These are not the guys I want as the face of gun rights activism.
I’ve been following Michael Yon for quite some time, since he was an independent journalist embedded with US armed forces in Iraq and then Afghanistan. He’s a bit of a loose cannon, and I certainly don’t agree with everything he writes, but this post makes some good points: Be a Palm Tree: Tobacco, Rebel Flag, 2nd Amendment.
The basic thesis is that back in the day smokers never took the complaints of non-smokers seriously. They arrogantly assumed that their rights as smokers trumped the rights of other folks to, for example, not be enveloped in a smog of carcinogens when stepping into an elevator. As a result of their rigid position, when the public sentiment turned against smokers and smoking it turned hard and they lost basically everything. He extends the same idea to the defenders of the confederate battle flag, arguing that if they’d been satisfied to fly the flag on their private property and wear it on hats and belt buckles, their probably would have been little uproar, but their insistence on flying the flag over (or very near) state buildings set up the backlash we’re seeing today.
And then Yon gets to what I thought was most interesting: open carry.
Yon’s Caption: Billy feeds Susan, while I stand guard with rifle and pistol.
Open carry refers to carrying a firearm openly (i.e. not concealed) and in many states (like Virginia, where I live) it is legal in most places and does not require a permit. The open carry movement is a loose coalition of gun rights organizations who, under the mantra of “use it or lose it,” engage in open carry to prevent the right from fading into obsolescence. Yon, as a person who grew up around guns, is strongly supportive of the 2nd Amendment and is supportive of open carry in general, but he has a problem with open carry extremists:
Those of us who have seen people shot both intentionally and negligently – I have seen plenty – do not like to be in the presence of goofballs with guns in their hands. Even trained US combat troops regularly shoot and kill fellow troops through negligence. British forces also do this… Hundreds of troops have been killed and wounded since 2001 by gunshot ‘accidents,’ which the military calls negligent discharges… US military commanders do not allow most troops to carry loaded weapons on any but the most dangerous bases: we typically take more casualties on bases from negligent discharges than from insider attacks. And this is from trained troops.
So, when Yon reads about a open carry advocate carrying a shotgun into a Walmart and then loading and racking a shotgun. That’s not a made-up example, and the local police chief (the incident took place in Gulfport, MS) was not amused:
“If I were in a situation where I’m in the store shopping with my family and I see an individual loading a 12 gauge, and racking it, I’m not coming to the conclusion this is good,” said Papania. “While the actions of these two men are sanctioned by state laws, what they did negatively impacted our community.”
Yon also goes further, and cites basic common decency. Although folks (like Yon) who grow up around guns do not bat an eye at responsible open carry, there are lots of Americans who did not have that background and are scared at the sight of a firearm. Common courtesy says that you shouldn’t go out of your way to further intimidate, harass, or scare folks like that. Let them be.
All of this leads Yon to conclude that “Fanatics are being allowed to hijack 2nd Amendment issues.” I agree with Yon on that, and also on his final words from the post:
Many of us want to keep the 2nd Amendment strong. We must pay attention to our political environment, and to history. We must be the Palm Tree, and understand that no right is absolute, and that our rights never trump the rights of others.
[BYU grad] Rob Gardner of “Lamb of God” fame has come together with two friends for a new project with a focus on covering iconic pop songs with a full orchestra, a choir and soloists. Gardner arranged the pieces and co-produced the project with long-time friends and collaborators, brothers Drex and McKane Davis…The project is called Cinematic Pop, and its purpose is cover well-known and popular songs using a cinematic orchestral medium to rekindle an appreciation for the value of orchestral music, both in general and especially with younger generations. “One of our goals and passions for this project is to it bring young people, to get them excited about symphonic music, orchestral music,” Davis said. “Attendance to symphonies across the nation has been decreasing over the years, so to be able to bring the younger generation to that music and introduce it in a creative and impactful way is something that is really core to what we’re doing.” …At this point, the producers plan to release 10 videos total, but the project doesn’t end with the videos. Davis said they all feel passionate about the power of experiencing live music, and they plan to take the show on the road.
After watching the recent presidential news conference, I agree with Nathaniel that Garrett’s question was exploitative, and that the tone of president Obama’s response was effective and appropriate. I’ll even go so far as calling the response masterful. Garrett lost. That being said, I find the content of Obama’s response deeply problematic.
