Thursday, May 13, 2004
Sacrificial Lambs
Tim Lee makes a point that seems to be overlooked in many abstract policy debates. Every time someone says that we should "wait and see" or "give it more time" or "do more research" before acting to fix a problem, what they're actually saying is that the people suffering under current policies should be sacrificed. For any policy problem, there's some group of people who are being harmed by current policies. The size of the group and the scope of the harm varies depending on the case, but the group does exist, and the harm to them is real. Obviously, any time you make a uniform policy on anything, it will benefit some people more than others, but the point is that an unwillingness to experiment to find ways to produce less harm to fewer people is tantamount to saying that those currently suffering don't matter. In cases like organ donation, the dry policy rationales for not wanting to try new things really mean that sick people will die. Those who believe in the precautionary principle need to justify that suffering, and quite frankly, I don't think they can.
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Tim Lee makes a point that seems to be overlooked in many abstract policy debates. Every time someone says that we should "wait and see" or "give it more time" or "do more research" before acting to fix a problem, what they're actually saying is that the people suffering under current policies should be sacrificed. For any policy problem, there's some group of people who are being harmed by current policies. The size of the group and the scope of the harm varies depending on the case, but the group does exist, and the harm to them is real. Obviously, any time you make a uniform policy on anything, it will benefit some people more than others, but the point is that an unwillingness to experiment to find ways to produce less harm to fewer people is tantamount to saying that those currently suffering don't matter. In cases like organ donation, the dry policy rationales for not wanting to try new things really mean that sick people will die. Those who believe in the precautionary principle need to justify that suffering, and quite frankly, I don't think they can.
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Wednesday, May 12, 2004
Raping the Victim in Court
WARNING: EXTREMELY GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE
Haidl Your Daughters
In July 2002, three California teenaged boys had violent sex with a seemingly unconscious 16 year old victim. They sodomized her with foreign objects and physically abused her, and just for good measure, they videotaped themselves enjoying the alleged rape. Now, the victim, a minor, is being accused by the defense of wanting to be violently assaulted by her classmates.
Rhetoric used by the defendants' attorneys--nine of them, not including the publicist, jury consultants, and private investigators--is appalling even if the defendants are innocent. In his opening statement, one lawyer attempted to prove consent by revealing that the victim shaved her pubic hair, declaring, "How many teenagers have a shaved vagina and anus? I don’t know, but I can think of a reason. Sex! She’s a sexual person!" In the public corridor outside of the courtroom, a defense consultant repeatedly called the victim "a fucking whore," while inside the court, lawyers simply stated that everyone, including the girl's family "knows what she is." They use the fact that the girl once drank a beer in a car as evidence of their claim that she is "a troubled young lady." They referred to her repeatedly during the opening as "a nut," "a pathological liar," "a cheater," an "out-of-control girl," "the aggressor," a wanna-be "porn star," "a tease--that’s what she is!" "a mess," a "master manipulator," a "little opportunist," "a compulsive liar," "a cheat--that’s what she is" and a "callous" drug addict and alcoholic. The judge made no effort to reign in the defense team.
It is illegal under California law to have sex with someone too intoxicated to consent, and it was apparently quite obvious in the video that the girl was unconscious. The tape shows the victim telling the boys that she is intoxicated, and they make repeated reference on the tape to the fact that they have to physically move the girl around to get her to do what they want because she is not moving. And yet, the defense claims that the boys are innocent because she had previously expressed interest in group sex.
California was one of the first states to enact a rape shield law, which bars the defense from using the accuser's character as evidence that no rape took place. According to California Evidence CodeSection 1101, "evidence of a person's character or a trait of his or her character (whether in the form of an opinion, evidence of reputation, or evidence of specific instances of his or her conduct) is inadmissible when offered to prove his or her conduct on a specified occasion." In other words, the fact that the victim liked sex, had a lot of sex, or seemed to behave in a sexual manner cannot be offered as evidence that she consented to have sex with the defendants. The statute specifically bars "evidence of the manner in which the victim was dressed at the time of the commission of the offense" from being used to prove consent, and it seems to me that the state of the victim's pubic hair would qualify as part of her "manner of dress." So why is Superior Court Judge Francisco Briseno allowing the defense's smearing of the victim's character to continue? I don't know, but if justice is to be done in this case, it must stop now.
Recently in Reason magazine, Cathy Young wrote, "In some cases, the woman's past—including her sexual past—can indeed be relevant to the man's guilt, particularly in he said/she said cases without much physical evidence." But that is clearly not the case here. There is ample physical evidence of sexual violence, not to mention the videotape of the defendants sodomizing a seemingly lifeless victim. Here, we have a courtroom that seems to have regressed to the 1950s, where expressing an interest in sex can be used as evidence that the accuser is willing to consent to sex with anyone who wanders by. The idea that "unchaste character" means a woman wasn't raped should have gone out decades ago. It is disturbing to see that such evidence continues to be heard by juries in our supposedly enlightened society. Victims of rape, and indeed, all members of society, deserve better.
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WARNING: EXTREMELY GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE
Haidl Your Daughters
In July 2002, three California teenaged boys had violent sex with a seemingly unconscious 16 year old victim. They sodomized her with foreign objects and physically abused her, and just for good measure, they videotaped themselves enjoying the alleged rape. Now, the victim, a minor, is being accused by the defense of wanting to be violently assaulted by her classmates.
Rhetoric used by the defendants' attorneys--nine of them, not including the publicist, jury consultants, and private investigators--is appalling even if the defendants are innocent. In his opening statement, one lawyer attempted to prove consent by revealing that the victim shaved her pubic hair, declaring, "How many teenagers have a shaved vagina and anus? I don’t know, but I can think of a reason. Sex! She’s a sexual person!" In the public corridor outside of the courtroom, a defense consultant repeatedly called the victim "a fucking whore," while inside the court, lawyers simply stated that everyone, including the girl's family "knows what she is." They use the fact that the girl once drank a beer in a car as evidence of their claim that she is "a troubled young lady." They referred to her repeatedly during the opening as "a nut," "a pathological liar," "a cheater," an "out-of-control girl," "the aggressor," a wanna-be "porn star," "a tease--that’s what she is!" "a mess," a "master manipulator," a "little opportunist," "a compulsive liar," "a cheat--that’s what she is" and a "callous" drug addict and alcoholic. The judge made no effort to reign in the defense team.
It is illegal under California law to have sex with someone too intoxicated to consent, and it was apparently quite obvious in the video that the girl was unconscious. The tape shows the victim telling the boys that she is intoxicated, and they make repeated reference on the tape to the fact that they have to physically move the girl around to get her to do what they want because she is not moving. And yet, the defense claims that the boys are innocent because she had previously expressed interest in group sex.
California was one of the first states to enact a rape shield law, which bars the defense from using the accuser's character as evidence that no rape took place. According to California Evidence CodeSection 1101, "evidence of a person's character or a trait of his or her character (whether in the form of an opinion, evidence of reputation, or evidence of specific instances of his or her conduct) is inadmissible when offered to prove his or her conduct on a specified occasion." In other words, the fact that the victim liked sex, had a lot of sex, or seemed to behave in a sexual manner cannot be offered as evidence that she consented to have sex with the defendants. The statute specifically bars "evidence of the manner in which the victim was dressed at the time of the commission of the offense" from being used to prove consent, and it seems to me that the state of the victim's pubic hair would qualify as part of her "manner of dress." So why is Superior Court Judge Francisco Briseno allowing the defense's smearing of the victim's character to continue? I don't know, but if justice is to be done in this case, it must stop now.
Recently in Reason magazine, Cathy Young wrote, "In some cases, the woman's past—including her sexual past—can indeed be relevant to the man's guilt, particularly in he said/she said cases without much physical evidence." But that is clearly not the case here. There is ample physical evidence of sexual violence, not to mention the videotape of the defendants sodomizing a seemingly lifeless victim. Here, we have a courtroom that seems to have regressed to the 1950s, where expressing an interest in sex can be used as evidence that the accuser is willing to consent to sex with anyone who wanders by. The idea that "unchaste character" means a woman wasn't raped should have gone out decades ago. It is disturbing to see that such evidence continues to be heard by juries in our supposedly enlightened society. Victims of rape, and indeed, all members of society, deserve better.
