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Perspective

From the AP via Yahoo:

Days after releasing top-secret memos that detailed the CIA's use of simulated drowning while interrogating terror suspects, President Barack Obama went to the spy agency's Virginia headquarters on Monday to defend his decision and bolster the morale of its employees.

So let me get this straight: Confidental documents from the CIA that detailed non-lethal techniques used on foreign enemies to save the lives of American civilians and soldiers should be outed so that it can be read by as many people as possible around the globe including those enemies themselves, but when the Democrats want to re-enact LBJ's socialism and plunge us, our children, and possibly our grandchildren into massive national debt without gaining any appreciable advantage in return it should be done with over a thousand pages of inaccessible legalese that not even the legislators themselves had the time, inclination, or (probably) intelligence to read and understand.

We can debate the various merits and detriments of individual decisions and acts all day long. But sometimes those things ought to be compared to each other if for no other reason than to demonstrate the perspective, or lack thereof, of the people making these decisions and acts. For once I'd like to see Obama and his Democrats do something that makes sense outside of their various excuses, declarations of "supposed to", and vague idealizing.

Education, Medicine, and Freedom of Culture

It was a quintessential Long Island scene. I, a Jew fresh from the Seder table, was in a traditional Greek household to join my best friend and his family in celebrating Catholic Easter. (Long story.) There was great food, great drink (those who have not yet tasted Greek raki, or tsikoudia, are highly encouraged to do so), great company, and great times. And then, just as I was letting my guard down, the discussion devolved into politics and I was suckered right into it before I knew what hit me. (If this scene is still not familiar to you, see my post from July 7 of last year. It was the same household.)

First, for no apparent reason, the old news of the tragedy that befell John Travolta a few months ago was commented upon. Then people were commenting on how it happened, and then they were commenting on Scientology. So far, so good; I have never been opposed to making fun of Scientology, especially when it is recognized that no hyperbole is actually needed in order to get a few good laughs. But then, some people were blaming Scientology for serious things, such as encouraging the lethal neglect of children. Then those same people were blaming a variety of belief systems for such things, while other people were blaming the individual practitioners, and others still were condemning the actions themselves while abstaining from judging the individuals, which seems not altogether inappropriate in the context of pious Christian observance, although in general it also seems indicative of ethics that are just a little too weak to hold much merit.

In any event, after a couple more minor twists and turns, the conversation became essentially a debate over the following proposition: Should there be laws against certain practices that are common among certain religions and cultures? One example was education; my table companion did not like how the Amish don’t send their children to "real schools" (which may be a slight exaggeration, but we all get his meaning). And even more importantly, what about medicine? The faith healers on television should, he said, be locked up like sellers of snake oil. And he railed against the Amish for not getting their children vaccinated; or, more to the point, he said they should be forced to do so against their will. A side question is, is this a religious thing or a cultural thing? In other words, even if they could be convinced that the syringe and serum could easily be made using pre-modern materials and techniques, and are therefore not part of the group of material things that lead to impurity of the soul, would the Amish still abstain from vaccinations out of pure mistrust of both modern medicine generally and the people who would administer it to their children?

Of course, to my table companion, it was all the same. Never mind one’s religion or culture or personal beliefs or what have you; as far as he is concerned, some things are more important for a child than his parents’ right to raise him into a specific lifestyle or set of beliefs. "I don’t go for all that cultural relativism stuff," he said more than once. And suddenly I was in the interesting position of using conservative principles to debunk what sounded remarkably like a conservative talking point, coming from his mouth at least.

First, let’s settle some finer points: Freedom of religion is one thing (I have already expressed my thoughts on that); freedom of culture is slightly distinct. Both have to do with the right to conduct one’s life according to one’s own preferences. But religion has a little bit more to do with spiritual practice, and culture has a little bit more to do with general lifestyle, including secular traditions, outlooks, etc. In other words, religion, being a joining of superstition and philosophy, includes both something cerebral, or intangible, such as a system of belief, and the physical, tangible results of its practice, including the carrying out of ritual and the real life consequences of refraining from doing anything forbidden; culture, being the total of all forces that shape a community’s shared lifestyle and outlook, and their manifestations, includes those physical results of religion to some degree or another. Even in those situations in which religion and culture coincide, we can make some distinctions, as with my question over the Amish avoidance of vaccination.

On the one hand, one might argue that if there is a self-conscious and overarching lack of freedom of culture, then there is really no freedom at all because the power to enact and enforce a prohibition on those things that make a culture largely requires some very Orwellian control over everyday life. On the other hand, some cultures insist on some practices that no free society, including one with freedom of culture, can accept. Imagine if a believer in the ancient Aztec or Mayan superstitions insisted on scooping out a live person’s heart with his bare hands every evening so as to ensure that the sun would rise again the next day. Are we supposed to say, "But what about the freedom of religion?" Of course not; let’s not lose perspective. Freedom of religion may involve a slippery slope, but so do the right to life and a lot of other rights that some religiously and culturally motivated people are prepared to violate.

The thick and thin of it is: In general, both freedom of religion and freedom of culture require few exceptions because they tend to involve the intangible things and real life consequences that are mostly imposed only on the self or consenting others. However, when other, non-consenting people’s freedoms are being violated, the perpetrators must be held accountable whatever their motivation was (religious, cultural, or otherwise). The law is meant to protect people from having their liberty encroached upon by other people, and should be applied uniformly to all citizens. However, the flip side of that coin is, we must therefore take care to refrain from enacting more laws than are absolutely necessary, because if we enact laws that prevent people from doing things, including culturally or religiously motivated activities, just because we don’t like other people doing them, then even though we might have the law on our side, we nonetheless become the very people from whom the law ought to be protecting free citizens: people whose business involves the restriction of others’ liberty.

Some people might call that multiculturalism, some (i.e. my table companion) might incorrectly call it cultural relativism, and a million other people have a million other names for it, some more appropriate and relevant than others. Me, I like to think of it as "passive tolerance". I use that adjective advisedly, because for one thing it is accurate, and for another it distinguishes my ideas from the more common meaning of “tolerance” as it relates to cultures and such. Lately the word "tolerance", which has been usurped by the leftists at colleges and elsewhere, and has come to mean the active kowtowing to foreign cultures – the more exotic and less civilized, the better – and the taking of pains to apologize for, if not actively eschew, Western, especially American, culture and civilization. This latter version of "tolerance" is not very tolerant at all in the honest sense of the word, it is in fact very stupid and pointless in just about any context, its real life consequences make it rather dangerous for life as we know it at this point in history, and I will have absolutely no part of it. My ideas are markedly different, and I must insist that my dear readers make a note of that. Acceptance of others is one thing; advocacy in the realm of identity politics (which I hate with a passion) is quite another, and in fact speaks of a different, less tolerant frame of mind.

In any event, I have digressed enough from the initial point of this post. My table companion insisted that, cultural relativism being false, people should not be allowed to substitute religious and cultural traditions for certain things that he found important and assumed, not unreasonably, that the rest of the civilized world also holds dear, namely education and, especially, medicine. I suppose that the crux of my argument to the contrary was that he and his intellectual ilk have no business prescribing how other people should live their lives and raise their children.

Let’s start with his ideas on education. I have nothing against education; it certainly serves me well enough. But I also do not advocate for everyone else’s compulsory education as much as most people. Modern education is a great and important tool, but like any tool, its usefulness differs from person to person. Take, for example, the Amish. Amish parents are perfectly justified in raising and educating their children to live perfectly successful lives in Amish society. That is their right. After all, they are not raising their children to be destructive to society. They are not raising dangerous, harmful, useless, wretched, or otherwise problematic children. Their children are raised to be as socially adept as anyone else in their society, and educated to be plenty useful and successful when it comes to having an occupation in that society.

Inevitably, at this point, I will hear the following rebuttal: "But what about those children who would rather live in modern society? They are hardly being given a chance!" True. But what about those of us in modern society who would have preferred to live a simpler, purer, more holistic life among the Amish, closer to the Earth, to each other, and maybe even to G-d? Those of us raised in modern society are hardly being given a chance to ever integrate into that community! To this I expect to hear: "But you can’t honestly be saying that our society isn’t better than Amish society?" Personally, I do think that modern society is better. But I also do not think that Amish society is especially wrong, or bad. Most of the world’s population lived like that for tens of thousands of years, and they were good people who got along alright. People, including parents raising a family, have every right in the world to choose Amish life over modern life.

Furthermore, I am not at all prepared to let the government turn that sort of personal preference into official policy. First of all, it is not fair to the Amish; they don’t seek to prevent me from living my life, and I am quite happy to reciprocate. But also, in general, a government that has a right and ability to declare my culture and society officially and legally "better" than others also has the right and ability to declare another culture and society "better" than mine, and might well do so if the right (or wrong) people get into the proper positions of power. The very thought that of the government doing such a thing is downright scary even before the everyday consequences become apparent.

My opponent would have the government forcibly take children away from perfectly adequate and loving parents for a determined period of time every day and have them taught not only things that their parents oppose, but also that their parents are wrong in opposing them, all just because he would rather that those children prosper in our society instead of in their own. Just because he would rather that complete strangers be doctors instead of farmers, computer programmers instead of blacksmiths, riding in cars instead of carriages, he would use the government to violate the sanctity of the family; as though the former things are anywhere near as important as the latter. That is, at best, morally very misguided.

A similar principle is at work with my opposition to locking up faith healers and such. Nobody is forced to go to them instead of to doctors. My own preference for modern medicine should not preclude other people from indulging their own preferences for other methods. I do not dispute the use of civil law against people who cause legitimate harm by making false claims of healing power. One result of such litigation is the introduction of various waivers that patients of faith healers and other false doctors have to sign. With those waivers in the picture, the case for criminalizing such alternative forms of healing practically disappears. People must be allowed to make their own choices, and my opponent must learn to mind his own business.

I cannot deny that the situation becomes much more complex when children are brought into the picture. For example, it is one thing to abstain from modern medicine for religious purposes, and it is one thing to raise your child to follow your own religion. But if your child gets seriously ill, and only a modern hospital can help him, should you be required to take him there if your beliefs oppose modern medicine? If you do not, even if the law does not require your imprisonment, are you a bad parent if you sincerely want your child to get healthy and do everything you think best to heal him? After all, such people sincerely believe that modern medicine would be utterly disastrous to at least that child’s soul, if not his entire being. If someone has those sincere convictions and still brings his child to a modern hospital, what does it say about his interest in that child’s prosperity? Doesn't answering that question with a statement such as, "It shows that that parent knows when to let go of his superstitious nonsense and do what has to be done for the kid’s health," only make sense from the perspective of someone with a modern frame of mind in the first place? While I am inclined to err on the side of having children be healed until they become adults and can make their own decisions, I readily admit that most of the questions in this paragraph are not completely resolved in my own mind.

In general, however, my table companion, while he clearly has trustworthy priorities for himself and his loved ones, is sorely misguided about the role of government in protecting others. The government is not supposed to advocate for education, and it is not even supposed to protect people’s lives; it is supposed to protect individuals’ rights to those things, as well as parents’ right to raise their own children. While it should prosecute actions that infringe on innocent people’s freedoms, whatever those actions’ motivations, the government should never even consider assuming the power to make overarching judgment calls about culture or religion, even for the sake of such popular concepts as "education". And people in general need to be more tolerant, at least passively, of other people’s business, and learn to mind their own.

Liberal Fascism

I recently finished reading Jonah Goldberg's book Liberal Fascism. Before actually opening the book, I was concerned that its content would be as politically charged and intellectually vapid as its title – you know, that it would spend 400 pages condemning an entire political party and an undefined, straw-man "liberalism" by insinuating that individual politicians are closet Nazis, based upon context-free quips by unrelated organizations and media outlets. This is the exaggerated impression that I got after reading certain other political books (see my earlier posts), and with a cover bearing such a provocative title written over a smiley face sporting Hitler’s mustache, Goldberg’s book offered people ignorant of its contents the impression that there was much left to be desired.

However, I soon recalled an interview with Goldberg on C-SPAN that I saw back in college. At the time, the book's publication was delayed over some editing details, but it was pretty much complete, and Goldberg defended its thesis to an interviewer and also to callers. Granted, he did not come off quite like a Harvard professor, but there is no question that he was interested first and foremost with recalling facts and figures, recounting historical anecdotes, making thoughtful connections between historical trends, and citing books and articles by professional historians – and not, I note, with smart-ass punditry that seeks only to spout superficial, irrelevant, half-true sound bites for the pathetic sake of bashing people, parties, and organizations. That tiresome nonsense, with which Americans are thoroughly inundated at the moment, was not on Goldberg’s agenda. (He does cite a couple of specific personas in the book – and even has an entire chapter on Hillary Clinton and her book It Takes a Village – but spends this time exploring objective claims about these people’s own words and ideas instead of playing partisan politics.)

Furthermore, I am very familiar with Goldberg’s other writing (mainly for National Review magazine), which is of very high quality. So, I decided to give Goldberg the benefit of the doubt and read his book. I am very, very glad that I did.

First, let me get out of the way those qualities of a book that, though superficial, are of great import. The writing is superb. Goldberg's use of language makes Liberal Fascism pleasant to read. Humor appears less frequently than it does in his other writing, which is appropriate given the nature of the book, but it does pop up here and there, and is delightful as always. There is the rare occasion on which Goldberg supports a point with a passage that appears a bit misplaced, but most often even those seeming irrelevancies and non-sequiturs are tied together coherently by the end of the section.

The other notable feature of the writing is its academic quality. As I said, the title and cover are provocative, but terribly misleading. Goldberg claims in the introduction that his is "not an academic book", but I find that that is only true in the sense that it does not read like a graduate student’s thesis paper. But while the writing style is not stuffy and academic (thank goodness), the content betrays a scholar who is passionate about his topic and wants the rest of us to be so as well. The themes of the book include studies of philosophers and their philosophies, how those philosophies influenced each other and developed over time, how they influenced history and how history influenced them, how they influenced society and how society influenced them, and how their impact on politics and society back then affects the political and social landscape today. Goldberg offers a thoroughly researched platter of knowledge, objective in nature, complete in both broad scope and abundant detail, covering all angles, and with an appendix plus 58 pages of endnotes made up mostly of works cited. The title and cover image simply do not do the opus justice.

(To be fair, it turns out that "liberal fascism" is a phrase coined by H.G. Wells, who was trying to promote the idea. Still, given the context of the times, and the fact that most people have no idea that H.G. Wells coined that phrase, I would not have slapped it on the cover if I were trying to get intelligent people to read intelligent content.)

Goldberg wrote the book, he says in its pages and also in subsequent interviews, largely because he was tired of conservatives being called fascists. It is exceedingly clear that fascism, what with its emphasis on statism and economic populism, is a left-wing phenomenon. However, even if we are to cave to those who claim that fascism is a right-wing ideology that just so happens to include certain aspects of government intervention (a concession that Goldberg refuses to make, as do I), then American conservatism is still not the philosophy to approach when looking for fascism’s current descendant. When fascism was in its heyday in the early twentieth century, its American counterpart was Progressivism, which in turn is the ancestor of modern American liberalism. This is a fact to which Goldberg repeatedly lends intellectual support; indeed, it is the thesis of the entire book. Really, when the basic facts of the various left-wing philosophies (Communism, socialism, fascism, Progressivism, etc.) are considered objectively, it is preposterous to conflate fascism with modern American conservatism. It is almost as though someone with a political agenda intentionally set about to propagate the fallacy that fascism is of the right for the sake of his own brand of left-wing philosophy.

In fact, that is precisely what happened. Unsurprisingly, we have Stalin to blame.

Marxist philosophy, and socialism generally, had a much greater influence on Western politics in the early twentieth century than most people realize. Most of the people in most places loved the idea of eliminating capitalism and collectivizing the economy. The reason that more countries did not have Communist revolutions is that they were not inspired by that particular brand of socialism. One given group of revolutionaries may have been united in its cause, but around the world, within individual countries, and even within individual cities and provinces, the Left in general was fraught with infighting among various factions with competing visions of what a collective utopia should look like.

One major factor that turned people off to the Communist brand of socialism, defined largely as Leninism/Bolshevism at that point, was its international outlook. Communism defined people by economic class, which was thought to transcend national boundaries, and so Communists looked forward to national boundaries disappearing when their global utopia arrived. The average worker, meanwhile, was not quite the citizen of the world that the Leninists were. An average proletariat in Germany, for example, was all for economic populism, but he was quite proud of his German culture. He wanted regulation, a shorter workday, a minimum wage, mandatory benefits, a welfare state, universal healthcare, and so on (all essential planks on fascist platforms), but he was not interested in becoming a cog in Moscow's wheel, and he did not like the idea of his homeland losing all meaning. He wore German garb, ate German food, drank German drinks in German beer halls, spoke the German language with his German family and friends, read German newspapers and literature, flew the German flag, and called Germany home. Why should he have to give up all of that just to get an 8-hour work day and health coverage? Similar sentiments were very common in many other countries around the globe.

So, in opposition to international socialism, there arose movements promoting national socialism. And, of course, there was more than one incarnation of national socialism. In Italy, Benito Mussolini, a lifelong socialist activist by his own proud declaration, led such a movement and called it fascism, employing the political symbol of the fascio, meaning "bundle" or "union", which was widely associated with the trade unions and implied, generally, the concept of "strength through unity". Italian Fascism was focused mainly on economic syndicalism and national greatness generally. Race was not a big deal to Mussolini, and in fact, Jews were statistically overrepresented in the Italian Fascist Party until 1938 when Il Duce threw Hitler a bone and enacted anti-Semitic laws. In Germany, Hitler and his Nazi party promoted their own brand of national socialism, which incorporated collectivist economics and national greatness like Italian Fascism, but also included plans of world domination and, due to the Nazis' conflation of nation and race, racism. (Plans for world domination should not be confused with internationalism. The Nazis did not want to export Nazism to the rest of the world in the way that Communists wanted to make the rest of the world Communist. The Nazis wanted quite literally to destroy the rest of the world and its population so that Germany’s borders could expand and the German people could have more living space and use any natives that remained after the take-over as slave labor.)

