Category Archives: Philosophy

I’m a horrible bastard, probably

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Tim Carney: An awful loss, a beautiful life, a daunting task | WashingtonExaminer.com.

I’m sure, after you read the linked story above, and read what I’m about to say, you are going to think what the headline says (except I’m the bastard, not you. Probably.)

The above story is from Tim Carney, a columnist at the Washington Examiner, who is understandably conservative. The story is about his nephew, who lived for only 442 days before dying, and suffering every one of those days with spinal muscular atrophy, being just about paralyzed at birth and getting worse as the days went on.

Carney writes about the love that the boy’s Catholic parents had for him, and how he spread love by being an object of attention:

Pat and Elena are devout Catholics from strong families, but their answer to this question can’t be set aside as some teaching in the Catechism. It’s a truth written on the human heart.

Jesus said that the two greatest commandments are to love God and love your neighbor. This is our purpose. This view is not uniquely Christian. It’s understood in other religions and in secular worldviews.

In this regard, John Paul lived a superior life. He exuded love. Before he lost control of his facial muscles, he beamed smiles that made grown men sob. Babies can love those around him with the pure, unconditional love we all should show.

Also, JP drew love from others. Neighbors, relatives and strangers cooked meals and gave time, equipment and money to help the Kilners. JP’s brothers and sisters showered him with affection. And Pat and Elena sacrificed immensely to care for him.

Before the wake at St. Patrick’s in Rockville, during an observance called Stations of the Cross, we read a Gospel passage in which Christ explains our duty to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and visit the sick.

“Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine,” the Lord says in this passage, “you did for me.”

Clearly a call to charity, this is also an exaltation of parenthood. Even moreso, this exalts the work of caring for helpless JP.

Tribulations both reveal character and form it. JP’s struggles revealed his parents’ heroic virtue and fostered virtue in others.

Pat and Elena saw John Paul as a blessing, and they generously shared that blessing with the world. They took him wherever they could, in a chair rigged with a ventilator and an IV. Elena shared wider, by penning hopeful, contemplative letters to John Paul every few weeks, which she posted on a blog.

One friend of mine, who never met the Kilners, read the “Letters to John Paul” blog. She wrote me, “John Paul’s story made me want to be a better person.”

John Paul continued shaping souls even in dying. A priest at St. Patrick’s took confessions during and after the wake. He commented afterwards that he heard some of the more honest, searching and contrite confessions he’s ever heard.

More than 500 people attended the beautiful funeral. One non-Catholic mourner was moved so much by the Mass she told Pat, “Now I understand why you’re Catholic.”

John Paul, who never spoke a word in his life, was the greatest evangelist of love, faith, virtue and hope I have ever met.

I look at this and shake my head. I don’t necessarily see love here. Yes, John Paul’s parents loved him, as any parent would, and they sacrified for him, as any parent would. But I look at this and think, “Why didn’t they just abort?”

Ayn Rand said it best when it came to abortion:

An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn).

Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body?

–”Of Living Death”, The Voice of Reason, pgs 58-59

Never mind the vicious nonsense of claiming that an embryo has a “right to life.” A piece of protoplasm has no rights—and no life in the human sense of the term. One may argue about the later stages of a pregnancy, but the essential issue concerns only the first three months. To equate a potential with an actual, is vicious; to advocate the sacrifice of the latter to the former, is unspeakable. . . . Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living: the right of young people to set the course of their own lives.

–”A Last Survey”, The Ayn Rand Letter, IV, 2, 3

Because of this stance, which I agree with, I don’t consider an embryo or a fetus to be a person like a born human, and thus am not a “pro-lifer.” (I’m willing to accept that personhood would emerge when the fetus displays cognition, or “neonatal perception,” but that’s very late in the pregnancy, and virtually nobody gets abortions at that stage.)

That’s also why, when I look at this, I think that the parents should have aborted. If they had known that the fetus was going to have spinal muscular atrophy, and therefore was going to have a short life full of suffering, why bring the fetus to term? Why increase suffering in the world?

Shouldn’t we, you know, work at reducing suffering? And if we should be doing that, then why bring to term a fetus that has congential problems and is going to have a life full of suffering? It doesn’t make any sense, and to me, it seems pretty sick to do so. Of course, I know some will retort that he wasn’t suffering, and the love he was receiving from his family was proof he wasn’t. But that’s crap. He was clearly in pain for 442 days, he was clearly suffering, there is no way around that.

UPDATE: In this case, the parents didn’t know…which means a great part of this is moot, for this case. In this case, continuing with the pregnancy is completely logical and understandable, and thus giving all you can for the child is similarly logical and understandable. Thus, a huge chunk of my blog post is irrelevant, and so I’ve deleted it. But I still stand by the idea that if a fetus has mental and physical problems, you should still head off at the pass a life full of suffering. That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it. Thus I won’t take down the rest of the post.

