Politics

Schneier on the Boston Lockdown

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2013-04-21 SchneierBob Schneier is a security expert who is also concerned with civil liberties, so he’s the kind of guy who doesn’t cut the TSA a lot of slack. What does he think about the virtually city-wide lockdown of Boston during the manhunt for the fugitive bombers? In this blog entry, he explains why he didn’t object and also links to posts by others who did object.

Me? I’m with Bob on this one. I think the counterexample of the way London wasn’t locked down when some of the subway bombers fled doesn’t work because they just fled. As opposed to the Marathon bombers who hijacked cars, killed cops, got into gunfights, and threw bombs. Frankly, I think calling the lockdown “house arrest” is a stretch. I would have been staying indoors, too.

Gosnell and Abortion, Part 3 of 3

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In the first post, I introduced the theme that pro-choice journalists are unconsciously avoiding directly covering the Gosnell case because it would cause cognitive dissonance and provided the first example: the Gosnell case would reveal just how liberal and out-of-touch the abortion status quo is in this country. In the second post I got to the heart of the issue: the extreme laws on abortion make it impossible to distinguish between abortion and infanticide, leading not just Gosnell but also pro-choice leaders (including President Obama) to openly call for infanticide. Gosnell’s problem: he followed through on the logic.

There’s one last myth that cannot survive the Gosnell story, and in some ways its the hardest for the pro-choice lobby to accept but also the most important to understanding the pro-life perspective. So here goes.

3. Abortion is not good for women 

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Gosnell and Abortion, Part 2 of 3

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Yesterday I wrote the first in a series of 3 posts discussing why the mainstream media has been reluctant to cover the Kermit Gosnell case. Rather than suggest that there’s some kind of conspiracy or willful deception, my belief is that journalists (who are overwhelmingly pro-choice) are simply unable to confront a case that threatens to upend the misconceptions and doublethink required to support the status quo of abortion in America. For example, most people do not realize how radical the current laws are. The vast majority of abortions are for birth control. They are elective. And, while late term abortions are rare, they are effectively unregulated. Only in the most extreme circumstances–where a doctor injures or kills a pregnant woman–is there any really legal danger to the abortionist.

But there’s a simpler and much more dangerous truth that the Gosnell case would threaten to drag into the limelight. Before I introduce it, however, I ought to include a warning that I will be quoting from some very graphic accounts of abortion. There are no photos or videos or audio, and my source is an abortion doctor who remains adamantly pro-choice to this day and was writing in defense of her career, but that doesn’t make it any easier to read. Having thus warned you, let’s get right to the simple reality:

2. Abortion is a violent way of killing human beings 

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Gosnell and Abortion, Part 1 of 3

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Less than a week after Kirsten Powers’ USA Today piece, the concerted pro-life effort to get the Gosnell trial the media attention it tragically deserves has succeeded. Sort of.

There are a lot of articles being written about Gosnell, but the vast majority are focusing on the coverage of the trial, not the trial. To be fair, some of these pieces delve into the grim details. Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic pointed out that in addition to dead babies, the story included: “The Exploited Women. The racism. The numerous governmental failures.” And yet Washington Post reporter Sarah Kliff still thinks this is a “local crime” story, at least as far as her Twitter feed is concerned.

2013-04-16 Sarah Kliff Tweet

Kevin Drum of Mother Jones concurs, dismissing the pro-life outcry as “working the refs” and “a hustle”. The Daily Caller even covered an attempt to delete Kermit Gosnell’s Wikipedia page because it was just a “local multiple-murder story in Pennsylvania.” (The attempt failed.) According to Drum, the lack of coverage doesn’t even need an explanation. Why wasn’t it covered? “Beats me. I’ve often wondered just what it is that causes some local crime stories to become media sensations and others to molder in obscurity.” Just one of those things, right?

