Just a memory of sitting under the apple tree in my backyard when I was a boy.

Woods

knee-high brown meadow grass with coronal distortions in the vertiginous brilliant midday sun - 

glowing, oozing nectar-like

I am certain that if I walk through the meadow to the woods the viscous penumbral glow will rub off onto my legs, a splendid solar stain to carry under the dark tree and brush-thatched canopy, down the barely visible stairs and past the cistern our small hands started to unearth,
the signifier of organized life slipping past memory into the black, vegetal soil
perhaps refusing to decay into oblivion
perhaps wishing it could dissolve into rest...
but I do not even know if I will leave the shadow of the apple tree
and the opioid effects of the languid July afternoon
leave me perched deliciously on the cusp of indecision

The Content of Their Character

I attended my son's holiday program at Milwaukee French Immersion School last night, December 18, 2012. I would be remiss if I failed to mention the beautiful voices and faces of the children who performed with joy, humor, seriousness, shyness, silliness, and pride. I would also be remiss if I did not mention how pleasurable it was to watch my son sing "Une Souris Verte" with a smile on his face after having been serenaded with the same song for nearly every night of the past three weeks while the boy showered.

In addition to the usual slightly chaotic wonderfulness that these holiday concerts invariably bring to those of us who are proud parents, I also witnessed something extraordinary. I saw 400+ students from every economic strata, every color, every creed singing and goofing and smiling as if this were the most normal thing in the world. I saw public servants who have been abused and accused, who by all rights out to be beleaguered and defeated, leading the kids in their performances with verve and passion and joy, indifferent to everything except their charges, to whom they gave themselves utterly. I saw our young interns from France and Canada earnestly leading songs and helping direct the kids in spite of their incipient coolness which, it seems to me, is a necessary adjunct of being young and French. I saw beaming fathers and proud mothers hugging their sons and daughters after the concert and I felt a general sense of bonhomie among what is surely the most diverse crowd in which I have ever found myself.

What I saw made me think of Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech delivered nearly 50 years ago on the footsteps of the Lincoln Memorial and I thought to myself that if anyone wants proof that Dr. King's dream was not merely a dream but is in fact possible they should come visit Milwaukee French Immersion School where they would witness the dream actualized. They would see a staff that believes in the equality of educational opportunity and responsibility. A staff that refuses to kowtow to the bigotry of low expectations. A staff that looks on the faces of their students and sees not the color of their skin but rather the content of their character. They would see a playground segregated by friendships that are unrelated to race. They would see students of every background and experience mixing together, sharing and learning from one another (more often than not in a wholly positive way). They would see what happens when a group of people share a common goal to give every kid in school the best possible education and a common expectation that every kid should be subject to the same requirements and demands.

While Milwaukee French Immersion School is not in Alabama, they would see what happens when children of every color and creed are given the opportunity to join hands. They would see what Dr. King's stone of hope looks like when it has been hewed from the mountain. They would hear what Dr. King's beautiful symphony of brotherhood sounds like in the voices of the children on the playground. And from this little hamlet in the middle of Milwaukee, Wisconsin they would see what it means to be free at last and they would see how normal that freedom is for the kids when by example and instruction we teach them to expect nothing less.

Ethical Behavior and Liberalism

The problem of being human is that we live in an actual world.  To judge whether particular behavior is ethical, we must judge the actual behavior in terms of the actual world.  Hence, the platitudes of the ideal must be discarded in favor of the practical.  The liberal perspective on the world grapples with the arrest of thought that arises when the ideals of liberalism confront the absurdities that result from consistent application of principles under any circumstance.  This is especially true regarding the liberal fealty to the idea of tolerance.

'Tolerance,' as a general behavioral guide, makes good sense and is wholly defensible.  I can persuasively argue that society and the individual function best when we tolerate differences between members of society so long as a particular behavior of a person or group does not cause great harm to other members of society.    If we accept that persons have rights of autonomy and self-determination, then persons must be free to exercise those rights.  Persons will not be free to exercise their rights of autonomy and self-determination unless formal rules require persons to be tolerant of other persons' behavior.  The formal rules have been present since the founding of the Republic and do not reflect some sort of touchy-feely political correctness.  The First Amendment is the most prominent example of a formal rule requiring that we tolerate certain behavior.  The Constitution is littered with other instances of rules requiring tolerance between citizens.  The Commerce Clause of Article 1 is another example of the Constitution formalizing tolerance through the elimination of trade barriers between states.  Most would agree that such minimum levels of tolerance are necessary for a functioning civil society.

The problem with the idea of tolerance arises when it is applied as an absolute rule to be followed in every circumstance.  The First Amendment offers a good example of the absurdities that can result when we do not follow a pragmatic approach to the application of tolerance as a behavioral guide.  The courts in the United States frequently limit speech that the First Amendment would otherwise seem to protect.  Hence, the court differentiates between political speech, to which it affords the highest protection, and commercial speech, to which it has generally afforded the lowest protection.  The courts recognize that the First Amendment, despite its language, is not an absolute prohibition on regulating speech because to do so would be untenable and would lead to absurd results in practice.  Hence, the First Amendment does not protect a person who yells 'fire' in a crowded theater.

In the context of political speech, the formulation for determining what speech is protected has been variously described as 'clear and present danger' or 'inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or cause such action.'  The words may change, but the analysis the court engages in is essentially an ad hoc judgment of whether the speech is intended to cause actual physical harm and is likely to do so.  Precedent and common notions of acceptability guide the courts' decision-making process.  American courts have a remarkably high level of tolerance for offensive and hateful speech that could be regulated in most other countries.  Nevertheless, American courts place a limit on the freedom of speech based on a pragmatic analysis of the effect of the speech in the context of the historical levels of tolerance Americans have had for expression.

The point is that even a doctrine shaped by an Enlightenment notion of freedom and tolerance is not absolute in practice.  While the issues in free speech cases are often thorny and difficult to resolve, we do resolve them without throwing up our hands and simply sanctioning all speech.  No one with a hint of seriousness about them would suggest that American courts somehow fail by not interpreting the First Amendment in absolute terms.  As noted above, we live in an actual world in which we have to make practical judgments about whether actual behavior is acceptable.

The context of the First Amendment is a useful example of how a liberal idea of tolerance is actually applied to protect the core principle of free speech without reaching absurd results.  The example can be expanded to demonstrate how Liberalism can and should judge whether behavior is ethical.  We must first abandon the idea that perfect ideational consistency is virtuous.  Again, easy examples abound.  No one doubts that as a general principle lying is bad.  It is equally true that no one doubts that in the particular case of Anne Frank and her family, her father's gentile employees were right to lie to the authorities and hide the Frank family.  If we are to cling to perfect ideational consistency as a necessary condition of ethical principles, then lying under any circumstance would have to be judged unethical.

For most persons, the Anne Frank example is not particularly difficult as most persons would agree that lying is generally bad but that there are circumstances when lying is necessary.  Most persons have little difficulty with the Anne Frank example because their response to the ethical nature of lying is guided by the practical.  Most persons are not necessarily wholly instrumentalist in their ethics, but neither are they relativist.  If you ask most persons about ethical behavior generally, they will espouse general principles or platitudes to describe their own conception of ethical behavior; however, most persons will not think it a deficit in their conception of ethical behavior to deviate from general principles when specific circumstances require it.

