Democracy is Failing Us When We Urgently Need It to Work

On viewing photos of Iraqis mutilating the corpses of 4 western non-combatants killed in an insurgent attack near Fallujah today, I am more saddened than ever by the fact that the only way to dissent from the foreign policy of George W. Bush, come election time, will be to cast a vote for John Kerry or Ralph Nader. The United States needs to declare independence from Arab oil and leave people in that part of the world to work out their own destiny. Absent intervention from outside the region, it seems to me that Israel has sufficient military capability to defend itself, so why not let our principled support of Israel take the form of a guarantee to directly counter any such intervention from outside the region? I believe that one motive for our current policy of intensive middle eastern involvement was to discourage Israel from developing nuclear weapons and setting off a nuclear arms race in the region. That cat, unfortunately, has already escaped the bag, and if anyone who defends current policies knows what to do about it, they're not letting on.

One American life was infinitely too precious a price to squander on the revisionist objective of Bush's war, that is, the "liberation" of the Iraqi people from the despotism of Saddam Hussein. Unfortunately, there is no way to make that statement in the voting booth without at the same time seeming to call for abortion on demand in a way that entails a legal right to use abortion as a means of birth control even with an unborn child capable of living outside the womb, and for social policies which hold that there is no difference which ought to concern the public between long-term homosexual relationships and traditional families in terms of their suitability as contexts for child rearing.

A Sobering Thought on the War on Terror
In a March 16 column entitled "Masterminds", Joseph Sobran points out that Osama Bin Laden couldn't call off the war being waged by Islamic terrorists against the United States even if he wanted to.

When Political Civility is a Greater Good than a Protester's Objective
According to the Washington Post, busloads of activists "stormed the small yard of President Bush's chief political strategist, Karl Rove, yesterday afternoon, pounding on his windows, shoving signs at others and challenging Rove to talk to them about a bill that deals with educational opportunities for immigrants....The crowd then grew more aggressive, fanning around the three accessible sides of Rove's house, tracking him through the many windows, waving signs that read "Say Yes to DREAM" and pounding on the glass." They were advocating passage of a law making it easier for states to permit immigrants who have lived in the US illegally for at least five years to attend state colleges and universities at in-state tuition rates. Ironically, I doubt that even Rove himself could have devised a more effective political strategy for undermining their cause, than they one they elected to employ.

Absurdity Cubed
In a class at the University of North Carolina (which sometimes offers a course entitled "Queer Theory"), a student characterized homosexuality as "disgusting" and "a sin". His professor then sent an e-mail to the entire class charging that his remarks constituted "hate speech" under the university's non-discrimination and anti-harassment policy, which prohibits “offensive speech or behavior of a biased or prejudiced nature related to one’s personal characteristics, such as race, color, national origin, sex, religion, handicap, age or sexual orientation." Now, according to the Associated Press, the federal Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights is conducting an investigation to "determine whether the teacher's actions amounted to harassment". If we are to criminalize undergraduate non-sequiturs, we may as well outlaw higher education. If we only promote students too timid to voice spirited but inappropriate or poorly thought out sentiments, we will soon have to suffer government by people even more boring than the officials with whom we are already afflicted, headed, not by an elected president, but a special prosecutor appointed by the mandarins of political correctness - a prospect which ought to call to mind the office of Director of the Committee of Public Safety during the French Revolution.

Kerry the Veteran Opportunist
John Kerry spent whatever capital was associated with his status as a veteran early on in this presidential election campaign. At this point, each time he waves his veteran flag he's adding to an already grossly bloated sincerity deficit that is driving me with increasing conviction into the arms of George W. Bush. If there's anything worse than a crass opportunist, it's a piously self-righteous one. Bush's defining weakness seems to be an almost religious belief that his policies are right, not because he believes he's particularly virtuous, but because he believes in the virtue of his goals. Kerry, on the other hand, is projecting the notion that we should bend the knee to whatever position he takes at the moment on foreign affairs which involve the application of American military force, because of who he is as a decorated veteran Navy Seal. I'll take my chances with the man whose faith in his beliefs is too strong, over the man whose faith in his virtue is too strong.

Hypothesis:
The sum of human misery in Iraq when it was governed by Saddam Hussein was less than it is today.

Testing and Education
Suppose that it were illegal for opthamologists to administer tests on which people who could benefit from wearing glasses performed more poorly than people with 20/20 vision. Something of that sort seems to be at issue here, where a non-profit law firm in Alaska apparently claims that a test being given to high school students discriminates against those with learning disabilities. Hopefully, this non-profit law firm will not direct its attention next to whatever entity ensures that prospective heart surgeons are competent to set up practice.

Baloney
According to the Associated Press, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that if John Kerry will not name the foreign leaders he claims privately back his candidacy, "the only conclusion one can draw is that he is making it up to attack the president." I'm not sure why one is not free to speculate that Kerry may be truthfully stating that there are foreign leaders who hope he wins and who do not wish to make their identities known for reasons of state. The only conclusion one can draw is that the White House decides what it will try to lead the American people believe by determining what it wishes the facts were. Sound familiar?

