Thoughts on policy, history, faith, baseball when I get around to it, waterfowl, and life in general by a junior attorney who'd much rather have Jonah Goldberg's job. Or possibly Darin Erstad's.

 
In the words of Indiana Jones, "Didn't [this guy] ever go to Sunday school?"

Jon Meacham, writing in Newsweek about the biblical Christmas story (predictably, he insinuates the whole thing was custom-tailored in the first century to enhance Jesus' messianic credentials) offers this whiplash-inducer to anyone with a passing knowledge of the Bible:

"Enraged and jealous, Herod orders a massacre of all the male children in Bethlehem—thus connecting Jesus' birth with the first Passover, when God spared Israel's sons from the same bloody decree by Pharaoh." [Emphasis added.]

Or not. Passover commemorates God's sparing Israel's sons not from a "bloody decree by Pharoah," but from His own "bloody decree," which fell rather spectacularly on Egyptian first-born sons according to the account in [i]Exodus.[/i]

An interesting subject -- I've always questioned whether the "virgin shall conceive" passage in Isaiah doesn't refer to an event in Isaiah's own time rather than Christ's (the context suggests that if the passage is Messianic, it is so by a double meaning). But Meacham annihilates his credibility on this subject with that kind of junior Sunday school mistake.
posted by Thomas at 8:22 PM

 
For the sore loser files.

If "know your enemy" is good, helpful advice, you'd expect the political faction with the least accurate understanding of its opposition to lose. I think it just did.

I think conservatives have a far less simplistic understanding of left-liberals than the reverse, possibly because so many national cultural institutions display the left-liberal conventional wisdom so forthrightly and inescapably. You have to have your head tucked several feet deep in the sand to miss the point of view of Hollywood, the networks, the major broadsheet newspapers, the news weeklies, the universities, etc. You definitely get a clear picture of where they stand and what they think -- it's on display for the whole country to see.

Conservative ideas, on the other hand, aren't so pervasive. While there are plenty of conservative voices, they often must be sought out actively -- which, if your sensibility is liberal or apolitical, you may not be inclined to do.

The result is that the conventional-wisdom left-liberal may become cloistered, and have his opinions hardened into the kind of unbelievably stereotyped caricature displayed in the editorial linked to above. (Summary: Middle America consists of ignorant, non-critically-thinking religious fanatics led blindly by amoral corporate pirates.)

The problem with presenting one's opposition as such a caricature is that the people you're trying to persuade may actually know a conservative or two, and notice that the caricature doesn't match the reality. They may know, for example, an evangelical Christian who doesn't handle snakes, who is well-read, who can hold his own in a reasoned discussion, and is generally a nice person. (True, that person's wife may have big hair and an appalling taste for saccharine music, even incorporating it into hands-raised, eyes-closed, swaying church service, but we can't all be Episcopalians.)

The farther the caricature diverges from the reality, the less the credibility of the person presenting the caricature. The Democrats' present problem is that an awful lot of its partisans think the opposition is too stupid to live. I've encountered this intellectual vanity myself -- and I've often found it's actually backed by intellectual reservoirs about an inch deep. The Socialist Paralegal (mentioned below), for example, is bright enough, but has proven that he knows a lot less than he thinks he does. (The Patriot Act, for example, doesn't mention library records anywhere.) It's not what left-liberals don't know that hurts them; in many cases, they actually know quite a bit. It's what they think they know that isn't so.

Even when you're right, proceeding as if you're ten times smarter than the opposition is a suicidal political strategy. People don't like know-it-alls, and they don't like to be talked down to. And they especially don't find it convincing when, if you disagree with them, they get all emotional and think that yelling "Listen to yourself!" over and over is a good way to win an argument.
posted by Thomas at 1:57 PM

 
Lileks has an excellent rant today. A sample:

Keeping the country united? Good luck. Imagine FDR running a war with a press composed of cynical snickerers who derided the president as a rich old cripple who thought the best way to defeat Tojo was a war in North Africa and preached defeat every day through the hard slog of the Pacific theater. Imagine running a war with an entertainment industry that declined to make a single movie about the conflict - why, imagine a "Casablanca" where Rick and Sam argue about whether America started it all because they didn’t support the League of Nations. Imagine a popular radio drama running through the early 40s about a smart, charismatic, oh-so-intellectual Republican president whose bourbon baritone mocked FDR’s patrician whine, a leader who took no guff from Stalin OR Hitler! Lux Soap brings you, The West Wing of the White House! Imagine Thomas Dewey’s wife in 1944 callling the WW2 a war for oil; imagine former vice presidents insisting that FDR had played on our fears after Pearl Harbor. Imagine all that.

Those people may well want the country united -- but only if it's united behind them.
posted by Thomas at 11:30 AM

 
So Elizabeth Edwards says there won't be post-election riots "if we win."

Columbia's Todd Gitlin says "I would not be surprised to see outbursts of political violence the likes of which we haven't seen since the Weather Underground of the 1970s" in the event of a Bush victory.

Republican campaign headquarters are being vandalized, stormed, shot up, and burglarized across the country on almost a weekly basis. (I'm waiting for some heads-up Democrat to direct me to reports of Democratic offices getting the same treatment; given that "everyone does it" seems to be their standard response to charges of election fraud, the only explanation for their not making that tu quoque argument here is that they can't.)

New left-liberal motto: "Terrorists: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!"
posted by Thomas at 11:26 AM

 
I try to keep up a little on events in Utah, where I went to school. Probably because of the state's dominant, conservative Mormon culture, many other churches tend to the liberal end of the religious spectrum, if only to keep them from getting lost in the background noise.

Utah's Episcopal bishop, the Rev. Carolyn Tanner Irish, is of the liberal Episcopal persuasion, which is almost a redundancy (at least as far as that church's clergy and leadership are concerned), but isn't so everywhere.

The Episcopal Church -- the American branch of the Anglican Communion -- is a little off the Anglican reservation these days over the issue of homosexuality. The Anglican Communion recently called (politely) on the American church to apologize for appointing an openly homosexual bishop, which the larger Anglican organization still considers to be inconsistent with binding scripture and church teaching. (The Anglican Communion is full of Anglicans from Third World countries, whose conservative religious philosophy Western liberals tend to find primitive and unsophisticated.) The Episcopal Church responded politely by saying, in effect, sorry for the trouble, but we're not going to change. The Episcopal statement justified its stance on homosexuality by saying the subject is "openly discussed and increasingly acknowledged." I'm still not quite sure what that's supposed to mean, unless the Episcopal Church sees its mission as reflecting the general culture instead of helping guide it.

In any event, the Rev. Irish of Utah defended the Episcopal declaration of not-budging with a statement that included a reference to her being unwilling to "turn back the clock" on this issue.

That's what got my goat. The Episcopal Church can do as it pleases. Even if the Bible is pretty emphatic on the kind of sexual relationships that are recognized as morally admirable (a really short list that doesn't include gay sex), it's not as if anyone, even the most conservative Christians, accept everything in the Bible as binding. It's always possible to interpret some things as having gone out of the gospel at the time of the New Testament, or to interpret others metaphorically. Some of the interpretations require strain-inducing mental gymnastics to justify, but in more skeptical moments I have to ask, what in religion doesn't?

No, what bugs me is the reference to a "clock." Clocks tick inexorably from one hour to another (unless my little daughter knocks my alarm clock off my nightstand and I discover this after my alarm doesn't go off, causing me to oversleep and be late for a morning court hearing and get scowled at by a judge). People have no effect on the march of time; morning goes to noon which goes to dusk no matter what we do.

The Rev. Irish, and the (inevitably) liberals who use the phrase "turn back the clock," seem to view history the same way -- that time and human events roll on regardless of human inputs, with the fulfillment of liberal philosophy the inevitable and uncontestable result. That view is lazy, arrogant, and complacent, and for such a well-educated bunch as your standard-issue NPR/PBS pride-in-critical-thinking liberal, it's inexcusable.

There is no clock. History is shaped by the people who live it. Sometimes they shape things right, and sometimes they make mistakes. A better analogy would be that people are navigating a tangle of highways. If they drive a few miles in what they later determine to be a wrong direction, it's perfectly acceptable -- even necessary -- to go back to the fork in the road and take the other -- or, more often, cut across some surface streets and try to pick up the road not taken further along.

"Progress" isn't inevitable. I dispute whether the "progressive" liberal agenda is even progress, since I believe it rests on unsustainable, fantastic illusions. It's up to us to keep civilization alive and improve it, and if that means acknowledging mistakes and making them right, it's no shame to change our minds about a decision made in the past, the liberal "clock" notwithstanding.
posted by Thomas at 11:06 AM

 
Working in the legal profession, I'm surrounded by conventional-wisdom NPR/PBS left-liberals. Over and over again, they express wonderment at how I could possibly be a conservative, being far too well-mannered, well-read, educated, physically fit, etc. (I'm starting to think they're just flattering me to get me to take on more of their work.) They honestly seem to think that conservatives are all drawling, irrational, bad-haired and big-bellied hicks.

George W. Bush is hated by these people not for what he's done, but for what he is. Except the "what he is" that these people hate, is a caricature. Respectable left-liberals hint darkly that he's setting the country on a course towards fascism or theocracy -- fever-swamp slanders made with increasing frequency, and in increasingly respectable quarters, by people who either don’t recognize or don’t care that they’re slandering millions of their neighbors at the same time.