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Tuesday, May 11, 2004
John McCain Supports Legislation to Guarantee More John McCain
McCain, Powell Push for Campaign Coverage
I like John McCain quite a lot. His views on campaign finance reform aside, I'd be much happier if he were the current Republican occupant of the White House. But he's apparently not content with the fact that groups of citizens with mutual interests can no longer easily band together and spend their own money to support political candidates they like. Now, he wants to make sure that all Americans have a chance to watch him on TV as much as possible, and that he doesn't have to spend any of his money to pay for it. Of course, it never occurs to anyone that there might be more politics on TV if politicians were better at making people care what's going on in their world instead of just whining about how much they hate their opponents.
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McCain, Powell Push for Campaign Coverage
I like John McCain quite a lot. His views on campaign finance reform aside, I'd be much happier if he were the current Republican occupant of the White House. But he's apparently not content with the fact that groups of citizens with mutual interests can no longer easily band together and spend their own money to support political candidates they like. Now, he wants to make sure that all Americans have a chance to watch him on TV as much as possible, and that he doesn't have to spend any of his money to pay for it. Of course, it never occurs to anyone that there might be more politics on TV if politicians were better at making people care what's going on in their world instead of just whining about how much they hate their opponents.
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Block the Ballot Box
Brian Kieffer reminds us all that Republicans seem to be able to remember their principles only when they're out of power.
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Brian Kieffer reminds us all that Republicans seem to be able to remember their principles only when they're out of power.
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Letters of Marque and Reprisal
I'm doing some research for an article, and I'm wondering if anyone knows anything about Congress' power to issue Letters of Marque and Reprisal. Essentially, the constitution gives Congress the right to issue what amounts to a warrant to allow privateers to target and capture enemies of state and military targets outside of U.S. sovereign territory. Their issuance to private parties was banned for signatories of the 1856 Declaration of Paris, but the U.S. was not a signatory to that treaty. A 1898 declaration to abide by its principles was only valid for the duration of the Spanish-American war, so as far as I can tell, Congress still theoretically has the right to issue such Letters. If anyone knows anything more about the topic, especially anything during the past century, drop me a line.
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I'm doing some research for an article, and I'm wondering if anyone knows anything about Congress' power to issue Letters of Marque and Reprisal. Essentially, the constitution gives Congress the right to issue what amounts to a warrant to allow privateers to target and capture enemies of state and military targets outside of U.S. sovereign territory. Their issuance to private parties was banned for signatories of the 1856 Declaration of Paris, but the U.S. was not a signatory to that treaty. A 1898 declaration to abide by its principles was only valid for the duration of the Spanish-American war, so as far as I can tell, Congress still theoretically has the right to issue such Letters. If anyone knows anything more about the topic, especially anything during the past century, drop me a line.
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Friday, May 07, 2004
Weapons of Mass Media Disruption
Michael Moore is in the news again crying censorship at an announcement from Disney that its Miramax division will not distribute his latest movie. Of course, refusing to spend millions of dollars to release and promote a movie isn't censorship, but that doesn't matter much to Moore. Neither, apparently, does the truth. On Wednesday, May 5, Moore wrote a letter to his supporters claiming:
Of course, his publicity stunt has worked, and dozens of other distributors have stepped forward and offered to promote his film. It's astonishing that, despite the fact that a panopoly of media companies want his movie and are willing to fund distribution, Moore still insists on claiming that only a few voices can be heard in the American media. Clearly the corporate media monolith Moore rails against can't be that strong, or else his story wouldn't be on the pages of hundreds of print publications and all over the internet. And yet, because one company has rejected his movie as not right for them at this time, Moore insists on propagating the notion that there's a vast media conspiracy to silence his movement.
One thing that Moore is right about: it's despicable that government tax breaks to media companies are being used to determine programming policies. The media should be independent of the government. For that reason, I propose eliminating tax breaks to the media. Let them pay the same taxes everyone else does; that should alleviate at least some fears about self-censorship based on fear of retribution from the government. If they have no special perks, no one can worry that those perks will be rescinded. Getting rid of tax incentives for the media would sever at least one tie between the media and the government they are charged with monitoring, allowing us a little more assurance that the media will alert us to shady dealings--deals like trading tax breaks for political support from corporations.
It would be commendable for media companies to voluntarily eschew tax breaks in the name of keeping themselves independent, but unfortunately, profit motives make that highly unlikely. If there's money on the table, any corporation with a fiduciary duty to shareholders would be loathe not to take it. We should make cronyism between media and the government less attractive by making sure the government has nothing to trade them. Independence from government is the best guarantee we can have that the media will report fairly, and one basic way to ensure that independence is to stop politicians from buying off the media. Our press has done a remarkable job of remaining independent despite such temptations for bias, but we should remove all doubt by turning off the money faucet.
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Michael Moore is in the news again crying censorship at an announcement from Disney that its Miramax division will not distribute his latest movie. Of course, refusing to spend millions of dollars to release and promote a movie isn't censorship, but that doesn't matter much to Moore. Neither, apparently, does the truth. On Wednesday, May 5, Moore wrote a letter to his supporters claiming:
"Yesterday I was told that Disney, the studio that owns Miramax, has officially decided to prohibit our producer, Miramax, from distributing my new film, "Fahrenheit 9/11." The reason? According to today's (May 5) New York Times, it might "endanger" millions of dollars of tax breaks Disney receives from the state of Florida because the film will "anger" the Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush."Moore, however, has apparently known for over a year that Miramax would not distribute his movie. In an interview with CNN yesterday, Moore admitted that he had known for almost a year that Disney would fund production of the movie, but did not want to be its distributor.
Of course, his publicity stunt has worked, and dozens of other distributors have stepped forward and offered to promote his film. It's astonishing that, despite the fact that a panopoly of media companies want his movie and are willing to fund distribution, Moore still insists on claiming that only a few voices can be heard in the American media. Clearly the corporate media monolith Moore rails against can't be that strong, or else his story wouldn't be on the pages of hundreds of print publications and all over the internet. And yet, because one company has rejected his movie as not right for them at this time, Moore insists on propagating the notion that there's a vast media conspiracy to silence his movement.
One thing that Moore is right about: it's despicable that government tax breaks to media companies are being used to determine programming policies. The media should be independent of the government. For that reason, I propose eliminating tax breaks to the media. Let them pay the same taxes everyone else does; that should alleviate at least some fears about self-censorship based on fear of retribution from the government. If they have no special perks, no one can worry that those perks will be rescinded. Getting rid of tax incentives for the media would sever at least one tie between the media and the government they are charged with monitoring, allowing us a little more assurance that the media will alert us to shady dealings--deals like trading tax breaks for political support from corporations.
It would be commendable for media companies to voluntarily eschew tax breaks in the name of keeping themselves independent, but unfortunately, profit motives make that highly unlikely. If there's money on the table, any corporation with a fiduciary duty to shareholders would be loathe not to take it. We should make cronyism between media and the government less attractive by making sure the government has nothing to trade them. Independence from government is the best guarantee we can have that the media will report fairly, and one basic way to ensure that independence is to stop politicians from buying off the media. Our press has done a remarkable job of remaining independent despite such temptations for bias, but we should remove all doubt by turning off the money faucet.
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Thursday, May 06, 2004
Dodging the Draft
Many smart people have already outlined the major reasons that a draft is unnecessary, unethical, and un-American. But I wanted to point out one more thing.
