The Modo Blog

Tienanmen Square Anniversary: The Day After June 3rd is June 4th

2006-06-05T10:42:00.000-04:00

Despite Google's promise to the People's Republic of China that "the day after June 3rd is June 5th", the 17th anniversary of the Tienanmen Square crackdown did in fact come and go this weekend, though with little fanfare in the Middle Kingdom.

Victor Frankl comes to mind--"What is to give light must endure burning."

Da Vinci Code: Why Now?

2006-05-30T20:42:00.000-04:00

Why is The Da Vinci Code so popular? I had the misfortune of first experiencing it as a book on tape, which renders it ridiculous, perhaps because Dan Brown's adjective-laden descriptive prose doesn't hold up to being spoken out loud.

More interesting than the story, I think, is the book itself as a phenomenon. Sloppily written suspense tales based on the Magdelene mystery have been written before; why does this premise strike a chord at this moment in history?

There are a number of strands of cultural change going on right now in the US, that The Da Vinci Code pulls together. The most visible is the worldwide surge in religious involvement--among Evangelical denominations particularly. This trend may not need exposition, but in brief it is seen in the expansion of megachurches and the growing importance of fundamentalist Christian voters as a bloc.

A related phenomenon is the way in which decline of the ascendence of the secular humanist worldview has occurred, namely, disenfranchisement of a generation of young adults with a radically pluralistic morality. I think it was Napoleon who once said that to understand a man, you have to know what was going on in the world when he was 20 years old. The generation shaped by September 11, 2001 will be much more confident passing moral judgements based in absolute principles than the generation forged in the moral disillusionment of Vietnam and Watergate and reacting against McCarthyism and totalitarianism. No system of morality that leaves a hint of room permitting Islamism is tolerable. Rooting absolute principles requires a source of authority--today religion seems preferred over political ideologies.

This is not to say that secular institutions are losing significant power or influence, but that secular sources of knowledge have lost some of the authority that they had. In the 1960s, it was reasonable to think that rational application of human organizations could eliminate poverty and cancer in a generation; today such notions seem hoplessly naive.

The third trend is a crisis of feminism. So-called "Liberal Feminism"--the brand of feminism focused on attaining equal political and economic rights for women--has achieved a large swath of its goals in the 20th century, but as Cathi Hanauer has shown, the project of "liberal feminism" has proven more complex than initially envisioned. Using Kegan's terms, we might say that post-feminist America has developed the holding environment to help women achieve the Institutional Self, but not to support them once they've gotten there. Men and women need to try to make meaning of its unfinished work within their own families and relationships, but they are reluctant to reject its ideals of equal pay for equal work and opposition to sex discrimination, and rightly so. As they re-negotiate roles and identities, they identify with dominant cultural metaphors, simultaneously taking mythical figures as role models and projecting themselves onto them. The figure of Mary Magdalene admits of so many powerful interpretations--forgiven woman sinner, strong woman companion misunderstood as harlot, early church mother--that she is a good choice for such meaning-making.

The Da Vinci Code had the second highest box-office opening ever despite aweful reviews. It may be a coincidence that a movie about the supression of the truth that Mary Magdalene was Jesus' wife and a chuch leader is wildly popular at a moment that religous discourse is ascending, secular discourse is losing authority, and feminism's project is leaving women wrestling with questions of family, workplace, identity and priorities. But I doubt it.

Speech and Debate: No Immunity from Corruption or the Constitution

2006-05-25T16:00:00.000-04:00

Arguments that the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution does not cover bribery often invoke existing caselaw that has found that it applies to activities directly involved in legislating (even speeches and press releases outside the halls of Congress), and since taking a bribe is not inherent in lawmaking that the FBI's raid on Mr. Jefferson's offices is not prohibited. Outside the Beltway makes this argument well.

However, I think this argument addresses the wrong question. It is off the mark to imply that some contend that bribery should not be investigated and prosecuted. The issue at hand is whether the raid itself interfered with an activity inherent in lawmaking, and I would argue that it did: privacy of the legislator's office. Members of Congress need assurance of confidentiality of the many sensitive materials that their work exposes them to--both personal communications in the daily business of politics, and information about national security or delicate foreign relations issues they handle. The Supreme Court has clearly considered Speech and Debate to include written documents, and that must include those held in congressional offices.

Subpoena, rather than search and seizure, should be the preferred method of obtaining evidence to investigate congressional corruption. Forcibly obtaining documents by midnight raid creates and atmosphere of siege, and will encourage congressional offices to take pre-emptive countermeasures that may make corruption investigations more difficult to undertake in the future.

The privledge of Speech and Debate, broadly conceived, stemmed from the English Bill of Rights as a response to Tudor monarchs' intimidation of members of parliament. Let us hope that we don't confuse the legitimacy of investigating corruption with the illegitimacy of violating a Constitutional clause and a principle of government that ensures that the bills passed by Congress are not just a rubber stamp for the will of the Executive.

Hybrid Cars: The Indirect Solution to Oil Prices?

2006-05-17T20:50:00.000-04:00

The Quaker Economist recently posted an article arguing that the benefit of hybrid cars is not in the short-term fuel economy they provide, but as a technological springboard to developing small enough, efficient enough battery car systems that will permit plug-in cars in the medium-term future.

I had previously argued that alternative fuels per se would not be the answer to the current energy crisis. That is, we must be clear if a given energy system is truly a novel energy source, or just a novel distribution system. For instance, hydrogen is really a novel distribution system, since there is no obviously most efficient means of production, so the administration's prior promises to extensively research hydrogen was not probably the best policy strategy. A fuel like biodiesel however has already a distribution system to plug into, and constitutes a bridge technology from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources.

The possibility of plug-in battery cars evolving from hybrid cars fits this analysis nicely as well. While battery cars would not themselves solve the demand for energy, by allowing oil-run plants to compete against nuclear, hydro, and other sources, overall energy costs would be expected to decline. As newer, cheaper means of electricity production are developed, plants with the innovations can be simply added to the existing power grid, without significant changes to the vehicles themselves. And this without the massive infrastructure investment required by a hydrogen fuel system.

That being said, I do not believe that the government should significantly subsidize hybrid car consumption. It is absurd for the federal government to support buying a hybrid SUV that gets worse milage than a non-hybrid sedan. Any federal incentives should be based on milage alone, for the government's goal is properly a more short-term effect of reducing national oil consumption. Hybrids have enough traction in the market that auto companies should be allowed to compete for smaller and more efficient designs with minimal government market distortion.

Lessons from China on Dealing with Africa

2006-05-11T11:21:00.000-04:00

The US needs to relearn how to win friends and influence nations, and the Chinese experience in Africa holds good lessons, according to a recent American Foreign Policy Council report.

How does China obtain resources, build trade, and win African nations to its side? In January, Beijing released an official China-Africa policy white paper, a document remarkable for the broad range of issues it covers. The white paper offers some clues into Beijing's strategy in Africa. First, China is dramatically boosting its aid and economic support to Africa-aid it can provide with few strings, at the same time as international financial institutions, like the World Bank, increasingly link aid disbursements in the developing world to good governance and anticorruption initiatives.

Chinese aid to the continent has become more sophisticated. While China once focused on large buildings-sports stadiums in Gambia and Sierra Leone, for example-it has increasingly used aid to support infrastructure creation that then also helps Chinese companies, and to directly woo African elites. In 2002, China gave $1.8 billion in development aid to its African allies. (Beijing has since then stopped officially reporting its aid, making a complete and accurate tally impossible.)

China has also used debt relief to assist African nations, effectively turning loans into grants. Since 2000, Beijing has taken significant steps to cancel the debt of 31 African countries. In 2000, China wrote off $1.2 billion in African debt; in 2003 it forgave another $750 million. Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has proclaimed that "China's exemplary endeavor to ease African countries' debt problem is indeed a true expression of solidarity and commitment." Debt relief has been an excellent public relations tool for Beijing because it not only garners popular support but also allows for two positive press events: the first to provide the loan, the second to relieve the debt.

In addition to increased aid, China's outreach includes efforts to boost its soft power in Africa. This is evident in a growing focus on promoting Chinese cultural and language studies on the continent. In 2003, 1,793 African students studied in China, representing one-third of total foreign students that year. Indeed, China plans to train some 10,000 Africans per year, including many future African opinion leaders who once might have trained in the West.

Beijing also seeks to establish "Confucius Institutes" in Africa-programs at leading local universities, funded by Beijing and devoted to China studies and Chinese language training. Already, in Asia, Confucius Institutes have proved effective in encouraging graduate students to focus on China studies and, ultimately, to study in China. Meanwhile, Chinese medical schools and physicians train African doctors and provide medicine and equipment free of charge to African countries.

Through these programs and exchanges, China develops trust by investing in long-term relationships with African elites that formerly might have been educated in London or Washington. Beijing is also working to encourage tourism in Africa, partly in an effort to develop cultural ties. The government has approved 16 African countries as outbound destinations for Chinese tourists, including Ethiopia, Kenya, and Zimbabwe. This pushed the number of Africa's Chinese tourists to 110,000 in 2005, a 100 percent increase over 2004, according to Chinese government figures.

In particular, the US cannot afford to lose its status as THE place for the best and brightest in the world to get an education. The brain draw of US universities is the enduring insurance of maintaining innovation, and a widespread deep understanding of American values among the influential classes of other countries.

h/t Simon World

GW Bush, First Citzen

2006-05-02T16:45:00.000-04:00

I'm afraid the blogging has been sparce with a lot of business to attend to, but this is important stuff I wanted to pass on. A recent copyrighted Boston Globe article detailing GW Bush's practice of writing 'signing statements' when he signs laws, many of which run directly contradictory to the very letter of the law being signed.

March 9, [2006]: Justice Department officials must give reports to Congress by certain dates on how the FBI is using the USA Patriot Act to search homes and secretly seize papers.
Bush's signing statement: The president can order Justice Department officials to withhold any information from Congress if he decides it could impair national security or executive branch operations.

Dec. 30, 2005: US interrogators cannot torture prisoners or otherwise subject them to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
Bush's signing statement: the president, as commander in chief, can waive the torture ban if he decides that harsh interrogation techniques will assist in preventing terrorist attacks.

Dec. 30: When requested, scientific information ''prepared by government researchers and scientists shall be transmitted [to Congress] uncensored and without delay."
Bush's signing statement: The president can tell researchers to withhold any information from Congress if he decides its disclosure could impair foreign relations, national security, or the workings of the executive branch.

Aug. 8: The Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and its contractors may not fire or otherwise punish an employee whistle-blower who tells Congress about possible wrongdoing.
Bush's signing statement: The president or his appointees will determine whether employees of the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission can give information to Congress.

Dec. 23, 2004: Forbids US troops in Colombia from participating in any combat against rebels, except in cases of self-defense. Caps the number of US troops allowed in Colombia at 800.
Bush's signing statement: Only the president, as commander in chief, can place restrictions on the use of US armed forces, so the executive branch will construe the law ''as advisory in nature."

Dec. 17: The new national intelligence director shall recruit and train women and minorities to be spies, analysts, and translators in order to ensure diversity in the intelligence community.
Bush's signing statement: The executive branch shall construe the law in a manner consistent with a constitutional clause guaranteeing ''equal protection" for all. (In 2003, the Bush administration argued against race-conscious affirmative-action programs in a Supreme Court case. The court rejected Bush's view [this is a clear case where the signing statement directly contravenes prior U.S. Supreme Court decisions].)

Oct. 29: Defense Department personnel are prohibited from interfering with the ability of military lawyers to give independent legal advice to their commanders.
Bush's signing statement: All military attorneys are bound to follow legal conclusions reached by the administration's lawyers in the Justice Department and the Pentagon when giving advice to their commanders.

Aug. 5: The military cannot add to its files any illegally gathered intelligence, including information obtained about Americans in violation of the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches.
Bush's signing statement: Only the president, as commander in chief, can tell the military whether or not it can use any specific piece of intelligence.

Nov. 6, 2003: US officials in Iraq cannot prevent an inspector general for the Coalition Provisional Authority from carrying out any investigation. The inspector general must tell Congress if officials refuse to cooperate with his inquiries.
Bush's signing statement: The inspector general ''shall refrain" from investigating anything involving sensitive plans, intelligence, national security, or anything already being investigated by the Pentagon. The inspector cannot tell Congress anything if the president decides that disclosing the information would impair foreign relations, national security, or executive branch operations.

Nov. 5, 2002: Creates an Institute of Education Sciences whose director may conduct and publish research ''without the approval of the secretary [of education] or any other office of the department."
Bush's signing statement: The president has the power to control the actions of all executive branch officials, so ''the director of the Institute of Education Sciences shall [be] subject to the supervision and direction of the secretary of education."

Hat tip to Boston Progressive.

Let your Senator or Representative know if you think this constitutional back door is dangerous and needs to be stopped.

Turning Points in Medicine

2006-04-10T13:36:00.000-04:00

Sherwin Nuland lists top 5 books that were turning points in medicine in this weekend's Wall Street Journal:

1. Interpretation of Dreams by Freud
2. The Double Helix by James Watson
3. The Silent World of Doctor and Patient by Jay Katz
4. Microbe Hunters by Paul de Kruif
5. The Merck Manual of Medical Information: Home Edition

To that list I would add On Doctoring, an anthology of writings about the art of medicine commonly given out to US medical students at the beginning of their training.

H/t Med Pundit

The Ecology of Polarization

2006-04-06T10:04:00.000-04:00

Centrists are so often frustrated with the black-and-white thinking of the political Left and Right that I think it's worth reflecting on the useful role each political pole plays in the ecology of our political system.

Perhaps most importantly, the Left and Right wings supply much of the energy into the political system. While solutions may come about from compromise and persuasion, the movement toward resolution of problems is often sustained by pressure from one or the other political pole. It is much like the relationship between the Id and the Ego--the extremes supply the drive, the centrists find the solutions.

That formulation makes sense in terms of the routine operation of the government, but the more dramatic functions of the extremes are seen when societal paradigm shifts happen. Without a Left and a Right, we never would have seen either the civil rights movement of the 60s or the arrest in growth of the welfare state of the 80s-90s. The poles often supply the Big Ideas, or champion them before they have a chance to win general acceptance.

Finally, even if centrists had all the answers to the social and political problems of the day, unfortunately much of their impetus to action comes from a need to counter what they see as harmful initiatives by the political poles, and replace them with their own intitiatives. In this way, the Left and the Right prompt those in the Center to become politically active when they might otherwise not be.

So next time you're discussing abortion or Iraq with a liberal or conservative who just digs in his heels, try not to get too frustrated. He's chosen his role in the political ecology, and it's all just the circle of life.

The Peter Pans of Generation Y

2006-04-04T16:56:00.000-04:00

Are the young men of Generation Y (today's 20-somethings) more listless than their forebears? Alan Stewart Carl comments on a Leonard Sax Wa Po column:

Within the last 30 years, marriage rates have been sinking and those getting married are doing so later in life. So, whereas young men in their 20s used to get married and then need a good job to support their family, now they don’t get married and thus don’t need a good job. Young men today simply do not have the responsibilities young men used to have.

But why hasn’t the decline in marriage also led to many more woman living at home? I think this has to do with the continuing effects of the feminist movement. Men who are not married are permitted by our culture to be boyish and directionless. But unmarried women are expected to rise above and claim their independence.

This cultural incongruity is readily seen within our modern movies. Actors like Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughan, Owen and Luke Wilson, Steve Carell and others make movie-after-movie that portray grown men as nothing more than overgrown children who find happiness in their boyishness. But actresses like Sarah Jessica Parker, Chalize Theron, Reese Witherspoon and most other popular Hollywood actresses are not playing roles that celebrate girlishness. Instead, they take on roles that demonstrate the virtuousness of independent women who either don’t need a man to be complete or are the rock in a directionless man’s life.

A TV advertisement that stands out in my memory showed an SUV that was seen packaged in a box as a toy, with a fully grown man agape like a child. It makes sense for advertisers to evoke child-like states of mind; child-men are more likely to make impulse purchases than mature men.

Youth has been glorified in various forms since antiquity, but in times of widespread material prosperity it is possible for people to 'live the dream' of prolonged childhood. I expect that extending the Imperial Self (to use Robert Kegan's psychological development theory) for men into their twenties, while women become more free to develop beyond the Institutional Self, will have profound implications on the institution of marriage in years to come. I see it in my own patients already. The difference between the situation now and 25 years ago is that it is common for such child-men to be economically and academically successful in their careers. This contrasts with Vaillant's work that found that achieving successful intimacy (with a spouse or mentor) was necessary to really succeed at work, because it catalyzed one's ability to connect with people, build trust, and work smoothly in organizations. In today's email workplace, it is possible to accomplish much without emotional maturity being noticed in many jobs.

But while you can fake sincerity, you can't fake emotional maturity, and tomarrow's families will need husbands and fathers who can fill the bill.

Mental Health Parity: New Evidence

2006-04-03T14:53:00.000-04:00

The current New England Journal reports a study comparing federal employee health benefit plans with and without mental health parity (full coverage for mental health services on par with coverage for other medical services). They found that:

The implementation of parity was associated with a statistically significant increase in use in one plan (+0.78 percent, P<0.05) a significant decrease in use in one plan (–0.96 percent, P<0.05), and no significant difference in use in the other five plans (range, –0.38 percent to +0.23 percent; P>0.05 for each comparison). For beneficiaries who used mental health and substance-abuse services, spending attributable to the implementation of parity decreased significantly for three plans (range, –$201.99 to –$68.97; P<0.05 for each comparison) and did not change significantly for four plans (range, –$42.13 to +$27.11; P>0.05 for each comparison). The implementation of parity was associated with significant reductions in out-of-pocket spending in five of seven plans.

The NEJM editorial opines:

Although parity did not lead to increases in the use of services relative to a comparison group, it did lead to systematic reductions in out-of-pocket spending for mental health services. Parity coverage performed just as insurance coverage should. It shifted costs from out-of-pocket payments to the insurance company (and eventually to very small increases in insurance premiums) without leading to an increase in the use of services. This shift means that, in today's mental health environment, parity coverage unambiguously improves the value of health insurance. It moves risk away from individual patients without changing the incentives that they face.

The evidence is stacking up, and policymakers will not be able to ignore it much longer. Treating psychiatric care as a separate service from general medical care means that the organization that sees the costs--the mental health insurer--does not reap the reduction in general medical costs that occurs when good mental health care is provided, so there is no incentive to provide adequate mental health coverage. Parity ensures that the same insurance company has a stake in both psychiatric and general medical care, and providing a system that handles both types of problems well. Parity makes sense for patient care, and now the data shows it is good, or at least not bad, for the bottom line.

Because integrated mental health care can decrease general medical costs, it should be a key part of a comprehensive national plan to control the growth of health care costs. However, if one company implements parity, it would fear patients with mental health problems flocking to its plan from others, so parity must be implemented simultaneously across the insurance industry. That's where federal action is necessary.

Let your senator or representative know if you think that mental health parity is important.

The Fall of Red America

2006-04-01T13:09:00.000-05:00

I was an online denizen, reasonably frequent commenter, and occasional diarist at Red State for about 6 months after the 2004 elections (my diary). Ben Domenech (aka Augustine) was a fair-handed editor of the site, and agree or not with his posts, he always did his homework.

Last year, the atmosphere at Red State became decidedly less friendly to good-faith dissent, and along with many other commenters, I left the site--and started my own blog.