If Kerry wins, the Democrats won’t question their myths. Left unchecked, they will strengthen and fester. Democracy requires that the side that comes in second has to be willing to accept the verdict of the voters. When you honestly think the other side is fascist, that's impossible. You don't accept government by Nazis, ever, democratically elected or not. Perpetuation of left-liberals’ conceit that theirs is the only respectable opinion is a real threat to republican government – a more fragile thing than I think many left-liberals assume.
posted by Thomas at 3:15 PM

 
As long as I'm in the letter-posting business, here's one I sent to CBS:

SIR:
Defending a document based on its content, not on its authenticity, is something I expect from a religious apologist, not a news organization. CBS might as well be claiming that even though the Donation of Constantine was forged, its content (a purported selection of the Bishop of Rome to be the head of the Catholic Church) is still true. Leave the question "What is truth?" to the metaphysicians, and do your job as journalists.
I do notice that your statement uses the word "accurate" instead of "authentic" in describing the memos. I presume that this word choice is not accidental; that, having failed to reproduce the memos in question on any 1972-vintage typing equipment (despite what must have been an afternoon of desperate scrambling), and having failed to find any credentialed document expert (typewriter repairmen and handwriting analysts don't count) willing to stake his reputation on a statement that the documents are authentic, you are essentially conceding the documents are forged.
"We publish forgeries, but only if they're accurate" is not a slogan CBS wants to stand on. Your source has lied to you. You have no obligation to maintain his anonymity. In keeping his identity secret, you are an accessory to journalistic fraud.
Since you show no signs of coming clean, I intend to contact my Congressman and request that he request that hearings be opened on this issue, as I doubt that CBS will not do the right thing absent the application of the subpoena power.

posted by Thomas at 6:34 PM

 
A letter I submitted today to my hometown paper (well, sort of -- the OC Register is closer both geographically and ideologically, but their comics page stinks, and I need "Frazz") the LA Times. Since, after a long and unbroken string of publishing my submissions, they've taken a pass on my last few, I offer it here humbly for your enjoyment.

***

To the Editor:

In the face of overwhelming evidence that CBS News "60 Minutes" show attacking President Bush's military record was based on forged documents, anchorman Dan Rather still insists the documents are authentic, telling the Washington Post, "Until someone shows me definitive proof that they are not, I don't see any reason to carry on a conversation with the professional rumor mill."

If this passes for an evidentiary standard among journalists, lawyers need to make room for newsmen at the bottom of the "most trusted" list. In litigation, the person making a charge carries the burden of proof -- requiring litigators, if they want to win, to double-check and document their facts in meticulous detail. I couldn't produce a 1961 document purporting to show that Dan Rather kicks his dog and then demand he demonstrate his innocence with "definitive proof" that my document could only have been produced on a 21st-century computer. It's not enough to allege, as CBS does, a theoretical possibility the document might be authentic; the person offering documentary evidence must authenticate it. CBS is attempting to influence a Presidential election with documents that would be inadmissible to prove a $10,000 plumbing contract.

***

Comments may be added by clicking on the time of the post, below.
posted by Thomas at 1:53 PM

 
The Wall Street Journal's Opinionjournal.com feature printed response by that newspaper's Public Editor to a person who criticized the paper's refusal to use the word "terrorist" to identify the Islamist terrorists who killed over 300 people, largely schoolchildren, after taking over their school and holding the kids hostage, without food, water, or toilets, for three days.

I thought the PE's reasoning stank, and sent him my thoughts:

Attn: Public Editor
SIR:
Via Opinionjournal.com, I read that you defended the Tribune's reference to the terrorists of Beslan as "militants" or "rebels."
You wrote, "No intellectually honest person can deny that "terrorist" is a word freighted with negative judgment and bias. So we sought terms that carried no such judgment."
Absolutely appalling, and factually incorrect. True, calling someone a "terrorist" involves a "negative judgment." So does calling a person who commits rape a rapist -- but it also happens to be a factually accurate statement. One can be a "rebel" or a "militant" without shooting child hostages in the back. You can't do that and not be a terrorist -- a word whose objective definition surely includes a person who intentionally inflicts bodily harm on noncombatants for political purposes.
Maybe it is true that "one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter" (although I suspect that only holds if the "another man" is morally bankrupt). Maybe the line between "terrorist" and "freedom fighter" can be fine in some instances. But murdering children after torturing them for three days is so far beyond the pale of any kind of legitimate tactic of resistance that no term but "terrorist" can possibly be accurate -- unless you want to say there's factually no difference between the Beslan murders and that rebellious militant George Washington.
Words have real meanings, and a journalist whose livelihood focuses on using words should know better than to use words improperly out of an exaggerated concern about "judgment." Use good judgment, and use the right words.

***
Comments may be posted by clicking on the time of the post. (I'm going to have to type that at the end of each post until someone shows me how to update the blog's code to include a visible "Post a Comment" link.)

posted by Thomas at 1:23 PM

 
I'm now happily settled into a decent-sized law firm -- a different experience from the two smaller outfits I've previously worked with. The first firm's Liberal Partner (mentioned a few months back) has been replaced by the Socialist Paralegal. In other words, my hapless opposition has gone from a kind of mild-mannered, soft-jazz NPR conventional wisdom liberal to a self-styled radical who thinks that Prescott Bush supported the Nazis (short answer: he didn't; long answer: look it up yourself) and that Dick Cheney is the fount of all evil.

The Socialist Paralegal apparently likes to argue politics, as I discovered a couple of weeks ago when he wouldn't leave my office for an hour and a half when I really had to get a project done.

The main thrust of his main argument appears to be that Republicans are hypocritical for wanting "small government," but -- according to him -- only when it suits them; otherwise, they want to control people as much as do Democrats. (He's one of those people who thinks the difference between the mainstream parties is generally insignificant.)

I'm trying to inform the Socialist Paralegal, or "SP," on the difference between conservatives and libertarians. While many libertarians lean Republican, it's true that libertarians are often greatly dissatisfied with that party as being excessively statist. Some of these criticisms are valid, especially with respect to Republican officeholders; let a man get his hands on the levers of power, and he may start to enjoy using them a little too much. Others are simply unrealistic. Anyway, though, assuming that support for limited government is appropriately considered a Republican article of faith, the Republican positions cited by the SP claims conflict with the limited-government ideal are not the contradictions he argues they are.

First, I don't agree that conservatives and liberals are equally interested in "control." As examples of Republican "controls" over private behavior, the SP cites the issues of abortion, gay marriage, and drug restriction. (I have also had the pleasure of a lecture on the environmental benefits of hemp. I never knew there could be such a need for a fiber with half the strength of nylon and twice the cost.) Even combined, these issues can't compare to the Democrat urge to regulate everything under the sun. Furthermore, individually, I submit these issues aren't the clear-cut evidence of "control" as they're claimed to be.

First, abortion. I've often heard this issue discussed with some line about how the government should stay out of the bedroom, as if this issue involved nothing more than regulation of people's private sexual lives. But abortions don't take place in bedrooms. They take place in clinics, which are subject to all kinds of regulations already. Less semantically, the thing that distinguishes abortion from other issues involving personal sexual conduct is that at some point, it becomes impossible to deny that a second party is involved. You can argue that birth control is entirely a personal matter; it's harder to argue when an eight-month fetus is involved that the matter doesn't involve a second person, or something close to it. (My daughter, incidentally, was born a month early. She looked and sounded pretty human to me.)

Somewhere along the continuum of human gestation, there is a point where society needs to draw a line dividing the respective spheres of personal autonomy and interpersonal relations, in the latter of which spheres the government should legitimately exercise its power to protect the weak. Since the protection of life is such an elemental responsibility of government (governments, after all, are instituted, according to the Declaration of Independence, to protect, among other unalienable rights, the right to life), if government may legitimately intervene in any sphere, this would seem to be one.

Neither does the debate over "gay marriage" involve a government restraint on personal behavior. It is not argued (at least in this debate) that the government should prohibit a particular variety of sexual conduct. Rather, the opponents of gay marriage are actually being more libertarian than its proponents: Since civil marriage is a government institution -- a quasi-contractual relationship defined and enforced by law -- expanding the scope of that institution expands the scope of government. In this particular case, it would expand the scope of government to compel a majority of the country's citizens to afford the incidents of marriage to a coupling they would rather not.

Drug prohibition is probably the toughest of the SP's three challenges, to the extent that the prohibition -- like mandatory seat-belt laws -- is intended to protect individuals from the consequences of their own potential misconduct. Many conservatives do, in fact, oppose drug prohibition; for example, support for some kind of decriminalization frequently appears in National Review. On the other hand, drug prohibition is not designed only for the protection of the potential user from himself. The abuse of mind-altering drugs, by altering a person's judgment, may cause him to endanger others. Of course, some substances are probably more potentially dangerous to third persons than are others; for example, drugs that increase aggression or cause psychosis might be more legitimately restricted than drugs with a milder effect. It may well be true that certain controlled substances are actually less interpersonally dangerous than alcohol, for example, which contributes to traffic accidents, domestic violence, child neglect, and the like. Frankly, I tend to think the prohibition on drugs other than tobacco and alcohol isn't so much a determination that the former are necessarily more interpersonally dangerous than the latter, as a conclusion that two social drugs (whose use is too firmly entrenched in the culture to eradicate) are enough.

But assume for the moment that the SP is correct at least in some respect -- that conservatives really do want to enforce controls on personal behavior. Might not these proposed restrictions actually further the cause of limited government, rather than diminishing it? Specifically, might conservatives not be concluding that government efforts to shape the national culture, by steering people's behavior into healthy channels, minimize the kind of destructive conduct that creates a perceived need for even greater government intervention?

For an example, take the case of single parenthood. One of the most reliable ways for a person to guarantee that she will be poor is to have a child while unmarried. And while it's of course not universal that the children of single parents have behavioral problems (my stepson clearly does not), a disproportionate number of young people who act poorly were raised by single parents. Raising a child is expensive and hard; it's even harder when all the burden is on one person. My hat is off to someone who is able to do it right, unassisted -- but there are clearly not enough such champions in the field. Increased poverty, neglect, and crime results; in turn, government feels pressure to intervene to mitigate these problems. Government attempts at mitigation inevitably develop into ponderous programs, top-heavy with bureaucracy and tending, like all institutions, to self-perpetuation. The result is increased taxation and regulation, restricting freedom perhaps far more than some small steps at guiding the culture would have done.

Altering your course a few degrees at the beginning of a flight involves a lot less effort than trying to get back on course after you've flown an hour on the wrong heading. (Microsoft Flight Simulator has been eating up shameful amounts of my time; my wife would prefer I delay risking splattering myself against a mountainside until the kids are older and I have more insurance.)

