Palin Comparison

This presidential campaign is the first in which people of my generation are a part of either ticket. As it happens we have Barack Obama, who is a couple of years older than i and Sarah Palin who is a couple of months younger. Similar age is about the only thing they have in common though, beyond the trivial coincidences of living in the same nation and being of the same species.

It's no surprise that i support Obama and disdain Palin. Obama is well educated, enlightened and informed. Palin is not, which is fine, but not really what i'm looking for in a potential president. I don't like the fake-folksy demeanor, the persistent reinterpretation of history, or the staunch pro-life stance (people compare Palin to Reagan, but she's much more like W). I am concerned that she is ignorant of foreign policy, and that she's embroiled in various small-time political scandals that indicate a tendency to seek and abuse power.

Worse though is the religious rhetoric, and the fundamentally (no pun intended) anti-intellectual views that she espouses. I don't think she's smart enough to be intentionally theocratic, but clearly she's the sort who cannot separate her fundamentalist beliefs from her political actions. Like all religious neo-conservatives she will rail against the "terrorists" (viz. Muslims), but the real enemies of her belief system are skeptics, freethinkers, scientists, seekers of truth. Her ideas would be loathsome to a John Adams or a Thomas Jefferson, as they are clearly loathsome to the woman with whom she is most frequently contrasted: Hillary Clinton.

I'm confounded how any fraction of the 70% of the population who disapproves of Bush can support Sarah Palin, who is essentially a female version of the same thing. I'm not exactly an Obama groupie. I have issues with his traditionally liberal view of government and i'm nervous about how his tax restructuring will affect people in California where so much of one's income goes to housing. But he's such a vastly superior human being in all respects that it's really no contest. I know that the dyed-in-the-wool conservatives will vote McCain/Palin regardless, but anybody who's undecided at this point must seriously consider the very real possibility of President Palin. I do not want the first President of my generation to be such a poor representative.

Barack Obama

Like most people of sound mind, i'd vote for a fence post if the Democrats decided to run one against John McCain in the fall. So for me the only choice is between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (and, possibly, a fence post). Prior to the beginning of the primaries I had a slight preference for Mrs. Clinton, but at present I have a slight preference for Mr. Obama.

I like many things about Mrs. Clinton. I think she would come to the White House better prepared to handle the responsibilities, and I see some of her ostensible liabilities as assets (to paraphrase Tina Fey, she might be a bitch, but bitches get things done). She makes a good point that Obama's message of hope has a whiff of magical thinking, and i think there's little doubt that in the Washington meat grinder she would be the more resilient politician. Mrs. Clinton has definitely been hurt by people around her, especially her husband and Geraldine Ferraro. But what's hurt her in my mind is that she has yet to take an unequivocal stance on any issue, even the war in Iraq, which is the key issue for my money.

Obama is hardly perfect either. He has some troubling religious affiliations, and his proposals for how he would change things are too vague for my pragmatic mind. I have conservative tendencies with respect to small government and fiscal responsibility, and those aren't things that I expect Obama to emphasize. But i'm very pleased with the way that he speaks consistently and directly about his positions, even in potentially hostile environments. There is far less sense that he is tailoring his message for his audience, or exploiting the prejudices or ignorance of his supporters. Finally, as with Bill Clinton in the early 90s, i get the impression that he is pretty smart, or at least is thinking for himself. I think even most republicans are getting tired of the pretense that Bush has any idea what he's talking about.

The best sign that Obama is on to something is the effort that the right-wing press is making to persuade people that he's bad. There was Rush Limbaugh's cynical effort to get people to vote for Clinton in order to divide the democrats, and Fox news has been discussing his "decline" after the Ohio and Texas primaries. The mentally challenged Glenn Beck never fails to mention Obama when he's shilling for Jonah Goldberg's idiotic Liberal Fascism book. I'm sure there will be all manner of swift-boating to come, but it's sorta cool that Obama has already put the machine in motion.

The general election could be pretty interesting. Obama will probably have trouble attracting the centrist voters, while McCain might have problems rallying some of the party base. If Ron Paul had Ross Perot's money, I wouldn't even be surprised to see him as an independent candidate. I also worry a lot about Senator Obama's safety to be honest. There is still a segment of our population that will have a problem with an unabashedly liberal black candidate.