The same should be true of any analysis of ethical behavior from a Liberal point of view.  If we lived elsewhere than the world, perfect consistency of general principles with actual behavior might be possible.  We live in the world, however, so perfect consistency of general principles with actual behavior is simply not possible.  Conduct, actual behavior, occurs in specific contexts that do not conform to any principles.  An ethical conundrum that arises in practice is a conundrum because it requires the application of general principles to a particular situation may implicate different principles and lead to absurd results if fealty to the general principles is demanded.  We need to recognize that a pragmatic response to an ethical conundrum or dilemma does not diminish general ethical principles.  Rather, the general principles that inform our notion of ethical behavior still serve as a guide to reaching the best possible result when faced with an ethical conundrum.

How can this be so?  The principles of Liberal ethics generally promote human flourishing.  Under this rubric comes the utilitarian principle of maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain.  So too does the concept of personal autonomy in the Liberal tradition fall under the rubric of promoting human flourishing.  Essentially, the Liberal thinker recognizes or argues that the best manner for achieving human flourishing in the world is through the application of Liberal principles to civil society.  While Liberal principles may represent the most effective means of achieving human flourishing, the principles are means to achieving human flourishing.  As such, they are not ends in themselves and do not have independent value apart from their tendency to maximize human flourishing.

When faced with an ethical conundrum, the only approach that squares with the Liberal notion of ethics is to follow the course of action the is most likely to achieve human flourishing in the actual situation in which the decision must be made.  This may require deviating from a Liberal principle in a particular situation without abandoning the principle in general terms.  Thus, we should strive for tolerance, but not at the expense of human flourishing.  We should strive for truthfulness, but not at the expense of human flourishing.  This is not a diminution of Liberal ethics but rather an affirmation of its power.  Simply because we do not allow a person to yell 'fire' in a crowded theater or because we condone lying to protect the lives of a Jewish family does not mean our ethics fail.  To the contrary, the ability to maintain adherence to general ethical principles in the way one lives while acting to promote the end that the principles are designed to achieve in particular circumstances demonstrates the strength of our ethics.

The Joy of Learning (An Unavoidably Sentimental Comment)

Last night I reread some of Christopher Hitchens' essays from the collection Arguably.  I specifically reread book reviews of books about Stalinism and Hitler.  Obviously the subject is not one conducive to lyricism, but Hitchens' prose moved me on a number of occasions with its clarity, cleverness, and pithiness.  I found myself reading and rereading certain passages over an over, marveling at the manner in which Hitchens conveyed not only information in a conventional sense but also information in a more complete sense, which includes wit and affect and a unique voice.

I suppose the cliche is that Hitchens achieved sublimity in these passages (which I will have to reproduce later when I have access to the book), which seems a trite way to describe what I felt when reading them.  Perhaps I can write what I felt without recourse to third party categorizations or tepid taxonomies.

The words cascade.  That is what it feels like.  A waterfall washing over my consciousness.  But the waterfall does not cleanse.  It adheres to me, but the waterfall still cascades, even as it adheres.  My consciousness opens, basin-like, to receive the words and what they mean and I gorge myself on them and I gorge myself on the meaning and I gorge myself on the feeling, how they feel to me and how they make me feel and the basin expands or maybe becomes porous allows other thoughts in so what I know and what I read mix in the swirling pool, boiling, bubbling, exhilarating, growing, until things calm in the moment of reflective awareness that indicates the full import of the thing learned and not just the ideational content, but the full import, the affective experience, the visceral excitement, the thrill of discovery, the aesthetic pleasure...

Even the moment of reflective awareness brings satisfaction unlike any other, a satisfaction that can only be gotten in the context of receiving something new from the written word, from the well-written word that captures cleverness and gravity and humor and tragedy in an irreducible manner that isn't so much intellectual as it is felt, that exceeds the representational pretensions of language as we have been taught it is to be understood, that is simply good because of the unconquerable sense of freedom and accomplishment the self-reflective moment of awareness gives the reader, an insuperable moment that cannot be denigrated or denuded, destroyed or defaced, a moment unique in its invincible ipseity, given in the communion of the word and the mind, the willingness to embrace the new, to reconcile the new with the known, to accept that the new and the known fuse into an expanded you...

This is something like what I felt reading those sublime passages in Hitchens, which I can only describe as the joy of learning and for which I remain unrepentantly sentimental.

Public Goods - Education

"We need to run it like a business."

I am not sure from where the attraction to this viewpoint of the best means of managing public goods comes considering how short-sighted and wrong-headed the viewpoint is.  As the parent of a child in the Milwaukee Public School system, I encounter statements like this regarding the best way to manage public education.  One of the reasons persons voice this view so vociferously in Milwaukee is the existence of the school choice program.  Having gotten a foothold in the public education system, those who would privatize it entirely regularly clamor about public education's failings, the need to give students a 'choice' in their education, and the virtues of private enterprise as an education model, particularly the notion of competition. I believe that some proponents of privatizing public education legitimately believe that doing so will improve the quality of education for Milwaukee students.  However, many proponents of privatization care little for the quality of education students actually receive and primarily care about limiting the role of government in society.  For this cohort, any reduction in government administration of public education is virtuous regardless of the outcome for the students.

We know from the experience of the Milwaukee voucher program that introducing 'competition' to the public education market is not the panacea that has been promised.  In fact, the measured results demonstrate that introducing competition into the education market has done nothing to improve the educational outcome of students who have opted out of public education in favor of voucher schools.  The plain fact is that voucher schools perform no better than their public school counterparts on standardized testing.

Even if voucher schools outperformed public schools, that would not necessarily be definitive proof that a private enterprise model is appropriate for elementary and secondary education.  Education is fundamentally different from private enterprise so long as we cling to the tenet that every child is entitled to an education that meets agreed on standards.  The private enterprise model, or the free market, involves a constant churning of enterprises striving to meet the needs of consumers in order to stay afloat.  Most businesses that are started end up failing to sell enough products or services to stay afloat and fail within a relatively short period of time.  Contrary to this constant churning, the public education system commits to educating every student regardless of ability.  We do not allow the education system to churn over failures and let them fend for themselves.  If a child does not meet the accepted standards, the public education system does not cast them out of the system.  Instead, the public education system must continue to educate the child.

The private enterprise system would not be appropriate for elementary and secondary education unless it would be required to educate every student, regardless of ability, just as the public education system.  If this requirement were imposed on a private education system, it would cease to function as a free market.  Competition alone would not guide the success of the system because, like the public education system, the private education system could not simply drop failing students out of the system.  So a student who misses 50% of the school days because of her family situation could not simply be forced out of a private school.  This student's lack of progress would have to be included in the educational outcome measurements of the private school in the same way that the student's lack of progress is included in the educational outcome measurements of the public schools.

One argument is that competition will help individual schools rather than individual students because under-performing or failing schools would be required to improve or they would be closed.  This argument has some virtues in that schools that are not performing up to accepted standards ought to be improved.  The problem is that in our system of educating every student, the students of a failing school that is closed would have to go somewhere else in the system.  If we grant equal access to education for all students, then no private school that is part of the public system and receives public funds should be able to turn away students that are required to find new schools as a result of their school being closed.  The law would have to mandate that private schools receiving public funds accommodate the students of failed schools to the same extent that public schools accommodate them.  If the law does not mandate this, then private schools operating in the public system and receiving public funds are fundamentally different from the public schools against which they compete.  Private schools would have a competitive advantage over public schools that would render the education market other than free.  The education market would not be like private enterprise because it would not be a fair competition between enterprises.