So the question is this: Is it possible to be both socially and economically libertarian? Or is the only way for an economically-libertarian society to remain so -- in the face of pressure for government to step in to relieve the human suffering caused, in large part, by personal misconduct -- to withdraw a few steps from absolute social libertarianism, aiming to so shape the culture so that damaging personal misconduct is minimized and the pressure for government relief reduced?

I think it is.
posted by Thomas at 4:28 PM

 
The other night on TV, I caught a debate between a conservative and a liberal talk show host.  The discussion turned to the movie "Fahrenheit 9/11."  Naturally, the conservative had some strong words against it.

The liberal talking head's response was to ask whether the conservative believed everything in "Fahrenheit 9/11" was untrue.

I've heard this kind of argument before.  It sets an impossible and a false standard.  An argument can make nine indisputably true points, tie them together with one lie, and the result will be as false and dishonest as if all ten points had been lies. 

The premise of "Fahrenheit 9/11" is that the Bush administration is manipulating the war on jihadi terror for the pecuniary interests of its members and their friends, and that administration members' relationships with Saudi Arabian interests, in particular, influence foreign policy to the country's detriment.

The 9/11 commission report, released yesterday, knocked a couple of the movie's main points on the head.  First, the movie's contention that the Afghanistan campaign's real purpose was to pave the way for a Unocal pipeline across the country takes a hit, in that it appears that the pipeline project was a kind of Clinton-era "vaporware."  That is, it seems that the project was conceived by the State Department in 1998 as a kind of carrot to be offered to various of the fighting Afghan factions, including the Taliban, to persuade them to stop fighting.  It was doubtful even at the time that the pipeline would ever be built; in fact, Unocal ultimately decided it didn't want to be involved. 

Applying Occam's toothbrush, it seems to me that the most obvious reason for the Afghan campaign was that, oh, the country's government was allowing the place to be used as a base for the terrorist group that blew a big hole in New York's skyline. 

The second hit "Fahrenheit 9/11" takes from the 9/11 commission report is the movie's contention that the Bush adminstration flew bin Laden family members out of the country, without allowing the FBI to interview them, during the time when flights were grounded after the attacks.  In fact, they didn't fly out of the country until regular airline flights resumed (I got on a plane myself that same week, figuring an Orange County-Salt Lake City flight wasn't a likely target for anyone -- although everybody gave a wary look to the poor lone Arab businessman in first  class).  The FBI did have a chance to interview the people it wanted to speak with.  And the decision to allow the Saudis to be flown to a central location in Tennessee (presumably to save them from the lynch mobs that Michael Moore thinks Americans naturally become, in their natural stupidity; see "Bowling for Columbine" and his comment that Americans are the stupidest people on earth) was made by Richard Clarke, of whose judgment the Left thought so highly when his testimony to the 9/11 commission was seen as reflecting poorly on President Bush.  In other words, Michael Moore thinks that a decision made by a person who apparently never liked Bush all that much, somehow was influenced by Bush family connections to Saudi interests.  I suppose any dots can be connected if you curve the lines enough . . . .

So while it may not be true that every word of "Fahrenheit 9/11" is false, including "and" and "the," the fact that the various accurate statements are tied together by falsehoods, renders the entire conclusion false, not to mention shallow, mean-spirited, and demagogic.  To the extent any Democrat doesn't repudiate it (and John Kerry, Bill Clinton, Terry McAulliffe have all spoken favorably of the film, with only a fraction of reservation expressed if any), he shows himself no gentleman.
posted by Thomas at 10:45 AM

 
Glenn Reynolds, on Instapundit:

"I'm not a "my country, right or wrong," guy. But I do think that if patriotism means anything it means giving one's own country the benefit of the doubt -- of which, in the case of this war, there's not really much need for -- and that the people I was discussing in that post are doing quite the opposite and adopting a "my country -- of course it's wrong" attitude. To root for your own country's defeat is to separate yourself from its polity, to declare it not worth saving or preserving, to declare the lives of its soldiers less important than your own principles. It's not always wrong, but it's a very a drastic step, as drastic as deciding to mount a revolution, really, and yet it's often taken by superficial people for superficial -- and, as in this case, tawdry and self-serving -- reasons.

If Bush really were Hitler, it would be different. A Nazi America wouldn't be worth saving, and its polity would be worth separating oneself from. But we're so far from that situation, as Young herself notes, that such discussions are entirely academic, and those who are rooting against America in Iraq have hardly demonstrated the moral courage and personal sacrifice that such a serious step demands, if it is to be taken seriously. If Bush is really Hitler, is filing slanted copy a sufficient response? But the real problem isn't that Bush is Hitler -- just that he's a Republican, which puts a very different face on things. I don't think that Young is one of those Libertarians who denounces the very concept of patriotism, but (though I could have been clearer in my post, I guess, but this seemed painfully obvious to me) I think that she should have thought this column through a bit more."

I reached a similar conclusion a while ago. A patriot is a friend of his country. A true friend doesn't rush with unseemly haste to believe the worst of his friend.

posted by Thomas at 10:53 AM

 
Since it appears that a couple of people a week are still reading this site, notwithstanding the utter absence of new content since March, maybe I should start each post with a hearty mea culpa. I'll abbreviate it "MC" and move on.

In last Sunday's Los Angeles Times, which I subscribe to mostly because it contains the local "Daily Pilot" paper and because of the "Frazz" comic strip (the OC Register's comic page is a big steaming amateurish pile of ... ink), the paper's editor John Carroll gave himself and his fellow "real journalists" (as opposed to the "pseudo-journalists" on Fox News or the Web) a big, fat, preening, self-congratulatory kiss on the backside -- which would speak wonders for his flexibility, if I weren't only being figurative.

The gist of the column was that REAL journalists owe a duty to the public to be ever-so-careful in verifying the facts they present are correct, and making sure the public is informed of the things it needs to know. (What it needs to know, of course, is determined by Carroll and his friends.) He pointed to a study that suggested watchers of Fox News were more likely than consumers of other media to subscribe to certain "myths" about the war on terrorism.

Of course, as many people pointed out, the "myths" the study focused on were all generally "right-wing" myths, including the idea that Saddam Hussein was linked to al-Qaeda or that weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. (Actually, there is evidence that both "myths" are true; whether it is persuasive evidence depends on your standard of proof.) The study ignored pervasive "left-wing" myths, like the concept that President Bush said Iraq was an "imminent threat" (he didn't); that the war would be easy (ditto) or that he claimed Iraq had sought uranium in Niger (he didn't say that, and now it appears that Iraq did, in fact, do so.) A fair study would have discovered that the converse of what it found is also true -- left-leaning people are drawn to left-leaning media, and tend to have left-leaning misconceptions. And that wouldn't have been news at all.

After asking rhetorically how the newer, non-liberal media outlets could have left their readers and listeners so "in the dark" as to swallow these "myths" (dang, I'm getting like Reuters with the scare quotes here; next thing you know, I'll be referring to "terrorists"), the Times promptly buried the discovery of a sarin gas artillery shell in Iraq on page 8. And then dropped the story pretty much altogether -- there may have been a follow-up story buried somewhere equally deep, but I've been too busy to see much but the front page, and there was certainly nothing on this potentially earthshaking discovery there.

The irony gives me a headache. The Times faults other media for supposedly failing to report the whole story -- and then, not even a week later, buries major news deeper than a dead Pharoah. It's hard to avoid the suspicion that the like-thinking Times staff of "real journalists" just don't think the sarin gas is newsworthy, and that their thinking is colored by their political perspective.

WMD found? Move on, nothing to see here; let's raise the bar a little higher for refutations of our "Bush LIED!" charge and go back to important stuff like Iraqi thugs getting the "Pulp Fiction" treatment.

This brings us to the question: can what the press chooses to emphasize effect the outcome of a war? Clausewitz recognized that a country's will to fight is as important a component of its warmaking abilities as its actual armed forces. Since literally destroying the American armed forces is generally not a high-probability outcome, especially for lightly-armed irregulars, the only real strategy that can conceivably work is one based on attacking the country's will. The North Vietnamese used this strategy very well, and the jihadists seem to be learning from their example. Convince enough people that the war on jihadist terror, or any of its battles, isn't worth the cost, and they win.

An enemy focusing on a will-reducing strategy would try to control the flow of information to the other side's public. He would emphasize stories that make the other side look bad, or that side's cause hopeless, and suppress stories that detract from this picture.

Where is the line between responsible journalism, with its commitment to telling the whole story and informing the public, and propagandizing for the enemy?

It's a tough call. Journalists don't necessarily have to support the enemy to present the news in the same manner he would want; the nature of American media is to pay more attention to bad news than good. "If it bleeds, it leads," and all that.

The problem is that I think the coverage of the Iraq war goes beyond this built-in bias for bad news. So many American journalists have essentially the same mindset -- a kind of conventional-wisdom liberalism, sharing its assumptions (and utter lack of historical perspective) with so many other organs of establishment culture. For many journalists, Vietnam is the template; if the troops aren't home by Christmas one year after the first shots are fired, it's a quagmire. Others have a misguided understanding of the principle of evenhandedness that leaves them constitutionally incapable of taking their country's side in any particular quarrel.

The media's incessant coverage of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, which has continued far longer than any normal people seem to want, is an example of this. The proper thing to do would be to investigate the abuses, punish the guilty, decide on some reasonable measures to minimize the risk of a recurrence, and move on. The more we flagellate ourselves over this, the more ammunition we give to our enemies. Let's clean our house, acknowledge the shame, and turn our backs on it. That means no wallowing, no Senators posturing, and no using it for political advantage. posted by Thomas at 4:17 PM

 
THE GREAT GAY MARRIAGE DEBATE

An interesting debate on the "gay marriage" issue developed on a message board I frequent (www.ldstalk.com). I found myself writing some fairly long essays in the thread, and got some essay-length responses. It was a fascinating debate, and I think it's worth preserving. Warning -- this is VERY long. But worth it.

