who might become prisoners. None of these is a morally legitimate reason to condone torture.
Whenever I hear the “ticking time bomb” argument, I am pretty sure that I am dealing with an idiot and that pointing out the utter illogic of the argument will be a waste of time. Seriously, when would such a scenario ever happen? You know there’s a time bomb, and you know that the guy you have in custody knows about it. Under those circumstances, if you tortured the guy and got the information needed to thwart the bombing, no jury would ever convict you of anything. No prosecutor would ever charge you. There is really no need for a law legitimizing torture in the case of the ticking time bomb scenario, and the scenario serves only as a red herring to soften us up to the idea of torture as legitimate under any circumstances.
It does not follow that because one might feel justified in taking extreme measures under extreme and highly improbable circumstances that the measures should somehow be considered other than extreme. I summarize the ticking time bomb argument as follows: “If one can imagine a scenario when an evil act might be justifiable, then that evil act is always justifiable.”
Let us imagine a scenario in which the only way to save a trainload of people from certain death is to throw a switch diverting the train onto a siding where a baby is playing in the new path of the train. You might decide that killing the baby is justified under the circumstances, but it does not follow that baby killing becomes less heinous because one might imagine an extreme situation in which it might be a suitable choice. I concede that once you kill your first baby, it probably becomes easier. Perhaps once you imagine killing a baby, it becomes easier to imagine killing them.
Let us imagine that a baby has wandered into a room where it has access to the enabled launch controls of nuclear missiles and that the baby is about to launch the missiles unless you shoot her in the head at once. The baby does not know what she is doing. She is a good baby and very cute, not unlike the Gerber baby. Unless you shoot that baby, millions will die in a nuclear holocaust. Shooting the baby would be understandable, wouldn’t it, but should we by this logic condone shooting babies as policy in less dire circumstances? What if she is about to launch a conventional weapon that will kill at most 10 people? Should you still shoot her? What if she is endangering only a single person or property or government secrets? What if she is crying in a theater?
What if the baby is the child of your suspect and the only way to get him to talk is to torture that baby in front of him by burning it with a soldering iron? What if you were only 10% sure that the suspect had the information you needed? 1%? 0.00001%?
Is there really a continuum along which baby killing on one end is evil and must be avoided and on the other end baby killing is a moral and civic duty? Is there a point on this continuum, the location of which it is reasonable to argue about, where baby killing ceases to be morally objectionable? I submit that it is not useful to think in such terms and that the continuum is an argumentative con job. Baby killing is only appropriate in extreme and improbable examples such as the ones I have described, and, what’s more, it is still a bad thing to have to kill the baby.
As far as I know, nobody tortured by the US or its proxies is believed to have had information about a ticking time bomb. Rather, some thugs suspect, based on God only knows what information, that their victims might know something about something and that torture might get them to talk about it. This is a long way from the ticking time bomb scenario.
So why condone torture? First of all, there is a certain constituency among slack jawed yahoos who think that torturing is manly and that scruples about torture are wimpy. The GOP is going for the votes of the morally handicapped. Secondly, some folks get off on torture. Thirdly, torture is part of a program of terror. One tortures prisoners to frighten others who might become prisoners. None of these is a morally legitimate reason to condone torture.
Friday, March 24, 2006
The Right Wing Has Nobody in the Bullpen
The liberal blogosphere is buzzing about the Washington Post’s choice of right wing blogger to "balance" out its blog. Steve Gilliard has the story covered pretty well: http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2006/03/rotflmao.html It turns out that the guy, one of the founders of RedState.org, is a serial plagiarist, an overt racist, and an all around idiot. It’s as if the Washington Post chose just about the worst person they could to be the face of conservatism. Was this a joke of some kind? If so, it is hilarious. Heck, it's hilarious even if it isn't a joke. I don’t buy into the whole “liberal media” argument, so I know the Post was not purposely trying to make right wingers look bad.
I lay it down to the shallowness of the bench on the right wing these days. Principled conservatives don’t allow themselves to be shills for this administration, so you are left with very little talent. It’s like the time the NFL players went on strike, and the owners fielded replacements. That’s what the right wing has to offer these days, posers and wannabes. The Washington Post got one of the best the right wing has to offer.
Let’s say you’re a second rater in any field: academics, law, journalism, punditry, whatever. You’re best bet to amount to anything is to become a right winger. You might even end up on the Supreme Court or get your own syndicated column or TV show. The competition is too fierce on the left and among real conservatives and others. So, I advise all the marginally talented young men and women out there to join the College Republicans today and learn to shill for the GOP. You may well go far, certainly well beyond your level of competence. You could be Director of FEMA or some such thing.
The unlimited supply of idiocy coming out of the right wing “intelligentsia” is what permits tbogg, world o’crap, and a score of left leaning blogs to have regular brilliant and hilarious posts mocking them. Talk about low hanging fruit. I don't read the rightie bloggers because, frankly, they are toxic. I get uncomfortable and embarrassed for them, and every paragraph makes me a little stupider. I leave that to tbogg and company and thank them for their sacrifice.
I lay it down to the shallowness of the bench on the right wing these days. Principled conservatives don’t allow themselves to be shills for this administration, so you are left with very little talent. It’s like the time the NFL players went on strike, and the owners fielded replacements. That’s what the right wing has to offer these days, posers and wannabes. The Washington Post got one of the best the right wing has to offer.
