Funmurphys: the Blog

By the Waters of Babylon

Thanks to Netflix we worked our way through the first season of "Mad Men" last week. I heartily recommend the series: it's well photographed and well acted and takes you back to the early 60's. Watching adults drink and (drink and drink and) drive--without seatbelts no less--or children playing "spaceman" with the (these are not a toy!) clear plastic dry cleaning bags reminds you of how much has changed in the last four decades or so.

One episode, entitled "Babylon" ends with a cover of Don Mclean's Babylon (but get the original) with it's moving lyrics from Psalm 137:

By the waters, the waters of Babylon.
We lay down and wept, and wept, for thee Zion.
We remember thee, remember thee, remember thee Zion.

YouTube has the segment here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4aAgvQelGI

As I was searching for more information on the song I came across Stephen Vincent Benet's mesmerizing short story "By The Waters of Babylon" that details a young man's journey to a ruined New York City, known to his people as "The Place of the Gods" (and the title of the story when originally published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1937). I had read it as a boy and was moved again re-reading this scene:

He was sitting in his chair, by the window, in a room I had not entered before and, for the first moment, I thought that he was alive. Then I saw the skin on the back of his hand--it was like dry leather. The room was shut, hot and dry--no doubt that had kept him as he was. At first I was afraid to approach him--then the fear left me. He was sitting looking out over the city--he was dressed in the clothes of the gods. His age was neither young nor old--I could not tell his age. But there was wisdom in his face and great sadness. You could see that he would have not run away. He had sat at his window, watching his city die--then he himself had died. But it is better to lose one's life than one's spirit--and you could see from the face that his spirit had not been lost. I knew, that, if I touched him, he would fall into dust--and yet, there was something unconquered in the face.

The World We Live In

Our interpreter (OK, we called them guides) at Northern Tier was in college studying to be an engineer. So naturally I gave him enough wisdom and advice on the subject to last a lifetime. During the conversation, my son piped up with "scientist and engineers run things, right?" I had to correct him.

"We live in a world built by scientists and engineers, but salespeople run it."

Lights, Engineering, Depression

While I find a brisk walk on a cool but sunshiny day to be a wonderful mental tonic, I don't know that there's measurable benefit to people who are actually depressed. Dr. Ilardi thinks there is, though.

Hmm, how does this play with the ranking of the least depressing fields: Engineers, Architects, and Surveyors? Maybe including the surveyors who spend most of their time outdoors I imagine, as opposed to we engineers who spend most of our times in human sized mazes under florescent light, is the secret to the lack of depression in those fields. Farming, Fishing, and Forestry isn't far behind, so maybe there is something to this after all.

No matter, I work in a profession that is fun and productive. Maybe that's why my fellow engineers are in such good mental health, whether we are like cavemen or not.

Suburban Life, The Choice Of America

I have to admit I get a little tired of urban living advocates who sneer at me (OK, not me personally, but in the aggregate as a suburb dweller) for my social isolation. They just assume I don't know my neighbors and sit around in my suburban cocoon all night after struggling home from an awful commute. Well who's sneering now?

Using data from 15,000 Americans living in various places across the country, researchers found that residents of sprawling suburban spaces actually have more friends, more contact with neighbors and greater involvement in community organizations than citydwellers who live in very close proximity to each other.

“Our findings suggest the old proverb may be true: good fences make good neighbors,” said Jan Brueckner, professor of economics at UCI and lead author of the paper. “This contradicts one of the common social and economic arguments against urban sprawl.”

Take that, urbanite sneerers. Somehow I don't expect this study to get much media time.

I have to admit I did find it comical when Ray Suarez argued that urban living resembles small town life because everybody knows who you are -- OK, he didn't include the small town life part, but he did claim that everybody knew you.

But I have to wonder if wealth is the underlying causation for the inverse correlation of human density and the density of the weave of the social fabric. I figure wealthier people weave a tighter fabric and also live less densely. Hopefully they accounted for that, but you can't tell from the press release.

Juan Williams Vs. Sylvester Brown, Round 2

Sylvester Brown has once again taken up the subject of Juan Williams and his book. Sylvester has decided to by and large replow old ground, although at least this time he doesn't try to equate Juan's message to "that the black man is inherently flawed, violent and savage", but hammers the idea that white people have problems too pretty hard:

The breakdown of the black family is evident when 70 percent of black children are born to single mothers, Williams asserts. If this is the case, then America, not just black America, is in a heap of trouble. The U.S. Census Bureau just announced that 50.2 percent of American families are headed by single women. And, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, the number of births to single white women has reached all-time highs, while the birth rate for black teens has dropped to "historic lows."

That sort of positive news doesn't play well in "blame-black" circles. In a society that's grown weary of in-depth social analysis, it's just easier to wrap issues like poverty, crime and single-parent households in a stereotype.

While I don't disagree with Sylvester, it does raise the question in my mind, if poor blacks can blame racism, descrimination, and the legacy of slavery for there poverty and poor choices, what do poor whites get to blame? Yes, a white person can fall victim to all the social pathologies a black person can, but can't say there is nothing they can do about it because their skin color dooms them in American society. Or is there something different between white poverty than black poverty, something different between poor white choices than poor black choices, something different between white criminals and black criminals? If white skin privilege exists, the greater part of it has to be that there are fewer excuses.

And isn't that really the point Juan Williams is trying to make - for people to get over the blame game, take control of their lives, and do something about their situation? Did Juan ask black people to stop being black, or did he ask them to simply adopt American middle class behavior: get a high school education, don't have children until one is twenty-one and married, work hard at any job, and be good parents? Is there something wrong with that advice? Can only white people follow that advice?

What's Sylvester's argument - don't tell poor black people to clean up their act as long as their are poor white people who aren't cleaning up their act?

Pope Benedict and Islam

Isn't it amazing? The way mobs across Dar al Islam seem to hang on the Pope's every word, even scrutinizing obscure addresses that get zero press in nominally Christian countries, unless Dar al Islam expresses its displeasure and the Western Press is forced to cover it. Considering what a wonderful address it is, I suppose I should thank them for raising such a stink that I got to read it.

Before we get to the meat of the address, I'm going to tackle the so-called offensive part of the address, which is being labled as a call for inter-faith dialogue. Well, Benedict calls it a cultural dialogue, and from his remarks he's going way beyond churchman from Christianity and Islam having their own hootenanny. It's a call for everybody to dialogue within a framework of reason, and he tells the story that got the the Moslem world so riled up to make this point: "not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature."

Now, did he have to include

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached"?

Good question, and let me bounce that right back at you, since Mohammed claimed that the Bible was garbled and he was just straightening out Jews and Christians, what did Mohammed bring that was new? What is your opinion of Mohammed's changes?

I'd also like to point out that the press doesn't seem to be able to quote properly, as this article on CNN has trouble:

The pope enraged Muslims in a speech a week ago in Germany quoting 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, who said everything the Prophet Mohammed brought was evil "such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

They seemed to have missed the whole "that was new" part. I suppose I should chalk it up to them having very little understanding of either Christianity or Islam. The emporer's point is that Mohammed didn't add anything to the Bible that wasn't inhuman and evil. A fine distinction you might claim, but an important one since it's saying not that everything Mohammed preached was evil, only those places where he made changes. And even more oddly, isn't that exactly what you would expect a Christian to believe? I do, and if I didn't, I'd be a Muslim, not a Christian.

I'm not Catholic, and I have some theological bones to pick with Catholicism, but I have to say that at least the last two popes have been extraordinary leaders, each in their own way. I'm going to have to start reading the pope more since he's the only guy out there defending Western thought, practice,and culture these days.

I've excerpted the introduction and the conclusion to Pope Benedict's address and urge you to read the whole thing:

It is a moving experience for me to be back again in the university and to be able once again to give a lecture at this podium. I think back to those years when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching at the University of Bonn. That was in 1959, in the days of the old university made up of ordinary professors. The various chairs had neither assistants nor secretaries, but in recompense there was much direct contact with students and in particular among the professors themselves. We would meet before and after lessons in the rooms of the teaching staff. There was a lively exchange with historians, philosophers, philologists and, naturally, between the two theological faculties. Once a semester there was a dies academicus, when professors from every faculty appeared before the students of the entire university, making possible a genuine experience of universitas - something that you too, Magnificent Rector, just mentioned - the experience, in other words, of the fact that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult to communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in everything on the basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason - this reality became a lived experience. The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, they too carried out a work which is necessarily part of the "whole" of the universitas scientiarum, even if not everyone could share the faith which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole. This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God. That even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.
I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both. It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between - as they were called - three "Laws" or "rules of life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an. It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole - which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.

In the seventh conversation (διάλεξις - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness, a brusqueness which leaves us astounded, on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably (σὺν λόγω) is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".
The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazm went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry.

At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the λόγος". This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts, σὺν λόγω, with logos. Logos means both reason and word - a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: "Come over to Macedonia and help us!" (cf. Acts 16:6-10) - this vision can be interpreted as a "distillation" of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.

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And so I come to my conclusion. This attempt, painted with broad strokes, at a critique of modern reason from within has nothing to do with putting the clock back to the time before the Enlightenment and rejecting the insights of the modern age. The positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly: we are all grateful for the marvellous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the progress in humanity that has been granted to us. The scientific ethos, moreover, is - as you yourself mentioned, Magnificent Rector - the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which belongs to the essential decisions of the Christian spirit. The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons. In this sense theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith.

Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. At the same time, as I have attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology. Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based. Yet the question why this has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought - to philosophy and theology. For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding. Here I am reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo. In their earlier conversations, many false philosophical opinions had been raised, and so Socrates says: "It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being - but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would suffer a great loss". The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur - this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.

What more can I say?

Social Cooperation

I have one last interesting bit from historian Willaim McNeil's Venice: The Hinge of Europe 1081-1797. Of course there is a lot more there, but you'll just have to read the book yourself.

It is more than passing interest to understand the rise and fall of particular civilizations, and to wonder at how Europe, once a backward part of the world, rose to world dominance in recent centuries. There was a time (i.e. the age of imperialism), not too long ago, that Europe pretty much ruled the world, either directly, through proxies, or through colonists. Now I'm sure there is more than a single explanation; I've thought about it before, and even wrote an essay stressing the importance of the political disunity of Europe, in effect, competing political firms in Europe beat monopolies in the two other great cultures of the time - Islam and China.