It started out with my response to the original post:

Posted by TheProudDuck: Feb 25 2004, 12:24 PM
I may be responding to someone who's already gone, not to mention engaging in a battle of wits with an unarmed man, but here goes:

QUOTE
1. Homosexuality is not natural, much like eyeglasses, polyester, and birth control. (You just imagined the penguins. Anyway, penguins are unnatural: they're birds, they fly underwater. Nuff said.)


Not a serious argument. I agree. If men acted according to their unrestrained natures, human life would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

QUOTE
2. Heterosexual marriages are valid becasue they produce children. Infertile couples and old people can't legally get married because the world needs more children.


One of the main reasons the institution of marriage exists is because of society's interest in providing a stable environment for the raising of children. Since it is reasonable to expect that a man and a woman sleeping together regularly may produce children in the ordinary course of things, whether they intend to or not, it is appropriate for a society to set up in advance the legal framework that will apply to the union, so as to regulate that environment.

The fact that some marriages do not produce children doesn't change the rationale for recognizing marriage as a legal institution, any more than the fact that some people will never pay capital-gains tax means that those tax laws shouldn't exist. The framework is there for when it's needed, and often it can't be known in advance whether marriage's child-sheltering institutions will be needed. Couples who don't intend to have children may change their minds. Couples who thought themselves infertile, by reason of age or otherwise, may not be.

The (relatively minor) exceptional category of elderly couples who are pretty much definitively infertile, to whom the primary rationale of marriage of providing a stable environment for childraising almost certainly doesn't apply, affirm the institution of marriage by their participation in it.

You would have us say that because exceptions exist -- i.e. some people to whom the chief rationale for marriage doesn't apply -- therefore the rule shouldn't exist, either. That reminds me of a very liberal lawyer I once worked with, whose favorite tactic in arguments against a particular rule was to think of some outlandish exception wherein a person might be hurt by it. Obviously, not every exception can be anticipated. Set up the rule, and if there are significant exceptional cases, make rules to accommodate the exceptions.

QUOTE
10. Children can never suceed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why single parents are forbidden to raise children.


See the above about exceptions to the general rule. Reasonable people may conclude that, in the aggregate, there are significant differences between men and women, and children are enriched by an environment where they experience a mother and a father who each provide their unique attributes. Occasionally, because of divorce or death or other circumstances, the ideal may not be possible. I do think that adoption law, as a general rule, should favor married two-parent couples over singles.

QUOTE
3. Obviously, gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.


QUOTE
8. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.


Unless you accept the argument that ALL homosexuality is genetically determined (which is a stretch), then it's possible that environmental influences may affect people's developing sexuality. One of the environmental factors that could reasonably be expected to have an effect is the acceptance of something by society. If something is viewed by society as acceptable, society will get more of that thing. Look at the use of racial slurs. It's (generally) not illegal to use them, but you're much less likely to hear them than you would have been fifty years ago. Because society doesn't accept their use.

QUOTE
4. Straight marriage will be less meaningful if Gay marriage is allowed, since Britney Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage was meaningful.


Ah, the bootstrapping argument: "We liberals have so diminished the meaningfulness of marriage already that you might as well let us tear it the rest of the way down." I guarantee you it wasn't social conservatives who enacted Nevada's marriage laws, or instituted no-fault divorce, or created the social atmosphere where marriage is taken lightly.

QUOTE
5. Heterosexual marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are property, blacks can't marry whites, and divorce is illegal.


A perfect example of the tendency of the living to think themselves superior to the dead: Every traditional arrangement must be inferior to the contemporary wisdom. "Divorce is illegal"? When was that? Certainly, divorce used to be a lot harder to obtain, but it's been legal in some form or another for pretty much all of recorded history. And it's far from clear that the present state of divorce law is the ideal, given the pain it tends to cause. For every divorce that benefits both parties, there's at least another that does more harm than good. "Women are property" -- OK, the Romans got that one wrong. That hasn't been true for a long time, although women's rights did take a long time to develop to their proper place. "Blacks can't marry whites" -- Anti-miscegenation laws are a relatively recent invention (most didn't exist until the 19th century) that ran their course over the span of a few generations.

How about "The punishment should fit the crime"? Or "no punishment may be inflicted unless a law has been broken"? How about the canons of statutory interpretation? The common law? The Golden Rule? All of these things are at least centuries old. Sometimes, the fact that an institution has stood the test of time suggests that it may be a good idea, having been "naturally selected" from among other institutions that were found wanting and discarded.

QUOTE
6. Gay marriage should be decided by people, not the courts, because the majority-elected legislatures, not courts, have historically protected the rights of the minorities.


Couldn't agree more. On the legislative side, we have the abolition of slavery, the 13th through the 15th Amendments, the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act -- the basic framework of civil rights in this country. On the judicial side, we have Brown v. Board of Education -- which itself built on a trend, pushed along by representative institutions, of greater civil rights (like President Truman's integration of the military). On the other hand, the judicial side also has to answer for the Dred Scott Case, the Slaughterhouse Cases, Plessy v. Ferguson, and the Lochner decision.

I happen to think that democratic government, expressed through republican institutions, works pretty well. As a default rule, I tend to favor the means of government that maximizes the degree to which decisions are taken by the consent of the governed. That inclines me to prefer the decision of a popular majority to the decision of a judicial elite except in exceptional cases.

QUOTE
7. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire counrty. That's why we have only one religion in America.


The values of pretty much every major religion, actually. The laws of a country ought to reflect its general moral sense. We have laws forbidding cruelty to animals because a majority of the people feel that it is wrong. The sense that a marriage between a man and a woman is the most moral sexual arrangement doesn't have to arise from any particularized religious tradition any more than animal-cruelty laws do.

QUOTE
9. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.


Interesting choice of deviant sexual behavior there. If I made that argument, you'd jump on me for "comparing gay sex to bestiality," or something equally juvenile. I do notice that people on your side are desperate to avoid the slippery-slope argument -- that's why whenever someone points out that a sexual ethic based on consent could lead to acceptance of [insert bizarre sexual practice here], he's instantly accused of "comparing" gays to people who indulge in that practice -- a colossal logical fallacy engaged in with enthusiasm by people who take pride in calling themselves "critical thinkers."

The main argument for acceptance of homosexual sex is that it's a consensual sexual practice, and that gay "marriage" is also a matter of consent. But if you make that argument, you are making the same argument for every other consensual sexual practice, or consent to a formalized sexual arrangement. You make it very hard to argue against marriages between multiple parties (hello, Tom Green!) or close relatives (provided, say, they are tested for possible genetic defects that might be expressed in their children).

QUOTE
11. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society. Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and we could never adapt to new social norms because we haven't adapted to things like cars or longer lifespans.


Well, let's see: If you listen to environmentalists, we haven't adapted to longer lifespans; the population of the earth is said to be outstripping its "carrying capacity," and we'll all be starved or globally warmed to death. And frankly, I don't think we're adapting all that well to the changes we've made in society's view of marriage already. Childbearing without marriage, which has become much more acceptable in the past half century, is probably the greatest single cause of poverty in this country. So yes, I do think that maybe we ought to give a little more thought to altering such a fundamental societal institution. A little more thought, that is, than is required to post twelve smart-arse straw-man characterizations of the argument against such a change.

The idea of the "precautionary principle" is generally espoused by the political Left. It's the idea that new technology or practice shouldn't be adopted unless its proponents can offer conclusive proof that it won't cause any harm. Of course, it's virtually impossible to prove a negative, and the idea is counterproductive, but it's interesting that the same people who demand absolute proof that, say, genetic engineering won't cause any harm, are willing blithely to accept an unproven modification of an ancient social institution.

QUOTE
12. Civil unions, providing most of the same benefits as marriage with a different name are better, because a "seperate but equal" institution is always constitutional. Seperate schools for African-Americans worked just as well as seperate marriages for gays and lesbians will.


Constitutional law does recognize that different treatment for men and women is sometimes justified by differences between men and women. Laws making distinctions between men and women (i.e., Selective Service) are evaluated under an "intermediate scrutiny" standard, as opposed to the "strict scrutiny" standard applied for racial distinctions. That's because the distinctions between men and women -- and between marriages between men and women and same-sex couples -- are real, while the distinctions between races are insignificant.

Posted by curvette: Feb 25 2004, 01:09 PM
I would think most people who care about family values would prefer to see homosexuals in monogomous, long term relationships than the promiscuous lifestyles that they are notorious for.

Posted by TheProudDuck: Feb 25 2004, 08:49 PM
I would think so, too. But that still leaves us with the following questions:

1. Will "gay marriage" serve to channel gays towards "monogomous, long term relationships" and away from the "promiscuous lifestyles that they are notorious for"? From my observations, it seems that those gays who want committed, long-term relationships (mostly women) already have them.

2. Even if there were some such channeling, would any gains be outweighed by the potential downside of further acceptance of alternative sex practices?

Let's say that the current number of gay people who live monogomous lifestyles is 10% (a wild-donkey guess). If "gay marriage" succeeds in channeling 10% of gays away from promiscuous lifestyles, but, by increasing social acceptance of homosexuality, leads to an equivalent 10% increase in the number of people who act on same-sex attractions (i.e. an increase from 5% of the population to 5.5%; I'm using compromise estimates here), what you've done is that for every one gay person you channel away from promiscuity, you've encouraged ten more people to act on gay attractions -- eight of whom will be promiscuous, if the percentages stay the same. So your net gain is -7 people steered away from promiscuity. It's like when Homer Simpson tried to get rich as a sugar magnate.

Of course, my numbers are pretty much pulled out of the air (except for the estimates of the percentage of the population which is actively gay and the percentage of gays who are more or less monogamous). But given the great difference in size between the gay population and the general population, a small percentage change applied to the general population will have a larger absolute effect than a large percentage change applied to the gay population. The numbers would have to be something like a 10% increase in gay monogamy and only a 2% increase in general gay activity for you to see a net decrease in the number of promiscuous gay people. I think that's unlikely.