Obama knows only too well that the no ransom policy is not exactly straight-forward. In November of last year, Obama had the US policy on hostages reevaluated. In June of this year, it was announced that while the US government will continue its official no ransoms policy, family members may pay ransoms themselves. Not only that, the government will assist in communicating and negotiating with the captors. In other words, ransoms can be paid, and the leg work can be done by the US, but the ransoms cannot be paid by the state. This is because not paying ransoms does not actually prevent hostage taking. What it does is ensure the hostages’ deaths. Ransoms do provide an easy source of funding for terrorist organizations, which is where the real concern lays as far as counter-terrorism is concerned.
The US, though, has made exceptions to its policy, most notably in the case of Bowe Bergdahl. I personally think that Obama did the right thing in securing Bergdahl’s release. Soldiers need to have the confidence that everything will be done to bring them back. The deal itself, though, is a classic case of giving terrorists concessions. The Taliban received five of its men for one low-ranking US soldier. Of course they will leap at an opportunity to take more soldiers (and civilians) captive.
Obama, then, can and has made exceptions when it comes to securing the release of US citizens held by terrorist organizations. He has made emotional appeals not to consider them abstractions, but to understand that they are real people who may never see their families again. The response to Garrett does not explain no exceptions were made in this case, or why the release of the Americans was not insisted upon for any of the major concessions Obama was willing to grant Iran. If Iran, China, and Russia were given the choice of either an Iran with American prisoners and no lifting of the conventional arms embargo, or an Iran with American prisoners and a continued embargo, it is hard to see why they would pick the latter when they stand to gain quite a bit more from the former.
Obama is also being a little disingenuous when it comes to employing the hostage logic. The four Americans (or at least the three whose whereabouts are known) are not being held hostage, they are prisoners. They have not been used by Iran as bargaining chips in the nuclear negotiations. Obama wants Iran to be considered a responsible state actor with whom other state actors can have normative relations. These states do not take hostages for the purpose of gaining concessions. If Iran is not such a state, then Obama has done far worse damage by granting Iran political legitimacy and lifting sanctions than any concessions in the prisoners matter would have done. He cannot have it both ways. Garrett’s trap backfired, but Obama’s response leaves too many big questions unanswered.
In case you don’t want to watch the video, here are some snippets.
Major Garrett: As you well know, there are four Americans in Iran — three held on trumped-up charges and according to your administration and one whereabouts unknown. Can you tell the country, sir, why you are content with all the fanfare around this deal to leave the conscious of this nation, the strength of this nation unaccounted for in relation to these four Americans?
President Obama: I’ve to give you credit for how you craft those questions. The notion that I’m content as I celebrate with American citizens languishing in Iranian jails — Major, that’s nonsense, and you should know better. I’ve met with the families of some of those folks. Nobody is content, and our diplomats and our teams are working diligently to try to get them out. Now, if the question is why we did not tie the negotiations to their release, think about the logic that that creates. Suddenly Iran realizes, you know what? Maybe we can get additional concessions out of the Americans by holding these individuals.
I’ve seen this story making the rounds on Facebook, predominantly among conservatives where it has been paired with headlines like “Obama finally snaps” or “Garrett unloads on Obama.” From the headlines, you’d get the impression that this was some kind of Joseph N. Welch “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” moment.
Well, it’s not. And it’s not even close.
I’m not going to weigh in on the entire Iran nuke deal issue, because I don’t know enough about it. I’m generally optimistic and hopeful. I have a very high opinion of Iran and the people who live there (in distinct contrast to the radicals who run the place), and the deal seems reasonable, based on what I’ve heard. On the other hand, lots of conservatives seem to be pointing out that the deal with North Korea seemed reasonable as well, and look how that turned out. So I don’t know.
But on the specific issue of signing the deal with Iran while Americans are still in Iranian jails, Obama’s response was absolutely on point. He cited the exact same logic behind the US policy of not paying ransoms or negotiating with terrorists. The fact is that if you make it profitable to take hostages, then more hostages get taken. So, even though in any one case you want to negotiate for the sake of today’s hostages, you can’t because it would cause more people to become hostages tomorrow. That response is an excellent rebuttal to Garrett’s question, and it’s one conservatives (with all their much-vaunted tough-mindedness and realism) should be particularly cognizant of.
Secondly, in terms of tone, Obama’s response was equally fitting. Garrett’s question was loaded and arguably even exploitative. For Obama to address that directly was well within bounds. So, on both levels, Obama handled this particular question fairly and adeptly.