The war in Vietnam would have been impossible had the draft not been active. This is not to say that Vietnam took place because of conscription, or that the draft makes wars like it politically feasible. Merely that it would have been physically impossible to fight a war like Vietnam, where thousands of American soldiers were sent in on the ground to be killed, wounded, captured, or tortured, without military conscription. The military would not have been able to use such a force-heavy strategy if troops had not been essentially a renewable resource: if forces were depleted, they had the option of simply calling up more. It would have been simply impossible to find 1.8 million qualified Americans to go to Vietnam if they'd had to recruit them and pay them market wages. With the draft, we were able to keep that war going, despite evidence that we weren't going to win and despite heavy American casualties. People who claim that having a draft will make Congress more responsible about deploying our troops would do well to remember that the draft brings with it the possibility of the kind of high-casualty warfare that few people would willingly volunteer to join.
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Many smart people have already outlined the major reasons that a draft is unnecessary, unethical, and un-American. But I wanted to point out one more thing.
The war in Vietnam would have been impossible had the draft not been active. This is not to say that Vietnam took place because of conscription, or that the draft makes wars like it politically feasible. Merely that it would have been physically impossible to fight a war like Vietnam, where thousands of American soldiers were sent in on the ground to be killed, wounded, captured, or tortured, without military conscription. The military would not have been able to use such a force-heavy strategy if troops had not been essentially a renewable resource: if forces were depleted, they had the option of simply calling up more. It would have been simply impossible to find 1.8 million qualified Americans to go to Vietnam if they'd had to recruit them and pay them market wages. With the draft, we were able to keep that war going, despite evidence that we weren't going to win and despite heavy American casualties. People who claim that having a draft will make Congress more responsible about deploying our troops would do well to remember that the draft brings with it the possibility of the kind of high-casualty warfare that few people would willingly volunteer to join.
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Wednesday, May 05, 2004
The Next Generation
Khomeini's Grandson tells VOA Rushdie Fatwa was Wrong
When Ayatollah Khomeini called on all Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie in 1989, it was a sign that many Islamic leaders were unwilling to engage in the kind of rational discussion and peaceful coexistence necessary for freedom and democracy to flourish. It's heartening to see that just two generations later, his descendants have been convinced by their experiences in the world of the value of such dialogue. It's also important for a Muslim leader to remind the world and other Muslims that believers are not required to follow violent edicts from Islamic scholars, and that Islam condemns violence. It can't be said often enough.
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Khomeini's Grandson tells VOA Rushdie Fatwa was Wrong
When Ayatollah Khomeini called on all Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie in 1989, it was a sign that many Islamic leaders were unwilling to engage in the kind of rational discussion and peaceful coexistence necessary for freedom and democracy to flourish. It's heartening to see that just two generations later, his descendants have been convinced by their experiences in the world of the value of such dialogue. It's also important for a Muslim leader to remind the world and other Muslims that believers are not required to follow violent edicts from Islamic scholars, and that Islam condemns violence. It can't be said often enough.
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A Child Shall Lead Them
Outside Encouragement
Paul Marshall continues his dogged tracking of religious persecution and extremism in Africa with this piece on Sharia law in Nigeria. If you read enough of this sort of thing, the atrocities tend to blend together until you hardly blanche at graphic descriptions of oppression and violence. But for whatever reason, this got me:
Religious conservatives of all stripes often claim that their moralistic dictates are designed to protect society from social ills. I simply cannot fathom how twisted one's mind would have to be to believe that forcing a child to marry a stranger protects anyone.
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Outside Encouragement
Paul Marshall continues his dogged tracking of religious persecution and extremism in Africa with this piece on Sharia law in Nigeria. If you read enough of this sort of thing, the atrocities tend to blend together until you hardly blanche at graphic descriptions of oppression and violence. But for whatever reason, this got me:
"Prostitution charges have been leveled at women merely for the crime of being unmarried after the age of 13. Judges in Bauchi State have told women to get married immediately or be sent to prison. One judge ordered four of them to pick out husbands from among the men in the court."Imagine a judge looking into the face of a child, a 13 year old child, and telling her that she is a whore because she is not yet ready to become a wife and mother. How can any human being look at a child that way?
Religious conservatives of all stripes often claim that their moralistic dictates are designed to protect society from social ills. I simply cannot fathom how twisted one's mind would have to be to believe that forcing a child to marry a stranger protects anyone.
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Tuesday, May 04, 2004
The New Face of Human Rights
The United Nations Economic and Social Council is voting today to confirm candidates to the 2005 session of the Commission on Human Rights. Filling the shoes of outgoing member nations like Bahrain and Sierra Leone will be hard, but luckily, some of your old favorites like Pakistan and Sudan are almost certainly guaranteed be back next year. Here's the list of candidates (pdf):
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The United Nations Economic and Social Council is voting today to confirm candidates to the 2005 session of the Commission on Human Rights. Filling the shoes of outgoing member nations like Bahrain and Sierra Leone will be hard, but luckily, some of your old favorites like Pakistan and Sudan are almost certainly guaranteed be back next year. Here's the list of candidates (pdf):
AFRICAN STATES (4 members to be elected)It's nice to see that so many regions of the world have managed to bring their own disdain for that pesky democratic process to bear on the CHR by only nominating as many candidates as there are seats available. In fact, actual selection of the best candidates by ECOSOC will only take place in Asia and Western Europe, forcing the world to choose between those bastions of human rights, Pakistan and Vietnam. I can tell already that it's going to be a banner season for human rights around the world.
Guinea
Kenya
Sudan
Togo
ASIAN STATES (3 members to be elected)
Malaysia
Pakistan
Republic of Korea
Viet Nam
EASTERN EUROPEAN STATES (2 members to be elected)
Armenia
Romania
LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STATES (2 members to be elected)
Ecuador
Mexico
WESTERN EUROPEAN AND OTHER STATES (3 members to be elected)
Canada
Finland
France
Spain
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Monday, May 03, 2004
Smart-Ass Laws Make For Smarter Lawbreakers
Is That Really Legal?
Jonathan A. Knee makes an interesting point: it's inconsistent to make it illegal for me to pay someone to have sex with me, yet allow me to pay someone to have sex with someone else and let me film it. But rather than coming to the obvious conclusion that it's also inconsistent to make it illegal to pay for something that it's legal to do for free, he decides to go the other direction. Knee wants to ban pornography by making it illegal to pay anyone to perform a sex act.
Knee says that "society objects on principle to the commodification and commercialization of sexual relations, even between consenting adults." According to Knee, the consumers of the 11,000 hard-core porn movies produced in the U.S. annually--that's 20 times as many movies as Hollywood produces--are not members of his society. Nor are any of the people who contribute to porn's $12 billion in annual profits, or the 40 million Americans who admit to looking at online porn, or the thousands of people who have worked in the porn industry. Of course it's likely that some people who secretly view porn publicly denounce it, but the point is that if Americans didn't want porn around, we'd stop buying it.
Furthermore, I wonder if Knee realizes that his law wouldn't stop porn from being made; it would just change the logistics. Most people who object to porn also object to Playboy and its ilk as equally dirty and objectionable, but since those bunnies aren't performing a sex act, they're welcome to pose nude for millions of dollars. As for porn featuring actual sex, Knee's law would simply cause the industry to start distributing the profits differently. There is already a burgeoning field of "amateur" porn, videos where people shoot themselves for their own amusement, then sell the tapes to a distributor. A law against paying people to perform a sex act wouldn't apply to say, the Paris Hilton sex tape, where no one involved was paid to have sex. Such a post-production payment scheme could also be arranged with commercial porn actors. Perhaps they could be made producers and given a cut of the profits. The options are endless, and when billions of dollars are up for grabs, you'd better believe that the porn industry will exploit all of them.
