Red State, No Way!

Adam Cadre, who I don't read as often as I should (because his site doesn't have an RSS feed), writes that yes, blue states really are better.

I'm not sure I totally agree with it (I think Adam's too flip about people choosing where to live based on their politics), but any opinion piece that uses the phrase the incredible erratic adventures of Stiffy McCain can't be all bad.

It's not OK just because he's a Republican

His stated policies are bad for the United States and the world. He gets a lot more credit from the media than he deserves. From all accounts, he's not a very good person. So why does every criticism of John McCain have to be about his age? This isn't any more acceptable than stereotyping Sen. Clinton by sex or Sen. Obama by race.

Typical.

Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech is brilliant. If you haven't already, watch it or read the transcript. As Pam Spaulding puts it,

In Obama’s speech I was reading the words of a man that gets it, regardless of the fact that he is a candidate for President of the United States of America that resonate with me on this issue. That he is this close to becoming president of this country — and to risk it all by cracking open this door on a painful area of this country — is something I thought I would never see. He is giving voice to a healthier view on race relations that needs to be embraced from a stage where it’s hard to argue that it is not an issue worth tackling.

Of course, a call to have an open, sincere national dialogue about race is totally ignored by the pundits, in favor of scandal-sniffing. "Did he sufficiently distance himself from Wright?" "Did he contradict himself about not having attended controversial sermons?" "Did he throw his grandmother to the wolves under the bus?"

And now the latest "gaffe" being pounced on is his clarification about the mention of his grandmother in the speech:

The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity, but that she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know - there's a reaction in her that's been bred into our experiences that don't go away and sometimes come out in the wrong way and that's just the nature of race in our society. We have to break through it. What makes me optimistic is you see each generation feeling less like that. And that's pretty powerful stuff.

The typical response I hear from the folks who want to pounce on Obama for this statement is "What if someone (Clinton, McCain, Joe Whitebread) talked about a 'typical black person'?"

What if they did?

Here, I'll even go ahead and make such a statement, so it's not just a hypothetical:

A typical black person in America harbors anger and resentment at white society because he or she has been on the receiving end of racism throughout his or her life. I think that comes pretty close to the tone of Obama's statement - though of course, nowhere near as eloquent, which is one of the reasons he's a serious candidate for President of the United States and I'm just a guy with a Z-list blog.

Was I stereotyping? Was I racist? Perhaps. The black experience is not my own; I'm just repeating my understanding of the situation, learned secondhand. You can make the argument that it's not my place to speak for black people, and that my role as a white person at this point in the discussion is to shut up and stay out of the way, or to use the privilege I have to help people who know what they're talking about get heard. Even if I don't completely agree, that would at least be a productive discussion (one that we as a nation aren't currently having).

Would Clinton or McCain be attacked for making a statement like the one above? Probably. There are partisans on all sides who use whatever disreputable tactics are at hand. Clinton gets attacked with sexism. McCain gets attacked with ageism. This sort of thing should be regarded as uncalled for, as beyond the pale, but it never is. Maybe it's a human tendency to overlook the faults of our allies and exaggerate those of our enemies. Maybe it's a belief that the ends justify the means. Maybe, to quote The Simpsons, "some people are just jerks."

But I'll risk being accused of some more stereotyping and say this: a lot of the people who are complaining about the potential blowback for talking about a "typical black person" are not talking about a statement anything like what I said above. Some have just internalized the idea that *any* talk about members of a race as a group is going to be racist (which, though an easy fix, is a privilege that's far more available to white people) and they're resentful that they have to police their behavior in a way Obama apparently isn't.

But I suspect others are talking about the typical ways of talking about typical black people. They're talking about Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray (the latter of whom is on record as favoring Obama's speech, incidentally) discussing black people's intelligence in The Bell Curve. They're talking about Jimmy the Greek going on TV and theorizing about black people's athletic ability. They're talking about Darryl Gates defending his policemen in Los Angeles by claiming that "blacks might be more likely to die from chokeholds because their arteries do not open as fast as they do on 'normal people.'" They're talking about bigotry, and they're complaining that they'll get called bigoted if they're open about it.

As well they should.

As Jon Stewart said of Obama's speech, "at 11:00 a.m. on a Tuesday, a prominent politician spoke to Americans about race, as though they were adults." Isn't it time we started acting like it?