In any event, these national socialisms were gaining major popularity in many parts of Europe and the world. Stalin, with good reason, worried that the number of Communists loyal to Moscow would dwindle and his power and influence would become negligible because of the success of this other form of socialism. So, there really was a competition for influence between Communists and fascists, but not as a battle of right-versus-left. It was really a battle between two sides of the same socialist, left-wing coin. So one day Stalin, true to form, decided to engage in a little deceptive propaganda: henceforth, all philosophies not in line with Communism were to be called "fascist". And since Communism is quintessentially left-wing, and fascism is defined as non-Communist, then fascism must naturally be right-wing. Thus the myth began that fascism is somehow right-wing and, subsequently, tied-in with American conservatism, a philosophy that would prove time and again to be an enormous threat to Communism.

There were some Communists who truly believed, it must be noted, that fascism was the manifestation of the prophesied "last gasp" of capitalism in the face of the global Communist revolution. But that does not make it inherently right-wing, and the man whose idea it was to label fascism as right-wing was not so interested in the historical application of Marx’s prophesy as in the propagandistic value of his fabrication. Besides which, the true believers of Communism were wrong about everything else, and I am at a loss to come up with a good reason to trust them on this one.

So, if I may make such an assumption, the question remaining in many minds is: how, exactly, does American liberalism fit into this picture? Well, despite the book’s title and my favorable review, neither Goldberg nor I am calling liberals fascists. The point of the book is to point out a philosophical lineage that many people do not know exists.

Modern American liberalism is directly descended from the Progressivism of a century ago, which in turn was the American manifestation of the same national socialist temptation that formed capital-F Fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany (and many other, less successful political parties in many other countries). My dear reader does not have to take my word for that, nor does he have to take Goldberg’s. The pages of Liberal Fascism teem with extensive quotes from newspapers, speeches, letters, books, articles, and general conversations of Progressives, Fascists, Nazis, and various unaffiliated national socialists. Furthermore, those quotes are cited, so the reader can do his own research if he would like.

Back then, Progressives were fairly open about their philosophical associations. After all, the Holocaust had not happened yet, and national socialism was a philosophy of hope and fulfillment just as much as the next left-wing philosophy. Of course, as I said, national socialisms came in different varieties, not least because different nations had different political cultures. American Progressivism never did produce a dictator, overthrow the Constitution, or turn a domestic society into a great big military machine – at least not permanently. A perusal of the practices that Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt put into place, both in war and in peace, is quite likely to dumbfound any reader who was not alive to remember those days.

I imagine that there are still plenty of folks who remain skeptical as to the claim that we are not calling liberals fascists. One reason might be that they are conflating fascism in general with the worst elements of Nazism, an unfortunately common practice, which Goldberg and I are expressly not doing. Fascism was not the ideology of killing the Jews and taking over the world for Aryans' living space; those were part of the broader goals of Nazism specifically. Nazism was a unique political philosophy, rooted in one place and time, that based a lot of its core ideas around general fascist thought. But Nazism and fascism are not synonyms, and when we say that liberalism has philosophical roots related to fascism, that is not the same as saying that liberals are a bunch of Hitler-loving, genocidal maniacs. That would be absurd.

Fascism in general was in favor of economic regulation, an extensive welfare state, and mandatory worker benefits such as a defined work day, minimum wage, and so on. It did not oppose corporate entities quite as strongly as Communism, but it did oppose their operating within a free market, as capitalism was seen as an evil, and it insisted that businesses be good "corporate citizens". In fact, it made an especially big deal about the trouble that big department stores were causing, what with their economic clout and the subsequent disappearance of more traditional places of business. Fascists believed in allowing abortion. They promoted the idea of the people coming together, working in unity to promote the common good, and thereby making the country better and giving it a brighter future. Their vision of this brighter future included a more holistic society that shed its unnatural materialism and instead focused on "the people". Fascists liked the idea of getting "past the politics" of a given social ill, and just having the government do whatever was necessary to make things right. Very popular was the idea that the need to mend each of these social ills was "the moral equivalent of war". Fascists believed greatly in environmentalism, took a strong interest in public health, and were especially concerned about children.

Now, this does not make modern liberals fascists, and vice versa. A modern pro-choice American, for example, is clearly unlikely to have that position due to a fondness for eugenics. The point is only to provide a link and discuss its implications, not to name-call or cast suspicion.

Those who are still skeptical that we are not calling liberals fascists might consider this: The philosophical categorization of fascism might still be in dispute, but nobody denies that Communism has always been left-wing. And, liberalism is left-wing. In fact, a number of liberalism’s ideas here and there can be traced, without too much controversy, to Marxist ideas – perhaps watered down through interpretation and adaptation for an American political arena, but still ultimately stemming from that same source. However, despite all of that, it is plain that neither Goldberg nor I am calling liberals all Leninists. Well, the same principle applies to fascism. We may think that because liberalism can be traced back to Progressivism, it is therefore related just as much to fascism as to other forms of socialism, but we are not calling liberals Nazis, or Fascists, or even small-f fascists any more than we are calling them Stalinists, or Communists, or any such thing. We are just saying that there is a connection.

So then, why write a whole book about it? Well, it should not surprise anyone that a modern American conservative might be motivated to prove once and for all that conservatives are not in any way akin to fascists, what with such imbecilic name-calling by left-wing bloggers and pundits at an all-time high under President Bush. To write a book whose purpose is to reciprocate the name-calling would be pointless, and probably even counterproductive. However, an intelligent, academic work that makes plain exactly what fascism is and how it relates to the various philosophies that preside over the modern American political landscape ought to do a lot of good. And, that is precisely what Goldberg has done.

Gay Marriage

Though I try my best to avoid political discussions, at least with people outside of my politically inclined circle of friends, sometimes they prove themselves inescapable. I was at a barbecue with my best friend's family, which I know well and love very much, on July Fourth to mark both Independence Day and the fact that my friend’s cousin was married the previous day. There was much merriment, good people, good food, good fun, and good conversation about wholesome, pleasant topics. It was the last scene that I wanted to see sullied with such unsavory muck as modern political discourse. But, to my chagrin, the topics of abortion and, soon thereafter, gay marriage were brought up right in front of my face while I was innocently enjoying a nice merlot and a conversation about childhood.

At first, I felt the familiar stirrings of impatience as someone elaborated on a comment about gay marriage to which I not only disagreed but to which I already had a long, comprehensive response practically memorized because it was the sort of trite comment heard every five minutes at college and which I used to find myself refuting on a weekly, sometimes daily basis. But, after more than a year out of the "think clink", so to speak, I have learned to take a deep breath and just let it go. And so I did. But, the next day, as I shared breakfast with my friend, the topic arose again, and I could not contain myself. The poor guy found himself on the business end of a ten minute soliloquy of my ideas, and as anyone who knows me will tell you, that can be rough, especially if all you want to do is enjoy some eggs and have a pleasant conversation about the Yankees’ series against the Red Sox. (Which I myself initially set out to do that morning.)

In any event, it occurred to me that, while I touched on the topic briefly in an article for The Primary Source, I have yet to post this conviction of mine on The Mench Times. So, here it is:

Marriage is probably the only major issue in which I am firmly in the libertarian camp to the exclusion of a position in the conservative camp. I say "marriage", and not "gay marriage", because to restrict the discussion to homosexual marriage is to miss the point. The problem is that we have made the government the arbiter of marriage in the first place.

Both conservatives and liberals make sense with their main arguments on the topic. Conservatives are correct when they say that the traditional definition of marriage as the union between one man and one woman is what is best for society. After all, for obvious and naturally occurring reasons that go back to biology, differences between the sexes, and other such factors, heterosexual relationships are best suited to produce families, which are the most basic, most fundamental, and most important social unit in society. The liberals might say, in response, that the government should still allow gay marriage, because the above sentence is just one opinion, and it is not right for any members of government to decide that sort of thing for everyone else. That would make perfect sense, except that to call it "just one opinion" is not quite on the mark. It has been the overwhelming consensus for millennia, in a large variety of cultures and civilizations including ours, largely because it makes plain sense. Furthermore, it is the overwhelming consensus among Americans today. When the government accepts the above-described conservative conception of family, it is not deciding anything for everyone else; it is reflecting the opinion that most everyone else already formed on their own. And, as I said in my Primary Source article on gay marriage, and as I still believe, "If ancient tradition and the public definition of the basic building block of society are going to be suddenly overturned in order that a small minority may get what it wants for itself, then it ought to be with the support of at least half of the affected society." That support simply does not exist, and is not likely come about any time soon.

But that is not the end of the story. Liberals, for their part, are correct that the government does not have a right to deny rights and privileges to one group of civilians just because of their sexual orientation. Of course, one can make the slippery argument that equal rights are maintained because, after all, any homosexual may marry an individual of the opposite sex, and no heterosexual may marry an individual of the same sex. But, the obvious response to that is a reminder of the fact that sexual orientation is not a choice, but a consequence of upbringing and, possibly, genetic predisposition. Therefore homosexuals, through no choice or fault (if fault is even relevant) of their own, necessarily can only love and cherish members of their own sex, and not those of the opposite sex. Furthermore, homosexuality and homosexual relationships, in and of themselves, are harmless. Many people think that they create problems for society by promoting lewdness, indecency, and other such things, but those phenomena exist among heterosexuals as well, and they are equally problematic in all cases. Thus, the conclusion is that it is irrational for the government to have an institution whereby individuals of only one sexual orientation may make legally official their mutual commitment to love and cherish each other, and possibly reap certain legal benefits by that, while individuals of another sexual orientation will never have that opportunity. That is not a legitimate form of discrimination.

So here we have a seemingly irreconcilable conflict between the family and the individual, two paramount institutions, in the realm of public policy. One might reasonably expect conservatives’ heads to explode over the matter. Of course, conservatives can spare their heads here if only they would stop thinking like liberals. You see the problem, as usual, is the government. It is being asked to play a major role in people's private lives, and unsurprisingly, the outlook of the situation does not appear terribly pleasant whichever side gets its way. The liberals are doing what they always do: they start by unduly taking something for granted (usually wealth and progress, in this case the standing of marriage in society) and then they seek to improve society by making the government just give it away to anyone and everyone. The conservatives are seeking to use government influence to unfairly deny a minority equal rights and privileges. Despite liberal caricatures, this is terribly out of character for the conservatives. The consistency is in the conservatives' reliance on the teachings of religion and their insistence, which is not entirely unfounded, that it can and shall play as much of a role in voters' decision processes as they darn well please.

Anyhow, I have learned to expect this sort of thing from the liberals, but I am terribly surprised, and disappointed, that my fellow conservatives – people who on almost every other issue known to man believe in small, limited government – are asking for the government to maintain socialization of the most important existing private institution, structure it in a narrow way, and then decide whether or not to consent to validating every individual instance of it. Does it make sense that people who believe in the sanctity of religion, the sanctity of marriage, and the untrustworthiness of government would push hard for government to make its own rules about who can and cannot get married, require marriage licenses before a wedding can take place, and replace "by the power vested in me by G-d" with "by the power vested in me by the State of New York"? I can only hope that conservatives come around and adopt my solution to the issue, as its principles, if not its following, are not exclusively libertarian.

The solution, which is quite simple, is as follows: Keep the government's grubby, dirty tentacles away from holy matrimony. (I hate to keep harping on this, but why on Earth does this concept seem to continually escape conservatives? That makes no sense!) Here, let us make an important distinction between traditional marriage and legal union, taken from my Source article:

Marriage is more than a private arrangement between two individuals to live together under certain legal conditions. That is a civil union. A marriage is the joining of a man and a woman in holy matrimony, thereby creating a family.

If you want to get married, go to church, or synagogue, or any other private institution of your choosing. If you want to enter into a certain legal standing with someone else, draw up a contract. If you want both, as most couples will, then wonderful; get both. Accepting the distinction between the concepts of holy matrimony and a legal relationship does not make them mutually exclusive at all.

Meanwhile, the government should recognize as binding any civil union between any people, regardless of marital status. After all, as I said in my Source article, a civil union is "a legal agreement and falls under the right to contract and associate with whomever one pleases". What the government should not do is have the slightest interest in marriage between anyone, at all. A marriage is, by all rights, a personal, private affair. A civil union, as with any contract, is a matter of civil law which remains independent of any personal affiliations or religious standings unless the parties agree to a clause stating otherwise in the contract itself.

This way, the government does not discriminate against any individual based on sexual orientation, everyone can enjoy the legal benefits that we currently associate with marriage, and such things as love, commitment, and matrimony are not subject to government jurisdiction. As for the standing of the family in society, it will not really change; homosexual couples will still not be able to conceive children on their own, and the adoption issue (both the reality and the terms of the debate) will not really change much at all.

Basically, everyone wins. That makes sense now, does it not? We conservatives should not be pushing for the government to stick its right hand into marriage instead of its left – we should be pushing for it to take its hands off of the issue in the first place.

A Quick Final Word on Krugman

With all too much time having gone by since I promised to do so, I have finally finished reading Paul Krugman's pathetic excuse for academic inquiry into the political state of affairs in the United States, The Conscience of a Liberal. The book does not get any weirder since I last commented on it, but it does not get any better either. Krugman has an inexplicable problem with the fact that not everyone in the country has the exact same amount of wealth and happiness. Furthermore, he believes that the Republican Party, having been hijacked by a spookily organized Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, got voted into more and more offices over the last forty years by making its racism clear to white voters, and then used its subsequent power to prevent society from maintaining and instituting a variety of government programs – the only hopes for a decent society. In explaining himself, Krugman goes back and forth between trite talking points of the Democratic Party and trite talking points of the Socialist Party.

Nothing more needs to be said about the book. It really is as simple as that to Krugman.

Of course, if the truth were half so cut-and-dry, the Republicans would have had to kick such conservatives out of their party a long time ago in order to win any actual elections. But let's leave Krugman and his delusions alone. After all, it is hardly sportsmanlike to have a battle of the wits with an unarmed opponent.

Joba Chamberlain as Starter

The amount of media attention paid to Joba Chamberlain is way too high. This is not to say that he does not deserve recognition for his many abilities and accomplishments, but the media needs to gain some perspective. Chamberlain is a talented athlete who came to the MLB from the minors and is working his way into a role on his team. It happens all of the time. It is not unwarranted for the media to comment on it, but their decision to treat it as an event of epic proportions is ridiculous.

Chamberlain and his transition to starter are important for my beloved Yankees, yes. But so are a million other things taking place at the same time. One example among many is the choice, now that Jorge Posada is set to return to the roster, among removing from the roster a utility player such as Shelley Duncan, one of the two present catchers (Molina and Moeller), or one of the various relievers in the bullpen. That choice will be given a few passing mentions at most; maybe Michael Kay will devote a moment to it in between batters while announcing a game.

Meanwhile, the media is devoting so much space to Joba Chamberlain and his ordeal that they have run out of things to say, and so spend a few minutes of every game talking about his background, specifically his father, whom they sometimes interview. The story of Joba's family is a nice one, but is better saved for an episode of Oprah. Despite some of the fads taking place in trendy circles (reality TV, talk shows), some things will never change: sports fans still watch ball games for the sake of seeing the game and commenting on performance and strategy. We do not need to know every player's life story, and we are certainly not interested in interrupting an inning to hear how proud Mr. Chamberlain is of his son, or to cry over the details of Joba's triumph over his various tribulations. Save it for a Lifetime special.

(This is not even to ask why, if they must burden sports fans with the details of one pitcher's personal life, they have yet to pay so much attention to anyone else's issues and background. What about Derek Jeter, or Alex Rodriguez, for example? Those two, and a host of other players, have done a whole lot more for the Yankees, and were just as talented when they started as Chamberlain is now.)

All in all, the media's fetish for everything Joba Chamberlain is overblown and unwarranted. Treat him like any other talented player.

In any event, after Joba's rocky start last night, people are wondering about his fate as a starting pitcher. Many people are already insisting that his unfortunate start was proof that he should have remained in the 8th inning spot. It is true that he was golden in the 8th, and it is plausible that keeping him there and making someone else the extra starter would have worked well for the Yankees. But here is the thing: the decision to put him into the starting rotation is reversible, but if he spends too much time pitching the 8th inning, it will become all the more impossible for him to make the transition. Chamberlain was a starter in the minors, and excelled at it. Making him a starter in the majors was the Yankees' plan all along. Chamberlain is talented at pitching, he has a lot of energy, and he needs to be given a chance to prove himself.

Besides which, one outing does not prove anything. Discounting, for a moment, the fact that he was battling enormous pressure unduly laid upon him by the media (discounting it, that is, only because it is unquantifiable), Chamberlain only ran into trouble in the first inning. Having a rocky first inning, for just about any starting pitcher, is more of a rule than an exception. It happens all of the time, and this was not just his first inning of the game, but his first first inning ever. Now, Chamberlain's problems in that inning may have been many, but it was hardly disastrous. A single run was given up, and the Yankees' line-up more than made up for it half an inning later. Meanwhile, Joba got three outs in a mere 13 pitches in the second inning, and in the third he was taken out after only two batters – an out and a walk – entirely because of the pre-established rule concerning his pitch count.

