Friday, 9 January 2004
Topic: Election Notes
What's God got to do with it? Plenty! Any white person who believes in God is a Republican, and not a geologist.
Dean and Clark are now putting more "God talk" in their speeches, and the question is whether this will help.
One would guess not.
See The Jesus thing
Ann Coulter, Townhall.com, January 8, 2004...about a month ago, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released a poll showing that people who regularly attend religious services supported Bush 63 percent to 37 percent, and those who never attend religious services opposed him 62 percent to 38 percent. When you exclude blacks (as they do in Vermont), who are overwhelmingly Baptist and overwhelmingly Democratic, and rerun the numbers, basically any white person who believes in God is a Republican.
Your see, we are not French.
See this Reuters item: Europeans Puzzled by U.S. Mix of Faith, Politics
Fri January 9, 2004 09:37 AM ET, Tom Heneghan, Religion EditorPARIS (Reuters) - Europeans may have some problems grasping the ins and outs of American politics at the best of times, but the transatlantic gap never gets bigger than when candidates in the United States start talking about God.
Democratic presidential front-runner Howard Dean has started awkwardly discussing religion on the stump, trying to shake off a label many European politicians would covet - the most secular candidate in the race.
The eight other Democrats jostling for a chance to challenge the openly religious President Bush have also spoken up about their faith, Bible reading or church attendance to close their perceived "God gap" with the Republicans.
European voters accustomed to campaigns focused on budget deficits, pension problems or immigration would be surprised to hear a political candidate talking about praying, as Wesley Clark has done, or being "God-fearing" as John Kerry has said.
Ah, we are not a "secular" nation.
Here are some interesting quotes:"If a politician were to speak of his faith on the campaign trail as American politicians do," said Austrian analyst Peter Hajek, "the population would react by asking 'Why is he or she telling us that?'"
"It would come across as odd if politicians spoke too much about their religious beliefs. There would be an embarrassing shuffle in one's seat," said James Ker-Lindsay at the Civilitas Research center on southeastern Europe.
"Europeans see it as a badge of honor that they have moved beyond religion, as a victory of science and rational thinking," he said. "This is something Americans find dreadful about Europe, that it is a godless society."
Yes, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been lampooned in the press for being a committed Christian. "People in this country are rather averse to individuals who seem holier-than-thou," religious affairs commentator Clifford Longley said.
As Reuters points out, France takes secular logic the furthest. To ensure equal treatment as it struggles against Islamic radicalism among its Muslim minority, it plans to ban all signs of faith including Jewish skullcaps and large crosses from public schools.
Even in Poland, home of Pope John Paul, the huge political role the Catholic Church played under communism is fading fast. "The era when religion and Christian values played an influential role in political campaigns and politics has passed," said sociologist Jacek Kucharczyk. "Politicians no longer use religious slogans to win votes."
Well, Ann Coulter would ask just what is wrong with these people. Why do they value "rational thinking" so much? And since when did science become truth? There are higher truths.
Even the National Park Service knows this. They are strongly resisting the pressure they are receiving now. The Grand Canyon cannot be more then six thousand years old, not millions of years old.
See Geologists Demand Removal Of Creationist Book From Grand Canyon Bookstores
Jeremy Reynalds, The American Daily, Friday, January 09, 2004
(Florence, KY) - A new book offering an alternative view of how the Grand Canyon was formed is the object of a book- banning effort by prominent evolutionists, who have demanded that the Grand Canyon National Park Service remove the text from bookstores within the park.
"Grand Canyon: A Different View" is the 2003 work of Tom Vail, who collected essays from 23 contributors (most of whom hold earned doctorates in science). His book presents a creation science viewpoint of the Canyon's formation that is quite different than what most Canyon visitors are told.
Creation scientists present evidence that the Grand Canyon was formed not by the slow erosion of the Colorado River over millions of years, but by a lot of water over a short period of time. [ It was Noah's Flood, you see. ]
The controversial "Grand Canyon: A Different View" has been on sale at the Canyon's bookstores since last fall. It quickly raised the hackles of the presidents of seven science organizations, who jointly signed a December 16 2003 letter to the park's superintendent urging him to remove the book.
Of course this particular controversy follows the one last year when Canyon officials required that plaques containing Biblical Psalms be removed from the Canyon. That decision was later overturned and is now under review.
In my last post I sort of held the next election would be one of class warfare. It seems it will also be one of religious warfare - with those who favor a Christian theocracy winning handily.
And the sissy Europeans will be all aghast again.
Thursday, 8 January 2004
Topic: World View
Why Are The Brits Making Fun of Us?