The bottom line is that the government is never going to be able to control porn. Like drugs, guns, and dozens of other restricted products, when consumers want it badly enough, producers will find a way to get it to them. The best the government can do is attempt to police the nonconsentual abuses that often go on in marginalized industries. To the porn industry's credit, largely out of fear of government intrusion, porn makers have done an excellent job of preventing mistreatment of their actors, preventing the spread of disease, and restricting the finished products to those who want to see them. Of course there are some fringe pornographers who abuse the talent and otherwise give the industry a bad name, but most producers are self-policing, for their own good. However, so long as the industry remains so marginalized, it is hard for those few participants who have been mistreated to come forward and seek justice. As with prostitution, criminalization is an impediment to protecting people from the harms it can cause.
Moreover, an open, freely operating porn industry is less likely to force its product on people who don't want it. If pornographers can't promote their product in dirty magazines--which would still be legal, since most only have naked models, not actual sex acts--or on commercial websites, they're that much more likely to turn to spam email and other methods of dissemination likely to be viewed by children or by adults who object to porn. That means more porn where people don't want it, and less porn where they do. How does that make sense?
Bottom line: commodification of a legal act between two consenting adults should be legal, no matter how many people find it distasteful. As Knee points out himself, a huge number of Americans have revealed a preference for the existence of porn by seeking it out and viewing it, so clearly, the consensus that pornography is wrong in "principle" is not as widespread as he would like us to believe. Almost as an afterthought, Knee notes, "one might want more empirical evidence of actual harm from the increased exposure to pornography before taking so radical a step." No such credible evidence exists. Of course, if other government regulations are any clue, the government doesn't need such evidence in order to pass a law. But we'd all be better off if they did.
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Is That Really Legal?
Jonathan A. Knee makes an interesting point: it's inconsistent to make it illegal for me to pay someone to have sex with me, yet allow me to pay someone to have sex with someone else and let me film it. But rather than coming to the obvious conclusion that it's also inconsistent to make it illegal to pay for something that it's legal to do for free, he decides to go the other direction. Knee wants to ban pornography by making it illegal to pay anyone to perform a sex act.
Knee says that "society objects on principle to the commodification and commercialization of sexual relations, even between consenting adults." According to Knee, the consumers of the 11,000 hard-core porn movies produced in the U.S. annually--that's 20 times as many movies as Hollywood produces--are not members of his society. Nor are any of the people who contribute to porn's $12 billion in annual profits, or the 40 million Americans who admit to looking at online porn, or the thousands of people who have worked in the porn industry. Of course it's likely that some people who secretly view porn publicly denounce it, but the point is that if Americans didn't want porn around, we'd stop buying it.
Furthermore, I wonder if Knee realizes that his law wouldn't stop porn from being made; it would just change the logistics. Most people who object to porn also object to Playboy and its ilk as equally dirty and objectionable, but since those bunnies aren't performing a sex act, they're welcome to pose nude for millions of dollars. As for porn featuring actual sex, Knee's law would simply cause the industry to start distributing the profits differently. There is already a burgeoning field of "amateur" porn, videos where people shoot themselves for their own amusement, then sell the tapes to a distributor. A law against paying people to perform a sex act wouldn't apply to say, the Paris Hilton sex tape, where no one involved was paid to have sex. Such a post-production payment scheme could also be arranged with commercial porn actors. Perhaps they could be made producers and given a cut of the profits. The options are endless, and when billions of dollars are up for grabs, you'd better believe that the porn industry will exploit all of them.
The bottom line is that the government is never going to be able to control porn. Like drugs, guns, and dozens of other restricted products, when consumers want it badly enough, producers will find a way to get it to them. The best the government can do is attempt to police the nonconsentual abuses that often go on in marginalized industries. To the porn industry's credit, largely out of fear of government intrusion, porn makers have done an excellent job of preventing mistreatment of their actors, preventing the spread of disease, and restricting the finished products to those who want to see them. Of course there are some fringe pornographers who abuse the talent and otherwise give the industry a bad name, but most producers are self-policing, for their own good. However, so long as the industry remains so marginalized, it is hard for those few participants who have been mistreated to come forward and seek justice. As with prostitution, criminalization is an impediment to protecting people from the harms it can cause.
Moreover, an open, freely operating porn industry is less likely to force its product on people who don't want it. If pornographers can't promote their product in dirty magazines--which would still be legal, since most only have naked models, not actual sex acts--or on commercial websites, they're that much more likely to turn to spam email and other methods of dissemination likely to be viewed by children or by adults who object to porn. That means more porn where people don't want it, and less porn where they do. How does that make sense?
Bottom line: commodification of a legal act between two consenting adults should be legal, no matter how many people find it distasteful. As Knee points out himself, a huge number of Americans have revealed a preference for the existence of porn by seeking it out and viewing it, so clearly, the consensus that pornography is wrong in "principle" is not as widespread as he would like us to believe. Almost as an afterthought, Knee notes, "one might want more empirical evidence of actual harm from the increased exposure to pornography before taking so radical a step." No such credible evidence exists. Of course, if other government regulations are any clue, the government doesn't need such evidence in order to pass a law. But we'd all be better off if they did.
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Friday, April 30, 2004
Buy American... Porn
US, Brazil locked in porn war
I'm just waiting for the outrage over this latest form of outsourcing. After all, what are poor, downtrodden American porn actresses supposed to do now? These are experienced, highly seasoned professionals, many of whom worked their way up through the ranks. We're losing high-paying jobs here just because Brazillian women are cheap. Literally. Perhaps what we need is some sort of federal job training program for victims of porn outsourcing. We'll call it the "Patriotic Erotic Act."
(link via Radley Balko)
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US, Brazil locked in porn war
I'm just waiting for the outrage over this latest form of outsourcing. After all, what are poor, downtrodden American porn actresses supposed to do now? These are experienced, highly seasoned professionals, many of whom worked their way up through the ranks. We're losing high-paying jobs here just because Brazillian women are cheap. Literally. Perhaps what we need is some sort of federal job training program for victims of porn outsourcing. We'll call it the "Patriotic Erotic Act."
(link via Radley Balko)
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Tuesday, April 27, 2004
We're Here, We're Queer, Elect Us This Year!
Teen Promotes Own Homosexuality in School Election
A gay teenager running for student body president has been forced to stop campaigning on the platform that his homosexuality makes him a better candidate. Posters featuring slogans like "Gay Guys Know Everything!" and "Queer Guy for Hunt High" have been removed from the hallways. School officials apparently feel that censorship is necessary because the posters would interfere with their learning. "The language in the two campaign posters in question was determined to be disruptive to the educational process and to have no relevance to the student's qualifications for office," said Robert E. Kendall Jr., school district spokesman in Wilson County, 40 miles east of Raleigh. The ACLU has taken the case.
I'd say that being a minority and getting picked on for several years by the kind of kids who usually win student council elections is quite relevant to a student's qualification to represent his classmates. But even if that's not true, certainly working with the ACLU to secure the free speech rights of students is relevant experience.
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Teen Promotes Own Homosexuality in School Election
A gay teenager running for student body president has been forced to stop campaigning on the platform that his homosexuality makes him a better candidate. Posters featuring slogans like "Gay Guys Know Everything!" and "Queer Guy for Hunt High" have been removed from the hallways. School officials apparently feel that censorship is necessary because the posters would interfere with their learning. "The language in the two campaign posters in question was determined to be disruptive to the educational process and to have no relevance to the student's qualifications for office," said Robert E. Kendall Jr., school district spokesman in Wilson County, 40 miles east of Raleigh. The ACLU has taken the case.
I'd say that being a minority and getting picked on for several years by the kind of kids who usually win student council elections is quite relevant to a student's qualification to represent his classmates. But even if that's not true, certainly working with the ACLU to secure the free speech rights of students is relevant experience.
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The NYT Attempts to Blind Me With Science
Of Smoking Bans and Heart Attacks
It's possible that the NYT editors didn't consult with their science people before writing this piece. It's also possible that their science people didn't know or care. But this editorial relies on data that is, on face, not scientifically significant, and they provide no evidence that it should be given weight other than their assertion that it proves what they want it to prove.