Even some pro-life people think it is okay to have an abortion if the baby is going to be born with severe complications:

Over one-quarter of pro-life individuals think that abortion should be legal if the baby may be metnally or physically impaired. And for good reason: they don’t want to increase suffering.

Let’s actually try and reduce suffering as much as possible in this world. Stop with the displays of “care,” “compassion,” and “love,” the ones meant to make yourself look good, and actually do something. I’m not perfect–I myself need to take this up–but we can all start. And maybe one of those places is not bringing in infants into the world who are very clearly going to live only in pain and suffering.

Yes, that probably makes me a bastard in many people’s eyes. But so be it.

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3 Big Thoughts on Libertarianism

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the stereotypical libertarian and conservative (and libertarian conservative, and conservative libertarian) approach to various topics in modern American politics. It’s pretty weird, and this will be somewhat longish, but I have to get it out of my head. [WARNING: Words ahead. Lots and lots and lots of words.]

First off, there is a huge focus on taxes, mostly accentuated by the conservative group Americans for Tax Reform, their leader, Grover Norquist, and his little “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” (whereby signatories refuse to vote for any tax increases. Ever. Or something.) The end result is we pontificate endlessly about marginal tax rates and the Laffer Curve, and how we should cut taxes to boost the economy and employment, and yadda yadda yadda.

The problem with this approach, though, is that it’s misplacing the blame. The real problem with the government is not taxation. While I agree that taxation is an issue, and there can and should be significant tax reform (flat tax, anybody?), government spending and command and control regulation are way more important and far more serious. Government spending creates huge distortions in the market by moving money around in the private sector that wouldn’t have been if we left decisions up to private citizens, thus negating their power of choice in the market as producers scramble to lap up the government money that is spread around. Meanwhile, government regulation prohibits Americans from doing sensible things every day, not just by changing incentives as taxation does, but by literally saying “No, you can’t do that.”

What is really stopping American business from hiring more workers and reigniting the nation’s economic engine? It is corporate income taxes, or is it a bewildering and byzantine system of government regulations at the federal, state, and local level, that make it a nightmare to hire anyone or even to do business itself? You can get around taxation through creative accounting, and indeed, many major companies have done it so effectively they never paid corporate income taxes for years. So clearly, taxation is not the biggest problem. Government spending and regulation, which breeds cronyism, lobbying, and corruption (talk about being redundant), and prevents people from pulling themselves up on the social ladder (what eggheads call “income mobility”), is–or, at least, is bigger.

There are three more considerations to think of when it comes to taxation. The first is the debt and deficit, which are massive problems today. Would cutting taxes do anything to fix them? Au contraire–they would only exacerbate the problem! Cutting revenue would only make the debt grow larger, because you can guarantee there would be no corresponding cut in spending. So that’s a big no-no. Second, by and large the American populace accepts taxes as the cost of living in America. Sure, they want that cost to be lower, but they’ve accepted it as just the way things are. It’s like grocery shopping; you’re going to shop around the lowest price, or maybe even try to haggle for a lower one, but at the end of the day, you’re still going to buy your food. At the end of the day, Americans are going to pay their taxes because they like America, with all of its flaws and blemishes, and they want it. Running a messaging campaign that myopically focuses on taxes may gin up some support on the passionate right, but it doesn’t quite reach out to middle America and makes you look like a fool in debate with leftists, who can rightly point out that the tax rate was much higher back in the day, but millionaires and billionaires still stayed in America and made things.

The third issue is much more severe. There are many other issues out there which are far more serious and injurious to your liberty than taxes. I happen to think that being thrown in jail for unlocking your smartphone, shot and imprisoned for smoking a joint, spied on by domestic intelligence agencies through drones and wiretapping, living under the cloud of indefinite detention by the military, or potentially even being assassinated by your government, are much bigger problems than having to pay a 25% marginal tax rate. In comparison, the tax problem seems fairly mundane and just simply pales compared to the decimations of civil liberties going on today.

These thoughts started percolating in my head after reading this comment to a really long Popehat post on right-libertarianism vs left-libertarianism. As I kept thinking about it, it made more and more sense. I’m not the only one, though. Reading this page at Libertarianism.com, I’m struck by how many libertarians say “Ignore taxes; spending is the real problem.” Jeffrey Miron, who I admire for a multitude of reasons, says “Slash expenditures; then lower taxes will follow.” Congressman Ron Paul, who has his issues, notes that the real discussion is the proper role of government, not taxation; on that I completely agree. And finally, Lawrence Reed of FEE states that the “real problem is spending. We tax because we spend and if government spends too much, no resulting tax system could be called remotely ‘fair.’” Right on, Mr. Reed, right on.

In summary, we libertarians (and conservatives) focus far too intensively on taxation. We’re missing the forests for the trees, in some sense. That’s not good.

This indirectly also leads into my second topic I’ve been thinking about, which is a basic income and libertarian justifications for it. Basically, a basic income (see what I did there?) is a minimum income, or floor, provided by the state to keep people from becoming too poor. Naturally, libertarians are against this, because it consists of the state taking money from some people to give to others. Normally, I would agree…except for a few things.

One, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, two of the greatest libertarians of the 20th century, were both in favor of a universal basic income. (Hayek especially. Milton Friedman a bit less so.) So is Charles Murray, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, though he supports it only as a “second-best” system to no welfare at all, and a far superior model to the bloated mess we have today. Matt Zwolinski, of BHL fame, also makes a strong argument for a small basic income. That’s fair, and definitely one reason why I’m becoming attracted to it.

The second thing is that, while libertarians emphasis “negative liberty” and “negative rights,” if you can’t feed and clothe yourself, they don’t mean much. As one libertarian philosopher puts it:

Most, if not nearly all, libertarians emphasize negative liberties. These rights, for the most part, mean the ability to pursue an activity that does not cause harm to other parties. Thus, the right to vote, to earn a living, to read, to pursue an education, to speak freely, to enter a contract with another agent, and other similar rights are rights that may be pursued without the enslavement of others by means of force and or coercion.

One of the most common criticisms of negative liberties is ‘so what?’ Indeed, it is easy to see the dismal of the negative right to free speech when one is hungry, poor and unemployed. Negative rights for agents in those derelict conditions mean not that much, if any bit at all.[9] For those in the said conditions the offer of positive rights, the right to be free from hunger, to an education, to a home, and to a job are understandable preferences. So of what relevance is the libertarian with his mantra of negative rights to the person in desperate need?[10]

Most right-libertarians take the standard of self-ownership, which most declare to be an axiom, as the sole foundational pillar of libertarian thought and political philosophy. As long as you own yourself and your property, that’s all that matters. But as Matt Zwolinski has been pointing out lately at Libertarianism.org (different site than the one cited above), that’s really far too simplistic and isn’t really adequate.

Also, I recently read John Tomasi’s book Free Market Fairness, examining a “middle way” between libertarians and classical liberals on one side, and Rawlsian “high liberals” on the other. Tomasi notes that a better basis for a libertarian polity, with free markets and a “thick” conception of economic liberties, is not the self-ownership principle. Rather, it is the ability of each citizen to be a “responsible self-author,” able to write his own story and lead his own life. (I don’t have my copy with me, unfortunately, having lent it to a friend, so I can’t give you a page number, but it’s there.)

The way I see it is this: you’re on the street, homeless, starving, and begging for food. Nobody will give any to you, though, and you won’t steal from anyone because you have principles. You end up starving to death. Now, the self-ownership principle was followed, but were you really free? Of course most libertarians would argue that yes, you were, and that is is a horribly over-simplified scenario–which they’re right about, it is over-simplified–and that “positive rights” serve only to enslave others because for that to work you must force someone to provide you with food…but if we have a society where people are starving like this, is that justifiable? Can libertarians really accept such a thing? And if your number one need is survival, if you’re living hand to mouth and living on a subsistence diet, are you really free?

I myself am torn on this, in terms of moral issues. I don’t know the answers to the above questions. I certainly don’t think, though, that targeted economic interventions and wealth redistribution as the left always promotes is the answer. We’ve seen what that has done over the past century, and it’s nothing good. Therefore, in terms of consequentialist issues, I’m totally onboard; it may be “second-best,” as Murray puts it, but it’s a hell of a lot better than what we have today. I’m also in favor of it from a purely PR perspective; Americans do indeed care about the poor, and a movement and/or political party that seems to just want to let the poor starve on the streets is going to be ignored at best, and vilified at worst. A basic income would remove that weakness.

As for how to actually implement…hell if I know. The standard basic income system is simply not feasible, ever. Even if we replaced all other government spending, giving $15,000 to every American, at a population of 300 million, would cost $4,500,000,000,000–that’s $4.5 trillion a year. I don’t think that’s something we can afford, even with a rapidly growing economy (which, as it turns out, we don’t have right now.) Probably the only way we can do this is through a form of the negative income tax. Originally proposed by Milton Friedman, I think Jeffrey Miron has come up with a slightly better version. That one might actually be doable.

At the very least, though, this is something that libertarians and conservatives should be taking seriously. As Mike Munger notes in the abstract of his article on basic income, “A distinction is made between libertarian destinations and libertarian directions.” Basic income may not be–and probably isn’t–a libertarian destination. But to me it seems it sure as hell is a libertarian direction.

Finally, one last thing, again from the left-libertarian playbook, are some thoughts about our environment and natural resources. I’m not what Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear would call an “eco-mentalist.” I don’t think increased government regulation over the environment is going to solve anything. I don’t think global warming or climate change is a serious problem (and even if it were a problem, I don’t think government would be the answer.) I’m not a vegetarian or a vegan, and I don’t go into any of that crap. I like my big engines and my big burgers just like any other red-blooded American. But I am very sympathetic to an idea amongst left-libertarians that the world is common property.

