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Showing posts with label issues. Show all posts
Showing posts with label issues. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Is this the sort of society we want?
Tony Judt, one of my favorite historians and liberal thinkers, passed away. I posted one of my favorite recent quotes from him on my Facebook, but it's worth reposting here:
When I write that we are trapped in “an economic language,” I mean that we have become accustomed to answering (and asking) only economic questions, and only in economic terms. The great economists of the past, from Adam Smith to Keynes, would have thought this bizarre. For them (as for me), a well-ordered society needs to address ethical questions, questions of justice and fairness and goodness and morality and right and wrong. We can’t live just by asking, “Is this efficient?”, “Is this good for GDP?”, and so on. We have to relearn to ask, “Is this the sort of society we want?”, a question to which there will be economic answers but there cannot be only economic answers.
When I write that we are trapped in “an economic language,” I mean that we have become accustomed to answering (and asking) only economic questions, and only in economic terms. The great economists of the past, from Adam Smith to Keynes, would have thought this bizarre. For them (as for me), a well-ordered society needs to address ethical questions, questions of justice and fairness and goodness and morality and right and wrong. We can’t live just by asking, “Is this efficient?”, “Is this good for GDP?”, and so on. We have to relearn to ask, “Is this the sort of society we want?”, a question to which there will be economic answers but there cannot be only economic answers.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Elena Kagan.
Linked to on Salon's home page today.
So many problematic statements, so little time. I’ll just rattle off a few glaring errors…
Let’s start with these paragraphs…
We are told that Kagan is a manifestation of Obama’s concern that the common people are not being heard by the Supreme Court. So he appoints a person who attended an exclusive high school, then Princeton, then Oxford, and then Harvard. Just the sort of person who is most likely to be in touch with the struggles and aspirations, the stances and aims of We the People…
Socioeconomic class is only one disconnect between rhetoric and reality when it comes to the Kagan selection. If she is lesbian, as rumor has it, then she is definitely not average. If she is not lesbian, she is very unusual as a 50 year old woman who has never been married. She has no children, which is also unusual for a woman her age…
Each of these traits by itself means little. There are tens of thousands of graduates from prestigious, if overrated, universities. Not every woman is able to have children. Added together, however, they do not depict someone who can relate to “average people” or vice versa. Quite the opposite. When you look at the aggregate effect of 1%
- I don’t pretend to be a populist. I think the people we elect to serve in positions of great power and influence should be smarter and worldlier than “typical Americans.” I look at my neighbors, guests on the Jerry Springer Show, people on the evening news—and I look at myself!—and… no, bad idea. Education isn’t everything (a first-rate degree doesn’t guarantee a fair and discerning mind and a just and good heart) but it’s A Big (and I would venture “essential”) Something when one endeavors to be A Big, Consequential And Decisive Somebody.
- I bristle at the insinuation that a 50-year-old woman would ONLY be childless because she was either unable to bear children or unable to land a mate. “Not every woman is able to have children” ignores, by careless oversimplification, a woman’s agency in deciding whether or not she DESIRES to bear children.
- The whispers about lesbianism bug me also, but not nearly as much as these lines…
Like the construction? Although I understand homosexuality to be deficient on numerous grounds, I wouldn’t oppose Kagan for that reason, if she does privately fall into that category. Five-term Senator David Walsh (D-MA) was one of the best members of the upper legislative chamber during the first half of the 20th century. Apparently, he was also homosexual. Some of my favorite writers are self-identified homosexuals who are undeniably talented and insightful (e.g., Gore Vidal, Andrea Dworkin, Amy Ray, Emily Saliers, Justin Raimondo).
“These people were homosexuals BUT they had some redeeming qualities. See? Look at me. Listen to me! I’m no homophobe!”
I’m no fan of Elena Kagan. I oppose her nomination on the grounds that her scant, deliberately inoffensive record offends me with its lack of judicial conviction and courage.