Meanwhile, this year Augustine was rewarded for his excellent online writing with a job as the Wa Po conservative blogger. His supporters at Red State stalwartly defended him when he was attacked from all sides. Yesterday, Domenech was conclusively shown to have plagiarized throughout his writing career. Michael Dougherty summarizes the story nicely. He concludes:

No one can fault the reflexive defense mounted by RedState for their co-founder, especially when Domenech's original critics gave no indication of being fair or decent. They succumbed to a pressure unique to the blogosphere -- to publish faster than the speed of thought. They acted on instinct for everyone to see. But as the facts came out, RedState's editors were surprisingly unfazed. Mike Krempasky had the last word, announcing Domenech's leave of absence and prophesying his walk down the road of redemption. The harshest words were not for the colleague that had only a few hours ago refused to own up to his intellectual theft, and used RedState to lash out at his critics and spin the story in his favor, but for that man's critics. "Loathesome (sic), vile, and disgusting -- their contempt for civil behavior surpassed only by the emptiness of their own souls."

Meanwhile, now that the truth is clear, those defenders are as quick to forgive him as Domenech was to lie in his own defense this week. They are as quick to excuse him as they are to condemn Jayson Blair or Jill Carroll.

Here's the question for centrists like myself: are the reflexive defenders left at Red State the conservatives that can be productive in dialogue with liberals and moderates, or are those conservatives somewhere else? If not, where are they?

Habeas Corpus: Today and Yesterday

2006-03-29T14:59:00.000-05:00

Here's a taste of the fireworks in the Supreme Court today in the Hamdan case, as told by NY Times:

Mr. Clement's position was that Congress had not in fact suspended habeas corpus, but that it might constitutionally have done so given "the exigencies of 9/11." Addressing Justice Stevens, the solicitor general said, "My view would be that if Congress sort of stumbles upon a suspension of the writ, that the preconditions are satisfied, that would still be constitutionally valid."

Justice Souter interrupted. "Isn't there a pretty good argument that suspension of the writ of habeas corpus is just about the most stupendously significant act that the Congress of the United States can take," he asked, "and therefore we ought to be at least a little slow to accept your argument that it can be done from pure inadvertence?"

When Mr. Clement began to answer, Justice Souter persisted: "You are leaving us with the position of the United States that the Congress may validly suspend it inadvertently. Is that really your position?"

The solicitor general replied, "I think at least if you're talking about the extension of the writ to enemy combatants held outside the territory of the United States —— "

"Now wait a minute!" Justice Souter interrupted, waving a finger. "The writ is the writ. There are not two writs of habeas corpus, for some cases and for other cases. The rights that may be asserted, the rights that may be vindicated, will vary with the circumstances, but jurisdiction over habeas corpus is jurisdiction over habeas corpus."

Hat tip The Moderate Voice

A group of British MPs filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court recently, offering their perspective on the legal status of the Guantanamo prisoners. For a bit of historical perspective, I highly recommend this transcript of NPR's This American Life (the middle segment). The piece nicely paints a picture of the moment when habeas corpus was last suspended in England.

The Garbage Problem

2006-03-28T13:50:00.000-05:00

A new book by Vermont author Heather Rogers looks at the post 1950s US garbage production and disposal problem. After detailing the industrial and policy choices that brought us to this mess, she concludes that no amount of virtuous consumer behavior will be enough to really fix the problem.

This observation dovetails nicely with my last post--we need to have broad-based systematic solutions to problems with so many contributing causes, rather than focusing on single endpoints like convincing towns to recycle more aluminum. In this case, I think it means strong state and federal regulations and incentives to use and manufacture reusable, not recyclable, packaging.

H/T VPR.

Fair Trade or Free Trade?

2006-03-27T14:47:00.000-05:00

Michael Stickings, a self-described Fair Trade coffee supporter, asks whether the forseeable long-term effects of price supports for coffee farmers might become a worse cure than the problems they solve.

The problem is that these high prices will encourage new entrants into coffee production, which will lead to a glut in supply that pushes global coffee prices down. Those who are already locked into Fairtrade supply contracts will do fine, but those who do not receive the benefit of Fairtrade prices will be made even worse off.

Converting every coffee buyer in the world to the Fairtrade philosophy doesn't necessarily solve the problem either, for you still have the inducement to entry provided by high coffee prices, leading to the same glut of coffee, and to strong incentives for those selling at the lower end of the market to defect out of the Fairtrade movement and reap the benefits of lower coffee prices.

I think his observations speak to the overly reductionistic approach of fair trade proponents.

The stated goal of fair trade is to raise wages for farmers, under the assumption that profiteering businessmen are cashing in on these farmers' work. But those wages are not set in a vaccuum, and the power of multinational corporations is not the only force keeping those wages low. To think that we can affect broad-based economic justice in just one industry of a complex multinational trading system, overriding the forces of labor availability, commodity supply and demand, and political requirements is a recipe for wasted time and effort. The difficulties making fair trade universal throughout the coffee industry only highlight this point; if fair trade can't be made accessible to every farmer, is it an equitable strategy at all?

While fair trade may indeed have the potential to improve raise the income of a reasonable number of farmers, to really lift a significant fraction of people in developing countries up from poverty in a self-sustaining way will require changes at the level of national trade and economic policy. Anything more reductionistic than that is, unfortunately, mostly window dressing.

Marriage: Contract or Firm?

2006-03-22T20:45:00.000-05:00

New Englanders are more likely to think of marriage as a contract than folks in other regions of the country, I have written, which may explain regional differences of opinion on gay marriage. Booker Rising cites William Weston on a related way of looking at marriage:

Jennifer Roback Morse, in the same essay in The Meaning of Marriage that I wrote about yesterday, goes through the argument that marriage is a contract. She makes the point that contracts are most suitable for short-term and arms-length relations. The sexual revolution, she says, has had some disastrous consequences for marriages because it changed the theory of sexual contracts. Under a marriage theory, sex is reserved for the most permanent, most intimate relations. Under the sexual revolution theory, by contrast, sex became a want best satisfied on the spot market. The most intriguing point she makes, I think, is that for the most intimate and long term economic relations, the market finds that even long-term contracts are not enough. For permanent economic relations, the market invented the 'firm.' Marriage is not a short-term contract for sex. It is not even a long-term contract for childrearing and companionship. A marriage is a firm, the most permanent, multi-faceted firm possible. In an ordinary firm or partnership, if they can no longer provide their distinctive good or service profitably, they dissolve. In a marriage, though, if the original product no longer works, they keep the firm and change what the firm produces. Marriage is the firmest firm."

If marriage is better described as a long-term firm than a short-term contract, that does not establish the more traditional idea of marriage as an 'institution,' but does meet that view halfway by granting that each individual marriage partakes in a common set of rules and expectations, just as business firms do.

Wisdom and Leaders

2006-03-20T09:22:00.000-05:00

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

--Rudyard Kipling

Even when distinctions between personal virtue and political virtue seem blurry, wisdom's realm is all human relations. It is very easy for commentators to fill paragraphs describing the lack of wisdom in past and present leaders, but little space is devoted to showing what wisdom itself looks like. I don't mean an opinion about this or that policy--there's plenty of that--but the actual personal process of approaching a complex problem with a clear head and a conscience at peace. Maybe that's because it is easier to describe in poetry.

There are a few exceptions, but I wonder if we would see more wisdom in our leaders, if more examples of it were more prominent in our education and day-to-day lives.

Confucian Renaissance

2006-03-16T21:39:00.000-05:00

The US cannot effectively think of China as a new Cold War adversary, writes Asia Cable. The difference is that China is not trying to export an ideology or exert military control. It is participating in a renaissance of Confucian society.

Call it the Emerging Confucian World Order, or to be more exact, the re-emergence of the Confucian World Order, since in fact Asia is simply reverting to the order of nations with China at the center that existed before the era of European colonialism.

As it did during the Ming Dynasty years, the height of the tributary system, China confers the boon of trade with the nations on its periphery and receives tribute in return. No boon was more welcome in Southeast Asia than Beijing’s decision to during the 1997-1998 Asian Financial Crisis to maintain its currency’s peg to the dollar, resisting the temptation to snatch trade advantages from neighboring state by devaluing. Recently, it signed a free-trade agreement with the ten countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and tolerates a $20 billion trade deficit with them. Meanwhile, it gracefully accepts “tribute” from South Korea in the form of its conferring “Market Economy Status” on China, the first country with more than $100 billion in trade with China to do so.

The growing animosity between China and Japan can easily be read in Confucian terms. Ostensibly, the discord is rooted in interpretations of Asia’s modern history. In China’s view, Japan has not shown sufficient remorse for its aggression during World War II. This, it is said, is reflected in how the war is portrayed in its history books and in the regular visits that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi makes to the Yasukuni Shrine. Japan’s apologies for its wartime actions constitute a modern version of the kowtow. The Prime Minister’s regular visits to the Yasukuni Shrine are for Japan the anti-kowtow.

But then Japan never was a model vassal. The current war of words echoes sentiments going back to the 14th century when the Chinese Emperor Hung-wu addressed the Japanese sovereign as, “you stupid eastern barbarian.” To which the Japanese Ashikaga shogun replied in kind: “Heaven and earth are vast; they are not monopolized by one ruler.” China and Japan that have been rivals for hundreds of years. It should not be surprising that they are still jockeying for primacy. In Confucian terms somebody has to be “big brother” and the other has to be “little brother.”

On the other hand, Korea was a model tributary state for 500 years, stretching from the late Ming to the end of the Qing Dynasty. The Koreans paid their annual tribute even more regularly than the other tributary states, such as Vietnam, Myanmar and Thailand. No other country in Asia, not even Japan, was so completely absorbed into the Confucian system. Today South Korea is moving perceptibly into China’s orbit. The only question is whether this trend is reversible. The six-party talks aimed at disarming North Korea of nuclear weapons seem to be accelerating this trend, and by clinging to them, the Bush administration may be pushing this development along. Seoul’s position in the talks is much closer to Beijing’s than it is to Washington’s.

But it is not just in international relations where old patterns of Asian social behavior are returning after two centuries of disruption by colonialism, war, and communism.

The Chinese government is explicitly promoting Confucianism, once despised as feudal ideology.

It is little surprise that Chinese leaders are seeking to rehabilitate their country’s most famous and influential thinker. In the moral void opened by the decline of Marxism and the abundance of material temptations, Confucianism can help provide the nation with a much-needed ethical anchor. And success in these endeavors would allow China’s leaders to strengthen their hold on another Confucian bequest – the “mandate of heaven,” or the right to rule.

What is the relevance of Confucianism in modern times? Which tenets have served East Asia well – and could help other nations and cultures? What are the pitfalls to be avoided? Of all the world’s great canons, Confucianism is the most practical. What concerned him most were people’s relationships with one another and with the state. He also focused on social justice and good government. Ren or benevolence was the pillar of the Master’s thought.

Another was learning. Whether or not East Asian countries include The Analects in their social curriculums, they all understand that education is the root of national strength and prosperity. The ingrained respect for knowledge – and for the teacher who imparts it – is the key factor in the outstanding academic performance of East Asians on a global basis...

In return for the loyalty of subjects, Confucius demanded that a ruler display benevolence and unstintingly serve their interests. If he didn’t, citizens had the right to remonstrate. Mencius, the second most influential Confucian philosopher later developed the concept of a “divine right of rebellion.” If an emperor became a tyrant, he would lose the mandate of heaven and people would overthrow him. Today they might simply throw the leader out of office in an election. Confucius and democracy are hardly incompatible.

Throughout history, the rigid and unthinking application of Confucian principles repeatedly produced complacent closed societies that were unable to make progress. They paid a terrible price: foreign subjugation and internal upheaval. Modern Confucians must guard against repeating such mistakes. If they succeed in adapting their time-tested heritage to contemporary challenges, Master Kong’s teaching may blossom beyond East Asia to enrich all mankind in the next century.

Before we think about events in Asia through the lens of easy analogies to our own history, it is important to step back and remember that Confucians often have radically different ideas from Westerners about how to organize society, how to communicate, and how relationships are managed. It is possible to make really big mistakes quickly.

Abortion: No Bright Line

2006-03-16T09:49:00.000-05:00

I quote here comments I left at The Debate Link in resonse to an interesting set of thought experiments: things along the lines of 'whom would you save from a burning building--zygotes or a 4 year old? an adult or a 4 year old? a premie or a 4 year old? etc.

The structure of all the hypotheticals you give is an exaggerated choice of passively allowing one life or group of lives to end in order to save others. The first one is designed, it seems, to make visible the 'bright line' between human life and non- or proto- life. The problems that reducing the exercise to absurdity creates, I believe, demonstrate that the assumption is false: there is in fact no bright line.

Life is not a state, but a process. Human life has many shapes and forms, and is not circumscribed. Taking one aspect of humanity (consciousness, ethical reasoning, ability to feel pain, a heartbeat, etc) and artificially elevating it to The Measure of Humanity creates ethical confusion, because it is an arbitrary choice of many human attributes.

Human life is a nebulous idea. A life-form gradually approximates our idea of human life over a gestation and a lifetime.

So what does this have to do with abortion? I think we need to get comfortable with ambiguity first, than deal with it the same way we deal with any imperfectly knowable body of information. We still raise interest rates and take aspirin, even though we imperfectly understand the workings of the economy and the human body.

Then given what we know about the scientifically measurable features of fetuses, the ethical implications in terms of individual rights and predictable harms, and our inherited body of laws and political institutions, we balance our values for life and dignity to decide how we will exercise our citizenship.

There unfortunately will never be an 'answer' as to whether abortion is right and wrong, or when exceptions apply, with the certainty of a mathematical law. There cannot be, in an issue charged with values, matters of degree, and uncertainty, just as there will never be a final word on something as complex as whether US foreign policy should be isolationist or activist.

There is no absolute answer, only the evolving political/cultural landscape, and we have to decide how we shape it and react to it.

That does not mean that once we make our best guess, we should not be rigorous in convincing others of our way of thinking and exercising our political rights to bring that plan to pass. We should. But we must always have the humility to remember that it is just that--our best guess. That's the essence of centrism.

Kurdish Genocide Museum

2006-03-13T11:49:00.000-05:00

I remain convinced that the US invasion of Iraq was a strategic blunder and morally indefensible.

But here is a powerful reminder of how evil Hussein's Baathist regime really was, lest we forget.

Town Meeting Report

2006-03-11T08:07:00.000-05:00

Once a year since colonial times, residents of New England towns meet in a public exercise of direct democracy that provides a local stage for how messy and wonderful democracy is. These are not like the political debate events staged by the League of Women Voters, but real town meetings--unscripted loosely organized proceedings where any resident can attend and vote on town business.

This year in my town's meeting, the hot button issue as usual was the budget; the state's property value adjustment formula required continuing increases in taxes, which were not popular. Someone requested a written ballot to approve the budget rather than the usual voice vote, to everyone's chagrin. Often that meant people wanted to vote against the budget but didn't want people to know they were doing so. Anyway, the budget passed, which was the only really reasonable choice, and we moved on to 'other nonbinding business'.

An elderly gentleman was very concerned about town employees 'escorting' women from out of town, and it had something to do with a proposed dog park. I didn't quite follow.

There was another elderly man, the only African American in the hall, dressed in a suit, quietly and attentively clutching copies of the town budget and other references, and clearly taking his citizenship very seriously.

Parents of young children, including myself, staked out the back of the hall. About half a dozen toddlers played busily on the floor, occasionally ushered out by embarrassed parents when their patience ran low, which became more often as voice votes were taken on miscellaneous matters of business toward the end.

Toward the end of town meeting, the selectmen announced they were forming a committee to consider changing the town's form of government. They were concerned that of 9000 residents, only about 200 routinely came to town meeting. A well-spoken patrician-like man in a sweater and turtleneck chided the selectmen for not providing adequate education on alternative forms of government before embarking on such a project, and a less well-spoken man in plaid flannel declared that he likes town meeting just the way it is. They each got equal hearty applause.

The Realpolitik Case for Darfur Intervention

2006-03-02T15:40:00.000-05:00

The Debate Link argues that American action to stop the Darfur genocide has a long-range strategic advantage; preventing the Chinese from using their security council veto and military/economic aid as leverage to gain influence in Africa.

As long as we're assuming for the moment the stark realist view of international politics and ignoring the harm of losing American clout for humanitarian influence in the region, we must point out that our own interest there, Nigerian oil, is critical to our economy. We cannot afford to allow this vital national interest to fall under control of an unfriendly regime. Consider Darfur a domino.

Liberalism in the Age of Cartoons

2006-03-02T06:44:00.000-05:00

How do we square a decent respect for opinions of others with the deep conviction that they are wrong? Positive Liberty writes:

Just as moral relativism does not imply an automatic cross-cultural toleration, liberalism does not imply moral relativism. Liberalism is not a set of moral conclusions at all; it is a meta-discourse: It’s a way of thinking and talking about thinking and talking themselves. Most other discourses think or talk about other things. But liberalism asks, and tries to answer, a very interesting philosophical question: Given the existence of profound disagreements on very important matters, how are people who disagree with one another to pursue a life together? All other things being equal, what rules will lead us more surely to the truth, and — in liberalism’s one leap of faith — are these not the very same rules that make for a decent and honorable argument (and a peaceful life) even in the absence of truth?

Liberalism proposes rules to keep the conversation going, and here are some of them, simply stated: It’s usually wrong, and almost always ineffective, to try changing someone’s mind with violence. If it neither picks your pocket, nor breaks your leg, do consider leaving it alone. God is strong enough to take care of His own; He does not require your help. Most political disputes can be settled without killing, and even if they can’t, the chances are that you don’t want everyone else taking up the sword as well. Contrary to what you have been told, mere words do not hurt you.

These are rules not about how to conduct our lives, but about how to try to convince others of how to conduct their lives. They are the meta-rules of the discourse of liberalism, the only discourse so far discovered that even has a reasonable set of such meta-rules. By contrast, the meta-rules of fundamentalism allow for no discussion whatsoever: We are right; you are wrong; all else may be discarded.

Our Constitution was only possible because the various factions all subscribed to this type of liberalism, despite their many differences. Pluralism demands that a differing group/viewpoint at least agree to the above principles. Some point out that folks in liberal cultures are resistant to criticizing those in illiberal ones. That need not be so--the sublimation of disagreement from violence into verbal critique is the heart of what it means to hold a liberal view. A liberal man may call an illiberal one misguided, counterproductive, dogmatic or morally bankrupt; he just can't call him wrong enough to be killed.

Darwin in Church

2006-02-13T10:28:00.000-05:00

A NY Times piece today describes how Darwin's birthday was marked in some church services yesterday.

I think it's important that the media run pieces like this that show how religious people engage with the theory of evolution and recognize the (mostly) separate realms of religion and science, in contrast to the bulk of media coverage of church-science controversy that paints a purely confrontational picture. If the issue is always portrayed as a face-off between starkly opposite positions, that becomes a self fulfilling prophesy.

Evolutionists are right that denying Darwin's theory based on religion has consequences: natural processes become less understandable and a valuable tool to improve the lot of humanity is lost. But anti-evolutionists also have a point: evolution itself is value-less, and attempts to derive values from evolution have historically had scary consequences, from social Darwinism and ethnic cleansing to the potential for human cloning. But denying each others positions wholesale just entrenches the opposition more.

Calling attention to the evil uses of evolution is a better strategy to avoid their repetition than denying the validity of the theory. Folks on both sides can see eye to eye on preventing values like respect for human life from being eroded by the theory, or religious intolerance arising from a perversion of it. Fostering personal trust between evolutionist scientists working on medical applications and anti-cloning activists will do more good than winning any intellectual argument.

I think that open discussion on precisely this point, the historical and potential perversions of the theory of evolution, is where the money is on putting this devisive issue behind us.

Gay Marriage Hearings in NH

2006-02-11T21:04:00.001-05:00

In neighboring New Hampshire, the proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage has reached the phase of legislative hearings. Valley News points out that the hearings may backfire for the gay marriage opponents.

In an extraordinary six-hour legislative hearing reminiscent of the ones that eventually led Vermont to bless civil unions, more than 100 people testified about the proposal. While a number came to argue against same-sex unions, the majority came to support them.

This was no abstract public policy debate. Many of those who spoke did so from deep personal experience and belief. The most powerful messages came from courageous teenagers, who stood before the crowd and told of their deepest fears and fondest hopes.