Let’s say you’re a second rater in any field: academics, law, journalism, punditry, whatever. You’re best bet to amount to anything is to become a right winger. You might even end up on the Supreme Court or get your own syndicated column or TV show. The competition is too fierce on the left and among real conservatives and others. So, I advise all the marginally talented young men and women out there to join the College Republicans today and learn to shill for the GOP. You may well go far, certainly well beyond your level of competence. You could be Director of FEMA or some such thing.
The unlimited supply of idiocy coming out of the right wing “intelligentsia” is what permits tbogg, world o’crap, and a score of left leaning blogs to have regular brilliant and hilarious posts mocking them. Talk about low hanging fruit. I don't read the rightie bloggers because, frankly, they are toxic. I get uncomfortable and embarrassed for them, and every paragraph makes me a little stupider. I leave that to tbogg and company and thank them for their sacrifice.
Who is a Terrorist?
Thunder at Wolfesblog reports on the Commonwealth of Virginia’s definition and description of terrorists: http://www.clairewolfe.com/wolfesblog/00001977.html.
Among the folks who are officially designated as potential terrorists are “property rights activists”, the “anti-government…movement”, “religious extremists”, and “street gangs”. (Street gangs? Since when do street gangs engage in “politically motivated” violence?)
Among the things to look out for when identifying whether someone might be a terrorist in “research mode” are the following items of terrorist equipment: cameras, tape recorders, binoculars, maps or charts, sketch pads or notebooks, SCUBA gear, and disguises. Good lord, they’re onto me. I have almost all these things in my home (except SCUBA and disguises, although I could probably change my appearance with stuff in my house if I wanted to, eg a hobo costume is fun and easy to make with old clothes and make-up).
Virginia cites a federal definition of terrorism, the main elements of which are:
Premeditation
Political motivation
Violence
Against non-combatants
By “sub-national groups” or “clandestine agents”.
I am not sure whether this definition is useful for anything except to exempt military personnel from being considered terrorists while they are killing non-combatants. I doubt that the non-combatant victims of deadly attacks by military forces take much consolation from knowing that they are not being “terrorized” in the process.
Also, the definition sets up political activity such as speech and assembly and association as legitimate objects of surveillance and control rather than inviolable aspects of fundamental civil liberties. From a law enforcement standpoint, that a crime is politically motivated is immaterial except to the extent that such a fact might provide guidance in investigations of particular crimes. Creating a class of “political crimes”, not unlike “hate crimes”, will lead to undue government interference in political activities and expression.
Virginia’s statement of the goals of terrorists sounds like the apparent goals of the Department of Homeland Security: to create an atmosphere of anxiety (this they do with their incessant warnings), to undermine confidence in government (this they do with their willful ineptitude and insistence that they cannot prevent attacks), and to influence government or social policy (they exist to secure more government power and erode personal freedom).
Over twenty years ago, I studied “Political Crime and Terrorism” in law school and concluded that there was probably nothing that a terrorist could do that would not already be covered by existing criminal statutes and that law enforcement had all the tools necessary to investigate and prosecute crimes of terror. Only in crises of legitimacy did governments require more. Countries with special anti-terror laws at that time included South Africa and Israel, and these were wanted in those places solely to maintain the structures of repression on which those governments depended. In American history, we had the example of the War for Southern Independence in which the United States government abrogated every Constitutional principle in the interests of preserving the existing power structure and regime.
Do our rulers perceive a crisis of legitimacy that warrants special anti-terror legislation and programs?
Among the folks who are officially designated as potential terrorists are “property rights activists”, the “anti-government…movement”, “religious extremists”, and “street gangs”. (Street gangs? Since when do street gangs engage in “politically motivated” violence?)
Among the things to look out for when identifying whether someone might be a terrorist in “research mode” are the following items of terrorist equipment: cameras, tape recorders, binoculars, maps or charts, sketch pads or notebooks, SCUBA gear, and disguises. Good lord, they’re onto me. I have almost all these things in my home (except SCUBA and disguises, although I could probably change my appearance with stuff in my house if I wanted to, eg a hobo costume is fun and easy to make with old clothes and make-up).
Virginia cites a federal definition of terrorism, the main elements of which are:
Premeditation
Political motivation
Violence
Against non-combatants
By “sub-national groups” or “clandestine agents”.
I am not sure whether this definition is useful for anything except to exempt military personnel from being considered terrorists while they are killing non-combatants. I doubt that the non-combatant victims of deadly attacks by military forces take much consolation from knowing that they are not being “terrorized” in the process.
Also, the definition sets up political activity such as speech and assembly and association as legitimate objects of surveillance and control rather than inviolable aspects of fundamental civil liberties. From a law enforcement standpoint, that a crime is politically motivated is immaterial except to the extent that such a fact might provide guidance in investigations of particular crimes. Creating a class of “political crimes”, not unlike “hate crimes”, will lead to undue government interference in political activities and expression.
Virginia’s statement of the goals of terrorists sounds like the apparent goals of the Department of Homeland Security: to create an atmosphere of anxiety (this they do with their incessant warnings), to undermine confidence in government (this they do with their willful ineptitude and insistence that they cannot prevent attacks), and to influence government or social policy (they exist to secure more government power and erode personal freedom).