It may be that some hybridized public-private model actually can deliver better educational outcomes for all students than the strictly public model.  The problem is that there is no evidence that this is the case.  Another huge problem is that the private enterprise advocates have not adequately answered the question of whether and how the private school system will deliver an education to every child.  I suspect that the question has not been adequately answered because the private enterprise advocates know it is an impossible task to be held to the same mandates as the public system and achieve better results.  Delivering educational services to  poor children and children with disabilities is an enormously expensive proposition, both monetarily and in terms of time.  Private enterprise advocates have never been able to demonstrate how the private system would be able to overcome these hurdles any better than the public education system.  If we are using public funds to educate students, it seems only fair to me that we ought not allow education to be privatized unless it can be demonstrated that private education can deliver superior results to public education, for every student, regardless of any other arguments against using public funds to support private schools.

I have not even touched on the merits of running anything like a business, though this deserves some comments as well.  I personally would like the private enterprise advocates to state with clarity and precision which business the education system ought to be run like.  Enron?  Lehman Brothers?  Washington Mutual?  Even successful businesses fail.  Kodak was enormously successful for decades, but eventually failed.  General Motors failed.  American Airlines is failing.  This is to say nothing of the countless new businesses started every year in this country that do not make it past their first year.  Before we commit to running education like a business, it would be wise to consider which business we wish to run education like.  Enron?  Lehman Brothers?  Washington Mutual?  Do we want our education system to have the same failure rate as new businesses?  The bottom line is that running education like a business cannot guaranty it will produce better results than the current public system.  In fact, running education like a business cannot even guaranty any success if our current private enterprise system is the model.

Charity Is Not Enough

This post is incomplete, but I thought I would get it out here as a work in progress.  Comments are welcome.

I recently heard Paul Ryan giving an interview in which he talked about 'civil society' and during which he mentioned that charities and religious institutions should function as a social safety net rather than 'government.'  The problem with Ryan's view is that we have imperfect institutions at every level.  To shrink the role of government in the sphere of social welfare will not result in a corresponding increase in the level of social welfare that private institutions provide.  The question of social welfare is not an either/or proposition.  The reason the government increased its role in providing for the social welfare of the populace is that the private institutions of civil society were not adequately providing for the social welfare of the populace.  Government is by nature imperfect, but so are the institutions of civil society.

The defining characteristic of the institutions of civil society is their voluntary nature.  Citizens do not have to belong to a church or contribute to charity.  When citizens decide to belong to a church or contribute to charity, they can choose which church to join and to which charity they wish to contribute.  The nature of civil society requires that an individuals relations with its institutions be voluntary.  If the relationship is not voluntary, the institution ceases to be part of civil society and becomes a quasi-state actor.  The problem with the voluntary nature of civil society association is that no one institution will have the overarching concern for the social welfare of all as its primary focus or will not have the resources to provide social welfare for all.

A quick aside:  I accept the fact that actually providing for the social welfare of all is impossible in the real world.  We have competing social, commercial, and political interests that render any dream of providing for everyone Utopian.  The libertarian impulse will never fully be squelched, which is frankly a good thing.  There will always be a tension between public and private life that will require compromises in how the benefits and income of any given society is distributed.  The compromises may lean left or right, but regardless they will result in imperfect provision of social welfare benefits.  The goal should be to maximize the provision of social welfare benefits to minimize conditions of deprivation consistent with the core principles of social and individual responsibility.

Government occupies a unique position in society:  it is the one institution that has the capacity to require citizens to act or refrain from acting.  While we cleave to the principle of self-determination and hold dear the idea that the power of government comes from the people, we, as individuals, surrender our self-determination, at least in part, to the sovereignty of the state.  Government thus has the power to compel, the power of legislation and enforcement of the laws.  Having the power to compel action or inaction, government is the only institution in society that can effectively provide social welfare benefits to maximize the common good.  The preferences of voluntary association does not bind the government nor does ecclesiastical tenets limit the provision of government services.  In short, the government can look at society and use its powers of legislation and enforcement to limit the conditions of deprivation for all members of society.  Civil society lacks the power, authority, and capacity to do the same.

The Ryan idea seems to be that there is an inverse relationship between government and charities in terms of the provision of social welfare benefits.  There is also a Hobbesian aspect to Ryan's position which simply accepts that society has winners and losers, some of whom will endure conditions of privation.  The fact of the matter is that history demonstrates that no such inverse relationship exists.  The reason government became involved in the provision of social welfare benefits was the broad consensus that civil society did not and could not adequately provide for the poor and vulnerable in society.  The earliest progressive reforms like maximum hour laws, child labor laws, and worker's compensation laws exemplify the belief among a majority of Americans that civil society was not protecting poor and vulnerable citizens.  Coupled with the largess generated through the industrial revolution, government could legislate and enforce the provision of social welfare benefits for those whom civil society failed.  Surely some charitable and religious institutions scaled back their provision of social welfare benefits because of government intervention, but the gross level of benefits provided increased considerably when government intervened.  Charitable and religious institutions did not reduce their provision of social welfare benefits in direct proportion to the government intervention.

Government legislation and enforcement of the provision of social welfare benefits did not become the panacea many progressives and liberals wanted it to become.  Nevertheless, government provision of social welfare benefits certainly had net positive effects.  We err if we assume government provision of social welfare benefits fails when it does not achieve ideal results.  This would be like saying that a play failed because it only yielded a first down when the ideal result was a touchdown.  Incremental improvement in the actual lives of American citizens demonstrates that social welfare programs were and are effective.  Success or failure cannot be measured in absolute terms but rather ought to be judged based on the practical effects on the actual lives of citizens and residents.

When evaluating the role of government in providing social welfare benefits, we should use a reasoned approach to analyze the costs and benefits of a given program.  If the net benefits outweigh the costs, the program should be deemed a success.  We do, however, encounter persons who oppose any form of government provision of social welfare benefits.  Such persons should not deign to criticize the effectiveness of a given program unless they are willing to use a reasoned cost-benefit analysis.  If such persons criticize a program because of philosophical reasons, they should so state their objection and say no more unless they can demonstrate through reasoned analysis that a particular program has more costs than the benefits it provides.

Does Marriage Equality Portend Doom?

Slate.com had a piece a while back regarding the short term data trends following the legalization of gay marriage.  According to the piece, in states that legalized gay marriage there is an immediate uptick in the marriage rate which captures gay couples that have waited for a long time to get married followed by a normalization of marriage rates that tracks the rate of heterosexuals marrying.  Divorce rates among homosexuals have tracked the heterosexual rates as well.  While the data stream is relatively short given that legalization is a recent phenomenon (Massachusetts was the first to legalize gay marriage in 2004), the data suggests that marriage equality does not impact the general rates at which persons marry.  The only notable effect appears to be that the number of marriages goes up simply because gay couples can and do get married.  The study obviously cannot track the wrath of an Old Testament God, but I suspect we are no closer to being turned into pillars of salt with marriage equality than without it.

So what is the big deal about marriage equality?  The question is a wholly normative one that results in the unpleasant intersection of two norms common to the American experience.  On the one hand we have the notion of freedom and equality under the law that has been enshrined as a norm in the American experience.  This norm causes us to embrace the expansion of personal freedoms.  In effect, it is the libertarian impulse in American life.  In essence, the libertarian impulse, whether causing a person to complain that the government shouldn't take something that he or she has "earned" or causing a person to complain that the government shouldn't tell us who we can and cannot marry, is the same.  On the other hand, Americans, like any other social beings, establish value and identity through group identification.  Hence, the conflict with the social conservatism of, typically, evangelical religious groups and evangelically religious-minded persons.