The basic gist is that left-libertarians are totally free market libertarians, like everyone else, at least until we get to natural resources and the environment. This kind of left-libertarianism is known as “Steiner-Vallentyne libertarianism”–at least on Wikipedia–after it’s two major proponents, Hillel Steiner and Peter Vallentyne. This turns into a strong defense of self-ownership, but holding an egalitarian view on natural resources. I remember reading about this a long time ago when I first researched Henry George and the “Georgist” school (which also has led to geolibertarianism.)

To break it down, wilderness and natural resources are, in their “initial state,” unowned. They become owned when, as John Locke and Robert Nozick put it, someone “mixes their labor” with it. Henry George disagreed with this analysis, pointing out that we own something when we make it, but nobody “makes” or “creates” land; it is just there. How then could we own it? Although he was writing in the late 19th century, before automation and global industrialization, his viewpoint is very appealing to me. It makes a lot of sense.
I should also note that I’ve always considered myself to be a “green-libertarian.” While I’m definitely a libertarian first and foremost, I also care a lot about the environment. That’s why I don’t want to entrust it to the government. That’s probably why I’m feeling sympathetic to this view of “common ownership” of the Earth.

But while the view that we can’t own land–we can merely “rent” it from the rest of the community–because we don’t create it is appealing, it also has significant flaws. First, what’s to say that one must create something in order to own it? Why not mixing your labor with something that is unowned? If someone discards something in the trash and another person claims it, does anyone care? I don’t think so, and I think you would be hard-pressed to say that the latter person doesn’t “own” it because it took it and it had no owner.

But a more fatal argument is the tragedy of the commons argument: that without a clearly defined, individual (or a very small group) owner, the whole ecosystem will go to pot as people overexploit the area. You must have some incentive for people to take care of the land.

Of the three points presented here, this is the weakest and the faintest one. I’m just not sold on it like I’m sold on a pivot away from tax obsession and the idea of a basic income. It is merely an interest. We’re stuck in a rut right now between global warming eco-mentalists on one hand who think we should all go into “deep ecology” and hard-headed conservative types who can’t even dream that the environment may be having problems on the other. There has got to be another way to break out of this. I’m just not sure what at the moment.

I definitely think that we, as a liberty movement, can use some strategic adjustment. I think the vehement opposition to any sort of income redistribution is going to stop us in our tracks; sure, it works fine from a high philosophy standpoint, but nobody on the ground really cares, and anyways, you can make a case for libertarianism with a bit of that as the crowd over at Bleeding Heart Libertarians have shown. (Heck, even Adam Smith, godfather of capitalism, was not as market-dogmatic as modern libertarians.)

…

Well, those are my two cents, anyways.

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OTB Comment: Really Only One Way to Save the #GOP

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Here’s a comment I wrote for James Joyner’s post on David Brooks’ proposal for a “Republican-lite” party. It’s so long I thought it might be worth it’s own little post:

Look, there’s really only one way to save the Republican Party, and that’s to become more libertarian. Dropkick the social conservatism out the door. You can’t have a party that says it will stay out of the boardroom invade the bedroom, and you can’t do that to foreign countries either.

Stop bailing out corporations and the banks. Stop the cronyism. Stop the subsidies to keep food prices high. Stop being pro-business and start being pro-market. Look for ways to break down the barriers holding people down and increase income mobility (forget about income inequality, it’s meaningless). Stop denigrating the poor and help them help themselves. Start getting serious about entitlement reform, because we’re already pass the point of no return, and now it’s just a question of how hard we’ll hit. Also, and this one is probably going to be very controversial, but it’s time to look at radical welfare reform. Whether that’s a negative income tax or a basic income, we need to replace the bloated mess we have today, but we do need to establish some sort of minimal safety net or floor so that people at least have a launchpad to get their lives started(and, for those Objectivists, don’t drag on the rest of us).

Stop being hypocritical on government spending: government spending is government spending. That means that you have to take cuts to defense spending too. Stop trying to take that stuff off the table. It’s stupid and makes you look like fourth-graders. If we’re going to cut government, we’re going to cut all of it, not just the parts you don’t like.

And for the love of jesus, stop being so virulently religious. Atheists and the nonreligious are one of the fastest growing demographics today. What’s interesting is that a lot of them are, if not the garden variety conservative, are more free market than people think. They’re not automatically godless Communists. I would say 50-60% are free market libertarians. Enough with the Christian rhetoric in your speeches. You don’t have to be a god-fearing Christian to believe in free markets and individual responsibility. That theoconservatism, combined with the social conservatism, is the #1 reason why the GOP brand sucks today. A lot of people don’t mind the free market and are cool with working for themselves and making some money to get ahead. But they can’t stand the religious crap, even if they are Christians. Nobody is that hardcore outside of Alabama and Georgia, and you can’t win elections with just two states.

Enough is enough is enough.

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Well, there goes the pro-life neighborhood….