Over twenty years ago, I studied “Political Crime and Terrorism” in law school and concluded that there was probably nothing that a terrorist could do that would not already be covered by existing criminal statutes and that law enforcement had all the tools necessary to investigate and prosecute crimes of terror. Only in crises of legitimacy did governments require more. Countries with special anti-terror laws at that time included South Africa and Israel, and these were wanted in those places solely to maintain the structures of repression on which those governments depended. In American history, we had the example of the War for Southern Independence in which the United States government abrogated every Constitutional principle in the interests of preserving the existing power structure and regime.
Do our rulers perceive a crisis of legitimacy that warrants special anti-terror legislation and programs?
Thursday, March 23, 2006
In Praise of Jimmy Carter
I have just finished Jimmy Carter’s “Our Endangered Values”. This book is written in a very accessible manner and is a quick read. President Carter’s take on the religious right and the neocons is quite interesting. He sees in them a similarity in style in that they are both absolutely certain of their rectitude about everything and unwilling to negotiate with anyone who might disagree with them. I might add that they have similar ideas about power: they want it without limit.
I have always been perplexed at the way some people vilify Jimmy Carter as if he were the worst president in their lifetimes. I have the opposite opinion. He was the best president during my lifetime, and we would have been a lot better off if he had been re-elected. Growth of government was low during his tenure, and he was relatively fiscally responsible. His commitment to human rights abroad seemed to me to represent a commitment to limited government power. He got the hostages out of Iran alive and did not start a war. Back in his day, I was free to travel to Cuba. I wish I had done.
He was the only actual believing and practicing Christian in the White House during my lifetime. He was an outsider, though, and he was torpedoed by his own party. He can hardly be blamed for the crappy economy that prevailed at the time, but I routinely hear people talk about his causing inflation. As if there had not been sky high inflation under Nixon and Ford.
When you examine the national debt and the growth of government and concomitant loss of liberty over the last 40 years, you can lay almost all of it at the doorsteps of Ronald Reagan and GW Bush, not Jimmy Carter. Reagan has been undergoing apotheosis for some time now especially since he died, but he really was a disaster for the country. It galls me to hear folks talk about Reagan as if he had saved America from Carter.
I have always been perplexed at the way some people vilify Jimmy Carter as if he were the worst president in their lifetimes. I have the opposite opinion. He was the best president during my lifetime, and we would have been a lot better off if he had been re-elected. Growth of government was low during his tenure, and he was relatively fiscally responsible. His commitment to human rights abroad seemed to me to represent a commitment to limited government power. He got the hostages out of Iran alive and did not start a war. Back in his day, I was free to travel to Cuba. I wish I had done.
He was the only actual believing and practicing Christian in the White House during my lifetime. He was an outsider, though, and he was torpedoed by his own party. He can hardly be blamed for the crappy economy that prevailed at the time, but I routinely hear people talk about his causing inflation. As if there had not been sky high inflation under Nixon and Ford.
When you examine the national debt and the growth of government and concomitant loss of liberty over the last 40 years, you can lay almost all of it at the doorsteps of Ronald Reagan and GW Bush, not Jimmy Carter. Reagan has been undergoing apotheosis for some time now especially since he died, but he really was a disaster for the country. It galls me to hear folks talk about Reagan as if he had saved America from Carter.
Are Humans Naturally Capitalist or Communist?
Freeman writes at some length about ”libertarian communism” and the notion that it involves an ignorance of market principles: http://freemanlc.blogspot.com/2006/03/in-defense-of-libertarian-communism.html. He aptly points out that much of the debate between libertarian “communists” and libertarian “capitalists” arises from a disagreement about human nature. How would humans organize themselves under conditions of complete freedom? Would they be atomistic and competitive or sociable and cooperative?
I reckon that individual humans vary in their degree of natural baseline sociability and cooperativeness and that these characteristics would be subject to the effects of socialization depending on the social environment in which an individual finds himself. A cooperative individual might not thrive as much in a competitive environment, whereas a competitive individual might find himself at a disadvantage among cooperators. In a free society, one might choose from among any number of groupings.
In our present society, humans manifest both rationalized market type relationships and other more cooperative relationships. We ordinarily do not treat our families in the same way that we treat our clients or vendors. We do not think about our churches in the same way as we do commercial enterprises, and it would be considered unseemly to do so. Indeed, we often subordinate rational market relations to other social relationships as when we throw business to a kinsman or friend despite a price disadvantage.
In the “wild”, humans tended to organize themselves in extended family groupings, the size and structure of which varied with the prevailing means of subsistence and other factors. Certainly, the “nuclear family” was not the norm, and relations among extended family members may not usefully be described in the language of capitalism. There were “economies” of exchange and the creation and maintenance of mutual obligations and expectations, but a significant factor in valuation was relational rather than strictly material.