So many problematic statements, so little time. I’ll just rattle off a few glaring errors…
Let’s start with these paragraphs…
We are told that Kagan is a manifestation of Obama’s concern that the common people are not being heard by the Supreme Court. So he appoints a person who attended an exclusive high school, then Princeton, then Oxford, and then Harvard. Just the sort of person who is most likely to be in touch with the struggles and aspirations, the stances and aims of We the People…
Socioeconomic class is only one disconnect between rhetoric and reality when it comes to the Kagan selection. If she is lesbian, as rumor has it, then she is definitely not average. If she is not lesbian, she is very unusual as a 50 year old woman who has never been married. She has no children, which is also unusual for a woman her age…
Each of these traits by itself means little. There are tens of thousands of graduates from prestigious, if overrated, universities. Not every woman is able to have children. Added together, however, they do not depict someone who can relate to “average people” or vice versa. Quite the opposite. When you look at the aggregate effect of 1%
- I don’t pretend to be a populist. I think the people we elect to serve in positions of great power and influence should be smarter and worldlier than “typical Americans.” I look at my neighbors, guests on the Jerry Springer Show, people on the evening news—and I look at myself!—and… no, bad idea. Education isn’t everything (a first-rate degree doesn’t guarantee a fair and discerning mind and a just and good heart) but it’s A Big (and I would venture “essential”) Something when one endeavors to be A Big, Consequential And Decisive Somebody.
- I bristle at the insinuation that a 50-year-old woman would ONLY be childless because she was either unable to bear children or unable to land a mate. “Not every woman is able to have children” ignores, by careless oversimplification, a woman’s agency in deciding whether or not she DESIRES to bear children.
- The whispers about lesbianism bug me also, but not nearly as much as these lines…
Like the construction? Although I understand homosexuality to be deficient on numerous grounds, I wouldn’t oppose Kagan for that reason, if she does privately fall into that category. Five-term Senator David Walsh (D-MA) was one of the best members of the upper legislative chamber during the first half of the 20th century. Apparently, he was also homosexual. Some of my favorite writers are self-identified homosexuals who are undeniably talented and insightful (e.g., Gore Vidal, Andrea Dworkin, Amy Ray, Emily Saliers, Justin Raimondo).
“These people were homosexuals BUT they had some redeeming qualities. See? Look at me. Listen to me! I’m no homophobe!”
I’m no fan of Elena Kagan. I oppose her nomination on the grounds that her scant, deliberately inoffensive record offends me with its lack of judicial conviction and courage.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Links galore.
Glenn Greenwald column on Britain's election...
It is outrageous that decent, law-abiding people are regularly treated as if they have something to hide. It has to stop. . . . And we will end practices that risk making Britain a place where our children grow up so used to their liberty being infringed that they accept it without question. . . . This will be a government that is proud when British citizens stand up against illegitimate advances of the state. . . .
And we will, of course, introduce safeguards to prevent the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation. There have been too many cases of individuals being denied their rights . . . And whole communities being placed under suspicion. . . . This government will do better by British justice. Respecting great, British freedoms . . . Which is why we'll also defend trial by jury.
How Rand Paul can win in Kentucky and still doom the GOP.
(Oh, let's only hope so!)
Even if Paul wins in Kentucky, though, he's bad news for his party in general. In fact, he's bad news especially if he wins. The Tea Party is going to be emboldened by a Senator Paul, and misinterpret his success in a conservative state as evidence that Tea Party conservatism is the road back to power for the GOP in general. When mainstream conservatives cite electability in primaries against Tea Party candidates, they'll have Paul thrown in their faces. But that won't make them any less right... If Tea Party activists succeed in turning the Republicans into the advocates of repealing significant portions of the modern liberal bureaucracy, they're going to kill the GOP for a generation.
I don't want the GOP "dead" for a generation. A bright, principled, thinking opposition is essential to challenge the reigning party by offering alternative points of view and courses of action... but I won't pretend that I think the Tea Party movement and far-right of the Republican party are any of those things. Too often, it looks to me like the only thing going on above the neck as far as Tea Partiers are concerned is yelling.
But the national electorate is getting less white every year. Moreover, we're going to exit this recession with some weak, but significant, renewal of the tradition of government involvement in the economy. With the employment growing again, the economy recovering, and healthcare reform taking effect, the ground is disintegrating under the feet of the Tea Party, even as its members think their moment of triumph is at hand. That's the exact recipe for an unpopular minority movement to convince itself that it represents a broad majority, take over its party, and lead it to disaster.
Equating sexual orientation with "sex life"
The very notion that it is "outrageous" or "despicable" to inquire into a public figure's sexual orientation -- adjectives I heard repeatedly applied to those raising questions about Kagan -- is completely inconsistent with the belief that sexual orientation is value-neutral. If being straight and gay are precise moral equivalents, then what possible harm can come from asking someone, especially one who seeks high political office: "are you gay?" If one really believes that they are equivalent, then that question would be no different than asking someone where they grew up, whether they are married, or how many children they have. That's what made the White House's response to the initial claims that Kagan was gay so revealing and infuriating: by angrily rejecting those claims as "false charges," they were -- as Alex Pareene put it -- "treating lesbian rumors like allegations of vampiric necrophilia."