Granted, Chamberlain's pitch count should have been lower at that point. He took too long in the first inning because his control was not what it usually is. The Blue Jays were, naturally, purposely taking a lot of pitches in order to take advantage of the new, pressured pitcher; however, if Joba had had his usual stuff, that strategy would not have yielded as much benefit to the Toronto team.

However, while I do not excuse Chamberlain's sub-par performance in the first inning, I maintain that the overall 2.1 innings that he lasted do not prove anything about the decision to go ahead with his transition. I support letting him have a second start as planned. Again, he can always go back to the 8th inning if he has to, but the window of opportunity to see what he can do as a starter is small. The Yankees could use a starting ace with as many years ahead of him as Chamberlain has, and a pitcher of his talent and work ethic deserves the chance to see if he can be all that he can be.

Paul Krugman's Code & States' Rights

I stopped reading political books towards the end of my college career. I did learn a lot from the likes of Thomas Sowell, George Will, David Horowitz, William F. Buckley, and Russell Kirk, but soon enough I became well enough versed in political philosophy to know what I believe and why I believe it. So, while the occasional newspaper or magazine column allows me to challenge my ideas and renew my convictions (or, sometimes, reconsider them), I have mostly turned to more interesting and enlightening kinds of books, namely history, biography, and the occasional applied philosophy (i.e. Thornton's Plagues of the Mind).

Recently, however, I deviated from that pattern to open up Paul Krugman's The Conscience of a Liberal (2004). My leftist uncle was in town for the Jewish holidays last month and, despite knowing my political bent, recommended the book. Krugman's stuff was not unfamiliar to me, and I thought it might be a good chance to return, briefly, to political writing, and also to see the other side of things.

I do get to do those things, but I am disappointed in the caliber of the book. It is of similar quality as the Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter books that I read when I first got into politics, and that I moved past rather quickly. It is not that any of the authors are unintelligent – Coulter was editor of the Michigan Law Review, and Krugman is a Princeton professor – but their political writing can hardly be called intellectual. The Conscience of a Liberal might as well have been entitled Liberal Democrat Rhetoric for Dummies; one might expect the dust jacket to be emblazoned with the DNC logo in the manner of a NASCAR uniform.

I have not yet finished the book, and will comment more on it when I do. However, I have already read more than once what might well be the most bizarre charge against conservatives that I have ever heard, and I wish to comment on it right away. Krugman's charge is that conservatives use "code" when publishing articles and making speeches, so that they can say something that sounds mundane or otherwise innocuous, but that lets other racist, elitist, Bible-thumping bigots know that the writer/speaker shares their prejudices. Here are Krugman’s own words from Chapter 6 (the context is a lead-in to a discussion of an early, regrettable editorial by Bill Buckley in National Review):

It’s worth looking at early issues of the National Review, to get a sense of what movement conservatives sounded like before they learned to speak in code. Today leading figures on the American right are masters of what the British call "dog-whistle politics": They say things that appeal to certain groups in a way that only the targeted group can hear – and thereby avoid having the extremism of their positions become generally obvious. As we’ll see later in this chapter, Ronald Reagan was able to signal sympathy for racism without every saying anything overtly racist. As we'll see later in this book, George W. Bush consistently uses language that sounds at worst slightly stilted to most Americans, but is fraught with meaning to the most extreme, end-of-days religious extremists. But in the early days of the National Review positions were stated more openly.

This is bizarre and absurd, and in fact calls into question Krugman’s sanity. But it also does something else less obvious: it causes Krugman to assume that the alleged code words, and the things that conservatives supposedly really mean, are one and the same in general. So, for example, Krugman believes that when conservatives discuss support for states' rights, or even their opposition to welfare, they are really talking about white-supremacist sympathies and their distaste at helping black people. Hence his intellectual comfort with the utter falsehoods and blinding non-sequiturs in this paragraph from pages 11-12 of the book:

One key message of this book, which many readers may find uncomfortable, is that race is at the heart of what has happened to the country I grew up in. The legacy of slavery, America’s original sin, is the reason we're the only advanced economy that doesn’t guarantee health care to our citizens. White backlash against the civil rights movement is the reason America is the only advanced country where a major political party wants to roll back the welfare state. Ronald Reagan began his 1980 campaign with a states' rights speech outside Philadelphia, Mississippi, the town where three civil rights workers were murdered; Newt Gingrich was able to take over Congress entirely because of the great Southern flip, the switch of Southern whites from overwhelming support for Democrats to overwhelming support for Republicans.

I am confident that the moral and intellectual case against having countless government bureaucrats forcefully taking law-abiding citizens' hard-earned, honest money and deciding that it is better used to subsidize other people's unemployment has already been made elsewhere enough times that it would be superfluous for me to spend too much time on it now. If Krugman, a man who has been writing about politics for many years now (and, presumably, following politics for even longer), is still convinced that it is all about race, then there is little that can be said to convince him that he has no idea what the heck he is talking about. Ditto his belief that opposition to the federal government creating a new unelected bureaucracy whose sole mandate is to have a monopoly on deciding not only who gets what healthcare options, but also how much everyone else pays for it, is because white people are secretly still pissed off that it is no longer a de facto misdemeanor anywhere to be black on a Tuesday. At this point, Krugman is intellectually incorrigible, obviously blinded by his ideology, and, thankfully, marginalized in his views. There is no point trying to talk sense to him or his followers when it comes to the role that race plays in conservative thought. A lot of the country may still believe in welfare and socialized medicine, but for the most part those people understand where conservatives are coming from in their opposition.

However, Krugman's views on conservative support for states' rights seem to me to have more of a following in the mainstream. Most people who do not share this conservative view do not understand it, and only know that it has been associated with racist arguments defending states that allowed slavery and then, later, Jim Crow legislation. This is disconcerting to me, and I wish to clear the air about states' rights.

States' rights are not a theory or philosophy, or any other sort of cerebral concoction of white bigots or anyone else. States' rights are a simple, natural fact. The Constitution of the United States, which created the federal government, is in essence a contract among the states that delineates federal powers. Anything outside the limited scope of powers defined by the Constitution is within the realm of the states. Therefore, they do indeed, literally, have rights, and many at that. Now, many people did use this fact in arguments defending states that abused those rights. However, that is not an indictment of the fact that states may have rights, it is an indictment of those particular state governments and their defenders.

Returning to Krugman’s idiotic theory that secret coded messages are sent by political candidates to cadres of racists from the campaign trail via such media as national television broadcasts of their speeches, if there is any sort of "code" that conservatives secretly "can hear" when someone mentions states’ rights, it is this:



I believe in freedom, which is best guaranteed by limited government and the right to self-government of individual local communities. The best way to achieve these goals is for various authorities to be dispersed among various sovereign governments so that power does not concentrate on a single governing body. So, the Founding Fathers created a democratically elected federal government that is limited in scope to protecting the nation from threats (foreign and, to an extent, domestic) against only the most essential and universal of rights, such as life, liberty, and property. To keep the federal government so limited, it is subject to a binding code set forth by the states within its jurisdiction, which in turn should have their own sovereign, democratically elected governments to handle everything else, perhaps furthering that very doctrine by allowing individual counties to have their own jurisdiction over certain issues, and so on.

However, the federal government has expanded in size and scope drastically since the Constitution was ratified, and as a result, many issues that are rightfully and legally within the respective domains of the sovereign states have been affected, if not wholly usurped, by Capitol Hill. This is not only an unfair and, frankly, unnecessary takeover of power by the federal government, which alone should be enough to bring unequivocal condemnation and swift remedy, but it is also a blatant violation of the Constitution, in both spirit and letter. Therefore, if the states do not act to protect their right to self-government without interference from the various malfeasances emanating from Washington, DC, then they are not only letting down their citizens, whose rights under limited and decentralized government the states have a responsibility to protect, but they are also setting a precedent for ignoring government lawlessness, even when it is blatant and unjust, a precedent whose limits will invariably be tested by the federal government until either the limits are found and the states begin to fight back, or the states give up altogether and the government in Washington, DC, nationalizes itself, ceasing to be federal in any sense of the word. Either way, the country, its communities, its families, and its individual citizens do not stand to benefit from the crumbling of states’ rights. However, even as some states try to assert their rightful sovereignty today, there are federal officials who fight them at every turn. I do not support this obstruction of justice by members of the federal government; I support states’ rights.



It would be great if we had statesmen who said such things more often; however, in some contexts, it is best for the sake of brevity to just mention that last clause and get on with things. So, "I support states’ rights" is not code for "I share your white supremacist sympathies," it is code for an extended version of "the less government, the better". Indeed, the excerpt from Reagan's 1980 speech (which actually took place seven miles away from Philadelphia at the Neshoba County Fair, sixteen years after the cited murders took place, and was mostly about the economy) that so infuriates Krugman was, "Programs like education and others should be turned back to the states and local communities with the tax sources to fund them. I believe in states’ rights. I believe in people doing as much as they can at the community level and the private level." (Source: David Brooks' 11/9/07 NY Times article "History and Calumny")

Quite frankly, if that smacks of racism to you, smack yourself.

Immigration and the Rule of Law

In response to my post below, my friend Alex posted an interesting question. In what is surely no surprise to my regular readers, I found myself writing so much in response that it would have been absurd to post it as a mere comment. So, I am posting both Alex’s comment and my response below. Those who wish to can review my earlier post to gain some context.

With respect to your intro, I think what you call your "conservative" views are things most libertarians would agree with. They want government to be limited to law and order and defense, so that's perfectly in line with your stances.

Your position on immigration is especially libertarian, if I understand it correctly. If you only want to keep people who are security risks out, then you must be pretty cosmopolitan, and think we should allow most everyone who wants to move here for economic reasons to do so, which would mean making our immigration laws much more liberal than they currently are. In fact, if you only oppose illegal immigration because of its connected risks of crime and terrorism, in principle you wouldn't oppose an amnesty as long as we could give all the current illegals a quick background check. Do I have this right?

No doubt, a nice summation of libertarianism is that "they want government to be limited to law and order and defense". As it happens, conservatives would say the same thing pretty much exactly. It is just that conservatives believe that their social policies are perfectly reasonable aspects of the “order” part.

As for immigration, I am not at all in favor of amnesty. Ignoring for a moment the time and resources required to do even a cursory job of finding all of the illegals and giving them a background check, to stand there and say, "Here’s an amnesty for you" is a terrible idea. Come now, my libertarian friend, think like an economist. What incentives would that give not only to others who are considering trespassing now, but to anyone thinking of breaking any law in the big picture? There are a million laws with which I disagree, from the capital gains tax down to my local speed limits, but I – as a conservative, or even perhaps as a libertarian – cannot possibly support the subversion of "law and order", as you say yourself.

The responsible citizen, when he disagrees with a law, petitions for its revocation, not for ignoring it or undermining it without formally rescinding it, which can only lead to anarchy and confusion. Your problem here is that, libertarian though your ideas may be, your thinking process is like that of a liberal. You appear willing to bend, manipulate, or ignore the rules to fit your own agenda, taking your maneuverings one cause at a time. But that is chaos, precisely the opposite of the rule of law.

People think of the "rule of law" and envision an elitist institution – they think of some aristocrat-types making their own laws and then imposing them on everyone else. But that is not what the rule of law is. It is an idea designed specifically to protect the individual citizen, and is in fact a key element in maintaining transparent government. The way it works is simple, really: It is the government’s responsibility to make very clear exactly what the law is, and to stick by that law, because the individual citizen has a right to know exactly what the law is so that he can go about his life without having to worry that tomorrow he can be arrested for doing what is perfectly legal today – and, also, so that he can rest assured that the law will protect him tomorrow from the same thing that it is protecting him from today. This is also why it is objectionable for the law to change back and forth a million times. Obviously, the law might change once or twice over long periods of time, but, again, government and the law should be transparent. If the law is unpredictable, then that is chaos, and the government has failed its citizens.

Does it make sense for me, an ardent opponent of abortion, to support the random jailing of abortion doctors whenever the system can get away with it, even if the law does not formally change? Only if my opposition to abortion is paramount to my support of my country, its people, its well-being, and its maintenance of order and justice. (Which it is not.) The responsible pro-lifer petitions the legislature to duly pass a law stating that murder is unacceptable even when committed against humans who have yet to be born. He may take a different route, citing the objective fact that Roe was not decided on any legitimate constitutional grounds and should therefore be re-decided, if not against abortions altogether, then at least in favor of keeping it the state issue that it technically is. But he does not decide that his own ideas are above the rule of law. The subversion of the rule of law in favor of a set of caprices, whether in a dictatorship or in a democracy, has historically proven, time and again, to lead first to chaos and then, quickly and invariably, to tyranny of one level or another.

But I digress.

To return to immigration, I would loosen up immigration laws to allow more to legally enter, but I would not allow anyone to enter the country undocumented. If some foreigners want to live in the US, then great, but then they must become full, equal American citizens – equal, that is, in the sense that they take the bad along with the good. I do not believe in giving immigrants, illegal or otherwise, any special treatment just because leftist identity politics dictate that they can be categorized as underdogs. (It must be because I am so cosmopolitan.) They must maintain the same or equivalent documentation as native citizens and they must pay the same taxes as native citizens. Furthermore, I am against allowing anyone to become a US citizen unless that person can show that he will not be a welfare recipient. Actually, this tends to be more of a problem with illegal immigrants than with legal ones. That people trespass here, giving the finger to our laws and sovereignty, just to live on the working American’s dime is extremely infuriating, and especially unjust to hard-working citizens. In fact, it is even worse than being a native-born welfare recipient.

Outside the realm of legitimate government jurisdiction, they ought to live in the same communities as native citizens and attend the same schools as native citizens. They should learn to speak the same language as native citizens, appreciate the laws, culture, and history of the native society, and otherwise assimilate into the existing society of native citizens. If I move to Yemen, how indignant could I plausibly get that everyone is insisting that I speak Arabic instead of learning English for me? What makes today’s immigrants so special, and/or the US so unexceptional, that that obvious rule does not apply here? If people want to speak with immigrants in their native tongues, or businesses want to advertise in foreign languages, then that is their business. However, the immigrants have no business expecting, let alone demanding, that of the native citizens. Also, as far as official documentation, law proceedings, and especially education go, it is not the place of the public realm to assume a policy of leftist multiculturalism. Tolerance, perhaps, inasmuch as that is a passive attitude, but an active multiculturalism is wrong, even before we consider the ultimate disadvantage at which it puts the non-English speaker who must learn to communicate and get along well in mainstream American society if he is to thrive here.

Conservative, Libertarian, or Both?

I have always identified as a conservative with libertarian leanings, but sometimes I wonder if it isn’t the other way around. After all, aside from my opposition to abortion, my political beliefs have very much in common with libertarian theory. In fact, even my reasons for being pro-life stem from a philosophy wholly compatible with libertarianism. Libertarianism is a purely political philosophy of individual liberty (as distinct from libertinism), and my opposition to abortion stems from an observance that the fertilized egg is biologically its own self distinct from the mother.

Really, the only views that I have that are more conservative than libertarian are my beliefs in a strong police force, a strong military, and secure borders. But even these can arguably be defended by libertarian principles. After all, libertarians, except for the extreme anarchist types, do find that government has a legitimate role in taking action against those who encroach upon the freedoms of its citizens. Therefore, the police force needs to be at least as strong as the criminals, and the military needs to be at least as strong as our external threats. In this day and age, that is mighty strong. In the short run, it might save Joe Citizen a buck and a half in tax dollars if the government skimps out on the latest missile defense systems, or the latest technology in bullet-proof vests. However, as any economist will tell you – and libertarians rightly put a lot of value in thinking economically – it is poor form to think only in the short run unless the short run contains an existential emergency. I am no fan of taxation, but what is the point of having the government save me a dollar in taxes if, as a result, it will then be unable to save me from al-Qaeda’s nuclear missile – that is, from an external attack on my fundamental right to life (which is surely as important as my right to that extra dollar from my taxes, if not more so)? I am not an interventionist or imperialist, and I know that government is not there to save its citizens from everything, but I do not mind giving it jurisdiction over foreign missiles aimed at me. I also do not mind giving it jurisdiction over our borders. Immigration is fine, but illegal immigration is dangerous. The possibility of hostile criminals or terrorists entering our country is very real. Citizens in towns near the border deserve as much protection as anyone else, and it does not make sense to leave to a local police force the task of making sure that al-Qaeda does not make war on, say, El Paso. We should have a military presence on the borders with Mexico and Canada, not to intimidate our neighbors or to keep everyone else out, but to make sure that no one and nothing harmful can unduly enter the country.

Those ideas may not be the main planks in the Libertarian Party platform, but they are reasonably defensible from a libertarian standpoint. However, they are also defensible from a conservative standpoint – in fact, if most Republicans had their way, they would be the main planks in the GOP’s platform. So, not to pigeon-hole myself, but am I conservative or libertarian, or both? And, how significant is the difference between the two, really? Are they perhaps the same thing; is the dichotomy a mere distinction without a difference? Or, are they two separate philosophies that, though perhaps capable of friendly relations in the political arena, are ultimately incompatible?

I suspect that most politically-conscious folk on the right have grappled with this conundrum at least once or twice. Indeed, it has been a topic of debate for decades, and remains unresolved even among the leading right-wing philosophers to this day. But it is nonetheless worthwhile to spend time deeply considering these questions, because pondering how two philosophies approach the same issue and contrast with one another goes a long way towards thoughtfully shaping one’s own views.