Don't they know we need to be careful?
Here's an interesting news item they pick off the wire from Massachusetts, from the Greenfield Recorder - which they really shouldn't be reading, I suppose.
See Flight Sim enquiry raises terror alert
Andrew Orlowski, The Register (UK), Posted: 08/01/2004 at 22:39 GMTA mother's enquiry about buying Microsoft Flight Simulator for her ten-year-old son prompted a night-time visit to her home from a state trooper.
Julie Olearcek, a USAF Reserve pilot made the enquiry at a Staples store in Massachusetts, home to an earlier bout of hysteria, during the Salem witch trials.
So alarmed was the Staples clerk at the prospect of the ten year old learning to fly, that he informed the police, the Greenfield Recorder reports. The authorities moved into action, leaving nothing to chance. A few days later, Olearcek was alarmed to discover a state trooper flashing a torch into to her home through a sliding glass door at 8:30 pm on a rainy night.
Olearcek is a regular Staples customer and schools her son at home. The Staples manager simply explained that staff were obeying advice. Shortly before Christmas, the FBI issued a terror alert to beware of drivers with maps, or reference books.
At one time it was rare to find US citizens, in the safest and most prosperous country in the world, jumping at their own shadows. Now we only note how high.
Well, that's pretty snooty. And kind of funny.
I remember when Microsoft Flight Simulator first came out. I tried it, and crashed my Cessna 172 repeatedly just trying to get in the air. Microsoft Flight Simulator has gone through years of upgrades and perhaps it is more functional now. I'm not sure even now it would aid terrorists. And one wonders how a ten-year-old young lad would get access to the flight deck of any airliner to put into practice what he mastered on his home computer - but he COULD BE a terrorist.
Yeah right.
These Brits feel all superior because they've been living with the threat of mad Irishmen blowing up a car now and then on a crowded street - and they're getting on just fine.
We feel we're different. We are.
Topic: Election Notes
Religious cults, like fringe candidates, are never quite as much fun as you'd imagine.
Lyndon LaRouche, Scientology... whatever.
My neighbor for a time was thinking of supporting Lyndon LaRouche in 2004 and I think I talked her out of it. I reminded her of his conviction for mail fraud - bilking old folks out of lots of money to finance his political efforts. And then there is his ranting about how the world is really controlled by a secret group of Jewish bankers and certain members of the British House of Lords, and those evil Rothschild folks. A nut case.
Still, he is sort of the tenth candidate of all the Democrats running against Bush. Brian Montopoli has some interesting comments today on Lyndon LaRouche.
Here's a bit of it:I've gone through life dimly aware of Lyndon LaRouche. I always thought he was some sort of wacko, vaguely cultlike figure, and when I came across his followers on the street, standing behind tables, I tried not to make eye contact, much as one does when confronted by those bright-eyed young men outside the Scientology building. Yesterday, however, I got a call from a friend at 6:15 telling me, rather breathlessly, to turn on the TV. LaRouche had bought a half hour on Fox 5 here in DC (preempting The Simpsons, no less), and he was broadcasting a speech he had given in December. I watched, and my friend was kind enough to take notes. Here are some of the highlights:
We should earmark at least $6 trillion to rebuild the infrastructure of our cities so that everyone can get to work in less than a half hour. This will involve magnetic levitation.
The monetary system may crash before the broadcast of the speech is over. (It didn't.)
Hitler was created by bankers.
The medical practice should get lessons from the Norman Wars.
The Democratic Party will "die" if it doesn't recognize LaRouche as a candidate, because in a poll nearly a year ago, an "unknown" Democrat had better odds of beating Bush than any of the established candidates.
That's enough of the bullet points. Onto LaRouche's presentation: he has this weird stream of consciousness style of speaking in which he jumped from topic to topic without ever really explaining anything. I believe he said Howard Dean shouldn't even be in this country, but never really mentioned why. Then he was onto the Peloponnesian Wars or something. It was at least timeslot appropriate: I felt like I was listening to Grandpa Simpson, only with more historical references. It was kind of a disappointment, actually, though - I was expecting a little more charisma, perhaps a crazy new laser based mail system or maybe something involving aliens and a secret handshake. I mean, LaRouche was strange, don't get me wrong. The magnetic levitation thing was great. I was just hoping he'd go a little further over the edge. It's like when I wandered into the Scientology building. I was a little under the influence, and I thought I'd see what they'd try to do to me - give me a psych test, get me to sign over the rights to my refrigerator, something like that. Instead, they just gave me a tour and tried to sell me some books. It was a pretty big letdown. Where was the indoctrination? The charismatic recruiter? Why wasn't I being lowered into a pool of something? They did invite me to L. Ron Hubbard's birthday the next night, but I decided not to go. Religious cults, like fringe candidates, are never quite as much fun as you'd imagine.