Romney, faith and "moral conviction"

I was completely unaware of Mitt Romney's impending speech this morning when I had the idea to write this post. (Most of my awareness that morning was focused on the fact that the bus driver who didn't stop for me though I chased after the bus for 3 stops, shouting and waving my arms, was an asshole.) The idea came from my earlier post about the Sacks and co. was (and still is) intended to lead into a discussion about how "because it's the right thing to do" is never enough justification.

Then I saw Melissa McEwen's take on Romney's speech, specifically this paragraph:

It is important to recognize that while differences in theology exist between the churches in America, we share a common creed of moral convictions. And where the affairs of our nation are concerned, it's usually a sound rule to focus on the latter – on the great moral principles that urge us all on a common course. Whether it was the cause of abolition, or civil rights, or the right to life itself, no movement of conscience can succeed in America that cannot speak to the convictions of religious people.

As Melissa points out, it's totally false.

This post was originally going to be about how we don't have a vibrant national dialogue about morality in America, the way we have dialogues about public policy. But Mr. Romney provided such a fine opening, I can't not take it.

We *don't* share a "common creed of moral convictions" precisely because the majority religion in America, Christianity, co-opts and preempts moral convictions. We never get to talk about morality; instead we just talk about what the Bible or a particular authority figure says and pretend that's the same thing - but it's much, much closer to the opposite. Or if we don't want to involve religion, we eschew questions of morality as well in order to dwell on legalism and consequentialism.

Here's how an exploration of moral conviction can work. Method #1 (let's call it the Axiomatic Method) is to start with an ethical axiom, and explore all the ramifications of that axiom, rejecting it or conditionally accepting it based on the conclusions drawn. This method seems to me to be the more common form of non-religious moral reasoning, but it's one that's relatively inaccessible. Though you find this a lot among philosophers, divinity students and libertarians, I suspect the average person doesn't really employ this form of moral reasoning in his or her life.

Method #2 is what I'll call the Mindy Method. Start with a moral observation - "X is good." Then ask "Why?" Now you've got a new moral principle. Again, ask "why?" and now you've got another. The goal of this version is *not* necessarily to arrive at a moral axiom and then to build back up from there. Rather, it's to reach an understanding with other moral agents, and to see where we differ. This serves two purposes: (i) we can find common understanding with people who might disagree on particulars; and (ii) we won't get duped into alliances with those whose goals are superficially similar but fundamentally opposed.

It's precisely because Christianity has so completely co-opted morality that "no movement of conscience can succeed in America that cannot speak to the convictions of religious people." Christianity, at least as it's practiced throughout this country, explicity rejects the Mindy Method - you generally can't ask "Why?" more than once or twice before bottoming out at "God said so," at which point most inquiry ceases. "Why should we do something just because God said to?" is a question that's reserved for theologians whose general faith is deemed beyond question; the folks in the pews don't typically get that luxury. Even when the question is asked, the answer tends to be consequentialist - either referring to personal consequences for the moral agent in this world, or the next.

Because Christianity avoids the question of "Is this the right thing?", substituting the question of "Is this what God wants?", the domination by Christianity of the moral sphere results in no real discourse about morality. And because the question of why the Christian God's purported wants should be obeyed is answered with an appeal to personal consequences, our discussions of policy tend to follow suit.

Of course, Romney's speech isn't really about moral convictions; it's an appeal to power. It's about defusing concerns among the Religious Right that electing a Mormon president would reduce their influence.

Issue Framing 101

How to frame an issue in eight easy steps:

1. Compose an "ethical dilemma" hypothetical that narrows down an issue into a single "yes or no" question.

2. Demand that your opponents answer the question with a simple yes or no.

3. Accuse anyone who doesn't give a yes or no answer of evading the question.

4. Accuse anyone who does give a yes or no answer, and then goes on to point out how stupid the question is, of evading the question.

5. Accuse anyone who does give a yes or no answer, and then goes on to explain how their reasoning would change if the hypothetical changed, of evading the question.

6. Demand that your opponents who answered the question in the way expected to answer a "follow up question."

7. Accuse anyone who gives a simple answer opposite from the one your leading question or follow up leads to of being an extremist.

8. If someone asks where the questions are leading, deny that there's any ulterior motive.

What, no mention of Amanda Marcotte?

Conservative columnist Dennis Prager has a rant up about how awful liberals are for eroding public discourse through the use of swear words.

Prager goes on to quote a few "leading cultural and political figures" (Jane Goodall, Bill Maher, and Cornel West - yeah, that's who I'd pick too as my triumvirate of leading leftist thinkers) who don't curse in their interviews but still evidence "absence of serious thought", apparently because they made statements that he doesn't agree with. Serious thought, one concludes, happens by accepting without question what conservatives tell you. Go fig. (Or don't.)