Scientists in Montana have recorded a 40% drop in the heart attack rate during a six month period in 2002 when smoking indoors was banned. Sounds good, right? But looking at the raw data, I could just as easily say that sixteen fewer people had heart attacks between June and November of 2002 than was the average for that six month period from 1997-2001. Sounds a lot less impressive, doesn't it? Because the base number they were comparing it to was only 40 people. A fluctuation from 40 to 24 isn't significant, but if you bill it as "a 40 percent reduction," it sounds much more important than it is. The sample size simply isn't big enough to draw any sort of conclusions from it.
The Montana scientists involved in this study were doing what's known as epidemiological research. That means that instead of picking a group of people and monitoring them specifically, the study looks at a given population over time and follows the progress of a particular statistic to see if changes occur in response to changes in the environment that population lives in. So the people comparing the number of asthma cases in NYC before and after 9/11 are doing epidemiology, whereas the World Trade Center Health Registry, which tracks the health over time of people who were near the WTC on 9/11, is an individual risk study.
Now, epidemiology can be useful, but only to a point. Essentially, responsible science uses epidemiology mostly as a method of forming a hypothesis. When determining that cigarettes cause cancer, for example, epidemiology was used to determine that there was a correlation between cigarettes and cancer that was worth further study. It was that further study, actually proving that the cigarettes caused the cancer, that led to a noteworthy scientific result.
In the case of secondhand smoke, however, the media is taking epidemiology as proof, and the scientific community is letting them get away with it because they like the headlines. They're claiming because a 40% drop in heart attacks came during the same time period as the smoking ban, that means that the smoking ban prevented heart attacks. However, during the same six month period in 2002, a lot of other things likely happened that could have caused the difference. In June of 2002, President Bush gave a series of speeches promoting physical fitness for senior citizens; maybe they worked. In July 2002, the FDA banned nicotine water, so maybe that was causing a few extra heart attacks in previous years. Maybe people lost their appetites because the stock market was falling rapidly. The point is that I don't know, and despite their cocky claims, neither do the authors of the study or those who write about it. In fact, the study never even looked at whether or not the 40 patients admitted in the earlier period, or the 24 in the studied period, ever came into contact with secondhand smoke at all. They didn't record the weight or general health level of the patients, didn't ask them about their eating and exercise habits. In fact, they didn't even ask whether or not the heart attack patients were themselves smokers. They simply looked at billing records and counted the heart attacks. I could do that, and I haven't taken a science class since the 10th grade.
But suppose I grant that epidemiology is a valid form of science and I agree to accept their conclusions. This study bases its conclusions on numbers that are statistically insignificant by the standards of epidemiology as a science. The rule of thumb is that unless the percent change is +/-100%, it's not significant. Moreover, look at the confidence interval. In this case, it is "95% confidence interval - 31.7 to - 0.3." That means that the study authors are 95% confident that if the study were repeated, the decrease in hospital admissions would be somewhere between 31.7 admissions and 0.3 admissions. So if you did the same study again and found that during a smoking ban period, there were only 2 fewer heart attacks than in a non-ban period, that would be consistent with the findings of the study. Again, doesn't sound so impressive, does it?
At the very bottom of a different article on the study, the writer notes the insignificance of the results, and states what most epidemiologists already know: their work is just the start of figuring out what's going on with our bodies and smoke:
What we're left with in the end is a study that doesn't prove that sixteen people somewhere in a tiny town in Montana may or may not have been saved from heart attacks during the same time period that a smoking law that they may or may not have ever come into contact with was in effect. And this is what people want to base our laws on?
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Of Smoking Bans and Heart Attacks
It's possible that the NYT editors didn't consult with their science people before writing this piece. It's also possible that their science people didn't know or care. But this editorial relies on data that is, on face, not scientifically significant, and they provide no evidence that it should be given weight other than their assertion that it proves what they want it to prove.
Scientists in Montana have recorded a 40% drop in the heart attack rate during a six month period in 2002 when smoking indoors was banned. Sounds good, right? But looking at the raw data, I could just as easily say that sixteen fewer people had heart attacks between June and November of 2002 than was the average for that six month period from 1997-2001. Sounds a lot less impressive, doesn't it? Because the base number they were comparing it to was only 40 people. A fluctuation from 40 to 24 isn't significant, but if you bill it as "a 40 percent reduction," it sounds much more important than it is. The sample size simply isn't big enough to draw any sort of conclusions from it.
The Montana scientists involved in this study were doing what's known as epidemiological research. That means that instead of picking a group of people and monitoring them specifically, the study looks at a given population over time and follows the progress of a particular statistic to see if changes occur in response to changes in the environment that population lives in. So the people comparing the number of asthma cases in NYC before and after 9/11 are doing epidemiology, whereas the World Trade Center Health Registry, which tracks the health over time of people who were near the WTC on 9/11, is an individual risk study.
Now, epidemiology can be useful, but only to a point. Essentially, responsible science uses epidemiology mostly as a method of forming a hypothesis. When determining that cigarettes cause cancer, for example, epidemiology was used to determine that there was a correlation between cigarettes and cancer that was worth further study. It was that further study, actually proving that the cigarettes caused the cancer, that led to a noteworthy scientific result.
In the case of secondhand smoke, however, the media is taking epidemiology as proof, and the scientific community is letting them get away with it because they like the headlines. They're claiming because a 40% drop in heart attacks came during the same time period as the smoking ban, that means that the smoking ban prevented heart attacks. However, during the same six month period in 2002, a lot of other things likely happened that could have caused the difference. In June of 2002, President Bush gave a series of speeches promoting physical fitness for senior citizens; maybe they worked. In July 2002, the FDA banned nicotine water, so maybe that was causing a few extra heart attacks in previous years. Maybe people lost their appetites because the stock market was falling rapidly. The point is that I don't know, and despite their cocky claims, neither do the authors of the study or those who write about it. In fact, the study never even looked at whether or not the 40 patients admitted in the earlier period, or the 24 in the studied period, ever came into contact with secondhand smoke at all. They didn't record the weight or general health level of the patients, didn't ask them about their eating and exercise habits. In fact, they didn't even ask whether or not the heart attack patients were themselves smokers. They simply looked at billing records and counted the heart attacks. I could do that, and I haven't taken a science class since the 10th grade.
But suppose I grant that epidemiology is a valid form of science and I agree to accept their conclusions. This study bases its conclusions on numbers that are statistically insignificant by the standards of epidemiology as a science. The rule of thumb is that unless the percent change is +/-100%, it's not significant. Moreover, look at the confidence interval. In this case, it is "95% confidence interval - 31.7 to - 0.3." That means that the study authors are 95% confident that if the study were repeated, the decrease in hospital admissions would be somewhere between 31.7 admissions and 0.3 admissions. So if you did the same study again and found that during a smoking ban period, there were only 2 fewer heart attacks than in a non-ban period, that would be consistent with the findings of the study. Again, doesn't sound so impressive, does it?
At the very bottom of a different article on the study, the writer notes the insignificance of the results, and states what most epidemiologists already know: their work is just the start of figuring out what's going on with our bodies and smoke:
"As both the CDC and authors of the new study acknowledge, the Montana data is limited by the relatively small number of people involved. Pechacek said that similarly dramatic reductions in heart attacks are unlikely to be found in larger populations, but he said the study is nonetheless important because it offers the best real-world information to date on the connection between indoor smoking and serious heart problems. He said studies have been proposed or begun into the how indoor smoking bans in California, New York City and Delaware have affected heart attack rates."So the study's authors admit that his results are unlikely to be reproduceable in larger populations. That's a big no-no in science, where the ability to duplicate an experiment's results is the main way of proving that it is objectively correct.
What we're left with in the end is a study that doesn't prove that sixteen people somewhere in a tiny town in Montana may or may not have been saved from heart attacks during the same time period that a smoking law that they may or may not have ever come into contact with was in effect. And this is what people want to base our laws on?
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Monday, April 26, 2004
Smokin' Op-Ed Piece
Make Peace With Pot
NYT contributor Eric Schlosser makes a strong case for decriminalizing marijuana. Worth a good read.