A third factor is the changing cultural experience of Americans.  When I was in high school and even college, an admittedly long time ago, homosexuality was a slur to be hurled.  Few persons outside of those who were gay or grew up with gay friends, relatives, or acquaintances would have thought twice about calling someone a 'fag' or describing something unpleasant as 'gay.'  I certainly used the terms with the regularity of my peers to express derision, displeasure, or derogation.  Like many persons, for me things changed along the way for cultural reasons as much as anything.

I needn't document the heroic efforts of LGBT activists to fight the prejudice levied against gay persons and to publicize the commonness of being gay.  In my own experience, I became more aware of the prevalence of gay persons in society as more persons came out.  In addition, I like to think my attitudes matured somewhat as I myself matured.  I also had a particular experience that altered my understanding of the struggles gay persons faced and changed my perspective forever.  I was working for a small law firm and one of the partners asked me to witness the signing of a will.  We had to witness the will in a hospital room because the person who made the will out was dying of AIDS.  The dying man's partner was at the signing, but he could not openly discuss his relationship with his dying beloved in the hospital because it was a Catholic hospital.

I witnessed more than a will signing that day.  First and foremost, I witnessed two persons in love at the very end of their relationship who could not share the simple act of a kiss or a hug or just holding hands.  This outraged my sense of justice but more importantly tugged at my humanity.  I walked out of the room a battered soul, thinking "who gives a shit if two men love one another?"  They ought to be spared the indignities of conventional morality (which was clearly immoral in this instance) and be allowed to love freely, to show their affection openly, to spend the last days of their lives together as they wished.  In such moments of greatest vulnerability the comfort of love is often the only bulwark we have that can assuage the terror and fear of leaving the world.  These two men, consenting adults, decent human beings, were denied the comfort that any other heterosexual couple would and does expect.  It became clear to me that no religious argument could ever convince me that two persons of the same sex should ever face impediments to their love, that allowing them to celebrate their love publicly, to enjoy the same rights and respect heterosexual couples have, would be in any way socially or morally deleterious.

While this was a watershed moment for me, I experienced what so many persons have experienced in the last 15-20 years or so as homosexuality became more public and more regular.  I developed acquaintances and friendships with gay persons.  I saw openly gay persons in public life, in business, and in social circles.  The one thing that became manifestly clear is that all of the gay persons I met were in fact, shocker here, just persons like any other.  Their sexual orientation was immaterial.  I care deeply for some gay persons, I dislike some gay persons, and I don't give much thought to most gay persons in the same proportion as persons who are not gay.  In effect, I came to view gay persons as persons whose sexual orientation was simply another attribute like brown hair or blue eyes.

And so I asked myself amid the furor of politics surrounding the equality of marriage movement, what is the big deal about gay marriage?  Nothing.  There is no big deal about gay marriage.  Gay marriage does not erode or diminish the 'institution of marriage' as is often stated by those who oppose it.  In fact, gay marriage actually makes the 'institution of marriage' stronger as it finally and irrevocably clarifies that marriage is about a voluntary, loving relationship between adults.  If we preclude same-sex couples from marrying, we actually diminish marriage because we accept that marriage is not about love and commitment.  Gay persons are as capable of love and commitment as heterosexuals.  The only thing that should matter when determining who is legally allowed to marry is whether the persons wishing to marry have reached the legal age of majority and possess the legal capacity of self-determination.  Once this threshold is met, there can be no valid reason for denying any two persons the right to marry.

Conservative religious types can cling to antiquated notions of morality and certainly have the freedom to do so in our republic, but they ought not to be able to use antiquated notions of morality to preclude consenting adults from exercising their freedom to love each other and to formalize their relationship with the marriage contract.  The world will not end if gays marry.  It has not ended in the states that allow gay marriage and it will not end if gay marriage is allowed everywhere in the United States any more than the world ended when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down anti-miscegenation laws in Loving v. Virginia.  To suggest that gay marriage portends doom for the 'institution of marriage' is simply wrong.  The only thing gay marriage might portend doom for is a normative stance that is patently immoral.  The norms that matter in America are freedom and equality under the law.  If this conflicts with a norm derived from religious teaching then the religious norm must give way.  Gay marriage is about equality, freedom, and respect.  If this dooms us, I accept this doom willingly and with open arms.

Toward Pragmatics

America spawned the philosophy known as 'pragmatism,' though it seems a forgotten relic if one reads the headlines about American politics on a regular basis.  While philosophical pragmatism makes specific claims on "truth," pragmatism as a practical philosophy is really more about a world view that accepts the notion that the right answer or best answer to any question is the one that works best under a given set of circumstances.  In this regard, pragmatism was a quintessentially American approach to the problems of the world because it eschewed dogmatism and idealism in favor of tangible or measurable results.

In the current political climate, the idea of adopting an approach to the problems we face that focuses on results over preconceived ideas about the problems we face is anathema.  I am reminded in particular of the vitriol in Wisconsin following Scott Walker's election to governor and the enactment of Act 10, which stripped public unions of many collective bargaining rights.  I found Act 10, and continue to find Act 10, to be abhorrent because I believe it will not solve budgetary problems in a productive manner.  Nevertheless, I felt like an outlier among liberals in thinking that Walker ought at least to have an opportunity to govern without recall and that I sincerely hoped that my disagreements with Act 10 would be proven wrong.  My preconceptions are such that I do not find credence in the notion that taking away power from labor and deregulating any given market will actually yield positive socio-economic growth for the majority of citizens.  It seems to me that the persuasive evidence is that the trickle down theory of economics has not yielded the tangible benefits its proponents promised.  However, I am not so prideful or convinced of my own infallibility that I would preclude the possibility that I could be wrong.

The problem we face is that few persons in the policy-making process are willing to adopt a pragmatic approach to policy problems.  While I feel liberals are more amenable to pragmatics than most persons who self-identify as conservative, the problem is not partisan.  Both sides of the aisle cling to a priori political 'truths' without regard for the practical effects of actual policy.  In structural terms, the federal deficit is a perfect example of the need for a more pragmatic approach.  The current Congress has a balance of power that makes effective legislation impossible without compromise.  Instead of seeking real world solutions that a majority of democrats and republicans could live with, each party in Congress draws lines in the sand that the party knows the other party cannot live with.  The result, as frequently pointed out, is that the current Congress is the least productive since 1947.  While gridlock may have the benefit of a certain negative stability, gridlock leaves pressing problems untouched.

The history of American politics is not a Polly Anna-ish tradition of bipartisan compromise on every issue facing the nation.  On the other hand, the history of American politics demonstrates that intractable policy problems can be resolved when the political leaders of both parties adopt a pragmatic approach to problem solving.  The Civil Rights Act was never going to win over large majorities in the South.  Still, the Johnson Administration was able to use a realistic approach to win over enough cross-over votes to defeat the Southern bloc's filibuster.  The final bill had to be drafted as a compromise in order to get enough votes, but the Administration and Congressional proponents were not so idealistically narrow-minded that they refused to promote a compromise bill.  In the end, the Civil Rights Act cleared the Senate 70-29.  The end result was flawed legislation to be sure, but legislation that nonetheless addressed the most egregious aspects of racial discrimination that had been perpetuated since the Republican's lost the majority that enabled them to enact the Reconstruction legislation and constitutional amendments.