Our wild forebears were considerably constrained in their lifestyle choices by their limited technology, and free men armed with our present level of technology may very well form unprecedented social groupings. The “nuclear” family would probably not have been possible for most people until the last 200 hundred years. As it stands, it is now difficult to maintain households that deviate from the “nuclear” model. It is illegal in some localities for more than three unrelated persons to share a home, and it would be difficult in most areas to get permission to construct a family compound to house a larger group. Even where it is not forbidden, social disapproval of communal living makes it unduly hard, and such families would be subject to increased surveillance by child welfare agencies and other police. Nonetheless, some people form larger groupings despite the obstacles, eg Hasidic Jews, Hutterites.
In any event, in a free society libertarian communists will be free and more fully able to live in communal groups while libertarian capitalists will continue to be free to live alone and count their money or do whatever it is they do, if anything, when they are not engaging in rational market oriented behaviors.
I reckon that individual humans vary in their degree of natural baseline sociability and cooperativeness and that these characteristics would be subject to the effects of socialization depending on the social environment in which an individual finds himself. A cooperative individual might not thrive as much in a competitive environment, whereas a competitive individual might find himself at a disadvantage among cooperators. In a free society, one might choose from among any number of groupings.
In our present society, humans manifest both rationalized market type relationships and other more cooperative relationships. We ordinarily do not treat our families in the same way that we treat our clients or vendors. We do not think about our churches in the same way as we do commercial enterprises, and it would be considered unseemly to do so. Indeed, we often subordinate rational market relations to other social relationships as when we throw business to a kinsman or friend despite a price disadvantage.
In the “wild”, humans tended to organize themselves in extended family groupings, the size and structure of which varied with the prevailing means of subsistence and other factors. Certainly, the “nuclear family” was not the norm, and relations among extended family members may not usefully be described in the language of capitalism. There were “economies” of exchange and the creation and maintenance of mutual obligations and expectations, but a significant factor in valuation was relational rather than strictly material.
Our wild forebears were considerably constrained in their lifestyle choices by their limited technology, and free men armed with our present level of technology may very well form unprecedented social groupings. The “nuclear” family would probably not have been possible for most people until the last 200 hundred years. As it stands, it is now difficult to maintain households that deviate from the “nuclear” model. It is illegal in some localities for more than three unrelated persons to share a home, and it would be difficult in most areas to get permission to construct a family compound to house a larger group. Even where it is not forbidden, social disapproval of communal living makes it unduly hard, and such families would be subject to increased surveillance by child welfare agencies and other police. Nonetheless, some people form larger groupings despite the obstacles, eg Hasidic Jews, Hutterites.
In any event, in a free society libertarian communists will be free and more fully able to live in communal groups while libertarian capitalists will continue to be free to live alone and count their money or do whatever it is they do, if anything, when they are not engaging in rational market oriented behaviors.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
My Iranian Revolutionary Roomies
When I was a senior in college, I had Iranian roommates. This was during the revolution in Iran and the early days of the hostage crisis. One of the guys, Kassra from Isfahan, was a supporter of the Ayatollah Khomeini, not enough of one to go back to Iran and fight in the revolution, but enough of one to voice support for the Islamic Revolution. The other, Mehran from Teheran, was less certain of his politics. The guys were in an English as Second Language program preparatory to attending some other American college, but their English was good enough that we were able to have many conversations about culture, politics, and what have you. I liked them despite their ambivalence about personal hygiene and chauvinism about their ancient culture. I taught them catch phrases from the “Czechoslovakian Brothers” skits on SNL.
Having these guys as roommates during the trouble with Iran helped me keep things in perspective. The hostage crisis was not a matter of “us” versus “them”. This had nothing to do with me personally or either of my roommates, and I couldn’t get all that worked up about it. I prayed that the hostages would come home safely and that the government would not be pressured into some precipitous act of violence that might get them all killed. At the time, some of my schoolmates were calling for bombings and abandonment of the hostages to their fate. They would rather see all the hostages dead than the US humiliated, as they felt was the case. They took the humiliation very personally.
Kassra and Mehran were very human. Kassra, especially, was a study in contradictions. He praised the notion of an Islamic state under Sharia Law, but he lived a life of decadence, drunkenness and sexual promiscuity while he was in America. He never went to Mosque, never prayed as far as I could tell, and never read the Koran. He was a party animal and would have been right at home in any frat house. Mehran worried about his family and seemed homesick. He had a sweetheart back home, and he wrote really bad poems. Both of them loved to go to the disco, and we would sometimes go to a club called St Tropez on Wisconsin Avenue. Mehran was a chick magnet.
I lost touch with the guys when they went away to some university in Tennessee, but I always felt richer for the experience of having lived with them. That was one real benefit of attending AU, the high percentage of international students and exposure to people from vastly different cultures and backgrounds. I think that my acquaintance with so many aliens has helped me realize over the years that strange looking people in faraway lands are not that different from my fellow Americans. Exposure to this kind of diversity helped to immunize me from nationalistic hatred.
Having these guys as roommates during the trouble with Iran helped me keep things in perspective. The hostage crisis was not a matter of “us” versus “them”. This had nothing to do with me personally or either of my roommates, and I couldn’t get all that worked up about it. I prayed that the hostages would come home safely and that the government would not be pressured into some precipitous act of violence that might get them all killed. At the time, some of my schoolmates were calling for bombings and abandonment of the hostages to their fate. They would rather see all the hostages dead than the US humiliated, as they felt was the case. They took the humiliation very personally.