Don't Just Believe

During the course of the latest presidential campaign, there have been articles on various web sites announcing that candidate X (invariably republican) does not believe in evolution. I know that this is common usage, but it aggravates the heck out of me. It implicitly supports the nonsensical notion espoused by creationists that evolution is simply an alternative belief. I don't really expect people to say "candidate X does not support the neo-Darwinian mechanism of species variation", or something of that nature, but using the word "believe" is just confusing.

The analogy that i would use is this: I believe that the sun will rise tomorrow because in the 16000 or so days that i've been alive, it has always risen. My senses tell me that it's a reliable phenomenon, so even if i had no idea why it happens, i'd have faith that it will continue to happen indefinitely. The consistent rising-of-the-sun phenomenon constitutes good evidence, and makes my belief that the sun will rise tomorrow to be perfectly reasonable. However, thanks to some really smart people i don't have to just believe it. I can say with a high degree of certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow, because there are a couple of pretty good theories (both the Newtonian and Einsteinian approaches) that explain the motion of objects like planets and stars. The theories (they're just theories, mind you) are so good in fact that i can tell you, with a high degree of precision, when the sun will rise.

Similarly with the evolution of species, the fossil record, the general information about the age of the planet, the abundance of species, the variation of species that are geographically isolated, the similarity of genetic material between similar species, etc., constitute good evidence and make a belief in evolution perfectly reasonable. But when you add to that more than a century of development on explanations for how genetic variation leads to speciation, it's not only possible to believe that evolution occurs, but to understand how it occurs.

So, in the future, instead of saying that a candidate does not believe in evolution, i propose that we rather say the candidate does not understand evolution.

California Hates You Too, Glenn Beck

I've always thought Glenn Beck is a smug, whiny idiot whose secret ambition is to be Robin to Rush Limbaugh's neocon Batman. Fortunately for me, he saved me the need to prove it to anyone who might be skeptical.

Voter Apathy

This seems like it should be a good time for one of those long, philosophical posts on my view of the world. I'm pleased with the results of Tuesday's election, i'm elated that Rumsfeld is gone, and i'm relieved that Bush won't be able to use his last two years to screw things up even worse. But the only thing remarkable enough to capture my notice is how little i really care. At least we get to have a little fun at the expense of the right for a while.

Al-Zarqawi

Al-Zarqawi was an evil bastard and i'm glad he's dead (now if only we could direct two 500-pound bombs on to Fred Phelps). However, i found it really strange that they had a large, framed photograph of al-Zarqawi at the press conference. I understand that it's important to present proof that al-Zarqawi is dead, but the photo was kind of creepy. Had they shown the image digitally or given it to the news organizations to show in an inset, it would have seemed less strange i think. The poster-size, framed photo they were using in the press conference was the modern day equivalent of mounting the enemy's head on the top of your keep wall. Which, i'm sure, was the intent. But still.

There's probably a certain psychological benefit in killing al-Zarqawi, both within Iraq and here in the states. But can anyone really believe that it makes a significant difference? Does anyone feel that the Iraqi insurgency was organized along the lines of a typical military establishment or nation-state, so that killing the leader disrupts the whole organism? Perhaps i've been reading too much Global Guerillas, but to think that this was like killing Hitler or even Saddam seems mistaken. John Robb on GG calls Zarqawi a "violence capitalist", an idea that i can understand. He wasn't like the CEO of a multinational corporation; he was like a venture capitalist who directed resources and ideas toward people who were already willing to undertake the work. Eliminating him will definitely leave a temporary void in the enterprise of terrorism, but you can't spur chaos where chaos is the method of choice.

The War in Iraq

After 3 years, the war in Iraq still confuses me. I continue to believe that we shouldn't have gone to war, that the evidence for WMD in the country is dubious, that the pre-war intelligence was intentionally exaggerated, and that the connection between Iraq and 9/11 is non-existent. But i'm willing to believe Iraq was a potential laboratory for weapons development; in fact i bought into that argument until the UN weapons inspectors failed to find any evidence. And even though there was no relationship between the opportunistic and essentially secular regime of Saddam and the Islamic radicals who constitute our obstensible enemy, there's little doubt that he was a pyschopath who could have evolved into the Arabic world's version of Hitler.