Enter Freedom and Virtue: The Conservative/Libertarian Debate. Edited by George W. Carey, it is a collection of essays by many of the most prominent conservative and libertarian thinkers of the twentieth century, including M. Morton Auerbach, Doug Bandow, Walter Berns, L. Brent Bozell, John P. East, M. Stanton Evans, John Hospers, Russell Kirk, Paul Kurtz, Tibor R. Machan, Edward B. McLean, Frank S. Meyer, Robert Nisbet, Murray N. Rothbard, Richard M. Weaver, and Frederick D. Wilhelmsen. Unlike I do above, the authors do not spend much time discussing individual issues; rather, they remain philosophic. There are arguments both for and against the possibility of "fusionism" – that is, the belief that conservatism and libertarianism are at least compatible, if not two sides of the same coin – as well as libertarian critiques of conservatism and vice versa. (Needless to say, the latter types of essays were not terribly keen on fusionism.)

Based on his introduction and choice of essays, I do not think that Carey intends to promote one point of view over another, although, interestingly, the book begins and ends with arguments directed against the feasibility of fusionism. First comes an anti-fusionist argument, "Do-It-Yourself Conservatism?" by Morton Auerbach, followed by three very brief essays by Stan Evans, Frank Meyer, and Russell Kirk (respectively) that were each written specifically to rebut the first essay. Next comes "The Twisted Tree of Liberty" by Meyer, who is famous for first coining the term "fusionism" and setting forth its arguments in this very essay (which was originally published in National Review in January 1962), and then later expanding upon it in his book In Defense of Freedom. Fusionism asserts that conservatism and libertarianism are vital complements and should band together not only because it was (and remains) politically expedient, but because the philosophies naturally merge in a way most beneficial for society. If I may strip the argument to its bare essentials for the sake of brevity:

The only real difference between conservatism and libertarianism is that conservatism contains a strong traditionalist belief in the primacy of virtue, while libertarianism is principally concerned with maximizing individual liberty. Both of these are important, but they are not mutually exclusive because a) no person or act is truly virtuous if people are coerced (i.e. by the state) to behave virtuously – in other words, an act only counts as virtuous if the actor freely makes the choice to be virtuous when he could have done otherwise – and b) liberty is an ultimate political end, but not an ultimate personal or social end, and is therefore pointless at best, and dangerous at worst, if the populace of a free society does not maintain a virtuous tradition. Conservatives and libertarians already agree about limited government and a free market economy, and while their social outlooks appear to be distinct, they are really the flip sides of the same coin. Therefore, conservatives and libertarians should put aside their differences, which are mostly illusory anyhow, and band together.

That was not necessarily an endorsement of fusionism, just a description of it. Really, it is key to the entire book; an argument for or against that notion is present, to a greater or lesser degree, in every essay.

Most of the arguments in favor of fusionism expand, in one manner or another, on the ideas described above, but the criticisms come from all corners. For example, following Meyer’s essay is an intelligent but tedious treatise by L. Brent Bozell, "Freedom or Virtue?", that attacks the notion that "virtue is only virtue if it is freely chosen" via a reductio ad absurdum. Assuming that I understood it correctly (it really was quite tedious), I do not quite buy Bozell’s argument. He uses divorce as an example – this was written back when divorce law was central to the social policy debate. Bozell interprets Meyer to believe that there should not be any legal restrictions on divorce just because we think that it is immoral. Meyer would argue by example: Is the Spanish man who is not free to divorce (again, written a long time ago) but hates his wife and stays with her only for selfish pragmatic reasons, equally virtuous as the American man who is free to divorce and would like to do so but decides to stay for the sake of the children and his own soul? No, Meyer would say, the Spaniard in this hypothetical scenario is not equally virtuous as the American, and in any event, very similar scenarios are very common in real life, thereby showing that it is harder for virtue to exist where people are not free to choose another path. Well, Bozell seems to say, by that reasoning, we might as well offer a tax incentive for divorce and increase the marriage penalty – that will really make clear who are truly virtuous and who are not! But Bozell misses the point by a mile (assuming, again, that I have not missed his). Meyer’s argument was not about singling people out as virtuous or not. It was about why it is misguided for the government to legislate in favor of one choice over another when it is nobody else’s business which choice an individual makes. Meyer would have been against incentives for divorce as much as he would have been against incentives against divorce, because divorces are not the government’s concern in the first place. His social outlook, which he projected into fusionism, was largely laissez-faire, which is to say, legally disinterested either way when it comes to the various social questions of ultimately individual concern. Bozell’s argument was, in the end, a straw-man argument.

This reminds me of Murray Rothbard’s essay, "Frank S. Meyer: The Fusionist as Libertarian Manqué", which appeared later on in the book. Rothbard, a libertarian (of course), doubted fusionism for a peculiar reason. His key premise here, with which I agree, is that libertarianism is a strictly political philosophy and must be distinguished from libertinism, a social philosophy that is only one of many philosophical foundations from which one might come to support libertarianism in the political arena. Briefly stated, Rothbard says that according to Meyer’s definition of fusionism, there is really no such thing, because a fusionist is just a libertarian who believes in maintaining traditional values on the personal and familial levels. (Rothbard offers himself as an example of just such a person.) To break down the argument a little bit: a) there are already plenty of political libertarians who are not keen on legislating values but still believe in them personally, which seems to be precisely the same as Meyer's model fusionist; b) any conservative who would refrain from legislating his social values for the sake of individual liberty is really just a libertarian by another name, which is to say, the exact same person as described in (a) except that he happens to label himself with a different word; and c) any conservative who is willing to legislate his social values is either not a conservative at all or living proof that fusionism cannot work because of the unavoidable discrepancy between his statist social views and the libertarian emphasis on individual freedom of conscience. Self-serving as this argument is for Rothbard (fusionists and most conservatives are really closet libertarians, and everyone else is an evil statist), I must admit that I am very tempted by it. Not only do I find myself identifying very closely with Rothbard’s definition of a fusionist (a libertarian with a personal commitment to virtue), but it seems to make perfect sense. The only thing lacking in Rothbard’s argument, which seems strikingly lacking in the rest of the book as well, is a discussion of the discrepancies between the conservative and libertarian views on foreign policy, the intricacies and nuances of which are too great to allow for any sort of substantial fusionism in my opinion.

Despite the size of this post, it covers a mere minority of the ideas put forth in the various essays, so do not assume that my lengthy synopsis spares you from acquiring your own copy of the book if you are interested in the topic. I highly recommend Freedom and Virtue to anyone interested in political philosophy, and also to anyone on the right who has not yet resolved the details of his political identity or philosophy. The writing quality is mostly first-class, and the philosophy is interesting, intelligent, and relevant.

A Passing Thought

I have been reading Freedom and Virtue (ed. George W. Carey) on-and-off for quite a while now, according to my incorrigible capriciousness. After a hiatus of a few weeks or so, I was determined to pick it up again this evening and finish at least one more essay, which I did. I had left off in-between the respective essays of Tibor Machan and Murray Rothbard.

A few short pages into Rothbard's essay, I had an interesting thought that was only tangentially related to what I was reading. It is hardly developed, it is a simplification and a generalization, and might be dead wrong or entirely irrelevant (or both) just as easily as it might be utterly brilliant. Nonetheless, it certainly gave me pause. The thought was:

The liberal/leftist speaks of "should" in the sense of all that should be, and then devises his legislation accordingly; meanwhile, the conservative/libertarian speaks of "should" in the sense of all that should be allowed, and then devises his legislation accordingly.

The more that I think about it, the more it makes sense to me, with one revision perhaps being necessary: namely, that the rule applies, but not to the liberal/leftist-conservative/libertarian dichotomy so much as to the more general ideologue-conservative dichotomy (using, that is, Russell Kirk's distinction).

Should this thought of mine lead anywhere substantial and interesting, I will post a follow-up.

Religious Freedom

I forget the exact context, but it was sometime in college that I first heard the phrase that most perfectly encapsulates my interpretation of the Establishment Clause, with which I agree wholeheartedly: freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. In yesterday's edition of The New York Sun, the best newspaper in New York if not the entire country, another worthy formulation comprised the headline of Section II: "Freedom for Religion".

Father Richard John Neuhaus, best known, perhaps, for being Editor-in-Chief of First Things magazine, wrote for the Sun an interesting review of Prof. Martha C. Nussbaum’s latest book, Liberty of Conscience. The title of her book notwithstanding, the good professor is decidedly on the side of allowing government to secularize whatever it pleases; good thing a sharp mind is there to rebut her.

Neuhaus begins by taking the reader on a concise history of the Establishment Clause, which is what liberals are usually referring to when they mention the "separation of church and state", a phrase absent from the Constitution (including the Amendments). After nearly two centuries of enjoying the Establishment Clause’s original intent, Americans were subjected to Justice Hugo Black's revisionism in the form of a 1947 Supreme Court decision (Everson). "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" was suddenly interpreted to mean, in Black’s words, that "neither a state nor the Federal Government ... can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion to another." Neuhaus's analysis here is most keen:

In discussions of the Religion Clause, it is common practice to speak of an Establishment Clause and a Free Exercise Clause. In fact, both grammatically and in intent, there is one clause with two provisions — no establishment and free exercise. The first provision is in the service of the second: The reason the government must not establish a religion is that having an established religion would prejudice free exercise by those who do not belong to it. As numerous scholars have pointed out, however, the end of the Religion Clause, i.e., free exercise, has been subordinated since Everson to the means, i.e., no establishment. The result is that "the separation of church and state" (a phrase of Jefferson's that is not in the Constitution) has come to mean that wherever government advances, religion must retreat.

Neuhaus is absolutely correct. Liberal interpretations of the Establishment Clause are based upon modern sensitivities towards religion. However, the Founders were not seeking to assuage the feelings of those skeptical of religion and its followers. In the Founders’ day, religious sensitivities centered around people who were upset about not being able to practice enough religion. The key here is to remember the context of the times. Americans had just won their independence from England, and, by default, from forced deference to the Anglican Church. Prior to the revolution, British subjects had to be a part of – and to subsidize – the Church of England. Those who preferred their own brand of religion (Catholics, Puritans, Quakers, Jews, etc.) were often treated as second class citizens. Not only were they pressured to conform to Anglicanism, they were harassed just for attending their own houses of worship. In other words, it was not just that the Catholic did not wish to tithe to the Anglican Church, it was also that he did make his way to a Catholic church on Sundays.

In order to ensure that such persecution did not take place in the new Republic, the Founders included the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment. Its object, which was clear and uncontroversial at that time and for over 150 years thereafter, was to preempt the creation of a Church of America that would have similar authority as the Church of England. As usual, the Founders’ ultimate goal was freedom; in this case, freedom to practice religion. Hence, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". Now that there was no Church of America to impose any religious norms on anyone, people were free to worship as they pleased. Catholics could go to Mass right down the road from a gathering of Quakers, which could in turn take place right around the corner from a synagogue, and nobody would be in any danger or trouble for it, or under any pressure to do otherwise. People could practice religion however they wanted, as often as they wanted. Is this not how it should be?

How did we get from there to government prohibiting a student from praying in school of his own volition?

The astute reader will note that nowhere does secularism play a role in the reasoning behind, or methodology of, the Establishment Clause. This is because it was never meant to do so. The modern secularist gets his interpretation of the Clause via faulty logic. First he takes as premise the leftist fallacy that religion is, in one sense or another, a restrictive force and a net negative in society, and so people have a reasonable interest in avoiding it. Then the secularist goes on to reason that since the Establishment Clause is meant to be the government's promise of protecting people from religious influences that obstruct their liberty, the government, while unable to do anything on the level of banning religion outright, can reasonably take measures to secularize anything under the public domain, which is ever-expanding.

First of all, the premise that there is something wrong with religion is itself wrong. Of course, that is a matter of opinion. However, so is the notion that there is something right with secularism. So, the question arises: whose side should the government take – or, at least, on whose side should it err? Of course, the question is somewhat moot, because it is not the government's business to take a side and start legislating accordingly. However, sometimes an issue cannot help but come to the government’s attention, especially in the courts. So, the question stands.

Secularists believe that it is most fair for the government to err on the side of secularism, and traditionalists believe that it is most fair for the government to err on the side of allowing free exercise of religion. The reasoning behind this – on both sides – is central to the entire debate. Some traditionalists believe that the government should err on the side of religion because they think that religion (that is, their religion) is right. But among traditionalists, that is uncommon reasoning, mostly because it is narrow and clearly untenable in a pluralistic society such as ours. Actually, most traditionalists believe that the government should err on the side of free exercise for objective reasons, namely that freedom is preferable to having the government decide when and where people may express their beliefs, and that the spirit of the Establishment Clause is firmly on the side of restricting government for the sake of increasing individual liberty. The secularists’ logic is different. Here, it is important to remember the premises from which they base their arguments. They believe that the spirit of the Establishment Clause prohibits government from taking the side of any religion, or of religion in general. Secularism, on the other hand, is not a religious philosophy, and so therefore it is fair for the government to side with it, or at least err on the side of it.

Of course, the traditionalist argument (the latter one, that is) is correct. A main problem with the secularists’ thinking is that they have a very narrow, misguided conception of what religion is. A religion is just a philosophy. What separates religions from other philosophies is that religions incorporate concepts of the supernatural. It is true that one naturally thinks of Catholicism or Hinduism in a different sense than one thinks of libertarianism or existentialism. However, there is a reason for that. Philosophy exists to pick up where science leaves off when it comes to answering life’s questions. Of course, science as we know it is barely a few centuries old, while mankind has been asking questions for considerably longer. So, philosophies that incorporate the supernatural have had one heck of a head start in forming a status-quo in societies, and in making themselves integral parts of society’s institutions. That is why we think of religions differently than we do other philosophies. However, when we get right down to it, a religion really is just a philosophy.

So, it is true that the government has no business crusading for Christianity, or Shintoism, or Scientology, or even religion in general – but only in the sense that it also has no business crusading for existentialism, or empiricism, or pragmatism, or secularism. Frankly, the government has no business crusading for any philosophy that is rightly left for individuals to consider for themselves. However, it is the government’s business to protect the individual’s rights and freedoms, and justly included in that spectrum is freedom of worship, freedom of expression, and overall freedom of religion.

RIP WFB

WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.
1925-2008
Requiescat In Pace

This Just In...

BOO YAH!!
And now back to the less important things in life...

Letters to a Young Conservative

I am a very capricious person, especially when it comes to books. I am a bibliophile and I love to read, but it seems that I have a much easier time collecting books than I do completing them. It is quite common for me to pick up a book, make some minor headway into it, and then lose interest and put it down for long enough to forget about it and start the cycle again with another book or activity. I am actually in the middle of about three or four books, and that is not counting those that I started and then put down over three months ago (after which time I have been removed from the book long enough to warrant starting all over anyway). Counting the latter category, I am technically in the middle of at least a dozen or two books.

I bring up my capriciousness because it is essential context for my dear readers to understand when they discover that I read Dinesh D'Souza's Letters to a Young Conservative cover-to-cover in a period of only three or four days – work days, no less. The writing flows beautifully, so that the reader feels as though D’Souza is talking to him naturally. (This particular reaction might require a familiarity with D’Souza's oral mannerisms, but you know.)

Furthermore, the content is pleasant to read. It is not a scholarly treatise on political philosophy, nor is it meant to be. This particular book’s contribution to conservatism, instead of being a new insight in the realm of ideas as is the norm with D’Souza’s works, is to provide a measure of motivation and confidence to young activists.

As the title indicates, Letters to a Young Conservative is a collection of letters from D’Souza to a conservative college student. Some of them explain the basics of what it means to be conservative as opposed to liberal and libertarian. To this end, D’Souza discusses ideas both philosophically and concretely, offering the occasional example of a specific policy. Other letters suggest ways for the addressee to survive in the hostile, liberal environment that is invariably present at his university. This latter aspect is what made the book most enjoyable for me, as I was a right-wing activist at my university before graduating less than a year ago. Indeed, some of D’Souza’s anecdotes and suggestions arouse a pleasant nostalgia, and in a couple of cases, a yearning to go back and experiment with some of his more entertaining ideas for activism.

The correspondence from the student to D’Souza is not present, and it is not obvious why D’Souza kept it up for so long – or if it is even real correspondence to begin with. I was just a couple of chapters into the book when the suspicion arose that the "letters" were really just chapters of a book that the author decided to introduce with "Dear Chris" in order to assign them plausible context. This would allow D’Souza to say what he has to say to college students in a direct manner, which would be convenient for both stylistic and marketing purposes. It also allows him to entitle the book "Letters to a Young Conservative", which sounds pleasantly classy, but makes the work sound more scholarly and sophisticated than it was ever meant to be. But then, this suspicion hardly takes away from the fact that Letters to a Young Conservative is great for the novice college conservative looking for a better understanding of his situation, for the inveterate university conservative looking for a little inspiration from outside of the bubble, and for any conservative looking for an enjoyable read that might well bring him back to the basics and the good old days.

It Is Okay for People Not to Vote

When the results of this year’s Iowa caucus initially came in, my first thought was that the worst of both sides had won. My second thought was that if the two main contenders in November are Obama and Huckabee, then most likely I will either vote Libertarian or just not vote. My third thought was to wonder what the "Get out the vote!" people would think of that.

It has always been odd to me that many people see voting as more of a duty than a right. Surely it is not rational to revere the freedom to vote on the premise that the taller the stack of completed ballots, the greater the inherent good of the situation. Rather, the liberty to vote is sacred because it ranks among the most essential means to a sacred end: political liberty in general. The way in which this works is simple: every individual citizen of age has the right to affect the outcome of an election by one vote. If that individual would prefer to affect the outcome of an election by withholding that one vote instead of by giving it to this or that candidate, then that is his prerogative, and there should be no moral imperative to cast the vote anyhow.