Rigel Cable, a 17-year-old Hartford High senior, spoke of growing up near the leafy expanse of Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish and of his dreams to one day be married there. If the amendment passed, that dream might die.

“To be told that I cannot marry in the place where I have spent so many years is very saddening,” said the teen. “It makes me feel as though my own hometown is rejecting me.”

What I found interesting about this passage is the teen's view of marriage as a way he hopes to participate in his local community--in contrast to the image often portrayed of a separate and insular 'gay community'.

There may well be a certain fraction of gay Americans who do think of themselves that way, but the desire for gay marriage seems to be more often conceived of as striving for normalcy than it is as a fundamental challenge to society in the minds of its proponents.

Gay Marriage Hearings in NH

2006-02-11T21:04:00.000-05:00

In an extraordinary six-hour legislative hearing reminiscent of the ones that eventually led Vermont to bless civil unions, more than 100 people testified about the proposal. While a number came to argue against same-sex unions, the majority came to support them.

This was no abstract public policy debate. Many of those who spoke did so from deep personal experience and belief. The most powerful messages came from courageous teenagers, who stood before the crowd and told of their deepest fears and fondest hopes.

Rigel Cable, a 17-year-old Hartford High senior, spoke of growing up near the leafy expanse of Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish and of his dreams to one day be married there. If the amendment passed, that dream might die.

“To be told that I cannot marry in the place where I have spent so many years is very saddening,” said the teen. “It makes me feel as though my own hometown is rejecting me.”

Low Fat Diet

2006-02-09T09:37:00.000-05:00

JAMA has a well-publicized article this week on results from the Women's Health Initiative showing to benefit from low fat diets in terms of cancer or cardiovascular risk.

A few caveats--it is only 7 years of followup, which might be too short to see a difference, compliance is unclear, and we already knew that total fat doesn't matter, it's saturated fat.

But let me just harp again on the silliness we have of thinking that tweeking our diet in certain ways affects our health. We can sum up what we know about nutrition as Marion Nestle does:

1. Eat less calories.
2. Eat more vegetables.
3. Move more.

Any advice more specific than that should come from your doctor.

Understanding the Enemy

2006-02-09T09:20:00.000-05:00

While my last post was a meditation on preventing emotionally charged issues from turning oneself into a partisan in spirit, this one focuses on the way to think about an enemy one means to defeat, i.e. militant Islamism.

Yesterday on NPR a former Army officer (I'm afraid I didn't catch his name) made a distinction I think is useful to think about--he said that we need to really understand our enemies, not just explain them away.

That is to say, that to predict the enemy's actions and take effective countermeasures, we need to understand him on his own terms, rather than applying our own meanings to his actions in a facile way.

But how can we know whether a given proposition about the Islamists is real understanding or just expaining them away?

One measure might be to see whether the proposition leaves one feeling superior in some sense; if so, it is likely 'explaining away'. For example, a conservative might interpret a protest against American occupation as opposition to freedom, and that certainly places the interpreter on the right side of history. Or a liberal might interpret suicide bombers as the result of imperialist policies oppressing the colonized class, again casting the observer as an anti-imperialist whistleblower. This criterion cannot by itself prove a proposition wrong, but if it is met on honest introspection, one should take it as a red flag that the idea/opinion ought to be examined more closely.

I would also worry that a proposition about the enemy is not rooted in true understanding if the enemy himself would not agree with it. For instance, if you asked an al Qaeda member if he is against freedom, or against the moral decadence fostered by Western secular materialism, I'd guess he'd answer the latter. Defining him as an anti-freedom fighter as Bush has done plays well at home, but might lead us to make statements and adopt policies that don't actually serve our goal. In this example, for instance, we might make more headway on our hearts-and-minds campaign if we focus on answering the charge that freedom leads to decadence, rather than touting the idea that freedom is pleasurable.

I welcome other ideas on what pitfalls of 'explaining away' the enemy might be.

We are all Danes now...

2006-02-07T12:11:00.000-05:00

Writes Jeff Jacoby in Boston Globe:

Freedom of the press, the marketplace of ideas, the right to skewer sacred cows: Militant Islam knows none of this. And if the jihadis get their way, it will be swept aside everywhere by the censorship and intolerance of sharia.

Here and there, some brave Muslim voices have cried out against the book-burners. The Jordanian newspaper Shihan published three of the cartoons. ''Muslims of the world, be reasonable," implored Shihan's editor, Jihad al-Momani, in an editorial. ''What brings more prejudice against Islam -- these caricatures or pictures of a hostage-taker slashing the throat of his victim in front of the cameras?" But within hours Momani was out of a job, fired by the paper's owners after the Jordanian government threatened legal action.

He wasn't the only editor sacked last week. In Paris, Jacques LeFranc of the daily France Soir was also fired after running the Mohammed cartoons. The paper's owner, an Egyptian Copt named Raymond Lakah, issued a craven and Orwellian statement offering LeFranc's head as a gesture of ''respect for the intimate beliefs and convictions of every individual." But the France Soir staff defended their decision to publish the drawings in a stalwart editorial. ''The best way to fight against censorship is to prevent censorship from happening," they wrote. ''A fundamental principle guaranteeing democracy and secular society is under threat. To say nothing is to retreat."

Like most Americans, I feel very strongly about maintaining freedom of the press and am deeply critical of efforts to silence political discourse. This cartoon flap has enormous geopolitical implications, and it is worth thinking hard about how to make sense of it.

My own first reaction, is to take sides. I agree with the Danes, so I guess that puts me on their side. But what does that mean? That I will support the Danish government in some way? the Danish newspapers? The cartoonists themselves? Or does it mean that I will support the US government in offering diplomatic or military aid? In point of fact, really all I have the power to do for the Danes is to root for them, and offer moral support on a blog.

And why is it that I took the Danes' side and not the Islamists? Do I not find disrespect for religious sensibilities distasteful? Surely I do, and would find any desecration to fall on the spectrum between an act of impoliteness at best and hateful bigotry at worst. So while not completely unsympathetic to the Islamists, I find myself valuing free speech over blasphemy-avoidance, because of the consequences to democracy if the press is so constrained. It is conceivable to me however that a reasonable person might feel the other way.

So is this taking of sides all that useful? Here is the crux. Holding a strongly valued political opinion allows one to be a vigorous voice in the democratic debate, but taking sides based on cultural affinity, personal allegiance (to a political leader) or ideological concordance is the slippery slope to authoritarianism--and is the root of organized violence.

So I take the side of freedom of press, vigilant to avoid the temptation to use each flash of threat to cherished Western values as a focal point to divide the 'us' from the 'them', but rather as a reminder that our broadest goal is to expand and protect the circle of 'us'--sometimes with a carrot, sometimes with a stick--both in the international community, and in the way each of us thinks about how our culture is situated in the world.

Bush Adopts Kerry's Iran Strategy

2006-01-28T06:54:00.000-05:00

Donklephant has a nice round up of quotes from conservative commentators during the 2004 elections condemning Kerry's plan to allow Iran to have fissile materials, then monitor strictly how they are used. This is essentially the Bush plan, with the added twist that Russia will help monitor the enrichment.

Not that the administration shouldn't be able to change its policy if the situation changes, but I would like to see an explanation from those who enthusiastically decried Kerry as being soft on nuclear proliferation as to why we should allow Iran to have fissile materials now, when it was a gross error of judgement in 2004.

Is it better to be evil or wrong?

2006-01-27T14:03:00.000-05:00

Conservative psychoanalyst Shrinkwrapped writes that "Liberals think conservatives are evil; Conservatives think Liberals are wrong."

While many conservatives do see adherents to pro-Choice or radical Marxian movements as evil, I think that by and large he is right. Conservatives tend to think that they have a view of reality and how to achieve a better society that is superior to the limited scope of Liberals' vision, fixated as they are on micro-problems and individual issues. Liberals believe that Conservatives are more or less able to comprehend reality but either choose to hold certain views out of self interest, or are imbibed with a near-pathological hate of something (racism, homophobia, classism) that they allow to color their beliefs despite the clear voice of reason.

And the internet is a prime place for those very biases to be played out, as the palimpsest of a message board helps one to conflate all the qualities one hates about the 'other side' into an easily recalled mental image.

People who subscribe to either label are right to call the other side on the limitations of its worldview. I more often am annoyed by the Liberal habit of focussing on fixing a symptom (eg. make stiffer regulations to clean up a polluted river) rather than a system-based problem (eg. fear of lawsuits makes incentive to minimize ongoing pollution rather than acknowledge it and openly develop cleaner practices). This frustration betrays an underlying conviction that I understand the broad sweep of reality better, but a Liberal might reasonably point out that consequences can be measured by varying degrees of time course, and the short term gain of lawsuits preventing the most egregious polluters to be brought to account might be valued high enough to outweigh the long-term though uncertain benefit of developing new cleaner practices.

On the flip side, Liberal people note rightly that the Conservatives who stand to gain from pro-business practices are their most energetic proponents, in keeping with the idea that Conservatives decide on their self-interest first, and their philosophy follows. Undoubtedly this formulation rings true for some Conservatives. But consider that it is a self-fulfilling prophesy that the population of people who value economic achievement--entrepreneurs, managers, people who organize people--will by definition be enriched for people who hold pro-business ideas about how government should act. There's no way to prove this, but I think the vast majority of pro-business Conservatives honestly believe what they do because they think that it will benefit society, just as the majority of Liberals working in homelessness programs believe that increasing funding to social services will benefit society, though it may also incrementally benefit themselves.

We are all evil; we are all wrong. It is time to give each other the benefit of the doubt.

MRI Study: Partisanship is Emotion Driven

2006-01-25T14:14:00.000-05:00

When committed partisans were asked to evaluate quotes showing either Bush or Kerry had flip-flopped on prior statements, they were subjected to functional MRI that locates which areas of the brain are most metabolically active. NYT reports:

After the participants read the contradictory comment, the researchers measured increased activity in several areas of the brain. They included a region involved in regulating negative emotions and another called the cingulate, which activates when the brain makes judgments about forgiveness, among other things. Also, a spike appeared in several areas known to be active when people feel relieved or rewarded. The "cold reasoning" regions of the cortex were relatively quiet.

Researchers have long known that political decisions are strongly influenced by unconscious emotional reactions, a fact routinely exploited by campaign consultants and advertisers. But the new research suggests that for partisans, political thinking is often predominantly emotional.

It is possible to override these biases, Dr. Westen said, "but you have to engage in ruthless self reflection, to say, 'All right, I know what I want to believe, but I have to be honest.' "

This is a preliminary study not yet being published, only being presented at a meeting, but the findings are clearly provocative. It's hard to draw specific conclusions about the specific areas activated, except that I would point out that in general, limbic system structures were active, while presumably the author implies that frontal structures used for reasoning were silent.

The limbic system is not simply the 'emotions' system producing minute-to-minute emotional states; its function also relates to forming long-term attachments to important people in our lives. To me, this study speaks to the powerful biological and psychological attachment that people have to political parties and their leaders, akin to the phenomenon of transference (when feelings toward a strong love-object like a parent are transferred to a psychotherapist).

It is nearly impossible for 'reason' alone to override these types of primal loyalties and attachments, because one cannot win over someone whose root valuations radically differ from yours, no matter how artfully you turn a phrase or construct syllogisms. And it is very difficult for cognitive theories like Lakoff's to account for behaviors arising primarily from emotional processes or predict them with any accuracy.

The implication for centrist politics is that drawing people to the center may need to rely more on personalities--candidates with charisma, resonating with regional cultural sensibilities, or a strong military record-- than the modality of 'cold reasoning' that perhaps many centrists are the most comfortable with by their psychological makeup.

Hat Tip: Centerfield

US Military Looking for a Few Good Bloggers

2006-01-22T23:22:00.000-05:00

Wa Po reports the US military is looking for bloggers to be fed 'content' regarding the Iraq War. What a ham-handed misunderstanding of how blogging works, and why it is valuable. I doubt many bloggers will agree to become mouthpieces of the Defense Department, but probably a few will, and shame on them.

VT Sex Offender Sentence Controversy

2006-01-22T07:34:00.000-05:00

I have been appalled by the political posturing in the wake of the controversial sex-offender sentence Vermont Judge Cashman recently issued. The law would not allow the offender to receive treatment in jail, so the judge made the best decision he could with a poorly written law by giving a relatively short jail term and mandating treatment. I don't have much problem with the judgement; I have a problem with the how the law is written.

Calls for the judge's resignation by state legislators and the governor himself should be seen as what they are--attempts to turn outrage over the sex offender's light jail term into personal political advantage.

Centrist Blogs--Bellwether of Realignment?

2006-01-20T09:33:00.000-05:00

The Moderate Voice has reproduced a New York Sun article describing the rise of centrist politics in the blogosphere. I won't reproduce it here out of respect for their copyright, but I encourage you to take a look.

Centrists (loosely defined as voters open to the idea that some of their ideas might be wrong) by their nature as such lack a stable organization like a political party to amplify their efforts. That's why I think it behooves us in the blogosphere to use our sites as links between commentary and action. In other words, when commenting on a particular issue, include a link to the politician involved (or to a congressional directory) to make it easy for those you've convinced to write a letter or donate money in response. I have done this on issues like redistricting reform and bioterrorism defense, but it would be a much more powerful strategy if adopted more widely.

The danger here for a given site would be a slide from news/commentary to political activism that loses reader credibility, so the tone of such posts would have to be low-key; simply add an invitation to action at the end of a regular, sober news analysis. And it should not be done too frequently, to avoid saturation. But since centrists lack systematic political coordination, ideas must tie themselves to action.

Unitary Executive Theory Does Not Predict Future Rulings

2006-01-18T09:12:00.000-05:00

Much of the Alito hearing questioning has centered on the constitutional debate over the extent of the president's executive power, specifically the unitary executive theory. From the Boston Globe:

Adherents of the theory say that the Constitution prevents Congress from passing a law restricting the president's power over executive branch operations. And, they say, any president who refuses to obey such a statute is not really breaking the law...

In a speech in November 2000 before the conservative Federalist Society, Alito said he believes that the Constitution gives the president "not just some executive power, but the executive power -- the whole thing."

Many worry that adhering to the unitary executive theory would make Alito an overzealous defender of the president's powers in wartime.

But Committee for Justice shows how adhering to the unitary executive theory does not necessarily predict that a judge will consistantly side with the administration, in a number of situations:

1. Executive Control over Inferior Officers. While Congress has substantial power over the appointment of executive officers, unitarians believe the Constitution’s silence about their removal means that the President can remove the ones who won’t follow his orders. Most adherents of the unitary executive, very likely including Judge Alito, therefore question the constitutionality of so-called independent agencies and the Office of the Independent Counsel. Here, however, the consensus ends.

2. Enemy Detention. In Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Justice Scalia—one of the most prominent supporters of the unitary executive—announced his opposition to the indefinite detention of American “enemy combatants.” His argument is based on the Habeas Suspension Clause, which he reads, in light of originalist evidence and its placement in Article I, to give Congress alone power over detained persons' access to courts. Because the meaning of the Suspension Clause is clear to Justice Scalia, the teachings of unitary executive theory—that the executive gets leeway in hard cases―doesn’t come into play for him.

3. Search and Seizure. Nor need fans of the unitary executive support the NSA spying program. If you believe the Fourth Amendment applies to any surveillance of domestic residents, then both the President and Congress must adhere to its basic logic: that searches and seizures be reasonable and reviewable by courts. When a search implicates national security, a unitarian may think the executive deserves some deference when determining what’s reasonable. But he might also argue that an executive interpretation of the Fourth Amendment isn’t reasonable if the executive doesn’t supply an intelligible principle that limits executive discretion or that makes independent judicial oversight possible. Because the NSA program doesn’t meet that standard, it would fail—even giving all possible leeway to the executive.

4. Torture. Here, a unitarian might turn to the Define and Punish Clause, which says Congress has the power to define and punish offenses against the law of nations. It is now commonly believed that Congress’s control over such offenses reaches treatment of captured belligerents during hostile action. Just as Justice Scalia considers the Suspension Clause a bright-line carve-out from executive discretion, a unitarian might consider the Define and Punish Clause another “carve out.” Because Congress has primacy in this area, the executive wouldn’t be able to evade limits on interrogation methods enacted by Congress. Other provisions that apply to the President and Congress equally—including the Eighth Amendment and the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause―might also impose limits on executive interrogation methods.

5. Military Tribunals. A unitarian might give the executive some discretion to try belligerents captured outside of U.S. territory. But, again, some unitarians might consider the Define and Punish Clause a “carve out” that limits executive leeway to define the international laws triable in such commissions (or to set procedures that may affect the outcome such cases). Unitarian theory also doesn’t speak to the scope and content of the Confrontation Clause and Due Process Clauses. Indeed, those clauses (Define and Punish, Confrontation, and Due Process) underpin the arguments of Neal Katyal, the professor (and former Department of Justice official) challenging the military tribunals in Guantanamo. Katyal is a self-described believer in the unitary executive.

I don’t know what Alito’s views are on these questions. But the simple fact he believes in the unitary executive doesn’t tell us much.

I strongly believe that robust checks on executive power are needed, perhaps especially in wartime. But I suggest that looking at the man's record and the substance of his judicial reasoning is more useful than the specific legal theories he holds, assuming they are within the mainstream. The great jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr, remember, simply held a moral relativism with the sole exception of government action that made him "puke". It was not his theory, but the substance of his decisions that made him great.

Bird Flu Threat Estimate

2006-01-18T08:35:00.000-05:00

Apparently taking a cue from the now-legendary Department of Homeland Security color-coded threat chart, the WHO has constructed this barometer to track the threat of avian flu.

Hat tip Medpundit

Oregon Death with Dignity Law Upheld

2006-01-17T16:26:00.000-05:00

The Supreme Court narrowly upheld Oregon's physician assisted suicide law.

I'm chagrinned to see that it's the liberal contingent of justices that sided with the state's right to regulate the practice of medicine (a power never given to Congress by the Constitution, thus reserved to the states). Though I have reservations about such 'Death with Dignity" laws, I think this was the correct ruling on federalism grounds.

Justice Roberts, Thomas, and Scalia, is this strict constructionism?

Unfortunately, this case comprises just more evidence of political agendas leaking into jurisprudence at the highest levels.

Alito Will Almost Certainly Be Confirmed

2006-01-16T10:13:00.000-05:00

Law professor Ann Althouse writes:

Alito really did have a perfect strategy to win in his showdown with the Senators. And it wasn't devious or evasive. He insisted on talking about the issues they raised in the terms of a judge's careful legal analysis. This analysis tends to be rather tedious, even when you speak crisply and avoid any padding. Proceeding in this fashion, Alito looked smart and scrupulously judicial, yet he powerfully thwarted his opponents -- by boring us! The Alito hearings will stand as a model for how an unglamorous nominee -- a not-Roberts -- can prevail.

Differ as you may with his politics, he seems to base his decisions on rather sound legal reasoning rather than ideological grounds, and the fact that the Democrats have had so much trouble pinning him as an ideologue seems ample confirmation that he is not, at least in the court of public opinion. Without grassroots support for a filibuster, there's really nothing in the way of his confirmation.

MLK Day Quote

2006-01-16T08:54:00.000-05:00

"The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers."

Martin Luther King Jr., 'Strength to Love,' 1963

Is the Culture War Ending?

2006-01-13T16:44:00.000-05:00

After the Future thinks the culture warriors of both sides are off target:

I've believed for some time that the religious right is fighting an enemy in secularism that is now a paper tiger. The culture war between the religious right and the secular left has more to do with the past than the future--it was a modern battle, and we are no longer moderns. It seems to be a fight that people who undertake it enjoy because it makes them feel as though they stand for something, but it's as pointless as standing for monarchy.