In more recent memory, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton come to mind as examples of politicians whose power and popularity was not derived because of inflexibility but rather was derived because of their willingness to find acceptable compromises.  As is well documented, Ronald Reagan effectively raised taxes five times during his eight years in office.  Of course, the tax increases were parts of overall tax policy compromises that raised taxes in exchange for eliminating loopholes.  In effect, the Reagan administration was able to increase tax revenue while decreasing the individual tax burden to businesses and individuals.  This sort of creative and practical policy making is sorely missed today.

Bill Clinton's biggest accomplishments were similarly the product of creative compromise and a pragmatic approach to policy making.  Welfare reform was the product of Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich understanding that the current welfare policy in America did not enjoy majority support.  We can quibble over the veracity of claims made about the welfare policy and whether it was in fact responsible for creating the 'cycle of dependency' so frequently descried in talking points of the time.  However, we cannot quibble with the fact that a majority of Americans opposed the welfare policy as it existed in the mid-1990's.  Gingrich would never get a wholesale elimination of welfare and Clinton could never get as generous a welfare program as he wanted.  Instead, Gingrich was able to get the enormously popular welfare to work provisions to place conditions on receipt of welfare benefits.  Clinton was able to preserve the benefits and could claim victory in the press by noting that welfare recipients would have to work to keep their benefits.  This provision was in accord with the policy preferences of a majority of Americans at time.

Clinton was also able to use the welfare policy compromise to increase enforcement of child support obligations.  Gingrich could likewise claim this as a victory because it allowed him to say the republican party did not condone scofflaws.  In effect, the compromise allowed both parties to recognize that some form of welfare was necessary while shifting the focus of receipt of benefits from entitlement to a safety net designed to foster and enforce commonly accepted notions of personal responsibility.  In fact, this is where most American's stood at the time.  A solid majority of Americans supported the notion that those in need of a helping hand should receive one so long as it was only a helping hand and not a lifetime giveaway.  In addition, a majority of Americans supported the idea that child support should be strictly enforced because they believed the parents of children, whether custodial or not, should bear responsibility for supporting their children.

What discourages me now is the lack of any common vision toward policies that allow both parties to gain something in exchange for giving something up.  I will admit that I consider the republicans in Congress to be more obstructionist than the democrats, but I also admit that this is at least partly a bias.  We need the leadership of both parties to address the problems facing the nation directly through creative compromise and pragmatic politics rather than to stand to one side of the aisle and point their collective fingers at the other side while baying, 'it's their fault' like children.  The American tradition is a pragmatic one.  Of finding solutions to problems that, however imperfect, are solutions.  The American character is not exceptionally moral or intellectual or homogeneous.  The American character is, however, practical.  We are usually good at finding ways to make things work.  This character is not the most ideologically pure, but it is who we are.  To the extent we become more dogmatic (which I think is actually a better word than 'partisan'), we stray from who we are and we do so at our own peril.

Christian Belief and Nationalism

The Christian religion that developed into the dominant religion of the European world did something, at least theologically, extraordinary:  it divorced the religious from the political.  Even in its Judaic forbear, religion was tied to the political.  It was not until the diaspora that Judaism became a religion without a politics.  In the Bible both the Gospels and Paul's letters remind us that faith in Christ is contingent only on belief in Christ, which has no political component.  Hence Paul's command to respect the mores and customs of the host or guest and Christ's command to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's."

This removal of the religious from the political vexed religious and political thinkers throughout the ensuing two millenia.  Luther in particular spent a great deal of mental energy trying to square the teachings in the New Testament with his instinct that any polity, to have political legitimacy, ought to be a religious polity.  More recently, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrestled with the New Testament teachings divorcing religion from politics in the context of resisting an unethical state:  Nazi Germany.  In the United States, the debate most famously took the shape of Jefferson and Madison's writings, including the U.S. Constitution, on the separation of church and state.  It must be noted that the United States constitution appears to be the first Western polity to explicitly accept the position seemingly articulated in the New Testament:  that the realms of faith and politics should be separated.

I am not so naive as to think that the debate in the United States has ever been so clear cut as I stated above.  Religious and political leaders have long held divergent positions on what role religion plays in politics.  The fact that religious proclamations were long considered innocuous in their relation complicates matters because such innocuous proclamations are often taken to suggest that the formal position articulated in the U.S. Constitution means something other than the plain language of the First Amendment suggests.  As society developed, the challenges to the separation of church and state changed in tone through the development of legal arguments advanced from philosophical positions that simply would not have occurred to anyone at the time the U.S. Constitution was drafted and in the first century of its existence.  I specifically refer to the growing influence of atheism and agnosticism that arose with scientific and technological advances and the growing influence of litigation in setting the boundaries of individual rights and government limitations. Once American society reached this point, lawsuits regarding the appropriate level of entanglement between politics and religion flourished and became a preferred method for aggrieved parties (on all sides of the issue) to assert their claims.  

This development obscures a greater conundrum involving the role of religion in American politics because it resulted in the piecemeal development of the contours of the First Amendment based on the individual cases that the federal judiciary decided.  Hence, we have all this silliness over whether a creche on public property constitutes an impermissible establishment of religion.  I do not doubt that the parties to such litigation legitimately feel their position is crucial and of societal importance, but such issues cannot get to the conundrum inherent in the New Testament.  I would like to address the conundrum, which is nowhere more ironically constituted than in the current tendency Americans to consider religious belief a necessary component of patriotism.

We hear examples of individuals stating that Christian belief is a prerequisite to being a patriotic American.  I will set aside for a moment any particular issues with this sort of theo-jingoism to deal with the belief itself and why it has become so common.  The individuals often argue that one cannot fully embrace the American ideals without fully embracing the Christian religion.  George W. Bush articulated this position in his frequent arguments about America being a freedom loving nation.  He frequently tied his own notion of American freedom with his conversion to born-again Christianity.  Conservative organizations do the same thing when they explicitly state that only a believing Christian can be trusted to ensure American freedom.  Obviously this is ironic since the condition freedom unconditionally on a particular set of social and religious beliefs.

What we do not hear are religious leaders wrestling with the conflict between the New Testament's command to be tolerant and to leave the political to the political.  This to me seems a peculiar absence in the culture's political dialogue.  I believe that the absence is due to the fact that American patriotism as formulated by those embracing what has been termed (inaccurately, I think) the religious right does not in fact have a strong religious component.  Instead, the insertion of Christian belief as a necessary condition of American patriotism serves as a proxy for a particular kind of American experience that its proponents regard as legitimate, in contrast to other kinds of American experience that are regarded as illegitimate.

Perhaps there is no better example of this than the current presidential race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.  The bottom line is that Barack Obama practices a form of Christianity that is essentially mainstream evangelical Protestantism.  Mitt Romney practices Mormonism which is at odds with much in evangelical Protestantism.  Nevertheless, the right embraces Mitt Romney and ascribes to him many of the values that Barack Obama must have as a practicing evangelical Christian.  The instability of the rights' arguments against Barack Obama demonstrate the psychological quandary in which the right finds itself.  For example, rather than deal with the inconsistency in the right's open embrace of Mitt Romney, many on the right simply refuse to believe that Barack Obama is a Christian.  No evidence supports this contention, but it certainly makes it easier to disavow Barack Obama if his Christianity is simply denied.  

More to the point, I believe that those who deny Barack Obama is a Christian do so because they have tied Christian belief into their cultural position such that they cannot accord anyone who does not share their cultural position with being a Christian.  In this regard, the conflation of Christian belief and patriotism reflects a hardened position that has little at all to do with Christianity and has everything to do with the right's experience.  