Today you can hear reports that Iraq is on or past the brink of civil war while at the same time hearing that democratic government is beginning to take hold. I think that both are possibly true and that both are possibly false. Mostly i think that neither is really a situation that we can make sense of given our (or at least my) frames of reference. In our relatively prosperous and stable society, the institutions of democratic government function with frustrating uncertainty, and even with those institutions our country has managed to reach civil war. But i don't think the history of the US Civil War can teach us much about the deep-seeded cultural and religious differences that prevail in the middle East. So i don't think either democracy or civil war are touchstones that we can use to identify the situation in Iraq, though the latter fits better on top of chaos.

My only moral absolute in life is that i'd do anything to make a safe future for my kids. If i thought that waging war against Iraq would accomplish that, i'd be all for it. I'd enlist. But it won't, and every time i hear about needing another X billions of dollars for the war or about the nuclear ambitions of Iran or about the further erosion of our civil liberties in the name of the war on terror, i sense that we're heading toward a future that will make me long for the days of the cold war. It seems not only likely, but inevitable, that we will see more terrorist attacks in the future on US soil, maybe even nuclear attacks; that in the wake of those attacks our people will be willing to make more concessions to government surveillance; and that our economic growth will be inhibited by the dollars we'll have to spend controlling our borders and battling our nebulous enemy. If this is the outcome of protecting our interests, then i would hate to see the alternative.

Star Trek Syndrome

On Star Trek, especially the original show, any new culture that the Enterprise encountered would be suprisingly monolithic. In some episodes, the new planet would have two conflicting cultures as part of the dramatic tension for that particular plot. This was a necessary expedient for an hour-long show that was trying to make fairly broad points. But it always amused me that even though our own planet has billions of people with hundreds of languages and radically different cultural behaviors, every other planet in the galaxy is monocultural.

This seems to be the way that most news media treat other countries too. Even fairly sophisticated news outlets, like NPR or The Economist, treat foreign cultures (think Iraq, Iran, China) as if the entire population has a single, collective set of opinions. For places that get extra attention these days (Iraq) you might get to hear the collective opinions of the major factions within the country (Kurdish Iraq, Sunni Iraq, Shiite Iraq). In contrast, we know that political opinions can differ widely within a given family; and within a neighborhood opinions can vary so radically that were we the subject of news analysis a civil war would be considered imminent.

I know that even with the best intentions the news media can't really provide a realistic picture of political and cultural variation; and i can know intellectually that they are applying a sort of statistical simplification much like the red state/blue state nonsense applied to our own country. But i wonder if in the end this sort of coverage is just neutral or if it's harmful. For example, it's possible for both right and left to use this sort of coverage to support their own viewpoint (think of the times you've heard a sentence start with "The Iraqi people"). More generally, i think it's just dehumanizing. It completely collapses the scope and breadth of ancient, complex, and varied cultures, which i think makes it easier for Western cultures (or at least the US) to dismiss the other cultures as small and insignificant; as if we were dealing with some isolated, anachronistic tribe.

Iraqi Elections

I think this image from Fark sums it up for me.

More On Morality and Law

I came across an interesting post by Judge Richard Posner on the question that i debated with myself a while back. Good read, and considerably more informed than my own opinion.

Imperial Hubris

I finally finished reading Michael Scheuer's book Imperial Hubris: Why The West Is Losing The War On Terror. A bit of background: the book was originally published anonymously because Scheuer was a veteran of the CIA and that was the condition demanded by his employer. Scheuer left the CIA not long after the book came out. Although he says it was voluntary, i've seen claims on the Internet ranging from a) his departure was CIA grandstanding intended to draw attention to agency concerns over lack of funding and influence to b) he was incompetent and needed to be purged along with all of the other chaff that Porter Goss so wisely swept away. I'm taking the content of the book and Scheuer's claims at face value, meaning that i think the facts could certainly be interpreted differently but i believe the sources from which the author draws (which are supposedly all publicly available) are factual and not hoaxes, speculation, or flights of fancy.