We are entering an era in which anything goes--we're already in it. It's an era in which there will be no consensus about anything, and people will believe pretty much whatever they want, whatever suits them. The human mind is ingenious and endlessly inventive. It can come up with the cleverest ways to justify the most absurd ideas. All any argument needs is a splinter of truth, and with it an elaborate fortress of delusion can be built...

The problem with this arguement is that you have to be a post-modernist in order to buy it--you have to believe that there is no common space for dialogue between disconnected worldviews. And that is precisely the assertion under debate, between the Western liberal tradition and fundamentalists of all stripes. Liberal democrats believe that space exists in the public sphere and that secular democratic processes can and should contain those debates; fundamentalists believe that their worldview should defeat the falsehoods of outsiders on its own terms.

It may be true that the only solution to the culture war is to show its premises to be absurd, but that synthesis will have to evolve out of the interaction among the players, not be imposed by a theory from the outside. In other words, sorry folks, we're going to have to keep talking about euthanasia, school prayer and abortion to people we disagree with for a very long time.

Hat tip to Ambivablog

Mindfulness and the Self-Improvement Demagogues

2006-01-12T12:34:00.000-05:00

I've recently become interested in popular figures promoting various plans for self improvement--what makes them work, and for whom, and what makes some more popular than others.

For example, Dave Ramsey has created a financial planning franchise centered on the idea that budgeting and avoiding consumer debt, coupled with a particular structured plan of incremental savings can get people financial freedom. Or Fly Lady, who helps clutter-prone people keep their homes neat by starting with shining the sink every day and gradually building a routine of 15-minute cleaning sessions to conquer clutter.

What these plans have in common is incorporating clever schemes of operant conditioning along with an easily taught method of breaking complex problems into smaller, simpler ones. These plans often provide some mechanism for clients to participate in some sort of community that fosters a sense of belonging and support, whether online or in conventions and classes.

I've also noted a theme of intentionality which reminds me of Shambala spiritual practices of meditative flower arranging, etc. That is, by deliberately budgeting, scheduling cleaning time, or planning meals in advance, one has a sense of being present in the moment, rather than allowing time to just happen to you in an alienating way. It can be a meditative, spiritual exercise.

It's not clear to me whether charisma of a plan's leader/originator has more to do with the plan's actual effectiveness, or just its popularity. But I suspect that these sorts of plans fill in a void left by the dwindling of extended family, and of community and religious institutions in America.

Turley on Alito

2006-01-11T15:25:00.000-05:00

In case you missed the USA Today article by GW University law professor and Clinton-era pro-impeachment talking head John Turley, here are choice quotes:

Despite my agreement with Alito on many issues, I believe that he would be a dangerous addition to the court in already dangerous times for our constitutional system. Alito's cases reveal an almost reflexive vote in favor of government, a preference based not on some overriding principle but an overriding party.

In my years as an academic and a litigator, I have rarely seen the equal of Alito's bias in favor of the government. To put it bluntly, when it comes to reviewing government abuse, Samuel Alito is an empty robe.

...Alito would supply the final vote to shift the balance of power toward a president claiming the powers of a maximum leader. Alito's writings and opinions show a jurist who is willing to yield tremendous authority to the government and offer little in terms of judicial review — views repeatedly rejected not only by his appellate colleagues but also by the U.S. Supreme Court.

As an assistant solicitor general, Alito strongly opposed the ruling of a court of appeals in the seminal case of Garner v. Tennessee. In that case, a police officer shot and killed an unarmed 15-year-old boy when he fled with $10 from a home. Alito supported the right of the officer to kill the boy for failing to stop when ordered, a position ultimately rejected by six members of the Supreme Court and decades of later decisions...

As he did as a Reagan administration attorney, Judge Alito often adopts standards so low that any government excuse can overcome any government abuse.

For example, in Doe v. Groody, Alito wrote a dissenting opinion arguing that police officers could strip-search a mother and her 10-year-old daughter, despite the fact that neither was named in the search warrant nor suspected of crimes. The majority opinion was authored by fellow Republican and conservative Judge Michael Chertoff (now serving as secretary of Homeland Security). Chertoff criticized Alito's views as threatening to "transform the judicial officer into little more than the cliché 'rubber stamp.'...

The Alito vote might prove to be the single most important decision on the future of our constitutional system for decades to come. While I generally defer to presidents in their choices for the court, Samuel Alito is the wrong nominee at the wrong time for this country.

I'm honestly still on the fence about Alito, but these are harsh words from a man otherwised not disposed to trash conservative judges on the basis of their willingness to limit government power.

The Hedgehog and the Fox

2006-01-10T11:44:00.000-05:00

Psychologists have long known that expert predications are not necessarily the most likely to be true. Philip Tetlock invokes the fable of the hedgehog and the fox in his new book, Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?. He describes the characteristics of predictors in a longitudinal study where subjects were asked to make predictions of political events, then followed up for 20 years:

Low scorers look like hedgehogs: thinkers who “know one big thing,” aggressively extend the explanatory reach of that one big thing into new domains, display bristly impatience with those who “do not get it,” and express considerable confidence that they are already pretty proficient forecasters, at least in the long term. High scorers look like foxes: thinkers who know many small things (tricks of their trade), are skeptical of grand schemes, see explanation and prediction not as deductive exercises but rather as exercises in flexible “ad hocery” that require stitching together diverse sources of information, and are rather diffident about their own forecasting prowess.

I think this finding has implications in every field. Prediction is everyone's business, but surprisingly little work on the topic has been made widely available. The Western scientific method of reductionism is very effective at identifying genes and proteins, but it is "ad hocery" that allowed Crick and Watts to predict that nucleic acids would form a double helix encoding the genetic code. Businesspeople with MBAs know a lot about what they studied, but having an MBA does not predict business success over time.

The temptation to overvalue facts and concepts relating to your own area of expertise is overwhelming, which is why training to be an expert makes poor training for business or poltics. The difference is the ability to operate on the appropriate scale of system hierarchy. While a cell biologist would have much more understanding of programmed cell death than a clinical neurologist, you wouldn't want him treating your Parkinson disease. Similarly, an academic expert on Russia would not necessarily be the best person to be the ambassador to the UN, or even to Russia, since he is too attached to his own theories and less likely to think flexibly about national politics and international relations.

The problem arising is how these findings feed into American anti-intellectualism. But there is a difference between allowing technocrats to become surrogate decision makers, and using them effectively to gather and synthesize data in the service of decision makers. Losing the resource of specialist insight through the intellectual laziness of policymakers or public mistrust would be a great mistake.

Hat tip Centrist Coalition

RINO Hall of Fame

2006-01-09T13:02:00.000-05:00

Conservative journal Human Events published what was meant to be an enemies list, but I'll join Charging RINO and cite it as a hall of fame:

1. Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R.I.)
Once approached by Democratic Leader Harry Reid to switch parties, Chafee has long supported liberal policies. He backs legal abortion, gay rights, federal-funded health care, strict environmental protections and a higher minimum wage. Opposes ANWR drilling. Also was the only Republican in Congress not to endorse the President’s reelection and one of three who tried to gut Bush’s tax cuts.

2. Sen. Olympia Snowe (Maine)
A self-described “centrist,” Snowe scored a 100% pro-choice voting record as scored by NARAL and consistently votes with Democrats on social issues.

3. Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.)
“Snarlin’ Arlen” warned Bush not to nominate judges who might overturn Roe v. Wade, joined Chaffee reducing tax cuts and supported Democrats on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, HMO and overtime regulation. Also opposed school choice in Washington, D.C.

4. Sen. Susan Collins (Maine)
Voted with liberals on the 1999 tax cut, campaign finance reform and the partial-birth abortion ban. Also advocated “pay-as-you-go” tax cuts with spending increases in 2004, leading to a budget never agreed upon between the House and Senate.

5. Rep. Christopher Shays (Conn.)
He led the House fight for McCain-Feingold campaign finance “reform.” He’s also prone to back environmental causes, gun control and abortion rights. He had no GOP challenger in 2004, but narrowly escaped defeat, 52% to 48%, by a Democratic opponent in the general election.

6. Gov. George Pataki (N.Y.)
Helped unions raise pay and unionize Indian casinos. Has said, “I believe in a limited government, low taxes, a tough approach to crime. ... But I also believe in an activist government. I’m not one of those laissez-faire types.”

7. Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (N.Y.)
Over the course of his 23-year career, he’s gained considerable power (chairman of the Science Committee), despite amassing one of the most liberal voting records of any House Republican. Fought back conservative challengers in 2000 and 2002 and could face a GOP challenge in ’06.

8. Gov. Mitt Romney (Mass.)
Has said, “I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country.” Supports civil unions and stringent gun laws. After visiting Houston, he criticized the city’s aesthetics, saying, “This is what happens when you don’t have zoning.”

9. Rep. Michael Castle (Del.)
As president of the moderate Republican Main Street Partnership and key player in the so-called Tuesday Group lunches, he is a ring-leader of RINOs. He’s teamed with Democrats to make federal funding of embryonic stem cell research one of his top priorities.

10. Rep. Jim Leach (Iowa)
One of only six House Republicans to vote against the Iraq War resolution in 2002, he was also the only Republican to vote against President Bush’s 2003 tax cuts. His support for environmental causes and abortion rights has won him liberal fans.

Conservatism, 1940s Style

2006-01-09T10:52:00.000-05:00

Check out this piece from the Atlantic Monthly written by a 20-something conservative in 1940, in the middle of a notably bad stretch for conservative politicians and intellectuals. A few choice quotes for historical interest, and then a discussion of why this exposition of conservatism is enlightening:

We are witnessing strange and terrible events. It is the deluge time, the time of the breaking of nations... I write from the point of view of millions of ordinary young college graduates trying sincerely to answer two questions: What values are enduring enough to survive all these crashing panaceas? What means must we use to save these precious values?

What do I mean by 'conservative'? Conservatism must include what Thomas Mann calls humanism: the conservation of our cultural, spiritual, and individualist heritage. Common sense is notoriously the oracle of conservatism. But, at its best, common sense means no mere unimaginative shrewdness. It means the common and universal sense of mankind, the common values basic to every civilized society and creed. These human values are the traffic lights which all (even 'mass movements') must obey in order that all may be free...

The conservative's principle of principles is the necessity and supremacy of Law and of absolute standards of conduct. I capitalize 'Law,' and I mean it. Suppose it were proved that the eternal absolutes do not really exist. Instinctively we should say: So much the worse for them. But now we must learn to say: So much the worse for existence! We have learned that from sad experience of centuries. Paradoxically, we have learned that man can only maintain his material existence by guiding it by the materially nonexistent: by the absolute moral laws of the spirit.

By 'Law' I do not mean all existing laws. All are not necessarily good. By 'Law' I mean the legal way as a way to whatever goals we may seek; I mean it as a way of living. This way is necessarily freedom's prerequisite. In this sense, Law must tread pitilessly upon individuals, nations, classes. It must trample with callous and sublime indifference upon their economic interests yes, even their economic interests- and their 'healthy instincts of the race.'

You weaken the magic of all good laws every time you break a bad one, every time you allow mob lynching of even the guiltiest criminal. I said 'magic' deliberately. Social stability rests to some extent on the aura surrounding our basic institutions. Such aura-wreathed pillars of tradition in various modern nations are the United States Supreme Court, an established Church, monarchy, a nonpartisan civil service and the aristocracy trained from birth to fill it. This social cement of tradition is too essential for every well-meaning, humanitarian Tom, Dick, and Harry to tinker with. It keeps us from relapsing into the barbarism inherent in our simian nature and in all mob 'awakenings.'

As menacing as open anarchists are those who discredit traditional institutions, not by attack, but by excess exploitation. The man who uses our institutions and Law as a barrier to, instead of a vehicle for, democratic reform is the real anarchist. I don't care a hoot whether any country, including ours, decides to use capitalism or socialism or any other material-ism, so long as it is attained through the vehicle of the traditional framework; so long as it is orthodoxly baptized and knighted by the magic wand of tradition; so long as it does not live 'without the Law.' I repeat: if moral absolutes do not exist, it is not so much the worse for them, but so much the worse for existence.

While I do see the wisdom in a concern that freedom must exist in the context of culturally appropriate order, here is the problem with the heart of his thesis: if moral absolutes do not exist, it is not so much the worse for them, but so much the worse for existence.

Besides the fact that the statement reflects little more than an assertion of his strong wish that these absolutes exist, the very statement implies there is a choice we have in accepting or selecting among a menu of moral absolutes. It is precisely this ability to accept or reject individual absolutes that proves that conceiving of morality in this way is absurd.

Let us put it another way, as Sydney Hook points out, in any moral decision there is a tension between two possible moral principles. Choosing what to do is elevating one principle above the other. Therefore, any moral system with more than one principle must allow that some principles are weighted more than others. But as soon as you allow that, then the whole concept of an 'absolute moral principle' becomes absurd--there is instead a graduated hierarchy of principles, and we are each left to determine where the principles in tension fall on the hierarchy. This situation is functionally the same as moral relativism.

I am not a moral relativist (I favor something like John Dewey's ethics) but I recognize the logical absurdity of moral systems that purport to exclusive claims to truth. There can be a conservativism that aligns itself with the roots of wisdom in our civilization's institutions without falling into dogmatism, if it renounces the claim to metaphysical grounding.

That is to say, one can believe in marriage as an institution but still realize the needs of gay couples need to be met by our societal institutions in some way; marriage is a tool to create families and protect interpersonal love, not an end in itself. One can revere the Christmas holiday as a national and cultural festival while remaining mindful that the themes of its root metaphors--hope, light--are incompatible with the idea of their competing with other festivals celebrating the same things.

Those of us who would follow a moderate way, cherishing our roots in American culture and institutions with the same intensity that we use them to claim the future as our own, need to articulate this vision better, or the loudest voices will be the extremes--of those who cannot see the possibilities of human agency acting upon tradition, or of those who would shed the accumulated wisdom of the years in a self-defeating quest for ungrounded abstractions.

Heresy and Healing

2006-01-03T20:06:00.000-05:00

Many people became Unitarian-Universalists as an alternative to faiths of origin that no longer rang true. As Rev Thom points out, there are a number of ways to be a 'heretic,' some more constructive than others. But the most difficult heresy is one that returns to orthodoxy and reexamines it.

If you are or have ever been in a close relationship, I want you to imagine that. It can be your husband, wife, partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, even a real close friend, or a relative. Now imagine something that you are different, or opposite about... In relationships, we do this, don’t we: I’m messy; she’s clean. I’m a morning person; he’s a night owl. I’m organized; she’s disorganized. Got it? Take a moment and come up with your own example? I want to propose that some of these dualities we think of are not absolutely true, but are for us sort of a myth. That we are not really all the time either one thing or the other, but we are a lot of times both. And your partner is both too. Most people are both messy and clean. Both outgoing and shy. Both reserved and adventurous. Sometimes one and sometimes the other, but that within each of you individually there lies some trace of both of these. However, we tend to polarize our differences to construct our own identities, but these identities, in turn, don’t allow us to be wholly who we are.

I’m proposing that we are all, in a way, actually both orthodox and heretical...

This is perhaps the greatest heresy of all. The heresy that ever seeks to expand upon any belief system or doctrine or religious institution, the heresy that proposes that yet more may be possible. The heresy that may bring back as new what had formally been rejected, that sings old words but sees them made new. The heresy that connects things and makes them whole, and frees us from assigned roles, frees us from reactivity and rejection, that frees us even from the new roles and definitions we’ve constructed for ourselves.

The whole sermon is interesting, so I do suggest following the link...

But I find the idea of radical heresy freeing ourselves from our own constructed roles and definitions very compelling. For when we become too enamored of the products of reason, that is where dogmatism, stubbornness and strife begin to grow.

Here is a practical example: global warming. The old orthodoxy was that technological progress is beneficial, and that the earth is resilient. The heresy came when environmentalists asserted the earth's ecosystem can be damaged if we're not careful. However, the greenhouse effect has become orthodoxy both within and without the scientific community, despite a number of serious logical flaws (most saliently, in my mind, is the lack of temporal correlation between global temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels during the 20th Century). I don't know whether the industry-->CO2-->climate change causality chain is true, but I do know that I will be regarded as a heretic by questioning it.

What Rev Thom is saying, though, is that if a global warming believer will have the most success by re-engaging the idea of technological progress and commercial activity as having the potential to benefit the world rather than rejecting them altogether; not least because it is impossible to do so.

We had a service in my UU church this week about global warming, and if you replaced the words 'greenhouse gasses' with 'sin' it would have had both the tenor and the content of an evangelical revival meeting. This service lacked the sensibility to meet the 'nonbeliever' half way, and see what kernel of truth might lie in doubt. When we have shed all doubt, we have shed the capacity to reason.

On Evolutionary Psychology

2006-01-02T17:43:00.000-05:00

Robert Kurzban at Penn is an evolutionary psychologist--he studies how behavior can be explained from an evolutionary context. This is different from 'Social Darwinism'--it is an experimental project without a presupposed racial or political ideology, though conclusions with societal implications may be drawn.

Here are some highlights from a post by TDAXP:

Men are more cooperative than women. Dr. Kurzban talked about "competitive cooperation" as the basis for social cohesion. If a group of people are playing a game against each other, they will be fractious regardless of their gender make-up. However, if the players learn there is another group, all-male groups quickly settle their internal differences and cooperate with each other, without being told that they will be competing against the other group.

Racism exists as long as it is cheap. People can fall into racial roles when a group is playing with itself. However, once the other group is learned about, racial roles go away. The drive to prepare for competition against the out-group with the in-group by cooperating within the group overwhelms pre-existing racial treatment.

Women scramble social hierarchies. As part of their rapid cooperation in the face of competition, all-male groups establish a clear and consensual social order. This does not happen in mixed-sex or all-female groups. The situation in integrated or all-female groups is closer to anarchy, with no clear order-of-dominance ever being established.

People love to punish wrongdoers, especially when others are watching. Dr. Kurzban described a trust game, where Player A could split $20 between himself and Player B, or give it to Player B and have it double. Player B could then keep almost all the $40 for himself, or split it evenly with Player A.

After Player A and Player B left, Player C was brought in as a "judge." In places were Player B kept most of the money for himself, ignoring the trusting Player A, Player C could use some of her money to punish Player C at a 3-to-1 ratio.

This was done under three different conditions. In all three Player C would have to write down his judgement on a sheet of paper.

Player C gave his answer through a complicated system that guaranteed no one would ever know if and how much he punished Player A. Player C's decision was completely anonymous.

Player C wrote down if and how much he would punish Player A, knowing a researcher would look over the answer "just to make sure the paper was filled out correctly."

Player C announced his decision in front of the other players

In all three cases Player C tended to punish Player A. Player C punished the least when it was secret, a lot when just one researcher knew, and a little bit more than that when everyone knew.

I leave it to the reader to speculate on any political implications of these findings.

Also, I would add that some believe that the inciting motive for inter-group ape violence is pre-emption. If the deepest human psychological motive for war is pre-emption as well, perhaps the most high-yield international convention possible would be to proscribe that particular justification for war as indefensible.

Chinese Economy Growing but Not Menacing

2006-01-02T11:35:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year everyone, I'm back from my holiday break and writing again.

Bloomburg's John Berry writes that China's economy is nowhere near matching the US's and that China's main presumed strength, its population, will become a shrinking factor in years to come.

Partly as the result of continued immigration, legal and illegal, U.S. population is increasing by 0.92 percent a year... With no net immigration and with its government's harsh rule of one child per family, China's population is expanding at a much smaller 0.58 percent rate. Surprisingly, given the enormous difference in current populations, Census Bureau projections show that between now and 2050, the U.S. population will rise by 124 million while the Chinese population will increase slightly less, by only 118 million. If those projections prove accurate, the Chinese likely would have no great advantage in terms of a burgeoning labor force as an ingredient for economic growth.

These observations are in the same vein as those from a previous post.