Sexual orientation is not about one's "sex life," at least not primarily, but instead is a key part of one's identity. Along with a whole variety of other factors (race, socioeconomic background, religion, gender, geographic origin, ethnic background), it shapes one's experiences, perceptions, and relationship to the world. As is true for all of those other attributes, there is vast heterogeniety within one's sexual orientation; there's as much diversity among gay people as there is among, say, Christians or Latinos or women or heterosexuals. But there's no doubt that it is a very substantial factor in one's life experiences and understanding of the world.
Rand Paul: Obama is "un-American"Paul went on to say that "maybe sometimes accidents happen." People die, ecoystems get ravaged, beaches turn into tarball-infested wastelands. Big deal. Cut BP a break!
"What I don't like from the president's administration is this sort of, 'I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP,'" Rand said in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America." "I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business."
Paul's basic stance is actually quite useful; it highlights a core weakness in libertarian theory: its lack of a robust mechanism to ensure that the natural environment is not devastated by the actions of businesses. Quite simply, unregulated markets do a very bad job of preventing private enterprise from doing nasty things like dumping sewage into rivers or polluting the air, or overfishing the oceans. Quite the opposite -- unregulated markets ensure that businesses will attempt to minimize their production costs to the lowest extent possible, regardless of the impact that has on non-customers, whether those be people, plants or animals, or the atmosphere.
The invisible costs of America's wars.
Everyone from the Founders to George Orwell thought (and hoped) that the massive societal costs which wars impose would be a deterrent to their being fought, but, given the types of wars the U.S. chooses to wage, most Americans who express their "support" for them bear absolutely no perceived cost whatsoever. Worse, many who cheer for our wars enjoy that most intoxicating and distorting reward: cost-free benefits, in the form of vicarious feelings of strength, purpose, nobility and the like, all from a safe distance. It's very difficult to generate attention for political issues that Americans fail to perceive so directly and tangibly affect them -- that's why the failing economy receives so much attention and our various wars (and civil liberties erosions) do not.
Judging risk when things can go wrong.
Every activity – driving a car, eating dinner, becoming a parent – carries with it an attendant degree of risk. If we focused too much on the risk, none of us would ever uncurl from the fetal position. Most of us figure, and with good reason, that the chance of disaster striking one person during the normal activities of daily life is small enough to ignore or discount.
But there are some possible disasters that could affect so many people that normal considerations of risk do not fit.
Tea party could cost GOP nine Senate races this fall.
The prime example of this is in Kentucky, a conservative state that never much cared for Barack Obama in 2008 and that has turned even more sharply against him, and against the national Democratic Party, since his presidency began. This, coupled with the feeble economy and the basic buyer's remorse nature of midterm elections, should make the contest to replace retiring Sen. Jim Bunning a cakewalk for the GOP.
But it isn't, because the GOP base, in a revolt against a party establishment that it believes has betrayed conservative principles, opted for Rand Paul in the May 18 primary, instead of Trey Grayson, the establishment's choice. Within 24 hours, Paul was scrambling to prove to a national audience that he doesn't actually oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He's now clammed up and shaken up his campaign staff, but Paul is an unseasoned candidate and a true believer. With more than five months to go until the election, further embarrassments seem inevitable.
Democrats, in other words, could end up stealing a Republican-held seat in a conservative state. The more controversial Paul becomes -- the more he becomes the main issue in the Kentucky race, instead of Obama, Washington Democrats and the economy -- the more conceivable it becomes that swing voters who are otherwise ready to vote against the Democrats will end up voting against Paul instead.
Neutral Milk Hotel! I've had "Holland 1945" on repeat most of the morning while working on our marketing outreach. It's such a beautifully, chaotically haunting song.
The only girl I've ever loved was born with roses in her eyes
But then they buried her alive, one evening 1945.
I return to it every few months with fresh enthusiasm.
Laura Gibson!
It is outrageous that decent, law-abiding people are regularly treated as if they have something to hide. It has to stop. . . . And we will end practices that risk making Britain a place where our children grow up so used to their liberty being infringed that they accept it without question. . . . This will be a government that is proud when British citizens stand up against illegitimate advances of the state. . . .
And we will, of course, introduce safeguards to prevent the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation. There have been too many cases of individuals being denied their rights . . . And whole communities being placed under suspicion. . . . This government will do better by British justice. Respecting great, British freedoms . . . Which is why we'll also defend trial by jury.