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Make Peace With Pot
NYT contributor Eric Schlosser makes a strong case for decriminalizing marijuana. Worth a good read.
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Pregnant Women's Medical Privacy
Over at Dean's World, they're talking about The Value of Life. Specifically, the author wants to know, "if you were to concede that the fetus is actually a human child, would it become more difficult for you to support abortion?"
My answer is no. I concede that a fetus is human, and that it has the potential to grow into an independent, thinking, feeling child. But even if I believed that carrying human DNA granted a being the right to life, which I don't, that doesn't guarantee that being the right to live in my womb for nine months. Now, perhaps a pregnant woman should turn to her stomach and ask the fetus nicely to get out before seeking an abortion, but the point is that as long as a fetus lives inside of an independent, thinking, feeling person, the person's right to control the course of her own destiny trumps any claim the fetus might have to a right to life.
But as the writer points out, the abortion debate at this point isn't about whether or not abortion is moral or healthy or good for society as a whole. "The question is do we want government further regulating our lives." As the William Saletan pointed out in a brilliant NYT op-ed yesterday, regulation means that people's private medical records will be made evidence in criminal trials, and that women and their doctors may be locked up for the decisions they make about ending a pregnancy.
Finally, I just had to comment on this:
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Over at Dean's World, they're talking about The Value of Life. Specifically, the author wants to know, "if you were to concede that the fetus is actually a human child, would it become more difficult for you to support abortion?"
My answer is no. I concede that a fetus is human, and that it has the potential to grow into an independent, thinking, feeling child. But even if I believed that carrying human DNA granted a being the right to life, which I don't, that doesn't guarantee that being the right to live in my womb for nine months. Now, perhaps a pregnant woman should turn to her stomach and ask the fetus nicely to get out before seeking an abortion, but the point is that as long as a fetus lives inside of an independent, thinking, feeling person, the person's right to control the course of her own destiny trumps any claim the fetus might have to a right to life.
But as the writer points out, the abortion debate at this point isn't about whether or not abortion is moral or healthy or good for society as a whole. "The question is do we want government further regulating our lives." As the William Saletan pointed out in a brilliant NYT op-ed yesterday, regulation means that people's private medical records will be made evidence in criminal trials, and that women and their doctors may be locked up for the decisions they make about ending a pregnancy.
"The purpose of these inquiries [subpoenas for the medical records of women who have had certain abortion procedures] is to try to prove that the so-called partial-birth procedure is never medically necessary, because that's what Congress asserts and the plaintiffs deny. But once this question is resolved, the next round of subpoenas will have a different purpose. It won't be to determine whether partial-birth abortion is ever necessary. It will be to determine whether each partial-birth abortion was necessary.We live in a country now, today, where the government has the power to demand that we reveal our most private (and sometimes shameful) medical details in a court proceding. We live under laws that allow our government to pry into our private lives to determine whether it thinks we may have committed crimes. I find that despicable, but it seems to be the direction we're moving in. The only way to stop it is to declare that in the absence of clear and convincing evidence of murder or medical malpractice, communications between doctors and their patients are private and confidential. Despite the myriad insurance and other regulations the Justice Department uses to claim that patients "no longer possess a reasonable expectation that their histories will remain completely confidential," there is still a presumption of innocence in this country. American women deserve the dignity of being held innocent of wrongdoing unless the government has actual evidence of a crime prior to asking for a subpoena. That's the way it's supposed to work. The government should never have the power to fish around in your records hoping to find something illegal, but that seems to be the way things are shaping up on the abortion debate. If the right to abortion is based on a right to privacy, privacy with regard to who got what kind of abortion and why should apply as well.
If the ban is upheld, any doctor found to have performed the procedure will be subject to a two-year prison term unless he or she can prove that the procedure was "necessary to save the life of a mother whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury." To settle that question, the court will need details about the patient.
Alternatively, if the ban is struck down, Congress will have to add to it what the Supreme Court demanded four years ago: a clause allowing the procedure when necessary to protect the woman's health. That, too, will require details about the patient...
But an abortion ban isn't just a moral statement. It's a pledge to prosecute, and prosecution introduces a different kind of ugliness: the public investigation of personal tragedies. That's the ugliness that lies ahead. If Americans won't take that warning from today's marchers, maybe they'll take it from John Ashcroft."
Finally, I just had to comment on this:
"I think it's fair to say that no one really likes abortion: no one is proud of their abortion, no one is rooting for their child to grow up to be an abortionist or to have an abortion."Actually, if I had a child, I would be extremely proud to see her grow up and become a doctor willingto perform abortions for her patients. In this country, 60% of counties currently have no abortion provider, meaning that desperate, often poor women must travel hundreds of miles to get a scary and emotionally difficult medical procedure performed by a doctor she doesn't know. If my son or daughter could help make having an abortion easier and less traumatizing for hundreds, possibly thousands of women, there's nothing that would make me more proud of her.
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Whither the American Patriotic Spirit?
Don't mourn Pat Tillman, follow his lead
The Arizona Republic ran an editorial yesterday that sums up my feelings on national service.
It used to be that during wartime, everyone helped out. Talk to anyone who was around during the 1940s and you'll hear stories about planting victory gardens to save food for the troops, collecting tin foil and scrap metal for recycling into supplies and munitions, knitting blankets and socks to send to "our boys" on the front. Of course, it wasn't all victory bonds and yellow ribbons. There were those who griped about the price of silk stockings and national rationing of sugar, butter, coffee, and beef, just as there are those now who gripe about gas prices. But there was a different attitude then, and I think it illustrates why democratic nations must have a clear mandate from their people before going to war.
Obviously, things are different now than they were 60 years ago. Perpetual media exposure, public scandals, and hostility with the international community have changed the American consciousness over the past several decades. We're more cynical now, all of us, and less apt to get behind a plan simply because our leaders are supporting it. Moreover, our lives are more complicated now. The ranks of stay-at-home-mothers who have the time to plant and harvest vegetables and knit mittens are dwindling fast. In many families, parents work multiple jobs just to keep the kids in food and clothes. We pay higher taxes, which makes us resent the government and throws suspicion on any expensive endeavors like wars. And after years of being demonized by foreign nations and vilified in their press, we're apt to react a little differently to attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center than we did to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
But all of that aside, I see a certain unwillingness to sacrifice ourselves to help people we don't know, foreigners who will never know us, that I find disturbing. Among people who opposed the invasion of Iraq, I've found a number of people who believe that the Iraqi people didn't need us to help them, or that we should focus on our own problems here at home before we worry about people in other countries. In other words, universal healthcare for Americans is a higher priority than rescuing non-Americans from the clutches of evil dictators. Maybe it's the legacy of Vietnam, where America got the idea that we weren't welcome to help. Maybe it's just that we're more self-centered than generations past. But I tend to think that in some sense, we've given up, and we're waiting for someone else to come and fix the problem. Well, it ain't gonna happen unless we make it happen.
A TV character once said that he couldn't tell the difference anymore between peacetime and wartime. That's how I feel now. We're a nation at war. You can tell by the TV coverage of dead soldiers in foreign countries and anti-war buttons on all the liberals' hemp backpacks. But at the same time, civilian life hasn't changed as it did in past wars. Part of that may be that our armed forces are much smaller than they used to be. There are a lot of people in America, myself included, who don't personally know anyone fighting in this war. That wasn't the case in past wars, where everyone's brother or best friend or husband was eligible for the draft. Fearing for the safety of those you love makes a war more real, I suppose. I'm sure the families of troops stationed in Iraq are painfully aware that there's a war on. At the same time though, I can still go to the supermarket and buy whatever I want for virtually the same prices as I did a year ago. I can walk down a random street and it's likely I won't see a single banner hanging in a window to note the home of a soldier on active duty.