If we allow ourselves to be overcome with fear of foreign competition, we could be tempted to enact protectionist legislation that is harmful to both the US and Chinese economies in the long run.

Is the Surveillance Legal?

2005-12-20T16:44:00.000-05:00

Volkh presents a clear discussion of the legalities of the Administration's wiretapping activities. In brief, he argues that the 4th amendment does not apply to the program in question due to the well-established border exemption that permits customs to search for contraband. The 1978 law FISA however is more complex: it prohibits electronic suveillance unless a few specific exceptions apply, or the executive is explicitly authorized by statute. Those exceptions are:

50 U.S.C. 1802(a)(1)
Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year if the Attorney General certifies in writing under oath that--

(A) the electronic surveillance is solely directed at--
(i) the acquisition of the contents of communications transmitted by means of communications used exclusively between or among foreign powers, as defined in section 1801(a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title; or
(ii) the acquisition of technical intelligence, other than the spoken communications of individuals, from property or premises under the open and exclusive control of a foreign power, as defined in section 1801(a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title; [and]

(B) there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party.

Does this exception permit the monitoring? Note that (i) and (ii) are both dealing with "foreign power, as defined in (a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title." FISA's definition of "foreign power" appears in 50 U.S.C. 1801:
(1) a foreign government or any component thereof, whether or not recognized by the United States;
(2) a faction of a foreign nation or nations, not substantially composed of United States persons;
(3) an entity that is openly acknowledged by a foreign government or governments to be directed and controlled by such foreign government or governments;
(4) a group engaged in international terrorism or activities in preparation therefor;
(5) a foreign-based political organization, not substantially composed of United States persons; or
(6) an entity that is directed and controlled by a foreign government or governments

That's the key: the first passage cited definitions 1, 2, and 3, but did not cite 4,5, or 6. In other words, "a group engaged in international terrorism" is NOT a foreign power which qualifies an exception to FISA's constraints. Thus, I believe, with Volkh, that FISA prohibits the administration's activities.

The question then turns to the other possible avenue circumvent of FISA--whether there is a statutory mandate allowing such surveillance. The administration claims that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force supplies that statute, but the text really does not address surveillance, only direct military action, and Volkh points out that if Congress' intent was to create a surveillance mandate with the AUMF, why did they spend so much time amending FISA and passing the Patriot Act?

At the end of the day, the question must not be "Did this surveillance protect us from terrorists?" (how can we know?) or even "Did they break the law?" (forgivable if their interpretation is within reason) but "Did the administration act in good faith?" If it knowingly circumvented congressional oversight to spy illegally on American citizens, then it should face serious consequences.

Fighting Bioterror

2005-12-13T17:19:00.000-05:00

You can help strengthen the US bioterrorism defense.

The greatest obstacle to the development of bioweapon countermeasures in the US is the gap between the public funding available for basic science research, and late stage product development (of drugs, vaccines and devices) that industry typically performs. The Bioshield legislation Congress passed last year has been utterly inadequate in its task of supplying incentives for industry to take on the early stage product development necessary to produce the vaccines and medications the public needs for large scale public health responses.

After 9/11 the US made a dramatic change in biodefense strategy; it shifted responsibility for procurement from the Defense Department to the NIH, an agency not really designed for this function. That being said, NIH did an excellent job of developing a new anthrax vaccine, but for political reasons it will not be able to duplicate this role.

Therefore, we need to either find another government agency to do the job, or provide incentives for industry to take on early product development. That is what Bioshield II is designed to accomplish, and it seems well suited to the job, with a system of targeted grants to provide milestones of product development. Its strength is that it builds biodefense into routine public health, a strategy I've touted on this blog. But it also provides intellectual property and liability protections that are absolutely necessary for any industry investment in the field.

It will take a good deal of courage for senators to support this bill which could easily be made out by opponents to be handouts to rich pharmaceutical companies; I'm no big fan of Big Pharma but I believe it is necessary for public health for government to provide adequate incentives for them to develop products that private markets will not support. When the sales of Lipitor alone total $10 billion a year, the $5 billion yearly US market for all biodefense countermeasures combined just doesn't look appealing to a drug company.

Write your Senator or Representative and ask them to support Senators Lieberman, Hatch and Gregg in passing Bioshield II.

What is a Centrist?

2005-12-02T15:39:00.000-05:00

The recent political developments in Israel have lead to a lot of thought about what centrism really means. Haaretz brings us an excellent essay about Israeli centrism.

A "genuine" centrist won't necessarily seek the middle ground on every issue. Occasionally, he will think that the right is correct on a particular issue - for instance, the need for a decisive struggle against terror "with the gloves off" - and sometimes he will side with the left - for instance, on the need to preserve the rights of the Palestinian population - and the balance will be seen in the overall picture.

What, then, motivates the centrist? Here is a far more positive answer than the one provided by Yossi Sarid: At a time when the people on either end see before them only one aspect of reality, the centrist tries to see the entire reality. Those on the extremes are similar to people who close one eye in an effort to direct their attention to the objective that interests them. Their vision may be sharper, but a broad swath of reality is simply hidden from view...

The key word in the vocabulary of the centrist is not, as many think, "compromise," but "inclusiveness." As difficult as it is, the centrist wants to include, simultaneously, all values and needs, to be attentive to all sectors. Someone on one side of the spectrum, on the other hand, might be attentive to Palestinians, but tend toward hatred of settlers or the ultra-Orthodox, and the opposite is true as well. Compromise is only the consequence of inclusiveness, not the object, and can come in many forms.

Compromise is only the consequence of inclusiveness, not the object.

Understanding this idea is the key to answering critiques of the centrist way of doing things coming from either pole of the spectrum.

The essay also describes an aspect of centrism similar to what I have tried to describe about moderate Republicanism, especially in this essay. Similarly, the Haaretz essay continues:

On the practical side, those on either end of the spectrum tend to forget the craftiness of history. They tend to think that the way to advance the ideal they believe in is by exerting maximal pressure to implement it, and forget that at the moment they chose that path and ignored their rivals and various other values and needs, they started up the backlash seeking to cancel out their revolution.

Hat tip Centrist Coalition

A Map of Different Color

2005-12-01T15:23:00.000-05:00

Based on Bush's local approval ratings, here's a revised red-blue map of the US. Hat tip to Donklephant.

Stopping Flu's Bacterial Partner

2005-11-30T22:45:00.000-05:00

Often in fatal flu cases, the complication that overwhelms the patient is bacterial pneumonia. Thus, as Michael Alderman writes in the NY Times, our national flu strategy should include mass immunization against pneumococcus, the most common cause of pneumonia. He writes:

While not all bacterial pneumonia is attributable to the pneumococcus bacteria, it is the most common variety, and the one for which a vaccine exists. It is estimated that pneumococcal vaccination could prevent half of these bacterial-related deaths.

Developed 30 years ago, the vaccine is recommended by the Centers for Disease Control's National Immunization Program for people over 65, or with chronic diseases or damaged immune systems. Since 2001, a form of the vaccine has been administered to nearly all infants. The vaccine, which helps protect against 23 strains of pneumococcal bacteria, has only very minor side effects, works for 5 to 10 years, and can be extended by a booster.

The vaccine has other advantages. At a time when bacteria have become increasingly resistant to antibiotics, including penicillin, prevention is our most dependable line of defense.

Thinking about pneumococcus in addition to influenza vaccination is an example of what I wrote about in a prior post about what the adminsitration's avian influenza plan needs to do better--integrate flu preparedness with the public health response to ongoing infectious disease threats. We can't allow narrow focus on the flu allow us to become more vulnerable to the host of diseases the public health system keeps at bay like TB and West Nile Virus--or to complications of flu like pneumococcal pneumonia--especially since with good planning, improvements in infectious disease surveillance, vaccination plans, quarantine, and other public health measures should be synergistic among disease preparedness plans.

Students' Day Celebrated in Iraq

2005-11-30T13:46:00.000-05:00

Check out these pictures of Iraqi schoolkids on Students' Day.

Weed for What Ails You: Medical Marijuana

2005-11-24T08:33:00.000-05:00

The medical marijuana case Gonzales vs. Raich has been remanded by the SCOTUS to the 9th circuit, reports Volkh Conspiracy. Along with Dispatches, I will leave it to the legal experts to comment on the constitutionality of Congress invoking the Commerce Clause to regulate an activity which is neither interstate nor commerce.

While I once agreed with those who asserted there was minimal evidence that marijuana causes lasting biological harm or addiction, there is new evidence not everyone may be aware of. In particular this large study documenting cannabis use associated with development of psychotic disorders (schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder), this is a metanalysis showing increased risk for schizophrenia with cannabis use, and this review goes over some bench-science data and epidemiological data to the same effect.

I agree it's pretty inconsistant to argue that alcohol should be legal but cannabis illegal, given the overall burden of harm caused by each substance to society. But we shouldn't pretend there are no dangers to cannabis use at all.

However, the potential harms we've found for cannabis, so far, are unlikely to accrue to people with terminal diseases using marijuana to control nausea, for example. There are those who argue that we have not enough evidence that it is efficacious, or that we have other medicines that work. It is too easy though to succumb to the temptation to believe that average effects seen in studies of hundreds of people are directly translatable to every given patient. Just by chance, there will be some cancer patients for whom Anzemet is ineffective, and marijuana is effective. Those people deserve a chance to try marijuana.

The stickier case is the chronic migraineur or irritable bowel patient who wants to try marijuana. In these folks, I think that in general the potential harms--inducing mood disorders in particular--really do outweigh the short-term symptom relief marijuana can provide, especially in younger patients. Cannabinoid analogues like marinol may be a good choice, but smoked marijuana has too quick an onset, thus too much reward circuit activation, to be safe as a long-term treatment.

In the end though, if society trusts doctors to prescribe oxycontin with appropriate regulation (and I think it should), then it ought to trust doctors to prescribe marijuana.

Voting and Alzheimer Disease

2005-11-23T21:46:00.000-05:00

Balancing civil rights and the needs of society in patients with mental illness in general and Alzheimer disease in particular is a thorny business. This month's American Journal of Psychiatry reports a study purporting to show how a structured interview can predict if a person with Alzheimer disease meets the requirements for voting as established in the Doe precedent.

Their data show that this structured interview's results correlate with the degree of dementia as measured by the standard Folstein MMSE, but I think this study misses the point of Doe. According to this article itself, the case was decided on the matter of whether the state of Maine could categorically deny the right to vote to individuals who had an appointed legal guardian--the court ruled that it could not, for the law violated the right to due process. But the court deliberately established very loose criteria to be able to vote, to ensure it would be difficult to take that right away.

The power to disenfranchise an American citizen has enormous potential for abuse--witness literacy requirements in the Jim Crowe era. To have an established structured procedure to prevent people from voting is an invitation to abuse. And the harm to society of a few Alzheimer patients voting is far less than the danger from establishing and delegating a state authority to disenfranchise.

No Child Challenge Stymied: Federalism Suffers

2005-11-23T21:29:00.000-05:00

A federal judge threw out a case brought by several states, including Vermont, Texas, OH, PA and others, asserting that the No Child Left Behind Act mandates too much state expenditure. The NY Times reports:

Chief U.S. District Judge Bernard A. Friedman, based in eastern Michigan, said, ''Congress has appropriated significant funding'' and has the power to require states to set educational standards in exchange for federal money.

If it has the power, should it use that power? No Child Left Behind is an unprecedented federal intrusion into the state/local government function of education. That its champion should be a Republican president is astonishing and disturbing. Fear of losing NCLB monies is becoming a primary overarching concern of school districts. Rather than fostering a culture of excellence among teachers, NCLB engenders a cynical attitude which is an obstacle to real achievement.

But the NEA and the states mentioned have gone to court rather than to the American people to counter NCLB. It's time that we repealed this counterproductive law in a definitive way, through the legislature. Contact your US Representative and write a quick note.

Withdraw or withstand?

2005-11-22T09:02:00.000-05:00

Over at Centerfield a commenter has sparked a lively discussion by breaking down the Iraq withdrawal question into some bite-sized chunks. Here are my own comments (in italics) on this way of analyzing the situation.

1. What would the effect of withdrawal be on Iraq in terms of:

a)the level of violence in Iraq

The immediate effect of withdrawal would most likely be destabilizing to provinces where the US presence acts to reassure minorities that they are protected. Other areas where jihadists cause the majority of violence would lose their main hard targets and initially disperse, but it is clear that the presence or absence of US troops does not definitively prevent civilian-targetted bombings (witness Jordan's recent tragedy). In sum, the pattern of violence would shift, but it's not clear the total level of violence would change markedly. What matters more long term than the level of violence, though, is the political implications of what violence occurs.

b)political developments in Iraq -- stability, healing or exacerbating the ethnic divide, more secular or theistic leadership, unified state (if that indeed should be our goal), human rights, emergence of liberal-democratic institutions

Withdrawal of US forces would provide a great test of the institutions we have helped the Iraqis set up. The underlying question is legitimacy--at the moment the authority of the central government is no longer bolstered by US boots, has it built up enough of its own legitimacy to stand or not? Legitimacy in this context is closely tied to familiarity and trust. It takes time for ethnic Kurds to deal with Shia or Sunni leaders over issue after issue, gradually experiencing fair treatment and adherence to agreed-upon rules, until trust accumulates. Only people intimately involved with both parties will have a sense of the extent that this has happened. The greatest value, then, in US participation in these talks is not to affect the actual outcome of the constitution or specific policies, but to attain the intelligence of the parties' level of trust, which is so key to determining if the central governement can withstand the shock of US withdrawal.

c)infrastructure reconstruction

US troops' presence affect on reconstruction is largely tied to provision of security rather than direct reconstruction efforts which is largely carried out by private contractors. Worsening security around Baghdad, Basra or other trade hubs would be expected to cause a cascade of stagnation as supplies for reconstruction dry up to even the most peaceful provinces.

d)the influence and involvement of border states -- esp. Turkey, Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia

Each state has interests tied to the US presence in Iraq that are more complicated than I have the space or expertise here to describe. In brief though, I think it's safe to say that each of these states would be emboldened to take interventionalist policies toward a newly de-Americanized Iraq.

e)what effect would the Murtha proposal of stationing troops in the area "just over the horizon" following withdrawal have on this?

The Murtha Reserve's effect would be proportional to its size, rapid deployability, and the credibility of the resolve to use it. Those are all matters for debate.

2. How will staying in Iraq (postponing our withdrawal to some future date or benchmark) increase the likelihood of having positive outcomes to a,b,c and d above and are there any different steps we should we now take in Iraq to increase that likelihood?

Postponing withdrawal indefinitely will have little direct impact on the short term level of violence. But commitment to long-term occupation will strengthen resistance recruiting efforts and make it difficult for pro-democracy factions to maintain nationalist credentials. But more important than the pro- or anti- democracy divide is the ethnic divide, and it is harder to predict its effect on ethnic leaders.

3. What effect would withdrawal have on political developments in the border states? What would the effect of Murtha's proposal be? Where might troops be stationed "just over the horizon"?

Withdrawal may embolden our enemies short-term, but it would be an evanescent effect. Murtha's proposal's effect will be determined by the amount of sovereignty that the host country is perceived as retaining in its relationship with the US. That is, the less like a colonized puppet its government looks, the better its chance of evading extremist retaliation. Though several countries like Kuwait and Turkey might be attractive, it could be wiser to station a brigade of Marines in the Gulf as a very rapid reaction force, with reinforcing Army units farther away in Diego Garcia or somewhere less visible in the Arab political world.

4. What effect will continued long-term deployment of US troops with the present level of attrition have on the US military in terms of flexibility, readiness, resources, recruitment and morale? What will be the effect of withdrawal on these?

The balance between hits to morale from attrition due to the current deployment situation and from withdrawal is difficult to estimate, especially for a non-military person.

5. What effect does continued deployment or withdrawal have on the ability of the United States to achieve broader foreign policy objectives and project its power abroad?

This is the key question. There's no question that the Iraq deployment is a major drain on the treasury, and that itself is a significant obstacle to accomplishing other foreign policy priorities. Despite arguements from war opponents, though, I think the foreign policy political capital could be salvaged if the US adopted a more pragmatic approach--describing the botched intelligence candidly and casting the current situation as a problem to fix rather than as a victory to achieve. Such a reframing will make the administration's tenor more in line with the view of the rest of the world, without substantively changing our goals and methods.

Bush to Worship in China

2005-11-14T08:40:00.000-05:00

GW Bush has asked the Chinese government for an opportunity to attend worship services during his upcoming trip. Here's how Imagethief (an American in Beijing) describes what this means:

Of course, there are officially sanctioned churches here, and I suppose something could be arranged, but I rather imagine that the Chinese government will look upon this rather like the US government might look upon a request from the Chinese to hold a pro-North Korea rally on the Mall. Or to serve the White House dogs, Barney and Ms. Beazley, at the state dinner when Hu Jintao goes to the US. At the very least there would be distaste and offense.

Just as cultural conservatives complain that the secular media/movie establishment can be insensitive to their values by downplaying religious expression, they must understand that not everyone looks at public religious displays as innocuous. What's more, moral decay is not a prerequisite to holding that view. Religious or secular reformers in China may actually be harmed by being seen getting explicit support from a US president.

There's nothing morally wrong about a head of state asking to worship in public on a visit to an officially atheist nation, but the administration should realize the extent to which this will impede dialogue on goals like furthering human rights and reasonable trade policies. I just don't think the statement is worth it--unless the intended audience is domestic.

Hat tip to Simon World.

The Net of Indra and UU Politics

2005-11-10T09:40:00.000-05:00

There aren't many Unitarian-Universalist Republicans, but I think there should be more.

The UU Principles and Purposes cites Respect for the interdependent web of all existence. Often the part of the web of existence most emphasized is the ecological balance of the natural world and the network of our interpersonal connections, and these are certainly very important pieces. But between the cosmic and the interpersonal, lie the economic and political webs of the world, which are subject to the same types of balances, though that's often overlooked.

In fact, I find it very interesting that those who are appropriately concerned about the detrimental effects of human activity in pursuit of economic aims on the balance of the natural environment seldom acknowledge the damage to the balance of the economic system when social aims are pursued by various interventions, whether by government or other social institutions.

Certainly, the danger of overemphasizing the need to preserve the balance of the cultural/economic system is to grow complacent about injustices embedded in it--that's the most important critique of Hegelianism. But as a physician, I tend to look at complex systems like the human body. Doctors grow a certain humility about the complexity of illness and the body's response to it, so that we don't always know what the consequences of a given treatment will be--we often talk about such things in terms of probabilities of cure or side effects. We don't let the uncertainty of the effect of treatments paralyze us, but we don't pretend that there's mathematical certainty about our predictions either.

The complexity of the economy is something like the same order of complexity as the body. If injustice and poverty are like diseases of the economy, we don't always know what the side effects are or the chance for cure, but we make the best guess we can.

Along this spectrum, conservatives sometimes end up like the nervous patient who refuses minor surgery for an easily treated problem until it grows much worse--such as defunding Head Start. Liberals can seem like the scalpel-happy surgeon who see people as diseases instead of patients--eg extensive funding of job training programs that don't work.

Similar reasoning applies to government actions in the realm of culture, an example being the ongoing reassessment of the canon of Western literature. Conservatives emphasize the need for a common cultural vocabulary of symbols and ideas, while liberals point out the social damage resulting from the act of exclusion of certain texts from the canon. At stake is the very shape of our cultural environment. The challenge is to find a compromise that connects as much of the interdependent web of American society together while still producing a managable and useful canon.

A more nuanced view of the interdependent web of existence would temper both liberal and conservative camps' tendencies, and provide a framework to allow them to talk to each other better. I see no inherent reason why one should emphasize one part of the web over another--disruption of the environment causes ecological damage, and disruption of the economic/cultural web causes poverty and social strife. Indeed, UUs may be well situated to foster this kind of dialogue, since they already are used to emphasizing interdependence as an overarching concern.