Complaints of media bias are tiresome. I get that. But, on the other hand, I’m really not convinced that folks are fully cognizant of exactly how far off-kilter the media is from the rest of society, or how profoundly that impacts how a lot of us see the world we live in. This chart, more than any other chart I’ve seen, conveys that reality.
I promise to do my best not to include this image in every post that I write for the next couple of years, but let me explain why it’s so important. (The post is from a Business Insider article, by the way: These Charts Show The Political Bias Of Workers In Each Profession.)
First, I mean “media” in the most general way possible. The entertainment industry, newspapers & print media, and academics: these are the sectors that determine, if not what people think, then certainly what people are thinking about. Folks marvel at the rapidity with which the country changed its mind on gay marriage, but it’s really no mystery when you think of how committed these sectors were to the campaign. (I’m not as sure about Online Computer Services, exactly, but it sounds like you may as well toss in the Internet with the rest of the media as well.)
So why is is that conservatives often feel under siege despite their numerical superiority (according to many polls)? This is why. Why is it that liberals cannot fathom what motivates conservatives? Again: this is why. There are essentially no representatives of conservative thought in the media that dominates this country.
This simple fact explains an awful lot about the current political climate.
I’d been storing up a couple of articles about Planned Parenthood, unsure of when I was going to post them, and then news broke yesterday of Planned Parenthood’s side gig selling human body parts from aborted fetuses. Well, it doesn’t get much sicker or more morally repugnant than that, but let’s back up before we get to that.
First, here’s an article from Secular Pro-Life showing how Planned Parenthood is aggressively expanding to increase their abortion numbers despite an overall decline in abortions nationally. At the same time, the work PP likes to be known for–cancer screenings and prevention services–are going down.
The graphic comes from a report by another pro-life organization (Americans United for Life) which (according to SPL’s summary):
covers a huge amount of ground: how Planned Parenthood is running away from its less profitable contraception and cancer screening services; how it is siphoning abortion business from its competitors, allowing it to take a greater share of the market even as nationwide abortions plummet; how it is putting its proverbial eggs in the basket of “mega-centers” that commit abortions six or seven days our of the week instead of just one or two; how it is developing those mega-centers by deceiving local authorities; and how our tax dollars are the scaffolding for the whole twisted enterprise.
Planned Parenthood likes to pass itself off as a woman’s health organization, but the reality is that it is (now moreso than ever) a highly profitable commercial enterprise founded on killing human beings.
Then there was this article from the WaPo that I thought was very interesting in light of the controversy over the Confederate battle flag: Planned Parenthood: The next relic from our racist past that must be purged. Steve Deace points out that, as racist legacies goes, Planned Parenthood’s is a stand out in all the worst ways possible:
Sanger left behind a documented legacy of racist screeds. Long before Democrats got a former grand wizard of the KKK named Robert Byrd elected to the U.S. Senate, Sanger proudly proclaimed the following:
“(We) are seeking to assist the white race toward the elimination of the unfit (blacks).” (Birth Control and Racial Betterment, 1919)
“Birth Control to create a (white) race of thoroughbreds!” (Subhead to Sanger’s magazine The Birth Control Review)
“We are paying for and submitting to an ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings (blacks) who never should have been born at all. That our wealth is being diverted from the progress of human civilization … Our eyes should be opened to the terrific cost to the community of this dead weight of (black) human waste.” (The Pivot of Civilization, 1922)
“Birth control is not contraception indiscriminately and thoughtlessly practiced. It means the release and cultivation of the better racial elements in our society, and the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extirpation of defective stocks–those human weeds (blacks) which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization.” (New York Times interview, 1923)
“I accepted an invitation to talk to the women’s branch of the Ku Klux Klan … I saw through the door dim figures parading with banners and illuminated crosses … I was escorted to the platform, was introduced, and began to speak … In the end, through simple illustrations (explaining the problems with inferior races), I believed I had accomplished my purpose. A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups were proffered.” (Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography, 1938)
Sanger established her first full-service “clinic” in Harlem in 1929. Why Harlem? Because, silly, that’s where a lot of the black people she often referred to as “human weeds” lived. Sanger described it as “an experimental clinic established for the benefit of the colored people.” In this case, she defined “benefit” as the overall reduction of the black population.
You might say this is all in the past, but the fact is that Planned Parenthood–which Sanger founded–still names its most prestigious award after her.