What if a voter dislikes all of the candidates in an election, and is not interested in voting for any of them? Are we to look down upon him for refraining from giving his vote to a politician that he dislikes? What about the person who finds that he has better things to do than vote; the person who would prefer to spend his time working, or playing with his children, or sitting at home reading a book, because he is not terribly animated about an election for one reason or another? Some people see a person who does not care about the fate of his country. All else being equal, I see an individual who is content to mind his own business, and who might reasonably wish that everyone else would return the favor. Besides which, the people who are so anxious about the fate of the country can cast their own votes.

It comes down to the fact that the institution of voting, and all of its political implications, exist to serve the individual citizen, not vice versa. Just as with freedom of speech and the right to bear arms, the right to vote necessarily implies the right to refrain from engaging in the activity. In the end, the right to vote is something that is there for the individual citizen’s sake, and therefore there is nothing wrong with each citizen deciding for himself whether or not to employ it in a given election.

It is tempting for someone making my argument to bring up the fact that most "Get out the vote!" types are not so anxious to see people vote as they are anxious to see people vote for their preferred candidates. For example, a Democrat, no matter now incredulous or indignant he may become upon hearing that a fellow citizen does not care about politics enough to vote, is more likely to prefer that that fellow citizen refrain from voting than that he vote Republican. There is nothing wrong with this; it is just a reflection of the Democrat’s own concern for the fate of the country, and his desire to make it right according to his own moral compass. (We all know what I think of the functionality of Democrats’ moral compasses, but this is just a hypothetical example.) But the point is that most "Get out the vote!" activists are actually targeting one group or another in the hopes that their respective preferred candidates will receive the extra votes that are cast.

However, while the above point remains true, it is not intellectually honest to base my own argument around it, because there are indeed a few people who sincerely believe that a vote for anyone is better than a withheld vote; that is, there is the occasional Democrat who would rather see his fellow citizen vote Republican than not vote at all. So, let us consider the rational intellectual reasons why it might be objectively true that the more votes there are cast, the better the inherent good of the situation, period. Actually, I can think of only one such reason: perhaps some people believe that a high voter turnout is necessary for the preservation of the liberty. In other words, if voter turnout is consistently low, then it will be all the easier for that right to disappear, and vice versa. I do not think that all people who think that voting is so important are also conspiracy theorists convinced that there is a plot to cancel elections and install an oligarchy or despot. However, it is true that in a modern democracy the size of the USA, in this day and age, it is not unheard of for certain freedoms and liberties to be slowly and surely watered down and washed away. It is one thing to be a paranoid conspiracy theorist, but in general being vigilant about our rights as Americans is not unwarranted.

However, in this instance, I would not be concerned about the right to vote disappearing as voter turnout decreases. First of all, even people who do not vote appreciate the importance of the right to vote. Second of all, it would be impossible to sneak such an outrageous act past the American citizens. You see, with speech, it can be done slowly: first, a few words are banned from the airwaves, then certain topics become "unfair" around election time, and so on. It is the same with the right to bear arms: first, you have to be licensed, then you have to have a background check, then you have to wait extra time, then you can only have certain kinds of firearms, then you have to store them a certain way, then you can have the gun but not actually use it, etc. And even with these examples, plenty of Americans have raised their voices in opposition to the encroachment on their freedoms. Given that the right to vote is a zero-sum game – either you have it completely or you have not even a hint of it – it would be blatant and overt if the government did anything to remove it, and the outcry would come from all sectors, not just the folks who actually participate in elections.

Besides which, I do not find any reason to believe that there is any movement to restrict the right to vote, or that there will be any such movement in the foreseeable future. There is no political reason for it, after all. And, should the day come when the government does try to work such mischief, then our problems as a republic will be greater than anything that a "Get out the vote!" campaign could ever solve. (Something along the lines of a "Get out the firearms!" campaign would more likely be warranted.)

In addition to having my reservations about the motives of those who profess voting to be more of a duty than a right, I am in fact convinced of a few reasons why certain people should not vote. Not that I would ever recommend any moral or legal imperative against voting – that is, I withhold ad hominem judgment on the matter – but I think that objectively speaking, it is in some cases better for a citizen to refrain from voting.

Let us consider the large percentage of non-voters whose reason for not voting is indecision or apathy. Most members of that group are probably not very educated about politics. Therefore, it is best if they refrain from affecting the outcome of an election in which the educated, engaged, involved, active citizens have cast their ballots. After all, elections are not about the assuaging of people’s feelings. (Nor are they, as the media would have us believe, about the careers of the politicians.) No, the elections are fundamentally about the fate of the nation and the affect that subsequent policies will have on people and society. Therefore, every indifferent Joe should not be dragged to the polls just to cast a random ballot and perhaps radically alter the outcome of an election from the way it would have gone had only the politically informed people voted. In other words, quality is better than quantity.

Again, I am not recommending that there be some ordinance requiring a certain level of political savvy in order to acquire voting eligibility, not least because no American should have the authority to decide how every other American must answer certain questions before he is allowed to vote. That is a power best left out of any mortal’s hands. All I am saying is that the less politically educated the citizen, the more likely he is to decide on his own to stay home on Election Day, and this naturally occurring system happens to be a good one that no one need tinker with. There is nothing wrong with it just because the vote counter will have one less ballot to go through.

In fact, I wonder if I should not turn that accusation around and direct it at my opponents in this argument. Surely, if voting is a civic duty, then as with every other civic duty, the citizen has a responsibility to be diligent about it. In other words, if someone must vote, then he must not only cast a ballot, but he must take good care to do so in such a way as to affect society in the best way possible. After all, what other civic duty, or anything else for that matter, will have such a major effect on not only the citizen himself, but on all 300 million of his fellow citizens?

So, if my opponents are so inclined to make voting a responsibility, would they also require people to be educated about it? Would they have people spend their precious free time reading a certain amount of newspaper articles per week so that they vote in an informed manner? (This is not even to touch upon the question of who gets to decide which newspapers and articles count as sufficiently informative and unbiased, and which are not worth the paper on which they are printed.) Perhaps, on the contrary, my opponents would overlook even the most remarkable ignorance just to collect another ballot with a random, uninformed, guess-caliber hole cast in it, and damn the consequences to the country. Either way, my opponents are presented with a problem: do they take the duty to vote seriously enough to require the logically corresponding responsibilities, which necessarily include intrusions into citizens’ lives, or do they profess that voting is a duty only in a superficial sense?

The solution, no doubt, is to recognize voting for what it actually is: not a duty at all, but a right, sacred only for the more general political liberty that its existence implies, and justly given entirely to the discretion of each individual citizen.

"A 'Pro-Life' Position is Logical and Rational"

Upon learning that the former Director of Student Activities at Tufts University, Jodie Nealley, was alleged to have embezzled $300,000 from my alma mater, I made haste to the Tufts Daily's website to read up on the situation. During my travels through the website, I encountered an op-ed entitled "A 'Pro-Life' Position is Logical and Rational" by a freshman named Michael Hawley.

Most of my readers are probably aware of my own views on the matter, namely that abortion is unacceptable in all cases unless pregnancy is such a threat to the mother's health that killing the child amounts to self-defense. However, I did not only enjoy the essay because I agree with the views put forward. The writing is top-notch for anyone, let alone a first-semester college freshman. It is clear and concise, and it obviously has come from a pleasant, refined individual. Furthermore, the author is congenial enough to take the time and space to advocate civil debate of the abortion issue, even congratulating an opponent for refraining from ad hominem attacks.

However, more important than the quality of the writing are the points that Hawley discusses. The following fallacies are keenly refuted in the article:

1) However wrong abortion might be, it is in keeping with liberty, and therefore the right thing to do, to allow a woman the choice to decide for herself.
2) Individual life, worthy of protection by common morality and the rule of law, has not yet begun at conception.
3) In the "pro-choice"-"pro-life" debate, the burden of proof is on the "pro-lifers".
4) Rape is a reasonable reason to sanction abortion.
5) A "pro-life" position cannot possibly be a product of learned philosophy or logical reasoning, but must be devotion to this or that religious dogma. (And, by implied extension: "Pro-lifers" are really trying to push their personal religious beliefs on others, and any "pro-life" legislation is tantamount to a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.)

Hawley's arguments are succinct and convincing; he makes them with intelligence and confidence. Far from being crafty or akin to squabbles over semantics, the arguments are sincere. As the title indicates, logic and reason prevail.

My readers are highly encouraged to read the op-ed for themselves. After all, it is not often that one has the chance to read a "pro-life" article of such quality.

Science and Religion

"Couldn't evolution be the answer to how and not the answer to why?"

Were it not for the occasional glimpse of intelligent commentary strewn about the average episode of South Park, it would be a real disconcertion that such an astute, insightful question must be attributed to a show so generally foul. But the wit that the show's creators manage to display at least once per episode make it easier to admit that I first heard that line from the character Stan Marsh, and that I immediately understood the evolution/creation debate much more clearly at that moment.

In a recent article ("The Origin of Species, and Everything Else", National Review, 10/8/07), Jim Manzi points out, "Scientific atheists put forward two propositions as logically deducible from science: that evolution eliminates the need for a Creator, and that evolution has no ultimate goal or purpose." The mistake that such atheists make is to consider evolution an end in and of itself. On the contrary, evolution is a mere tool of Creation.

The first of the atheists' propositions is easily disproven by applying Aristotle's realization that "any chain of cause-and-effect must ultimately begin with an Uncaused Cause," as Manzi puts it. Ironically, it was my college philosophy professor, Daniel Dennett, a world-famous proponent of atheism, who first got me thinking about this topic when, on the first day of lecture, he dismissed the class with the question, "Why is there something instead of nothing?" Every time that we come up with an answer of what caused something to come about, we would be remiss not to then wonder what, in turn, was the cause of that cause. Even if we identify a chain of events going back to the Big Bang, we have to consider: Who put that ball of mass there, and what caused it to adhere to what we recognize as the laws of physics? And even if scientists could discern the exact force that created the mass that "Banged Big", so to speak, the question would remain: Whence came that exact force? I am convinced, therefore, that there must necessarily be an Immortal Power that has always been and will always be, and from which the rest of Creation comes about. That is G-d.

Whatever the case, the question of ultimate origins is not one that science is meant to answer, as per the very definition of the scientific method itself. (Manzi says it well: "A scientific theory is a falsifiable rule that relates cause to effect.") A scientist would therefore be out of order in claiming that any scientific theory, including evolution, "eliminates the need for a Creator".

The second proposition that Manzi identifies is not disproven quite as easily as the first, but it is necessary to address the point. Manzi himself refers to a very keen but very complex and fairly boring analogy involving computer software known as Genetic Algorithms in order to make his point. Those who are interested in reading his explanation in full are encouraged to do so, but I would rather speak more generally here.

In short, evolution must have a goal in the same way that any applied algorithm must have a goal: it takes a large number of possible genetic combinations and, even as new combinations join the mix, weeds out less fit combinations so that over time, the collective gene pool becomes fitter and fitter. It would be astoundingly difficult for us to determine what the genetic goal of evolution is, but that does not mean that the goal does not exist, or even that figuring it out is literally impossible. It just means that as human beings, we do not have the lifespan or brainpower to do it on our own, and we have not come up with the correct technology to accomplish that goal for us.

The way to determine evolution's genetic goal would be to take all possible gene combinations (in other words, all possible organisms), compare their abilities to survive and reproduce over time, and see which one has the most fitness. Of course, as I said, we humans rather lack the ability to do that, but the fact that we cannot figure it out does not mean that the conclusion does not exist. After all, the algorithm known as evolution is literally performing that task for us as we speak. If, rather than waiting until the end of time, we would like to know the answer a bit quicker, then perhaps we might collect the genetic information of every species on Earth and re-create the world in a computer model that we can "fast-forward", so to speak.

Here, I am going to hear some protests that say something to the effect of: "But you are not taking into account the fact that the physical environment of Earth is always randomly changing, so the evolution of species, far from being the tool of some ultimate goal of Creation, is really just a reflection of the fact that some species do better in certain environments than others." But that argument does not hold water.

First of all, that argument does not take into account the evolution of species that takes place within a constant environment. Once a new species comes onto the scene in a certain environment, if it is more fit than the species that were there before it, then the older species might become much fewer in number, or perhaps die out altogether. Within a few years, the exact same spot on Earth – without a changing landscape or climate – may have a very different gene pool that can only be altered if a new species, fitter still, comes onto the scene. Evolution really does imply a gene pool that is destined to approach (in the mathematical sense of the word) ultimate fitness over time.

Second of all, and more substantially, the changes that take place in the Earth's environment are not necessarily random. People tend to forget that the Earth, and all of its natural phenomena, are just another small part of the workings of the universe as a whole. The natural environment changes according to physical forces that have been present in the universe since long before the first life form appeared on Earth. Here, I cannot help but defer to Jim Manzi, who explains that "the [changing] fitness landscape, after all, is only the product of the interaction of other physical processes". He continues:

The scientific atheists sweep a lot of philosophical baggage into the term "random": It is often used loosely to imply a senselessness, a basic lack of understandability, in natural occurrences. But in fact, even the "random" elements of evolution that influence the path it takes toward its goal — for example, mutation and crossover — are really pseudo-random. For example, if a specific mutation is caused by radiation hitting a nucleotide, both the radiation and its effect on the nucleotide are governed by normal physical laws. Human uncertainty in describing evolution, which as a practical matter we refer to as randomness, is reducible entirely to the impracticality of building a model that comprehensively considers things such as the idiosyncratic path of every photon in the universe compounded by the quantum-mechanistic uncertainty present in fundamental physical laws that govern the motion of such particles. As a practical matter, we lack the capability to compute either the goal or the path of evolution, but that is a comment about our limitations as observers, not about the process itself.

In other words, if I may apply that concept back to the world's changing environment, meteorologists may have a difficult job with a poor track record, but it is technically possible to predict those patterns for all time because they are the result of interactions of finite amounts of matter and energy that are as old as the universe and that continue to follow set laws of physics.

As a side note: Perhaps one day, humans will have perfected that technology, and we will be able to predict environmental changes of all sorts for the rest of time. We would then, of course, adjust our behavior accordingly in order to better survive and reproduce. The fact that the brainpower that would enable us to do that would be an evolutionary advantage in and of itself is further proof that the changing environment is not random according to the evolutionary process.

Here, my dear reader will kindly note that nothing that I have said above challenges the general veracity of the theory of evolution; indeed, I accepted it as true from the very beginning of this post. I bring this up because it is of interest, given that I am a political conservative and a believing Jew. Most Americans would be surprised to learn that the clash that we see in our political arena between proponents of evolution and proponents of religion is rather unique to our society. Nothing illustrates this better, in my opinion, than the following excerpt from Stephen Jay Gould's wonderful 1997 essay "Nonoverlapping Magisteria":

In early 1984, I spent several nights at the Vatican housed in a hotel built for itinerant priests. ... Our crowd (present in Rome for a meeting on nuclear winter sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences) shared the hotel with a group of French and Italian Jesuit priests who were also professional scientists.

At lunch, the priests called me over to their table to pose a problem that had been troubling them. What, they wanted to know, was going on in America with all this talk about "scientific creationism"? One asked me: "Is evolution really in some kind of trouble, and if so, what could such trouble be? I have always been taught that no doctrinal conflict exists between evolution and Catholic faith, and the evidence for evolution seems both entirely satisfactory and utterly overwhelming. Have I missed something?"

A lively pastiche of French, Italian, and English conversation then ensued for half an hour or so, but the priests all seemed reassured by my general answer: Evolution has encountered no intellectual trouble; no new arguments have been offered. Creationism is a homegrown phenomenon of American sociocultural history - a splinter movement (unfortunately rather more of a beam these days) of Protestant fundamentalists who believe that every word of the Bible must be literally true, whatever such a claim might mean. We all left satisfied, but I certainly felt bemused by the anomaly of my role as a Jewish agnostic, trying to reassure a group of Catholic priests that evolution remained both true and entirely consistent with religious belief.

The thesis, and, indeed, the very title of Gould's essay express what in my own humble opinion is the correct approach to the two disciplines of science and religion. A magisterium is a "domain of teaching authority", as Gould explains it, and indeed, the domains of science and religion, properly understood, do not overlap and can in fact be complimentary.

Science's domain is that of the physical realm. It is meant to perfect techniques of observation and analysis. What is here? How does it work? How long has it been here? What was here ten billion years ago? How did that work? How can we even know that? What can we create to be here in the future in order to make our lives better? How will that work? These are questions that science is meant to answer.

Proponents of scientism need to learn the natural limits of mankind's capacity for comprehension and the existence of questions upon which no physical force has any bearing. So you have proven evolution to be a fact; how could that possibly mean that G-d does not exist? How could any aspect of science prove what is right and what is wrong? Those are, at the very least, opinion questions. Most people treat them as religious or philosophical questions. Only someone who has the debased notion of science as a "side" to be "taken" against anything that is not science (i.e. another category for identity politics to corrupt) would consider them scientific questions.

Religion's domain is the spirit, the soul, and the supernatural – including arguments against the existence of such things. It is philosophical in nature, and it is meant to guide human beings as they wander through life. What is Good, and what is Bad? What makes Right, and what makes Wrong? Why am I here? What is the meaning of life? Why should I care about what happens to others? What happens to my consciousness when I die? Why is there something instead of nothing? These are questions for religion.