There is another strand to consider - social organization within Europe. Specifically, the ability of individuals to form organizations at a level other than family. McNeil addresses this phenomenon:

All complex societies develop ad hoc corporations. What was unusual about the Italian trading cities of the eleventh century (and northwestern Europe generally after about 1000) was the number and effectiveness of such arrangements. As compared to other peoples, the inhabitants of this hitherto rather backward portion of the globe proved strikingly capable of transcending kinship groupings and cooperating smoothly with persons who were not blood relatives but were recognized as belonging to some sort of wider in-group -- whether that in-group comprised the inhabitants of a village, the citizens of a town, speakers of a common mother tongue, or even the bearers of a common tradition of high culture, i.i the culture of Latin Christendom. These broader groupings rarely came into play; the operationally imporant transfamilial in-groups for medieval Europe were the inhabitants of a village and citizens of a town.

One of the results of this ability to cooperate, according to McNeil, was the rise of Nothern Italian trading corporations, mainly from Pisa, Genoa, and Venice. The ability to form large corporations beyond family groups led to the displacement of the prior traders, mainly Islamic and Jewish, who relied on kinship ties for organization and thus remained small, family operations. These non-family operations could scale up to a large size yet retain the trust normally found within families.

How was such an ability formed? The claim is that the moldboard plow, which was extensively used in Northern Italy and North Western Europe, forced non-family cooperation in those who used it. It was too big for a single family to use, so within the villages of the time people were forced to cooperate across family lines or lose out at plowing. This in turn fostered a culture that looked at cooperation across family lines as routine and expected in the context of another connection. This is not the case in many parts of the world, and generally in the poorer ones.

Islamic Reformation

I still hear people saying Islam needs a reformation (I suppose because they think that the reformation did wonders for the Christian world's politics). Callimachus at Winds of Change wrote a wonderful post on the subject a while back, You Say You Want a Reformation. While I don't disagree with his post, I think there is still more to be covered. First off, the title implies it but Callimachus doesn't follow up that a reformation really is a revolution, and not all, probably not even a majority, turn out well. The French revolution deposed a King and created an Emperor in his place. The Iranian revolution replaced a repressive and unpopular regime with a far more repressive and unpopular regime, and no doubt has made many Iranians understandably nervous about a second one any time soon. Any revolution carries the risk that things will only get worse.

Secondly, the protestant reformation didn't actually do what people who call for an Islamic revolution to do for Islam, namely get religion out of politics or change the nature of the religion. The reformed Catholic church was just as involved in politics afterwards, maybe moreso. Nor did it promote religious tolerance, as for instance the Spanish Inquisition was in part a response to the religous ferment at the start of the reformation. During the middle ages the Catholic church was an important political player for two reasons - it was the only universal institution in the Christian world, and it was a feuditory in the fuedal system - i.e a bishop was just another baron, and the Pope even was like a King in the Papal States. The wars that the reformation started did have the effect of strengthening the central state and ushering out the feudal system.

The Reformation did not fundamentally change the nature of Christianity, just it's organization. We can debate the proper role and balance of faith and works in the Christian life per the various Christian denominations, but they will agree upon what the faith should be in and what the works should be. Certainly the disagreements over theology that loom large within Christianity pale to insignificance as compared to differences with other religions.

Callimachus says that we are looking at an Islamic Reformation right now, and as he observes, not al religions are the same:

For another: There already was an Islamic Reformation. It happened while we were sleeping. The result is Wahhabi dominance, and Islamic Brotherhood, and Bin Laden. This is the Islamic Reformation. We're fighting it now.

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When Christianity reforms -- when it goes back to its roots -- it tries to foreswear the world. When Islam goes back to its roots, it tries to conquer the world.

OK, I will disagree, Christianity does not foreswear the world. Instead it tries (with mixed success) to love people. Islam at root is a rule based religion, Christianity at root is a relationship based religion. And not only are we facing a current "Islamic Reformation", Islam had a failed but similar reformation at about the same time as the Christian one. From Venice: The Hinge of Europe 1081-1797, by history professor William McNeil:

Economic difficulties at home and the cessation of victory abroad had serious implications for Moslem thought and self-confidence. As long as success had continued to crown Ottoman standards, the Moslems of the empire could and did argue that the favor Allah continued to shower upon Ottoman arms attested the correctness of their faith. When successes ceased, the inference was obvious. Clearly, Allay was displeased; and the reasons were not far to seek. From almost the beginning of Islam, pious and fanatical puritans had taught that all innovation that went beyond the practices attested in the Koran was displeasing to God. This was a doctrine that demanded reformation of existing Ottoman religious practices every bit as radical as anything dreamed of by the Calvinist reform program for Christianity. The two movements coincided closely in time, for in the final decades of the sixteenth century and throughout the first half of the seventeenth, so called faki preachers inflamed popular discontents, already acute for economic reasons, by demanding uncompromising adherence to Koranic models of piety. The faki attacked the official hierarchy of Ottoman Islam for criminal laxity in condoning innovations of all sorts. They attacked the dervish orders no less vigourously for the heterodoxy of their opinions and ritual practices.

Despite their passion and popular following, the faki did not prevail and were never able to seize political power. Their cultural influence was negative, inhibiting all buth the rich and privileged from exploring novelties, whether intellectual or otherwise, for which Koranic sanction was lacking. Even long established rational science -- imported into Moslem learning in Abbasid times -- withered away as subject of instructions in public institutions of higher learning. Symbolic of this transformation was the fact that in 1580 Sheik-ul-Islam ordered the destruction of the sultan's private observatory. This institution had been as well equipped as any in Europe; but when popular preachers interpreted the outbreak of plague in Istanbul as a sign of Allah's displeasure at the sultan's impious efforts to penetrate God's secrets by astrological science, the observatory (which was, in fact, inspired by astrological curiousity) had to go.

The book goes on to say that religiously questionable pursuits, such as medicine, were abandoned to Jews and Christians, and that higher education became the memorization of sacred texts and their commentaries. Sounds similar to the problem we're facing today. And it sounds like that movement sowed the seeds of todays movement as well by setting the Islamic world up for failure in succeeding centuries, causing once again an attempt to return to the glory days of Islam.

Resistance To Change

I picked up a book at the library about Venice -- yes, inspired by my recent trip there (someday, and soon, I will actually get you there in the European Vacation series) -- and I managed to get a good one, Venice: The Hinge of Europe 1081-1797, by history professor William McNeill. Since it was written in 1974, no shadow of current political controversy touches it; yet I can't help but be struck by certain passages and their application to today:

Widely diverse reactions flow from encounters with new and superior cultural traits: successful borrowing or inventive adaptation within the receiving cultural context are relatively rare but of great historical importance because it is in such circumstances that additions to human skills and capacities are most likely to arise. Far more common, but historically less important, are the instances when men draw back, reaffirm their accustomed patterns of life, and reject the attractive novelty because it seems either unattainable or else threatening and dangerous. In such cases it may become necessary to reinforce accustomed ways in order to withstand the seductions inherent in exposure to what appears to be a superior foreign product. Cultural change, sometimes very far reaching, may thus paradoxically result from especially strenuous efforts to maintain the status quo.

I have to applaud the fact that in 1974 a professor could not just mention that one culture could have traits superior to another, but write a book that looked at such cultural flows.

But more importantly, is this what we are seeing in action today on the part of Islamofascist terrorists? An excessive reinforcement of accustomed ways? Is this why poverty has no correlation to becoming an Islamofascist terrorist, but exposure to the West does? Is it possible that the actual agents of 9/11, the Mohammed Attas and Hani Hanjours, as well as the mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed all of whom spent time living in the United States, only had their murderous intent reinforced, possibly created, by such direct exposure to a different culture.

Of course, the actions of al-Qaida et al. aren't directly entirely, or even primarily, at the West. Far more Iraqi's have been killed by al-Qaida operatives than westerners. Are we seeing extra strenuous efforts to maintain a status quo, or at least the illusion of one? While al-Qaida dreams of defeating the west, they also dream of ruling the Islamic world and imposing their brand of Islam on it. And to them, their Islam is the original, pure, untainted by foreigners Islam, the idea being to return to the status quo ante pernicious western influence.

Is then what we are experiencing a fight by a part of the Islamic culture against both the rest of the Islamic culture and the West over how much Islamic culture should be influenced by the West?

Juan Williams Vs. Sylvester Brown

Sylvester Brown's column today was titled:Blaming blacks is popular with some, but it's perilously naive. An alternate could be I'll be blaming whites for the next 210 years. Juan Williams wrote a book Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America--and What We Can Do About I (which I haven't read - yet) that echoes a lot of Bill Cosby's laments and self help advice for poor blacks.

Sylvester does what he so often does - misunderstand and mischaracterize: "This diatribe - that the black man is inherently flawed, violent and savage - is older than the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria." If that were so, why are Mr. Cosby and Mr. Williams offering advice to blacks? If the black man were inherently flawed, violent and savage, why would they say if you stop a couple of behaviors and start a couple of others, you'd be much, much better off? How could the advice, which applies equally well to poor whites, "begin with getting a high school education, not having children until one is twenty-one and married, working hard at any job, and being good parents" be so offensive to some?

Sylvester says: "The "blame blacks" message appeals to many whites because it deflects accountability." Hmm, what does the blame white message do, Mr Brown? And really, if you think whites really are this mass of institutional racism, why entrust us with the responsibility for black success? Seems kind of, well, stupid, doesn't it?

What Is A Feminist?

Who died and put Nora Ephron in charge?:

And by the way, Laura Bush isn't a feminist. You can't be a feminist if you don't believe in a woman's right to choose."

Um, why not? What exactly is feminism about? I've said it before, I don't consider myself a Feminist, but a feminist. I find Feminism both dreary and alarming - dreary because it is so humorless, so dogmatic, so past its prime, and alarming because as a Man, I'm the enemy. I find feminism sensible and always relevant. The biggest difference to me is that Feminism is all about women being just like the stereotype of manly men at the birth of feminism - career first, sexual predator, all that nonsense, while feminism is about women being free to pursue happiness without gender restrictions (which means we need a healthy dose of masculinism as well). While I oppose abortion, it doesn't enter into feminism because of the physical reality that reproduction is gender asymetrical, and there is nothing law or culture can do about that. Women are no more or less equal than men due to abortion law because are men not subject to it and there is no equivalent for men. So I'm happy to be a feminist, just don't call me a Feminist.