And that assumes that an increase in gay promiscuity is the only potential downside for "gay marriage." I think a general reinforcement of the ethic that consent is the only basis for evaluating the morality of a sexual practice is a bad thing for society, and I think "gay marriage" would have that effect.

So Curvette, in answer to you, I believe that "gay marriage" is unlikely to be a cost-effective means of delivering the social good you mentioned.

On top of all that, I can't shake the impression that for a large number of "gay marriage" advocates, the movement to impose such an institution on the country (and since a majority of the people will almost certainly continue to oppose it, it will have to be imposed by activist courts in opposition to public sentiment -- a major difference between this issue and desegregation, which a national majority supported), while it may contain many people of good will who are motivated by the concerns you cite, it contains as many or more people who simply want to see the moral consensus in favor of marriage as the sexual ideal further diminished. In short, I think a good number of the "gay marriage" advocates are not acting in good faith, and would not themselves be likely to enter into such "marriages" even if they were recognized.

Posted by TheProudDuck: Feb 26 2004, 01:38 PM
QUOTE (sgallan @ Feb 25 2004, 10:05 PM)
**** If something is viewed by society as acceptable, society will get more of that thing. ****

One: Well okay..... if so, I have no real problem that. Once it societally acceptable few will.

Two: Could you become Gay? I couldn't. But from the movie Stripes, "I am willing to learn. Is there a school they send you too?" LOL.... still wouldn't work though. Sadly, I am a flaming heterosexual.

The rest of your argumentation, while good, is Lawyerly rationalization to win a point, or debate. High level spin if you will. I can rationalize anything myself. But I am nonetheless not compelled. Instead I see a person held hostage to a political party, and it's agenda, combined with an in-bred religious paradigm, with the additional factor of being raised in a conservative family in what was once the bastion of California conservatism.... Orange county.

This is all cool. It's part of what makes politics so interesting......
--------------------
"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
Stephen Roberts

Arguments first, analysis of my subconscious "hostage" status second.

QUOTE
Two: Could you become Gay? I couldn't. But from the movie Stripes, "I am willing to learn. Is there a school they send you too?" LOL.... still wouldn't work though. Sadly, I am a flaming heterosexual.


As I am now, I don't think I could, either. If my early sexual development had taken a different course, who knows. Any further detail would probably provide WAY too much information to be posted on a message board.

But isn't it reasonable to conclude that some people who identify themselves as gay could be physically attracted to members of the opposite sex? Look at the co-founder of Word Perfect, who decided he liked men after fathering a family. Clearly at least some, er, parts of some gay men are capable of arousal by women.

Likewise, doesn't the existence of bisexuality support the idea that some people are attracted to either sex? Or, to put it more crudely, that plenty of men would screw a snake if someone held it straight for them?

Isn't it possible that some people, who felt somewhat physically attracted to both men and women, might choose to pursue one attraction over the other as a result of social conditioning or moral conviction?

In other words, I think it's likely that while there probably is a small core of effeminate men who are so hard-wired that way that they would never be attracted to a woman (I think my old singles ward had a couple of these guys), there's a larger group who's capable of going either way, under particular circumstances. (And some of them do!) As I said, I think society's outlook is a significant factor for this fence-sitting group.

As for characterizing my arguments as "high level spin," I guess I'm flattered; the partner I work for spends most of every other day telling me how low level my spin is. I'm a little surprised you'd consider me held "hostage" to caricatured Orange County conservativism, having been around so long. (Is there anyone on these boards who's been around as long as we have?) Most people at BYU and my extended family considered me fairly liberal with respect to religion. Some people on these boards would probably agree. I think for myself, not some "agenda" (it's curious that one's own ideas are "principles" and the other side's are its "agenda!").

Part of the disadvantage my side has in this debate is that we've only recently had to articulate the practical grounds for positions that, only a decade or so, pretty much everyone took for granted. Where was the press for gay marriage in the liberal decade of the 1970s? The idea was a non-starter, because the worth of marriage as currently constituted was considered so long proven that long, thoughtful defenses weren't necessary.

But now, here comes the other side, simply slapping a "civil rights" sticker on their position and expecting the rest of the country to roll over and accept, or be branded bigots and have our arguments dismissed as mere rationalizations. Marriage, I think, is one of those things like courage or patriotism that is strongest when least analyzed: it's a good thing, period. But make us defend it, and argue against what we consider to be ill-advised proposed changes to it, and our arguments must necessarily be long and involved, because so many practical arguments over the years have gone into making marriage as unquestionably good an institution as it was once considered. We have to unpack those centuries of experience, and restate the arguments. That's a lot harder to do, and harder to keep an audience interested in, than simple slogans about "civil rights" and "people who love each other."

(Much debate back and forth while I attended to actual work, then:)

Postedby TheProudDuck: Mar 1 2004, 07:50 PM
Dang -- I spend a day or so doing some actual work, and six pages' worth of thread goes by.

In case anyone's still interested in anything said several pages back, Cal wrote:

QUOTE
PD-I don't have time right now to respond to everything you have said but:

1) What exactly do you think gay marriage imposes on the rest of us?
IMHO opinion gays just want to be left to enjoy the same right to cohabitaion and protections under the law as the rest of us. How does that impose on YOU?



There is a breed of secularist who breaks out in hives every time a high school choir sings a Christmas carol -- because he interprets a government-affiliated expression of religious sentiment as a government endorsement of a religious principle he doesn't hold, and is offended.

Although I think society bends over too far to avoid giving such an offense, a sound principle is involved: People should generally not be compelled to affirm a belief they do not hold. In a democratic society, it's at least partially true that the official position of the government is effectively the official position of the collective society.

The special status afforded to marriage is at least partially a declaration by society that a monogamous union of a man and a woman is a morally admirable thing. A majority of the people in this country do not believe that a same-sex coupling is as morally admirable as a marriage between a man and a woman. To mandate same-sex "marriage" would be to force a majority of the country to declare, at least by democratic proxy, a moral belief that they do not hold. The fact that gay "marriage" is in the process of being imposed by one state's supreme judicial court and another state's lawless officials makes it even worse.

So if a secularist has a right to be offended by the public suggestion that there is a God, with which he profoundly disagrees, shouldn't he expect that someone else might be offended by a public stance on a profound issue which that person disagrees with? Leave the First Amendment and its implications out of this for a moment, and focus on the underlying harm that the modern interpretations of the First Amendment are meant to address. I submit that the same principle is implicated here.

Scott -- "I contend that we are both sexual prudes. I just believe in one fewer moral sexual practices than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible couplings, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

(Apologies to Stephen Roberts)


Posted by TheProudDuck: Mar 2 2004, 11:58 AM
QUOTE
When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible couplings, you will understand why I dismiss yours." ****

Actually, I cannot think of any couplings I dismiss between consenting adults. Not a one. Live-ins. Polygamy. Man on man. Women on women. Swingers. As long as all parties are okay with it, and nobody gets killed or mutilated I am okay with it as well.


All right, then; you recognize one fewer criterion for disapproving of sexual conduct than I do. You draw the line based on two criteria: consent and "nobody gets hurt."

As to consent, I believe that there are occasions where society is justified in disregarding two parties' consent. For example, in law, a person can't consent to a contract in which he waives the right to sue his doctor or lawyer for malpractice. The transaction between the professional and his client involves more than merely the two people involved; it also implicates society's interest in policing professional practice.

I think that given how powerful sexuality can be in overpowering people's ability to think rationally (similar to drugs), society has a legitimate interest in trying to keep the sexual atmosphere from getting completely out of hand. While a society may pass laws against indisputably destructive sexual practices like child molestation, laws can never be enforced perfectly. When a society, on the one hand, sends a general message that people should gratify whatever sexual desires they may have, and sends a more specific message that certain behaviors are still unacceptable, people whose chemistry or environment has formed their sexuality so they fall on the wrong side of the line receive a very mixed message. Human nature being what it is, they have every reason to rationalize that what they want to do really isn't so bad -- the inability of minors to consent, after all, is only a legal fiction, which gets more and more tenuous the further into adolescence a person gets ...

So when society simultaneously says "Do what you will" and "Don't do X, Y, and Z," society must expect that some people will conform their behavior to the first, and more general, of these contradictory commands.

As for "nobody gets hurt," your second criterion -- Isn't this just as arbitrary as my criteria? Couldn't a person reasonably take the position that consent, alone, is sufficient? A person's body is his or her own, isn't it? There are plenty of people (also invariably left of center) who believe in the "right to die" -- to commit suicide. If a person has a right to end his life, or consent that it be done, why can't he consent to end his life as a filet mignon d'homme on the plate of some German cannibal? Of course I'm not making this scenario up.

Bottom line is, we both draw lines. You draw the line at consent-plus-no-injury; I draw the line at consent-plus-no-injury -- plus a sense, part rational and partially derived from the religious tradition I have chosen as my general moral framework, that marriage is the most proper form of sexual expression.

A question occurs to me, Scott: Are there any forms of sexual activity that you consider less morally admirable than others, but that you would nevertheless not want criminalized?

QUOTE
Following your train of thought..... why don't we (again) outlaw mixed race marraiges. And of course we need to bring the sodomy laws back on the books. Oral sex too. Of course nowadays these concepts are no longer considered valid. Give it 10-20 years and the same things will be thought about Gay marraiges.


Why would my train of thought lead to outlawing mixed-race marriages, or sodomy laws, or restrictions on oral sex? No significant part of the public would want these things. My train of thought is simply that if it is offensive to a secularist to have his government seem to endorse a religion with which he disagrees, it is also offensive that the general public have their government endorse a moral proposition with which it disagrees. The whole concept relates back to the general idea of government by consent that is the foundation of the whole Anglo-American tradition of ordered liberty. Governments, as the expression of the public will, should try, to the greatest extent possible, to avoid contradicting their constituents on matters of the deepest conviction.