Friedersdorf, also pro-choice but possessed of some journalistic integrity, tried a little harder and came up with 14 theories. The most interesting comes near the end of the list:

13. Horrific as It Is, This Case Doesn’t Speak to Anything Larger About Abortion.

Is Friedersdorf claiming that it was horrific enough to be covered, but that was cancelled out because it says nothing about abortion? Try that logic out on other horrific stories: “Yeah, we were going to cover a school shooting, but then we realized it wasn’t related to abortion so we packed up and went home.” It sticks out on the list because it doesn’t even answer the question. Or make any kind of sense at all.

The reality is that the Gosnell story isn’t ignored because it says nothing about abortion, but because it says a lot about abortion. Friedersdorf had previously dismissed the idea that “Pro-Choice Journalists Are Willfully Ignoring the Story to Avoid Giving an Advantage to Pro-Lifers” (theory #9 on his list), but that’s not how cognitive biases work. Their entire function is to pre-empt the pain of cognitive dissonance by filtering out the uncomfortable evidence before you’re aware of it. They lead people to do and say irrational things like, I don’t know, propound entirely senseless theories just because they are reassuring. Pro-choice journalists (a close synonym for just “journalists”) aren’t willfully ignoring the story, but they were definitely ignoring it, and now that they can’t do that they are mostly changing the subject by going meta.

The Gosnell case isn’t threatening because it’s intrinsically pro-life,but it’s definitely kryptonite to the pro-choice status quo. Starting today and continuing to posts on Thursday and Friday, I’ll do a run-down on how the Gosnell story is a clear and present danger to the myths and doublethink necessary to preserve America’s abortion status quo.

1. America’s Abortion Laws Are Very Extreme 

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Rackspace vs. The Patent Troll

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Encouraging news: Rackspace has responded to a 500% increase in their legal bills by deciding to go after one of the most notorious patent trolls around (Parallel Iron). Looks like the villagers have had enough and it’s time for the pitchforks and torches.

2013-04-16 Patent Troll Sign

Alas, it’s not actually that dramatic. These are court cases, after all, but Rackspace won a major victory against another patent troll just last week, so maybe they’re on a roll. Even earlier, Newegg famously lived up to their “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” approach to patent trolls when they crushed patent troll Soverain Software over shopping-cart patents.

(And if you have no idea what a “patent troll” is or why anyone should care, This American Life recently rebroadcast their 2011 story on them called When Patents Attack. Check it out.)

The Failure of Market Failure

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2013-04-15 Library of Economics and LibertyArt Carden and Steve Horwitz have an absolutely essential article up at the Library of Economics and Liberty about market failure. Why is this article absolutely essential? Because, although market failure is a real thing, it is too often naively assumed that the proper response to any and all market failures is to override the market. It’s not. From the article:

Externalities, public goods, asymmetric information, and market power provide necessary—but insufficient—conditions for intervention to be justified. They certainly are not talismans that provide interventionists with carte blanche to tinker with the members of a society as if they were pieces on a chessboard. Too often, critics of markets think that merely invoking these terms destroys the case for free markets.

So market failure is when, because of externalities, public goods, etc., the market fails to arrive a the best solution. The problem is that imposing some kind of non-market solution raises new risks, for example that the government intervention will fail as or even more spectacularly than the market would.

The article does a great job of going into depth on each of the varieties of market failure, and I’ll just add my $0.02 to their conclusion. There are twin extremes that need to be avoided. The first is the extreme of assuming that the market is always right. The second is the extreme of assuming that, whenever the market fails, government is always right. Unfortunately–while the first is easily recognized as an extreme by most folks–the second frequently goes unchallenged. It ought to be.

There is no perfect ideological answer to real-world problems. Sometimes market failures really do require intervention. Sometimes, however, they don’t. One of the biggest differences between liberals and conservatives, in my experience and according to psychological research, is that conservatives can accept when the optimal solution is just unreachable and a second-best strategy is the only thing we can hope for.

People Deserve Second Chances, But Politicians Don’t

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2013-04-03 Sanford Cries

As ABC News reports:

Stage two of Mark Sanford’s political comeback is complete.

The former South Carolina governor, who ended his term tarnished by one of the most sensational political sex scandals in recent memory, has won the Republican primary to become the party’s candidate for the U.S. House seat he represented in the 1990s.

I have a beef with this.