But it's more than just not being personally connected to the soldiers. In past wars, I think people felt like the troops were "over there" fighting to make sure that what was menacing the world over there didn't come here and get us. There was a definite sense that we needed to defeat Hitler and the Japanese in order to prevent them from coming here and hurting us. Much as we're afraid of terrorism, I think that most of us don't have a sense that U.S. military efforts around the world today, but especially in the current hot zones, are protecting us from imminent danger. It may well be the case that they are, but the government hasn't sold the idea to many Americans, and so we don't have a sense that helping the war effort protects us too. It may sound selfish, but we're more likely to act if we believe it's directly related to protecting ourselves, and I don't get the sense that most Americans feel that.
We should all do volunteer work and give as much as we can afford to spare to charity. We should do it because it's the right thing to do, and because there are other people in the world suffering whom we have the ability to help. But when it comes to war-specific giving, I think the American people need to hear more than just "we're at war" to feel that patriotic spirit that has moved us to make sacrifices for the greater good in the past. We're not in danger of running out of fresh vegetables, but we are in danger of running out of soldiers to relieve those who have been fighting for years far from home. We don't need recycled tin foil, but we do need donations to the efforts of Americans in Iraq to spread goodwill and make them trust us. There are still things our military--and the world--needs from us. We just need to stop waiting for the government to tell us it's time to start acting like it.
(via Outside the Beltway)
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Don't mourn Pat Tillman, follow his lead
The Arizona Republic ran an editorial yesterday that sums up my feelings on national service.
"But how about the rest of us?The piece goes on to suggest donating money or volunteering with the Red Cross and other worthy causes as just some of many things we could be doing with our time. But honestly, we all already knew that those things were out there. We've known all of our lives. In fact, those of us most likely to be moved by an op-ed (or even those most likely to read an op-ed) are either already giving what we feel we can, or are already feeling guilty because we know we don't give enough.
What are we doing?
Why is it that a few hundred thousand Americans risk their lives in what has become a dangerous and dirty war, while the rest of us complain about $2-a-gallon gasoline?
Why should 1,900 Arizona service members, many of them part of the National Guard and Reserves, put their lives and careers on hold, even risk their lives, while the rest of us simply wait for summer vacation?
What can we do?
What can we do to emulate and honor the devotion to duty those men and women display?
We can do a lot. To help them - and others."
It used to be that during wartime, everyone helped out. Talk to anyone who was around during the 1940s and you'll hear stories about planting victory gardens to save food for the troops, collecting tin foil and scrap metal for recycling into supplies and munitions, knitting blankets and socks to send to "our boys" on the front. Of course, it wasn't all victory bonds and yellow ribbons. There were those who griped about the price of silk stockings and national rationing of sugar, butter, coffee, and beef, just as there are those now who gripe about gas prices. But there was a different attitude then, and I think it illustrates why democratic nations must have a clear mandate from their people before going to war.
Obviously, things are different now than they were 60 years ago. Perpetual media exposure, public scandals, and hostility with the international community have changed the American consciousness over the past several decades. We're more cynical now, all of us, and less apt to get behind a plan simply because our leaders are supporting it. Moreover, our lives are more complicated now. The ranks of stay-at-home-mothers who have the time to plant and harvest vegetables and knit mittens are dwindling fast. In many families, parents work multiple jobs just to keep the kids in food and clothes. We pay higher taxes, which makes us resent the government and throws suspicion on any expensive endeavors like wars. And after years of being demonized by foreign nations and vilified in their press, we're apt to react a little differently to attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center than we did to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
But all of that aside, I see a certain unwillingness to sacrifice ourselves to help people we don't know, foreigners who will never know us, that I find disturbing. Among people who opposed the invasion of Iraq, I've found a number of people who believe that the Iraqi people didn't need us to help them, or that we should focus on our own problems here at home before we worry about people in other countries. In other words, universal healthcare for Americans is a higher priority than rescuing non-Americans from the clutches of evil dictators. Maybe it's the legacy of Vietnam, where America got the idea that we weren't welcome to help. Maybe it's just that we're more self-centered than generations past. But I tend to think that in some sense, we've given up, and we're waiting for someone else to come and fix the problem. Well, it ain't gonna happen unless we make it happen.
A TV character once said that he couldn't tell the difference anymore between peacetime and wartime. That's how I feel now. We're a nation at war. You can tell by the TV coverage of dead soldiers in foreign countries and anti-war buttons on all the liberals' hemp backpacks. But at the same time, civilian life hasn't changed as it did in past wars. Part of that may be that our armed forces are much smaller than they used to be. There are a lot of people in America, myself included, who don't personally know anyone fighting in this war. That wasn't the case in past wars, where everyone's brother or best friend or husband was eligible for the draft. Fearing for the safety of those you love makes a war more real, I suppose. I'm sure the families of troops stationed in Iraq are painfully aware that there's a war on. At the same time though, I can still go to the supermarket and buy whatever I want for virtually the same prices as I did a year ago. I can walk down a random street and it's likely I won't see a single banner hanging in a window to note the home of a soldier on active duty.
But it's more than just not being personally connected to the soldiers. In past wars, I think people felt like the troops were "over there" fighting to make sure that what was menacing the world over there didn't come here and get us. There was a definite sense that we needed to defeat Hitler and the Japanese in order to prevent them from coming here and hurting us. Much as we're afraid of terrorism, I think that most of us don't have a sense that U.S. military efforts around the world today, but especially in the current hot zones, are protecting us from imminent danger. It may well be the case that they are, but the government hasn't sold the idea to many Americans, and so we don't have a sense that helping the war effort protects us too. It may sound selfish, but we're more likely to act if we believe it's directly related to protecting ourselves, and I don't get the sense that most Americans feel that.
We should all do volunteer work and give as much as we can afford to spare to charity. We should do it because it's the right thing to do, and because there are other people in the world suffering whom we have the ability to help. But when it comes to war-specific giving, I think the American people need to hear more than just "we're at war" to feel that patriotic spirit that has moved us to make sacrifices for the greater good in the past. We're not in danger of running out of fresh vegetables, but we are in danger of running out of soldiers to relieve those who have been fighting for years far from home. We don't need recycled tin foil, but we do need donations to the efforts of Americans in Iraq to spread goodwill and make them trust us. There are still things our military--and the world--needs from us. We just need to stop waiting for the government to tell us it's time to start acting like it.
(via Outside the Beltway)
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Saturday, April 24, 2004
Attack of the Cynical Heathens
Hug an Evangelical
In this op-ed column about liberals' disrespectful treatment of devout Christians in this country, Nicholas Kristof gets it exactly right... until the second to last paragraph. He writes:
Oh, and I hope that someone writes to the Times to explain that lesbian thing, and that the Times publishes the letter. I've always wondered about that.
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Hug an Evangelical
In this op-ed column about liberals' disrespectful treatment of devout Christians in this country, Nicholas Kristof gets it exactly right... until the second to last paragraph. He writes:
"Moreover, saying that one will tolerate evangelicals who do not evangelize — well, that's like Christians saying they have nothing against gays who remain celibate."There's a big difference between evangelizing to someone who has made it clear your efforts are unwelcome and having a romantic and sexual relationship with a willing partner despite the objections of a third party. A more accurate asessment of the situation would be something like:
saying that one will tolerate evangelicals who do not evangelize is like Christians saying they have nothing against gays who refrain from forcibly sodomizing them.Bottom line: it's not okay to sneer at moral and respectable individuals who happen to believe something different than you do about how the world works. That's especially true when they're out there doing a lot of very good works that need doing. It's perfectly okay to have policy arguments with people, and to challenge the basis for their beliefs about lawmaking and social mores. But there's a difference between debate and attack, and we all need to learn it.
Oh, and I hope that someone writes to the Times to explain that lesbian thing, and that the Times publishes the letter. I've always wondered about that.
