Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Why I Hate Santa Claus, pt. 1

Every year, as Christmas comes around, I start to wonder why we lie to our children with the Santa myth. What do we gain by perpetuating this story? Is it just a disciplinary tool, a crutch for parents who want to convince their children to be good on penalty of not receiving any toys? If so, that is another demonstration that most people don't live their lives as if they believe in God. If people honestly thought hell was a possibility, wouldn't they live strictly moral lives, as per the bible's morality?

If the metaphysical layout posited by Christianity was true, the Santa meme should be unnecessary. And yet the latter meme survives. It's fascinating that something that so closely mirrors the widespread conception of a personal god also survives in our meme pool. What about the Santa meme makes it fit?

Does it really enhance the experience of credulous youngsters? I don't remember exactly how old I was when my mom dropped the S bomb on me, but it was definitely before my fourth Christmas. But it definitely didn't ruin the holiday for me. I loved Christmas as much as the next kid for at least another decade. Most people seem to associate belief in Santa with the 'magic' of the holiday. Perhaps they perpetuate the Santa story because of that perception.

An important partner to the 'Santa exists' meme is the 'don't ruin the secret' meme. Maybe the second meme is the one I should be asking about. When I was a kid, I didn't tell all the other kids that the whole Santa thing was a lie. Most people carry the Santa meme without believing its truth value is positive, but almost everyone who knows of it but doesn't believe in it still thinks anyone who does believe it should be protected from the truth. This is what Dan Dennett refers to as 'the spell' in the title of his book Breaking the Spell. Our society, en masse, acquiesces to pretend that a big guy in a red suit comes down everybody's chimney on Christmas Eve and leaves them presents. It's embarrassing, really. Supposedly reputable news organizations all talk about Santa like he's real.

They have to. They'd lose all their advertisers and be inundated with hate mail if they broke the spell. It's happened before. And the same thing happens when someone points out that religious stories are not real. Believers get all offended when you compare their beliefs to the Santa meme, but that's primarily because the comparison is so apt. People who believe Jesus rose from the dead, walked on water, and rode dinosaurs take umbrage at the notion that their religion is akin to believing that Santa flies around the world in one night on a sleigh.

We all learn to respect the delusions of children with respect to Santa Claus, and we all learn to respect other people's delusions about Jesus. It's the same protective spell in both instances. I don't really know where it comes from, but I suspect it applied to Jesus long before Santa came on to the scene.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Why I Hate the Baby Jesus, pt. 3

Some jerkoff stole the Baby Jesus from a Nativity display on Independence Mall. No, I didn't do it.

I argue that the real problem in this situation is that the Nativity scene is on public property at all. But if someone nicked
JC from the display as a protest, I don't see what they think they're going to achieve. Insofar as there is an atheist "cause," that cause isn't being advanced by vandalizing other people's religious pageants.

Atheists, of course, aren't a group in the vein of the Ancient Order of Hibernians of the Knights of Columbus, the two organizations behind the creche display. There is a secular movement which opposes this kind of tableau, and their effort to end the practice is the closest thing to a unified atheist cause. That cause is not served by publicly disprespecting sacred religious imagery, no matter how gag-inducing a blond-haired, blue-eyed Baby Jesus is to any intelligent person. That only encourages Catholics and other Christians rally around their curiously Aryan-looking Savior. If we believe in the First Amendment, we have to give these people the respect they deserve.

That respect consists of allowing them to observe their holidays unmolested on private property. This Christ heist makes the issue seem personal, which can only turn public opinion against the small, secular minority. We look petty. We look mean. We don't look like a mature and rational group of people with the Constitution on our side.

All of that having been said, there is precisely zero evidence that this vandalism was perpetrated by an angry atheist. It might have been an enraged Protestant evangelical on some kind of anti-Catholic jag. It could have been a Jew, angry about being libeled for all those centuries. It might have been a Republican- they wander the streets at night looking for mischief, you know. It could have been a junkie looking for something to sell to support his drug habit. Hell, maybe it was a stoner who thought it would be awesome to have an Aryan Jesus in his room. We have no way of knowing.

None of those is particularly likely, but how many atheists are there, really? If we were the majority, things would already be set up our way, wouldn't they?

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Here Comes Rock Bottom

When the Federal Reserve Bank's board of governors meets starting tomorrow, they will discuss what to do to stanch America's months-long financial hemorrhage. Since the federal funds rate, their primary policy tool, is sitting at one percent, come the end of next month they may need to find another way to try to ease credit. Analysts are predicting a half-point drop when this week's meeting ends Tuesday. That would put us within an lolcat's length of the Zero Lower Bound, which is what economists call the minimum possible nominal interest rate.

There's nothing the Fed could do to set nominal interest rates below zero. Once they've set the rate that low, we're in what's called a liquidity trap and need to find some other way to stimulate the economy. The Fed's other two policy tools are the discount rate and the required reserve rate. The former is the rate at which banks borrow money from the Fed, usually kept somewhat higher than the Fed funds rate to encourage banks to borrow from each other before coming to the Fed. The discount rate is at 1.25 percent right now, which doesn't leave a prodigious amount of room for easing.

The required reserve ratio is the fraction of a bank's deposits which must remain in its vaults rather than being lent out. When a bank has financial obligations to meet, it draws from its reserves until they drop to the required minimum level and then borrows from other banks or the Fed. The lower the reserve requirement, the less money in vaults and the more circulating in the economy. Since all of these policies rely on banks to increase lending and thereby boost investment and consumer spending, I have to be skeptical of what monetary policy is going to achieve. U.S. banks have already been handed the better part of $700 billion, to little or no benefit.

I have a feeling that what Fed chief Ben Bernanke is going to end up doing is going to Capitol Hill and calling for a fiscal stimulus. In 2004, Bernanke published the definitive paper on the liquidity trap in Japan in the 1990s (it's an enlightening read, I can assure you). He and his colleagues concluded that the Bank of Japan was not vigorous enough in its attempts to overcome Japan's slumping economy, so that after a number of years, BOJ's policy options had been exhausted but the recession had not ended. The Fed has shown unprecedented aggression in combating the current recession, but conditions will likely continue to worsen even with nominal interest rates at zero.

Paul Krugman and Robert Reich have both been calling for a major stimulus package in the form of spending on infrastructure and aid to state and local governments. Krugman in particular has declared that "prudence is folly," that is, caution will only mean a deeper and longer recession. This is a good opportunity to do a long list of things we have been neglecting and will probably reduce future deficits. Really, what have we got to lose at this point?

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Why I Hate the Baby Jesus, pt. 2

Eager not to disappoint, the Christian right has graced us with more cries of discrimination against the majority. Michael Reagan (son of Saint Ronnie) published an article on Friday whining about how the Evil Atheist Conspiracy is intimidating the poor, sad Christians out of their sacred birthday celebration.

Christians, 90% of the country in his reckoning, are being strangled by a wicked minority of bigots and haters. How dare businesses refuse to pay obeisance to our beliefs, he fumes. We're the majority! Our freedom of speech is being trampled!