Hug A Mom Today

The Stanford Magazine, which the Alumni Association so thoughtfully sends to me despite the fact I haven't paid to join (if you don't count the thousands of dollars in tuition, which I don't since my father paid that), has a section called One Question. They ask one question, and well known members of the Stanford community (i.e. not me) answer that one question. Last months edition (i.e. the one I'm currently reading) had an interesting juxtaposition of two answers. First up is a condescending piece of snot by a professor (who else?):

Marjorie Perloff is the Sadie Dernham Patek Professor of Humanities, emerita: Until recently, I honestly believed that the feminist revolution was irreversible. I took it for granted that women could now have real careers and be independent people. But as I read my daughter Carey’s 25th-reunion class book or the New York Times, I learn that little has changed. Indeed, in some ways, the situation has deteriorated as the “soccer mom,” the mom who “uses her SUV as her office,” is valorized. Moms in my day (late ’50s-early ’60s) who didn’t work outside the home used their spare time to work in the community and the arts, take courses, and so on. We would have been ashamed to be soccer moms and spend our afternoons chauffeuring kids around. So I regard the current scene with dismay but also with bemusement: it will change again just as everything does.

I suppose I could read this with a detached bemusement too if it wasn't coming from a professor, so I'm forced to have nothing but dismay. This is the chief reason I have come to disdain capital F Feminism while I consider myself a small f feminism -- I'm all for throwing open the doors of opportunity to all people regardless of gender (or sex) or race or pretty much anything other than criminal behavior, but where I'm also in favor of people deciding on their own what opportunities to persue, the Feminists are not open at all and only consider particular choices the right ones. I, too, am amazed when I read my reunion books how many of the women chose to stop persuing careers, and I'm talking about high paying, prestigous careers, to be full time mothers. But I don't think they've made the wrong choice, just as I don't think those women who continued with their careers made the wrong choice, because it's their choice to make, not mine. On a side note (what, not in parentheses for a change?), I was shocked to read this from a professor; perhaps the instaprofessor wouldn't be so shocked since he comes in contact to such disdain on a far more regular basis.

But the truly wonderful thing is immediately following they have the perfect rejoinder:

Jim Collins, ’80, MBA ’83, founded a management research laboratory in Boulder, Colo., and is the author of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . And Others Don’t: I used to believe that the critical questions in life were about “what”—what decisions to make, what goals to pursue, what answers to give, what mountains to climb. I’ve come to see that the most important decisions are not about what, but about who. The primary question is not what mountains to climb, but who should be your climbing partner. If you want to have a great life, the most important question is not what you spend your time doing, but who you spend your time with. First who, then what—life is people.

Apparently there are plenty of women (and men too!) who have also made it past what to who and have decided that spouses and children are the who, or at least the most signficant who, when it comes to answering who do you spend your time with. Amen, brother Jim.

Happy Easter

I noticed it on Saturday when about the 4th working person told me "Happy Easter" in establishments where they only go so far as "Happy Holidays" at Christmas time. Isn't there supposed to be a War on Christians? Did we win and nobody tell me? Or is this just a truce for Easter? Maybe they figured I wouldn't be out and about on Passover if I were Jewish. Of course, I'm sensitive enough to worry that when clerks were wishing me Happy New Year on or about January 1st they were upsetting the Chinese and Moslems who celebrate New Years at a different time. Oddly enough, nobody told me "Have a good Good Friday" on Friday.

I'm taking my cue from Joshua:

But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord."

So (belatedly) Happy Easter, Happy Passover, Happy Days, or even Happy Cranky Atheist Day to you, as the case may be.

Are All Creeds Created Equal?

You just have to love a title like "Jesus and the Duke", and the post itself doesn't disappoint after such a strong lead. Andrew Klavan looks at creeds, honor killings, and how they relate to Elizabeth Smart. Yes, there is a difference in creeds, and what make the United States a rare country is that it a nation built on a creed and not ethnicity. Mr. Klavan writes:

I couldn’t help reflecting that if Elizabeth had been the child of Islamic hardliners, her welcome home might not have been quite as loving as it was.

Now the Mormons and every other group have their extremists, but they’re not accepted by our society as they are virtually throughout the Muslim world. To the vast majority of Americans, the idea of punishing, let alone murdering, a raped child is so appalling that language fails. And there can be no multicultural dithering about it: our way is better than their way, as civilization is better than savagery, as love is better than hate. But, of course, our superiority isn’t a matter of individuals, it’s a matter of ideas. The Islamofascist’s creed is a bad one; the American creed is not.

Which brings me at last to the films of John Wayne and the ministry of Jesus Christ. I mean, if these are not the twin pillars our nation rests on, man, I don’t know what those pillars would be. Thus my texts for today’s sermon, brothers and sisters, are John 8: 3-11 and John Ford’s The Searchers.

Not just anybody who can weave the Bible and John Wayne together. I might have gone with Romans 12:19 myself.

I wonder what text Mr. Klavan would choose to go with True Grit?

We Are The World

Last night while watching the Olympics (yes, of course after American Idol) they were showing the moguls competition -- which I find not just silly but annoying because sports shouldn't have judges, which is probably the best reason to prefer curling as an olympic sport to moguls -- and the funWife and I noticed how they have the current top three competitors sitting in order and the guy in the middle at the time was clearly asian (you don't see too many in olympic skiing events). He popped up to wave to the stands before the last competitor since he was going to medal, and so the TV obligingly told us that Toby Dawson was waving to his mother, who was clearly not asian. I immediately told my wife, he must be an American. We are the world.

Why Do You Want To Skin The Cat?

What do the homeless, brutal cops, and polluting cars have in common?

The all follow a power law distribution, not a normal distribution, and so need power law solutions according to the always interesting Malcolm Gladwell:

Power-law solutions have little appeal to the right, because they involve special treatment for people who do not deserve special treatment; and they have little appeal to the left, because their emphasis on efficiency over fairness suggests the cold number-crunching of Chicago-school cost-benefit analysis. Even the promise of millions of dollars in savings or cleaner air or better police departments cannot entirely compensate for such discomfort.

What is doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result this time?

I Have A Dream

Rev. Martin Luther King's 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech is famous, and with good reason. It's magnificent, and when I tried to just excerpt it, I found I couldn't leave anything out.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free.

One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.

So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition. In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.

This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.

So we have come to cash this check -- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights.

The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. we must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" we can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring." And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

As great as the impact of reading it is, I can only imagine that it was ten times greater hearing it delivered by such an orator. Talk about communicating a vision, this speech delivers on the vision of a nation free of racial divisions while appealing to both the historical vision of the United States and to clear Christian imagery.

So are we there yet? Can all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" Well, not quite, but we are far, far closer now than we were then. I'm crazy enough to think that my children's generation will actually be there with few exceptions.

While a pervasive and oppressive racism was clearly the dominate factor in a black person's life in 1963, that is no longer the case. Other factors are now equally or more significant than racism in negatively affecting black people, although the concentrating effect of population disparity on minorities is hard for a non-minority to judge, as I pointed out in a post I titled the perception of racism but could have been titled the experience of racism.

That's what Bill Cosby's crusade is about. It's said that generals fight the last war; Mr. Cosby is trying to get the troops to fight the current war. The struggle for civil rights is over, the struggle now is what to do with them.

There is still some controversy over the Rev. King's remarks centering on how to reach the vision he so wonderfully provided. What kind of transition will it take and how long should it last? While I think Rev. Kings vision is still as important and worthwile as the day he spoke on the steps of the Lincoln memorial, I don't think we can look back to his every utterance as a roadmap. Yes, he pointed out that black people would need help on the way to full equality, but 45 years later that isn't the question, the question is what form should it take, if any? If we are this close to "Free at last, free at last, free at last" does looking to the past hurt or help getting all the way there? And funny how people use his opposition to Vietnam to oppose any war they don't like but they fail to mention such opposition when we are fighting a war they either support or don't care about.

Rev. King provided us the vision in a clear and compelling form; it's up to us to try every day to live up to that vision.

(Yes, I realize that yesterday is the day set aside to celebrate the good Reverend's accomplishments, but time as always presses and while I started this yesterday, I couldn't finish it until today.)

Different But Equal

Jim Pinkerton looks at Maureen Dowd's lastest book, Are Men Necessary? and while he starts out good, he goes astray. I think one area that Feminism went astray was the outlook that equality meant sameness, and so the way to be equal to men was to be the same. I'm all for equality, but that doesn't mean sameness. Different but equal makes perfect sense to me. And so it seems to me that when women try to compete sexually as if they were men, macho men, disaster strikes. That's the direction mainstream Feminism took and got the pants beat off them, and I do mean that literally. I know men tend to be protrayed as idiots by the media, but it is the height of folly to think that women can try to out masculine the most masculine of men.

And so Jim's right that Hef is laughing and Maureen is crying, but it isn't because Men hold all the cards and always have; it's because Maureen tried to beat Hef at his own game.

Once More Into The Breach

As I have mentioned before, I am a death penalty agnostic. But one thing the irks me about certain death penalty opponents is that they think that not just has an innocent been put to death, but only innocents have been put to death (leastways if they are a minority). Marlin Gray was executed for the rape and death of two sisters, and there are some people who are convinced he was innocent. I don't know for sure since I wasn't there, but the evidence is pretty clear and convincing. Even Bill McClellan, who's a soft touch for a sob story, sits through all the trials and says the mystery isn't who but why. This reflexive defense of anyone sentenced to death is as annoying than the other extreme - no innocent person has ever been put to death.

Law Reform

My biggest complaint with the civil justice system isn't the system itself, but us. You know, Americans. We're the ones who have adopted the idea that anything, and I mean anything can be litigated. Everything is open for review by fifteen strangers: twelve people of the street, two paid advocates, and a judge. There is no aspect of human interaction - business, personal, intimate, property - that can't be hauled into a court at a later date for a do over. You may be thinking great, we need more oversight. But there is a penalty for all this, both in terms of direct costs paid to the practitioners and the opportunity costs in changed behavior. And our civil system doesn't even protend to be speedly like our criminal system. Cases can drag on for years, which means that not only is everything subject to review, but it can be years before anything is final. That surely has to be a big drag on invention, risk taking, and business in general.

Another facet of the problem is that when you have breakthroughs in technology or science, everyone benefits. When you have breakthroughs in finance, everyone benefits as improved financial helps new ventures get financed. These breakthroughs are driven by the quality and number of people involved in these fields. But when it comes to law, it seems that breakthroughs there only benefit lawyers, which only increases the attraction to a field that is way over represented and talented in America. The explosion in class action lawsuits hasn't done a thing for the average person -- if anything it's hurt them overall, but it sure has made a bunch of lawyers wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice.