The book repeats several themes throughout the book. The first is that our government has failed to understand that Al Qaeda is not a terrorist organization, but rather a global insurgency. The distinction, the author claims, is that we treat terrorist organizations with a law enforcement approach, using the special forces and intelligence agencies to go after the perceived terrorist leaders, while we should instead treat the enemy as a well-trained military force that needs to be confronted with forces sufficient to overwhelm and decimate it. Scheuer cites evidence showing that the so-called terrorist training camps that we've all heard about did in fact provide more general military training with the intention of developing a conventional military force.

A second point that Scheuer repeatedly emphasizes is that bin Laden is not a murderous thug using radical Islam to justify his attempts to destroy Western culture. Rather he argues that bin Laden and Al Qaeda oppose specific US policies toward the Muslim world and not Western freedoms and individuality per se. The Islamists oppose US support for Israel, the US presence in Islamic countries, and US support of oppressive regimes in the middle east (e.g., Saudi Arabia). These policies, Scheuer argues, have enabled bin Laden to frame his actions in terms of a defensive jihad, and idea that has legitimacy in Islamic teachings and growing support in the Islamic world.

Scheuer's assessment of bin Laden is probably the most unsettling part of the book, and also probably the reason why it has not been given the attention that i would have expected. Scheuer casts bin Laden as not only a pious Muslim and a highly capable leader, but also as a classic Islamic hero who is admired even by those who disagree with his actions. At one point in the book he refers to bin Laden as a "great man", though he takes care to note that he means this in the sense of a person who has changed history. However, he also says that "there is no reason, based on the information at hand, to believe that bin Laden is anything other than what he appears: a pious, charismatic, gentle, generous, talented, and personally courageous Muslim who is blessed with sound strategic and tactical judgement..., a reluctant but indispensable bloody-mindedness, and extraordinary patience". Given that Susan Sontag was excoriated for suggesting that the 9/11 terrorists were not cowards, i'm surprised that Scheuer hasn't been dragged through the Fox News muck for such an assertion.

Scheuer opposes the war in Iraq, though it would be a stretch to say that this is an anti-war book. His opposition to the Iraq war is based in part on the concern that it's costing us people and resources, but more so on the idea that it's bolstering the claims of bin Laden and other Islamists that the US is systematically pursuing policies to destroy Islamic cultures (he calls the war a "Christmas gift" for bin Laden). Although those sound like the same arguments used by anti-war liberals, Scheuer is no pacifist. He rails against the Bush administration more for not prosecuting the war in Afghanistan quickly enough; for waiting to establish some sort of global alliance rather than going into Afghanistan immediately after September 11 when there was still an opportunity to do some damage to bin Laden's forces. (He spends large sections of the book on the failure of our government to understand the realities of fighting a war in Afghanistan and to learn from the experiences of the Soviet Union and others). But Scheuer concedes that we probably will not change our policies toward the Islamic world, and so he contends that our remaining option is to fight the war more aggressively and to accept that we must kill many people, lose many soldiers, and spend many years and much treasure in the attempt (he especially likes drawing parallels to the US Civil War). He also states that we must temporarily set aside concerns about the environment so that we can reduce our dependence on middle-eastern oil, which is to say that he thinks we should extract oil from ANWR and develop nuclear energy.

One of the scarier and more controversial claims in the book is that bin Laden has sought and received sanction from Islamic scholars to use weapons of mass destruction against the United States as part of his defensive jihad (i will resist the temptation to point out the irony of Al Qaeda attempting to use WMD as a preemptive strike in a defensive conflict. Or maybe i won't). The book claims that bin Laden needed "Islamic grounding" for the idea of using WMD against the US, and he found it in a treatise written by a Saudi cleric named Shaykh Nasir bin Hamid al Fahd. Basically, this document posits the notion that Western cultures could be held responsible for the deaths of millions of Muslims, and so the use of WMD against the US would be justified by principles in the Koran. I found one internet pundit who derides this claim-- stating that it's absurd to think that bin Laden could be given "permission" to use WMD against the US-- though i think he misses the point.