Kassra and Mehran were very human. Kassra, especially, was a study in contradictions. He praised the notion of an Islamic state under Sharia Law, but he lived a life of decadence, drunkenness and sexual promiscuity while he was in America. He never went to Mosque, never prayed as far as I could tell, and never read the Koran. He was a party animal and would have been right at home in any frat house. Mehran worried about his family and seemed homesick. He had a sweetheart back home, and he wrote really bad poems. Both of them loved to go to the disco, and we would sometimes go to a club called St Tropez on Wisconsin Avenue. Mehran was a chick magnet.
I lost touch with the guys when they went away to some university in Tennessee, but I always felt richer for the experience of having lived with them. That was one real benefit of attending AU, the high percentage of international students and exposure to people from vastly different cultures and backgrounds. I think that my acquaintance with so many aliens has helped me realize over the years that strange looking people in faraway lands are not that different from my fellow Americans. Exposure to this kind of diversity helped to immunize me from nationalistic hatred.
Just Get a Strong Family!
Wouldn’t it be great if we all had perfectly functional families that met all our needs and expectations? We don’t, though, and it is irritating when some folks cite a “breakdown of the family” or some such thing as the cause of some social problem or other. Would a hypothetical juvenile delinquent have been less likely to have turned to crime if he had had a loving father to keep him in line? You bet. But he didn’t, and there is no sense in blaming him for not going out and recruiting a dad in the Ozzie Nelson or Ward Cleaver mold.
It takes the cooperation of a number of people to make a well functioning family, and children who do not enjoy the benefits of such families are hardly to blame for not having them. Tsk-tsking about their weak or nonexistent families is not helpful. Each of us has to make do with the families we find ourselves part of, and there is not much chance that any of us is in much of a position to improve on our family situation. We can resolve to try to be better fathers, mothers, spouses, siblings, children, whatever, but that’s all we can do. Our family is a matter a luck.
We often can’t help it if our marriages turn out badly, and we should be held responsible only for our part in the failure of our marriage. It does no good to point out that the consequences of a failed marriage might have been avoided if one had not been in a failed marriage. That’s like telling a homeless person that his problems would be solved if he got a house. Certainly it is good advice to tell someone to marry well, but this is sometimes harder to do than to say, and most people think they are marrying well when they enter the matrimonial state. I am sure my wife never imagined that I would be such a disappointment, or she would not have married me.
What do those who complain about familial “breakdown” mean by it? Are they exhorting us to seek out new and improved families for ourselves? Do they imagine that their observation is explanatory in any meaningful sense?
The “family” is an abstract concept that encompasses a set of relationships among individuals. It does not exist apart from those individuals, and it consists in interactions among them. If anyone should fall short due to circumstances or character or whatever, needs may go unmet, and dire consequences may ensue. To state that the “family” is impaired in such instances is to employ a euphemism. Let’s call it like it is: somebody done somebody wrong; somebody disappointed somebody; somebody had to go it alone.
It takes the cooperation of a number of people to make a well functioning family, and children who do not enjoy the benefits of such families are hardly to blame for not having them. Tsk-tsking about their weak or nonexistent families is not helpful. Each of us has to make do with the families we find ourselves part of, and there is not much chance that any of us is in much of a position to improve on our family situation. We can resolve to try to be better fathers, mothers, spouses, siblings, children, whatever, but that’s all we can do. Our family is a matter a luck.
We often can’t help it if our marriages turn out badly, and we should be held responsible only for our part in the failure of our marriage. It does no good to point out that the consequences of a failed marriage might have been avoided if one had not been in a failed marriage. That’s like telling a homeless person that his problems would be solved if he got a house. Certainly it is good advice to tell someone to marry well, but this is sometimes harder to do than to say, and most people think they are marrying well when they enter the matrimonial state. I am sure my wife never imagined that I would be such a disappointment, or she would not have married me.
What do those who complain about familial “breakdown” mean by it? Are they exhorting us to seek out new and improved families for ourselves? Do they imagine that their observation is explanatory in any meaningful sense?
The “family” is an abstract concept that encompasses a set of relationships among individuals. It does not exist apart from those individuals, and it consists in interactions among them. If anyone should fall short due to circumstances or character or whatever, needs may go unmet, and dire consequences may ensue. To state that the “family” is impaired in such instances is to employ a euphemism. Let’s call it like it is: somebody done somebody wrong; somebody disappointed somebody; somebody had to go it alone.
Not One of AU's Finest Products
I learned the other day that the unethical federal prosecutor in the “20th hijacker” trial is an alum of my alma mater, the Washington College of Law at The American University. I suppose that I should not be surprised. AU is a fine school, and I am not ashamed of my degrees from that institution, but it has an unhealthy relationship with the federal government. It is situated in Washington, DC and has scads of adjuncts who are high ranking bureaucrats in their day jobs. There are countless government internships sponsored by AU, and among the more prominent field of study are the School of International Service and the School of Public Administration, both of which prepare one for government work. DC is a company town, of course, and most everybody works for the government or is trying to influence the government or is serving burgers to people who are involved with government.