The Death of the European Dream

2005-11-09T11:49:00.000-05:00

The two best analyses of the roots of the French riots I've seen so far:

Ehsan Ahrari's overview of the French government's betrayal of the North African "Harkins" who sided with France in the Algerian war, and were subsequently moved to French slums.

Joel Kotkin's piece on how the French economic system's rigidity has made immigrants' ability to assimilate economically and culturally much harder in France than in the US.

H/T Middle Earth Journal and Centerfield.

Cyber Bullying

2005-11-09T09:52:00.000-05:00

The explosion of communication technologies has created a new venue for the timeless adolescent phenomenon of bullying. VPR reports

According to researchers at Clemson University 25 percent of middle school girls and 11 percent of middle school boys say they have been electronically bullied at least once in the last two months...

Nancy Willard of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use says parents should also be more proactive about checking computer files.

(Willard) "Finding out where your child has registered, find out what your child has posted in his or her profile, what your child is posting online. These are all public places. Now your child may say, 'Oh, you can't invade my privacy.' But guess what? This is public information and they're posting it for the world to see. Certainly you as a parent ought to be able to look at it."

(Keck) For parents who don't know how to do this, Willard suggests asking for help at a local computer store. She's also written a parent's guide that's available on her Web site.

Anecdotally, much electronic bullying is associated with mass circulation of embarassing pictures or text about the victim, and involves more of a theme of exclusion than physical threat when involving girls. But electronic bullying is only an old problem with a new face.

Bullying is associated with poor physical and emotional health consequences, as well as legal consequences (60% of kids classified by teachers as bullies in grades 6-9 had a criminal conviction by age 24, and 40% had three).

The bullying problem garnered some attention after the wave of school shootings in the 1990s, but we need to continue to address the problem to prevent the long-term social costs of dealing with the self-perpetuating problems that bullying fosters. This Dept of Justice report discusses the 'whole school' approaches pioneered by Olweus in Norway in the 1970s which have the best evidence documenting efficacy in reducing bullying and improving the school environment, also benefitting other aspects of school performance.

School climate is a local school problem, and needs to be addressed locally. Our local Vermont school district has made the reduction of bullying a priority, and is participating in an Olweus program. I would encourage you to see what your district is doing.

PA School Board Ousted

2005-11-09T09:28:00.000-05:00

The Dover, PA school board members who wanted a statement on Intelligent Design read in biology classes were ousted in yesterday's elections.

"My kids believe in God. I believe in God. But I don't think it belongs in the science curriculum the way the school district is presenting it," said Jill Reiter, 41, a bank teller who joined a group of high school students waving signs supporting the challengers Tuesday.

Another issue raised was the sums of money the court case is chewing up, which is not popular with voters--muddying the waters as far as using the election as a gauge for the electorate's sentiments on the issue of ID in the schools itself. But this is clearly a setback for the ID advocates.

The Humanitarian Case for Free Trade

2005-11-05T08:23:00.000-05:00

A recent article in The Quaker Economist argues that the evidence shows that globalization has had a positive effect on the standard of living for the world's poor.

Contrary to what you may read in anti-globalization leaflets and press releases, between 1980 and 2000, 75% of the world's population achieved an enormous increase in both average incomes and living standards due to the effects of globalization. Summarized from Wolf's book in the chapter "Why The Critics Are Wrong" (p. 143), "never before have so many people, or so large a proportion of the world's population, enjoyed such large rises in their standard of living — India produced an approximately 100% increase in real GDP per head and China nearly a 400% increase in real GDP per head." This is an enormous improvement, experienced by some two billion people.

Meanwhile, GDP per head in high-income countries (with only 15% of the world's population) rose by 2.1% between 1975 and 2000, and by only 1.7% per year between 1990 and 2001.

A much shorter piece appeared in the Nov/Dec 2004 issue of Foreign Affairs which helps, along with the data cited above, to explain some of the intense reactions against globalization by the middle class around the world (including many Quakers). The article is "Globalization's Missing Middle" by Geoffrey Garrett. He, too, describes the net positive effect of globalization on the poor of the world and admits that the rich also benefit, but his primary focus is the fact that "middle income countries have not done nearly as well under globalized markets as either richer or poorer countries..."

While the western hemisphere contemplates establishing FTAA, we need to look at the data to understand the effects of NAFTA and CAFTA on the regional economy as a whole, and not get distracted by anecdotes of plant closings and unfair labor practices.

Timothy Taylor at Macalester College makes two arguments for free trade that I find persuasive. To frame the debate, let's realize that the globalization debate amounts to deciding where to situate our policy along the spectrum from free trade to maximum protectionism (high tariffs and nuisance regulation to discourage foreign investment and importation).

First Taylor suggests a thought experiment. Imagine one company develops a technology that increases productivity so much that it will make all its competitors obsolete unless they adopt the same technology. Should the government institute taxes and regulations that make the new technology impractical to protect the competitors? I think most of us would say no. Now imagine that the new technology in question is moving production offshore. In economic terms, there are no differences between these situations. As Rudi Volti notes, technology is most fruitfully thought of as a complex of tools and social organization for economic activity. Except for those who hold on to the ideas that command economies or mercantilism are still better models, there's little arguement that protectionist policies decrease economic growth, and the data support this.

Taylor's other argument runs like this. If we imagine there is a specific industry, automobile manufacturing for instance, which the nation considers to be of strategic or cultural value to protect, we may institute trade barriers to keep the higher prices of domestic cars competitive with those of imported cars. What this amounts to though is a subsidy of this industry--a government policy that augments the income of the industry above what the market would otherwise provide. However, if there is strategic value to keeping the auto industry vibrant, that's a benefit that presumably all citizens share, but only those who buy domestic autos pay for. That's not as fair as providing a direct subsidy to the industry, since then the presumed beneficiaries of the presence of the industry in the country--the taxpayers--share the cost equally. I'm definitely not arguing for subsidies of that nature. My point is that protectionism is a very indirect and inefficient way to support an industry that the market won't support on its own.

A few words about the very important concerns about labor and environmental practices by large firms in the developing world. The main fear here is the 'race to the bottom' theory: that capital will flow from developed nations to the developing ones with the loosest environmental standards and labor laws. Radley Balko cites data that show that this is not happening, however. On the contrary, the degree of liberalization of a country's economic policies correlates with better conditions, not worse. The cause of poor working/environmental conditions in developing countries is the poverty and misgovernment already there--such conditions would exist even without foreign capital. If anything, the foreign investors' public relations needs provide much of what leverage there is in some countries to improve these conditions.

In short, the emperical evidence just does not support these theoretical concerns about free trade.

Now, it's certainly true that free trade amplifies the fluidity of the economies involved, and when a new free trade agreement is put into effect there's a fair amount of economic disruption--this causes adjustment pains, and spawns aweful anecdotes of plant closings and sweatshops. Government can and should do much to cushion the transition for displaced workers and industries. And there is a place for activists to ensure good corporate citizenship in the US and abroad. But improving the hours or benefits or child hiring one factory at a time is nibbling around the problem of developing-nation poverty that only endogenous economic growth can truly solve.

To paraphrase Churchill, a liberalized market-oriented economy with free trade is the worst economic system around, except for all the others.

Get Your Flu Shot

2005-11-04T22:54:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) Oct 25 - At least 70 million doses of influenza vaccine will be available for the U.S. market this year and everybody who wants a shot should be able to get one, health officials said on Monday.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention opened flu vaccination to everyone on Monday, saying the priority groups, such as seniors, who need the vaccine first had been given plenty of time to get them.

"There is no reason for anyone to delay or go without their annual flu shot," Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt told reporters in a telephone briefing.

In a statement, the CDC said that providers with adequate supplies of vaccine should broaden their vaccination efforts "to include other people, especially 50-to-64 year-olds, who are interested in getting an influenza vaccination."

Last week the CDC reported that too few Americans are getting vaccinated against flu.

H/T GruntDoc

Judging Judges

2005-11-04T16:27:00.000-05:00

Activists at either end of the spectrum are very selective with their facts, and the rhetoric around the Alito nomination is no exception. Blue Mass Group has compiled a list of Alito's rulings that could make him look quite liberal, to demonstrate the point. Siding with a disabled elevator operator, a gay high school student, and having one's decision reversed by Justice Scalia are not positions conservatives find themselves in often.

H/T Dispatches from the Culture Wars

Redistricting Reform Progress

2005-11-03T15:17:00.000-05:00

Redistricting reform is possibly the key centrist issue. If we had congressional districts that produced a real contest between the parties, candidates would have incentive to move toward the center for general elections--in today's primarily foregone conclusions, the incentive is for candidates to be more extreme in order to win the primaries.

Here is an excellent summary of HR 2642, the redistricting reform bill John Tanner introduced in the House this year, with a side by side comparison with a similar bill from 1989. Charging RINO has more on this.

Moderates of both parties need to speak up, or only the voices of the extremists will be heard. Contact your Representative here and support redistricting reform.

Bush on the Flu: Reinventing the Wheel

2005-11-01T15:55:00.000-05:00

The national response to the threat of bird flu contains many sensible measures, but its compartementalization echoes that of our preparation for terror attacks. Rather than setting up a flexible infrastructure to deal with disaster, it focusses too much on a specific threat.

Firefighters, police, and paramedics know that they perform like they train. A disaster is simply defined as a situation where the needs exceed the resources at hand. When first responders find themselves outmatched by the situation, they (ought to) have a pre-arranged plan for bringing in support. They don't know ahead of time which particular diaster will call for activating this system--a hazmat spill, a train wreck, a multi-vehicle accident--but they know the same principles and systems apply. And by working together on daily problems, they are better able to work together as a team if a larger disaster strikes.

Our mistake after 9/11 was dividing agencies designed to address terrorist acts from those focussing on natural disasters, to the detriment of our day-to-day preparedness for a broad range of threats, as we saw in the Katrina debacle. Let us not make the same mistake in public health preparedness by getting avian flu tunnel vision, and leaving ourselves less protected from chronic infectious threats like TB, or emerging threats like arboviruses (eg West Nile). The response to avian flu should encompass a comprehensive emphasis on public health infrastructure--multiagency surveillance, vaccination, and containment. It doesn't make sense to ask the public health sector to reinvent the wheel with each wave of media attention to a disease threat.

More Alito Blogging

2005-11-01T13:51:00.000-05:00

Althouse reviews Alito's ruling on whether Congress has the power under the 14th amendment to enact the Family and Medical Leave Act.

The First Amendment Center summarized and reviewed 20 cases he ruled on.

I'm still in the information gathering phase, as most of us are, but so far he does not seem like an ideologue. I don't know whether I support his nomination on balance yet though.

H/T SCOTUS Blog

Where is everybody?

2005-10-31T11:17:00.000-05:00

Claim your spot on the Modo Blog Frappr Map. You can use a pseudonym, it's anonymous.

Alito's the Nominee

2005-10-31T09:08:00.000-05:00

Check out this Red State post for a good overview of three of Alito's more interesting rulings.

Colin Powell's Promise to Arab Leaders

2005-10-30T07:25:00.000-05:00

In the spring of 2004, US-Arab relations were rocked by the Abu Ghraib scandal. Then-Secretary Powell made this assurance to Arab leaders:

But even in the midst of their disappointment, the secretary told the Arab leaders he met to "watch America. Watch how we deal with this. Watch how America will do the right thing. Watch what a nation of values and character, a nation that believes in justice, does to right this kind of wrong. Watch how a nation such as ours will not tolerate such actions."

"I told them that they will see a free press and an independent Congress at work," he continued. "They will see a Defense Department led by Secretary (Donald) Rumsfeld that will launch multiple investigations to get to the facts. Above all, they will see a president -- our president, President Bush -- determined to find out where responsibility and accountability lie. And justice will be done. The world will see that we are still a nation with a moral code that defines our national character."

Iraqis have not been impressed by the US response to Lynndie England's 3-year sentence, or Sabrina Harman's 4 month sentence. But the US government should not be judged solely, or mostly, by how it metes out justice--more important is how its policies and practice of handling of prisoners has changed.

The military has made some substantive procedural changes that are reasonable and humane. They've better codified the boundaries of interrogation and taken some authority away from the interrogator. They've clarified the proper use of police dogs, and instituted a better prisoner tracking system to prevent 'ghost detainees'--the poorly documented ones that are most likely to be abused.

At the higher echelons, the story is less rosy. This is highlighted by recent political battles over banning torture.

While I think that the legal argument that combatants without a national affiliation do not have the right to claim Geneva Convention protection has some merits (based on the text of the Conventions themselves, by which non-uniformed fighters are specifically not covered), I also believe that on balance it is in our interest to voluntarily bestow those rights on prisoners the US takes in combat regardless. Doing so has value in strengthening our relationships with allies and with the local population in the countries where we're engaged in counterinsurgency.

However, the administration continues to insist on what amounts to the right to torture detainees, while refusing to call it that.

Over a year and a half after the Abu Ghraib story broke, it is an ongoing mark of shame for America. Colin Powell's early optimism has been thwarted by an incompetent and unprincipled administration that compounded the problem by overestimating the short-term intelligence gains of torture and underestimating its long-term political costs.

Victory Means Exit Strategy?

2005-10-29T09:45:00.000-04:00

Bloggers like to compile lists of hippocritical quotes, like these prominent Republicans' Clinton-era warnings about the Balkans(Link):

"Victory means exit strategy and it's important for the president to explain to us what the exit strategy is."
--GW Bush, Houston Chronicle on April 9, 1999

"There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our overextended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the president started this thing, and there still is no plan today."
--Tom Delay, April 1999

"No goal, no objective, not until we have those things and a compelling case is made, then I say, back out of it, because innocent people are going to die for nothing. That's why I'm against it."
--Sean Hannity, explaining why he wanted the US to immediately withdraw from the Balkans

More recently, of course, Democrats have been calling for an exit strategy from Iraq.

I don't think the idea of an 'exit strategy' usually makes much sense. It's often argued that deadlines for withdrawal are counterproductive because it gives the enemy a date it knows it only needs to survive beyond. But that's only part of a larger problem that managing theater-level operations through the political decision-making process is bound to produce inefficiency, inertia, and ill-informed choices: witness the botched Iranian embassy hostage rescue attempt.

True, the decision to withdraw is a question of geopolitical strategy which should be debated at high levels, but it is a binary question--we either withdraw today or we don't. Once committed to withdrawal, the actual process should be administered by commanders on the ground as much as possible, who require flexibility and freedom to act on changing situations. The need for this flexibility precludes much detail in an 'exit strategy' making the concept itself of limited value.

So what if 'exit strategy' refers more to the pre-invasion idea of what conditions will trigger a withdrawal? Well, this war falls in a long line of wars that prove the maxim that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. If the tactical plans are so unreliable, strategic plans can only be more so. We know now that most of the assumptions about the post-war situation were way off, so any plan based on them would be worthless.

Usually, I think people calling for exit strategies are making proxy criticisms of an adminstration for embarking on a war for values the critic does not share. In the 90s, conservatives opposed the precedent of humanitarian military action, fearing we would get bogged down in costly actions that don't further our national interest, and exhaust ourselves. The president felt that the burden was not great enough to outweigh his value of a world community that does not tolerate genocide.

Liberals opposed invading Iraq when they perceived diplomatic channels as being potentially effective for achieving the stated goals of the war. Conservatives felt that the danger to the region and the world of the precedent of allowing a rogue state to ignore UN resolutions and develop WMD was greater than the cost of invasion and occupation.

It would be nice if we could have a public discourse on these real differences in value/cost perspectives rather than proxy debates about who wants an exit strategy when.

Iraq War Blowback

2005-10-28T20:58:00.000-04:00

After the mujahadeen helped drive Soviet forces out of Afghanistan in the 1980s, they distributed their Islamist ideology and their technical knowledge all over the globe. The Afghan war amounted to a catalyst for the formation of a global Islamist militant community, by concentrating like-minded militants in one place, where they networked and trained together. Peter Bergen and Alec Reynolds argue that Iraq may serve a similar function for the next generation of Islamists:

Several factors could make blowback from the Iraq war even more dangerous than the fallout from Afghanistan. Foreign fighters started to arrive in Iraq even before Saddam's regime fell. They have conducted most of the suicide bombings--including some that have delivered strategic successes such as the withdrawal of the UN...

Fighters in Iraq are more battle hardened than the Afghan Arabs, who fought demoralized Soviet army conscripts. They are testing themselves against arguably the best army in history, acquiring skills in their battles against coalition forces that will be far more useful for future terrorist operations than those their counterparts learned during the 1980s.

Mastering how to make improvised explosive devices or how to conduct suicide operations is more relevant to urban terrorism than the conventional guerrilla tactics used against the Red Army. U.S. military commanders say that techniques perfected in Iraq have been adopted by militants in Afghanistan.

It would be Pyrrhic indeed if after strenuous efforts we finally pacify Iraq, only to find that international Islamist organizations had been replenished with veterans of that very war.

I think we are very close to the point where our continued presence in Iraq does more harm than good. Whenever we choose to withdraw, there will be some who feel it is too early; that can't be helped. But if we linger too long, we may find ourselves proving the old medical adage, "the longer you stay, the longer you stay."

Conservative Judicial Activism

2005-10-28T09:47:00.000-04:00

The Right is more in favor of judicial activism than it likes to admit to itself. ChargingRINO cites John Danforth:

They [the Religious Right]- they want a political judge. They want a judicial activist. This business about judicial conservatism and somebody who decides the law, that's baloney. I mean, that's what they should want. That - that is what the judge should be, somebody who interprets the law and not makes it. But forget about that. I mean, these people are just as activist as the People For the American Way and all those organizations."

It is possible to believe, as I do, that Roe stands on shaky legal reasoning, and still feel that future abortion cases ought to be decided on the basis of the facts of those cases themselves, rather than as an excuse to overturn a questionable piece of established law.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously asserted that "general propositions do not decide concrete cases." Neither do faulty precedents decide future cases.

Conservatives are fond of saying that they want Justices who will simply interpret the constitution as they find it. I would go one step further and seek Justices who interpret the constitution and established case law as they find it. The proper remedy for an activist judiciary is not new reverse activism, but legislative action.

TX and VT Healthcare Polls: Common Ground

2005-10-27T15:42:00.000-04:00

Texas and Vermont are not often mentioned in the same sentence. But recent polls on consumer healthcare preferences show that the iconically Red State Texas and the poster-child Blue State Vermont aren't that far apart in health care policy priorities.

Kaiser found that among Texans, 81% felt increasing the number of Americans covered by insurance was "Very Important" while AARP found that 78% of Vermonters thought that reducing the number of uninsured Vermonters was "Very Important" or "Extremely Important."

The Vermont study interestingly found that 66% of respondants strongly agreed that the state should ensure a certain baseline level of healthcare for each Vermonter. What that base should be, though, was not defined. The Texas study did not address this question, but another study by NPR/Kennedy School in 2002 found 52% of Texans favor national insurance coverage, with particular support among Hispanics.

There are certain to be real differences between what type of healthcare systems the two states would develop over time, but it is interesting that two states with such different general political cultures should look so similar when polled regarding goals for the healthcare industry.

Why is it so important to torture?

2005-10-26T08:47:00.000-04:00

The NY Times op/ed page opines on the Bush administration proposal to change McCain's anti-torture amendment to allow the CIA to abuse prisoners:

President Bush's threat to veto the entire military budget over this issue was bizarre enough by itself, considering that the amendment has the support of more than two dozen former military leaders, including Colin Powell. They know that torture doesn't produce reliable intelligence and endangers Americans' lives.

But Mr. Cheney's proposal was even more ludicrous. It would give the president the power to allow government agencies outside the Defense Department (the administration has in mind the C.I.A.) to mistreat and torture prisoners as long as that behavior was part of "counterterrorism operations conducted abroad" and they were not American citizens. That would neatly legalize the illegal prisons the C.I.A. is said to be operating around the world and obviate the need for the torture outsourcing known as extraordinary rendition. It also raises disturbing questions about Iraq, which the Bush administration has falsely labeled a counterterrorism operation.