My favorite section of the book deals with the idea of the US attempting to transplant democracy into occupied countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, which Scheuer regards as tremendously misguided. I've heard arguments against the notion before, but they've tended to be either patronizing assertions that the countries in question lack the necessary cultural maturity, or "Prime Directive"-style arguments that insist that we should leave other countries alone to develop in their own time. Scheuer's argument is an extension of these ideas but is more sophisticated and persuasive. Roughly he argues that the democracy-in-a-box advocates ignore the long and bloody history that lead to the democracy in the US. Our democracy, he contends, doesn't just go back to the US Civil War or the American Revolution; but to conflicts that unfolded centuries before in the countries of our ancestors, to the influences that set the stage for philosophical arguments in favor of individual liberty and self-government that eventually manifested themselves in the actions of our country's founders. I prefer this argument because it doesn't assume that democracy is a predestined conclusion, an instinctive human desire, or even the highest form of social organization. It explains why countries in Eastern Europe were able and willing to move toward democratic structures, while other areas of the world with radically different cultural histories are resistant to it.

The book contrasts starkly with what we see, hear, and read on a daily basis in the various media. I regard this to be valuable, others will no doubt view it as evidence that Scheuer lacks objectivity or has simply failed to make his point. If you watch C-SPAN or CNN or Fox, if you read the newspaper or political blogs, if you listen to conservative radio or NPR you will come away with the idea that we've succeeded in Afghanistan, that Al Qaeda and bin Laden are extreme fringe elements within Islam bent on destroying our way of life, and that our goals in Iraq will be achieved if we can simply make it to democratic elections. According to Scheuer we have failed miserably in Afghanistan, allowing Al Qaeda and the Taleban to escape essentially unscathed and able to reestablish authority in the country as soon as we remove our forces. He says that despite the successes we've had against the Al Qaeda leadership, that it's actually a flourishing organization that we've helped to flourish by virtue of the policies we continue to pursue in the Islamic world. Democracy will not survive in these places he says, unless we are committed to an essentially permanent and expanding occupation of the countries, which places in question whether it's democracy at all.

There's much in this book that makes me uncomfortable. I don't like the idea that to win the war against the insurgency we must essentially kill enough of the enemy to remove their capacity or will to fight; though i have no argument against it other than Scheuer's own: change our policies in the Middle East so that the conflict has no basis. I don't know how we could meaningfully change the US stance toward Israel as Scheuer suggests, since the Al Qaeda position is that it must be destroyed. I don't agree with Scheuer that we must stop being so squeamish about losing US soldiers because they are, as he says, professional soldiers who know the consequences of their profession of choice. I don't agree that we need to exhibit more "manliness" in our execution of war.

On balance though i find myself persuaded by many of Scheuer's arguments. Probably my favorite quote that the author uses in the book is this gem from John Adams:

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her own example. She well knows that by once enlisting under banners other than her own, were they even banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, ambition, which assumed the colors and usurped the standards of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit.

This neatly sums up why i personally oppose our actions in the Middle East. More evidence that the founding fathers were simply smarter than we.

Does It Matter?

One factoid from the post-election miasma sticks in my brain for no apparent reason. I read a report that said the most watched news station was Fox News, while the most viewed news web site was CNN.com. I've made the dangerous assumption that this is true, and from my precarious perch have leapt to the even more dubious inference that this means red-state people tend toward TV viewing while blue-state people tend toward the Internet.

Oh, but i'm not done there, not by any means (i feel sort of like Vizzini in The Princess Bride). I think that the denizens of the blue archipelago are not only more Internet-centric, but that they are evolving toward a real (yet, puzzlingly, virtual) global culture. This hypothesis is not entirely based on their preference for bastions of the liberal media like CNN, but also on their willingness, even enthusiasm, for disassociating themselves from the remainder of the US. To couch this in more inscrutable, pseudo-intellectual sounding jargon, i'd say that the blue have disavowed nationalism entirely in favor of culturalism. That is, they value the principles of their culture over the principles of their nation where the two disagree; and they place little value on the integrity of the nation as an end in itself.

Big freakin' deal, you think. Well, i think it might be. Twenty years ago, the blue archipelago would have been just that-- a chain of isolated pockets of liberalism within a sea of conservatives. There'd have been solidarity, sure. In situations like the presidential election, all the blues would still get to voice their opinion as a whole. But now, the blue archipelago is really a unified culture that regards the red ocean as mysterious and hostile but effectively outside their borders. In fact, the blues have closer association with like-minded folks in the network community who are geographically beyond the extent of the US.