It used to be that farsighted rulers would periodically reform the legal code (Hammurabi was the first recorded). I know the legislatures across the land are too busy with far more sexy and immediate stuff, but I think we're getting to the point that we really need to consider the kind of top to bottom overhaul to rein in the reach of lawsuits and combine it with a wholesale pruning of government regulation. But that won't happen until we demand it. Just having a "business friendly" Supreme Court Justice doesn't cut it.

Always Room For One More

Tom McMahon has a fun blog, but he has this bad habit of going to blogs and getting banned. First it was Electrolite. OK, he wasn't banned, he just had all the vowels removed from comments the Haydens didn't care for. Then it was Cynical-C blog where the proprietor banned him from commenting. But that was just the warm up, because when he was banned at NoodleFood, he wasn't just banned, he was condemned to hell along with it. I kid you not. The craziest thing about it is that Tom is such a mild commenter - calm, patient, insult free - which seems to drive wackos nuts. I mean, what set off Diana at NoodleFood off was that he, brace yourself, quoted a line from Amazing Grace which caused huge foaming at the mouth, and when she discovered that he had a link, a link mind you, to National Review, which periodically runs a negative review of Atlas Shrugged, that's when she fell over backwards, and not only banned Tom from her site, but in full atheist majesty flung him straight into the pit of hell with Whittaker Chambers. As Dave Berry would say, you can't make this stuff up.

It sounded like so much fun, I linked to my negative review of Atlas Shrugged (which the online version of National Review ran seven years ago - my how time flies) in his comments. So Tom graciously has reprinted my review of Atlas Shrugged so that I too can go straight to hell with him and Whittaker. Since I knew it was coming, I made pitcher of ice water to take with me for Tom and Whittaker. And if you want to join us there, you can let Tom know of your negative review of Atlas Shrugged.

Poverty

Katrina has put poverty on, well, the middle burner these days. An op-ed in the Post Dispatch by Francie Broderick linked Katrina with recent roll backs in Medicaid coverage in Missouri noted this exchange thoughts it inspired:

"Two years ago, I was in Jefferson City when legislators debated the question of saving health care and social services by raising some taxes and closing some corporate loopholes. A woman opposing this approach literally shouted in my ear: "People should take care of themselves." I made the mistake of responding. "Some people simply can't," I said, to which she again shouted "Well, they just have to do better."

...

Why have things changed so much? Why did we decide to let the most vulnerable fend for themselves? I think part of the answer is that we have been asking the wrong questions. Instead of asking "How do we make things better?" we have been asking what the individual has done or not done to get themselves in their situations. In other words: How is it their fault?

I think we also should be asking: What systems and policies have to change so that people can take better care of themselves and their families? What do we know that will work? How can we make it happen? "

Now, those are some excellent questions - I'm always a fan of "How do we make things better?" but I think it ignores the difference between people who can't take care of themselves (or adequately participate in a market economy) and those who won't. And for me that's a huge difference, and oddly enough one of my problems with doctrinaire libertarianism since they want to reduce the problem to one for which they already have a solution, so doctrinaire libertarians simply the problem to one in which we are all adults sound of mind and body. But we aren't and even my simple dichotomy of can't and won't isn't so simple in real life as there aren't simple binary functions of can/can't and will/won't, let alone can't/won't.

So if you look at the poor and see the problem of poverty as one of people who can't, one set of solutions becomes clear; if you look at the poor and see the problem of poverty as one of people how won't, a different set of solutions becomes clear. And since the tendency is that feedback from life only reinforces your previously held assumptions and beliefs, people of one camp find it hard to see the poor in any other way. I guess I look at it both ways, and that what's needed for one group won't do much for the other. For people who can't participate adequately, whether through physical or mental issues, money by itself is a significant part of the solution. For people who won't, money by itself only enables them in their won't-ness and is something that they will be able to earn once they are no longer won't-ers.

There is clearly a social/cultural aspect to poverty; I can remember watching an older writer being interviewed by Tim Russert and the writer related how he was talking to a friend of the same generation and they were talking about growing up poor during the great depression, which got them to talking about poverty today and the differences, and the writer said that the difference was that when he was growing up, the poor were middle class people without money but that being poor today is about far more than money.

Megan McArdle first looks at the poor and Katrina and has suggestions on why and how a "self-evacuation" in the face of a storm means the middle class and rich leave without difficulty and the poor stays behind. Then she effectively explores the difference between the poor and middle class, and hint, it isn't about money:

"So I think that conservatives are right that many of the poor dig themselves in deeper. But conservatives tend to take a moralistic stance towards poverty that radically underestimates how much cultural context determines our ability to make good decisions.

Sure, I go to work every day, pay my bills on time, don't run a credit card balance and don't have kids out of wedlock because I am planning for my future. But I also do these things because my parents spent twenty or so years drumming a fear of debt, unemployment, and illegitimacy into my head.

...

In other words, middle class culture is such that bad long-term decision making also has painful short-term consequences. This does not, obviously, stop many middle class people from becoming addicted to drugs, flagrantly screwing up at work, having children they can't take care of, and so forth. But on the margin, it prevents a lot of people from taking steps that might lead to bankruptcy and deprivation. We like to think that it's just us being the intrinsically worthy humans that we are, but honestly, how many of my nice middle class readers had the courage to drop out of high school and steal cars for a living?"

It is often said by advocates who only see those who can't that nobody chooses to be poor. Well, I don't choose to be fat, but I have looked in the mirror lately. So yes, some people choose to be poor, only the choice is never put in those terms. It's the sum of a whole bunch of decisions not all of which seem related. And the poor have a host of influences that lead to poor decisions; the middle class has has a host of influences that lead to better decisions. So what can we do to influence the influences? And how much can government do as part of that influence? I leave these as excercises for the reader.

And to round out the trifecta, I turn to Joe Carter to has reposted his thoughts on the relativeness of poverty:

"I’m always hesitant to share this story because we in America tend to have a knee-jerk sympathy for the “down and out.” There are, however, many times, like in my family’s case, when pity is completely unwarranted. A lifetime of foolish decisions by my parents, rather than a dismal economy or lack of opportunity, led to our being poor. We reaped what they had sowed.

But while being poor can be difficult, it isn’t the tragedy that many might be inclined to believe. From an early age I knew that while many people had more than I did, others had it much, much worse. That lesson was seared into my conscience while sitting in a pew watching Baptist missionaries present a slideshow detailing their latest mission trip. The images of true poverty gave our tiny congregation a glimpse into the everyday life in Ethiopia, a time of famine when a bucket of unshelled peanuts would be considered a feast. I was struck by the realization that as little as we had, these people had less. I was white-trash Texas poor; these people were Africa poor. "

My summation is that I know as a Christian I should help those in need; but I have to be careful not just because all needs aren't equal, but all needs aren't the same. A lack of money has many causes and the best help addresses the cause even as it addresses the lack. Even rich people have needs that money cannot solve.

Hearing Voices

The hottest trend right now, so I'm told, is podcasting. And the hottest trend podcasting is "Godcasting", or religious (mainly Christian) podcasts - sermons, daily devotionals, etc. At last a new internet technology not driven by the porn industry.

American Moral Recovery

I'm not the only one who thinks that American society and culture is getting morally better. Check out this editorial by David Brooks at the Salt Lake Tribune (originally at the New York Times News Service, August 9, 2005):

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_2927633

By a lot of hard statistical measures, we are now better-behaved than we were 15 years ago.

I particularly liked this note:
"The second thing that has happened is that many Americans have become better parents. Time diary studies reveal that parents now spend more time actively engaged with kids, even though both parents are more likely to work outside the home."

This explains why: the top of my dresser is covered about 4 inches deep with unopened financial statements, the lawn needs mowing, the garage is full of junk that I have to sort through, and that I finally got around to filing my taxes in July. I'm concentrating on what matters - my wife and children!

Don't Gore My Ox

Judge Lefkow, who was the target of one murder plot and whose family was murdered by a man who had appeared in her courtroom, spoke on Capital Hill the other day. Part of her testimony was a call for Congresspeople to "publicly and persistently repudiate gratuitous attacks on the judiciary" since "Fostering disrespect for judges can only encourage those that are on the edge, or on the fringe, to exact revenge on a judge who displeases them."

I'm not going to address the content of her remarks, but the possible spin that could be put on them. I can easily see her remarks being denounced as an assault on the Constitution and/or the First Amendment - she's calling for restriction on speech after all. Just because it's voluntary wouldn't stop the spin and complaining. Don't agree? Just consider Ari Fleischer's remark about watching what you say and the hornet's nest he stirred up.

OK, so what's my point? My point is how we all filter people's words and actions through our own thoughts and feelings towards them and their associations and can react oppositely to essentially the same words or actions depending on who's doing the talking or taking the action.

I'm Perfect, You're Not

As I have two Fruit of the Murphy Loins, I find the cell phone to be indespensable to the modern parent. The ability to coordinate my movement with my other leader has saved the day on more than one occasion - most recently when I summoned breakfast at the chess supernationals. But I find that it does reinforce a lot of bad behavior in people - poor driving, incessant chattering, loudmouthery, just general obnoxiousness and cluelessness. Last night when we were leaving a restaurant, a gentleman was talking on his cell phone squarely blocking the exit door. We were not quiet entering the vestibule; my loud "excuse me" caused no change in his location; only when I reached around Sir Clueless to shove open the door did he move slowly out of the way without apology or even any acknowledgment of our existance. I have no idea what he was discussing, but I know it wasn't that important.

People, let's be aware out there.

My Own Response

Over at TalkLeft this post caught my attention: Should Reckless Sex Be A Crime? I guess if you're a lawyer you find the debate interesting about a proposal to criminalize first time intercourse without a condom. My response is the uninteresting "Are you out of your freaking mind?" I guess that wouldn't cut it with the barristers in a court of law (i.e it isn't an acceptable legal phrase).

A World Safe and Secure

During Wednesday evening's debate in Tempe, Arizona, the two presidential candidates were asked the following question by moderator Bob Schieffer:

"Will our children and grandchildren live in a world as safe and secure as the one in which we grew up?”

The correct answer to this question is:

Yes, the world will be 10.33% safer for our children.