Forgiveness is an important part of life, and I believe in giving people second chances. But what’s admirable on a person-to-person level can create warped incentives on a systemic level. The American voter’s willingness to forgive and forget when it comes to political scandal create a toxic environment where integrity–which is costly to people who try to live with it–is devalued.

I have nothing against Sanford and I don’t want to throw stones, but I don’t want to hand him a seat in the US House of Representatives either. Obviously that decision lies ultimately with the voters of South Carolina, but I sure wish they’d have some better sense. You want to know why we can’t find any honest politicians to represent us? This is why. Politics naturally attracts egotistical, impulsive glory-hounds, and so if you want to screen them out (or at least discourage them a little bit) you’re going to need a system that has stiff penalties for wantonly dishonest behavior. More importantly, you need those punishments to go through regardless of how sorry or sympathetic the perpetrator is. If the public takes back misbehaving politicians and gives them a second chance then the threats of punishment are not credible and therefore can have no deterrent effect. And if there’s no deterrent effect against lying and cheating, what kinds of people do you think will come to dominate the system?

That, alone, is enough for the voters of South Carolina to give a resounding “denied” in response to Sandord’s newest job application. But wait, there’s more!

The fact that Sanford is a conservative Republican plays perfectly into the Democratic narrative that social values is just a code word for entrenching the interests of the patriarchy. Yeah: gays can’t get married, but Sanford can abandon his wife and children and all he has to do is say “sorry” before he gets his old House seat back. Really? In light of that, all his God-talk is very obnoxious:

It’s been a very long journey. And in that journey I am humbled to find ourselves where we find ourselves tonight… I want to thank my God. I used to cringe when somebody would say, `I want to thank my God’ because at that point I would think this is getting uncomfortable. But once you really receive God’s grace and (have) seen it reflected in others you stop and acknowledge that grace and the difference He has made in my life and in so many lives across this state and across this nation.

I’ll  be perfectly honest: I think he’s lying. I think someone who truly understood repentance would have more sense than this. But regardless of his sincerity, the GOP needs to pick between “supporting rich old white guys” and “supporting family values”. Earth to the Republicans: those two phrases are not synonymous. Acting as though they are–as if the interests of the rich old white guys were equivalent to the interests of families–is exactly why so many people can’t take social conservatism seriously.

And lastly, let me address the old “I don’t care what they do in their private lives” approach. Here’s a newsflash: marriage is not your private life. Obviously there are aspects to family life that are intensely private and personal and none of our business whatsoever, but the vows that spouses take are public vows. Marriage is not a private bond between two individuals. It is a public institution that creates an agreement between the spouses (to love and protect each other) and society (to give their union special status). Breaking those vows is not a purely private matter. That’s why we have weddings.

So yeah: Mark Sanford is on his comeback. He’s the underdog now, I guess. The anti-hero.

Welcome to America.

Internet Commenters and the “Nasty Effect”

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2013 03 22 Comments Bad For You

Slashdot summarizes a depressing bit of research:

Researchers worked with a science writer to construct a balanced news story on the pros and cons of nanotechnology, a topic chosen so that readers would have to make sense of a complicated issue with low familiarity. They then asked 1,183 subjects to review the blog post from a Canadian newspaper that discussed the water contamination risks of nanosilver particles and the antibacterial benefits. Half saw the story with polite comments, and the other half saw rude comments, like: ‘If you don’t see the benefits of using nanotechnology in these products, you’re an idiot.’ People that were exposed to the polite comments didn’t change their views really about the issue covering the story, while the people that did see the rude comments became polarized — they became more against the technology that was covered in the story.

Glad that none of my commenters here are like that, but it’s still disconcerting to thing that the ignorati of the world might actually be having a real impact. (Pic is from Salon, which also covered the story.)

Dear Crazy Conservatives, Please Stop

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So Vulture reports that Dinesh D’Souza is making a new movie. I really, really wish he wouldn’t.