Religionists need to learn the purposes of religion itself. Religion teaches many wonderful, priceless things, but history, for example, is not one of them. In other words, if sound science proves that a literal reading of the first chapters of Genesis is incorrect, then it is misguided to presume that science is wrong. Our faith is best reserved for more worthy notions, such as the existence of G-d and the truth of His morality. Theologists, just like scientists, need to be wary of the temptation to disgrace their magisterium by failing to recogize its proper boundaries and making it an object of identity politics.

Perhaps if we accept the genius of science to explain "how", and encourage it to continue, we will have an easier time understanding "why".

SupportingFire.com

It is my absolute pleasure to announce to my readership the recent inauguration of SupportingFire.com. Written by my dear friends Jordan Greene and Patrick Randall, SupportingFire is "devoted to military strategy, technology, and intelligence", according to the initial post. The post continues:

...our intention is to provide penetrating analysis of national security developments both proximate and far-reaching. Because we are interested primarily in security dynamics vis-à-vis Russia and China, our posts will reflect this.

I know of few men better suited either to providing intelligent insight into and analysis of military issues or to presenting that insight in beautiful, fluid writing than Jordan and Patrick. You are all highly encouraged to visit SupportingFire on a regular basis. You will find it most interesting and engaging, and well worth your while.

A Wrinkle in Time

When I heard a few weeks ago that author Madeleine L'Engle had passed away, I was surprised, and then saddened. Surprised, because I thought that she had already passed on; saddened, because I remembered enjoying her writing very much as a youth.

The news story about her passing mentioned that her writing highlighted her Christian faith. This peaked my interest, because I had read perhaps her two most well-known books, A Wrinkle in Time and A Wind in the Door, and I did not remember any sort of religious message in either. I then decided that it was because so many years had gone by since reading those books that I did not remember such an important aspect of them, and that I ought to re-read them to see if I could learn something new from them the second time around.

Quickly finishing the book that I was already reading, I sat down and read A Wrinkle in Time. Being more of a children's novel than anything else, it took me just one evening to finish. There was no doubt about it: It was meant to frame the universal struggle between Good and Evil on a religious note.

The designation of the book as being of a 5.8 reading level almost surely stems from the novel's simple sentence structure, basic plot, and mostly transparent characters. Very few fifth graders now-a-days could understand the educated diction of some of the characters; the science that forms the premise for some of the more fantastic aspects of the fiction; the frequent references by one of the characters to proverbs from around the globe and lines by Shakespeare, Pascal, Seneca, Dante, Perez, Cervantes, Delille, Euripides, Horace, and others; or the relatively advanced vocabulary that L'Engle scatters throughout her book, such as "ephemeral", "belligerent", "inadvertently", "omnipotent", "precipitously", and others. Also advanced are the morals and lessons presented in various stages of the novel, some more subtly than others.

When I first read the book as a child, I thought that the point was to tout the scientific notions that form the basis for much of the plot, such as the "tesseract". The tesseract is the employment of the fifth dimension to move about space with ease. The best way to explain it is like this: We all know the three dimensions - a line, a square, a cube. In the novel, time comprises the fourth dimension. The fifth dimension is a little more complicated. We all know that, at least in terrestrial reality, the shortest distance between two points is the first dimension, a straight line. However, if those two points could be brought together for a moment, then no travel would be necessary. Imagine an ant walking from one end of a piece of string to the other; though a straight line would get him there more quickly than if he swerved about, wouldn't it be faster still to join the two ends of the string so that with one step the ant could go from one end to the other? Well, imagine the joining of any two points of the entire universe so that travel through it could be done with ease. The condition of having two points of the universe joined as one comprises the fifth dimension.

When I first read A Wrinkle in Time, I was fascinated by this and other scientific concepts in the book. My young mind's interest in them, and their novelty to me, blinded me to the very possibility that there was another point to the book. The fact that I was relatively uneducated in my own religion, let alone in Christianity, did not help any in this regard. However, upon re-reading the book, I could see that the science, though important to the plot and to the enjoyment of the novel, was clearly not as important as the morals. There are a variety of themes upon which L'Engle touches, ranging from religious to political; the evil society in this novel has an eerie similarity to the totalitarian one that Lois Lowry depicts in her masterpiece, The Giver. However, the main theme that the author seeks to emphasize is that the importance of a just faith in G-d, and the struggle between Good and Evil, are truly universal. Mankind has been caught in the thick of this struggle since our arrival on the scene, and L'Engle stresses the importance of remaining vigilantly on the side of Good, even when it seems futile, because the struggle is very real, ever ongoing, and never hopeless.

When I put the book down after re-reading it, and while thinking about it soon afterwards, I was less-than-impressed. Though a wonderful thinker, L'Engle was hardly a great writer - not bad, not too good. However, as I think about it more and more, and as I write this review, I realize that there is something striking about A Wrinkle in Time. It is no Narnia, but it definitely deserves a place next to Maestro Lewis on the shelf. The writing may not have been terribly sophisticated, but it was good enough that this discerning and capricious reader did not put it down until the book had been finished from cover to cover. Furthermore, the writing hardly did L'Engle's ideas justice. In considering this, I am reminded of a favorite concept of mine, that language is the dress of thought. Sometimes, a woman's beauty is obscured by awkward make-up and ill-fitting clothing. Similarly, the philosophy and concepts that L'Engle seeks to expound are of high caliber, but she dresses them in the simplest language, making it all the more difficult to appreciate their importance and complexity.

All in all, I would recommend this book to parents who wish to offer their children (ages 12-14, in my estimation) good, wholesome reading. It is the sort of book that a child can read alone or together with a parent. Also, I would recommend this book to older or more sophisticated readers who would like a break from adult writing, if not from adult topics - in other words, if you would like a good book that will not put you to sleep with its academic language, then A Wrinkle in Time will provide you with a good couple of days of reading. Finally, given the universality of its messages, I would recommend the book to anyone of any age who enjoys an intelligent exploration of moral and/or religious themes.

How Most People Find Politics

I am fortunate enough to have a local newspaper (Newsday) that prints the comics every day. As it happens, that is usually the only part of the paper that I read, unless I need to check how the Yankees are doing and the internet is not handy.

I mostly read the comics for laughs, which certainly abound. My favorites include Dilbert, Zits, Garfield, Baby Blues, Peanuts, Blonde, Pickles, Wizard of Id, and Hagar. I am also a fan of Non Sequitor and Mallard Fillmore, although when it comes to their usual political analyses, I only appreciate the latter.

You might be wondering why I avoid the news part of the newspaper, which certainly ranks among its most important sections. This brings me to the point of this post. In today's comic section, the Stone Soup strip was striking in its portrayal of a regular person's reaction to politics:


In an article for The Primary Source, I once wrote that

For every activist on the Hill, there is a student who couldn’t care less about politics; he would rather focus on studying, partying, dating, playing sports, watching TV, and generally living a normal life. I must admit: I envy such people, and find that they are the last living proof that sanity can exist even in the crazy world of Walnut Hill.

I really do love to ponder a situation and refine my ideas and philosophy in the process. However, the situations themselves are so often of such low caliber - regularly showing themselves to be downright disgusting - that I simply cannot stomach the news, be it on television or in print. Even talk radio, with most of whose hosts I agree fairly often, has become more irksome over time. The sensationalist nature of the various news programs only makes things worse in this regard. As it happens, the only news venue that I can enjoy at this point is the magazine, my favorite being National Review.

I really do envy the fellow who can go about his life and hardly consider politics. Of course, I do enjoy the intellectual challenge that politics present, and I certainly recognize the importance of remaining wary of the forces that affect my life. However, my version of paradise includes an obliviousness to the slime that comprises most news stories. It is a place where one can engage in intellectualism -improve one's mind and become more worldly - without plodding through any mud, metaphorical or otherwise.

The point is, following politics and the news causes immense disgust, and I cannot think of anyone else who expressed that fact quite as well as the author of the comic strip above.

Russia: Still a Threat

It's not that I think that there are rabid Leninists running the Kremlin again. But the fact that it is not Communist again does not mean that it cannot be an evil threat any longer. Putin may not have any ideological agenda, but he is on a power quest, and he has no qualms about using all of Russia for his own ends in that respect.

A post on the blog Environmental Economics tipped me off to an AP story about a new bomb that Russia developed. Apparently, it is much stronger than the US's "mother of all bombs". I was not going to comment on the story, because I have faith in American scientists and engineers, not to mention the American military. If we are behind now, we can catch up and then some, I believe.

Nor was I going to comment on the ridiculous fact that, unlike a nuclear bomb, the new Russian bomb is not environmentally harmful. (This was the focus of Environmental Economics' article; the title was "An environmentally friendly way to exterminate those pesky humans".)

But the following paragraph, appearing at the end of the AP article, worries me greatly:

Last month, President Vladimir Putin said he ordered the resumption of regular patrols of strategic bombers, which were suspended after the 1991 Soviet breakup.

I do not know exactly what this means, or even if it represents any more of a return to a dangerous Russia than everything else coming out of Moscow in the last few years. But I do know that it is time for Americans to resume keeping a watchful eye on the former Soviet republic.

"College Wahhabists"

The Editor-in-Chief of The Primary Source, the publication for which I wrote when I was in college, was kind enough to ask me to publish one last article, as it is customary for an alumnus to write for the annual Orientation issue. I accepted, and penned "College Wahhabists: An exposé of the national Muslim Student Association." It was slightly edited by the staff, but that was only for the best.

The text of the article can be found at the link above; if I may be so bold, I highly recommend clicking on it and reading what appears. While you are at it, read the rest of this year's Orientation issue, which can be found on the Source's homepage. The issue will remain there until the publication of the next issue, at which time the Orientation issue will be archived and the new issue will appear on the homepage. When that happens, read the new issue. Upon publication of the third issue of the semester, return to the website to read that one. And so on.

You will find the endeavor to be very much worth your while.

Correction on Post Below

In the post below, I claim that the anti-free speech decision at Tufts University has been reversed. It has since been brought to my attention that that is not entirely correct. Strictly speaking, all that Dean Glaser did was rescind the punishment levied against a student publication, The Primary Source. The decision finding the publication guilty of "harassment" and "creation of a hostile environment" for publishing allegedly offensive material stands.

In other words, they didn't change their minds about the Source, they still think that it is okay for a court to deem non-violent, political speech unacceptable and that they can find a student magazine guilty for publishing it, and the Source's first precedent against it remains.

What did happen was: When the Source was originally found guilty, there was a punishment levied against it. (See this earlier post for details.) Now, that particular punishment no longer applies, and there is no penalty actually in place.

However, the guilty verdict remains. It is unclear whether another punishment will be, or can be, levied against the Source for this particular "infraction" in the future. Whatever the case, by refraining from overturning the verdict itself, Tufts has shown that it is not as committed to free speech and open dialogue as President Bacow's letter suggests. That, combined with the Source now having a precedent against it, leaves the Source and all other student groups at Tufts shockingly vulnerable to censorship.

Victory for Free Speech at Tufts University

Earlier, I made a post entitled "Tufts University: Where Nobody Cares About Free Speech", in which I exposed the students and faculty at Tufts who were determined to squash the right to free speech for one unpopular student group, The Primary Source. Well, just this week, the decision against free speech was reversed on appeal. Below is the e-mail that Tufts' President Bacow (bacow@tufts.edu) sent to the Tufts community explaining his views on the matter. It is not exactly how I wish he worded it, but the general views on free speech are pretty good, and overall it's more than I ever expected from him.

Today, Dean of Undergraduate Education James Glaser ruled on an appeal by The Primary Source of a decision by the Committee on Student Life. Specifically, Dean Glaser set aside that part of the decision requiring The Primary Source to include bylines on all future articles. Since Dean Glaser's decision leaves open other issues raised by the CSL decision, I thought I would take this opportunity to express to the community my own views on freedom of expression at Tufts.

First, some background: Twice last year, The Primary Source published articles that many in this community, myself included, found incredibly offensive. The first article, allegedly a satire of affirmative action, suggested that African-American students admitted to Tufts were academically unqualified. The second article, published in response to Islamic Awareness Week, strongly implied that all Muslims were violent and intolerant.

After the publication of the first piece, the community responded collectively. In rallies, meetings, and pieces published in the student press, people strongly voiced their own opinions. The editors of The Primary Source withdrew the article and apologized.

After the publication of the second piece, I wrote a Viewpoint for The Tufts Daily in which I strongly took issue with the substance of the Primary Source article about Islam. Although The Primary Source had once again offended a discrete minority within our community, I opposed any attempt to censure or limit the publication. I repeated a statement I have made often since coming to Tufts: The appropriate response to offensive speech is more speech, not less.

Following publication of the second article, a student organization and an individual student petitioned the Committee on Student Life, asserting they were harassed by the publication of the two articles. The CSL held a hearing and ruled that The Primary Source had harassed these students given the definition contained in our student handbook, the Pachyderm. In response, the CSL imposed the byline policy which Dean Glaser vacated today.

In retrospect, I think that the CSL was ill-advised to hear this case.

Universities are places where people should have the right to freely express opinions, no matter how offensive, stupid, wrong headed, ill-considered, or unpopular. To say that people have the right to express such views does not mean that we condone them or that they should go unchallenged. Rather, it means that the responsibility to respond is shared collectively by all members of the community and not vested in the action of any administrative body.

We modeled an appropriate response to offensive speech after The Primary Source published its parody of a Christmas carol questioning the academic qualifications of our minority students. This approach - people speaking strongly and clearly in response to offensive speech - was far more powerful than any decision of a student-faculty committee. It was through our collective voice that we affirmed our community values.

While Tufts is a private institution and not technically bound by First Amendment guarantees, it is my intention to govern as President as if we were. To put it another way, I believe that students, faculty, and staff should enjoy the same rights to freedom of expression at Tufts as they would if they attended or worked at a public university. With the exception of the recent CSL decision, we have operated in the past as if such rights applied. I will work with the Board of Trustees to formalize this policy.

During the McCarthy era, a number of university presidents in the United States failed to defend the principle of freedom of expression. Students, faculty, and staff paid for this equivocation as the government sought to purge college campuses of those expressing particularly unpopular opinions. We must be vigilant in defending individual liberties even if it means that from time to time we must tolerate speech that violates our standards of civility and respect.

Lawrence S. Bacow
President

Health Care at Gitmo

I hope that my dear readers can forgive me for not posting for so long. Suffice it to say that I never meant for there to be such a long period between posts, and I will do my best to see to it that that does not happen again.

Anyhow, the last two issues of National Review magazine each had an article that served to counter Michael Moore's latest "documentary", Sicko. They were both excellent reads. The first one, from the July 30 issue, is "The Myth of Cuban Health Care" by Jay Nordlinger. It eloquently - even movingly - rebuts the fallacy, which Moore mistakes for truth in his film, that Cuba's system of socialized health care is an exemplary system that the US should emulate. The second article, from the August 13 issue, is "Health of the State" by Theodore Dalrymple. In his article, Dalrymple draws upon decades of first-hand experience to demonstrate how universal health care, even as practised in a prospering Western democracy (as opposed to a place such as Cuba), will not produce the benefits that Moore promises, and will, in fact, prove to have some serious drawbacks.

However, what these articles do not rebut, and what most of Moore's opponents are reluctant to address, is that famous stunt that Moore pulled in which he went on a raft towards Guantanamo Bay with ailing 9/11 workers and requested that the US military at the base provide the workers with free medical care. After all, Moore claimed, the soldiers at Gitmo provide free medical care to the terrorists held prisoner there, so surely they must be willing to provide at least those same benefits to the people who came to help on 9/11, especially since those same people can't find free medical care anywhere else in the US. Nobody wants to put down those 9/11 workers, or even appear indifferent to them, especially when doing so might accidentally lead to defending the giving of benefits to terrorists. So, this stunt doesn't get much play in the conservative response.

I have not seen Sicko, but I have seen some clips, including the one that I describe above. When I saw it, I paused for a moment. I found it to be fairly ridiculous, but it took me a moment to figure out why. And then it occured to me that it is not even plausible that the US government cares for the terrorists more than it cares for the 9/11 workers, and not only does it not have to socialize health care to prove as much, but to do so would in fact be detrimental to the 9/11 workers - for the same reasons that it would be detrimental to the rest of the nation.

The terrorists at Gitmo receive health care because there is nowhere else for them to get it. The US government has accepted them as wards of the state until the appropriate time of their release. If the government has so endeavored to control every aspect of their lives, then it makes sense for it to provide for their health - especially if some of them know information that we are still trying to get from them.

(As a corrollary to this, the City of New York passed some months ago a ban on trans fats. The details behind the legislation and the arguments for it are complicated, but suffice it to say that the government banned a type of food simply because it was very unhealthy. When I heard this, I was concerned not only about the fact that in a nation founded on freedom legislators thought nothing of taking the liberty to ban others from cooking with or eating a certain food. I was also concerned that, if the government is going to control every aspect of citizens' lives, then it is only a matter of time before someone who gets sick anyway says "You owe me!" and socialized health care is insituted. That person's argument is going to be: "You restricted me from eating what I want and doing some things that I enjoy, all in the name of my health. Well, it was not enough. You had the privilege of controlling me, but now that it did not pan out the way you planned, you have to take responsibility. If you were not going to take responsibility for my health, then what gave you the right to control and restrict me for the sake of my own health in the first place?" What's scary is that that's a reasonable argument!)