Here's how I know this. In 1960 the life expectancy at birth was 69.7 years. In the year 2000 it was 76.9 years. See http://www.moralityindex.com/6.html#Data%20Sources for the entire data table. I was born in 1960, and my children's birth years average about 2000. We calculate

((76.9 / 69.7) - 1) * 100 = 10.33%

So our children will likely be about 10% safer from premature death. The ever-increasing life expectancy graph sailed right on up through September 11, 2001 with nary a blip. (I leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out why there was a huge drop in life expectancy during the First World War and not during the Second.)

If you personally want to be safe, wear your seat belt and don't smoke. Everything else is worry.

You are also a lot safer now from getting murdered than you were in 1990. (Note:The crime statistics are not valid before about 1980 because of missing data, so you should ignore those years.)

In fact, you are safer from property crime, too, compared to about 15 years ago:

Warning: There is a false ramp-up in these graphs during the early years! The data comes from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, which have gradually increased the number of reporting agencies over the years. But that dramatic drop you see in crime during the Clinton era is very real. You can swipe the data tables from http://www.moralityindex.com/crime.html and graph them yourself if you want.

The point is not that we can calculate our relative safety to three significant digits. The point here is that questions of safety and danger can be determined by reliable statistics, not by someone's feeling on a certain day with regard to how safe we are.

Bob Schieffer and others have this rosy glow about the "good old days", and how safe and wonderful things were back then. Sure, I walked to school when I was a kid and never worried about someone snatching me. But my brother got hit by a car on his bicycle and ended up in the hospital with a concussion and a broken leg. Of course he was not wearing a helmet - nobody did in 1966! Now my children and I do not get on our bicycles without a helmet. We have to wear seatbelts in the car or get a fine. On a global level, I was growing up during the Cuban Missile Crisis. People were building bomb shelters and we were close to global thermonuclear war. That doesn't sound very safe and secure to me.

The numbers show that we are living longer and safer. If politicians want to make intelligent public policy, they should look at the numbers and not rely on some around-the-water-cooler analysis.

I'm sure that terrorism has increased, and global leaders are rightly concerned about it. "On December 31, 1964 a squad of Palestinian guerillas crossed from Lebanon into northern Israel. ... their target: a pump for conveying Galilee water to the Negev." The operation failed, but al-Fatah leader Yasser Arafat extolled their service in the cause of Jihad (book: "Six Days of War, June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East", by Micheal B. Oren, 2002, page 1).

Nowadays the terrorists don't attack water pumps, they fly airplanes into office buildings. Arafat has morphed from a terrorist leader into an ineffectual national leader who issues perfunctory condemnations whenever his countrymen blow up civilian buses in Israel. Other scum like al-Zarqawi have taken over the headlines. Yes, terrorism has changed over the years.

But we're still safer on the whole.

Wonderful Spam

Do they give the electric chair for spam? The Justice Department has filed a criminal complaint against for men for fraudulent spam. I can see an Alice's Restaurant moment:

"What were you arrested for, kid?"
And I said, "Spaming."
And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said,
"And creating a nuisance."
And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime

I hate spam, but I notice it less now that I use a mail program that has a decent spam filter (AKA Apple Mail). I still get 60-70 spams a day, but I only see at worst about 5 of them, usually those that have 5 unconnected words in the title. Why that's hard for the filter to spot and easy for me is left as an excercise for the reader.

I just don't get spam. Who in their right mind actually buys anything from a spammer?

If the Can-Spam Act (shouldn't they change it to Can't-Spam Act?) also covers comment spam, I'm all in favor of it. I just installed MT-Blacklist by Jay Allen to try and stop it here. I never had a problem when I was using Greymatter, but I'm being overrun by it recently.

Get On You Feet

I admit it - I thought to myself what Elton John said aloud. My wife and I happened to catch the end of American Idol last week and we were shocked not just that Jennifer Hudson was voted off, but that La Toya London and Fantasia Barrino were in the bottom three with her. IMHO those three plus George Huff are the the best in the bunch - and they all happen to be black.

But I think a more likely explanation than racism is that the three women are similar enough they canabalize each others votes. This whitebread couple in the 'burbs has voted consistantly for La Toya and are hoping she wins; but we stopped watching the show a couple of weeks ago so we didn't vote for anyone last week (or this week).

UPDATE: The kid who impersonates Frank Sinatra was voted off last night, and neither Fantasia or La Toya were in the bottom 3. (I didn't watch - a little birdie told me after my son and I got back from his baseball game, which his team won BTW). So maybe the contest is back on track, although lets face it -- the five who are left are all very good. And John Stevens would have been the winner 50 years ago when his music was still in style.

Between Richmond and Isleworth

Funmurphys takes the weekend off, but not Conrad! This must be kiss a dictator month for the left, but the Great Gweilo is having none of that. I haven't been to Shanghai (surprise!), but I did spend a month in pre-earthquake Kobe. It seemed pretty technologically advanced to me - right down to the instructions for the western style toilet in hotel. The eastern style toilet is a hole in the floor, and needs no instruction, just good knees.

American Commercial With Extra Padding

I'm sure we're not the only ones to figure this out, but the only way to watch the monstrous bloat that is American Idol is to tape it (or Tivo it (or to Tivo-like-service it)) and watch the parts you like, i.e. the singing and judges remarks, while fast forwarding through the rest. I'd be happy to see quite a few of the contestants win this time, although Red is my sentimental favorite. Not that I watch the show or anything.

Speaking Nonsense to Indifference

When I read a post like this one, I don't know why I bother with this blog. The James says it better than I ever can.

All too often, I find people making arguments that are completely unpersuasive, but very confirming. By that I mean they have no hope of persuading someone to change their mind, but they do confirm someone's previously held belief. This isn't a left/right thing, as such arguments are made by people of every political persuation.

The arguments are often quite logical - but the chief defect is one of the starting assumptions. For instance, if you start with the assumption that Bush or Clinton is an evil man, why all sorts of things that don't make any sense otherwise suddenly do. Bush toppled the Taliban just for an oil pipeline - why sure! Clinton ran drugs through Mena airport - makes perfect sense! If you start out with the assumption that the Democrats or Republicans truly are the party with people's best interests at heart (and needless to say the other party is out to "get" the people), it makes perfect sense to view the identical actions of the parties in completely different ways.

I know I've given a lot of thought to my positions. Obviously, I'm right. And if you disagree, why you can't simply be mistaken. No, because you couldn't honestly come to a different conclusion than me, you have to have ulterior motives. OK, honestly this is something I struggle with -- along with plenty of others. But too many have seemingly thrown in the towel on this and adopt this outlook wholeheartedly. And then their opponenents aren't mistaken, but liars. And then it's OK to hate your opponents, because they are liars and deserve it.

Act Natural

Alison Hawke at Quantum Tea Blog has a very nice post about routine camera surveillance in general and Britain in particular as it is the most watched nation. She points to a post by Future Pundit that points out that technology has it's limits - in this case the failure of the British criminal justice system.

Alison rightly claims the law is the law whether anybody is watching or whether you get caught. My thought is that if because of such monitoring laws that weren't previously enforced suddenly take on new life, we need to consider law by law whether or not to keep these laws and scrap the bad ones rather than block such monitoring.

Moral Depravity

I'm the number one hit for "moral smugness" on Google. I now turn to what I find to be moral depravity -an email sent to Archpundit from a white supremacist. I warn you, it is revolting, not for the obscene language, but for the sentiments expressed. While on a theoretical level I understand that people like Mr. Holt exist, it's a shock to read such brutal hatred, and another shock to find out this guy was recently on the School Board for St. Louis and currently has a radio show here in St. Louis.

There is some irony to the email - the torrent of abuse on "nigros" and "nigro lovers" was set loose by Archpundit calling Mr. Holt a white supremacist.

I Dodged A Bullet (Metaphorically)

I about had a heart attack this morning - the St. Louis Post Dispatch editorialized about the concealed carry law that "It would be wonderful if the law were unconstitutional, as Judge Steven R. Ohmer says it is. But it's hard to read the Missouri Constitution that way without a lot of wishful thinking." This is the same editorial board that supported common crook and high handed Speaker of the Missouri House Bob Griffin because he was a staunch supporter of abortion on demand. I have to say it's great that despite their repeating the claim that concealed carry "is the road to hell" and is "an abomination" (hey, aren't these the people who hate it when right wingers speak in that kind of language?) they have the intellectual honesty to admit that it isn't unconstitutional (if they would only do the same about Roe vs. Wade, I really would have a heart attack).

I don't care that much about concealed carry, but I went from an opponent to a supporter when I looked at the data. It doesn't lead to shootouts in the streets, people killed over nothing, and an increase in crimes of passion. I don't think it does much to lower the crime rate, either, though. But what it does do is allow the average citizen, and most importantly the single mom living in a lousy neighboorhood, the ability to choose a firearm as a method to protect herself. That's me, pro-choice when it really is a choice.

Morality Index

Can you measure morality? What standard would you use? Well, my old physics buddy, Carl Drews, has decided that a new born (not to mention two older children) doesn't keep him busy enough, so he's trying to measure the aggregate morality of the United States at his new website The Morality Index. Carl decided to use the 10 commandments to be his guide to morality. So far he has determined figures for murder, theft, and adultery, although due to the difficulty in measuring it, he's using marriage and divorce as proxies. I have to say, using just those three indicies, things are not looking good, as the trend is almost a straight line increase in immorality since 1950.

Good luck, Carl, I can't wait to see how you measure such things as not coveting and honoring your mother and father.

UPDATE: OK, I was wrong - I misread the graph. The trend has been ever upward since 1950, largely based on increasing lifespan. I'm sorry I got it wrong, Carl, and I'm sorry but I think you need to go back to the drawing board - the commandment is "Don't Kill", not "Live Long and Prosper".

And as Carl notes, while I call him my physics buddy, he defected to electrical engineering during college (as I later defected to aeronautical engineering for grad school).

3rd Wave Feminism

I've mentioned before I'm not a conventional Feminist. Well, according to women studies major and Miss America contestant Nancy Redd, I'm a 3rd wave feminist. Too bad my grandmothers aren't around to find out. I knew I was at least 2nd generation since my mother, with two boys, made sure her sons never knew there was a distinction between man's and women's work (she also breast fed at a time when, in the words of my children's pediatrician, doing so was a political statement). Anyway, I'm in complete agreement with Ms. Redd when she says "This is what third-wave feminism is all about: Be a career woman, be a stay-at-home mom, be Miss America" -- and I'm confident that my daughter will live that future.