I'm baffled to think of where Reagan learned what freedom of speech is. It has nothing to do with what others tell you. It has nothing to do with courtesy, and it doesn't entail a right not to be offended. The notion that businesses owe Christians a mention of their holiday is warped. If you're a cashier at a retail store, your responsibility is to ring up the goods customers bring you. They decide what they want to buy, you take their payment and give them a receipt. "Merry Christmas" doesn't show up in there. No "Hare Krishna," no "Assalam Alaikum," no "May the Force be With You." It has nothing to do with the transaction. Again, I'm astounded at how weak and defensive these people are in their faith. They need constant validation otherwise they think there's some kind of conspiracy against them.

Reagan concludes by calling for Christians to do some intimidation of their own, as if the concept was alien to them. The Religious Right has done nothing but intimidate people for the last 40 years. These people are bullies, and like all bullies they are whiny and pitifully insecure. Is that what Christmas is about? Intimidation? Is that what Jesus would do?

Monday, December 8, 2008

Why I Hate the Baby Jesus, pt. 1

It's that time again, folks. The calendar has rolled its way past Thanksgiving, that quintessentially American holiday, with the heaviest driving day of the year, a day of compulsory gluttony, and a rabid festival of consumerism coming one after the another, and on toward the happiest season of all: the War on Christmas.

There's a lot to be learned from how we as a country handle Thanksgiving, but for my money the supposed secularist effort to banish the Baby Jesus and the Christian reaction to same constitute the most insipid display in the tawdry pageant that is American public life. In recent years secularists have mounted efforts to remove references to God and other religious symbols from government property, and religious conservatives have reacted with cries of discrimination. The secularist argument is that setting up nativity scenes outside town halls, displaying the Ten Commandments in courthouses, and printing "In God We Trust" on our money all constitute endorsement of the Christian religion by the government in violation of the First Amendment. Conservatives assert that there is a strong tradition of public endorsement of religion in this country and that barring such displays violates their right to free speech.

That argument is incoherent. How does a lack of state endorsement impinge on a private citizen's freedom of belief? Does their brand of Christianity depend on affirmation from the state? Where is that in the bible? These folks can set up their creches on private property, no questions asked.

If these folks need Uncle Sam's stamp of approval on their beliefs, theirs is a very weak faith indeed. In part the First Amendment is intended to prevent churches from becoming dependent on the state. City hall doesn't force these people to wave the flag in their church or say the national anthem. They can't even force people to do those things in public, at least not since 1943. That's what it's all about: the state doesn't meddle with your beliefs, and it doesn't use its resources to promote your beliefs over anybody else's.

I have no problem with Christians doing their Christmas thing in their churches or their homes. More power to them. I don't even have a problem with public space being rented or otherwise reserved for Christmas-related functions. As long as any other group has the same opportunity to use the space for their purposes, public places are fair game. But we have to draw the line at the government itself setting up Christian imagery and overseeing specifically religious observances. That's just not what the government does.

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Semester's Over (If You Want It)

Since the semester is over, I'm going to have a bunch of time on my hands. So I'm going to start blogging again. Hooray.

Yesterday I borrowed Paul Krugman's latest book, The Conscience of a Liberal, from the library. I anticipate that the book is going to be pretty similar to Supercapitalism by Robert Reich. The thesis is that America's postwar consensus on political and economic issues was what made the last century the American Century and that the radical right must be stopped from dismantling the social safety net of the New Deal.

The book's title is a reference to Barry Goldwater's 1960 The Conscience of a Conservative, which galvanized movement conservatism in the United States. Krugman is taking aim primarily at that movement, so he wants his book to serve as a foil to Goldwater's.

Krugman spends the first two chapters laying out parallels between the last 40 years and the Gilded Age, which is by no means a novel comparison. I think it holds up well, though. Krugman points out that the groups that would later become FDR's New Deal coalition were divided along racial and geographical lines during the Gilded Age, and that conservatives are working to do the same thing today. Conscience was published before Sarah Palin came onto the scene and started throwing around the "real America" meme, but she was far from the first to latch onto that wedge rhetoric. It's been a favorite right-wing trope for years.

The author is a stalwart Keynesian, and he has recently been arguing that the government's response to the current economic slump should be an aggressive fiscal stimulus. I anticipate that the book will have lots of nice things about Roosevelt and the New Deal. Since I'm a huge nerd, I hope it gets pretty wonkish. Check back here for my take on the rest of the book.

Friday, October 17, 2008

A few weeks ago I read a Rolling Stone article penned by Matt Taibbi explaining why Sarah Palin represents everything that is wrong with America. I agreed with most of what he said, and I always enjoy anyone taking shots at Palin, who is just about the worst thing that could possibly have happened to American politics. The most striking thing Taibbi said, though, was that he supports Barack Obama because of what he says about America.

It's more than just the fact that he would be the first black president. His various shortcomings notwithstanding, Obama is a thoughtful, intelligent, compassionate and open-minded person. He is no radical; we can't expect from him to bring about the socialist revolution the right keeps shouting about. There is no prospect of Obama overturning the political power structure in America; if Wall Street thought he was going to put the lid back on their honey pot, they would not have contributed so much to his early campaign during the early part of the primaries. But I think he is the best that we can expect that system to produce.

The divisive rhetoric of the right is only fully coherent if Obama is a dangerous outsider, so that is the narrative his opponents have constructed around him. It is a nebulous construct indeed; we have the word 'terrorists' thrown around without much attention to historical accuracy or grammatical number. The McCain campaign's official line is that Obama has a close friendship with '60s-era radical and domestic terrorist (singular) William Ayers. Never mind that their association was strictly professional, involved only charitable efforts with other leading Chicago citizens and a single fundraiser for Obama, and ended over three years ago. What matters is that voters hear the word 'terrorist'.

That word plays into two other (sometimes subliminal) memes pushed by the right. If Obama is a '60s-style leftist radical, is he also socialist or communist? Maybe he's a Muslim terrorist. Or maybe he's with the Nation of Islam- a violent black separatist and a different form of '60s radical.

Once these ideas get inside the soggy heads of so-called low-information voters, it all intermixes into a hazy, anti-American caricature. Both McCain and Sarah Palin are calling Obama a socialist; Palin and McCain adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer have made comments about certain areas being "not real" America and some being more patriotic and pro-America. It's clear from the remarks made by McCain surrogates that, contrary to what Taibbi's argument, they think of conservatives as the best Americans, the ones who embody what America really stands for.

The game here is in-group identification. It has been no secret that the Republicans' best chance to overcome Obama in a very Democratic year is to paint him as alien. Most of the bad things about Obama stem from the degree to which he has sold himself out, ingratiating himself to the political establishment in order to become a player in the presidential race. Hitting Obama on that count doesn't play well with thinking voters, since their major alternative is a 26-year Senator who has assiduously followed the incumbent president during his second term in office. The other reality-based criticism of Obama is his lack of experience, which also doesn't carry a lot of water with anyone lucid enough to understand the danger in putting Sarah Palin within a heart attack or metastatic melanoma of the presidency.