Moreover, that the young woman chose a career as a federal prosecutor tells you a lot about her character in the first place. Being a prosecutor means screwing with people and bringing the weight of government violence down on their heads. Anyone who would do that willingly has a problem. And being a federal prosecutor in this administration, and not resigning in protest, suggests that you don’t have much in the way of scruples at all. Finally, thinking that you need to cheat in a prosecution that you cannot possibly fail to win and that is rigged completely in your favor, suggests a streak of stupidity and poor judgment.
I don’t blame AU, though. Admissions are based on IQ and GPA, not character. Graduation is based on spewing back information on exams, not character. AU is not in the business of building character. By the time you are in law school, it is probably too late to do much about your character flaws. If anything, mine were magnified by the law school experience.
A high IQ and a good memory, while helpful for success in law school, do not necessarily correlate with good character. Indeed, if you consider the most evil bas**rds in power in the country today, many of them have Ivy League educations and above average intelligence. Look at the neocons. They have brains out the wazoo but nothing in the morality or character departments.
Moreover, that the young woman chose a career as a federal prosecutor tells you a lot about her character in the first place. Being a prosecutor means screwing with people and bringing the weight of government violence down on their heads. Anyone who would do that willingly has a problem. And being a federal prosecutor in this administration, and not resigning in protest, suggests that you don’t have much in the way of scruples at all. Finally, thinking that you need to cheat in a prosecution that you cannot possibly fail to win and that is rigged completely in your favor, suggests a streak of stupidity and poor judgment.
I don’t blame AU, though. Admissions are based on IQ and GPA, not character. Graduation is based on spewing back information on exams, not character. AU is not in the business of building character. By the time you are in law school, it is probably too late to do much about your character flaws. If anything, mine were magnified by the law school experience.
A high IQ and a good memory, while helpful for success in law school, do not necessarily correlate with good character. Indeed, if you consider the most evil bas**rds in power in the country today, many of them have Ivy League educations and above average intelligence. Look at the neocons. They have brains out the wazoo but nothing in the morality or character departments.
Re-Education Camps for Statists after the Revolution
Some of my conspecifics at the office are downright toxic with their willful ignorance and complete disregard for traditional American values. I have always been at a loss to explain how people of otherwise seeming good sense and normal intelligence could be such jingoistic idiots when it comes to the actions of the government. I have come to realize that they simply do not share my values at all. They don’t know what the Constitution provides, and they really don’t care. They don’t understand how I can be so passionate about an ancient document and the ideas it contains about civil rights and limited government.
I have come to think of these conspecifics as “collaborators”. They have been completely conditioned to be willing servants of the state and to find criticism of the state repugnant and disturbing. Taxation is the price of admission to society in their view, and they consider themselves as participating in the government. When they speak of the US government, they always say “we” since they think that there is an alignment of their individual interests with that of “their” government. They may find fault with some things the government does or fails to do, but they do not consider that any subject is beyond the government’s legitimate reach.
When the revolution comes, it will, I fear, be necessary to maintain an agency to deal with the collaborators. They cannot be permitted to run free and set up new governments to satisfy their need to be enslaved. My religious scruples require that I resist the temptation to call for mass executions. I would prefer that no executions take place or that executions be limited to individuals who are parasites rather than mere collaborators. I am convinced that the collaborators are hapless dupes and that they can be re-educated to understand that the state is predicated on force and fraud. If they learn this lesson and still persist in statist activities, then they are beyond human redemption and must be dealt with more sternly.
I propose a system of camps in which collaborators would be housed temporarily until they learned to adapt to freedom. Since they like slavery, it would not be too difficult from a moral standpoint to require them to perform the day to work of running the camps. Also, they could be permitted to engage in work for hire and other economic pursuits in order to earn money to fund the camps. They could be permitted to keep a portion of their earnings as an incentive to work more and to use to practice being free.
The logistics of this program will be fairly simple. The agency will order collaborators, as defined more specifically by the agency, to report to the nearest detention center. They will, being sheeplike, comply voluntarily. The most statist among them will in this way self identify by showing up at the camps. Once there, the detainees will be informed of the requirements for release, one of these being attendance at re-education classes in freedom. They will be asked to sign up for duty in various posts at the camp, excepting guard duty or any other duty that might afford an opportunity to engage in coercion.
The agency overseeing the camps will be staffed by volunteers who will serve as instructors, counselors and guards. The guards will protect the detainees from violence and the facility from theft or vandalism, but detainees will be free to come and go as they please. They will not be told that they have this right, and it will serve as a kind of self-executing test of readiness for freedom. Those who leave will be ready, whereas others will continue to imprison themselves indefinitely.
I hereby put my hat in the ring for consideration as the first Commisar of Rehabilitation.
I have come to think of these conspecifics as “collaborators”. They have been completely conditioned to be willing servants of the state and to find criticism of the state repugnant and disturbing. Taxation is the price of admission to society in their view, and they consider themselves as participating in the government. When they speak of the US government, they always say “we” since they think that there is an alignment of their individual interests with that of “their” government. They may find fault with some things the government does or fails to do, but they do not consider that any subject is beyond the government’s legitimate reach.
When the revolution comes, it will, I fear, be necessary to maintain an agency to deal with the collaborators. They cannot be permitted to run free and set up new governments to satisfy their need to be enslaved. My religious scruples require that I resist the temptation to call for mass executions. I would prefer that no executions take place or that executions be limited to individuals who are parasites rather than mere collaborators. I am convinced that the collaborators are hapless dupes and that they can be re-educated to understand that the state is predicated on force and fraud. If they learn this lesson and still persist in statist activities, then they are beyond human redemption and must be dealt with more sternly.