The immediate objection to this picture is that it doesn't matter how the blue people view themselves, since they are still subject to the laws of the land. That's true, but how important it is remains to be seen. First, keep in mind that most blue folk view much of the existing law as acceptable. The Bill of Rights? Sounds good. Dig those other amendments too, in fact, the Constitution is just fine as it is. The red states don't want stem-cell research, but we like it fine here in California. The administration might try to stop it, but they know they've got to betray their own principles of small government and local control in order to do it (as they did with medical marijuana laws).

This peculiar limit to great power is becoming the leitmotif of our age. Terrorists have proved that regardless of the destructive power at your disposal, there is only Pyrrhic victory against an unidentified enemy who regards death as a reward. In part, that's because the terrorists with whom we're at war have no nation, no real affiliation with place beyond Mecca and Medina, no adherence to principles codified outside of the Koran. No, i'm not comparing the blues to the terrorists, except to note that removing allegiance to nation changes a lot of the rules.

I think the real problem with this idea is that blue nation and red nation aren't really as strong separately, even if per-capita GDP is as good and military defenses are equivalent. The US isn't the most powerful nation simply because we're a democracy. It's also because of our size, our location, and the geographic diversity. Even if the relationship is tenuous, what drives our economy is the movement between strong centers of innovation, manufacturing, capital, agriculture and defense. It'll be long time before global culture homogenizes to the extent that this movement can happen across national borders, and those culture wars are likely to be a lot worse than the one on the home front.

Veteran's Day

I spent my formative years living on a farm in rural Indiana. It is a conservative community, but i didn't think of it that way then. I remember being a bit alarmed during high school when one of the nearby towns decided to remove The Grapes of Wrath from the local library, arguing that it was obscene. But everyone in the area was so like-minded that there was seldom any debate about politics, or even wrong and right.

One of the beliefs we all shared was that veterans were to be admired and respected. Like most boys i romanticized war; and, perhaps not like other boys, i watched a lot of movies from the 40s and 50s that romanticized it even more. I never got over the sense that WWII was a unique time in history and that those who survived it were somehow special. I still feel that it was a righteous and necessary war and that those who died made a worthwhile sacrifice.

In that community there was never much discussion about the relative virtues of Korea or Viet Nam. If you served, you were doing your duty and sacrificing for your country and that's all that mattered. I know that the same still applies to the first Gulf War, Kosovo, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq. And, liberal though i might be, i think that's the way it should be. For every Pat Tillman, there are thousands of high-school kids to whom the military is the best available career option. They volunteer knowing, if not entirely understanding, what the consequences might be. Their intentions are good and their sacrifice is every bit as meaningful as the soldiers from the world wars.

But these days i can't think of these things abstractly. When i think of war, i have to think in terms of my own sons fighting and maybe dying. I have to think in terms of what possible benefit there could be to mankind from their sacrifice. Whenever i hear about a new casualty from Camp Pendleton i immediately think about his or her parents and how they justify it to themselves. I can't imagine it. I feel that i would need more than the liberation of the Iraqi people. I would need more than guesses about what Saddam might have done if left undisturbed. I think talk about Sunni and Shiite and who the insurgents really are would infuriate me. Simply put, i would need to know precisely, unambiguously, who in the hell the enemy are and what the result would be if we defeated them.

Wall of Separation

I can't imagine there's ever been more commentary on an election, especially since this is the first presidential election with a fully-formed blogosphere. Some of it has been pretty angry; some has been still pretty angry; some pretty funny and insightful; and some has been smug. Even the people in my office have done little beyond talk about the election and peripheral concerns, like which country they're going to move to.

I've gone pretty quickly through my anger, denial, bargaining, depression states and i'm now into acceptance. Not easy acceptance, but i've calmed down enough to feel like maybe the country will survive to see a better day, some day, maybe after a prolonged dark ages. OK, so maybe i'm not completely past depression yet.

Anyway, now that i've reached a point where i can start to think again, i've begun to ponder those "moral issues" that came up in the exit polls. (Incidentally, the quotes around "moral issues" are a dead giveaway that you're a liberal commie-pinko). On both counts-- stem-cell research and same-sex marriage-- it seems to me that the so-called moral objections come primarily from Bible passages that appear to define conception as the beginning of life or that condemn homosexuality. As a graduate of a Bible-centric Lutheran elementary school, i can confirm that the passages condemning homosexuality are fairly explicit (in the right context); but in my opinion those that are used for the conception argument are less so.