With the legitimate criticisms blunted by their own candidates' shortcomings, the right has had to resort to turning Obama into a scary, angry, communist black man. The people who respond to those kinds of tactics are not the ones I would put forward as exemplars of what is great about America. One of the major reasons why I support Obama's candidacy is that statement that his election would make about America. He would not merely be the first black president; he would be a president who won despite prolonged appeals to ignorance and bigotry by his opponents.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Does Philly really want Poe's body?

Apparently there is a struggle between the literary circles in Philadelphia and in Baltimore, MD as to where Edgar Allan Poe ought to be buried. About a year ago, Poe scholar Edward Pettit published a cover article in City Paper explaining why we should collect the body of Poe from its place of repose in Maryland. Pettit's argument centers on the fact that most of Poe's early successes occurred in this city, and that much of his best work was done here. In fact, he says, no other author can boast such an impressive catalog produced in Philadelphia. Anyone who is familiar with Poe's biography understands why it is so hard to decide where he "should be" buried. He lived and worked in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, Brooklyn and Richmond, VA.

He moved around in part because of his tendency to make enemies, which impeded the advancement his literary career. Baltimore was his place of death and Boston his place of birth, though the latter doesn't much care what becomes of his body. Baltimore's major claim is that that is where he died and has been
buried for near 160 years. To be honest, I'm satisfied with that. Is it really imperative that we exhume a corpse more than a century-an- a-half dead? What good would that really do us? It might bring attention to Poe's writing, but putting Poe's work into the public eye is not necessarily the same as encouraging people to read him.

The benefits we might derive from first convincing the authorities and concerned scholars in Baltimore to give up the body and then digging it up, moving it, and reburying it here are hardly worth the effort. Why bother?
Pettit points out that the mystery genre was literally invented by Poe in Philadelphia. That's phenomenal. Does the proximity of his putrescent remains really commemorate that? The high level of violent crime in the city inspired Poe to write detective stories. I suggest that we try to reduce the violent crime rate here today. That seems like a fitting tribute, unless you happen to think that we're better of hoping to spawn another literary genius by dint of the gruesome risk of living here.

Really, while we're on the topic, I can think of a dozen other problems we might want to solve before worrying about who should or should not be buried here. Here's a good one: how many kids in our city school system can actually read "The Pit and the Pendulum"? Really, anything you want to point to in Poe could become metaphor for something that affects living people in Philadelphia. The narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart" was dangerously insane- what is the state of our mental health care facilities? "The Fall of the House of Usher" - hey, we have a bunch of homeless people here, I bet they would like a place to sleep, while we're trying to accommodate Poe. You see where I"m gong with this- it's not that hard, folks. The last thing we should be worried about is Poe's place of burial. Most people have a thousand things they want to pay attention to that don't matter. Moving someone's body here is a ridiculous addition to that list.

Monday, September 1, 2008

More on Palin

Sarah Palin is a major gambit. The ubiquitous sports metaphor among pundits has it that she is a Hail Mary pass, a last-ditch effort to bolster a desperate Republican campaign. The Alaska governor was a dark horse when Sen. John McCain announced her as his running mate Aug. 29. Her nomination seems carefully tailored to appeal to the electoral blocs in which Sen. Barack Obama is perceived as weak. Palin should play very well with the voters supposedly alienated by Obama's infamous gaffe two weeks before the Pennsylvania primary in April. Obama was speaking at a private fundraiser in San Francisco when he said that, in reaction to the indifference of the Powers That Be, rural voters in Pennsylvania "cling" to the Second Amendment, religion, and xenophobia. Apparently dwelling on Obama's five-month-old comment, McCain and his people chose the evangelical governor of a state with an even stronger gun culture than we have in Pennsylvania.

During her acceptance speech, Palin brought up Obama's comment, saying that Obama addresses working class voters with respect when he speaks in Scranton, Penn., but mocks them behind their backs in San Francisco. The problem with Obama's comment in April was not that it betrayed a lack of understanding of the working class; indeed, there is a great deal of bitterness among the working class in this state. Gun ownership and church attendance are high in rural areas of Pennsylvania. These are cultural pillars which remain constant in the lives of blue-collar voters buffeted by the sort of things Obama and Biden talk about in stump speeches. Obama was obnoxious in his delivery, but his observation was sound. In the days since the Republican Convention, he and his running mate have pointed out that Republicans said much about God and guns but nothing about the issues which face the working class. This response is smart. Palin can field-dress a moose. Fine, but what are she and McCain going to do to lower gas prices, expand access to health care, create jobs for the middle class?

We have heard from the Republicans for months that Obama is naught but a carefully contrived spectacle, devoid of substance. He has been derided as a celebrity and accused of relying on identity politics. All of these memes have been irrevocably undermined by McCain's choice of running mate. The only requirement imposed on the vice president by the Constitution is that he or she must be fit to assume the Presidency; it is for this duty that Republicans have endorsed Palin. It's laughable for them to continue to disparage Obama's thin resume.

So many of the issues raised by McCain and his surrogates regarding Obama's fitness to take up the staggering responsibility of the presidency apply equally to Palin. How can it be said that he is too green to serve as commander-in-chief, but she is not? The pinnacle of Palin's executive experience is the governorship of a state no larger than the Harrisburg metropolitan area. Has her short time in that post prepared her to manage the vast executive departments of the federal government? If Democrats are wrong to treat their candidate like a celebrity, should Republicans refer to Palin as a "rock star"?

On the day that McCain introduced her to the nation, Palin parroted Sen. Hillary Clinton's remark about the 18 million cracks the senator's supporters had made in the glass ceiling that is the American presidency. Attaching a female to the bottom of the ticket in hopes that women will vote their gender is as sexist as any remark made by Democrats about Palin neglecting her children to run for office. It is obvious that the Republicans think women voters are stupid and that they condone identity voting when it is to their benefit.

The forfeiture of so many prominent talking points is the price McCain has paid to energize the Republican base. The Religious Right and social conservatives adore the governor and don't care much about the contradictions her presence forces on the campaign.

Friday, August 29, 2008

McCain neuters major talking point with VP pick

Awash in media coverage of the Democratic Convention, Sen. John McCain announced today that his running mate will be Republican Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. Palin was a dark horse, and the fact that her selection remained a secret for so long might have been an impressive media coup had the announcement not been overwhelmed by Sen. Barack Obama's historic acceptance speech a mere 12 hours earlier.

The McCain campaign has not been exceedingly deft in its interaction with the media, though reporters have taken dives for McCain on one or two important occasions. If the timeline surrounding the selection had been different, this might have signaled a reversal for the campaign.

Much like Obama's pick, Palin sketches out a number of contrasts to the top of her ticket. She is 28 years McCain's junior, and has not held any office in Washington. Palin came into office as a reformer in a state teeming with corruption less than two years ago, so her rhetoric about Washington will probably approach that favored by Obama. She gave birth to a son with Down Syndrome in April; she and her husband decided not to abort the pregnancy when they learned of their unborn son's disability. Her vociferous opposition to abortion makes her a pleasing choice for the religious right. If she becomes the first female vice president, she will break the old-Protestant-white-guy mold on as many counts as Barack Obama.