In any case, it strikes me that there are three ways a legal regime can address a particular practice: It can (1) forbid it; (2) tolerate it (society may or may not have moral objections to the practice, but does not either prohibit it or encourage it), or (3) give it special recognition and status. In 10-20 years, will there be a special institution giving society's approval to oral sex -- call it "orriage"? "Sodomage"? By your logic, the iron laws of history must not only strike down barriers to sexual practices, but lead to their special recognition by society.

QUOTE
Though the events in San Francisco and other places may be ahead of the societal curve a bit, I think the idea is to bring the issue to the forefront so people can be educated a little.


And I think the "idea" is absolutely lethal to consensual government. Public servants are responsible to the law. Gavin Newsom is every bit as out of line as that judge in Alabama with his Ten Commandments monument. While I doubt we're going to go the way of Haiti anytime soon, when public servants elevate their personal beliefs over the law -- making their jurisdiction into a government of men, not laws -- that's completely inconsistent with republican government. Those officials need to be impeached every bit as quickly as the Alabama judge was removed.


Posted by Sgallan: Mar 2 2004, 12:57 PM
***** A question occurs to me, Scott: Are there any forms of sexual activity that you consider less morally admirable than others, but that you would nevertheless not want criminalized? ****

Between consenting adults I do not put my values on others. So morality has nothing to do with it. As far as the rest of your essay; it's a pretty good defense of the various Islamic laws regarding the same issue. Why not just stone them to death? Or entrap and torture them like is going on in Egypt. Same with adulters, and any other sexual activity you may not like?

*** Why would my train of thought lead to outlawing mixed-race marriages, or sodomy laws, or restrictions on oral sex? No significant part of the public would want these things.*****

They used too. They do in many parts of the world. It's where the line is drawn.

*** My train of thought is simply that if it is offensive to a secularist to have his government seem to endorse a religion with which he disagrees, it is also offensive that the general public have their government endorse a moral proposition with which it disagrees. The whole concept relates back to the general idea of government by consent that is the foundation of the whole Anglo-American tradition of ordered liberty.*****

Yeah, but there is also the issue of the majority subjucating the minority. It is why we are a Democratic Republic and not a pure Democracy. Heck, if we were a pure Democracy both you as LDS, and me as the skeptic, would be outlawed.

**** In any case, it strikes me that there are three ways a legal regime can address a particular practice: It can (1) forbid it; (2) tolerate it (society may or may not have moral objections to the practice, but does not either prohibit it or encourage it), or (3) give it special recognition and status. In 10-20 years, will there be a special institution giving society's approval to oral sex -- call it "orriage"? "Sodomage"? By your logic, the iron laws of history must not only strike down barriers to sexual practices, but lead to their special recognition by society. ****

Yep. And throughout history laws and practices have indeed recieved special recognitiion by society. From racial issues, to womens rights issues, to even childrens rights issues. Just takes awhile.

*** And I think the "idea" is absolutely lethal to consensual government. ***

It's worked in the past. And our Government didn't implode. Though it did come close during the Civil War. But heck, if our country is so polarized that an issue such as this can tear it apart.... then it's time I guess. But I somehow doubt it.

***** Public servants are responsible to the law. Gavin Newsom is every bit as out of line as that judge in Alabama with his Ten Commandments monument. While I doubt we're going to go the way of Haiti anytime soon, when public servants elevate their personal beliefs over the law -- making their jurisdiction into a government of men, not laws -- that's completely inconsistent with republican government. Those officials need to be impeached every bit as quickly as the Alabama judge was removed. *****

And perhaps he will. But like the Ten Commandments thing it has brought an issue to the forefront. In this case the issue deals with civil rights. Many do not think homosexuals should have them. I happen to think they do. Slowly but surely it seems as though society is coming around though it will take longer to be sure.

Posted by TheProudDuck: Mar 2 2004, 02:47 PM
QUOTE
***** A question occurs to me, Scott: Are there any forms of sexual activity that you consider less morally admirable than others, but that you would nevertheless not want criminalized? ****

Between consenting adults I do not put my values on others. So morality has nothing to do with it. As far as the rest of your essay; it's a pretty good defense of the various Islamic laws regarding the same issue. Why not just stone them to death? Or entrap and torture them like is going on in Egypt. Same with adulters, and any other sexual activity you may not like?


I think you're missing my point, which is that I am capable of taking the position that something is immoral, but should not be illegal, while as I understand it, you draw the line between sexual behavior you have no moral problem with, and behavior that you think should be criminalized (rape, abuse, etc.) Your position, incidentally, is essentially J.S. Mill's, namely that society is not justified in restraining, either by law or moral disapproval, of any conduct that does not directly harm other people. I think Mill was wrong (in particular with respect to the "directly" part), but that's a debate for another day.

As for your comparing my essay to the Sharia laws about stoning and torturing sexual deviants, how is that any more fair than the (often criticized) tactic of comparing gays to pedophiles?

What you're asking is why, if I'm not willing to grant same-sex coupling the recognition of marriage, I don't go "all the way" and decree that gays be crushed under walls, Taliban style. The answer is simple: because that would be grossly disproportionate to the social good I hope to gain. So, in my opinion, would be criminal laws against gay sex. The remedy to what I still believe to be a real problem (the encouragement of sexual libertinism) can't be so destructive of liberty, or so disproportionate, that it causes more harm than it prevents. We shouldn't criminalize less-than-ideal sexual expression for the same reason we don't impose the death penalty for running red lights.

QUOTE
*** Why would my train of thought lead to outlawing mixed-race marriages, or sodomy laws, or restrictions on oral sex? No significant part of the public would want these things.*****

They used too. They do in many parts of the world. It's where the line is drawn.


And it's up to us to use good judgment in drawing that line. Like it or not, both you and I draw lines as to what sexual conduct is acceptable.

QUOTE
*** My train of thought is simply that if it is offensive to a secularist to have his government seem to endorse a religion with which he disagrees, it is also offensive that the general public have their government endorse a moral proposition with which it disagrees. The whole concept relates back to the general idea of government by consent that is the foundation of the whole Anglo-American tradition of ordered liberty.*****

Yeah, but there is also the issue of the majority subjucating the minority. It is why we are a Democratic Republic and not a pure Democracy. Heck, if we were a pure Democracy both you as LDS, and me as the skeptic, would be outlawed.


I doubt that last bit, especially in California. There's simply no popular sentiment for criminalizing skepticism or Mormonism. You might want to give people a little more credit. After all, Britain has no First Amendment, and yet minority religions aren't criminalized. (Although I think that Britain, like most of Europe, "walk[s] to the uplands of tolerance by the easy paths of indifference.")

Just as a majority, in a consensual system of government, should not be allowed to impose on a minority things the minority could never be reasonably expected to consent to, the reverse is also true: the minority should not be able to impose its values on the minority. The trick is to balance these two things, not to empower the minority with an absolute veto. (That was what did in the Polish republic of the 18th century.)

QUOTE
**** In any case, it strikes me that there are three ways a legal regime can address a particular practice: It can (1) forbid it; (2) tolerate it (society may or may not have moral objections to the practice, but does not either prohibit it or encourage it), or (3) give it special recognition and status. In 10-20 years, will there be a special institution giving society's approval to oral sex -- call it "orriage"? "Sodomage"? By your logic, the iron laws of history must not only strike down barriers to sexual practices, but lead to their special recognition by society. ****

Yep. And throughout history laws and practices have indeed recieved special recognitiion by society. From racial issues, to womens rights issues, to even childrens rights issues. Just takes awhile.


So, to follow up -- do you seriously think there will eventually be a special official institution centered around oral sex? Maybe "Monicage" would be a better name ...

*** And I think the "idea" is absolutely lethal to consensual government. ***

It's worked in the past. And our Government didn't implode. Though it did come close during the Civil War. But heck, if our country is so polarized that an issue such as this can tear it apart.... then it's time I guess. But I somehow doubt it

QUOTE
***** Public servants are responsible to the law. Gavin Newsom is every bit as out of line as that judge in Alabama with his Ten Commandments monument. While I doubt we're going to go the way of Haiti anytime soon, when public servants elevate their personal beliefs over the law -- making their jurisdiction into a government of men, not laws -- that's completely inconsistent with republican government. Those officials need to be impeached every bit as quickly as the Alabama judge was removed. *****

And perhaps he will. But like the Ten Commandments thing it has brought an issue to the forefront. In this case the issue deals with civil rights. Many do not think homosexuals should have them. I happen to think they do. Slowly but surely it seems as though society is coming around though it will take longer to be sure.


Again, it seems to me that it's too easy to appropriate the name "civil rights" and force the other side on the defensive. I think gays DO have civil rights. Forcing me to accept an institution called "gay marriage" is a civil wrong.

Posted by sgallan: Mar 2 2004, 03:03 P
The answer is simple: because that would be grossly disproportionate to the social good I hope to gain.****

And to me your "social good" in this instance is bad and hurtful to many kind people I know. But as is often the case with conservative positions; actual people seem to count less than paradigms. It is why I could never become a conservative. Your policies are mean. Almost purposefully so. The other sides are often no less detrimental, but at least theirs is usually because of stupidity.

*** And it's up to us to use good judgment in drawing that line. Like it or not, both you and I draw lines as to what sexual conduct is acceptable. *****

Which is why we are having this conversation. But as usual the conservative positions are behind the curve, and the liberal positions (like what is going in in SF) are ahead of the curve. I am curious to see how it washes out. Constitutional Amendments however are only rhetoric. It's a hard document to change and cooler heads from both parties tend to understand the implications of such Ammendments. Thank goodness.

*** I doubt that last bit, especially in California. There's simply no popular sentiment for criminalizing skepticism or Mormonism. ****

Now you missied my point.

*** Just as a majority, in a consensual system of government, should not be allowed to impose on a minority things the minority could never be reasonably expected to consent to, the reverse is also true: the minority should not be able to impose its values on the minority. The trick is to balance these two things, not to empower the minority with an absolute veto. (That was what did in the Polish republic of the 18th century.) *****

Except perhaps when it is a case of human rights. But, because you think of the homosexual as deviant because of their sexual activities you also somehow think they are devoid of the rights of the rest of us.