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In an embarrassingly hypocritical legal suit, a Catholic nonprofit church has argued that “fetuses are not people” in order to get out of paying money for a wrongful death (emphasis here mine):

Lori Stodghill was 31-one years old, seven-months pregnant with twin boys and feeling sick when she arrived at St. Thomas More hospital in Cañon City on New Year’s Day 2006. She was vomiting and short of breath and she passed out as she was being wheeled into an examination room. Medical staff tried to resuscitate her but, as became clear only later, a main artery feeding her lungs was clogged and the clog led to a massive heart attack. Stodghill’s obstetrician, Dr. Pelham Staples, who also happened to be the obstetrician on call for emergencies that night, never answered a page. His patient died at the hospital less than an hour after she arrived and her twins died in her womb.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, Stodghill’s husband Jeremy, a prison guard, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit on behalf of himself and the couple’s then-two-year-old daughter Elizabeth. Staples should have made it to the hospital, his lawyers argued, or at least instructed the frantic emergency room staff to perform a caesarian-section. The procedure likely would not have saved the mother, a testifying expert said, but it may have saved the twins.

The lead defendant in the case is Catholic Health Initiatives, the Englewood-based nonprofit that runs St. Thomas More Hospital as well as roughly 170 other health facilities in 17 states. Last year, the hospital chain reported national assets of $15 billion. The organization’s mission, according to its promotional literature, is to “nurture the healing ministry of the Church” and to be guided by “fidelity to the Gospel.” Toward those ends, Catholic Health facilities seek to follow the Ethical and Religious Directives of the Catholic Church authored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Those rules have stirred controversy for decades, mainly for forbidding non-natural birth control and abortions. “Catholic health care ministry witnesses to the sanctity of life ‘from the moment of conception until death,’” the directives state. “The Church’s defense of life encompasses the unborn.”

[...]

But when it came to mounting a defense in the Stodghill case, Catholic Health’s lawyers effectively turned the Church directives on their head. Catholic organizations have for decades fought to change federal and state laws that fail to protect “unborn persons,” and Catholic Health’s lawyers in this case had the chance to set precedent bolstering anti-abortion legal arguments. Instead, they are arguing state law protects doctors from liability concerning unborn fetuses on grounds that those fetuses are not persons with legal rights.

Now, what they’re saying is that state law defines fetuses as not people, not the Church itself. But, by using this argument, aren’t they throwing away standard Church doctrine on abortion and the right to life? With $15 billion, shouldn’t they just pay up?

Make no bones about it–I’m a pro-choice kind of guy. I generally follow Ayn Rand’s ideas on abortion. However, I understand–and sympathize with–pro-life arguments that equate abortion to murder. It does make sense; if the fetus is a person, then wouldn’t abortion be murder? I myself am not entirely clear on if a fetus is a person or not, but I generally move against it because, come on, a fetus doesn’t notice anything and isn’t performing cognition in whatever passes for a noggin. It’s a potentiality, nothing more. But, I will accept that, if we discover fetuses performing cognition, that maybe that’s the point where abortion should be denied.

What the above paragraph shows is that this is a deeply complicated issue, complicated over the simple fact that we don’t know when personhood begins. What both sides should realize that this is precisely the worst place for a ham-handed government to get involved.

Unfortunately, it has become clearer and clearer to me over the past few years that the pro-life movement is really not about it’s trumpeted principles at all, but just another way to gin up more votes or more parishioners. A lot of it is just a hypocritical grab for power over women’s vaginas.

I’ve written before that I would gladly trade abortion for gay marriage: take the pro-life, pro-gay route, just to end the stupid culture wars in America and get back to what is really important, fixing our economy and our fiscal problems. But these days, I don’t know if I can. The transparent hypocrisy is showing just a tad too much.

Here’s a grand idea, folks: let’s leave government out of the bedrooms and our private parts. This is not an area for government action. Let’s leave it be.

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Dear Social Conservatives: Just stop the hate

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Sometimes, I read something, and I don’t really write about it for days or even weeks afterwards. In this case, I’m still not sure what to say about this piece from Stephen Crowder at FoxNews.com, but I’m going to try and say it anyway:

Can all of the real men in this country please stand up? You there, not so fast. Anyone who’s read my op-eds here on FoxNews.com knows just how much I hate the systematic destruction of man in modern America.  No, I’m not just talking about the hyper-metrosexualization of young men, I’m talking about the role of man in modern society as a whole. For real men everywhere, these are some dark times.

[...]

Now I get that Carlos is an extreme example of a screw-up being used by some high-up network executives as a desperate grab for ratings. The problem is that this kind of behavior is becoming increasingly indicative of men in the 21st century.

Today’s left-leaning, pseudo-feminist society has bred men to believe that they are not intrinsically different and/or valuable in comparison to their female counterparts (and vice versa).

I remember in kindergarten, my teacher (who will not remain nameless) told the entire class, “Kids, men can do anything that women can do and women can do anything that men can do!”

I raised my hand.

“Yes, Crowder.”

“But Mrs. Henderson, what about being a dad?”

“Many women do that everyday!”