The obvious problem with choosing a neophyte as nominee is that it undermines the McCain campaign's primary attack meme against Barack Obama. A vice president must be qualified for the presidency, and not merely because of the dictates of the Constitution. The Republican National Convention next week will endorse a woman with 21 months of experience in state government to be commander-in-chief. If Obama's resume is thin, Palin's is transparent.

The strategy behind Palin relies partially on her reputation as a reformer in her own party, which McCain hopes will reinforce his erstwhile claim to maverick-dom, and partially on the hopes that she will attract disaffected Clinton voters. But her primary advantage may be her appeal to the hard right. Palin is extremely Protestant, speaking out loudly against abortion rights and advocating Creationism in her state's school curricula. One consolation that came with McCain's primary victory was the elimination of three of his rivals who indicated in a debate that they do not believe in evolution. The choice of Palin may give unfortunate credence to the anti-reality crowd.

Monday, August 18, 2008

Fair and Balanced

As The Onion has observed, a huge amount of print space has lately been devoted to the fact that newspapers are quickly becoming obsolete as a news medium. Circulation at most major newspapers has dropped continuously over the last decade as Internet news sources have drawn readers away. Most online news outlets do not require paid subscriptions; they provide articles in a torrent throughout the 24-hour news cycle; for what it's worth, they save all the resources used in printing and distributing newspapers, which is environmentally friendly and gives them a significant financial advantage.

One trend which others have considered troubling is the prominence of ideologically slanted news sources on the Internet. Personally, I rely on The Nation and alternet.org, and the only columnists I read regularly are the liberals at the New York Times. Reputable newspapers have stringent standards of fairness; journalists are expected to present both (or all) sides of any story with equal emphasis. Online news purveyors such as WorldNet Daily, alternet, and the entire blogosphere often have explicit biases. Consumers taking the path of least resistance to their information gravitate towards sources which tell them what they want to hear.

That is not necessarily a bad thing. Alternet carries articles on topics which few other sources (and likely no conservative sources) touch upon. All of their authors write from a leftward perspective, but only sometimes only liberals are concerned with certain political and economic issues. There aren't always two perspectives on issues like water shortages or human rights; conservative writers just make those things less of a priority.

In some cases, the existence of two "sides" on an issue is entirely fictitious. There are empirical matters in science and history which are not debatable. Evidence weighs insurmountably toward one conclusion. Anyone who claims that a thousand innocent people were rounded up in the Salem Witch Trials, for instance, is just wrong. He or she would not deserve equal time with those who correctly report that eighteen were hanged and one pressed to death with stones during that incident. An important example of a debate in which one "side" is given undue credence by the standards of balance in news reporting is the Creationism movement.

In reality, there is no question as to whether humans and other animals evolved from a common ancestor over millions of years. Evolutionary theory is the basis of modern biology; it is based on a massive body of archaeological, genetic, and anatomic evidence. There is little or no evidence to support the Creationist position, by contrast. That Creationism is so often given equal time with science is due partially to the extraordinary deference our culture gives to religious beliefs, but it is also a result of a misplaced priority on balance.

I hope there will be a revision of the current standard in journalistic ethics to account for this problem, but I do not know what, precisely, I would propose. I can predict that the methods which will prevail will be determined by the financial realities of the Internet. News sources which can generate more advertising revenue will survive in the competitive marketplace. If news consumers desire certain standards of accuracy and ethical behavior in their reporting, sources which meet those standards will thrive. If consumers prefer sensationalism and biased reporting to sobriety and objectivity (whatever that means), that is what they will get. The structure of news organizations in coming years may be derived from old newspaper practices, or it may be radically different. The outcome will not be determined by the preferences of ethical thinkers but by those of consumers.

Saturday, August 2, 2008

Association, Implication, Accusation

Yesterday, alternet.org published an article by Rory O'Connor discussing the culpability of right-wing talk radio in the July 28 shooting at a Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tenn. Rory is co-author of Shock Jocks: Hate Speech and Talk Radio, in which he and Aaron Cutler attack right-wing hatemongers like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage. I haven't read the book, but I am always wary of attempts by well-meaning liberals to deal with "hate speech." Hate should be rejected, rebutted, and remonstrated, but never censored. Acting as an agent of tolerance is incompatible with acting as a thoughtpoliceman. I will reserve judgment on the efforts and arguments of O'Connor and Cutler until such time as I have read them in context.

O'Connor's article first deals with accusations made against him by conservatives, comparing him the Nazis. These are fairly standard, not particularly adroit, and largely unworthy of attention. O'Connor dismisses them as such and derides the supposed 'conspiracy to kill talk radio' in which Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and all liberals are complicit, according to the angry, grandiose delusions of right-wing radio hosts. O'Connor mentions this conspiracy theory as a means to transition onto the topic of the 'actual conspiracy to kill,' in which he links the right-wing radio stalwarts Savage, Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Neal Boortz and Mark Levin to last week's church shooting. Jim Adkisson, the church gunman, had bought and read several of their books, it turns out. He also listened to them on the radio.

This thesis is guilt by association, and I don't see much to warrant the connection. How can O'Connor establish that listening to Limbaugh or Savage abetted or even inspired Adkisson's act of violence? Limbaugh is more insipid than violent, though as O'Connor points out, some weeks ago he expressed his hope the agents provocateurs would stage riots and the Democratic Convention in Denver. I don't see any impetus in Limbaugh's words or ideas for random acts of violence on people merely because their church affiliation identifies them as liberal.

Savage, by contrast, seems dangerously deranged. He is erudite but bipolar, shifting in seconds from dulcet Brooklyn-tinged rumination to bellicose paroxysms. Savage frequently describes his opponents as 'vermin' and warns against the dangerous erosion of white culture in the United States. I don't necessarily think that Savage is an improbable instigator of violence, but I do think O'Connor's association here is facile. His case is not assiduously made. Accessory to murder is not a trivial charge, and the burden is on O'Connor to support it.

Both of the above talkers foster the conceit that large conservative blocs act according to their daily commands over the airwaves. Limbaugh takes credit for 'Operation: Chaos,' in which conservatives purportedly registered to vote in Democratic primaries so as to keep Hillary Clinton's candidacy alive. His hopeful speculation about riots in Denver played into the same pretension. Savage actually considers himself a national hero, taking credit for the horrendously jingoistic diversion of the dreaded Dubai Ports deal and the disgusting intrusion of the government into the case of Terri Schiavo. O'Connor is reinforcing the suggestion that Americans act on the exhortations of these hate-peddlers. So far as I understand, that's the thesis of his book,

It is likely that there is some non-causative correlation between violent hatred for liberal people and institutions and interest in the works of the conservative shock jocks. In an open marketplace of ideas, if there are dollars available to support this kind of hate speech, the niches occupied by Savage et al. will inexorably be filled. People in America already espouse the antipathies exhibited by Adkisson, and they will inevitably be articulated in some corners of the intellectual discourse. The pundits in question are a symptom of a social phenomenon antecedent to their prominence as radio hosts. Assigning them culpability won't kill their ideas. Even banning them from the radio wouldn't keep them off the Internet. Linking them to criminal activity in an attempt to silene them is a losing battle.