However, the 9/11 workers are free. They are free to get up in the morning and occupy themselves however they please. That is what our soldiers are fighting for, that is what makes this country great, and that is what makes us the good guys in the fight against the terrorists whose treatment Moore so envies. Along with freedom, however, comes responsibility. This is not because anyone said so, but because that is just reality. If the government were to take responsibility for the 9/11 workers' health, then that would mean two things:

1) Someone else would have to pay for their health without necessarily being compensated for it in any way. Remember that when the government pays for something, it does not actually pay for anything. Rather, it forcefully takes hard-earned money from people who would not pay it if the state did not have police power behind it, and then anonymously spends it however it wants, sometimes on bridges to nowhere, sometimes on someone else's hospital bill. Will the 9/11 workers ever be forced to relinquish their hard-earned money to pay for something that the original taxpayers want or need? Who knows? Probably not unless the original taxpayers demonstrate that they have not sufficiently contributed to others in society to earn enough money to buy what they want. The government stopped treating every citizen equally a long time ago with the first welfare-esque payment, and in a perverse way at that.

2) The government would have a legitimate claim on running important aspects of the 9/11 workers' lives. This is sort of the inverse of the reasoning that makes it understandable that the government provides for the prisoners' health at Gitmo. If the government is going to provide for the 9/11 workers' health, then why should it not have a say in how the 9/11 workers affect that health? For example, why should one of them be able to smoke, and then have the government (or, for that matter, everyone else in society) pick up the tab? Should the government have a say in what goes in their IV tubes at the hospital? Should the government be able to prohibit them from bungee jumping? From boxing? From eating potato chips? Why should the taxpayers be burdened with the costs that come from other people's risky or stupid decisions? If the government is going to have the taxpayers pay for a person's medical bill, then surely it should be allowed to take measures (well, "reasonable" measures, but that's as subjective as they come) to make sure that that bill is as small as possible.

It would, of course, be nice if everyone who is sick or injured could just get better without having to pay for it. But the real world does not have room for a utopia. There is no such thing as a free lunch, and that's just reality. As the two articles in National Review show (and, hopefully, as I have demonstrated), socialized health care, while well intentioned, is an awful idea in practice. Socialism has yet to work with anything else, and it will certainly not work with health care. Freedom, including free markets and individual responsibility, is the way to go. It may not be perfect in comparison to some nirvana that any old Joe can dream up, but it is the best option available in the real world.

How Do You Think I Feel?

Have you, dear reader, ever heard someone use the phrase "I feel" or "I just feel like" instead of "I think that"? It is increasingly prevalent these days, and essentially omnipresent at universities such as my alma mater, Tufts.

Such usage is, of course, blatantly incorrect according to the English language, but given that I am as subject to colloquialisms as the next guy (my favorite is "not for nothin'"), it is not right to tackle this one from that angle.

What does deserve commentary, however, is the cause of which I cannot help but believe that such usage is one of many effects. What would cause a few people, eventually followed by much of the rest of society, to express that they have a thought or opinion by using the word "feel"? It must be a growing ethos of practiced sensitivity in society.

It was at Tufts that I figured out that it was the sensitivity encouraged by the overwhelmingly liberal atmosphere that prompted the usage. After all, sensitive people, especially in a place such as a post-modern university, consider their feelings to be of very high, if not the highest, importance. For some people, it is their defining characteristic. So, when they come up with an idea in which they see truth, it is more a part of them and their feelings than just some thought. In other words, they don't just think an idea to be true in some corner of their brains. They feel it to be true. Does this indicate some odd confusion on their part? Perhaps. Perhaps some people just use "feel" when they are not too sure of an idea, or when they cannot back it up with any sophisticated thought process.

This last group of people is especially prone to using "I feel like" or "I just feel like," increasing the vagueness of their attachment to the thought, and further abdicating any real responsibility for it. Incidentally, the "like" part of the usage can also, conceivably, be traced back to a leftist influence. According to some schools of thought, almost all of which are decidedly leftist, thoughts and ideas, especially those that do not concern the implementation of socialism, have no substance or meaning. They are passing illusions created by the society in which we live, and which distract us from the task of rebuilding society according to this or that utopian vision. Using "feel" instead of "think" is a step towards acknowledging that leftist notion, and adding "like" to the usage increases the vagueness, distance, and impact of the idea being put forth. The speaker has an emotion (which is necessarily ephemeral) that sort of convinces him of some notion that is kind of like the one that he is putting forth.

But perhaps I am going way out on a limb with that last assessment.

In any event, most people who employ the usage are obviously not convinced of any leftist ideas. At this point, the prefacing of thoughts and opinions with "I feel (like)" has become just another colloquialism in many places, and people use it as such. But I wonder if it says anything about our society that a usage such as that one can become mainstream.

Notes on Portugal

As most of you know, I was on vacation last week and the week before. My first destination was Portugal, and the things that I encountered there warrant some commentary.

To be blunt: Don't go to Lisbon unless you simply must. I say this not only because it looks like the entire city hasn't seen a paint job in decades. The politics are just awful; it seems as though everyone in Lisbon is either a Nazi or a Bolshevik.

I will note right here that this only refers to Lisbon. The other places in Portugal that I visited (admittedly, none of them were cities) were beautiful, pleasant, and with nary a political object in sight.

Anyhow, you may rest assured that I do not exaggerate when I tell you that in Lisbon, on most streets, including major boulevards and plazas (in fact, especially major boulevards and plazas), there were banners every fifteen yards or so advertising for the Coligação Democrática Unitária (Unitarian Democratic Coalition), or CDU. On the bottom of the banners, as on their website, appeared the initials and logos of the two parties that form the coalition: the Partido Ecologista (Ecologist Party), or PE, and the Partido Comunista Português (Portuguese Communist Party), or PCP. Those of you interested enough to visit the links that I post here will note that the PCP's logo, which both the PCP and the CDU bandy about proudly, is the very same hammer and sickle that the Soviets used. In other words, every few feet on many streets (including most boulevards and squares) in Lisbon, there was a Soviet hammer and sickle flying around. In other words, the Soviet logo is mainstream in Lisbon.

Indeed, according to Wikipedia, the CDU won just over seven-and-a-half percent of the votes in Portugal's 2005 national elections, and eleven percent of the votes in local elections that same year. Which is to say that about a tenth of the population of a modern Western democracy recently voted for people who proudly display the Soviet hammer and sickle.

Is this hitting home for anyone, or are our memories so short that this seems like an overreaction on my part?

Quite frankly, this political trend in Portugal is disgraceful and at least a little bit scary. A friend of mine, who is usually a tad more sensitive to socialism and communism, commented that ten percent isn't really all too much. I responded that it should be "red alert enough." The pun was unintended, but it fits quite nicely.

Earlier in this post, I mentioned that, in addition to Bolsheviks, Lisbon is filled with Nazis. Thankfully, the Nazis do not appear to actually be mainstream, although if those people are dumb enough to fall for the Soviet line, who knows what else they'll believe. Anyhow, spray-painted in many alleys, on much scaffolding, and on the occasional wall in the occasional plaza, one will encounter bold, patiently crafted swastikas. One of them was in the center part of a Jewish star, and a couple of the swastikas had an "X" spray-painted through them. The fact that the swastikas were spray-painted in disgusting alleys and such contrasted with the hammers and sickles, which were part of professional-looking banners placed prominently about the city.

Many of the swastikas had writing around them, not all of which was intelligible. However, one of them had a few lines of writing, the last of which, which was written in large letters, called for "ABORTION NOW!" or "LEGALIZE ABORTION!" (I forget which it was, but it was definitely one of those two.) Indeed, the real Nazis made eugenics a main plank in their party platform, and abortion was part and parcel of the eugenics movement. For a while, it was only to be found in that movement, and nowhere else. Margaret Sanger, who founded Planned Parenthood sometime around the 1920s, was popular for making speeches in which she boasted that, given the demographics that would likely get the most abortions if general access to them was increased, they would greatly reduce the Negro population. I am sad to report that Ms. Sanger has been proven correct on all counts.

But I digress. This is about Portugal, not abortion; Bolsheviks and Nazis, not Planned Parenthood. From what I saw, the swastikas might well have been the work of a major underground, or they might have been the work of a couple of punks. It's probably somewhere in between. However, before I ever read Wikipedia's (or anyone else's) statistics, I could see that the Bolshevik banners were without a doubt indicative of a major organization. I was not exaggerating when I described the banners' omnipresence; there were by far more CDU banners than all other political advertisements combined. How do Commies like that get such funding, presence, and popularity in a modern Western democracy? Heck, I thought that the occasional Che t-shirt at college was a major problem. What I saw in Lisbon was nothing short of ridiculous! I still have trouble believing that it was real - but, to be sure, it was.

I guess what I'm saying is, keep an eye on that corner of Iberia. Should the Communists see further victory in Portugal, it just might become a problem. Certainly stranger things have happened - worse things are a different story.

Plagues of the Mind

I have not yet finished Plagues of the Mind: The New Epidemic of False Knowledge by Bruce S. Thornton. But already, I can say that, barring utterly disastrous reasoning and writing in the final chapters (which is highly unlikely), it is an excellent book. Those seeking to understand the philosophical origins of the liberal mindset (if not of liberalism itself) need look no further.

I recently finished reading chapter four (of seven), entitled "Tragedy and Therapy." Having already discussed the problems with both extreme rationalism and extreme romanticism - that is, with the notions that science and technology can produce an earthly paradise, and that "feeling is all there is" - Thornton tackles the fusion of those two philosophies, which he refers to as the "'therapeutic' vision." In this vision, science (psychology) is employed to produce an earthly paradise defined as a society in which everybody is protected from anything that might make someone feel even the slightest discomfort. Thornton gives this vision the beating that it deserves. (Note: This chapter contains Thornton's own brilliant analysis, and is not at all a rehashing of the arguments presented in Christina Hoff Sommers' and Sally Satel's wonderful book, One Nation Under Therapy.)

Maybe it's just because I am personally fighting a battle against the censorial forces of political correctness at a major university right now, but I couldn't get enough of what Thornton had to say in "Tragedy and Therapy." Of course, his discussion of the universities' role in fostering the therapeutic vision by enforcing PC nonsense on their students is a small part of the chapter, but it was certainly as important as any other part. Here is an excerpt:

The cult of sensitivity that is increasingly being institutionalized on university campuses and in the sensitivity training industry promotes several varieties of pernicious false knowledge. It made infants of people, particularly college students, who are led to believe that the world should be a place where they will never feel bad or suffer disappointment, where they will be coddled and indulged and mothered, and where their already overinflated estimation of themselves will be continually reinforced. ... Eighteen-year-olds who can work, vote, drive, pay taxes, fornicate, procreate, and otherwise act as adults, get their hands held by phalanxes of counselors, facilitators, consultants, tudors, and even faculty. No one seems concerned about what will happen to these adults when they have to enter the real world and discover that it can be a cold, uncaring place where their anxieties and psychic fears are not the prime order of business.

You may trust that I did not just do what most book and movie commercials do: pick the best excerpt that I could find and portray it as representative of the entire work. There are many more such paragraphs in the chapter, and in the book as a whole. Many of them are arguably better than this excerpt, according to certain tastes.

The excert above, as you can see, is a discussion of the therapeutic vision's application to society. However, before describing a philosophy's practise, he engages the reader in a lengthy, in-depth exploration of its theories. Thornton (who has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and is a professor of Classics & Humanities) discusses each philosophy's history by citing prominent works of literature and other writings, from the time of the Greeks and Romans, through the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Enlightenment, up to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He notes how a given philosophy has developed and changed over time, how social developments and other philosophies have affected it, and how all of these factors produced the philosophy as it exists today. Then, Thornton will explain it in further detail to make sure that the reader actually understands the philosophy's theories, using examples where appropriate, before launching into criticism of it and its practical applications.

In other words, Plagues of the Mind is not just some partisan screed, but rather an intelligent, scholarly work, and Thornton provides the endnotes to prove it.

Chapter four marked the end of Part I of the book, "Of the Causes of Error." I very much look forward to Part II, "Of Three Popular and Received Ideas." Plagues of the Mind comes very highly recommended to everyone and anyone interested in politics, society/sociology, philosophy (including theology), and/or the classics.

Out to Lunch

Well, not lunch so much as international travel. You will experience a dearth of posts for a couple of weeks while I explore the Iberian Peninsula. I will resume posting as soon as I return.

Tufts University: Where Nobody Cares About Free Speech

A number of weeks ago, I made a post about a student at Tufts University, Andre Loli, who voiced the idea that a student publication at Tufts, The Primary Source, should be censored. I then promised a post about the context in which Loli made his case, and said that I would have it up in less than a week. Perhaps I just miss the ol’ college days, but I could not help but procrastinate about it. However, the travesty of Tufts University and The Primary Source is finally here.

The Primary Source, Tufts' student journal of conservative thought, has been punished by the University for publishing non-violent political speech that has been deemed unacceptable. Let me repeat that: Non-violent political speech has been deemed unacceptable. Even before the details are explained, this should strike the reader as anti-American. It is also anti-freedom, anti-open-mindedness, anti-tolerance, and anti-educational. At an esteemed, "progressive" institution of higher learning, no less. Let that sink in for a moment.

As a first-hand witness to everything (I was an editor of the Source for two years), I can tell you the story myself. For our final issue of 2006, which came out in December, we continued our long-standing tradition of printing Source carols. Source carols are parodies of Christmas carols and Chanukah songs, and are about politics or goings-on around campus. One issue that the Source perennially discusses is affirmative action, and it so happens that one of the carols that we published was on that topic. (Naturally, the magazine takes an opposing stance towards the racist admissions policy.) The carol was titled "O Come All Ye Black Folk," and went as follows to the tune of "O Come all Ye Faithful":

O Come All Ye Black Folk
Boisterous yet Desirable
O come ye, O come ye to our University
Come and we will admit you,
Born in to oppression;
O come let us accept them,
O come let us accept them,
O come let us accept them,
Fifty-two black freshman.

O Sing, gospel choirs,
We will accept your children,
No matter what your grades are, F's, D's, or G's,
Give them all privileged status;
We will welcome all.
O come let us accept them,
O come let us accept them,
O come let us accept them,
Fifty-two black freshman.

All come! Blacks, we need you, Born into the ghetto.
O Jesus! We need you now to fill our racial quotas.
Descendants of Africa, with brown skin arriving:
O come let us accept them,
O come let us accept them,
O come let us accept them,
Fifty-two black freshman.

Poorly written? Maybe. Negligently edited? Probably. In bad taste? Apparently. The end of the world? Hardly.

And yet, from the outcry sparked within the student body, one would think that the Source had invited the Klan to rally on campus. At the weekly meeting of the student senate after the issue came out, there was not even standing room. This was partially due to the news cameras that were present, but mostly due to the dozens upon dozens of students that came to express their outrage at the Source in a public forum. The whole thing took over an hour.

It would have been one thing if they came just to ask for an apology, or proclaim the umbrage that they had taken, or maybe even have a two-way discussion about it with the Source (six of whose members were present). But that wasn't the half of it. First of all, almost everything that the Source's detractors said was more rant than intelligent discourse. They delivered emotional, dramatic tantrums, and one student held up a copy of the Source and tore it down the middle. The wildest claims about us Sourcers being racists (which we are not) were just the foundation from which they took things to the next level. First there were general calls for sanctions against the Source. Then there were calls for each issue to be reviewed by some sort of diversity panel (read: censors) before going to print. Then there were calls for the entire magazine to be defunded. Then there were calls for it to be banished from campus. Then there were calls for the members of the Source to face punishment. One student suggested that we all be expelled.

All in the name of tolerance, diversity, liberalism, and open-mindedness. Huh.

The Source's response was the correct one. First, we explained that the piece was satire, and was written from the point of view of a Tufts admissions officer. Did the carol say disgusting, racist things? Of course - but the point was that not only do Source members not subscribe to those views, but that Source members think that people who do should be ridiculed for it. If I say the words, "The Nazis thought that all Jews should die," did I say that all Jews should die? Well, I did technically spell out those words, but it is hardly rational to ascribe that view to me on the sole basis of my one sentence. Similarly, the Source did technically spell out some horrible stereotypes in the carol, but inasmuch as the piece was satirical, it is inaccurate to ascribe those views to the magazine and/or its staff. We do not actually think that black people are boisterous, that they get failing grades, that they come from the ghetto, or any other such things. Rather, we were saying that Tufts' admissions officers must believe those things since they engage in affirmative action, and that as such, they should be ridiculed (i.e. by having a satirical carol written about them).

However, it is true, as I mentioned earlier, that the carol was not written or edited all too well. The bad writing obscured the satirical nature of the piece, and, subsequently, the point about affirmative action that it was trying to make. Therefore, it was not unreasonable that some people read it and got offended. So, we apologized for the writing and editing. And we should have apologized for that. The Source is better than that. We have always taken pride in our quality of product, in the time spent copy-editing every last detail of every last page, and so on. If we print something that shows a lack of talent or effort, then that is beneath us.

So, at this point, we had admitted that the carol could have been better written, explained our true intent, and apologized for our failure to prevent this great misunderstanding. There was no excuse for the whole thing not to have become a non-issue right there and then. Unfortunately, it is still an issue right now.

No significant further action was taken right away, but in January, towards the end of Winter Break, Lawrence Bacow (bacow@tufts.edu), the president of Tufts University, sent an e-mail to all students in which he tried to subtly link a student’s tragic suicide at the end of the Fall semester with the Source's carol. This letter may not have convinced people that the Source was responsible for someone’s death, but it did bring the whole thing back to the forefront of people's minds as they returned to campus for Spring semester. Had Bacow not sent his e-mail, the entire incident might have blown over completely after people spent so much time away from Tufts over the break.