A great many of the religious right belong to a group or a collection of groups that has seen their position in the cultural diminished over the last 50 years or so.  The adoption of Christianity as a badge of identification serves as a cultural marker rather than a religious belief.  For example, many on the religious right lack the employment skills and educational experience to profit in today's economy.  Instead of embracing unionism or liberal positions, these persons resort to a cultural position of blame.  They do not have the right education because affirmative action kept them out of college.  They do not have the right job because affirmative action kept them out of the factory.  The jobs left because the unions screwed the companies.  They oppose public education because schools teach about slavery and Jim Crow and the civil rights movement instead of celebrating the achievements of true American heroes.  They wail against the culture because, in their opinion, when the culture shifted left it left them behind.  Never mind whether this is in fact the case, such persons believe it.

There is a longing among the dispossessed for an Eden that never was.  If we hadn't lost our family values, we wouldn't have lost our influence.  If we hadn't kowtowed to every special interest under the sun we'd still have our factory jobs and our pensions.  They hearken back to a time when people like themselves were prosperous and secure.  They find like-minded comfort in the pews of their Sunday services, where the preachers rail about the godlessness of liberals and the Democratic party.  They find like-minded comfort in hearing that their position in society isn't their fault.  The fault lies in the non-Christians that took over the country, the colleges, and the public schools.  This is what their preachers tell them and they believe it.

Outrage or discontent at being dispossessed, or at least in occupying a cultural role fraught with anxiety and economic uncertainty, is nothing unusual.  What makes the turn ironic, though, is the use of the pulpit to motivate persons to channel their cultural frustration into political change under the auspice of their Christian faith.  The turn is ironic because the very book upon which their discontent is fomented and channeled into political action commands tolerance and the separation of the religious from the political.  In this regard, their Christian faith is not in essence a faith in Christ as that faith is received and codified in the New Testament, but rather is a faith in the injury that the ascendant portion of the culture (or so they believe) did to them.  

Religion and politics become intertwined, patriotism becomes imbued with a particular religiosity because it is the only resource available that trumps the formal legal edifice that has allowed the newly ascendant to have risen above them.  The newly ascendant are the recipients of such hated policies as affirmative action or equal pay because the dispossessed consider these policies to be responsible for their plight.  The entanglement of religion and politics marks out the dispossessed from everyone else.  If you want to espouse Christianity, it will not be considered legitimate unless you also espouse discontent at being dispossessed.  Christianity will not be recognized as such if one adopts a nuanced position separating religion and politics.  Neither will patriotism be recognized as such if one advocates the separation of religion and politics.  So intertwined have the religious and the political become for this class that any person who does not hold like views cannot be patriotic because such a person belongs to the class that caused the dispossession in the first place.  Even resort to the New Testament itself is not sufficient to convince the dispossessed that they have accepted an inconsistent position because their identity and their complaint of injury are so firmly entrenched that if they were to accept New Testament teaching on tolerance and separating religion from politics that very identity would be compromised.  The dispossessed would have to accept that they cannot scapegoat liberals or immigrants or minorities for their own cultural or socioeconomic woes.

As a result, we do not find ourselves in the midst of great intellectual struggles with the teaching of Christ akin to those of Luther or Bonhoeffer. Instead, we find ourselves in the midst of what can appear to be a baffling struggle against intellectualism; a struggle characterized by the reflexive and dogmatic rather than the nuanced and thoughtful.  The struggle is ever more disturbing because of the dispossessed's bellicosity toward the rest of us.  And so we find ourselves in a nation founded on a belief that the religious and the political ought to be disentangled that in part finds support in the New Testament in which any attempt to espouse the separation of religion and politics brands one as unpatriotic regardless of the actual affection one feels for the nation.

Why Concentrated Wealth Hurts Society

Follow the link to a piece Robert Reich put up regarding an explanation for our current stagnant economy.

http://robertreich.org/post/24974761785

Reich basically states that the only way out of the current stagnation is for U.S. consumers to spend us out.  Unfortunately, as Reich notes, median income has been stagnant for years and actually dropped after the housing crisis.  The housing crisis also tightened the credit market for most U.S. consumers so they could no longer borrow to increase their spending power.  Hence, we currently cannot spend our way out of economic stagnation.

Reich points out that one of the reasons that incomes have become stagnant (and even decreased) is that the distribution of wealth has been flowing upwards for some time.  Reich specifically notes that the upper 1% of earners only spend about 50% of their economic gains, which makes sense because they have so much to spend.  I have also thought for some time that the increasing concentration of wealth hurts the economy in other subtle ways tied to consumer spending.  Take, for example, the automobile market.  If we consider cars, it takes essentially the same manpower to make an $80,000 Mercedes as it does to make a $20,000 Kia.  Assume we have one person making $500,000.  That person can afford and likely will purchase a luxury automobile such as the $80,000 Mercedes.  Now assume that the wealth is distributed between eight persons making about $62,000.  No person will be able to purchase the Mercedes, but all six will be able to purchase the Kia.  Again, assuming the manpower necessary to make each car is similar, a more equal distribution of wealth would up to six times the manufacturing labor than an unequal distribution of wealth.  This also does not address the other economic benefits of multiple transactions, which include more labor for transporting the vehicles, more commissions for the sale of the vehicle, more mechanics to service the vehicles, etc.

I do not have an answer to how we ought to achieve more equal income distribution.  Obviously the government will have to play some role as we know individuals will not donate or redistribute as much of their income voluntarily as they will when the laws force redistribution or create incentives to redistribute.  It seems logical that the government will have to have a greater role to achieve income redistribution, but other avenues are important also.  Increased collective bargaining might help as would the creation of a skilled workforce that could demand decent wages for their work.  The bottom line is that a Wal-Mart economy, unionized or not, is unlikely to change the current distribution of wealth.  A skilled economy, with technological experts and skilled laborers, however, would generate greater income equality simply because such workers would naturally be able to command higher wages.

Do People Really Want No Government?

I have experienced ineffective central governments in small doses and it was not pretty.  Despite the constant refrain from the Grover Norquist and Tea Party types, life without taxes is solitary, poor, brutish, and short.  Oh yeah, and it is manifestly unfair.  For all the problems our government may (or may not) have, our government generally makes commercial transactions smooth, predictable, and fair.

Several years ago I took a trip to Laos and Thailand with my wife and some of my in-laws, all of whom were born in Laos and emigrated to the U.S. after communists took over the Lao state.  One of the most interesting aspects of the trip was shopping because of the difference between shopping in the U.S. or other developed countries to which I have been.  Most noteworthy is the lack of predictability in basic transactions.

In both Thailand and Laos we shopped mostly in markets, though we did go to a couple of westernized malls and department stores.  Here is what I found at the malls and department stores:  prices were higher but shopping was far more efficient.  You found something you wanted, it had a price tag, you took it to a cashier, and you paid the listed price.  Generally, the merchandise appeared to be what it was purported to be.  For example, if you purchased a Nike soccer shirt it appeared to be a Nike soccer shirt in terms of quality and design.  Thus, if one purchased an Arsenal jersey it was for all intents and purposes the same Arsenal jersey one would get at any soccer store in the U.S.  The price was also similar.