Moreover, guilt by association is a vile, right-wing tactic. These very same shock jocks spout constant accusations that Barack Obama is untrustworthy because he associates with terrorists such as William Ayers and his racist (Christian) ex-pastor, Jeremiah Wright. We liberals (well, some of us) object when Marilyn Manson and the Grand Theft Auto games are blamed for violence by teenagers. I don't see any reasonable distinction between those and the question O'Connor is trying ask.

And O'Connor is, at base, asking a question about culpability. He flirts with standing up and pointing the finger at his adversaries, but always retreats into comfortable dubity. If he's going to make a case against Savage and Limbaugh, he should do so emphatically rather than by mere suggestion. Is there some passage in which Savage (for instance) demonized Unitarians in particular? Is there a connection somewhere in the voluminous screeds of Hannity or Limbaugh that touched particularly on a personal experience of Adkisson's life? While my presumption is against the association O'Connor is trying to make, I am not averse to evidence. O'Connor declines to provide any.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Freedom of Choice (of Breakfast Meats)

This morning I heard an ad on the radio which struck me as a poignant commentary about the United States. It is increasingly obvious to me that our values and institutions are centered on commerce, and commercial interests dominate decisions which are supposed to be dictated by principle and concern for the "public good." While I have been aware of this state of affairs for upwards of a decade, recent developments have for some reason rekindled my interest in the questions of why America looks like it does, why we Americans act as we do, and how the public policies that determine these things are set.

I plan to research and write a series of posts dealing with these questions and how they relate to America's place in the world and particularly how they shape the presidential race. For now, I want to get back to the radio ad.

McDonald's recently introduced a breakfast sandwich called the Southern Style Chicken Biscuit, which true to its name consists of a fried chicken patty on a biscuit. It accompanies a number of other greasy, disgusting biscuit-based items which have reportedly been added to McDonald's menu in the years since I stopped eating there. Some consider the new sandwich remarkable in that it has moved chicken onto the breakfast menu, but as Joel Klein of TIME notes, this is not an unprecedented coup. Furthermore, there is no coherent reason why pork should be included in our morning meals while chicken is categorically proscribed. If there ever was some sanctity of breakfast, it was long ago defiled by the introduction of cereal shaped like waffles and sausage on a stick wrapped in pancakes, corndog style.

The radio ad for McDonald's new arterial calamity began by extolling the US's hallowed freedom of speech. How lucky we are to live in a nation where each person can express his ideas without fear of repression by his government! All manner of divergent opinions are tolerated in this nation of courage and integrity. No personal opinion or taste is grounds for ostracism, the ad continues. (Let us ignore the fact that you can't even see the truth from where you have to stand to be able to say that.)

What should we do with this precious freedom of expression? The radio told me that the proper course is to start eating chicken for breakfast, which was somehow not the first thing that came to my mind. I never had any inclination to include poultry on my breakfast menu, but then again, my tastes are so distant from where the ad industry would have them that I may qualify as a bad American on that count alone.

Isn't this appropriation of patriotic concepts and imagery in the name of selling a breakfast sandwich a form of sacrilege, to be decried and deplored by Americans from sea to shining sea? No. No, it isn't. What I find distressing about this ad is that there really isn't anything unusual about it. It's perfectly acceptable to use patriotism and America's purported ideals to implore consumers to buy your product. No one sees that as a debasement of what we stand for. This is a tacit acknowledgment of the fact that consumption is really what we're all about. What's the point getting upset about it? People who supposedly hold America dear to their hearts don't really want to impede commerce, so they never raise their voices in objection to this kind of thing.

This state of affairs reinforces my conclusion that most or all of the patriotic talk we put up with in American is entirely for show. Somehow, our politicians are excoriated for the mere omission of conspicuously patriotic (and Christian) rituals. Every lapel is adorned with a flag pin, every speech closed with "God bless America." Politicians never venture anywhere near vocally diluting or devaluing our shibboleths (which says nothing about what they do with their actions rather than their words). When a corporation suggests that the happy providence of the First Amendment should be utilized to eat chicken before 11:30am, that's business as usual.

Once again I find myself devoid of any obligation to participate in any of this- the patriotic pageantry, the consumerism, the greasy breakfast. I must be in the minority, though, or no one would pay to make those ads.

Friday, July 11, 2008

My dogma is bigger than yours

In a footnote to chapter nine of Breaking the Spell, Dan Dennett alerts his readers to a piece written by Cristoph Cardinal Schörnborn in which he clarifies the views of the Catholic Church toward evolution. In 1996, Pope John Paul II gave an address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences entitled "Truth Cannot Contradict Truth," in which he spoke about evolution. His main point was that the emergence of the human spirit (for my money, "spirit" is the Fergie of meaningless buzz-words, being both the most despicable and the most ubiquitous) could not be located on an evolutionary timeline and therefore weighed toward divine intervention. Let's just elide over the fact that the soul has never been scientifically demonstrated in the first place. John Paul and Schörnborn don't worry much about that, so neither will we.

In "Finding Design in Nature," Schörnborn attempted to remedy false notions about Church doctrine which had cropped in the nine years since the papal address. John Paul mentioned evolution but did not condemn it as false, so it's perfectly reasonable for any reader to assume that he accepted the fact that evolution is a real process. The important distinction, for Schörnborn, is that Christian teachings are fundamentally incompatible with "Neo-Darwinian doctrine," which he criticized as ideological rather than scientific. Neo-Darwinism denies the supposedly abundant evidence of design in the universe.

With formidable indignation, he quoted a1985 writing by John Paul in which he touted the "finality" of life on earth. So far as I know, finality is not a scientific concept. How would one test an organism to determine whether it is "final"? Does it have something to do with cell structure, anatomy, observed mutations? Is there a finality gene? Presumably John Paul's address was given in Italian; the Italian finalità may have some connotation or scientific application of which I am unaware. More likely, though, it's just jargon made up by JPII to make a case for something that just isn't so.

The late Pople continued: "To speak of chance for a universe which presents such a complex organization in its elements and such marvelous finality in its life would be equivalent to giving up the search for an explanation of the world as it appears to us." This is a baffling role reversal. The merest thought reveals that divine intervention is the bankrupt explanation in this discussion- what Dennett would call a "skyhook," a device which purports to do the work of a crane absent any actual superstructure to support it. Claiming that God is responsible for any observed phenomenon is intellectually lazy. Scientists have studied processes of differential replication for 149 years and have learned much about how random, stepwise processes can carry a system from simplicity to complexity. Positing divine intervention does not require any tests or observations, or even any thought. Pointing your finger at someone else and saying, "No, you're the one who refuses to use your brain," is worth 0 points. Sorry.