In any case, i believe the moral objections come from Biblical references (if you disagree, there's not much point in going further, because, well nobody reads this stuff anyway). Fine, so far. If you believe that the Bible is the unadulterated word of God, and the Bible says no canoodling with the same sex, then by all means don't do it. At first glance though, this doesn't seem to me like a legitimate basis for a law given that this is the belief of one faction of one religion. On the other hand, some of our laws clearly are based on moral beliefs, albeit almost universally held beliefs like the idea that thou shall not wacketh thy neighbor unless thy neighbor preparest to wacketh thou. I figure somebody must have written something about where moral beliefs figure in the separation of church and state.

First, let's state what i believe to be the formal statement of church-state separation in the US Constitution, the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances


The relevant bit here is the establishment clause, which i think is interpreted to mean that the government (state and federal in light of the 14th amendment) can't establish a preferred or mandatory religion. This has generally been extended to mean that the government can't raise money in the name of one religion or use the symbols or rituals of a particular religion. But i don't know if this necessarily means that a particular religious belief can't be cast into law if enough people feel that it should be.

I looked first to James Madison, hoping that he'd have something to say. The best thing i found was here, Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance, which was written in response to a proposed law to levy taxes to support the clergy in Virginia. There's much great stuff here, but nothing that explicitly weighs in on my particular concern. I did really like this bit though:

What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society?

In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny: in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries.

I suspect that Madison would have had some good opinions on this matter, but i won't put words in his mouth.

Next i did a search on "moral laws", which was probably a mistake. I got a lot of stuff that disagrees with me, such as this well-written but largley pointless article by Alan Keyes about moral laws. He argues that making morally-based laws unconstitutional would essentially infringe on the free exercise of religion. Um, yeah. Apparently he was out sick on James Madison day during his constitutional law class. Also got a lot of stuff on Kant and the Metaphysics of Morals. This reminded me of a drinking game in college that my roommate and i used to play, where we'd get wasted and then try to read random passages from Kant. It makes more sense when you're drunk.

Sigh. I'm too lazy to do actual research, so i'm going to fall back on people who're smarter than me. Jefferson described the establishment and free exercise clauses in the constitution as a "wall of separation" between church and state. I think this is a great metaphor. Although i am a live-and-let-live sort of person, i don't think this metaphor implies moral relativism. We can have morality, in the Hobbesian sense of a social contract, without relying on Biblical interpretations. Clearly, prohibition of same-sex marriage doesn't fall into this morality. There's no reasonable basis to think that allowing gays to marry is going to harm society. Stem-cell research? I think it's hard to argue that an embryo is a living human.

BTW, isn't killing real, live human beings frowned upon in the Bible? I could swear i remembering reading that.

Sky Falls, Film at 11

So it appears that President Bush is gonna get another 4 years after all. According to the news, exit polls indicate that the important issues for Kerry voters were Iraq and the economy, while for Bush voters they were terrorism and "moral values". So, basically, Bush won the fear and hatred vote. Another triumph for Karl Rove.

My main problems with Bush were the unneccessary quagmire in Iraq and the lack of fiscal responsibility. But it's depressing and demoralizing to see that he apparently won on the basis of wedge issues like gay marriage and stem cell research. As a straight male who's been happily married for 17 years, i completely fail to see why allowing gay couples to marry would hurt the "sanctity" of my marriage. As a member of a family with a history of diabetes, i cringe at the idea that embryonic stem cell research will be inhibited because the republicans are pandering to a religious constituency that uses vague Biblical passages to define a cluster of cells to be a human life.

I expect another 4 years of inflating deficits, increasing health-care costs, erosion of civil liberties and environmental protections, weak economic growth, expanded militarism, and more and more hatred of our country. I sure hope i'm wrong. Step up to the plate, Mr. President.

Common Ground

My political awareness began with Watergate, so this is the 8th presidential election that i've followed (starting with Carter/Ford). This seems like the most contentious and angry so far, though it's more likely that i've just developed a greater intolerance for contention and anger than i had when i was younger. Still, i think there are certain things that almost all Americans agree on.

1) We don't want to be told what to do.