What this says to me (and I'm certainly not the first person to point this out) is that conservatives value appearances over content. (Hence all the church-going family men in the closet?) Ann Coulter, David Horowitz, Michelle Malkin (among others) say horribly sexist and racist things on a regular basis, but as long as they don't say "fuck" it's okay? Of course, when Cheney says it it's okay because it was a whispered. And Coulter saying "faggot" doesn't count, apparently - perhaps it was because she pulled the rhetorical trick of "I'm not saying this," though I suspect it had more to do with targeting John Edwards with the slur.

I'll take my foul-mouthed people who stand up for what's right over squeaky-clean bullies every time.

Ron Paul, Libertarianism and Abortion

Shakesville War II appears to have begun over the political phenomenon that is Ron Paul and the larger question, asked by Melissa McEwen, of how people who profess to hold a consistent libertarian philosophy can be anti-abortion.

I know folks I consider good people who identify as libertarian, including one that's run for political office as such. But they tend to be in liberal communities like Boston and San Francisco, rather than conservative communities like Orange County, and the libertarian movements in these communities (being small, and in need of more supporters) tend to take on the political positions of the people around them.

In the case of liberal communities, it means an emphasis on the wrongness of criminalizing drugs, and support for gay rights and reproductive freedom. Some of them say the state has no business involved in marriage, but they concede that if it's going to be it certainly has no business telling some people they can marry and others they can't.

In conservative communities, it means an emphasis on the wrongness of taxes and gun control, and support for anti-abortion laws and increasing the power of religion, with justifications that have always seemed like handwaving to me.

The most popular form of handwaving these days seems to be federalist buck-passing: candidates for national office declare that positions they can't justify under a libertarian philosophy should be left to the states; candidates for state office (if they can't get statewide support for their measure) say it should be left to local government. I'm not all that sure what candidates for local government do - pass the buck back up to the state/fed by claiming that the protection of rights by those levels of government is interfering with the democratic process?

In the case of reproductive freedom (a term I use to encompass both abortion and contraception), I'm just going to plagiarize myself and use language I originally wrote for the Shakesville thread, in response to someone making the typical attempt to reconcile anti-abortion with libertarianism by calling it a use of force (the words used in the original reply, as will become obvious, were "life or death situation"):

When they call terrorism a life-or-death situation, and advocate reducing liberty to fight it, they're not libertarian. When they call health care a life-or-death situation, and advocate reducing liberty (if you call taxation reducing liberty, which they tend to) to promote it, they're not libertarian. When they call drug abuse a life-or-death situation, and advocate reducing liberty to discourage it, they're not libertarian. When they call shooting people a life-or-death situation, and advocate reducing liberty to control guns, they're not libertarian.

But abortion is different. You can call it a stark life-or-death situation, and advocate reducing liberty to outlaw it. Guess what the difference is?

What it comes down to is that, in my experience, libertarianism is a very self-centered philosophy. Not that libertarians are all self-centered as we typically understand the term, but the choice of issues, and the positions on the issues, reflect only that which is important to their overwhelmingly white/straight/male/rich (I've met libs who weren't all of these, but never any who weren't at least two out of the four) base. Hence the enormous emphasis on the guns, drugs and taxes trifecta, and the relative indifference to issues of abortion, gay rights, racism, sexism, etc. (except for the parts of those issues that could conceivably affect them, like child support, hate crime laws, affirmative action, anti-discrimination laws, etc.)

And now, the fake news

Apparently FEMA decided to fake a press conference, got called on it, and tried to cover their asses:

We pulled questions from those we had been getting from reporters earlier in the day." Despite the very short notice, "we were expecting the press to come," he said, but they didn't. So the staff played reporters for what on TV looked just like the real thing.

Bullshit.

If you hold a press conference and people don't show up, you don't have your confederates pretend to be reporters and give you easy propaganda questions. You make a statement that's totally above-board, 100% from your organization. This isn't a matter of "oh, nobody showed up so we had to throw the party ourselves"; this is a case of deliberate misrepresentation. Sadly, all I expect to happen is that there'll be a brief moment of outrage before everyone with the power to do anything about it ignores the story and returns to business as usual.

Ann Coulter's site hacked

"I've been participating in a charade for nearly eleven years, now. Quite frankly, I'm sick of it. You have all been a part of a sick joke that I began considering shortly after first getting on the air. At first, it was quite interesting to see how people would react when I would use twisted logic and poorly masked bigotry." The site's down, but there's a discussion at reddit.