How Rand Paul can win in Kentucky and still doom the GOP.
(Oh, let's only hope so!)
Even if Paul wins in Kentucky, though, he's bad news for his party in general. In fact, he's bad news especially if he wins. The Tea Party is going to be emboldened by a Senator Paul, and misinterpret his success in a conservative state as evidence that Tea Party conservatism is the road back to power for the GOP in general. When mainstream conservatives cite electability in primaries against Tea Party candidates, they'll have Paul thrown in their faces. But that won't make them any less right... If Tea Party activists succeed in turning the Republicans into the advocates of repealing significant portions of the modern liberal bureaucracy, they're going to kill the GOP for a generation.
I don't want the GOP "dead" for a generation. A bright, principled, thinking opposition is essential to challenge the reigning party by offering alternative points of view and courses of action... but I won't pretend that I think the Tea Party movement and far-right of the Republican party are any of those things. Too often, it looks to me like the only thing going on above the neck as far as Tea Partiers are concerned is yelling.
But the national electorate is getting less white every year. Moreover, we're going to exit this recession with some weak, but significant, renewal of the tradition of government involvement in the economy. With the employment growing again, the economy recovering, and healthcare reform taking effect, the ground is disintegrating under the feet of the Tea Party, even as its members think their moment of triumph is at hand. That's the exact recipe for an unpopular minority movement to convince itself that it represents a broad majority, take over its party, and lead it to disaster.
Equating sexual orientation with "sex life"
The very notion that it is "outrageous" or "despicable" to inquire into a public figure's sexual orientation -- adjectives I heard repeatedly applied to those raising questions about Kagan -- is completely inconsistent with the belief that sexual orientation is value-neutral. If being straight and gay are precise moral equivalents, then what possible harm can come from asking someone, especially one who seeks high political office: "are you gay?" If one really believes that they are equivalent, then that question would be no different than asking someone where they grew up, whether they are married, or how many children they have. That's what made the White House's response to the initial claims that Kagan was gay so revealing and infuriating: by angrily rejecting those claims as "false charges," they were -- as Alex Pareene put it -- "treating lesbian rumors like allegations of vampiric necrophilia."
Sexual orientation is not about one's "sex life," at least not primarily, but instead is a key part of one's identity. Along with a whole variety of other factors (race, socioeconomic background, religion, gender, geographic origin, ethnic background), it shapes one's experiences, perceptions, and relationship to the world. As is true for all of those other attributes, there is vast heterogeniety within one's sexual orientation; there's as much diversity among gay people as there is among, say, Christians or Latinos or women or heterosexuals. But there's no doubt that it is a very substantial factor in one's life experiences and understanding of the world.
Rand Paul: Obama is "un-American"Paul went on to say that "maybe sometimes accidents happen." People die, ecoystems get ravaged, beaches turn into tarball-infested wastelands. Big deal. Cut BP a break!
"What I don't like from the president's administration is this sort of, 'I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP,'" Rand said in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America." "I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business."
Paul's basic stance is actually quite useful; it highlights a core weakness in libertarian theory: its lack of a robust mechanism to ensure that the natural environment is not devastated by the actions of businesses. Quite simply, unregulated markets do a very bad job of preventing private enterprise from doing nasty things like dumping sewage into rivers or polluting the air, or overfishing the oceans. Quite the opposite -- unregulated markets ensure that businesses will attempt to minimize their production costs to the lowest extent possible, regardless of the impact that has on non-customers, whether those be people, plants or animals, or the atmosphere.
The invisible costs of America's wars.
Everyone from the Founders to George Orwell thought (and hoped) that the massive societal costs which wars impose would be a deterrent to their being fought, but, given the types of wars the U.S. chooses to wage, most Americans who express their "support" for them bear absolutely no perceived cost whatsoever. Worse, many who cheer for our wars enjoy that most intoxicating and distorting reward: cost-free benefits, in the form of vicarious feelings of strength, purpose, nobility and the like, all from a safe distance. It's very difficult to generate attention for political issues that Americans fail to perceive so directly and tangibly affect them -- that's why the failing economy receives so much attention and our various wars (and civil liberties erosions) do not.
Judging risk when things can go wrong.
Every activity – driving a car, eating dinner, becoming a parent – carries with it an attendant degree of risk. If we focused too much on the risk, none of us would ever uncurl from the fetal position. Most of us figure, and with good reason, that the chance of disaster striking one person during the normal activities of daily life is small enough to ignore or discount.