Schörnborn goes on to defend the new pope, Benedict XVI, from the scurrilous neo-Darwinists who would warp and corrupt his pronouncements for their own wicked ends. He doesn't cite any of these nefarious materialist rogues, so I have to doubt their existence. Who would make such a claim? I wouldn't go out of my way to get Benny on my side of the Beatles vs. Stones controversy, much less something meaningful like the origin of life. Furthermore, who believes that the pope doesn't think God had anything to do with the development of life on Earth? XVI is just as wrong as I expect him to be.

The Cardinal concludes by reiterating that design is plainly visible in all of nature. Again, no scientific work is cited to support this claim. It is a bare assertion. It's not that I expect Schörnborn to publish articles in a biology journal. He has better things to do; if he's anything like American bishops, that includes protecting child molestors. In any event, there is a sizable catalogue of supposed scientific work in support of the design theory. That body of work is rejected in toto by respectable scientists, but if the Cardinal is going to try to use science to support his Stone Age ideas, the least he could do is bring some science into it.

Monday, July 7, 2008

Imperialist and Reagan ally dies on the Fourth of July

The National Review has decided to host a circle-jerk in memory of the late Sen. Jesse Helms, a staunch conservative from North Carolina who died Friday (The Nation speculated, I hope facetiously, that he planned to die on Independence Day). This kind of hero worship bothers me no matter the alignment of the idol; I was far from pleased when The Nation and MoveOn.org uncritically extolled the virtues of Sen. Barack Obama a few months ago, notwithstanding the fact that he somehow became the standard-bearer for the progressive movement in this country. I won't be happy when The Nation holds a sad symposium reflecting on the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy, either. I know they're not going to be honest about it.

Does anyone really need talking heads from their own little ideological buddy list telling them how great some politician is (or was)? Can't said politician just put an ad on TV talking about how great they are? Why waste energy and print space on that kind of redundant applause? We rather need to know what's wrong with our politicians. Remember, these folks are trying to screw us.

Once you get past the fact that the entire post-mortem exercise is worth about the same as tailpipe exhaust, you have to start thinking about who Jesse Helms actually was. For one thing, he was a friend and political associate of Ronald Reagan, possibly my least favorite person in all of history. Helms was a stalwart opponent of civil rights, a virulent homophobe, and a prominent defender of the Reagan administration when it was caught funding Nicaraguan death squads. Helms is praised in NR for standing up to various presidents when he disagreed with them. But when it was discovered that a friend's cronies had armed terrorists in the Middle East and used the proceeds to fund terrorism in South America, he stood by his man. So what the hell good was he?

The folks at NR pour accolades on the late senator for his incessant crusade against the liberal elites of Washington. He filibustered to block their unqualified judicial appointments (!?!). He wanted to reform the United Nations (really glad he pushed that one through, huh?) and the somehow inherently anti-American State Department. He fought to reform anti-AIDS programs so that they would actually prevent the spread of the disease. It's not clear where the NR yackos got that last one. Helms was opposed to any funding for those programs, and he made no bones about why: homosexuals deserved to die for having ebil, ebil buttsekcs.

Helms also hated modern art and was a nemesis of the National Endowment for the Arts. Some egghead wants to give Keith Haring a grant so he can do his doodles on the walls of subway tunnels? That guy should be out on his ass. Caspar Weinberger sold M-16s to the Ayatollah? Well, that's so important, I can't see why it's illegal. He needs a pardon. See where Helms was coming from?

There is only one underwhelming mention of Helms's racial prejudice in the crop of eulogies, and it is phrased as follows: "I don’t know that he was completely innocent on race." The crowning element of this exuberant echo chamber is good, old exceptionalist nationalism. Helms knew what America was all about, so his support for our brutal and anti-democratic foreign policy was justified. After repeating that suggestion, David Rouzer closes the symposium with a masterful amalgamation of insipid supersition and saccharine patriotism: "It is only fitting that he joins two other great patriots, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, in exiting this world on the Fourth of July — and not by coincidence."

Monday, June 23, 2008

George Carlin, 1937-2008

I was saddened to read this morning that comedian George Carlin has died. In my opinion, the greatest thing about Carlin was his appreciation for language and his Orwellian understanding of its distortion. His comedy was vulgar and irreverent, but it was always tinged with erudition. He was pretty much uneducated, but he had a far greater understanding of the world than most Americans.

Carlin was acerbically critical of the American political system and religion ("Three out of four people now believe in angels. What're you, fuckin' stupid?"). His assessment was insightful, and his explanation of how language is used to manipulate public opinion was as eloquent as that of George Orwell. He dismissed religion as mind control and had a similar view of the consumerism so pervasive in this country. Any form of orthodoxy or attempt to craft a "received reality" was suspect. Carlin ridiculed politically-correct euphemisms as ruthlessly as he attacked the owning class in America. He was a free-thinker and one hilarious motherfucker.

Some responsible YouTuber posted a piece from his most recent stage show about death:

Saturday, June 21, 2008

What if you're wrong about the Great Juju at the bottom of the sea?

I love this video of Richard Dawkins owning a theist:



This speaks to one of the early questions that drove me away from Christianity. How can I know that my religion, I asked myself, is true, when there is just as much evidence for all the other religions (that is, none)? This is a very important question that religious people need to ask themselves if they are at all concerned about being intellectually honest.

Monday, June 2, 2008

Why I am not fundamentalist

Over the past week I have witnessed a series of flame wars in the Religion and Theology forum at Democratic Underground, where I wasted an exceptional amount of time last month. For five or six successive days, people who don't know each other traded insults and fallacious arguments, diagnosed each other with various neuroses, and squabbled over who was the bigger crybaby. The protracted flamefest started over the suggestion, not unknown in those parts and rarely well-received, that atheism is a religion. Two posters, both themselves atheists, spent days antagonizing other atheists while proclaiming their good intentions. In all, it was an effective demonstration of one of the strongest criticisms of atheism (which nonetheless falls victim to the fallacy of suggesting that atheism is a unified movement, but I will address that shortly): many atheists have a vicious contrarian streak and need to feel superior to others. If there are no believers around, other atheists will do. I have gone through this stage at least once, so I am acutely aware of it in others.

I didn't see much to gain from getting involved, so abstained from the argument for the most part. One intercession that I made was to observe that there were three definitions of "fundamentalist atheism" at work. Generally speaking, a fundamentalist is a person who adheres to a strictly literal interpretation of a religious scripture. Since atheism is not itself a philosophy but merely the condition of lacking belief in a god or gods, there are no central tenets for atheists to adhere to. The term is generally applied to vocal atheists how don't feel obligated to show respect for the supernatural beliefs of others. Beyond that common thread, the term is amorphous and serves different users in different ways, shifting as necessary to apply to many thinkers and positions.

The variation of the definitions I encountered intrigued me. I delineated the them as follows:

1). A fundamentalist atheist is one who will not acknowledge that atheists such as Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot committed atrocities. Also,they dogmatically refuse to acknowledge that fundamentalist atheism exists.