The author of the piece, Ms. Nesoff, disagrees: "Redd missed the point. She shed a quarter of the 158 pounds on her 5-foot-5 frame to compete for the crown, conforming, in the process, to current notions of beauty. Perhaps what's being reclaimed by feminists who embrace beauty pageants and impractical shoes is not feminism itself but femininity. ... Perhaps some women want to ignore the inequality that persists in our society by coating it in pink frosting. They can strap on those Jimmy Choos and pretend that there is no glass ceiling or rape or sexual harassment."

Methinks Ms. Nesoff misses the point. The old style feminists seem to see equality only in terms of making women as manly as possible - thus the gripe about reclaiming feminity and conformity to current notions of beauty. Who wants to exchange the patriarchy for the matriarchy, especially if the matriarchy is trying to out patriarch the patriarchy? If a woman wants to wear impractical shoes to look good, isn't that her decision? If a woman wants to wear work boots, eschew makeup, forgo current notions of sex appeal, have a career in construction, swill beer, and cuss like a sailor, more power to her - but again, shouldn't that be her choice? Or she can strap on those Jimmy Choos and deal with glass ceilings, rape, and sexual harassment in her own unique style like the rest of us who aren't demanding that others conform to our theories but who are trying to make the world a better place through our own actions.

Thanks to Dodd at Ipse Dixit for the link.

Tanya has an opinion, too.

Men Vs. Women, Me Vs. Maureen Dowd

The Man Without Qualities is all over Maureen Dowd's latest with three, oops four as of now, posts that demonstrate that (once again) she hasn't a clue about what she's writing about. I generally can't be bothered with Ms. Dowd as I'm clearly not her target demographic (something she makes clear in that latest column). I know people who admire her, and rave about her writing style. I looked into the matter and discovered that indeed they were right - her writing is amazing as she is able to write a column that is both the column they print and the perfect parody of the same. "As Dr. Judson told the journalist Ken Ringle, "Her spittle turns his innards to soup, which she slurps up, drinking until she's sucked him dry." I've heard ex-wives described exactly the same way.

To give Maureen her due, while she uses the same elements over and over, she does manage to arrange them differently on occasion, unlike Molly Ivins, for instance, who writes the same column over and over. No matter what the facts and circumstances are, Molly always manages to draw the same conclusion: Democrats good, Republicans bad, very very bad. Oh wait, sorry, that's Maureen too.

I try to never be surprised by the media, but I often fail. Michael Savage was (rightly) fired for telling a caller that he hoped he died because he was "a sodomite". Maureen Dowd tells her readers I hope men become extinct because, well, they have tiny little Y chromosomes, and ... ... nothing happened, no response. I suppose it's because of the sheer scale - Mr Savage's hate was something you could wrap your hands around because it was so personal; Maureen's hate is hard to see because it's so vast - half the human race vast. But this time I'm doubly surprised: A top columnist in the Newspaper of Record keeps writing columns on subjects I've already covered, and covered better IMHO, as this reproduction makes clear:

Dear Mr. Know-it-all,

My wife and I have been having an argument that is threatening to end our marriage and we need your help in settling it. She says that men can be replaced by a turkey baster, and I ask her who will fight their wars? Then she just laughs (a distinctly unpleasant laugh). So, who's right?

Dan Collision, Ottumwa Iowa

While I try not to get involved in domestic disputes, I felt I must help as your remark about the laugh makes me believe she has told this story to her friends and they all agree with her that you are a big goofball. So I will tell you, you're both wrong. Men can't be replaced with just a turkey baster; a hot water bottle is also required (in season). I can understand you two overlooking this as we are just now getting cooler weather and all summer long your mere presence in bed has been making her too hot (and not the good kind of hot, either). And the thing that's actually kept us from being replaced, since turkey basters and hot water bottles are cheap and plentiful, is an automated system to take out the trash. When this system is cheap and plentiful, then mankind will become womankind. For the nostalgic woman, it will store the odor from the trash and then spray this fragrance at random intervals in the house while saying "Ah, that's better", "Don't light a match", "Like roses", or "I wouldn't go in there if I were you".

As to your remark about fighting wars, physical combat would be obsolete without any men. Instead, each country would make catty remarks about the other country behind its back, until from embarrassment one country would surrender and the victor would take some of the remarks back (how much would be part of the peace settlement) and the loser would take them all back. So Dan, I hope I've done my part for domestic tranquillity.

PS You'll know women have been replaced when you see chisels and gasoline sold in the cleaning products aisle at K-Mart.

The Perception of Racism

Clarence Page wrote about hate crimes in one of his columns a few years ago. Mr. Page was quoting statistics on hate crimes from the FBI that showed that white against black hate crimes were about 3 times more prevalent than black against white. He went on to state that since Blacks make up only about 10 percent of the population, they are being victimized out of proportion to their numbers. He had his statistics wrong, though, because it's not the number of victims that drive the number of hate crimes, but the number of perpetrators. That is, victims don't ask to be victimized, but perpetrators force them to be. So you would expect, given equal hate in this country and perfect crime reporting, that the ratio of racist hate crime would equal the percentage of the population, which is more like five times more white on black than black on white hate crimes.

That got me to thinking about perceptions of racism in this country, where blacks and whites consistently disagree about the amount of racism. Blacks consistantly report through surveys etc. that racism is more prevelant and more significant than whites. This led to the following thought experiment: let's say that there is a certain rate of racism, and let's say it is constant between the two races. Let's also assume for the experiment that whites outnumber blacks by a ratio of 5 to 1 (roughly true for the USA), and that whites and blacks have equal power to commit a racist act. What would each group experience with regard to the frequency of racist acts?

On average, blacks would experience 25 times the amount of racist activity directed against them that whites would experience, even though each race would perpetrate the same number of racist acts per person, simply because there are 5 times more whites than blacks (5 times more acts, but only 1/5 the people to experience the acts). In other words, the amount of animosity a minority feels is the square of the ratio of the relative majority to minority populations.

And when it would come time to report the prevalence of racist acts, whites would report only one fifth the number of racist acts that blacks would, simply because whites would spend much more time in white-white interactions where no racists acts would occur. The disparity is caused simply by the relative size of the two populations, and not any bias on either races' part. Each races' experience would be different and equally valid from its standpoint. Additionally, if you asked how important race was to your life, whites would tend to say unimportant since, on average, only 1/6 of their interactions would involve race, but blacks would tend to say very important since, on average, 5/6 of their interactions would involve race.

Again, all of this disparity is caused by the disparity in population, and says nothing about the underlying amount of racism or poor racial perception. It's not that "whites don't get it" or that "blacks are hypersensitive", but that each group is reporting accurately on their different, equally valid experiences.

Let's throw in a look at how general meanness (not race related) can get factored in as well. Let's assume there are 5 million whites, 1 million blacks, and on average each white and each black commits 5 racists acts a year and 5 mean acts a year. At the end of the year, there are 25 million anti-black racist acts, 5 million anti-white racist acts, and 30 million general mean acts. Therefore, on average, each member of a given race will experience in a year:

White: 1 racist act against, 5 mean acts against.

Black: 25 racist acts against, 5 mean acts against

So what would each races perception of how important general meanness is versus racism? Blacks would of course say racism is more important than meanness, while whites would say just the opposite. The truth? They occur at an identical (at least in this experiment) rate. So who's right and who's wrong? Both are right, since they are reporting from their own experience, and from their own experiences, each group is correct. Remember, all of this comes from whites outnumbering blacks, and having racism and meanness exist.

Of course the real world is is different than the purity of such simple statistics and assumptions, but I really do think that it tells us something about the perception of racism being tied to the underlying population sizes. The larger the disparity in populations, the larger in the difference in how each population perceives racism.

Jack or Theresa?

Tom McMahon picks up a question originally posed by Rodney Balko: If we could clone a thousand Jack Welches and/or Mother Theresas, and drop them into Bombay with some start-up money, which of the two options would do more good for more people, a thousand Jack Welches, or a thousand Mother Theresas? I'd say why not both, but that doesn't respect the spirit of the question. So if I'm forced to chose, I'd have to say Mother Theresa. She's already proven she could do a lot of good in India. People like Welch are a dime a dozen; Mother Theresas are far more unique.

Since I consider myself a Hayekian (Freiderich, not Salma) when it comes to political/economic systems, I think the system here made Jack Welch, not the other way around. GE was a thriving concern when he arrived, and it's a thriving concern after he left. There are very few indespensable CEOs (Herb Kelleher and Steve Jobs are the only two who spring to mind) and they are almost always the founders of a company. The problem with India isn't a lack of entrepeneurs, it's the quasi-socialist economy. Indians in the US thrive. A thousand Jack Welches would just disappear without a trace. Instead of Jack Welch, you might consider the founder of GE and great inventor, Thomas Edison, but again the problem with India is it's political/economic system, not a lack of brain power.

So if I had to pick someone who I'd clone and send to a bunch of countries (if I can clone people and provide them startup money, why limit them to Bombay?), it would be Benjamin Franklin, grandfather of the United States. Not only was he a successful business man (he started with nothing, unlike Jack Welch) and inventor, he also was a philanthropist and a political innovator. Franklin would agitate for the needed reforms both through writing (he was a famed satiricist and top author) and political action and be able to take advantage of them, and yet retain a sense of charity and love for his fellow man.

Moral Smugness

One of the classic situations in which almost all ethicists will tell you it's okay to lie is the following: You're sheltering a Jewish family in your house in 1944 German occupied Europe when the Gestapo knocks on the door and asks if you're hiding any Jews. I bring this up because it leads to the point we all tend to be morally smug. If we were polled, most of us would answer that not only is it OK to lie in that circumstance, but had we been in German occupied Europe in 1944, we would have had to lie as we would have had half a dozen Jewish families living in the attic. Sadly, this isn't, and wasn't the case. Most people didn't shelter the Jews - the few exceptions such as Oskar Schindler, Raoul Wallenberg, and the rescue of Danish Jews by ordinary Danish citizens (It's a myth that the Danish king put on the Jewish armband but the truth that Denmark was able to save most of its Jews - the majority who were smuggled to Sweden and even the fraction deported to Theresienstadt) are notable by their rarity. We look down on those who failed at such an obvious moral test. And yet we fail to realize that there are times and places where it's very hard to be virtuous, and other times and places it's easy. Apparently, it was far easier to thwart the Nazi's in Denmark than anywhere else in Europe; not necessarily because the individual Danes had more moral courage, but perhaps because of the support found within Danish society and culture.