2013 03 21 2016 Obamas AmericaHis last movie, in case you missed it, was 2016: Obama’s America and it is a perfect example of what happens when the American right decides that Michael Moore is a really awesome guy and theywant to be totally just like him. In fairness, I did not watch the movie. I did, however, have the misfortune of reading the entire book upon which it was largely based: The Roots of Obama’s Rage (also by Dinesh D’Souza). It was an educational experience, but not in the way that D’Souza probably intended. The central premise of the book is that Obama is suffering from an acute case of absent-father syndrome, and therefore he has become the spiritual reincarnation of his father’s exact politics. The problem with that, of course, is that if Obama Senior was totally absent from his son’s life, how did he manage to pick up his politics? It’s not as though his precise brand of anti-colonialism was readily available on bookshelves. The only way Roots of Obama’s Rage makes sense as a narrative is if you believe in literal ghosts (which, if you read the book, might actually be what D’Souza is saying).

The mangled thesis isn’t the worst crime of the book, however. The intentionally belligerent tone is. D’Souze quite deliberately hurls as many racially insensitive terms as he can, including some of his own invention. For example, his term “lactation man” (meaning: “a person who makes things white”) impresively manages to be both sexist and racist at the same time! At least Ann Coulter tries to be funny and clever (guilty admission: sometimes I think she succeeds). D’Souza’s provocative prose is just ugly.

So the near media blackout surrounding the film’s release struck me as a blessing. This is not a right-wing documentary you want to bring home to meet your parents. Depressingly, however, the film did astoundingly well. Only three documentaries have ever pulled in more than the $33,449,086 that D’Souza’s film scored: a Justin Bieber documentary, March of the Penguins, and Farenheit 9/11. At over $100,000,000, Michael Moore’s haul is impressive, but his film opened up in over 800 theaters, and Obama’s America opened up in 1.

The next installment is scheduled for release just before the 2014 midterm elections. I can’t wait.

In another example of conservatives behaving badly, I’m flabbergasted at the way the following Cruz / Feinstein smackdown has been making the rounds among my right-of-center Facebook contacts and in the blogosphere. The video of the exchange between the two senators is here, and the conservative take on it is summarized with images like this one: 

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Reminder: Human Beings Are Not Commodities

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Earlier this month, the New York City Health Resource Administration unveiled a series of posters designed to combat teen pregnancy. The posters have drawn widespread criticism, including drawing fire from both sides of the abortion debate. The primary complaint is that they stigmatize pregnant mothers, and that’s valid. There’s an even more sinister message, however, but it’s not drawing as much attention because it’s much more subtle.

2013 03 15 I'm Less Likely To Graduate

Think about the logic of that statement: “I’m twice as likely not to graduate high school because ou had me as a teen.” The unstated question is: As opposed to what? By waiting, could you have had this child at a later stage in your life, a stage when this child–this particular curly-haired kid–would have had a better shot at life? No. You couldn’t have had this child at any other time. You would have had a different child.

What the poster is implying is that human beings are interchangeable. If you get pregnant at 17 your kid is more likely to have a bad life. If you get pregnant at 27 they have a better chance. But it’s not the same child. Conception is the moment when a new organism is created. Unless you save that particular sperm and that particular egg for 10 years, we’re not talking about improving the life of a specific child. We’re talking about two entirely distinct children.

Does that matter? Yeah, I think it does. I think it does because Madonna going around and adopting children like they were Pokemon (“Gotta catch ’em all!”), parents in India and China sex-selecting their chidlren by killing off the girls, the fact that 95% of babies with Down syndrome get aborted, the entire industry of IVF that tends to treat children as an upgraded model of those purse-dwelling toy dogs, and the looming biothethical quandary of designer children all contribute to the commodification of human beings.  Implicit in all of this is the idea that–as long as you terminate the pregnancy before birth–you can have a do-over. As though a human being were like a laptop or a car or a cup of coffee: a purchase you can postpone by returning the merchandise or a transaction you can unravel if the situation changes.

Yes, I’m pro-life, but you don’t have to be pro-life to be troubled by this trend. Even those who think abortion should be legal can recognize that a living human organism has some moral value, and that we ought to treat them as something qualitatively distinct from products. I’m not saying that these posters are creating that perception, but they sure are disturbing reflections of it.