The experience at the markets was entirely different.  I looked at a handful of jerseys at one of Bangkok's famous night markets, including an Arsenal jersey.  This was during The Invincibles season at Arsenal.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003%E2%80%9304_Arsenal_F.C._season   I urge any soccer fans to check out footage of The Invincibles at Arsenal.  Like Ajax and Holland in the early 1970's before them and Barcelona in 2010-2011, The Invincibles were not only astonishingly good, they also played the most aesthetically beautiful soccer.  In any case, I checked out a jersey and was quoted a price, which wasn't marked on the jersey.  I did a little negotiation and the price dropped 10 baht or so.  I handled the jersey and it was clear from the construction that despite bearing the famous swoosh strip the jersey was a knock off.  I mentioned the jersey to my wife and she took a crack at it.  She was quoted an initial price that was lower than my negotiated price.  She was able to knock off a few baht through negotiating.  We were with my future sister-in-law, who was a Bangkok resident, and she told us that she could get it for even less, about half of the original price quoted to me.  She said she would have to negotiate alone outside of our presence to get the best price because the vendor would jack up the price if they knew a falang (or white person) was ultimately going to purchase it.

This is how the markets work:  there is one price for falang, there is another price for non-Thai Asians (excluding Japanese who actually have to pay the highest prices), and yet another price for native Thais.  In order to get the best price, shoppers have to dicker with the vendor.  While some people may find the act of dickering for products enjoyable, this is how nearly everything is purchased from markets.  The process is hopelessly inefficient if one shops for the majority of products at markets.  In addition, the actual product is likely to be a counterfeit version of what one actually intends to purchase.  Obviously, this is not fair to the manufacturers of the original product and deprives the original manufacturer of income that would otherwise be theirs.

Why can this happen?  In large part the market transactions can occur because the government does not actively police the retail market.  I am sure Thailand has laws prohibiting the sale of counterfeit products, but the laws do little good because no one enforces them.  I can only imagine the outcry that would occur in this country if such markets were allowed to flourish unchecked.  Can you imagine what Nike would do if thousands upon thousands of counterfeit Nike products were sold in every population center?  I suspect that Nike would demand that the government intervene and police the markets to ensure that counterfeit products would be rooted out of the markets.

The bottom line is that efficient retail transactions can only occur in a well-regulated retail marketplace.  Like it or not, a well-regulated retail market requires government intervention.  Without regulation of the products being sold, the prices being charged, and the profits being generated, the shopping experience becomes fraught with unpredictability and hopelessly time consuming.  According to my relatives, the retail market is not the only one subject to the vagaries of prejudice and lack of regulation.  The housing market is similar as are practically any commercial transaction one can think of that does not occur at the highest end of any market.

So how have we achieved predictability and efficiency in our markets?  The simple answer is through taxation and regulation.  The sales tax is a simple mechanism for generating income necessary to regulate retail markets.  The sales tax provides a uniform mechanism for collecting both funds and data regarding the operation of markets.  When sellers are required to record transactions and recover a sales tax based on the actual sale of a product, the net effect is to streamline the process.  While a large retailer could operate without fixed prices and still charge sales taxes, the administrative inefficiency would be crushing.  It is much easier to have a fixed price and a cash register system that automatically applies the sales tax to both the receipt and the data collection mechanisms in place.  I have stood in line at Target and witnessed customers upset simply because the line was not moving fast enough.  Can you imagine the rage that would occur if every person who went through the line could dicker about the price?

Regulation also ensures fairness.  In a regulated commercial market, it is much easier to ensure that the products being sold are not counterfeit.  Surely counterfeit products still make their way through the retail market in the U.S. but the incidence has to be much lower than the incidence of counterfeit products in an unregulated market like the ones I encountered in Thailand and Laos.  The only way to ensure the efficiency of markets is through government regulation.  If anyone doubts the truth of this, consider the crash of the U.S. housing market.  The housing market crashed largely because of the unregulated derivatives and credit default obligation markets.

If we really want smaller government, we can certainly have it; just be prepared for our markets to become less efficient, less predictable, and less profitable.  If we want robust markets, we need a reasonable amount of government regulation to ensure transparency, fairness, and predictability.

The Limits of Tolerance

Mona Eltahawy has a powerful article on misogyny in Arab countries and posits that no argument can justify the violence and subjugation of women in Arab countries.  http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/23/why_do_they_hate_us

I agree with Ms. Eltahawy's position.  As a general philosophical matter, human conduct must be judged pragmatically.  Hence, Ms. Eltahawy can argue persuasively that such relativistic concepts as cultural tradition do not justify violence against women.  If we dispense with the notion that abhorrent behavior can be excused based on tradition or history or any other such justification based on custom, we can set practical limits on ethical behavior.  Without the move to judge behavior pragmatically, we are left to shrug our shoulders and simply concede that while the behavior is abhorrent to us it is within the ethical parameters of the culture in which it arises; therefore, we cannot wholly condemn the behavior.  Ms. Eltahawy demonstrates that ethical behavior may operate on a continuum, but that some behavior can be judged unethical regardless of the cultural milieu from which the behavior arises.

Ms. Eltahawy identifies several unethical behaviors in how Arab countries treat women.  Some Arab countries deny women suffrage.  If we accept the premise that all persons are equal under the law, regardless of gender, then denying women the right to vote is unethical regardless of the tradition or religious text supporting the denial.  Quite simply, no justification of denying suffrage to adult women can render the decision ethical.  In addition, treating the relationship of men and women to sexuality differently is unethical.  Obviously men and women relate to sexuality differently given the fact that men and women are in fact separate genders.  Nevertheless, the requirement that women cover themselves without a concomitant requirement for males can have no ethical basis.  Similarly, the requirement that a man must accompany an adult woman in public but the lack of a reciprocal requirement can have no ethical basis.  If we accept the premise that an adult female possesses the same rights of self-determination that an adult male possesses, then any cultural tradition that limits a woman's rights of self-determination without a reciprocal limitation on males is unethical.

Ms. Eltahawy's piece reaches its most heartbreaking when addressing physical violence against women and the politico-legal complicity in that violence.  Ms. Eltahawy was herself groped by a fellow protester during the Tahrir Square demonstrations, a fact so odious as to defy comprehension.  In a dangerous and fever-pitched confrontation with the martial forces of an authoritarian regime, a protester could be so easily distracted by the mere presence of a woman that he would take the opportunity to cop a feel?  Frankly, this is sad comment on the infantilization of men in misogynistic societies.  If women are stylized as virgin/whore figures, then men are stylized as out-of-control children.  The message to men is that they cannot control themselves in their relations to women and therefore cannot be held accountable for their actions.  What mature man gropes a woman he does not know?  That such an experience would be so titillating that one would act on it demonstrates the infantile quality of the man raised in a misogynistic society.  Imagine the excitement that the explosion of self-determination inspired in the protesters and then the despair at knowing even here someone manages to treat you as a voiceless object, as a mere thing to be touched?

The groping incident is just the tip of the iceberg, though.  The Egyptian police arrested Ms. Eltahawy during the demonstrations and battered her.  While in custody, the Egyptian police sexually assaulted her (on a public street) and broke one of her arms and one of her hands.  The police remain unpunished.  Similar horror stories abound.  In 2002 15 Saudi girls died in a fire because the "morality police" would not allow them to flee the building because they were not covered.  Nothing happened after this incident.  Ms. Eltahawy discusses genital mutilation and minors coerced into marriage who die in childbirth.  The list is disgusting and shocking.