We look back at slavery as a huge evil and a moral stain on our country -- which it was. But we too easily dismiss the difficult decisions men such as Thomas Jefferson had to make and the moral anguish they suffered. We feel superior - we tell ourselves we would have done everything in our power to end such terrible suffering and injustice, unlike so many of the time. And yet we forget that to be opposed to slavery here and now carries no cost, no penalty, and no moral superiority. Sadly, slavery is still an issue in the world, but mostly overlooked in this country, although you can still do something about it. We feel the superiority, yet it we didn't earn it, but the people who worked against it and finally ended it at such great cost, they earned it. We've simply inherited it, along with a host of other moral improvements that allow us to look down at our ancestors.

We feel so much better about ourselves when we consider how much better we would have done in prior moral challanges than those who actually had to face the consequences. It helps us ignore what we are failing to do because of the consequences to ourselves here and now.

Virtual Sexual Inequality?

A computer game researcher, Jason Rutter, claims that women characters are worth less on eBay than male characters from Everquest, the massive multiplayer online role playing game (MMOPRG). I love the statement about a growing body of literature about women adopting male characters to keep from being hassled. Clearly, I'm in the wrong line of work - I should be trying to persuade Washington University to hire me as the computer gaming chair. Sadly, I missed the boat on this opportunity as I have so many others. As to the sex difference, it could be that because there are more males playing ("vast majority") than male characters (80 percent), it could be that old fashioned supply and demand thing instead of that old fashioned male chauvinism, although I wouldn't rule it out based on the age and geekiness of the average EQ player.

David Broder's Call For Service

David Broder is a sober, thoughtful pundit who rarely provkes a gut reaction in me. But his column about national service provoked one in me, and that amazing thing is that I'm still churning away days later when I have a chance to write about it.

I suppose what provoked the response was the root attitude towards people and liberty that incensed me so. National service is such a seductive proposal, and yet one so at odds with the notion of liberty for all that this nation was founded on. And Mr. Broder's tying it to the military echoes Edward Bellamy's great socialist novel, Looking Backward. Perhaps it was the way Broder wrapped socialism in the flag that I found so offensive.

David starts simply and appropriately enough, admiring the success and quality of our armed forces on Memorial Day. But that's not enough.

"It does not demean or dishonor them to suggest that this holiday is also a time to consider whether the ideal of national service, which they represent, should be extended to a much larger part of our population -- especially our young people."

So now we're going to take the all volunteer army, an army composed of people who are doing what they want, who are at liberty to fight for their country, and somehow that relates to compulsory service, people forced to unwillingly labor for others' ends. There are many service groups, here and abroad, that would lovingly support anyone who willingly wants to labor for his fellow man.

"But there is also a real cost to this country for indulging the notion among those who are entering adulthood that they have no obligation to their country.

...

But even acknowledging all of this, compared with any past generation of Americans and to any similar cohort of young people in the world, most American youths have extraordinary opportunities, because this country has decided rightly that they are the very best investment we can make.

Is it wrong to suggest that those who are the recipients of this national investment might be asked to give something back to their community and their country? I do not think so."

Ask away David, but do not tell. Is there anything stopping people from volunteering their time, talent, and energies for causes they think are worthwhile? None. So please, ask, exhort, implore, plead, beg, admonish all you want. But there is a big difference between reminded people how nice they have it, how they are but pygmies on the shoulders of giants, and forcing them to do what you think they should do -- that big difference is the difference between liberty and tyranny.

"Through the luck of history and through the decisions of their elders, no young Americans for three decades have been required to give up a period of their lives for military service. That exemption has nothing to do with their merits or their superior qualities. It is purely a matter of timing."

Um, David, the draft is a rarity, not a constant, and traditionally (in this country, anyway) has only been resorted to in times of war or more recently in times of cold war. And even then it wasn't universal.

But this is all warm and up throat clearing.

"Meanwhile, we know that large unmet needs abound in this society. In the past few months I have gone to briefings on reports documenting the looming staffing crises in nursing, in teaching, in a wide variety of social services and in the bureaucracies of state and federal government. In each of these fields, an aging workforce, often underpaid, is being forced to work beyond acceptable limits to meet the demands of this society. "

You've got to be kidding me. We need to force young people into involuntary servitude so that we'll have enough government bureaucrats? Say it ain't so, Dave. Actually, nobody is forced to work beyond acceptable limits to meet the demands of this society - you can always quit and do something else. But under national service, people will be forced to work, although not for the demands of society, but for the demands of David Broder. Perhaps we should handle this through the market, you know, where you pay people to do what you want. Why do we have to meet this looming shortage the soviet way? I don't recall it working so well for them.

"Meanwhile, each year at this time, hundreds of thousands of young men and women are graduating from colleges (where the cost of their education has been subsidized, directly or indirectly, by the public) and are being encouraged to pursue their careers, without much regard to their societal obligations. Those careers can be productive and fulfilling and often of great value to the nation. But the good that these young men and women (and their counterparts finishing high school, junior college and trade schools) could do if they all contributed a year of their lives at the outset of their careers is almost incalculable."

It isn't seemly for a man of David's age to drool over young people, but drool he does. Who decides what all these young people are going to do? David Broder? Society at large? Guess what, the market is how society at large determines the worth of people's contributions (see F.A. Hayek). Forced labor (or national service, same difference) is how a privileged few determine the worth of people's contributions. OK, can you tell that this is the truly maddening part? If all that matters is the good that youth could do if they contribute a year of their lives (of course, it isn't a contribution since that implies something voluntary which isn't what David is talking about), then why stop at one year. Wouldn't the good be twice as much if they were required to forgo two years. But let's not think small, let's go whole hog. Why not just force them to do good until they drop dead while still in the state's harness? Oh yeah, that's been tried and didn't work out so good.

Why don't we have all those people collecting social security staff government bureaucracies? Rather than demand that our youth give up a year of their lives for David's desire to do good, why don't we simply require that all those people collecting government money work for it? No doubt that would be awful and demeaning and unworkable; requiring college graduates to work for nothing but the honor of being an American would be ennobling and easy to administer.

"Especially at a time when vital home-front tasks are being shortchanged because of tight budgets, the wealth of talent and energy represented by our young people could make a huge difference if applied to the nation's needs."

So my choice is to raise taxes or send our children into involuntary servitude? Isn't there a third way?

"It would take the spirit of this holiday and give it real substance."

No, it would pervert the ideals that this country stands for, and defame the memory of those who died so that I and my children could live in freedom and be at liberty to pursue the aims that we think best. That's the whole crux of the matter - how do you organize your society. Do people create a better society by each individual working to the goals that they think are best; or do we force people to serve others. This country has demonstrated over the years that the first method creates the better society.

The Cat Amongst The Pigeons

Sweedish golfing bombshell Annika Sorenstam is playing with the big boys at a PGA tournament. This has provoked much grumbling on the PGA circuit; the PGA is considering an explicit ban on women in response. While it's playing out in the media as a classic knuckle dragging men vs. virtous women morality play, I'm not sure that's the whole truth. Certainly Ms. Sorenstam has every right to play in a PGA tournament where I hope she (along with every one else) plays her best. And it would be sheer churlishness for anyone to quit the tournament if paired with her as Vijay Singh said he would. But why can't men play in the LPGA? Where's the outrage over that? If it's funny that the men fret they'll be beaten why a women, why isn't it funny that the women fret so much they'd be beaten by a man that they banned men?

It comes down to economics, of course. And the only part of Mr. Singh remarks that had any resonance with me was when speaking in opposition to Ms. Sorenstam playing at a PGA tournament was that she was taking a spot from someone in the field. While I don't agree, I understand: it's fine and well for someone to measure herself against men, but it's a business, and you're taking money away from a union member. It's not about the gender, it's about the money. Surely sexism plays a role, but the reason there is a PGA and an LPGA is money. What would happen if the top ten or twenty female golfers joined the PGA? Well, that would knock ten or twenty men out of the game, and smaller pay days for many who remain -- while the play might be elevated, more people means more losers and more people chasing endorsements. Would the LPGA survive? Maybe, but the money might well shrink, as it would be the Second Rate Ladies Pro Golfing Association. So I can see a compelling, non-sexist reason why most men in the PGA would want to keep women out: it cuts down on the competition. And that's the same reason the LPGA bans men.

Why Is This Art?

Yesterday the whole family went to the St. Louis Art Museum with friends from church. We had an elegant brunch and then enjoyed the beauty of the objects d'art. Paintings, weavings, sculptures, sarcofogi, furniture, and other assorted brick a brack from earlier era's were all quite beautiful. Then we heaved ourselves up to the modern art section on the third floor. My daughter kept asking me, "Why is this art?" I had no answer other than I didn't consider it art, even though it was in an Art Museum. Many of the pieces were untitled - cut up golden torsos strewn about the floor; a wood cabinet filled with concrete; eight small nails connected by thin wire; an enormous burned canvas; a huge framework containing trashcans smashed flat and filled with broken glass, and broken glass on the floor in front; paintings of vague shapes that perhaps were meant to be people. It was a phantasmagoria of whatever: no talent, no beauty, no truth, no vision, no connection. Ty and Amy Wynn make more artwork on a single episode of Trading Spaces than was contained in the entire section devoted to Modern and 20th Century art at the Museum. How embarrassing for the artists of today. What a sad epilogue for the proud artistic traditon of Western Civilization. I can only speak for myself, but if that is a representative sample of what passes for Art these days, then modern art is completely bankrupt, a fraud, an insult to humanity, a desecration of the memory of all the artists who labored in the past to enrich civilization with their art and added to our rich artistic heritage. Tell me again why my tax dollars are subsidizing this nonsense.

Violent Television

I still remember the Monty Python skit where the middle aged wifed joked "I'm against all this sex on the television - it hurts my back too much." Well, violence on the TV is no laughing matter. Researchers claim that watching violent TV as a child leads to more aggressive behavior in adults. I have to say I'm always skeptical of studies like this, but at least when they start talking about people being twice as likely to commit aggressive acts they pass the significance threshold.

Anti-American?