I propose a system of camps in which collaborators would be housed temporarily until they learned to adapt to freedom. Since they like slavery, it would not be too difficult from a moral standpoint to require them to perform the day to work of running the camps. Also, they could be permitted to engage in work for hire and other economic pursuits in order to earn money to fund the camps. They could be permitted to keep a portion of their earnings as an incentive to work more and to use to practice being free.
The logistics of this program will be fairly simple. The agency will order collaborators, as defined more specifically by the agency, to report to the nearest detention center. They will, being sheeplike, comply voluntarily. The most statist among them will in this way self identify by showing up at the camps. Once there, the detainees will be informed of the requirements for release, one of these being attendance at re-education classes in freedom. They will be asked to sign up for duty in various posts at the camp, excepting guard duty or any other duty that might afford an opportunity to engage in coercion.
The agency overseeing the camps will be staffed by volunteers who will serve as instructors, counselors and guards. The guards will protect the detainees from violence and the facility from theft or vandalism, but detainees will be free to come and go as they please. They will not be told that they have this right, and it will serve as a kind of self-executing test of readiness for freedom. Those who leave will be ready, whereas others will continue to imprison themselves indefinitely.
I hereby put my hat in the ring for consideration as the first Commisar of Rehabilitation.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Freedom by Sufferance
Wally Conger wonders whether it is time to consider revolutionary action, whether other avenues for freedom have been exhausted: http://wconger.blogspot.com/2006/03/exhorting-right-of-revolution.html.
We will never be free of the state in this life. The best we can hope for is a state that at least pretends that we have some rights and that its power is, in principle, limited. What we are moving toward inexorably is totalitarianism, a state that recognizes no limits and that suffers us to be free only to the extent that it is convenient for it to do so.
Such a state might well tolerate my seditious statements and leave me alone to rant against it, not because it cannot control my expression but because it has no good reason to do so at the moment. In fact, the illusion of freedom that allowing me to speak out provides may be far more valuable to the state than the satisfaction of silencing me. Indeed, why silence me if my sedition has no noticeable impact on the acquiescence of its subjects to its edicts? If I start to make a difference, the state can silence me then.
To the extent that the state enjoys willing acquiescence in it, the costs and bother of governing are minimized. The subjects practically govern themselves, and the state can focus its efforts on repression only in those instances where the interests of the state are advanced by it. A rationally run totalitarian state will not repress solely for the sake of repression; rather, repression will be selective and predicated on the needs of the state at any given moment to perpetuate itself and efficiently extract labor and resources from its subjects.
Thus, a totalitarian state might well be marked by plenty of day to day “freedoms” which the state, in its gracious mercy, permits to its subjects. But these are subject to extinction at the caprice of the rulers. The state owns all the fruits of my labors but extracts only a part of it and lets me keep the rest. It may decide to take everything if it pleases, and the only obstacle to this is the state’s realization that it will get more out of me if I am allowed to keep enough of my earnings to live on and support myself while I work for the benefit of the state. In fact, our rulers openly discuss what might be the optimum amount to let us keep in order to maximize state revenues.
The state allows me to occupy my home, but it may, when convenient for its purposes, take it for its own use or to give to another subject for his use. The state grants me privacy until it doesn’t. It can break into my home and shoot my dog if it pleases, and there is not a damned thing I can do about it. The state can eavesdrop on my every conversation and read my mail. If it is not doing so at this moment, that does not mean that the state acknowledges any right of privacy on my part. It just hasn’t gotten around to it yet or seen a need for it.
The state can make anything I do unlawful at any moment. My favorite foods can be made into controlled substances tomorrow, and I can be imprisoned or murdered for possessing them. That it has not done so is solely a function of the needs of the state and not any solicitude for my desires or well being.
The state in this country is ostensibly limited to the powers granted in the Constitution, and I am supposed to have certain rights, but the state has assumed far more powers than enumerated and no longer accepts any limitation. Moreover, the state acknowledges only those rights that it is politically convenient to acknowledge. Our rulers have written the 4th amendment out of the Constitution, and other rights are respected only to the extent that it is necessary to secure optimal acquiescence. The state is not thwarted in any of its objects by any scruples about rights.
We will never be free of the state in this life. The best we can hope for is a state that at least pretends that we have some rights and that its power is, in principle, limited. What we are moving toward inexorably is totalitarianism, a state that recognizes no limits and that suffers us to be free only to the extent that it is convenient for it to do so.
Such a state might well tolerate my seditious statements and leave me alone to rant against it, not because it cannot control my expression but because it has no good reason to do so at the moment. In fact, the illusion of freedom that allowing me to speak out provides may be far more valuable to the state than the satisfaction of silencing me. Indeed, why silence me if my sedition has no noticeable impact on the acquiescence of its subjects to its edicts? If I start to make a difference, the state can silence me then.
To the extent that the state enjoys willing acquiescence in it, the costs and bother of governing are minimized. The subjects practically govern themselves, and the state can focus its efforts on repression only in those instances where the interests of the state are advanced by it. A rationally run totalitarian state will not repress solely for the sake of repression; rather, repression will be selective and predicated on the needs of the state at any given moment to perpetuate itself and efficiently extract labor and resources from its subjects.