That kind of legacy explains photos like these:
So, all of this would have been bad enough, but yesterday we learned that Planned Parenthood is in the business of harvesting and selling body parts from the unborn human beings they kill. This isn’t just some fringe benefit, either. According to undercover video, they decide exactly how to perform abortions in order to avoid damaging the most valuable body parts that are currently on order. Here is Dr. Deborah Nucatola (Senior Director of Medical Services at Planned Parenthood since February 2009) describing her own procedures for ensuring optimal organ harvest from the abortions she personally performs:
For example, so I had 8 cases yesterday. And I knew exactly what we needed, and I kinda looked at the list and said okay, this 17-weeker has 8 lams, and this one — so I knew which were the cases that were more probably likely to yield what we needed, and I made my decisions according to that, too, so its worth having a huddle at the beginning of the day and that’s what I do.
This Breitbart article goes into more details, including Nucatola’s discussion of how to get the ban on Partial Birth Abortions. These abortions, which involve crushing the head of an unborn human being before delivering the rest of the body intact, are optimal because they allow everything (other than the head, obviously) to be resold. She says: “The Federal [Partial Birth] Abortion Ban is a law, and laws are up to interpretation. So, if I say on day one, I do not intend to do this, what ultimately happens doesn’t matter.”
There is some doubt about whether or not the body parts are technically sold since, as you can imagine, selling human body parts is not legal. Not even, I was surprised to learn, body parts from aborted humans. Snopes lists the allegation as “unconfirmed,” and for its part, PP has replied with a statement claiming that no body parts are sold, but that “tissue” (their euphamism) are donated for a fee:
In health care, patients sometimes want to donate tissue to scientific research that can help lead to medical breakthroughs, treatments and cures for serious diseases. Women at Planned Parenthood who have abortions are no different. At several of our health centers, we help patients who want to donate tissue for scientific research, and we do this just like every other high-quality health care provider does — with full, appropriate consent from patients and under the highest ethical and legal standards. There is no financial benefit for tissue donation for either the patient or Planned Parenthood. In some instances, actual costs, such as the cost to transport tissue to leading research centers, are reimbursed, which is standard across the medical field.
Consider me skeptical. The idea that there is “no financial benefit” is the same thing that PP would say about all the abortions they perform, since PP is ostensibly a non-profit, after all, and just in it for the health of women. Besides, as Hot Air summarizes the actual content of the video:
The context of the video was clearly not reimbursement for transportation of random tissue. Nucatola talks extensively about the demand for specific body parts in relation to price. “A lot of people want liver,” Nucatola states, and then explains how they train their staff to perform these abortions so that PP clinics can harvest organs to meet specific demand, and then make the sale. At one point, Nucatola even talks about body parts being on a “menu.”
I’m not a lawyer, but from what I’ve seen I doubt that Planned Parenthood is going to face a criminal investigation over this any time soon. The regional franchise might, but the national organization has been careful to keep its nose clean. But it’s equally obvious from the video that the only thing stopping them from whole-hearted retail is legal stricture. A change in the Supreme Court, as Nucatola says, and then it’s a different ballgame.
The whole thing is pretty grisly business, but none of my friends in the pro-life movement are at all surprised. This is what Planned Parenthood is. This is what they do. If you want to watch the video itself, here it is below.
Pretty awesome read and video from The Guardian on the Pluto flyby today:
Cheers, whoops and flag waving broke out at Nasa’s New Horizons control centre as scientists celebrated the spacecraft’s dramatic flyby of Pluto, considered the last unexplored world in the solar system. The probe shot past at more than 28,000mph (45,000 km/h) at 12.49pm BST (7.49am ET) on a trajectory that brought the fastest spacecraft ever to leave Earth’s orbit within 7,770 miles of Pluto’s surface…Stephen Hawking, the Cambridge cosmologist, joined in congratulating the New Horizons team in a recorded message. “Billions of miles from Earth this little robotic spacecraft will show us that first glimpse of mysterious Pluto, a distant icy world on the edge of our solar system. The revelations of New Horizons may help us to understand better how our solar system was formed. We explore because we are human and we long to know,” he said.
The whole thing is definitely worth reading. But perhaps the best part?:
The moment, played out on Tuesday to the sound of The Final Countdown by the 1980s glam metal band Europe, marked a historic achievement for the US, which can now claim to be the only nation to have visited every planet in the classical solar system.
Apparently I’m not very good at self-promotion. I said before that I would provide monthly recaps of my personal blog The Slow Hunch, but I’ve failed to do so the last…5 months.