*** So, to follow up -- do you seriously think there will eventually be a special official institution centered around oral sex? Maybe "Monicage" would be a better name ... ****

Sure, why not (I can do cynicism too).

*** Again, it seems to me that it's too easy to appropriate the name "civil rights" and force the other side on the defensive. I think gays DO have civil rights. Forcing me to accept an institution called "gay marriage" is a civil wrong. ****

I don't believe that you do. By not allowing Gays to marry you put them in an almost impossible position to do something you and I take for granted..... make a legal Union as a couple. Oh, you may suggest non-marraige Unions. But the legalities, and contract involved, in making those Unions as marraiges are today, would be a thick document requiring a lot of money to make...... and it would STILL have loopholes. Even if you could somehow make an airtight document you are STILL societly ostracizing them. And why do you do this? Because of the sex? Because of an ancient tradition? Well slavery and the subjucation of women were pretty ancient traditions. The latter is still a way of life in many countries. But in this one it has gone by the wayside. As should this one.

Posted by TheProudDuck: Mar 2 2004, 04:18 PM
QUOTE
And to me your "social good" in this instance is bad and hurtful to many kind people I know. But as is often the case with conservative positions; actual people seem to count less than paradigms. It is why I could never become a conservative. Your policies are mean. Almost purposefully so. The other sides are often no less detrimental, but at least theirs is usually because of stupidity.


I think you give the other side too much credit. The Democratic rank and file may elevate "paradigms over people" without understanding either the paradigm or the harm, but I think the leadership knows exactly what it's doing, and counts cynically on its constituents' stupidity.

Take the school-choice issue. The public education unions want the public education monopoly to stay seamless, so the party they own opposes virtually any efforts to introduce meaningful choice into the mix -- and condemns children who care about school to be dragged down by their peers in failing schools who don't. Real people, sacrificed to a "paradigm."

Or take the issue, currently pending before Congress, of whether a murderer of a pregnant woman may be charged under federal law with a double homicide (as is the case in California). The abortion-rights activists don't want a single crack in the idea that a fetus, up to birth, is nothing more than body tissue, so they fight that; the families of murder victims be damned.

Sometimes, though, people get hurt in the name of the larger good. The Endangered Species Act has destroyed the livelihoods of whole communities in logging country -- real misery, but perhaps worth it. Our legal and tax systems routinely ruin people's finances. Sometimes that's necessary in order to finance the whole society; if we tried to arrange too many compassionate exceptions, we could swallow the whole system.

I don't think the sexual culture of this country is healthy. (I don't necessarily think the sexual culture of the 1950s was perfect, either.) I think that diluting the unique status of marriage any further will do more harm than good, which is why I have reluctantly to take the position I do knowing that decent people may be hurt.

QUOTE
Except perhaps when it is a case of human rights. But, because you think of the homosexual as deviant because of their sexual activities you also somehow think they are devoid of the rights of the rest of us.


What rights are homosexuals "devoid of" that the rest of us have? Only one "right," as you define it -- the right to compel people to deem a union of two people of the same sex a "marriage," just as morally admirable as a real marriage. Right now, I don't have that right, either.

QUOTE
But as usual the conservative positions are behind the curve, and the liberal positions (like what is going in in SF) are ahead of the curve.


Uh huh. Like those liberal positions on Keynesian economics, unconditional welfare, and accommodation with the Soviet Union were so far ahead of the curve.

QUOTE
It's a hard document to change and cooler heads from both parties tend to understand the implications of such Ammendments. Thank goodness.


Much easier to get a "legal realist" judge to change it for you without changing it -- and so we get to the realm of penumbras and emanations, and different meanings of "is", etc.

QUOTE
But the legalities, and contract involved, in making those Unions as marraiges are today, would be a thick document requiring a lot of money to make...... and it would STILL have loopholes.


With no more than a couple of legislative tweaks, I could arrange to cut and paste the relevant language from the California family code into a form contract which would be available for ten bucks.

QUOTE
Well slavery and the subjucation of women were pretty ancient traditions. The latter is still a way of life in many countries. But in this one it has gone by the wayside. As should this one.


For every tradition that has been branded a relic of barbarism and discarded, there are a dozen others that continue to stand the test of time. It's the exception rather than the rule for a truly bad idea to last long. If they aren't discovered for their flaws and rejected by the society in which they arise, they destroy the society and themselves along with it. I don't think society's view of same-sex couplings as less morally preferable to marriage is the equivalent of slavery, and I imagine you'd find quite a few descendants of slaves who'd think so even more vehemently.

Posted by sgallan: Mar 2 2004, 07:53 PM
PD -

Part of the problem with these kinds of discussions is you (the collective version) are always right, and all good, while the other side is always wrong, and all bad. And vice-versa. And you wonder why people like me stay in the middle (save on freedom and rights type issues for me). Well to me both of your poop stinks. Badly. I have been following the process for far too long to buy into such a polarized position as you are selling. I mean no wonder society as a whole is so polarized. It is agenda thing personfied by the "all good all bad" stuff. At least in the past people could posture on the outside and deal on the inside. No more. The sides actually seem to dislike each other. And neither has any problem with spreading that "they suck we don't" paradigm. Your personnal attitude is typical and is why I am - like many people - disgusted with politics and politicians. I mean I can hear your spin on FOX, over and over and over, every single day. And I can hear theirs on a combination of MSNBC and CNN. As far as your positions as to sexual things..... reminds me of the old saw.... "Democrats want in your wallets and Republicans want in your bedrooms". Neither of you are conservative however; you both want control. LOTS of control. The emphasis is different. So on this battle, because it is personnal, I will continue to battle on the side I am on, with the understanding - considering the changes in the past 25 years - things are coming around. That conservatives are against this sort of this isn't suprising. One, they have always had issues with things sexual. Two, it is a way of exerting control they rather enjoy.... much of it religious based. And third, because they really don't mind being mean. And don't mind hurting people who do not fit in their box. I really believe this. I have been around enough, and close enough a follower of politics, to have had it validated again and again.

But then again, you'll disagree. Because your wing of the part is all good.... of course.

Posted by TheProudDuck: Mar 2 2004, 09:32 PM
I tend not to think much of the conceit that one is "in the middle." It's too easy to say "a pox on both your houses" and think yourself above it all. While a thinking person will rarely if ever agree exactly with every official plank of a party platform, the two-party system in this country has traditionally (as in, since the Federalists squared off against the Democratic-Republicans) served to group generally like-minded people together in broad coalitions -- kind of like European parliamentary systems do in practice, with their dozens of parties, except without those systems' risk of giving kingmaker status to extremist parties and thereby increasing their power. I think it would be a rare person who, after giving careful consideration to the ideas generally associated with each side, would find his own ideas equally distributed on both sides. One will always be slightly more one way than the other.

Having determined that my own thinking tends to fall on the Republican side, it is true that I tend to criticize Democratic positions more. I figure that the other side is best situated to criticize Republicans, and don't need my help. (Although there is a certain red, puffy-faced anti-intellectual numbskullery about a certain flavor of Orange County Republican that does try my patience.)

And given what you said -- "But as usual the conservative positions are behind the curve, and the liberal positions (like what is going in in SF) are ahead of the curve" -- I'm not sure I'm convinced that you're as much in the middle as you said. Although you did clarify that you leave the "middle" on "freedom and rights type issues." Your leanings strike me as generally libertarian.

There's a strong libertarian tradition in my extended family, to the extent that several members are planning to perform the singularly useless exercise of voting for the actual Libertarian Party. My own thinking is that social libertarianism, taken to extremes, makes economic libertarian untenable. Societies are kept together and functioning, and restrained in their self-destructive tendencies, both by law and by culture. Where constructive social restraints are relaxed (as has been the case with inner-city family life), families and the larger society literally fall apart. Poverty spreads along with illegitimacy; the rising generation isn't socialized properly, and governments, in turn, feel irresistible pressure to intervene to solve the resulting problems. So bureaucratic control increases (and since it's inegalitarian to focus that control only in problem communities, the control is imposed over everyone). Taxes have to be raised to pay for program after ineffective program. As government's involvement increases, so do opportunities for lawyers to skim their share.

In short, there's an inverse proportion between the effectiveness of society's "little platoons" of private virtue, as Edmund Burke called them, and government control.

Tell me -- do you really believe that mainstream conservatives are as anxious to regulate "bedroom" conduct as "the other side" is anxious to regulate economic matters? Name one conservative figure who, in the past decade, has advocated criminalizing private, consensual sexual conduct. (Criticism of courts for inventing a right to such conduct, when it clearly doesn't appear in the Constitution, isn't the same thing.) There's the abortion issue -- but since when do abortions take place in the bedroom? That's hardly just a "sex" issue; what draws such passion to the debate is that it potentially involves questions of life and death. Frankly, given the Bush administration's essential abandonment of restraint in domestic spending, it seems to me that both parties are a lot more interested in wallets than bedrooms.

"Old saws" often contain more pith than truth.

QUOTE
I mean no wonder society as a whole is so polarized. It is agenda thing personfied by the "all good all bad" stuff. At least in the past people could posture on the outside and deal on the inside. No more. The sides actually seem to dislike each other. And neither has any problem with spreading that "they suck we don't" paradigm.


I don't particularly like this polarization, either. Part of it, I think, has to do with the fact that as demographic mapping techniques have improved, the parties have gotten really good at redistricting their officeholders into safe seats, where they can just appeal to their bases and don't have to worry about building coalitions. Part of the problem, too, is that our governmental system has been so effective at making compromises, that all the easy compromises have been made -- and the only issues left are the ones where compromise is virtually impossible. On cultural issues, the polarization may largely be a function of "your side's" very success -- it's taken so much of the ground, with the assistance of a like-minded judiciary, that the other side may reasonably suspect that the give-and-take is all give for them.