Sadly, many of those on the left actually believe this. To the left, men and women are interchangeable. How else could you support same-sex marriage?

The only difference between someone like our friend Carlos Short and I, is that he’s bought into the lie. Why shouldn’t he have ten “baby-mammas”? Those women, sorry, persons, don’t need a man or a husband. Who needs a nuclear family with a strong male figurehead when you’ve got politically correct, warm fuzzies on which to fall back?

Also, suggesting that a mother needs a husband and that a child needs a father… well that’s getting dangerously close to the line of “judging.” To many on the left, that already has you walking on paper-thin ice.

Stop. Just stop.

I am absolutely sick to high heaven of people going around and lecturing one others on how they should live their lives. Most of the time, the ones doing the lecturing are not symbols that should be raised up. And even if they are, where do they get the idea that they can write screeds denouncing other people’s personal lives?

I’m not saying that the TV show Stephen is blasting is one that I would like, or that it’s some model to hold high to the rest of the world. It probably isn’t. But by the same token, neither is the same kind of backwards, barbaric, and utterly brain-dead misanthropy that leads him to turn this into an anti-gay marriage barb.

And for the record, Steve, support for gay marriage has nothing to do with “men and women are interchangeable” beliefs. It has everything to do with treating people as individuals, and protecting their individual rights–you know, what conservatives harp about constantly? Guess you don’t practice what you preach.

There are many families that follow the model that Stephen here would want them to–and yet they still turn out horribly dysfunctional. And there are many people who might not fit his views of gender roles–and they turn out to be just fine, wonderful people.

Just stop hating people. Just stop judging people. I am utterly sick and tired of conservative folk, especially the evangelical and fundamentalist Christians, going around and doing nothing but judging others. Wasn’t there a major message in the Bible that said “don’t judge?”

“Do not judge so that you will not be judged. “For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you. “Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? “Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and behold, the log is in your own eye? “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:1-5)

People need to stop moralizing about others and go back and fix their own lives. Stop criticizing other people because they follow a life that’s different from yours. One of the first colonies in America was Rhode Island, a refuge for Jews, atheists, homosexuals, and a whole bunch of other people who didn’t fit in anywhere else. If having different lifestyles like that isn’t American, then nothing is–and certainly not your Puritanistic moralizing nagging that nobody buys today.

Aannnnddd….I’m out. I don’t know if I have any more to say on this topic. Just that I find this crap very aggravating and I wish it would stop.

UPDATE: My friend linked to this on Facebook, and a commentator there had a really good point:

[I]t is not social conservatives, but prescriptive social conservatives. People can be socially conservative all day, if it primarily involves their own behavior. Under these terms, I would consider myself a social conservative.

The problem is when people decide that they know what’s best for others and they will force you at the point of a gun, if need be, to shape your behavior in a way they approve.

Yes, this is the real problem. Those who are personally “socially conservative” but don’t bother other people are harmless and perfectly okay. I do think, though, that a lot of unnecessary crap in this country comes from moralizing, and people of all stripes–liberals, conservatives, even libertarians–need to just stop. Just shut up. Nobody wants to be lectured on how to live their lives, period. So knock it off.

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COPS: Disgusting

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I’m reading Kelley Vlahos’ article in The American Conservative on the 25-year old reality TV show COPS, and one thing really disgusted me:

And though the COPS team is emphatic that it works within the law, the show has been the target of civil rights complaints and other grievances from the start. Its producers were accused in 2011 of coercing an 18-year-old African American boy into signing a waiver that would allow them to show his face on television after he was detained (in dramatic COPS fashion — “three knees in my back and my neck”) for loitering in a Tampa county park after dark. He complained later that while handcuffed in the squad car, he was told by a COPS producer that if he didn’t sign the waiver, he would go to jail.

He signed “out of fear,” he told news reporters, and was soon released on a misdemeanor.  Meanwhile, he’s afraid his image will be out there forever, his face on the ground. “I might not be able to get a job,” he said. “They show reruns and reruns.”

That’s beyond disgusting. First, if it’s not illegal already, it should be. Second, it is downright immoral. That this TV show is run by self-centered, immoral jackasses who defraud young, uneducated kids just to score some more ratings makes me furious. Does anyone here respect people? Does anyone here understand the meaning of “standards?” I guess not. Nothing matters any more.

I hope COPS goes off the air, and then real life cops around the country start getting re-educated on what their jobs really are.

I encourage you to read Kelley’s piece from top to bottom. It’s a great read, and I assure you, it’s not what you would think is “normal conservative” material.

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Welcome to the Future, Part 2

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Welcome to the Future. Again.

Earlier, I wrote about how technology was advancing, and because of that advance, we were well and truly in the future. Now, I want to write about something much more pedantic:

Now that we’re in the year 2013, we are officially in the future.