No, i've not taken a poll, but i'm convinced that virtually all Americans feel this way. Note that i didn't say that i think we have a basic problem with telling other people what to do, so long as the institution/organization/entity dictating correct behavior more or less agrees with our own beliefs. That's unfortunate. Democracy without sympathy for opposing viewpoints is, i think, classic tyranny of the majority. This attitude is not exclusive to any political perch. In my view, both socialism (i.e., the government tells you what to do), and theocracy (i.e., God's representatives tell you what to do) are fundamentally anti-American, even if they happen to make society more stable or more safe.

2) We value privacy and freedom over safety.

Many people will probably disagree with this given the post 9/11, Patriot Act world we live in. But i was listening to radio reports from Iraq recently and i was struck by how many Iraqis claimed that they were happier in Saddam's Iraq rather than in the obviously unsafe and unstable country they now inhabit. I can't really criticize this viewpoint-- if my children's lives were in daily danger i'd be willing to make many compromises also. But i suspect that many Americans would claim that they'd rather fight than submit to an invasive, totalitarian government. I'm less convinced that so many would actually fight for it, but i'm beginning to realize how much these are Western values rather than fundamentally human values.

3) We're all convinced that people who disagree with us are misinformed.

I can't even count the number of times during this election year that i've heard somebody on radio or TV claiming that they are dismayed by the fact that some other party (with whom they disagree) has clearly not bothered to find and assess the facts. These other people do not attempt to understand the issues but instead are swayed by celebrity endorsements or religious dogma or television pundits. The other people are often a) young, and therefore incapable of seeing the full historical context of the issues, or b) members of special interest groups that reflexively vote the group-think line, c) fanatics, incapable of reason, or d) idiots.

My crackpot theory is that we think this way now because we don't have to ever consider anyone else's viewpoint. Regardless of your personal positions there's probably a news source out there that will confirm all of your prejudices. There was a good article on the humor website SomethingAwful.com [not for kids or the weak] about the elections that concludes with the phrase "Be willing to make yourself mad". I think that's great advice, though i might have rather sad "Be willing to make yourself angry". Chances are that if you really attempt to absorb information from opposing sides you'll have no problem driving yourself mad.

4) We want the best possible world for the next generation.

It's impossible to explain to people without kids how a parent feels about their children. The way i generally put it is this: i'd be willing to die for my wife, but i'd be willing to kill for my children. Put another way, the love i feel for my children is completely irrational. There's no "good of the many" calculus that goes on in your brain with regard to the well-being of your kids. If i knew that i had the power to blink an entire civilization out of existence, and that doing so would save my kids, i'd do it without hesitation.

If that sounds nuts, you probably don't have kids. The positive thing about this is that in principle it leads a parent to want to cultivate a world that is both safe and abundant in opportunities. The down side is that when the system breaks, it breaks bad. Threatening or harming the children of one culture by another culture will lead to generations of hatred.

OK, so this is a long-winded way to advocate life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But, let's face it: if we can't have these, then there was no point in my ancestors fleeing all of the best countries in Europe.

Red State, Blue State

I live in a blue state, but in a very red part of a blue state, which doesn't mean that it's populated by communists but rather by conservatives. My personal leanings are more toward the blue so i tend to avoid discussions of any color with my mostly red neighbors. Mixing red and blue makes magenta, which is the liberal elitist's way of saying purple. I suppose it must be the undecided folk who are purple.

The whole red state/blue state silliness didn't make much sense to me until i remembered that you learn your primary colors in pre-school and kindergarten. I also noticed that whenever people refer to the red state/blue state concept they always list red first, blue second, just like in "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish". So, anyway, i don't think this idea was arbitrary at all, but instead a deliberate attempt to explain the electoral college at the level of a Dr. Seuss beginning reader book.

So i figure that the various news organizations that use these simplifications think we're just as stupid as we think they are. I bet this also explains the popularity of Bill O'Reilly, since he sounds just like my elementary school principal. Mostly likely the election results in November will not be expressed in terms of numbers of popular or electoral votes, or even in percentages. I expect them to use pictograms of beachballs. "President Bush has this many beachballs, and Mr. Kerry has this many beachballs. Can you tell who has the most beachballs?". Unfortunately, Florida will still have trouble tallying the votes/beachballs and the election outcome will be entrusted to the judges on American Idol, just like the constitution mandates.