Anti-Source sentiment through most of the Spring semester was varied and appeared randomly and sporadically until one black student, David Dennis, filed a formal complaint with the University against the Source. His specific charges were "harassment" and "creation of a hostile environment." Don't ask me how he can possibly mean that we created a hostile environment with the carol. It had something to do with making him feel unwelcome, thereby making it harder for him to do his schoolwork, or whatever. All I know for sure is that Dennis is an over-sensitive prick who, instead of bringing lawsuits as a means of enacting censorship, should have been seeing a therapist about his inability to get over something relatively insignificant.

However, absurd though Dennis’ charges may have been, they were by no means unpopular - and I do not refer merely to the general support that Dennis received from the student body. At about the same time that Dennis filed his charges, the Muslim Student Association's chapter at Tufts (MSA) brought its own suit against the Source. It made the exact same charges as Dennis, this time due to a piece that the Source published in April. The piece was a parody of flyers that the MSA put up for its pet project, Islamic Awareness Week. On its flyers, the MSA had a suggested itinerary of discussion points about Islam. Here is the full text of the Source's version:

Islam
Arabic Translation: Submission
In the Spirit of Islamic Awareness Week, the Source presents an itinerary to supplement the educational experience.

MONDAY: "I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them." – The Koran, Sura 8:12

Author Salman Rushdie needed to go into hiding after Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeni declared a fatwa calling for his death for writing The Satanic Verses, which was declared "blasphemous against Islam."

TUESDAY: Slavery was an integral part of Islamic culture. Since the 7th century, 14 million African slaves were sold to Muslims compared to 10 or 11 million sold to the entire Western Hemisphere. As recently as 1878, 25,000 slaves were sold annually in Mecca and Medina. (National Review 2002)

The seven nations in the world that punish homosexuality with death all have fundamentalist Muslim governments.

WEDNESDAY: In Saudi Arabia, women make up 5% of the workforce, the smallest percentage of any nation worldwide. They are not allowed to operate a motor vehicle or go outside without proper covering of their body. (Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2001)

Most historians agree that Muhammed’s second wife Aisha was 9 years old when their marriage was consummated.

THURSDAY: "Not equal are those believers who sit and receive no hurt, and those who strive and fight in the cause of Allah with their goods and their persons. Allah hath granted a grade higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to those who sit. Unto all Hath Allah promised good: But those who strive and fight Hath He distinguished above those who sit by a special reward." – The Koran, Sura 4:95

The Islamist guerrillas in Iraq are not only killing American soldiers fighting for freedom. They are also responsible for the vast majority of civilian casualties.

FRIDAY: Ibn Al-Ghazzali, the famous Islamic theologian, said, "The most satisfying and final word on the matter is that marriage is form of slavery. The woman is man’s slave and her duty therefore is absolute obedience to the husband in all that he asks of her person."

Mohamed Hadfi, 31, tore out his 23-year-old wife Samira Bari’s eyes in their apartment in the southern French city of Nimes in July 2003 following a heated argument about her refusal to have sex with him. (Herald Sun)

If you are a peaceful Muslim who can explain or justify this astonishingly intolerant and inhuman behavior, we’d really like to hear from you! Please send all letters to
tuftsprimarysource@gmail.com.

I implore you, my patient readers, to note that what you just read are facts about Islam. Facts. Not ideas. Not philosophy. Not commentary. Just facts.

Students were not the only ones to react strongly against the Muslim piece. President Bacow weighed in again, this time in the form of a Viewpoint in The Tufts Daily. It's one of those things that is so shocking that you are just going to have to read it for yourself, as no amount of commentary from me can accurately portray it for what it is. Fortunately, Matthew Gardner-Schuster, Editor-in-Chief of the Source, countered with his own excellent Viewpoint. I know that I am taking up enough of your time with this post as it is, but you are strongly encouraged to read those two Viewpoints.

Enough digression; we have a courtroom drama to explore. Of course, it was hard to feel any dramatic tension while sitting through the damn thing for six hours - numbness of mind and body is more like how it felt - but I assure you, dear reader, you will not be bored by the following true tale of what happened at the double hearing of David Dennis v. The Primary Source and Muslim Student Association v. The Primary Source.

The first thing that you need to know is that the hearing, which took place on April 30, 2007, was conducted by the Committee on Student Life (CSL), which called the hearing after receiving the formal complaints from Dennis and the MSA. Normally, CSL, which is comprised of students and faculty, acts as a sort of appeals court to the student judiciary, but there are certain exceptions, with which I am not very familiar. In any case, CSL was the body that originally tried the case. It was headed by Prof. Barbara Grossman (Barbara.Grossman@tufts.edu), whose husband, Steven Grossman, is a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a former Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Massachusetts. Others present included Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman (Bruce.Reitman@tufts.edu), University Counsel Dickens Mathieu (Dickens.Mathieu@tufts.edu), and the rest of CSL. Dennis represented himself; Shirwac Mohamed, president of the MSA, represented that organization; and Editor Emeritus Douglas Kingman and Editor-at-Large Jordan Green represented the Source with the help of nationally syndicated writer and Harvard Law student Benjamin Shapiro. (Shapiro actually gave the Source's closing statements.) The sequence of events was:

1) Opening Statements (Dennis, then MSA, then Source)
2) Witnesses (Dennis’, then MSA’s, then Source’s); each witnesses was first questioned by he who called him, then by the opposing side, and finally by CSL
3) Direct questioning of opposing side (Dennis, then MSA, then Source)
4) Questioning of everyone by CSL
5) Closing statements (Source, then Dennis, then MSA)

It is not necessary to describe all of what was actually said at the hearing. Suffice it to say that the plaintiffs and their witnesses droned on and whined incessantly about how offensive the Source was. Instead of presenting a good, solid, coherent, or even relevant case against our magazine, they only acted like self-righteous, immature toddlers telling on a playmate for being mean. If I were to most accurately express the true extent to which they blithered on about how the Source committed various "bias incidents" instead of saying anything significant or relevant, then I would redundantly explain things for another six or seven paragraphs. The only reason that I refrain from doing so is that this post is long enough as it is.

There was, however, one plausibly coherent argument made by the plaintiffs. Even if the Source is protected by free speech, they said, the student body should not have to pay for it. It is true that the Source is funded by the Student Activity Fee (SAF). Every year, a small fraction of each student’s tuition money goes to the SAF, which funds all of the student groups on campus, including publications such as the Source. The budgeting of that money is overseen by the student treasury, which is comprised of a few student senators elected by the rest of the senate for that post.

The plaintiffs’ fiscal argument is not actually stupid, as are their other arguments. However, it is still without merit. First of all, there is a great variety of student groups on campus in terms of politics, philosophy, religion, race, culture, etc. (Lists of student groups appear here and here.) If a student group could be defunded (effectively shutting it down in most cases) because there exists a student offended by it, Tufts would be left with little more than the chess club. They may just be going after the Source now, because we are more widely hated and our "offensiveness" is a little more overt, but as I told Source detractor Andre Loli:

Once the doors of censorship are opened, it is myopic, if not wholly stupid, to think that they will be passed through only the one time. It is hard to tell who will be next, but unless you are interested in eschewing objective reason and taking one side against another within the forum of identity politics, it really should not matter.

There is also a legal argument that, ironically, came from the plaintiffs themselves. The plaintiffs insisted that when they applied to and matriculated at Tufts, they were told that Tufts takes a strong stand against bias and offensiveness, and so Tufts had to live up to its promise. First of all, Tufts said the same thing about supporting free speech, so those two effectively cancel each other out in this particular contest. But also, students applied to and matriculated at Tufts with the implicit understanding that opportunities relating to student life would continue as before, and that they, as Tufts students in good standing, would have every opportunity to avail themselves of those privileges. The student judiciary duly recognized The Primary Source in 1982 as a legitimate student publication in which campus conservatives could engage in opinion journalism, and any tuition-paying student in good standing, therefore, has every right to avail himself of the opportunity that that provides. To defund the Source, in other words, is to unfairly and unduly punish those students who are a part of it.

In any event, the hearing itself was a kangaroo court. That is not an exaggeration. That is not mere commentary. That is not "just my take" on it. It was absolutely a kangaroo court, and even those who oppose the Source on every count should be able to recognize that fact if they are honest with themselves. First of all, the audience was rowdy. More people showed up at the hearing than at the student senate meeting a few months earlier, and the difference was composed entirely of Source detractors. Grossman told the audience before the proceedings began that "this is a hearing... this is not a performance" and that it must not make a ruckus. Of course, it did anyway, and Grossman did nary a thing about it. Every time that Dennis, Mohamed, or one of their witnesses got riled up and said some smart-ass, self-righteous thing in a smart-ass, self-righteous tone, which was often, the audience would be brought to the brink of bursting out in cheer and applause. A number of times, it could not help but go over that brink.

This was unfair to the Source for the nebulous reason that it created an environment that made Dennis and Mohamed feel confident and collected, and Kingman and Greene feel unconfident and tense. More concrete, however, is the fact that the audience’s behavior put undue pressure on CSL to favor the plaintiffs, both during the hearing and during the deliberation. More concrete still is the fact that the audience’s behavior lent undue credence to Dennis’ and Mohamed’s argument that everybody is angry with and offended at the Source, and wants to see it brought to justice. I believe that most of the campus (over 5000 undergraduates), while not pleased with our publication, disagreed with the plaintiffs’ actions and aims. It’s just that supporters of Dennis and the MSA (about a couple hundred people) packed the large room to a brim, while the only people present who supported the Source were us Sourcers ourselves and a couple of our very close friends. In other words, the audience’s behavior skewed everyone’s perception of the campus’ overall opinion because it was not a representative sample of the campus as a whole.

Another way that it was a kangaroo court was the behavior of the panel. It is to be expected that the plaintiffs and their witnesses had only absurd things to say, but CSL itself was ridiculous. As a preface to her first question to the Source, Barbara Grossman went on for a while about how proud she is of her son for joining the Anti-Defamation League, which, she assured us, responds to bias incidents against all groups of people, not just one specific group. Whether or not that’s true is irrelevant: What the heck was she doing glorifying the kind of thinking that forms the bedrock of the premise of one side of the case over which she was presiding? Soon thereafter, Grossman asked a question about one of the Source's defenses - that we were contributing to, and therefore encouraging, discussion of important issues (affirmative action and the role of militant Islamism in the world, respectively). Only, she didn’t ask us what we meant, or to elaborate, or anything; actually, she asked, "Isn’t that like spray-painting a swastika on the side of a synagogue, and then claiming that you were only trying to spark dialogue about anti-Semitism?" Maybe it’s just me, but comparing the publication of satire and politically incorrect facts with vandalism and Naziism seems to betray a fair amount of bias on the part of the panel. It wasn’t just Grossman, either. Dean Reitman asked some one-sided, baited questions, as did some others. What makes all of those questions even more striking is the fact that CSL barely asked one such question to the two plaintiffs. I think that the hardest question that the plaintiffs received was a request to elaborate on exactly how the Source's pieces in question affected them psychologically. (The plaintiffs claimed, in keeping with their charges of harassment and creation of a hostile environment, that the offensiveness of the Source's pieces caused them to be too troubled to do their school work and function normally.)

There was, of course, more provable evidence of the CSL's bias against the Source, which came in the form of procedural bias. Two such incidents stick out in my mind. The first involved a dispute about subpoenas. At one point during his time to ask questions of the Source, Shirwac Mohamed asked if he could ask questions of Matthew Gardner-Schuster, who was in the audience, and was in fact in the front row. (Mr. Gardner-Schuster, remember, was Editor-in-Chief of the Source when the anti-Islamism piece was published, and is still EiC right now.) Dickens Mathieu, University Council, said the questioning should be allowed. Then, one person in the audience, Ford Adams, a friend of the Source, jumped up and said that, according to Tufts’ handbook on the university’s judicial process, subpoenas were not permitted. Indeed, Gardner-Schuster was on neither the panel nor the witness list. Nonetheless, Mathieu maintained his position, stating that even though Gardner-Schuster was not a part of the formal proceedings, his participation in the questioning did not count as a subpoena because he was not called in from a distant location and the hearing did not have to cease to wait for his arrival. Gardner-Schuster was five feet away from the tables at which the hearing took place, with no barrier separating him from them, and he could in fact be brought a microphone and answer Mohamed’s questions without getting up from his seat. Adams countered with the argument that his physical distance from the hearing was irrelevant; Gardner-Schuster was not formally a part of the proceedings, and both he and the Source are protected from his suddenly and without warning being made a part of them, especially since it would be at the pleasure of the opposing side of the case. Mathieu insisted that his own argument was still correct, and that Mohamed could question Gardner-Schuster. At this point, Adams sat down, but Kingman, one of the Source's representatives at the hearing, stood up and countered with a point of his own. Apparently, Kingman had earlier requested to question Mathieu himself, and was refused the request on the grounds that subpoenas were not allowed. Why then, Kingman wanted to know, was Gardner-Schuster being subpoenaed, when Mathieu was able to avoid the same fate even though he was both physically and procedurally closer to the hearing? Mathieu ignored the point completely, and simply insisted that he had "made his ruling." (Technically, it was Grossman’s ruling to make, but she had indicated in the middle of the argument that she would defer to whatever decision Mathieu made.)

The other example of procedural bias against the Source is even more concrete than the first. Consider the sequence of events described above. Each side had ten minutes for each item on the list (except for the CSL panel, which took as much time as it pleased). When it came to witnesses, each side was allowed to call up to four of them. This seems fair at first. However, after the initial, cursory glance, one recalls the fact that there were three sides to the case: Dennis, the MSA, and the Source. So, for example, while Dennis was allowed ten minutes to question the Source, and the MSA was allowed another ten minutes of its own to question the Source, the Source had a total of ten minutes to question both sides. In other words, for each of the two cases in which it was being tried, the Source had five minutes to question an opponent that had had ten minutes to ask its own questions.

So, after the trial ended, students went home to await the verdict. It came nine days later. (I am having trouble uploading the PDF file of the verdict online, but please do not be shy about e-mailing me at Daniel.Mencher@yahoo.com and asking for a copy of it.) To nobody’s surprise, the Source was guilty on all four counts (harassment and creation of a hostile environment for both Dennis and the MSA). The punishment was something that Mohamed specifically asked for: The Source is now required to print individual authors’ names on every page that it publishes. (Dennis’ specific request was that the Source be defunded. Shocking.)

On the one hand, the punishment must seem quite minor and perhaps even reasonable. The two items that triggered the lawsuit were, in fact, anonymous. But a closer examination reveals that the punishment is unjust.

First of all, the Source had explained countless times - several times at the senate meeting, in press releases, in response to individual questioning, and several times at the hearing itself - that any unsigned material that we publish is the editorial opinion of the Source. Far from being unheard of, having unsigned content representing "editorial opinion" is practiced by many other publications ranging from The Tufts Daily to The New York Times. Every issue of the Source from the past decade or two has had a handful of pages with such anonymous content. Also, every time that the Source explained that point, we were sure to also mention that the Editor-in-Chief of a given issue, whose name is always prominently displayed in every copy of the magazine, takes full responsibility for all unsigned content in that issue. So, the plaintiffs and CSL had individual Sourcers openly willing to answer for the carol, for the Muslim page, and for any other anonymous content - past, present, and future - with which they took issue. Why was that not good enough for them? For that matter, why was Mohamed so interested in knowing the very individual who made that page in the first place?

As it happens, there is no individual who made that page, and this is why the punishment levied by CSL’s verdict is a real burden for the Source. Things such as articles, obviously, have one author. But special sections are all collective efforts. At least two or three people participate in the design and production of any such section. Then, it will be printed out, and the page will be edited and copy-edited by about five or six people. One of those people will make the appropriate changes on the computer template of the page and print it out again. Later, some more people might look over the page and make some more changes. Sometimes, people will just make the changes on the computer without announcing it to anyone or leaving a paper trail. Finally, the Editor-in-Chief must approve all content before it is published, and this is usually decided with the advice of his managing editors. Occasionally, approval is granted only as long as some changes are made, and it is not always one of the original designers or editors of the page who is tasked with making those changes. Obviously, to list the author or designer of a special section would be an imprecise, unwieldy burden on the Source. And all of this is not even to mention the fact that it would take up a lot of space on a page that we would rather devote to further content!

Furthermore, the punishment does not fit the "crime," so to speak. There was a mistaken notion that, though not mentioned out loud, pervaded the arguments of the plaintiffs and their witnesses, the questions of the panel, and the hearing in general. That notion is that the Source should be punished for being offensive. However, one cannot bring a general, nebulous suit against a publication for being offensive, even at Tufts. One must have specific charges relating to specific incidents. The charges in each case were harassment and creation of a hostile environment. If Tufts just wanted to get away with some punishment to tick off the Source because it doesn’t like us, then making us put a name on every page when we do not want to is a good way to frustrate us. However, that is not CSL’s official purpose. It’s purpose, once it has found the Source guilty, is to apply a fitting and appropriate remedy and/or punishment relevant to the specifics of the case. Making us put a name on every page is irrelevant to creation of a hostile environment and to harassment alike, and does nothing to mitigate those situations for their victims. Therefore, we have every reason to conclude that the punishment is simply meant to frustrate the Source for publishing content that the CSL, along with the plaintiffs, finds disagreeable.

I would tell you how it all turned out in the end, but the end has not yet occurred. The Primary Source has officially appealed the case to Dean James Glaser (James.Glaser@tufts.edu), and we are still eagerly awaiting his decision.