But there are some possible disasters that could affect so many people that normal considerations of risk do not fit.
Tea party could cost GOP nine Senate races this fall.
The prime example of this is in Kentucky, a conservative state that never much cared for Barack Obama in 2008 and that has turned even more sharply against him, and against the national Democratic Party, since his presidency began. This, coupled with the feeble economy and the basic buyer's remorse nature of midterm elections, should make the contest to replace retiring Sen. Jim Bunning a cakewalk for the GOP.
But it isn't, because the GOP base, in a revolt against a party establishment that it believes has betrayed conservative principles, opted for Rand Paul in the May 18 primary, instead of Trey Grayson, the establishment's choice. Within 24 hours, Paul was scrambling to prove to a national audience that he doesn't actually oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He's now clammed up and shaken up his campaign staff, but Paul is an unseasoned candidate and a true believer. With more than five months to go until the election, further embarrassments seem inevitable.
Democrats, in other words, could end up stealing a Republican-held seat in a conservative state. The more controversial Paul becomes -- the more he becomes the main issue in the Kentucky race, instead of Obama, Washington Democrats and the economy -- the more conceivable it becomes that swing voters who are otherwise ready to vote against the Democrats will end up voting against Paul instead.
Neutral Milk Hotel! I've had "Holland 1945" on repeat most of the morning while working on our marketing outreach. It's such a beautifully, chaotically haunting song.
The only girl I've ever loved was born with roses in her eyes
But then they buried her alive, one evening 1945.
I return to it every few months with fresh enthusiasm.
Laura Gibson!
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
I cannot imagine how.
If you want to read a fascinating “conservative” case for legalizing gay marriage, read last week’s Newsweek. The conservative lawyer in question argues that banning same-sex marriage represents a gross governmental interference in private lives of citizens and a breach of personal freedom—a compelling argument from a different angle than the stance I automatically assume on why we should embrace gay marriage ASAP (namely—barring loving homosexual couples from marriage is just cruel).
Here's a sample of the article's contents:
“When we refuse to accord this status to gays and lesbians, we discourage them from forming the same relationships we encourage for others. And we are also telling them, those who love them, and society as a whole that their relationships are less worthy, less legitimate, less permanent and less valued. We demean their relationships and we demean them as individuals. I cannot imagine how we benefit as a society by doing so.”
When I was in my early teens, I thought that introducing the term “marriage” into the debate over same-sex rights made those court and ballot box battles messier than they needed to be. The way I saw it then, people got so tetchy over that one word. Couldn’t “civil unions” confer most of the benefits of marriage while skirting the big fight over same-sex marriage? But I know now that I was wrong. A civil union isn’t the same as a marriage. Yes, a civil union extends certain rights and protections, but it withholds the profound and particular respect and recognition that we (at least in theory, if not in practice) attach to marriage in our society.
Here's a sample of the article's contents:
“When we refuse to accord this status to gays and lesbians, we discourage them from forming the same relationships we encourage for others. And we are also telling them, those who love them, and society as a whole that their relationships are less worthy, less legitimate, less permanent and less valued. We demean their relationships and we demean them as individuals. I cannot imagine how we benefit as a society by doing so.”
When I was in my early teens, I thought that introducing the term “marriage” into the debate over same-sex rights made those court and ballot box battles messier than they needed to be. The way I saw it then, people got so tetchy over that one word. Couldn’t “civil unions” confer most of the benefits of marriage while skirting the big fight over same-sex marriage? But I know now that I was wrong. A civil union isn’t the same as a marriage. Yes, a civil union extends certain rights and protections, but it withholds the profound and particular respect and recognition that we (at least in theory, if not in practice) attach to marriage in our society.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
You probably want to be David.
“I feel like Goliath because I think theirs is a Goliath out there in independents and conservatives, and I think they’ve awakened the sleeping Goliath.”
Wait a minute, Christian values voter… you remember how the story about Goliath ends, right?
Wait a minute, Christian values voter… you remember how the story about Goliath ends, right?
Monday, August 3, 2009
Where is my freedom of speech? My life, is it livable?
The regime had understood that one person leaving her house while asking herself: ‘Are my trousers long enough? Is my veil in place? Can my makeup be seen? Are they going to whip me?’ no longer asks herself: ‘Where is my freedom of thought? Where is my freedom of speech? My life, is it livable? What’s going on the political prisons?’
MARJANE SATRAPI. THE COMPLETE PERSEPOLIS.
MARJANE SATRAPI. THE COMPLETE PERSEPOLIS.
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