Thus, a totalitarian state might well be marked by plenty of day to day “freedoms” which the state, in its gracious mercy, permits to its subjects. But these are subject to extinction at the caprice of the rulers. The state owns all the fruits of my labors but extracts only a part of it and lets me keep the rest. It may decide to take everything if it pleases, and the only obstacle to this is the state’s realization that it will get more out of me if I am allowed to keep enough of my earnings to live on and support myself while I work for the benefit of the state. In fact, our rulers openly discuss what might be the optimum amount to let us keep in order to maximize state revenues.
The state allows me to occupy my home, but it may, when convenient for its purposes, take it for its own use or to give to another subject for his use. The state grants me privacy until it doesn’t. It can break into my home and shoot my dog if it pleases, and there is not a damned thing I can do about it. The state can eavesdrop on my every conversation and read my mail. If it is not doing so at this moment, that does not mean that the state acknowledges any right of privacy on my part. It just hasn’t gotten around to it yet or seen a need for it.
The state can make anything I do unlawful at any moment. My favorite foods can be made into controlled substances tomorrow, and I can be imprisoned or murdered for possessing them. That it has not done so is solely a function of the needs of the state and not any solicitude for my desires or well being.
The state in this country is ostensibly limited to the powers granted in the Constitution, and I am supposed to have certain rights, but the state has assumed far more powers than enumerated and no longer accepts any limitation. Moreover, the state acknowledges only those rights that it is politically convenient to acknowledge. Our rulers have written the 4th amendment out of the Constitution, and other rights are respected only to the extent that it is necessary to secure optimal acquiescence. The state is not thwarted in any of its objects by any scruples about rights.
Death to Tailgaters
BW Richardson posts about drivers who tailgate http://bwrmontag.blogspot.com/2006/03/risky-investments.html. This is one of my biggest pet peeves. There is simply no good reason ever to drive right on the bumper of the vehicle in front of you. There is no margin for error, and you are apt to get yourself and others killed.
My Idiot Brother in Law drives this way. He is always right on top of the car ahead of him, and I refuse to be his passenger. He does this because he (a) is an idiot, and (b) suffers from some kind of autism that renders him incapable of realizing the potential consequences of his actions, and (c) is an inconsiderate a**hole. He is not alone on the highways.
I prefer to maintain a reasonable distance between my vehicle and the car ahead of me so that I can react to unexpected events, and this has saved me from accidents on numerous occasions, especially when the car ahead of me is tailgating. This well conceived plan runs into difficulties when the car behind me is right on my bumper and cannot react to my unexpected braking or maneuvers, and I have been hit from behind even when successfully avoiding trouble ahead.
If you are tailgating me, I consider it an act of assault. You are endangering my life, and I would be morally justified in using force to get you to back off. I sometimes fantasize about a death ray mounted in the rear of my car. I don’t have one of these yet, so I use more passive methods to defend myself. Whenever anyone tailgates me, I gradually reduce speed consistent with safety until the offending driver passes me. If necessary, I will reduce speed to 5 miles per hour. Also, I activate my hazard lights and keep them on until the tailgater passes me or backs off.
Even if you are tailgating others, I consider you a jerk and an antisocial menace. You are the jackass who ties up traffic on my commute once or twice a week with your completely avoidable accidents. You create unnecessary stress and make all our lives a little less pleasant by virtue of your miserable existence. You reflect badly on your parents who are doubtless ashamed that they raised up such an inconsiderate b**tard. If you are a tailgater, you are probably a worthless waste of space in other aspects of your life.
My Idiot Brother in Law drives this way. He is always right on top of the car ahead of him, and I refuse to be his passenger. He does this because he (a) is an idiot, and (b) suffers from some kind of autism that renders him incapable of realizing the potential consequences of his actions, and (c) is an inconsiderate a**hole. He is not alone on the highways.
I prefer to maintain a reasonable distance between my vehicle and the car ahead of me so that I can react to unexpected events, and this has saved me from accidents on numerous occasions, especially when the car ahead of me is tailgating. This well conceived plan runs into difficulties when the car behind me is right on my bumper and cannot react to my unexpected braking or maneuvers, and I have been hit from behind even when successfully avoiding trouble ahead.
If you are tailgating me, I consider it an act of assault. You are endangering my life, and I would be morally justified in using force to get you to back off. I sometimes fantasize about a death ray mounted in the rear of my car. I don’t have one of these yet, so I use more passive methods to defend myself. Whenever anyone tailgates me, I gradually reduce speed consistent with safety until the offending driver passes me. If necessary, I will reduce speed to 5 miles per hour. Also, I activate my hazard lights and keep them on until the tailgater passes me or backs off.
Even if you are tailgating others, I consider you a jerk and an antisocial menace. You are the jackass who ties up traffic on my commute once or twice a week with your completely avoidable accidents. You create unnecessary stress and make all our lives a little less pleasant by virtue of your miserable existence. You reflect badly on your parents who are doubtless ashamed that they raised up such an inconsiderate b**tard. If you are a tailgater, you are probably a worthless waste of space in other aspects of your life.
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