Are the anti-war protests a sign of anti-Americanism? I think far more non-Americans are motivated by anti-Americanism than Americans are. I think there is a fringe, but a fringe only, of anti-war people in this country who are reflexively anti-American, who think the biggest problem in the world is American and who pretty much think America is always wrong and the root of all evil. Many, if not most, of those who are anti-war here aren't anti-American but anti-Republican. For them, the problem is that a Republican president wants to go to war. I've had several anti-war people tell me that if Clinton or Gore were President, they would have no problem with war against Iraq. They trust them, but they don't trust Bush. And I think you can see that in the different reactions to Clinton's wars than Bush's wars. They were for Clinton's wars, even when they didn't involve the UN or the US Congress; they didn't mind the use of ultimatum over diplomacy; they didn't mind civilian casualties, open ended commitments, nor the possibility of quagmires; in short they didn't demand the same things of Clinton they demand of Bush. And to be fair, there are people who would be far more wary of war with Iraq, if not against it altogether, if Clinton or Gore were President than they are with Bush as President.

Of course, there are plenty of people who are just anti-war period, and it doesn't matter who the President would be. And there are people who have good reasons to reject not any war but this war with Iraq, no matter who the President is. So clearly, for Americans to be against war with Iraq isn't necessarily, nor even likely, to be anti-American.

Dissent

I'm all for letting your views be known - whether through weblogs, letters to the editor, (my personal favorite) buttonholing strangers at parties, or the old standby of protest rallies/marches. My third post on this blog, way back on October 3 of last year, said things like "I have to respect people who want to peaceably assemble to make a political statement" and "I bring this up just because this is America, and the two events [protest rally and Leukemia walk] were different expressions of civic mindedness American style, part of the warp and woof of community. In different ways, they are why I love this country." I draw the line at protests that aim to disrupt the lives of people who have nothing to do with the thing being protested against - such as protestors against a war shutting down a highway.

Dissent is as American as apple pie, and equally heroic in this country. There are generally no real costs to dissent in this country, unlike many other countries. You and your family can be imprisoned, tortured, murdered even in countries like Cuba or Iraq if you dissent. You can stand in front of the White House and express your opinion that Bush is another Hitler all you want, and nothing will happen to you, except perhaps other people will express their opinion of you. And frankly, isn't it their right to voice their opinion of you, as it is your right to voice your opinion or whomever or whatever? If someone says they think you are an idiot, you are not being repressed, you are not being silenced. There is no bravery in dissent in this country, no extra worth in dissenting views. Sure, the majority isn't always right, but then neither is the minority.

So by all means, speak your piece, march, rally, but do so in peaceable, law abiding way. And if you want to persuade me to your cause, please try to reason with me, reach out and show your interested in my good opinion; If you want to harden my opinion against you, then by all means shout slogans, disregard and disrespect me, and generally act out your feelings of moral superiority.

Dramatic Decrease in College Students Mental Health

The American Psychological Association reports that college students have far more mental health problems than 11 years ago. How can this be? Every child is wanted now, so shouldn't their mental well being be getting better? Or perhaps this excerpt provides a clue:

"This comes at a time when students are finding fewer options for counseling and mental health care in the community, leaving the role of providing care primarily in the hands of university counseling center staff, according to the researchers."

Could it be shrinks are trying to drum up business? Or could it be with less stigma, people are more willing to turn to mental health professionals? Chronic mental illness didn't change over the period studied, thankfully.

Via Science Blog.

Rabbidity

I spent some time at the end of last week over at Eschaton engaged in discussion about Affirmative Action. I found it interesting that by taking the position that judging people by race or ethnicity was wrong, I was told I might (giving me the benefit of the doubt) be a racist; others didn't give the benefit and said anyone who said anything along the lines that either you shouldn't discriminate or that we live in a colorblind society or just bringing up the word quota is racist. The interesting thing was, nobody said we DO live in a colorblind society; a few said we OUGHT to live in a colorblind society. Anyway, rabid partisans are rabid partisans whether they are on the left, right, center, or uncategorizable. They're always right and those whom they oppose are always wrong. They divide people into two categories - allies and enemies. Allies are always right, enemies are always wrong. Anything an enemy does is another example of why they aren't just wrong, they're evil. They don't need to listen or try to understand; attack, attack attack is all that is needed. As I said, rabid partisans exist all across the political spectrum (and always have). Bush haters, meet Clinton haters.

SUV - That Says It All

I'm not someone who either drives an SUV or hates them. My wife drives a mini-van, and I drive an econo-box. We looked at SUVs when we bought the mini-van, and they were just too expensive, more expensive than the mini-van. Greg Easterbrook has an article based on a book about what's wrong with SUVs (found via Archpundit). I knew they gobbled gas, but I didn't know that they really weren't that safe. I also was vaguely aware that by being classified as trucks, they escaped a lot of regulations that cars were under. The article details a lot of those exemptions. In the end, I'm struck by how we have two lines of vehicles - those highly regulated as passenger vehicles (cars, mini-vans), and those somewhat less regulated as trucks (SUVs). I suppose what really galls the anti-SUV crowd is how many people pick the less good for you SUVs despite the high price and the faults required to be legally considered a truck. If people want to overpay for a hunk of junk, what's it to me? Why are some of the people up in arms about a supposed loss of civil rights due to the war on terror so bound and determined to tell me what my automobile has to be like; why do those who resent any intrusion in the bedroom welcome it in the drivers seat? I know, it's for my own good.

Disappointed By The Truth?

A DNA test confirmed that the man convicted of the crime was in fact guilty of it, and the project innocence lawyer said the test result was disappointing. Why would you be disappointed? Shouldn't you be happy that the legal system got the right guy? It's not like there was a question of whether a crime occured or not; the question was who did it. Maybe she was disappointed in Mr. Charron, the rapist. Well, me too.

One Man, One Vote, Lousy System?

Is plurality voting, also known as one man, one vote (sorry ladies, I don't mean to be offensive, just historically accurate), the best voting method? Not according to vote theorists:

"It's a terrible system," says Alexander Tabarrok, an economist at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and director of research for the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. "Almost anything looks good compared to it."

It's certainly the easiest to understand. But what about instant runoff, where each voter ranks all the candidates, and the candidate with the fewest votes is recursively eliminated until only one is left? Or Borda voting, where each voter assigns points to each candidate out of a total possible per voter and the winner is the candidate with the most points? Or how about approval voting, where each voter can vote for as many candidates as he wants? Well, Kenneth Arrow demonstrated that the only voting system that works properly 100% of the time is the one man dictatorship (literally, one man, one vote total), not that either he or I advocate that. And in a two candidate vote, it doesn't matter what system you use - they all work. A good testing ground for any new voting proceedures would be primaries, where there are often a more than two candidates. And maybe the American system of two parties, plurality voting, and winner take all victories all works together such that the whole is more than the sum of the parts.

20 Year Reunion

My 20 year college reunion was this year. I was too busy (and too cheap) to go. The organizers were kind enough to send me for free the reunion book wherein each class member got a page to tell of their post-Stanford life. I was too busy to write. You were only supposed to get the book for free if you contributed. I've been too busy to do more than glance through it and try to look up a few people. That's the difference five years makes in your life - five years ago I both contributed to the book and read it cover to cover. Now, the Fruit of the Murphy Loins are five years older (I feel only about six months older) and that makes all the difference. Free time? That's the moment between when I collapse in a mindless heap having finished all that I can do at the end of the day and when I drag myself off to bed to be ready to start the process over the next day. Getting up in the morning represents the triumph of hope over experience. The contributors to the 15 year reunion book fell into two broad categories with two exceptions - those who were bragging about how wonderful their lives were, those who were relating how awful life had turned out, and the exceptions were Steve Minsuk and I. Besides me, there wasn't any middle ground. And Steve Minsuk, in a case of family name foreshadowing, is now Sharon. And the really weird thing is I knew him - we had Freshman English class together.

A couple of things struck me about the contributers to the 20 year reunion book. One is that my children are older than the great majority, which is weird because I'm a year or two younger than my classmates, and I got a late start with women. Oh, there were a few, like the Frykmans, who married right after college and so got a headstart on kids. But most of us waited to get married, and then waited to have children. My first first Fruit ripened when I was 29. My classmates seemingly waited even longer. The other thing that struck me is how many of my female classmates chucked successful careers to stay home with their children. I'm taking about smart, ambitious women who grew up hearing that staying at home was a dead end, who went to an elite university, who had high paying, powerful jobs. And then they had children, and after much agonizing, they decided they'd rather work in their home than at the office. Page after page of how "I used to be a partner at , but now I'm happier staying home with the kids." Don't get me wrong, there are still plenty of my female classmates kicking butt in the career department; I'm just surprised by how many prefer to wipe butt than kick it.

Why I'm Not A Feminist

As I've grown older, I've changed my mind about many subjects. Generally, as a callow youth I accepted the prevailing theories only to discard them when over time I was confronted with experience that contradicted them. When I started college, I considered myself a Feminist. Women, who were the exact same as men, were unfairly not being accorded all the rights and respect that they should. Organized Feminism was the answer. My Sophomore year, that changed.

I attended a lecture by Catherine McKinnon and Andrea Dworkin with a couple of female Feminist friends. It was made abundantly clear that I, by being a man, was the problem. Male sexuality was pretty much the root of all evil. Let me say that when sometime later I heard that the two women were lesbian lovers, I was not surprised. Afterwards, when the two Feminists were enthusiastic about the lecture, that ended my days as a Feminist. I clearly had the wrong equipment for the team. Feminism as a fetish has gone on to ever increasing heights of loopiness.

Even though I got off the big F bus, I still consider myself a small f feminist. By that I mean that women are equals, but not identical, and should be treated legally and socially as such. Women should be able to chose what they want to do with their lives. But all that nonsense about the patriarchy and abortion being the most important civil right and women are still second class citizens and pretty much all of Organized Feminism and Academic Feminism -- bleah. Let's face it, feminism won some time ago and it's time to disband the armies of Feminism. The cures that Feminism now demands are worse than the mild and/or imaginary ills they combat.

J-Lo, Modern Woman

J-Lo (Jennifer Lopez to us midwesterners) has just revealed that she and Ben Affleck are engaged. I don't usually comment on the doings of celebrities, but I have to make an exception in this case. J-Lo is a thoroughly modern woman, so modern in fact that she and Ben are engaged even while J-Lo is still married to Cris. I guess she prefers weddings to marriages, or perhaps marriages to husbands.

Well Meaning Coercion

John Leo has a good piece about well meaning coercion. Both ends of the political spectrum do it; each end feels justified when they do it, but put upon when done by the other side.