I think the person who advanced this definition meant to say that fundamentalist atheists refuse to admit that Stalin et al. were motivated by their atheism in their atrocities, which is the usual construction of that particular meme. I don't think anyone, at least at DU, had ever claimed that Stalin's purges or the Cultural Revolution didn't happen, but I checked carefully, and that was indeed the accusation made by the poster in question.

I also like the catch-22 couched in the second half of this definition. All you have to do to be a fundie is claim that you are not a fundie. It's artful, if pedantry is considered an art (as it is on some Internet boards). The gist of this person's concept of fundamentalist atheists is that they refuse to accept any criticism of atheism and form a quasi-religious clique to reinforce their delusion. It is convenient for use against anyone who defends atheism against attack, because they seem to tacitly acknowledge that they are part of a larger movement.

2). A fundamentalist atheist stubbornly asserts that no benefit has come from religion and that religion must be eliminated, usually be violent means.

As Carl Sagan once said, "Also pretty vague, but, also pretty different." While there is some commonality between this definition and (1), namely the tendency to ignore evidence, the distinction here is that (2) treats atheism as a philosophy with a set doctrine about the destructive nature of religion, whereas (1) treats atheists as a cohesive group that defends its own members.

A major problem with (2) is that many of the people labeled "fundamentalist atheists," including Dawkins, et al., don't actually make that claim. In particular many of the atheists labeled as part of the "clique" on DU do not agree with this position. I read the claim many times that most of the atheists on that discussion board advocate putting the religious in mental institutions, but it was always unsubstantiated. One user posted a thread in that forum explaining how most atheists enjoy religious music, holidays, cathedral architecture, and so forth; the main advocate of (2) was shocked, shocked at the fact that most of the atheists on the board had positive things to say about religious culture. I'm not sure whether the incident changed his conception of "fundamentalist atheism."

There are people who can accurately be named "anti-theists," but I'm not sure Dawkins and his colleagues ascribe to that label. I would place the four so-called New Atheists on a continuum, starting with Christopher Hitchens, the most vituperative critic of religion, followed by Sam Harris, Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett, the most objective and scholarly. Both Hitchens and Harris are apologists for neoconservative foreign policy, arguing that Muslim fanatics are a unique threat to Western civilization which can only be eliminated by force. Their position is perhaps the origin of the misconception that many atheists advocate violence against the religious. Dennett and Dawkins are strongly critical of American imperialism and violent coercion of any kind. Not even all of these four consider violence justified; to impute that position to a majority of atheists is an egregious exaggeration.

3). Fundamentalist atheists are those who insist that the only proper reading of a religious text is a literal reading and that all believers must adhere to such an interpretation.

This definition cemented in my mind the notion that the three posters who provided the definitions were merely drawing them around grudges and appealing to past experiences on the board to provide content for the chimera that is fundamentalist atheism. (3) happily eschews the common factor between the two preceding definitions, effectively depriving all three of any credibility. The practice of denying counter-evidence is tellingly absent from this definition; if there was any legitimate basis for the term I would expect that to be a universal component.

I understand the argument which gives rise to this definition. It was in fact instrumental in my own transition away from belief in God. When I was a child I believed everything in the bible was the literal truth, but the Cosmo Kramer that is reality inevitably imposed itself on my little bubble. The stories of the Flood and the Creation are simply contrary to fact, and when I abandoned them I couldn't settle on a liberal interpretation of Christianity. The New Testament, with all its miracles, is no less fantastic than the Old Testament. Without the story
of the Fall, the Resurrection narrative doesn't make any sense. Once the Old Testament myths are suspect, the New Testament miracles must fall under the same scrutiny. If the miracles are discounted, what is the rational distinction that can be made to assert that some parts of the New Testament are historical, while others are mythical or allegorical? Any standard that might be applied to distinguish between the two is, as far as I can see, completely arbitrary. The only cohesive readings of the bible are a literalist view (which must contend with a mountain of evidence against its veracity) and an allegorical view.

The above reasoning is either misinterpreted by a believer or misapplied by a disbeliever to create the negative interactions of the kind which lead to (3). This seems a rather personalized definition of "fundamentalist atheism," but then, all three definitions seem highly personalized. Regardless of the definition, though, I only ever see the term used as a pejorative. It is applied as a catch-all for anyone who steps out of line and expresses their ideas about religion. There is only one fundamental of atheism: not believing in God. You don't even have to make the claim that God doesn't exist; all you have to do is refrain from making the claim that He does. There is no central atheist authority, and no foundational creed to subscribe to. Out of such a non-contiguous group, the "fundamentalist" label tends to fall upon anyone whose behavior is judged impertinent.

Saturday, May 31, 2008

Moving the goalposts

Today the Rules and Bylaws Committee of the Democratic National Committee is meeting to determine the status of primary election delegates from the states of Florida and Michigan. Those two states were stripped of their delegates after their state Democratic Parties went back on their agreement to hold primaries no earlier than February 5.

All of the presidential candidates agreed not to campaign in the two states, and the voters in those states were told that no delegates would be seated. Before Michigan held its primary January 15, four of the candidates removed their names from the ballot, leaving only Hillary Clinton, who declined to do so, Chris Dodd, who did not have the resources to withdraw his name, and Dennis Kucinich, who presumably thought he would have received the same number of votes either way. There was relatively low turnout compared to the number of Democrats who voted in other primaries, which is understandable considering that everyone knew at the time that it wouldn't mean anything. DailyKos urged Democrats to vote in the Republican primary and rejuvenate the floundering campaign of Mitt Romney to disrupt Republican campaign. The contributors to that blog were not happy when Republicans did the same to the Democrats in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. At any rate, 56% of the Michiganders voted for Clinton, while 31% marked "uncommitted."

Florida held it primary on January 29. Hillary Clinton won 50% of the vote, Barack Obama garnered 33%, and John Edwards barely missed winning a delegate with 14%. It was accepted by all parties that the primaries would not count because they violated the schedule set by the DNC. The Clinton campaign did not care, for the most part, because they believed that they would have a lock on the nomination by Super Tuesday. Unfortunately for them, Obama performed well that day and won a series of 12 victories thereafter because Clinton had no campaign infrastructure in any of the subsequent states. Clinton began to push to have the primaries from Florida and Michigan legitimized.

The RBC has a number of options before it after it hears testimony from the Obama and Clinton campaigns. It could refuse to seat any delegates, seat all of the delegates from both states but allow each only half a vote at the convention, or seat half the delegates from each state. The Committee does not have the authority to grant either state more than half its votes at the convention. It might split Michigan's 108 delegates evenly or it might assign 69 to Clinton and 56 to Obama, giving him the uncommitted delegates.

If the DNC has any integrity, it will not seat any delegates from either state. Everyone was explicitly notified in January that the votes would not count. The Clinton campaign has no respect for the rules, and the Obama campaign doesn't have much to gain by standing up for them, so they are pushing for a compromise. This fiasco is a major blow to the credibility of the Democratic Party, if that party can be said to have any credibility to begin with. Not only is their selection process arcane and antidemocratic, allowing high-level party officials to weigh against a candidate with popular support in their role as superdelegates; the DNC also tolerates relocation of its goalposts at the very end of the primary game.