I know it sounds really silly, but think about it. In science fiction, particularly television shows, the 21st century was always “the future.” It was always 20XX (some older shows were based in 2001, 2006, 2010, or even 2012, but it usually it was around 2020 or later.) For some reason, that first “20″ was both insulatingly distant and yet tantalizingly close. The 22nd century of the original Star Trek, or the 4th millennium (so, 3000-4000 if my math is right) were just a bit too distant for the same feeling.

The feeling that this was going to be us soon. It wasn’t going to be some fictional land. It was going to be us.

Naturally, most of those visions never panned out, and thank goodness for that. Many science fiction writers were small-minded, pessimistic eco-socialists, and so penned many a story with giant megacorporations pillaging the common man and ruining the Earth. Fortunately, though, the future has turned out to be far better; even with the cronyism run amok in the country’s financial industry, which led to a catastrophic and disastrous recession, we now have iPhones which contain the entirety of human knowledge in the palms of our hands; our economic liberties–while having taken a beating–are not out of the fight; our planet is actually as beautiful as ever (thanks to rapidly developing recycling, cleaning, and energy technologies); and though I am deeply disturbed about our personal and civil liberties taking one shellacking after another by consecutive Republican and Democratic administrations, I am still optimistic in the long run they will be fine.

And here we are, in 2013, a realm of limitless possibilities. We’re in the Future. All those science fiction stories you read when you were younger are us today. Make the most of it.

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Is the US a democracy or a republic? Both.

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Woman looking pensive at floating words.

You talk like they’re mutually exclusive.

There are some things that just annoy me in American politics. Well, everything annoys me, but there are some things that are relatively minor, small details, that just infuriate the crap out of me. Perhaps one of the largest of these minor things is the continuing notion of many on the right that we live in a republic, not a democracy, and how they loudly proclaim in places that America is not a democracy, as if that’s a good thing.

For some reason, they think that A) this is correct and B) it is good marketing. Why, I have no idea, as I’m about to lay out.

For starters, let’s go to the dictionary, and get the definition of some terms:

Democracy
government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.

This has two interpretations here, which are usually defined as “direct democracy” and “representative democracy”:

Direct Democracy
a form of democracy in which the people as a whole make direct decisions, rather than have those decisions made for them by elected representatives
Representative Democracy
a type of democracy in which the citizens delegate authority to elected representatives

Clearly, the United States has a representative democracy, because we elect representatives to whom we give authority to craft laws. Might not be the best solution, but that’s what we have. Now, let’s look at the final piece of this puzzle:

Republic
a state in which the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them.

Now, I don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty much like a representative democracy.

The problem comes from some of the words of the Founding Fathers. I’m not saying that the Founders were wrong, but rather that the English language has changed and adapted since 1775. Back then, “democracy” meant “direct democracy,” and the Founders were wise to inveigh against it. Today, though, “democracy” means “representative democracy”….which basically means “republic.”

The real thrust of conservatives here is that, supposedly, under a republic, the rights of the minority are protected through a constitution against depradation by the majority. But this really isn’t the case. For example, take Israel. It is a republic, since the government is elected by the people. But, it has no constitution. While there are several “Basic Laws,” the consitution has never been agreed upon, and thus remains unwritten, and drastic changes can be made at any time by the Knesset, Israel’s legislature.

But the whole thing is just stupid. First off, nobody really cares. The vast majority of Americans do not pay attention to constitutional law or political theory, and are simply uninterested in what is little more than a game of creative semantics. Second, it makes you look foolish. I mean, when you talk to the average American, and tell them that the “United States isn’t a democracy,” and say it positively, they’re going to think you’re a fascist. And do you really think that looking like a fascist will help you to win voters over to your side?

I’ve been told by some older conservatives that the failure to recognize the difference between a republic and a democracy is a terrible thing for the younger generation. This somehow shows, they argue, how we have lost sight of what is important and this will be our country’s doom. Except…that’s not at all what it is. It is little more than a semantic word game. And I’m sorry, but no game of semantics is going to be the downfall of a civilization, no matter what Orwell wrote in 1984. Is language powerful? Oh lordy yes. But is something like this going to be doom? Of course not. It’s so silly I would laugh, except I weep instead.

This is what it has come down to, then. The left has such a horrid grasp of economics that it hurts precisely the people it purports to save, and such ignorance of basic liberties that it creates more horrors in its pursuit of sweet dreams. Meanwhile, the right is still plagued by bigotry, intolerance, and being hopelessly stuck in a nonexistent past while abjectly refusing to deal with the future that’s on its doorstep. While I am optimistic for the long-term–more and more people are becoming libertarians, and something will give soon–when I see stupid arguments over “democracy vs. republic,” I’m not hopeful for the short term. There needs to be a change of direction from silliness like this, and soon.

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Scary polls on demonic possession

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Poll: Nearly six in ten voters believe in demonic possession | The Daily Caller.

From my friend Mike Bastasch, who works at the Daily Caller News Foundation:

The “Exorcist” may have moved public opinion more than previously thought. Nearly six in ten registered voters believe it’s possible for people to become possessed by demons, according to a new poll by Public Policy Polling.