So here I am again to provide all three readers of my blog with a lengthy list of posts you probably missed:
The Magical World of Miyazaki – Talks about my favorite insight from Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki in the documentary The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness on seeing the world in a magical way. Also features a nice video tribute to his work.
Finding Meaning Within Chinese Factories – Journalist Leslie Chang’s TED talk on Chinese factory workers and the need to listen to their voices in the debates around globalization.
Being Co-Creators With God – Features some excerpts from and comments on the slim AEI-published book Entrepreneurship for Human Flourishing regarding our participation in the divine activity of creation and its potential for helping the poor.
2015 Mormon Scholars in the Humanities Conference – The abstract for my paper presented at the 2015 Mormon Scholars in the Humanities Conference this April, entitled, “”A Friend Shall Lose His Friend’s Hammer”: An Eschatological View of Work.”
Groundhog Day: Salvation in the Mundane – A mixture of thoughts from social scientist Charles Murray and philosopher Adam Miller on the mundane, grace, the good life, and Groundhog Day.
Mowing the Lawn of Eden – Brief commentary on an excerpt from a wonderful NYT article on the happiness lurking in the mundane and repetition of everyday life.
Markets in a Zion Society – A portion of an unpublished paper that explores the cooperative nature of markets and its tendency to produce moral results, including fairness, generosity, and peace.
Found an interesting blog post from a Canadian economics blog: There are no Friedmans today, except maybe Friedman himself. The basic point is simple: “The right won the economics debate; left and right are just haggling over details.” Of course, you wouldn’t know that from most economics debates. The world has a funny habit of forgetting when conservatives win major debates. Everyone is well aware that evolution beat out any and all opposing theories. Few remember that the Big Bang Theory was seen as a controversial, conservative-aligned view before it was thoroughly validated. Same basic notion here: everyone wants to give credit to Keynes but forgets:
The way that New Keynesians approach macroeconomics owes more to Friedman than to Keynes: the permanent income hypothesis; the expectations-augmented Phillips Curve; the idea that the central bank is responsible for inflation and should follow a transparent rule. The first two Friedman invented; the third pre-dates Friedman, but he persuaded us it was right.
And one more quote to show how far we’ve come:
We easily forget how daft the 1970’s really were, and some ideas were much worse than pet rocks. (Marxism was by far the worst, of course, and had a lot of support amongst university intellectuals, though not much in economics departments.) When inflation was too high, and we wanted to bring inflation down, many (most?) macroeconomists advocated direct controls on prices and wages. And governments in Canada, the US, the UK (there must have been more) actually implemented direct controls on prices and wages to bring inflation down. Milton Friedman actually had to argue against price and wage controls and against the prevailing wisdom that inflation was caused by monopoly power, monopoly unions, a grab-bag of sociological factors, and had nothing to do with monetary policy.
Imagine if I argued today: “Inflation is dangerously low. In order to increase inflation, governments should pass a law saying that all firms must raise all prices and wages by a minimum of 2% a year, unless they apply for and get special permission from the Prices and Incomes Board to raise them by less.” What are the chances my policy proposal would be accepted?
Friedman had a mountain to move, and he moved it. And because he already moved it, we simply cannot have a Friedman today.
Oh well. I guess sometimes it’s more important to win than get the credit.
Or at least the notifications. That seems to be what a recent blog post at the Harvard Business Review suggests:
Multitasking…imposes a heavy cognitive load and hurts performance on a task, because our mental resources are finite and have to be allotted to discrete tasks. That’s why you’re not supposed to talk on the phone or text while you’re driving, and why many campaigns urge drivers to wait to respond until they’re no longer behind the wheel.
In an experiment with over 200 undergrads, researchers gave the participants a Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART). This consisted of a 10-minute exercise during which the students pressed a key whenever a number flashed onscreen (unless it was the number “3”). Eventually, one-third of the students received notifications, another phone calls, and another nothing at all (see the article for more detail). The results?
When the researchers looked at the relationship between block and group, they found that the percent change between blocks was greater for participants who received notifications, compared to participants who didn’t, and this was statistically significant at the 0.05 level. However, they didn’t find any significant difference in errors between people who received phone calls and people who received texts.
So basically, just having your phone near you can distract you and negatively affect your work performance. And this distraction-by-notification might even be comparable to interacting with your phone. Stothart said that in terms of effect size, their results were consistent with those of the distracted driving literature, which has looked at the effects of texting or talking on the phone (interacting) while driving.