Well, Claudine didn't got to the Lyndon LaRouche rally in Long Beach, nor did I. It might have been amusing in an isn't-this-odd way.
But a lot of life out here in Hollywood is like that. Who needs more?
By the way, if any of you visit, I live quite near the Scientology Celebrity Center, the big complex up on Franklin Avenue, not far from the Magic Castle. We could visit. There's another big Scientology center a few blocks east of here right in the middle of Hollywood - the one for the "not famous." No John Travolta there. Your choice. I haven't visited either.
Topic: Election Notes
Class Warfare and Questions of Character
Why punish the successful and reward those with no ambition?
My friend Martin, the Wall Street attorney but hardly an I'm-rich-and-you're-not-ha-ha Republican, is uncomfortable with Howard Dean. He's been toying with the idea of doing some work for Wesley Clark. Heck, Martin has been toying with the idea of running for office himself. Forgive him, he chats too often with his advisor from law school, Peter Rodino of Watergate fame. But I can see why he likes Clark.
Monday Wesley Clark laid out his tax plan. The Dean folks were pretty stunned, and more than a few political writers have urged Dean and the rest to jump on board and get behind this plan as the official party position.
Under the Clark proposal, called "Families First Tax Reform," families of four making less than $50,000 would pay no federal income tax and all families with children making under $100,000 would get a tax cut. The tax cuts would be paid for by closing corporate tax loopholes and by increasing by five percentage points the tax rate on income exceeding $1 million.
As he says, "This year alone, the richest Americans - those making more than $1 million - are getting an average tax break of $128,000. So, while working families have seen their bank accounts shrink, the president has been working overtime to help the richest Americans get richer. That's not right."
Under his plan, fewer than half of families would have to file tax forms and the rest would find their taxes easier to file than they are now - "With this new system, you can figure out whether or not you need to pay taxes just by filling out three lines. The first line is your income. The second line is your marital status. The third line is the number of children you have. And if it all adds up to $50,000 or less and two children or more, then you should put away your checkbook, because you won't owe the government a dime in income taxes."
Details are here:
Clark unveils tax plan
'Karl [Rove], I want you to hear me loud and clear'
CNN, Monday, January 5, 2004, Posted: 6:03 PM EST (2303 GMT)
Now of course I do have a conservative friend out here that says, if we must have taxes at all of any kind, we should have a flat tax. His position is that those who succeed should be rewarded, not penalized. They should be able to keep what they earn, and not be forced to subsidize services provided to people who would rather play victim and do nothing to become successful. The idea is that flat taxes - everyone paying the same fixed percent of income - would act as an incentive for people to get a positive attitude, accept personal responsibility, and make something of themselves, instead of expecting those who do things and succeed to underwrite their slothful whining. If they did that then they too would be able to keep what they earn - not ninety percent of twenty-grand, but if they apply themselves and quit complaining, ninety percent of each year's millions. Otherwise they're just taking his money - the money he worked for so hard. It's not fair.
Clark says lowering taxes for the rich isn't fair. It's a matter of character. One doesn't do things that aren't fair. Making someone with low income pay the same rates as someone with high income, and then making tax breaks unavailable to them, is "not right." Maybe so.
My conservative friend says raising taxes on the successful - those who don't whine and don't play victim and who actually make things happen in this country - isn't fair. This too is a matter of character. We destroy people's character by making them think they deserve subsidies, when they do little to make this country great and could be rich too if they only applied themselves. We make them behave like victims, when they really need "tough love." Why punish the successful and reward those with no ambition?
Class warfare is in the air.
Karl Rove, the president's chief political advisor, knows it. Everyone knows it. And it should be an interesting campaign.
Martin likes Clark, not so much for the tax plan but for Clark's comments when he explained it. Clark said this:
"If Karl Rove is watching today, Karl, I want you to hear me loud and clear: I am going to provide tax cuts to ease the burdens for 31 million American families - and lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty - by raising the taxes on 0.1 percent of families - those who make more than $1,000,000 a year. You don't have to read my lips, I'm saying it. And if that makes me an 'old-style' Democrat, then I accept that label with pride and I dare you to come after me for it."
Let the fun begin.
Wednesday, 7 January 2004
Topic: The Law
Well, here's an interesting question. Do you punish crime but treat illness?