Phillip Carter points out that a big problem with torture is that any evidence obtained in such a way would be excluded from war crimes trials or any international tribunals. The specter of tainted evidence makes the prosecution of people like Saddam Hussein and his ilk much more difficult.

Darius Rejali reports that the main case that pro-torture apologists cite is the French victory in Algiers. But now that the Algerian archives are open, it appears that it was better informant penetration of the local settlers rather than information gained through torture that carried the day. There is no good evidence I could find, or that Mr Rejali could find, to recommend torture above other methods of intelligence gathering. Given its significant downsides, institutionalized torture is not only unwise, but it ought to lead a nation into pariah status as surely as possession of illegal weapons of mass destruction.

Scowcroft and the Other GOP

2005-10-24T11:35:00.000-04:00

Brent Scowcroft has been grumbling quietly in the background about the Iraq War, and with good reason. Amy Davidson interviewed Jeff Goldberg about his article in the current New Yorker about the Scowcroft/Bush 43 split. Here's a telling quote:

Are the conservatives turning against the neoconservatives?

They’ve been doing so for some time. Just read George Will. Their complaint is that neoconservatives aren’t conservative; they’re liberals with guns. Conservatives tend to take Scowcroft’s more jaundiced view of human nature. Paul Wolfowitz, on the other hand, is a liberal, but a liberal who believes that transformation can be brought about by force, not just persuasion. Obviously, there are other breaches within the Republican Party, on the Harriet Miers nomination, on spending, and on and on.

They're liberals with guns.

The enlightenment/liberal political project has long seen its ultimate end as a world government--from the League of Nations, to the UN, to the EU. The purpose is noble enough--to sublimate human conflicts from war into political/legal discourse. As Joseph Ellis notes, the greatest success story of channelling regional discord from potential war into a stance of 'agree to disagree' political tumult was the adoption of the US Constitution.

But Russell Kirk, intellectual father of 20th century conservatism, clearly enshrines "recognition of the need to cultivate affection for the multiplicity and variety of traditional life and custom, in opposition to the narrow and reductionist ideologies of equalitarian and utilitarian social schemes" (Link) as one of the bedrock principles of conservatism. A policy of serially injecting democracy into traditional societies from the outside is not consistant with a comprehensive conservative outlook. And a liberal certainly would not be so cavalier about the use of force. The neoconservatives have managed to combine the worst tendencies of each end of the political spectrum.

GW Bush is not a conservative, he is an evangelical; American political, economic, religious and cultural norms are his gospel. As president, he has the military means to be a crusader. We need to check any other adventures into Syria or Iran, before his disjointed and ungrounded policies do more harm.

Hat tip to Charging RINO

China in Perspective

2005-10-20T21:45:00.000-04:00

The impending economic hegemony of China has been widely predicted, and Secretary John Snow has been working hard to convince China to revalue its currency in an effort to stem the US/China trade deficit. Indeed, as The Economist reports, China has made large strides in the past 10 years, solving many of the problems of transition to markets that, for instance, Russia, has not.

The number of state firms has tumbled from over 300,000 to 150,000 in the past decade.

This has been offset by rapid growth in the private sector. The OECD estimates that in 2003 private companies accounted for 63% of China's business-sector output (which in turn accounts for 94% of GDP). This compares with 54% in 1998 and virtually nothing in the 1970s. If you add in “collective” enterprises, which are officially controlled by local government but in practice operate more like private firms, the private sector's share was 71% in 2003 (see chart). By now it is probably close to three-quarters. Nevertheless, that still leaves state enterprises' share of output well above that in OECD countries.

That being said, at the start of the 1990s China's central planning authorities regulated the distribution of aobut 600 commodities, while the Soviet Union regulated over 100 times that number, so the scale of central planning was much less in China to begin with.

China's 2004 GDP was about $1.6 trillion, compared with the US's $11.7 trillion. The US growth rate was 4.4% last year, compared with China's 8.5% average annual real GDP growth in the past 4 years. These figures make it sound like the US economy is really falling behind China. But here are a few reasons to temper predictions of America's eclipse by China:

-Another way of comparing US and Chinese economies is to note that 10 years ago China's GDP was one tenth of the US GDP, and last year it was one seventh--hardly an economic realignment.

-China's economy is about the same size as Brazil's ($1.5 trillion with a 5.1% growth rate).

-Economists generally agree that the bilateral trade deficit (the difference between what two specific countries export to each other) is much less important than a given country's total trade deficit. What matters is if a country is net positive or negative for foreign capital, and this is determined much more by domestic savings rates than by presence or lack of protectionist policies.

-Time Asia reports that "62% of the [China's] export growth over the past decade came from Chinese subsidiaries of multinationals headquartered elsewhere in the world—in Asia, Europe, and America."

-Other "Asian Tiger" economies like Japan and Taiwan seemed indomitable during the 1970s and 1980s, but faltered in the 1990s, largely due to reliance on easily-withdrawn foreign investment and loose credit policies from their central banks--somewhat similar conditions exist in China now, with government capital readily available to multiple inefficient state firms.

Clearly China is a growing player in the global economic scene, but harmful policies (i.e. protectionist tariffs and regulation) will result if we allow ourselves to get carried away with economic alarmism and facile ideas about 'giant sucking sounds' to the East, rather than carefully considering trade policy.

Paglia on Frank

2005-10-14T12:40:00.000-04:00

Robert Birnbaum interviewed Camille Paglia in The Morning News and here's what she had to say about the notion that people voted against their best economic interests in the last presidential election:

RB: I take it you agree with Thomas Frank’s [What’s the Matter With Kansas] notion of what he calls an “age of derangement,” that working people are voting against their interests?

CP: I totally reject that formulation.

RB: Really?

CP: The idea that working people are voting against their interests seems to me—I’m sorry, I find that to be one of the most condescending, twisted things that has now taken root. It’s now in the media everywhere. That is twisted.

RB: OK.

CP: The people are voting against their interests? Who knows that? Tom Frank knows that? Tom Frank knows what is in the people’s best interest? It’s an outrage.

RB: Yes, he gets to say that. If people need health care and jobs and housing and he points out that in specific circumstances, such as in Topeka where the Republican administration granted huge concessions to Boeing and Boeing pulled out when they thought they had a better deal elsewhere, costing 4,000 jobs, that’s clearly not in the interest of working people.

CP: You can find a lot of local stories of misery—the mill towns outside of Boston and everywhere. But Frank’s animus is against capitalism. OK? And here’s my point—you can’t just go around—and I could make the same point about upstate New York, which has been declining. Carrier, IBM, the shoe factories that my family came to work in, closing. GE, all kinds of stories, but the point is the people are not voting against their interest. Their interest is capitalism. This is my objection. In my view, comparing the evidence of the 20th century, that socialism in a nation ultimately does lead to economic stagnation and eventually of the creative impulse, in terms of new technology and other things. And that capitalism, despite all its failures, despite the fact that it’s Darwinian, has indeed produced a high standard of living. And, here’s the big one for me, as a feminist: It is capitalism that has enabled the emergence of the modern independent woman, for the first time free from fathers and brothers and husbands—a woman who can be self-sustaining. Now, I do believe—I am a Democrat, I am not a Republican, I do believe that because capitalism is Darwinian that it requires a strong safety net, that the government needs to provide certain things... So what I am saying is, how dare Thomas Frank decide what is—the people who are voting Republican believe that capitalism, despite the misery of individual places, they still believe that capitalism provides the best chance for small entrepreneurs to have an idea, put it into motion and eventually make a killing. Even if you are not rich you see other people getting rich and you want a system that can produce rich people.

RB: Sure, but it’s a chimera. They have been sold that bill of goods. They believe they can do that but they can’t—

CP: But—

RB: Hold on a second. Your point that a significant social security, as the consensus has produced in Europe and Scandinavia, leads to stagnation—

CP: Forty percent of a paycheck over there is taken by the government. The government does everything. People rely on the government to do everything. And I do believe there is a slow decline in creativity that is observable in Europe over the last 40 years.

Until the Democrats realize that Americans by and large really do believe in capitalism, and that their party is perceived as being too closely tied to groups who use special interests issues like environmentalism and anti-globalization as cover for anti-capitalist sentiments, they will have a lot of difficulty getting credibility in Kansas.

Is the 17th Amendment Outdated?

2005-10-10T15:56:00.000-04:00

The 17th Amendment provides for direct election of US Senators by the electorate, changing the original constitutional procedure for their election by state legislatures. Has it been a success? With Medicaid shifting cost burdens to states, and highway bills used as leverage to force states to adopt laws that the federal government would not otherwise be able to pass on its own jurisdiction, it seems that states' powers are constantly being eroded by end-runs around the constitution. The states' check on federal power now is only through the Supreme Court, rather than through the constant political mechanism that legislature appointment of senators provided.

How did we get here? John W. Dean writes that the two main conventional-wisdom reasons for its enactment--the Progressive movement and confusion with the state-legislature system--are inadequate.

Professor Zywicki basically demolishes both these explanations. He contends, first, that explaining the Seventeenth Amendment as part of the Progressive Movement is weak, at best. After all, nothing else from that movement (such as referendums and recalls) was adopted as part of the Constitution. He also points out that revisionist history indicates the Progressive Movement was not driven as much by efforts to aid the less fortunate as once was thought (and as it claimed) - so that direct democracy as an empowerment of the poor might not have been one of its true goals.

What about the "corruption and deadlock" explanation? Zywicki's analysis shows that, in fact, the corruption was nominal, and infrequent. In addition, he points out that the deadlock problem could have been easily solved by legislation that would have required only a plurality to elect a Senator - a far easier remedy than the burdensome process of amending the Constitution that led to the Seventeenth Amendment.

Fortuntely, Professor Zywicki offers an explanation for the Amendment's enactment that makes much more sense. He contends that the true backers of the Seventeenth Amendment were special interests, which had had great difficultly influencing the system when state legislatures controlled the Senate. (Recall that it had been set up by the Framers precisely to thwart them.) They hoped direct elections would increase their control, since they would let them appeal directly to the electorate, as well as provide their essential political fuel - money.

Increasing the directness of a democracy is not always good, or permanently good. In the early 20th century it may have made sense to cut out local political party machines by directly electing senators, but today it's the national special interests who have the most well oiled machines.

If you cruise the internet for repeal-the-17th sites, you will find many references to the fact that the federal government has grown in scope since the amendment was passed. I think this argument misses the mark. The growth in welfare programs and regulatory control of sectors of the economy are not due to the Senate's sudden newfound freedom from state legislatures--these programs originated with Presidents are were passed by both houses of congress, in response to changing national expectations of what government's role should be. These things would have happened with or without the 17th.

The harm of the 17th amendment is twofold. First, it erodes state autonomy in matters properly reserved to them, such as intra-state transportation and education. A senator will think twice about stepping on state legislators' constitutional toes if he wants another term in Washington.

Secondly, it leaves each senator more beholden to nationally organized special interests than to his/her own constituents. The republic works best when politicians represent the people more than they do special interests, but the concentration of power in just 100 senators popularly elected at large in our current system promotes senatorial vassalage to monied lobbies. One way to cut K Street out of the loop would be to roll back the 17th Amendment.

Avian Flu Update

2005-10-05T10:59:00.000-04:00

Here are some highlights from the New England Journal report on the current state of avian flu (Influenza A H5N1).

-Animal to human transmission: Most cases in Asia occurred from contact with live birds, despite many exposures to poultry products. There have been 57 deaths so far since December 2003. There is evidence the virus is beginning to adapt to human hosts.

-Human to human transmission: A number of seroconversions (evidence of virus exposure only on blood test) among household contacts and coworkers, but no serious illnesses directly attributable to H5N1.

-Clinical Features: May have longer incubation period than standard human influenza. Upper respiratory sympoms occasional. Diarrhea, vomiting, and bleeding from nose/gums are also possible. Watery diarrhea is common. Lower respiratory tract sympoms occur early and are very common, with bilateral chest x-ray findings and rapid progression to acute respiratory distress syndrome. Most require ventilatory support and intensive care for multiorgan failure upon admission.

-Mortality: 33%-100% in various inpatient cohorts, with a median death rate of the studies listed at 80%.

-Treatment: No vigorous studies are available. H5N1 is sensitive to oseltamivir and zanamivir in the test tube and in animal models, but there is evidence that we'd need to use higher doses and longer duration of treatment than for standard human influenza.

For more info on influenza in general, see here.

Whither the Mandarin?

2005-10-04T03:02:00.000-04:00

The liberal arts-trained, senior civil servant is quickly becoming a creature of the past, writes Michael Lind. He describes how trends in education and politics have eroded the influence of the class of elite public official ("mandarins"), stemming from the rise of four distinct sources of authority:

The mandarin thus is a scapegoat for all of the major forces in contemporary society. The humanist programme of mandarin education is rejected alike by the professional (for whom education is vocational), the positivist (whose task is to expose the power relations that works of literature or history conceal, in preparation for doctrinal instruction in an ideological system), the populist (whose goal is either to replace the classics with a contemporary canon or to reinterpret them to make them "relevant" for today) and the religious believer (for whom the substitution of mandarin humanism for revealed religion was always an enormity). The mandarin is an amateur, to the professional; a statist, to the libertarian; an elitist, to the populist; and a heathen, to the religious believer. What possibly could be worse than a society run by such people?

The answer is a society without them.

Lind describes how the whithering of the professional senior civil servant has led to increasing political spoils appointments, to the detriment of the domestic bureaucracy. This stands in contrast to the intelligence and defense establishments which have largely evaded this trend.

America's unofficial mandarinate, the northeastern establishment, crumbled in the last quarter of the 20th century. The result is a social experiment in today's US as audacious, in its own way, as that of Soviet collectivism: an attempt to have a government without a governing elite. The US ship of state veers now in one direction, now the other. From a distance, one might conclude that the captain is a maniac. But a spyglass reveals that there is no captain or crew at all, only rival gangs of technocrats, ideologues, populists and zealots devoted to Jesus Christ or Adam Smith, each boarding the derelict vessel and capturing the wheel briefly before being tossed overboard.

While I think that the current administration, for all its faults, does lead with more cohesion than the derelict vessel metaphor suggests, I think that seeing the evolution of the US bureaucracy in the last 25 years as the result of a war among the forces of professionalism, positivism, populism, and religion has great explanatory power.

A well-trained, disciplined and professional civil service was the bulwark of the society that gave us the term 'mandarin' for over two thousand years. If we are to abandon having a meritocratic class as a cog in the mechanism of our society, we need to have its roles filled in some other way, or risk going the way of the Qing.

Why Conservation Doesn't Work

2005-09-30T14:48:00.000-04:00

Congressman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) is introducing legislation to raise the fuel economy requirements for cars to 33 miles per gallon by 2015. Republicans for Environmental Protection describes the rationale:

Since America holds only 2 percent of global oil reserves, increased domestic production would add little slack to the oil market. America accounts for 25 percent of global oil demand, but 98 percent of global oil reserves are in foreign countries. Consequently, an energy policy that perpetuates America's oil dependence is a poor strategic choice.

In contrast, we can exert more control over our energy destiny by reducing fuel demand through greater efficiency. The National Academy of Sciences has documented that technology is available today to produce safe vehicles that get substantially better mileage.

Improving mileage by as little as 2 mpg would cut gasoline demand by 1 million barrels per day, equivalent to all the growth in U.S. gasoline demand since 1997.

I'm going to speak some heresy here--conservation doesn't work. Not voluntary conservation, anyway. Jimmy Carter was rightly mocked in the 1970s for asking Americans to wear sweaters as part of his energy policy, and GW Bush should be mocked as heartily. We know from clinical trials of depression, ADHD, and other psychiatric disorders that 'Behavioral' interventions--defined as those that rely on changing habits and offering rewards/punishments--only work as long as the intervention period lasts. As soon as the patient stops meeting with the therapist, the changes all go away.

The real solution is making the desired behavior flow directly from the system, rather than imposing change from without. In other words, for ADHD for example, it's better to have class in a room with less distractions, than to punish a kid each time he gets out of his seat. Likewise, it's a more sustainable program to provide incentives for buying smaller cars, than it is to release the strategic oil reserve with each shortage. And it certainly makes more sense to level the playing field for car manufacturers by having them all adhere to an aggressive fuel efficiency requirement than to have the Commander-in-Chief periodically exhort Americans to drive less.

H/T Moderate Republican

Living Originalism

2005-09-28T10:10:00.000-04:00

Jonathan Rowe writes of a brand of originalist constitutional interpretation that is free of the absurd Scalia fetish of the 'original intent' while giving full homage to the Constitution as supreme law of the land.

He points out that there are many situations and questions about which the Constitution says nothing, and shows how the standard originalist modus operandi of asking what the constitution's text specifically says about the issue does not usually shed any light. He suggests that it is necessary to go one level of abstraction up from the text to see what the general idea embodied in specific language is, rather than focussing what the Founders' history-specific intent was. As an example of this type of critique, he analyzes the Declaration of Independence.

Let’s focus on the Declaration of Independence. The words state “All men are created equal.” The original intent of the Framers might ask, “how did Jefferson, Adams and Franklin, understand and expect those words to apply?” Did they, for instance, think blacks are covered under the norm? If we asked instead, how did “the people” expect those words to apply, arguably we get an outcome that is far more illiberal than asking the Framers that question. Jefferson et al. because they were more reflective than the average Joe of the Founding, arguably did think that blacks had rights under the Declaration and were thus very troubled by the institution of slavery. Your average Joe of the Founding thought “all men are created equal” meant “all white Protestant Males” were created equal. But again, regardless of how the average Joe expected the words to apply, the Declaration doesn’t say that. It makes no distinction between blacks and whites. Original meaning would instead ask what did those words generally mean in a dictionary sense. For instance, “All” meant “every”; “men” arguably meant “mankind” (which term would include women with men) or “human beings,” and “equal” meant, not “equal in abilities” but rather equal in deserving certain basic rights which governments are in the business of securing. So as a matter of logic, we would ask not, “did the Framers or the people” think that blacks and women had equal rights under the Declaration. The answer is arguably “NO”; but rather, “are blacks and women human beings?” And the answer to that is most certainly yes. Thus blacks and women by nature are entitled to “equal rights.”

This type of common-sense approach to constitution interpretation, I believe, is why we have human beings sitting on the Supreme Court rather than a Westlaw terminal. Overeagerness to depart from the text of the constitution can stem from an underestimation of the value of a functioning system of checks and balances in the face of an issue of the moment; overzealousness in the worship of the word-by-word constitutional text may betray the mistaken belief that the foundation of our government is somehow eternal, rather than temporal. But a philosophy based on 'original meaning' is a practical compromise between the twin needs for order and liberty.

Hat tip to Dipatches from the Culture Wars.

Mental Health and the Third World

2005-09-27T10:46:00.000-04:00

NAMI plans a protest this week in Washington to draw attention to the WHO/World Bank initiatives to expand access to mental health care in third world nations. Their concerns revolve around two main points: that treating mental health as a separate problem draws attention away from the social and political problems that exacerbate psychiatric symptoms, and that this initiative can be used by multinational drug companies as a way to expand the reach of biological psychiatry. These are legitimate issues, and I think that policy makers ought to take them into account when deciding how to respond to the mental health care system's deficits in these countries.

But disparities in mental health care access do exist. Disorders like bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and post-traumatic stress disorder clearly respond to treatments that are available in first world countries--some medication treatments, but also psychosocial treatments. Moreover, it's easy to reverse the direction of causality when thinking about poverty and mental illness in developing countries, while the relationship is seen as synergistic here in the US. The 2001 WHO report notes:

Poverty can also be both a cause and a result of ill health and may contribute to brain disorders through poor nutrition, unhygienic living conditions and inadequate access to health care. According to the report, research indicates that in many countries "poverty and several psychiatric disorders, such as depression, exacerbate each other."