Such violence and the legal and administrative apparatus that allows the perpetrators to go unpunished have no ethical justification.  There is simply no circumstances in which rape can be legitimated.  There is no circumstance where cultural norms regarding modesty can be used to justify forcing girls to die in a fire.  There is no tradition that can claim moral legitimacy that physically maims and injures a girl's genitals.  The only way to judge these acts is against the backdrop of pragmatic morality:  are these acts necessary?  If not, do the acts cause harm?  If the answer is yes, no argument can turn these acts into ethical ones.  Ms. Eltahawy should be commended for reminding us that some things in the world cannot be justified under any circumstances.  Misogyny is one such thing.

Dworkin on the Affordable Care Act Mandate

Ronald Dworkin has a good piece at the New York Review of Books on why the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act is constitutional.  http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/may/10/why-mandate-constitutional-real-argument/

He does two things well.  First, he reminds us that entitlements are no such thing but are in fact forms of social insurance in which risk of social harm is spread across the population to minimize the harm to individuals and small groups.  We use social insurance to spread risk because typically harm does not occur to a majority of individuals at the same time, despite the fact that the harm is likely to occur to a majority of individuals over time.  Hence, the need to enact social insurance programs that enlist the majority who are not presently harmed because we understand that those being harmed will never possess the political clout (i.e. they will not have the votes) to elect sympathetic legislators except at extraordinary moments in time.  This was true of the post-Civil War amendments (13-15), the FDA, the Social Security Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and myriad other important social insurance or regulatory programs.  The same is true today with the Affordable Care Act and Dworkin explains the social insurance act well and concisely.

Second, Dworkin provides a legal analysis accessible to any non-lawyer of moderate intelligence that demonstrates the constitutionality of the mandate.  This forms the bulk of his opinion and is worth the read.  I enjoyed his description of the Chief Justice and Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito as ultraconservative.  I find the description apt.  William Rehnquist was conservative.  Warren Burger was conservative.  Sandra Day O'Connor was conservative.  The gang of four are nothing like conservative justices.  The conservatives were frustrating because of their insistence on (the conservative principles) of slow, incremental change and respect for precedent.  If only we could have those salad days back instead of the current ethos that removes the constitution from context and presumes that four persons living in 2012 can somehow divine the precise thoughts of men who died about 200 years ago.  I also find it amusing that this faction adopts the term "strict constructionist" to describe their method of constitutional interpretation when the very fact that a case is before them suggests more than one reasonable interpretation exists.  Perhaps I should not be surprised.  The legal profession is not known for self-deprecation and humility.  I do, however, want to find the talisman that allows these four old men in black robes to enter the minds of long dead men and divine the obvious and only meaning of an often ambiguous and vague document.

Armed America

Jill Lepore has a good piece in the New Yorker on violence, gun rights, and the second amendment.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/04/23/120423fa_fact_lepore  The best line from the piece is:

"When carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense is understood not as a failure of civil society, to be mourned, but as an act of citizenship, to be vaunted, there is little civilian life left."

I have some qualms with the article.  Namely, that Lepore touches on so many aspects of the history of guns in American life that the article at times feels a bit disconnected.  Nevertheless, Lepore does well to demonstrate that the NRA's position on gun control has more to do with conservative politics than firearm ownership.  She also does well to point out the silliness of the NRA position that Barack Obama will do anything to infringe on gun ownership rights.  Finally, one cannot help but wonder how we got to the point where a private citizen could willfully initiate a confrontation with another private citizen in a public place and claim a perfect defense to criminal liability.

What strikes me most about gun rights advocates is not the idea that one ought to be able to own a firearm but the notion that gun ownership is somehow necessary.  Lepore's formulation above conveys the absurdity of the matter well.  In my own thoughts, I consider the argument that gun ownership is necessary essentially admits that we are not adults.  The idea of life in a society so fragile that the only mechanism of self-preservation is the threat of violence from every individual is so fraught with insecurity as to be unimaginable.  The point of civil society is civility, a common understanding of the basic rights and rules of interaction in the public and private spheres so that we are able to function without constant suspicion and fear.  Civil society is supposed to elevate us beyond the insecurity of mere survival so that we can, as a society, flourish in ways pre-civil societies cannot.  The gun rights advocates turn this on its head and tell us that it is in fact better if we revert to an age when the very act of survival is precarious, anxious, and fearful.  Doesn't anyone else think this is insane?

The Myth of Black on Black Violence

Edward Wykoff Williams has a good piece in The Root today exposing the problems with the notion of "black on black" violence.  http://www.theroot.com/views/why-don-t-we-talk-about-white-white-crime  As Williams notes, most crime in all ethnic groups is committed by members of the same ethnic groups yet we do not speak of a white on white violence problem.  In addition, Williams does an outstanding job of bringing out the simple fact that the idea of "black on black" violence has led to greater policing in black neighborhoods which, predictably, leads to greater arrests of black persons and increased entanglement with the criminal justice system.  Finally, Williams cites the pioneering work of Professor Michelle Alexander on the profoundly disturbing impact disparate enforcement of the law has had on the black community.   The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.  Professor Alexander's book should be required reading for every American, but especially for those who do not believe racism is alive and well in America today.


The rate at which persons of one ethnic group commit crimes against persons of the same ethnic group is evidence that the melting pot metaphor does not hold.  Our nation and our cities are divided places.  The lines along which we divide are predictable, but sad:  race, ethnicity, poverty, wealth, etc.  Obviously this is nothing new, but the Williams piece and the literature he cites bring home the point of how hopelessly divided our society is in a novel manner.  Rhetoric of freedom and equality aside (which, if you think about it for a moment, are actually opposing ideas), we remain a balkanized or ghettoized society.  We should view pronouncments about any single ethnic group with suspicion to discern hidden motives and flawed assumptions and we should view pronouncements about the black community with an even more critical eye given the ongoing institutionalized disparate treatment of African Americans.

Adrienne Rich

The poet Adrienne Rich passed away.  The NY Times has an excellent obituary:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/books/adrienne-rich-feminist-poet-and-author-dies-at-82.html?_r=1&hpw#

I encountered her in a class that covered poets who became prominent in the 1960's and 70's.  "Diving into the Wreck" is a great, canonical poem.  That Ms. Rich identified herself as a Jewish lesbian means everything and nothing.  The poem is simply superlative, but knowing a bit about Ms. Rich enhances the poem's richness and depth.  I encourage anyone who has not read Ms. Rich to pick up an anthology such as a The Fact of a Door Frame.

The feeling Ms. Rich's poetry gave rise to is similar to the one I experienced when it was clear that Barack Obama had won the 2008 election.  In the moment of apprehension, I became aware that an entire population now had what I have had and have always taken for granted.  In the case of Barack Obama, it is the silly but important notion American boys have that, "everyone can be President."  Now, every African American boy can share in this notion.  In the case of Adrienne Rich, I became aware that an entire population of writers could write about the world as they encountered and experienced it.  I had always taken that for granted.  The effect of Ms. Rich's poetry opened my eyes and gave me insights into the risk that serious writing entails.  This made me a more careful and better reader.  Above all, however, Ms. Rich wrote brilliantly and enriches the experience of every English-speaking reader who encounters her.

The Ullrich Plan (minus EPO)

1.  Spend all winter in an Ibiza-esque food and beer orgy.
2.  Look in the mirror sometime in mid-February.  Feel shameful.  Drink two beers.  Resume self-neglect.
3.  Note the calendar turning into March.  Go to WCA website to check out race schedule.  Have panic attack.
4.  Subject body to exorbitant levels of punishment given predictable challenges deconditioning and weight gain pose.
5.  Dream of TOAD glory.

Have fun rolling around Madison this weekend.  I'll be killing myself in beer town.