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Friday, April 23, 2004
Confessions of an Abortion Voter
Kerry shows support for abortion rights
Four years ago, I was an abortion voter. Although I lodged a protest vote for president--Gore was going to win New Jersey by a landslide anyway, so I voted for Harry Browne--I voted in all other races for the candidate whose views on abortion best matched my own. I voted for Democrat judges, much as I hated to help put judicial activists on the bench. I voted for several pro-choice Republicans, as well as a less-odious-than-usual Green who was the only state senate candidate I could find who came out against additional, prohibitively restrictive building codes being applied to outpatient surgical clinics. I knew that no candidate I voted for would do what I really want government to do, but I figured that if I could help protect the rights of women everywhere to declare sovereignty over their own bodies, that was the most important thing in this election.
My views on voting have changed some over the last four years. I voted for Republican judges in 2002. But I think there are a lot of pro-choice voters, especially women, who still vote the way I did four years ago. They don't have the time or inclination to really research the candidates or the issues, but they know this issue is important to them, and it's fairly easy to tell who falls where on the choice/life spectrum. So that's how they vote. I've spoken to several women over the years who have told me they vote this way. Conversely, I'm sure there are a lot of anti-abortion voters for whom the issue is equally a deciding factor in their votes, but in the opposite direction. It's such a deeply held moral conviction for many people, and I wouldn't be surprised to find out that a huge number of voters use it as a litmus test.
The major parties encourage that stance by holding themselves to similar standards. A pro-life Democrat won't get very far in the party, and a pro-choice Republican can't expect to be put up for any national elections any time soon. That kind of dogmatism makes it easy for voters to simply choose the party they agree with and vote for whichever candidate they run, assuming that her views are likely to match the party's. It's not always true, but in that sense, party politics is accomplishing its goal: to allow people to vote for the party's candidates without knowing anything about the election. However, in recent years, such party pressure has made life difficult for presidential candidates trying to appeal to the independent swing voters whose views are less easily pigeonholed than those of party members. Kerry can't alienate his base by supporting restrictions on abortion, but many moderates would like to see some limits on the right to choose. Bush would never dream of abandoning his hard line pro-life stance, but he can't introduce the restrictive proposals that would energize conservatives because the independents he must woo won't stand for it. It's a no-win situation, both for them, and for the American people.
In the end, we get what we ask of our politicians. When we ask them to be everything to everyone, we get candidates without discernable views. We get John Kerry telling us that we need him to pack the Supreme Court with pro-choice judges, even though in 1972, he stated that, "the question of abortion is one that should be left for the states to decide." The latter, of course, is not an acceptable stance for a Democrat, so whether he still believes it or not, he can't say so, even though he might find that most Americans agree with him. We get our president telling us that all life is sacred, unless you were raped, in which case you have free license to kill your baby. Exceptions for rape and incest are extremely popular, even among many pro-life voters, but the idea that being a crime victim gives a person the right to snuff out "innocent life" is simply nonsensical. Basically, it says that the mother's comfort is more important than a child's life, but only if the mother was a victim of rape or incest. If she wasn't, her comfort and her control over her body don't matter. But, since many voters buy this nonsense, that's what we get.
The bottom line is the person in the White House for the next four years will probably get to make the decisions about who will next be on the court that we expected to come up during this term. If I had to choose, I'd pick Kerry over Bush to make those choices in a heartbeat. But there are other issues, and while they may not have the same emotional pull as photos of dead fetuses or the image of a young pregnant woman frightened and alone, they are just as important, if not more so. I just hope that abandoning my singular commitment to the right to choose doesn't come back to bite me in the ass someday when I need it.
||Link || |
Kerry shows support for abortion rights
Four years ago, I was an abortion voter. Although I lodged a protest vote for president--Gore was going to win New Jersey by a landslide anyway, so I voted for Harry Browne--I voted in all other races for the candidate whose views on abortion best matched my own. I voted for Democrat judges, much as I hated to help put judicial activists on the bench. I voted for several pro-choice Republicans, as well as a less-odious-than-usual Green who was the only state senate candidate I could find who came out against additional, prohibitively restrictive building codes being applied to outpatient surgical clinics. I knew that no candidate I voted for would do what I really want government to do, but I figured that if I could help protect the rights of women everywhere to declare sovereignty over their own bodies, that was the most important thing in this election.
My views on voting have changed some over the last four years. I voted for Republican judges in 2002. But I think there are a lot of pro-choice voters, especially women, who still vote the way I did four years ago. They don't have the time or inclination to really research the candidates or the issues, but they know this issue is important to them, and it's fairly easy to tell who falls where on the choice/life spectrum. So that's how they vote. I've spoken to several women over the years who have told me they vote this way. Conversely, I'm sure there are a lot of anti-abortion voters for whom the issue is equally a deciding factor in their votes, but in the opposite direction. It's such a deeply held moral conviction for many people, and I wouldn't be surprised to find out that a huge number of voters use it as a litmus test.
The major parties encourage that stance by holding themselves to similar standards. A pro-life Democrat won't get very far in the party, and a pro-choice Republican can't expect to be put up for any national elections any time soon. That kind of dogmatism makes it easy for voters to simply choose the party they agree with and vote for whichever candidate they run, assuming that her views are likely to match the party's. It's not always true, but in that sense, party politics is accomplishing its goal: to allow people to vote for the party's candidates without knowing anything about the election. However, in recent years, such party pressure has made life difficult for presidential candidates trying to appeal to the independent swing voters whose views are less easily pigeonholed than those of party members. Kerry can't alienate his base by supporting restrictions on abortion, but many moderates would like to see some limits on the right to choose. Bush would never dream of abandoning his hard line pro-life stance, but he can't introduce the restrictive proposals that would energize conservatives because the independents he must woo won't stand for it. It's a no-win situation, both for them, and for the American people.
In the end, we get what we ask of our politicians. When we ask them to be everything to everyone, we get candidates without discernable views. We get John Kerry telling us that we need him to pack the Supreme Court with pro-choice judges, even though in 1972, he stated that, "the question of abortion is one that should be left for the states to decide." The latter, of course, is not an acceptable stance for a Democrat, so whether he still believes it or not, he can't say so, even though he might find that most Americans agree with him. We get our president telling us that all life is sacred, unless you were raped, in which case you have free license to kill your baby. Exceptions for rape and incest are extremely popular, even among many pro-life voters, but the idea that being a crime victim gives a person the right to snuff out "innocent life" is simply nonsensical. Basically, it says that the mother's comfort is more important than a child's life, but only if the mother was a victim of rape or incest. If she wasn't, her comfort and her control over her body don't matter. But, since many voters buy this nonsense, that's what we get.
The bottom line is the person in the White House for the next four years will probably get to make the decisions about who will next be on the court that we expected to come up during this term. If I had to choose, I'd pick Kerry over Bush to make those choices in a heartbeat. But there are other issues, and while they may not have the same emotional pull as photos of dead fetuses or the image of a young pregnant woman frightened and alone, they are just as important, if not more so. I just hope that abandoning my singular commitment to the right to choose doesn't come back to bite me in the ass someday when I need it.
||Link || |
Thursday, April 22, 2004
Time Capsule
Via Matt Panaro, the photodiary of a young woman from Kyiv riding her motorcycle through Chernobyl. What I found most striking about it wasn't merely the fact that the accident left the region, in her words, a "ghost town." The place is like a tiny museum of life under communism, frozen in time. She writes:
||Link || |
Via Matt Panaro, the photodiary of a young woman from Kyiv riding her motorcycle through Chernobyl. What I found most striking about it wasn't merely the fact that the accident left the region, in her words, a "ghost town." The place is like a tiny museum of life under communism, frozen in time. She writes:
"At first glance, Ghost Town seems like a normal town. There is a taxi stop, a grocery store, someone's wash hangs from the balcony and the windows are open. But then I see a slogan on a building that says - "The Party of Lenin Will Lead Us To The Triumph Of Communism"......and I realize that those windows were opened to the sping air of April of 1986....
Perhaps future archeologists will compare this town to Pompeii. The Soviet era is forever preserved here - in the radiation that will last for many centuries. "
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