Fifty-seven percent of voters believe possession is possible. Republicans are more likely than Democrats to believe in demonic possession by a 68 percent to 49 percent margin. Furthermore, women are more likely than men to believe possession is possible by a 59 percent to 56 percent margin.

The most interesting part, though, is this:

Republicans by a 39 percent to 35 percent margin. And women are more likely than men are to believe in ghosts by a 39 percent to 35 percent margin.

Democrats are also more likely than Republicans to say that they have seen a ghost by a 31 percent to 22 percent margin. However, only 26 percent of voters at large say they have seen a ghost.

And they say Republicans are unscientific.

Second most interesting:

Despite, widespread fear of ghosts and demons, they don’t actually rank as the scariest monster. That dubious honor goes to zombies with 29 percent of voters saying they are the scariest, and coming in a distant second were vampires with 15 percent saying they are the scariest monsters. However, the category “something else” did actually beat out vampires suggesting voters have something much spookier in mind than lame Twilight vampires.

And Mike scores points for bashing Twilight.

To be fair, even though I’m an atheist, I’m not what they would call a “philosophical naturalist,” who totally rules out ghosts and such like that. I am inclined to think that these things don’t actually exist in real life…but I have never experienced such a thing, and I like to keep my mind open, particularly on ghosts. I mean, they could be artifacts from trans-dimensional bleedthrough, and only some people are sensitive enough to notice.

I don’t know, though, but when you consider that 41% of Americans think Jesus will return by 2050, it’s not all that surprising to see such high numbers.

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More thoughts on “#DisneyStarWars”: How “Passing On” A Story Doesn’t Quite Make Sense

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“Hey hey, guys, let’s use the Force!” “Shut up, Mickey. And Goofy, put your pants on.”

Okay, so after getting the snark out of my system, as well as somewhat tempering the terror that I feel about a bunch of Disney execs now running the most beloved continuity in the history of mankind, there’s a line in the New York Times piece about this deal that bothers me:

“It’s now time for me to pass ‘Star Wars’ to on to a new generation of filmmakers,” Mr. Lucas said in a statement.

With all due respect, Mr. Lucas, no, you don’t.

I understand that we pass on stories between generations all the time. In the earliest era of human history, all stories were passed down orally. Different speakers, undoubtably, would change or alter these stories. But that was then, and I’m not talking about that. This is the 21st century, and to me, the very idea of an author “passing on” a story doesn’t really work.

When you write a story–really write one, and by that I mean create the characters, the backstory, the setting, the conflict, to generate all those players and then put them into action, arrayed against another–it is yours. It comes deep from the depths of your mind, and even, perhaps, your soul. Excellent writers do that; the story they create is not just a story, it’s a piece of them.

Imagine reading a story by a person with no opinions, no feelings, no real life experiences beyond the humdrum, and no real impetus to embue said story with those qualities. An automaton, if you will. (Or a droid, if you prefer.) It would be very wooden. Technically proficient, but utterly cold and dreadfully boring. It would have no spark, no life.

It would be dead.

Lucas, when he created Star Wars, didn’t do that. He took his childhood wonder and fully immersed his story within that, with the amazing scenery and boundless breadth of the Star Wars galaxy. He took his personal sense of heroics and swashbuckling bravery, the interest in mysticism, basically what was there and made it into one of–if not the–greatest franchises in the history of humanity.

I could not make the same story Lucas did. Neither could Spielberg. Or Michael Crichton. Or Faulkner. Or anyone else. Stories are personal. That’s why there are so many fanfic authors out there. Because when you write a story, you’re pouring a little bit of yourself out and presenting it to the world. (Don’t worry, though, you’re a never-emptying teacup, even when your throat is dry.)

I understand what Lucas is saying, in terms of pure commerce, but let’s be real here. He could never truly pass on Star Wars. Look at the Expanded Universe. Look where it has gone astray in recent years. That’s not George Lucas writing there. It doesn’t feel like Star Wars because it doesn’t have him in it. To be fair, this is understandable and to a degree acceptable in modern, large-scale, sprawling continuities with multiple authors and a large Expanded Universe. A media company is going to hire on writers to actually create the extra content, and generally selects authors who are similar to–or at least, can write appropriately close enough to–the original. (Unless they deliberately want to take a different tack, which is a technique that can, on occasion, work. But that’s dangerous ground to tread, in my opinion.) At the end of the day, however, it is still the baby of the original writer. None of the other Expanded Universe authors, even if they create new characters and new settings within that universe, really own it. They’re just playing in Mr. Lucas’ sandbox with his permission.

I’m not terribly afraid that Disney will totally destroy Star Wars. (I mean, it’s kinda been destroyed already, if you ask me and a bunch of other fans.) I just think that Mr. Lucas can’t do what he’s saying. He will never be separable from his creation. He can never pass it on.

Whatever Disney does, it will be “Disney Star Wars,” not Star Wars. We must all search our feelings. We all know this to be true.

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