Posted by sgallan: Mar 2 2004, 10:03 PM
**** Frankly, given the Bush administration's essential abandonment of restraint in domestic spending, it seems to me that both parties are a lot more interested in wallets than bedrooms. ****

This point I'll conceed as a practical matter. Though bedrooms seem to be more of interest in an election year. Must cover ones political base.

I'll admit to being a social libertarian to a point. My values and mores are not yours. And I can provide ample anecdotal information (my family) where your mores, and control preogatives - which assume the doom of society, if such mores are relaxed -, do not work for our situation. I can even extend such information to my peer group as well. I am old enough to be able to look back now. And we could trade statistics, and their interpetations, to each prove our point, to the point a debate could go into the thousands of posts. I could also google up plenty of quotes to show various politicians saying things to prove my point. But do you really want to go there? That kind of stuff is so cheap and out of context as to be useless.

Basically you seem to suggest that homosexual marraige is a doom and gloom senario for society as we know it. I see it as society growing up..... as it has done the past as well. I think your views are partially upbringing based, religion based, and of course political party based. All of which suspect any who do not practice a morality you proscribe too. A conservative morality. Change scares the conservatives. This is probably a good thing as the other side can also get a bit carried away. One slows or balances the other. Otherwise, I see the one side purposefully hurting an entire group of people. And I simetimes wish a homosexual child on those people. I think it may be the only way they could truly gain any perspective.
posted by Thomas at 1:43 PM

 
The main reason I'm skeptical of ("have contempt for"?) the concept of a "living Constitution," as advocated by liberal legal scholars like Laurence Tribe and as recently endorsed by Justice Kennedy in Texas v. Johnson (the case overturning Texas sodomy laws on the basis of what appears to be a recognition of a Constitutional right to freedom of sexual expression) is that it frees judges the duty of ever having to make decisions that are distasteful to them. This is inconsistent with the ideal of the rule of law -- the idea that the law is superior to the rulers.

A jurist who subscribes to a legal philosophy that holds that the legitimacy of a judge's decisions arises from a particular law, whose legitimacy in turn arises from the fact that this law was duly enacted by a means by which the consent of the people to be governed by the law was expressed, will occasionally find himself forced to apply the law in a manner with which he personally disagrees. A judge who opposes decriminalizing marijuana, for example, might find himself forced to conclude that Constitutional provisions of federalism require that a state law's medical-marijuana law be upheld.

A jurist who believes the Constitution's meaning changes over time, on the other hand, will never face the same moral challenge of deciding between his politics and his commitment to the law. If he believes that the purpose of the due-process or equal-protection clauses is to allow judges to enforce prevailing standards of what ought to be legal, he will almost certainly determine that these "prevailing standards" are those he himself holds.

Empirical evidence bears this out. The "non-originalist" approach to Constitutional law invariably results in the finding of Constitutional rights to the exact same liberal values that happen to be held by the decisionmakers themselves. As far as I can find, there has never been a case where a liberal Supreme Court justice applied non-originalist reasoning to arrive at a decision inconsistent with his or her own politics.

Like many nominally religious people, they have created a god that has the advantage of never disagreeing with them. posted by Thomas at 7:21 PM

 
The Corner on National Review has been tossing around the idea, now that John Kerry appears to be the Democratic presidential frontrunner, that his Vietnam service may re-ignite old arguments about that war. It's an interesting thought, since the two sides on the original arguments have largely gone on to remain politically opposed, although on different questions.

My view on the question is that the great flaw in the Vietnam war was lack of judgment (the worst of all "ills afflicting men," according to Sophocles.) In retrospect, the decision to fight a war that might have been expected to do more harm than it could have been expected to prevent, the conduct of the campaign, the acceptance of an attritional strategy, and the domestic political considerations that led the Johnson administration to escalate the war were all ill-considered decisions that caused great harm.

But it's not for lack of judgment that the most vocal of the Vietnam protestors, and their latter-day ideological heirs, faulted America for its participation in that war. Rather, they largely defined the war as arising from unjust motives. It wasn't that the decision to fight was ill-considered, but rather that we were on the wrong side. Even Martin Luther King, right on most other subjects, couched his opposition to the war in terms that described America as an aggressor. Others accused the United States of seeking economic advantage (although it would seem that we had all the rice and coconuts we needed).

Part of this problem, I think, went back to McCarthyism and its embarrassment of the anti-Communist cause. The unspoken rationale was that a communist insurgency really wasn't that bad; that it was essentially a revolt against oppression and therefore shouldn't be opposed. (Arthur Schlesinger once remarked that if McCarthy and his merry men had gone after undercover Nazis, nobody would have objected.)

One of the defining distinctions between a conservative and a liberal is that, by and large, the former views Nazis and Communists as equally evil totalitarians, while the latter tends to see some features in Marxism that at least partially mitigate its butcher's bill (which is often attributed to the ideology's never having been "properly applied.") Keep in mind that I'm referring here most to the hard Left, as opposed to the average NPR-listening, PBS-watching conventional wisdom liberal, who probably hasn't thought things this far through.

So the conservative is inclined to think that opposing communist attempts at conquest or insurgency as a good thing in principle, with the degree of opposition to any particular campaign a matter for judgment.

Things get interesting because a nation's exercise of collective judgment is affected by the conduct of individuals, which conduct may be immoral in a way the actual exercise of judgment is not. In other words, government officials may place career advancement or ass-covering foremost, and may be less than truthful in their presentation of facts, or less than forthcoming about the reasoning behind their conclusions. There was enough of this in the 1960s military and government culture that there are individuals who do bear moral guilt for what happened there.

But that moral guilt does not attach to the United States as a whole, because it's hard to see how the ultimate American aim in Southeast Asia was anything but legitimate, even noble, namely, the prevention of the spread of a tyranny with a clear record of inflicting human misery. Maybe the "domino theory" was flawed; maybe communism wouldn't have spread beyond Indochina, or if it had it wouldn't have mattered. (Although the "dominos"in Laos and Cambodia did topple in short order after the fall of South Vietnam, with horrific results in the latter case, and I'd imagine there would have be plenty of Thais, Malaysians, and Indonesians who'd take exception to the idea that it didn't matter if they'd gotten the Khmer Rouge treatment.) Yes, after 1989, it became conventional wisdom that communism was inherently flawed and couldn't endure, but that wasn't clear at the time.

And even if one described the Vietnam war as "somebody else's civil war" (and it was largely a case of one country conquering another, the Viet Cong having been largely destroyed by 1968), it's not as if liberal conventional wisdom opposes intervening in civil wars; witness Bosnia and Kosovo. (Although the hard-core Left is happy to oppose those things, too; witness Michael Moore on Kosovo -- i.e. we were dropping bombs on people who hadn't done anything to us. Of course, he complicates things by endorsing for president Wesley Clark, who commanded the Kosovo expedition Moore once condemned. Keeping up with these people isn't easy.)

Bottom line, after extended unedited stream-of-consciousness ramble -- The problem with the Vietnam war was poor national judgment, not malice or greedy motive. No nation will ever be free from mistakes, although a free nation, by preserving the means of correction from within, will probably make fewer of them.

This brings me to the theme which a lot of Democrats are making with respect to the present war -- i.e. that their patriotism is being questioned for their opposition to the war. I hear a lot more Democrats insisting that their patriotism is not in question than I hear Republicans actually questioning it; in fact, nobody has yet to provide me with an actual example of a Democrat's patriotism being impugned by a major Republican figure. (On the other hand, Wesley Clark and Howard Dean have both explicitly impugned President Bush's patriotism.) Maybe they protest too much; maybe they've found it to be an effective political tactic, or maybe the Left has never gotten the British "Khaki Election" of 1902 (in which the Liberals were characterized as being on the side of the Boers in the Boer War) out of its collective mind.

Most of the Democrats, especially the celebrity kind, who protest this phantom questioning of their patriotism, in fact have nothing wrong with their patriotism. They may be underinformed or sophomoric in their criticisms, but it's entirely possible to be an underinformed and sophomoric patriot; there are plenty of those on the pro-war side. However, I do think there comes a point where a person's criticism of his country becomes so constant, one-sided, and malicious, that to call him a patriot -- a friend of his country -- is to destroy entirely the meaning of friendship.

While a friend may see his friend's faults and strive to correct them, a friend does not automatically take the opposing side every time his friend has a quarrel. A friend does not invariably believe the worst of his friend, and impute to him the worst possible motives in every case. A friend's friendship is not conditional on his friend's conforming himself in every respect to what the first person thinks the friend should be.

So while a dissenter may well be a true patriot, and in many cases one who does his country the highest service, I also think it's fair to say that someone who thinks behaves towards his country as described above, is not his country's friend. Especially when, in ascribing to his country the worst possible motives, he's consistently wrong. I may occasionally misjudge my friend, and do him wrong, suspecting him of some weakness; if so, it behooves me to apologize and try to avoid making the same mistake. But the chronic, self-proclaimed dissidents who wrongly judge America time after time, and will only think kindly and behave decently towards their country if it is a socialist utopia, are not patriots if the word is to have any meaning.

Maybe that doesn't mean anything. Maybe to be patriotic is nothing more morally significant than to like chocolate. A true liberal internationalist might well say that patriotism, far from being something that one should object to have questioned, is actually a negative trait. But then, that person should not object when his patriotism is questioned; if patriotism is a bad thing, then someone who questions yours is paying you a compliment.

Ironically, after having written way too much about this, the practical result of the above is negligible. If a person is actually no patriot, that's his business. I believe patriotism is one of those deeper things that is strongest when least spoken of. Patriotism, or the charge of its lack, should not be used as tactical leverage in political maneuvering or reasoned debate. A democratic country operates best, and makes its most informed and legitimate decisions, when discussion of the country's course is reasoned and deliberative. To accuse a critic of a particular policy of lack of patriotism does nothing to refute the merits of his argument -- and it's the whole point of democratic debate is that it takes all available facts and viewpoints into account. (By the same token, of course, mature Democrats ought to avoid waving the bloody shirt of "you're questioning my patriotism.")

posted by Thomas at 1:31 PM