The "primary health care model" for general medical care delivery has been implemented in many developing countries, but mental health has been slow to adopt it (Link). "Primary health care" is a strategy of integrating technology and support from outside countries into the political, administrative, and cultural framework of the host developing country. It should be developed for mental health purposes, especially to deliver psychosocial treatments which engender less reliance on outside sources of funding and medications.

Germans Can Move Water

2005-09-24T08:39:00.000-04:00

Even in the midst of so much tragedy on the Gulf Coast, there is a story of generous effectiveness, thanks to the Germans. TQE reports:

Remember those estimates that it would take three to six months to pump the water out of New Orleans? Just ten days after those estimates were made, the city is more or less dry. There is a story behind this news. It has to do with a large contingent of German volunteers who came to play a major role in the rescue of New Orleans. It's time someone told their story...

Tested and proven in the Asian Tsunami disaster earlier this year, and in the floods of 2003 in France, the German pumping team could provide what no other country had available: fast, experienced help with some of the best mobile pumping equipment available anywhere.

By Sunday, September 4, the offer had been accepted by US Ambassador William Timken on behalf of the United States — at a time when most other nations were still asking how they could help. THW, the German technical relief agency, asked for volunteers. By departure date the German team had grown to 89 volunteers, with five paid support personnel. They were joined by a five-person team from Luxembourg. All expenses were covered by the Federal Republic of Germany.

It is largely due to these pumps that the now-famous 9th ward was largely dry by the time Rita hit, and if the pumps weather the storm, it will be dry again much sooner than after Katrina.

While the story is inspiring, it is also distubing that there were no official channels through disaster response agencies, no pre-conceived plans to arrange for such pumps. That is a lesson for FEMA to work on for the future. Nevertheless, it renews hope in humanity when people come together like this in a time of need.

Victimization of the Severely Mentally Ill

2005-09-23T11:10:00.000-04:00

Conventional wisdom says the mentally ill often perpetrate crime, but new data turn that assumption upside-down. The recent Archives of General Psychiatry reports data from the National Crime Victimization Survey showing that the severely and persistantly mentally ill are 12 times as likely to be victimized by crime than the general population. In other words, 25% percent of the severely mentally ill population has suffered a violent crime. By contrast, Steadman found that mentally ill patients did not differ from the general population in rate of crime perpetrated.

The severely and persistantly mentally ill live in the most dangerous social environments due to economic disadvantage, and are the most vulnerable to coersion and exploitation. In this post-institutionalization era, we must find more effective ways to detect and prevent their victimization.

CT to Recognize VT Civil Unions

2005-09-22T23:04:00.000-04:00

More evidence that the national compromise on same-sex marriage likely will look like the VT civil union law--Connecticut will recognize VT civil unions, but not Massachusetts' same-sex marriages, according to VPR. Connecticut will soon be granting civil unions itself.

Most pro gay marriage people are most interested in securing the legal protections that marriage confers, while most anti gay marriage people are primarily concerned about maintaining the cultural-religious-legal construct of marriage as they have seen it bequeathed down the ages. I think that the civil union solution actually does that quite nicely, and if it is seen not to disrupt the institution of heterosexual marriage for any length of time, I think objections will slowly fall away as it is adopted in state after state.

From Freedom to Virtue

2005-09-22T21:00:00.000-04:00

Doug Muder writes of how religious (and by that I also read cultural) liberals need to make the personal political.

For years, religious liberals have been publicizing the wrong thing about ourselves: our freedom. The Right knows that we have more freedom than they do, and they see it as evidence of our superficiality: Sure, you’re free. You can get an abortion. You can get a divorce. You can drink. You can sleep in on Sunday mornings. You can go to porno movies. You can sleep around.

They’re not impressed.

They see us as people who want to be free to slough off our obligations. They don’t understand that we want to be free to make commitments. And that we do make them and keep them. That part doesn’t fit. It breaks the frame.

When I look at this congregation, I see a lot that would break the frame of the Religious Right, if they only knew about it. I see married couples -- gay and straight alike -- who stand together and handle gracefully whatever the world throws at them. Their frame can’t account for that.

I see children who are growing up to be fine young men and women. Their frame can’t account for that.

I see people who give up their time, their energy, and their money to make the world better. Who build affordable housing. Who are committed to peace. Who make beautiful art and music. Who care for the mentally ill. And there are people I don’t see right now, because at this moment they’re back there teaching our children to be better people.

Their frame can’t account for that.

The Religious Right sees itself as the last embattled fortress of virtue in a world overrun with vice. If evil is breaching that fortress, it just makes their battle more desperate. But if goodness is alive and well outside the walls, that doesn’t fit. It breaks the frame.

We fight them best by making lives that they have to admire. By building better families and better communities. By contributing more to the world. By doing it in public. By doing it in ways they can’t ignore. If you want to hear sermons about family values, go listen to Jerry Falwell. He’s good at that. But if you want to be surrounded by people who live values, whose example can show you how to make your family work, come here.

That’s the message that wins.

The Hate-America Right

2005-09-21T10:45:00.000-04:00

I'm not a fan of anyone who hates America, and as Dean's World points out, the hate-America Right is just as harmful as the hate-America Left.

We talk a lot about the Hate-America Left. There's no doubt that they do exist--the Michael Moores, the Noam Chomskys, the Howard Zinns, and the other members of the fascist and communist apologist left. But one of the reasons I turned my back on conservatism was the dour Hate-America Right.

Who are they? The ones who say God no longer loves or protects America because we've fallen into wickedness and hedonism. The ones who suggest we got what was coming to us on 9/11 because God won't protect a country that considers allowing gay people get married. The ones who say we're a lazy, stupid, illiterate, slovenly bunch of uncouth pigs and vile hedonistic sinners.

Here's my question for the Hate-America Right: where was the point exactly that America was protected by God's grace? Was it before or after the British sacked Washington DC and burned the Capital and the White House? Was it before or after Gettysberg and Antietam? Before or after the bombing of the Maine? Before or after Pearl Harbor? Before or after the bombing of the Cole? Before or after 9/11?

[Here's] a news-flash for the dour "America sucks" conservatives: the divorce rate is down, not up. Illegitimacy is down, not up. The "free love" movement ended over 20 years ago. Single motherhood is viewed as either an unfortunate situation or is outright frowned on by most of society and is on the decline. And sexually transmitted diseases are less of a problem today than when our grandparents were young...

These observations are related to my prior post on Choice-based vs. Obligation-based families. To believe that excessive choice is the culprit in one's own family problems, one must believe in a general decline of the culture due to the same forces. But these ideas, as well as the false "Roman decline" historical analogy just don't hold up under data and closer scrutiny.

But then the class-war ideology of the left doesn't hold up either. That is why so many Americans self-identify as independents--they do not wish to be affiliated with the two parties using ideological mobilization of the bases as their main strategy, rather than reaching out to the the center. As long as moderate rhetoric is poison for a candidate in the primaries, politics will be more about a duel between each end of the hate-America spectrum than about centrist solutions.

Hat tip to Classical Values

Update: Darfur Isn't Getting Better, and We're Not Helping

2005-09-18T08:56:00.000-04:00

Nicholas Kristoff writes in today's NYT that the Bush Administration continues to be more hindrance than help in the world's response to the tragedy in Darfur.

[In] effect the United States successfully blocked language in the declaration saying that countries have an "obligation" to respond to genocide. In the end the declaration was diluted to say that "We are prepared to take collective action ... on a case by case basis" to prevent genocide.

Kristoff points out that much of Bush's evangelical base has been moved to action, making his own reluctance difficult to explain on domestic political grounds. I don't know whether that reluctance is driven by concern about overstretching our military, or unwillingness to cede our sovereignty by allowing international bodies to define genocides and thus oblige our military to intercede. But whatever the objections might be to the operational parameters of anti-genocide policy I would have hoped we would be able to at least provide the international community solidarity and strong language. It would have really cost us nothing, and would have provided the type of symbolism that influences the acts of nations.

White Coat Blues

2005-09-17T09:07:00.000-04:00

Medical school is a set up for developing clinical depression. Sleep deprivation, socialization into a profession where illness and death are routine, and an academic work load unlike any other ever encountered all add up to quite a burden for your synapses. The New England Journal writes this week:

Students may become depressed at any point in medical school, but Gartrell has found that the period of greatest distress occurs during the third and fourth years, when students rotate through the hospitals and clinics. "In the clinical years, there's just far greater commitment of time, plus as match pressure begins to emerge, it's an extremely stressful time for a lot of people," she said. Students are often separated from friends and classmates and must work with a constantly changing set of residents and attending physicians, which contributes to their sense of isolation. Gartrell said that many of the female students she sees are worried that the mounting demands of training and clinical practice will not allow them time to find a partner, marry, and have children. Haynes noted that the increase in sleep deprivation during rotations may also expose mood disorders.

There's no question that even under the best circumstances medical school pushes people's cognitive and emotional reserves to the limits. I'm glad that the risk of depression is getting more attention.

"We Had to Kill our Patients"

2005-09-14T13:08:00.000-04:00

At least some physicians in New Orleans gave lethal doses of morphine to critically ill patients they could not save, as looters stormed the hospital seeking drugs and the last of the staff were evacuated, according to The Mail.

My colleague in contact with staff at the New Orleans VA Hospital reports that when the power went out, they were unable to evacuate all of their critically ill patients when the ventilators went out. They had to bag ventilate them all night by hand and lost nearly all of them. Truly a nightmare.

Nature, TV, and the Brain

2005-09-13T09:17:00.000-04:00

Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods stands in a tradition of nature-education reaching back through John Dewey, at least as far as Rousseau. But I would go farther than the author.

Louv describes the multimedia world as a filter, a layer of perception between people and the reality--natural but also cultural--around them. Electronic media are very effective at distributing and organizing information, but they are not as good at conveying subtle emotional content. There is simply a different gestalt to seeing the Grand Canyon on TV, and being there. In fact, having seen it enough times on TV actually distracts one from fully enjoying it when you see it the first time--there is an impatience, a jadedness that takes a little while to overcome before the grandeur of the place can sink in. And many are not willing to wait long enough for that to happen, though it surely does.

There is sound neuropsychological basis to the idea that electronic media cause distorted learning patterns. TV, including educational programs, put the cognitive areas of the cortex into alpha-wave activity (semi-sleep), favor right-sided cortex activity, and inhibit cortical communication with the limbic system, associated with emotion and learning (Link). The many detrimental effects of excessive TV exposure to kids are well documented--increased irritability and risk of ADHD for example. And much is written about TV and obesity. Little is said though of the ongoing cognitive toxicity TV has on adults.

But here is the hope: the vast improvement in information management can be put to use without drawing the soul out of our experiences if we take the time to truly experience nature, if we realize how many experiences must be had in person. Television, the internet, and video games are obstacles only when we allow them to become so. Louv's message applies to adults at least as much as it does to children--create authentic experiences and your life will be richer.

Photos From New Orleans

2005-09-10T10:25:00.000-04:00

Check out this eerie photo diary from New Orleans with captions, by a Nicaraguan hotel worker living in the French Quarter.

Hat tip to Med Pundit.

What is Judicial Activism, Really?

2005-09-08T13:20:00.000-04:00

Charging RINO cites George Will's WaPo piece suggesting good questions to ask the prospective Chief Justice when he comes before the committee. Many strike at the basis of how one reasons about the law, and it's important that we constantly consider these questions as a nation, not only at the time of SCOTUS nominations.

The idea of judicial activism is a pervasive item of contention. Today, liberals tend to believe the constitution is a 'living document' with which each new generation must have a dialogue of sorts if it is to remain relevant and useful. Conservatives are more likely to hold the originalist view that the intent of the Founders must be preserved by considering it a static document.

But that's not how the political factions have always aligned themselves. In FDR's day, conservative justices were considered 'judicial activists' for striking down democratically enacted New Deal legislation. Is this evidence of mere political obstructionism? I don't think so. Rather, the concept of judicial activism is not used the same from instance to instance, and it is a cause of confusion.

The judicial activism of today that conservatives rail against as 'legislating from the bench' might be renamed 'judicial social engineering'. The state supreme court ruling requiring Vermont to enact Civil Union legislation, for example, was not upsetting to two different types of conservatives on two different grounds:

1. To limited-government conservatives, the court was seen as forcing the state to assume an inappropriate role in structuring society itself. These folks would see the state take its cue directly from the culture, rather than allowing the culture to be shaped by the fickle goals of the state.

2. To cultural conservatives, the court was seen as a body of political adversaries (i.e. liberals) enacting their own political agenda in the only way they could, since civil union legislation would never pass.

The judicial activism of FDR's time might be renamed 'assertive judicial review.' That is, the Court assiduously enforced the constitutional limits on another branch's powers. To liberals, this view seemed like obstructionism and pro-business cronyism, but remember the context of the time--governments in Europe were meddling in their countries' economies with a free hand, ordering citizen-producers about and sliding toward totalitarianism.

There are no black-and-white solutions to differences of perception about what constitutes judicial overstepping. Courts must stay within the letter of the law, for to allow full blown judicial social engineering would be to set up lawyers as a ruling caste. But let's be honest--no mainstream liberal is really advocating this. What liberals do often do is rely on dramatic test cases a la Rosa Parks to prove a point, and attempt to change policy. That was appropriate early in the civil rights movement, when the chance of legislative reform was virtually nil. But today, there is certainly a critical mass of support for progress on issues like gay rights, the environment, and civil liberties. Besides, which have had more pervasive impact: Gomillion v. Lightfoot or the Voting Rights Act of 1965? Missouri vs. Illinois or the Clean Water Act?

We should fight injustices in the courts when we must, but making policy in the halls of democracy is the hard work of enacting lasting, fundamental change.

Tulane Hospital Evacuation

2005-09-07T23:21:00.000-04:00

Check out this compelling account of the Herculean task facing the staff of Tulane's teaching hospital, as told by its CEO.

At 1:30 am on Tuesday morning began the biggest crisis and challenge of my life and in the life of Tulane and no doubt New Orleans. I was awakened by my COO who told me the water in the boiler room was rising a foot an hour since midnight and if it continued at that rate at best we had only another two to three hours before we would lose all power since we already were on emergency power since early Monday morning. We had only 7 ventilator patients whose lives would be in jeopardy, and we had to move fast to get them out. We had no boat and no helicopter pad.

Houston we have a problem.

Hat tip to Gruntdoc

Disorder on the Gulf Coast

2005-09-06T23:45:00.000-04:00

If you don't have a clear enough picture of the horrors in New Orleans, see this NO Times-Picayune post, with reports of gang rapes of young girls.

Or see CNN's report on looters taking potshots at contractors rebuilding the levees.

My brother just returned from delivering water and supplies to friends in Mississippi, and tells me that everyone has armed themselves to protect their belongings.

It's unbelievable that this is happening in America. Some argue that this disorder is proof positive of the virtue of the second amendment. I'd be interested in seeing data when this is all over that give us guidance as to whether an armed society is a polite society, as the NRA saying goes, or if it's really just a more dangerous society.

Choice vs Obligation: Towards New Family Values

2005-09-05T22:51:00.000-04:00

I have argued that America's regional cultural--and voting--patterns can be explained by examining the settlement patterns of British immigrants and their folkways. A recent UU World article suggests that differences between New England Yankee family ways and those of the other 3 folk groups may be more profound than Albion's Seed points out. I'd like to look at these family differences from a psychodevelopmental point of view. But first, here are some quotes from the article.

Fundamentalists themselves would claim that the Bible is the center of their worldview, but scriptural support for their more controversial positions is often scant and open to alternate interpretations...

Members of the pseudonymous Shawmut River Baptist Church “generally held such views before they were ‘saved’ and became born-again Christians. Their pro-family conservatism could not be explained, then, by doctrines or practices found in any particular religion.” Instead, Ault attributes Shawmut River’s conservatism to a “villagelike” web of multigenerational family ties very different from what he observed among his academic acquaintances.

Though a life of mutual dependence within a family circle was commonplace among members of Shawmut River and other new-right activists I met, it was foreign to people I knew in academia and the New Left, as well as to other educated professionals I knew... Our material security did not rest on a stream of daily reciprocities within a family-based circle of people known in common, but rather on the progression of professional careers, with steadily increasing salaries and ample benefits to cover whatever exigencies life would bring.

Shawmut River’s extended-family system was based on its shared belief in congenital obligations, in a society in which “relationships were seen and acted on as given rather than chosen.” A child, in this view, is born into a network of mutual obligations and depends for its survival on the fulfillment of those obligations. As it grows, the child takes an ever more active role in upholding that network. At no point in the process is the individual in a position to stand outside the network and choose whether or not its obligations apply to him or her. The only choice the individual has is whether to fulfill his/her obligations or to renege on them. This is what fundamentalists mean when they say that moral values are “absolute” rather than “relative.”

By contrast, the liberal worldview puts a much greater emphasis on commitments undertaken by choice, rather than obligations imposed from birth. Naturally, this is a difference of degree rather than kind. Unitarian Universalists have obligations and Baptists make choices, but choice plays a far greater role in the liberal worldview than in the conservative. Choice is entirely a good thing in the liberal worldview, whereas it is ambiguous to the Christian Right.

Muder cites statistics that show that Liberal and Conservative households do not differ measurably in terms of signs of 'moral decay' such as divorce, pornography viewing, teen sexual promiscuity, wife beating, etc.

Religious conservatives are not being busybodies when they worry about moral breakdown: Fundamentalists worry about moral breakdown because they see their own lives, families, and communities breaking down.

This makes it understandable how someone with a 'obligation' view of the family sees the trouble in his own community can feel very threatened by concepts associated with a choice-based family where obligations would be even less surely adhered to. When they see the moral problems in their own families, they imagine that liberal families can only be much worse. He goes on to discuss the liberal concept of 'commitment' as distinct from the conservative's obligation.

If there is one basic thing conservatives do not understand about religious liberals, it is this sense of commitment. They see us champion choice over obligation, but misunderstand our reasons. They understand us to be advocating a superficial and nihilistic way of life. They think we want to choose our own moral codes so that we can pick easy ones that rationalize our every whim. They believe that we want the freedom to define our relationships so that we can walk away from anything that looks difficult...

In fact, religious conservatives and liberals share more concerns and beliefs than either commonly admits. Both have loyalties that go beyond self and the convenience of the moment. Both reject the materialism of popular culture. Both seek something more substantial than the momentary satisfaction of desire or the endless striving after status. The committed life is a different way to pursue these goals, not a denial of them.

Muler calls this the "Liberal Good News"--that choice-based families work, and that meaning in life can be found equally well through chosen commitment as through obligation. He also argues that the progress of Capitalism makes the continued erosion of the obligation-based family inevitable. While that might be true, I would also suggest that there is more theoretical reason to promote the choice-based family; I believe it is a better 'holding environment' to promote healthy ego growth, especially as children grow older.

Ego psychology is the study of the faculties of cognitive and emotional problem-solving--how they develop and how to use observations about their function to help patients. In The Evolving Self, Robert Kagan writes of stages of adult ego development as a process driven by the brain's growing Piagetian cognitive development (which he extends into adulthood). He describes a cycle of stages with a goal of increasing individuation, alternating with stages with a goal of better integration with other people. As we progress through these stages, we attain deeper senses of self and deeper connection with others according to the cognitive level we're capable of at the time. While obligation-based family structures are good holding environments for integration stages, they are relatively poor for individuation stages; choice-based families are more flexible, and allow better progression to cognitive and emotional maturity.

While the available evidence doesn't support the proposition that obligation-based families are more stable or produce better people by objective measures, there is similarly no evidence that choice-based families are any better. But I'd prefer to live in a choice-based world, and the best preparation for that is growing up in a choice-based family.