What to do with Michael Jackson if he is guilty.
What to do with Michael Jackson if he cannot possibly BE guilty.
This came up today.
See Vile, Vile Pedophile
Is child molesting a sickness or a crime?
Dahlia Lithwick, Slate Magazine, Posted Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2004, at 4:17 PM PT
Here's the problem.Again, and for all the wrong reasons, we can't take our eyes off Michael Jackson. Whether or not the allegations are substantiated, the question is in the air: Is pedophilia a disease to be treated, or a crime to be punished? Are people who seduce minors sick or evil? Our current legal and medical systems blur both views. We call for the most draconian punishments (life imprisonment, castration, permanent exile) precisely because we view these acts as morally heinous, yet also driven by uncontrollable biological urges.
If sex with children is truly the product of freely made moral choices, then we should deal with it through the criminal justice system. But if it is a genetically over-determined impulse, an uncontrollable urge nestled in our DNA, then punishing pedophiles must be morally wrong. As science - and culture - increasingly medicalizes bad behavior, finding a neurological component to everything from alcoholism to youth violence, we run the parallel risks of either absolving everyone for everything, or punishing "criminals" who are no guiltier than cancer patients.
What science has revealed about the moral/medical roots of pedophiles is, of course, ambiguous.
Well drat!
Lithwick lays out the medical and legal issues from the nineteenth century forward. But she adds that researchers have been unable to isolate a biological cause for pedophilia, or even to agree on a personality profile. Not to mention the terrific confusion within the medical community in defining what this "disease" really involves. Until a few years ago, for example, the DSM-IV - the Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - defined pedophilia as a disease only if the sufferer's "fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning." In other words, a non-impaired, remorseless pedophile was apparently perfectly healthy.
Huh?
But as Lithwick points out, advocates of the "disease" school say pedophilia is often the product of uncontrollable impulses that seem to respond to treatment (including castration, both surgical and chemical) particularly in conjunction with monitoring and behavioral therapy. This raises at least a possibility not associated with car thieves and insider traders: That small tweaks to one's brain chemistry may neutralize the impulse to commit more crimes. And if that is the case, they contend, shouldn't we be treating rather than punishing?
Thomas Szasz (link here) urges that pedophilia is ultimately still a moral failure regardless of its biological roots: "Bibliophilia means the excessive love of books. It does not mean stealing books from libraries. Pedophilia means the excessive (sexual) love of children. It does not mean having sex with them." The crime, he argues, is not the psychological impulse, but the willingness to give in to it. But this conclusion, Lithwick says, assumes an answer that science is still uncertain about: whether for some pedophiles, the impulse to molest has become a pathology. If that is the case, pedophiles can't have the criminal intent necessary to want to commit a crime, and that mens rea is the cornerstone of our criminal law.
Lithwick finds something else. Back in 1987, Robert Wright discussed this in relation to alcoholism in the New Republic. Wright's conclusion was that it is a mistake to label a behavior - even a behavior with some biological and genetic determinants - a "disease" because it ultimately means "giv[ing] up on the concept of volition altogether." According to Wright, since alcoholism is the product of a complicated moral soup of environmental and biological factors, since biology may play a role, but not the only, or even predominant role, in these behaviors, we are better off holding people responsible for their actions than not. Otherwise, he argues, "things fall apart."
Somehow I don't find that helpful. Pragmatic, yes. Just? Probably not.
But punishing child molester has its attraction.
And what good does it do? There are, it's generally agreed, four basic rationales for punishment: revenge, rehabilitation, deterrence, and incapacitation. If we accept the mixed causation theory - that pedophilia is part disease and part crime, then almost none of these rationales are served. Lifetime recidivism rates show that "rehabilitation" alone has not been very effective for sex offenders, and we know that deterrence is unlikely when most offenders are able to "get away with" multiple acts before apprehension. Revenge makes sense only where rational choices led to the commission of the crime, which is in doubt when one's neurochemistry may be running the show. Which leaves only incapacitation as the reason for punishing pedophiles.
And that is where Lithwick comes down.Now, don't knock incapacitation. A lifetime of involuntary confinement was a good idea for carriers of the Black Plague, who were guilty of no moral failures at all.
Indeed. But is that practical?
And it is right?If science is proved even ten percent right and nature has some hand in creating a pedophile, lifelong imprisonment solves only one immediate problem - warehousing dangerous citizens. But it raises a more immediate problem - we may be punishing sick people who could have been helped.
Well, I'll have to think about this.
And by the way, the whole item is even more complex than my overview here. You might read it.
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