None of the proposed solutions provide any remedy for the people in both states who sat out the vote because they were told it would not count. Clinton loyalist Howard Ickes insists that Obama should not receive any delegates from Michigan, essentially punishing Obama for following the rules. This is the level of hypocrisy that I have come to expect from her and band of inept crooks. Michigan was completely expendable to them until Obama pulled ahead of them. Now they are pushing to change the rules in hopes of surviving.

As a registered Democrat, I feel slighted by the attempt to count invalid votes. My vote in the Pennsylvania primary was valid, as far as I know, and now it will likely be debased by the inclusion of votes from a pair of sham elections. This is precisely the kind of behavior that made me resist registering with this party in the first place. If democracy mattered to these people, they would have pushed for another set of primaries so that every Democrat's vote could be counted. Instead they are left with a bitter and divisive episode which will necessarily disenfranchise someone.

The RBC will likely seat at least some of the delegates from the two states, placating the bitter supporters of the losing candidate. The best possible outcome for Clinton still leaves her
chances very slim, so this abrogation of the party's rules will have little meaningful effect. Come to think of it, many of her supporters will still refuse to vote for Obama once he wins the nomination, regardless of what concessions are made to them.

The notable exception might be Clinton's installation on the bottom half of the Democratic ticket. This would unite the party, but it would lose my vote. Obama's political brand, built upon the notion that he is separate from the Washinton politics that have flourished under Bush and Clinton, already strains my suspension of disbelief. Taking Clinton, whom he has decried as an exemplar of that kind of politics, under his wing would dramatically undermine that image. Almost nothing could persuade me to vote for Clinton in any capacity.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

No historical understanding necessary

I like this cartoon by Pulitzer Prize winner Mike Ramirez. In particular, I like the way it casually eviscerates its own point. The bust of Lincoln is included to demonstrate that far more qualified presidents would be baffled that someone so inexperienced as Barack Obama could hold the highest office in the land.

While Lincoln is indubitably one of the greatest presidents in American history, his example is inapt because he had about as much government experience when he was elected president as Obama does today. Lincoln served eight years as a member of the state legislature in Illinois, equal to Obama's time there. Lincoln taught himself law during his early years in the legislature and eventually became a distinguished attorney. He was elected to a single term in the House of Representatives, where he was a vocal advocate against the Mexican War, but was not a prominent or successful legislator. In 1858 he ran unsuccessfully against Stephen A. Douglas for the Senate seat now held by Richard Durbin. Douglas and Lincoln ran for president two years later; the Electoral College was split among them and two other candidates, but Lincoln had a commanding plurality in the popular vote and a solid bloc of victories in Northern states.

Anyone who follows presidential politics is familiar with Obama's résumé. He graduated from Columbia University, worked briefly for a publishing company, then moved to Chicago to become a community organizer. After graduating from Harvard Law school in 1991, he worked as an attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago. He served eight years as a legislator before defeating carpetbagger and all-around embarrassment Alan Keyes in what was essentially a bye election for the Senate in 2004. He has served for three years and, while not a star legislator, I submit that he has been more successful than Lincoln.

Obama's is far from the most impressive curriculum vitae to show up in this year's crop of presidential candidates, but the parallels between him and Lincoln should be enough to demolish the "lack of experience" meme. While there is little to indicate that an Obama presidency would be as historic and Lincoln's, a lack of executive experience should not automatically disqualify a presidential candidate.

It is surprising that Ramirez chose Lincoln as the president who, presumably, would be most offended by an Obama presidency. He might have chosen Ronald Reagan, who remains a conservative icon to this day and had served two terms as governor of California before ascending to the Oval Office. That might neuter the right's criticism of Obama's fanatical supporters, who are no less enthusiastic than the Cult of the Deified Ronald. At least a Reagan bust would have allowed the cartoonist to avoid decapitating his own argument, though. Critiquing the Obama brand could be the work of other cartoons, so the contradiction would be less obvious.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

The aesthetics of science

I wanted to respond to a comment that Maddie left on my second Templeton post, but I couldn't fit in all I wanted to say, so I'll use this post to cover all the ground I couldn't in my response.

Maddie wrote about the standards of evidence that would be necessary to justifiably believe in a god. The only thing even approaching positive evidence would be a demonstration of some phenomenon that cannot be explained by any natural cause. Even then, attributing any specific characteristics to this hypothetical supernatural force is completely baseless. The human race has learned enough to graduate beyond that level of thinking.

When I was a child, I struggled to reconcile the stories in the bible with things that I knew to be fact- stories like the creation (I didn't realize at the time that there were two mutually exclusive stories in Genesis), the Noachian Flood, the sun standing still in the sky so Joshua could complete his genocide against the Amorites, etc. The more I thought about those stories, the clearer it became that they could not have happened. I was pulled in both directions, but I had always found the science more compelling than the myths. Everything I learned about science made sense. To borrow a phrase from physicist Brian Greene, the universe is elegant. The stories in the bible, with all of their contradictions are other various absurdities, never came together in the same way.

That is an aesthetic judgment, I guess. Based on that judgment, though, I can't figure out the appeal of pseudoscience. It isn't enough that we, a horribly limited species in an insignificant little corner of space, have found a way to reach out across the universe and determine with a very high level of precision how it works? We also need to look at the planets moving through the sky and come up with a way that they supposedly affect our daily lives? Science is so much more proactive, using our own faculties to reach out into the cold beauty of the universe and snatch a little piece of it for ourselves. The notion that our personalities and the details of our lives are dictated by some hazy astrological mechanism is so much less life-affirming.

I see the same glaring discrepancy in homeopathy. The growth of our medical knowledge is perhaps more astounding than our progress in astrophysics- it roughly doubles every two years. The exponential gains of medical science are not merely an inspiring display of the human capacity for discovery- they mean advances in the human condition on a daily basis. The fundamental changes that medicine promises in the coming decades are startling in their scope and brilliance. Medicine is a branch of science that should generate awe in every human being. And yet some are not impressed- they insist on buying into homeopathy, which operates on the principle that water 'remembers' the properties of past solutes, so that medicine diluted to absurdly low concentrations retains its beneficial effect. This seems to me an obscene abdication of reason.

Are we somehow not packaging the truth properly? Surely, the comforting appeal of homeopathy and other myths must pale in comparison to the inherent beauty of the truths that human endeavor has revealed. Reality should need no marketing campaign. And yet people look askance at you if you say you don't believe in these myths. Granted, most who believe the Christian mythology wouldn't link their historical 'get out of reality free' card to the 'get out of reality free' cards others use for astronomy and medicine and so forth, but I challenge anyone to point out a substantive distinction.

What am I going on about? If all those good folks in the heartland think the world is only 6,000 years old, well, shucks, they just can't be wrong.