Criminal Prosecutions
The horrifying view of Utah prosecutors that a pregnant woman can commit first-degree murder by delaying in consenting to major surgery will win no friends for the pro-life cause. That an argument so offensive on its face would even be brought to court is one more piece of evidence supporting the contention that the scales of justice in the U.S. today have tipped dangerously in favor of prosecutors. In ordinary as opposed to legal language, by bringing these charges, these prosecutors are so recklessly endangering this woman's right to liberty that it isn't even stretching the truth to call their action criminal.

David Brooks' Comic Masterpiece
David Brooks' op-ed piece about John Kerry in today's New York Times is a masterpiece of the genre. If anyone has packed more belly-laughs in a single column during the past year, I haven't seen it.

Who needs censorship...
According to the Washington Post, Democrats are having a field day taking the White House to task for this statement in last month's Economic Report of the President by the White House Council of Economic Advisors: "When a good or service is produced more cheaply abroad, it makes more sense to import it than make or provide it domestically." This is just one example in an ever lengthening list of truths which it is politically inexpedient to express. As that list grows, the hope that political debate will result in the adoption of wise policies diminishes. The utility of democratic institutions for the purpose of improving the quality of life is sharply limited by the wide-ranging preference of voters for soothing self-deceptions over uncomfortable truths.

What Will They Think of Next
According to the Los Angeles Times, the Pentagon is preparing to deploy a new weapon in Iraq, "a powerful megaphone the size of a satellite dish that can deliver recorded warnings in Arabic and, on command, emit a piercing tone so excruciating to humans, its boosters say, that it causes crowds to disperse, clears buildings and repels intruders." The chairman of American Technology Corp. says that "[for] most people, even if they plug their ears, [the device] will produce the equivalent of an instant migraine." The Pentagon should have saved itself the trouble and deployed videotapes of this year's Super Bowl halftime show.

Martha Stewart
An editorial in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette notes that "she was nailed for covering up a crime that the government wasn't moved to charge her with", the beneficiaries of her conviction are "mostly prosecutors who can boast a famous scalp", and the moral lesson to be drawn from her plight is "to make highly lawyered statements to inquiring prosecutors or else invoke the right not to speak to them at all[emphasis added]." Well said. More than a few "little people" who dozed off in a haze of perverse pleasure derived from Martha Stewart's discomfiture are going to wake with their own lives under the microscopes of other "little people", employed by tax agencies, whose prosecutorial zeal evolved in a culture of government power at the service of envy that was encouraged by their own applause.

Priorities in the Shining City on the Hill
People in the U.S. elected to undergo more than 8.7 million plastic surgery procedures last year, while at least 15 per cent of the population went the entire year without any health insurance. 82 per cent of those who underwent plastic surgery were women, with liposuction and breast augmentation being the most popular procedures. Over 11 per cent of U.S. children went the full year with no health insurance.

Bush's Folly
Washington Post columnist Colbert I. King aptly summarizes Bush's Iraq policy: "administration officials are in over their heads in a country and culture they didn't take the time to get to know or understand, and it's clear that Bush and his advisers are making it up as they go along. Pride and politics stand in the way of their admitting their mistakes, while the nation pays in blood and treasure. "

The Human Face of War
The horrors of the aftermath of 15 years of war between Iraq and the United States, and the failures of US-led "reconstruction", have never been more tellingly illustrated than by Ariana Eunjung Cha's "Iraqi Hospitals on Life Support", and the accompanying photos by Preston Keres, in today's Washington Post.

A Sentence for the Ages
'Mr. Eisner was even more direct. "I think it is only what it is," he said. "Don't look at it as tea leaves."'
-Washington Times

What are the odds....
The Associated Press is reporting that early Wednesday, the minority whip of the New Mexico House of Represtatives, Joe Thompson, was "charged with drunken driving, hours after attending a bill-signing ceremony to highlight the state's newest effort to crack down on DWI offenders."

Virtue and Value in Haiti

In an otherwise thoughtful op-ed piece about Haiti in today's Washington Post, Bob Shacochis opines that one cause of the failure of American pro-Aristide policy was the appointment of "emissaries diplomats and bureaucrats who did not genuinely believe in the fundamental goodness and potential of Haiti's long-suffering people."

I can think of no evidence supporting belief in the "fundamental goodness", or, to use an equivalent phrase, "fundamental virtuousness", of any people, Haitian or otherwise. I can think of a great deal of evidence to the contrary.

What is needed is not a counterfactual belief in the virtuousness of a people, but a committment on the part of each member of a people to value the life and well-being of every other member of that people, expressed in the form of a government wielding effective sanctions with overwhelming popular support against any who act in ways incompatible with the committment. Such a committment does not depend on belief that the others who are to be valued are virtuous, and it is the lack of just this committment, not on the part of citizens of the United States, but on the part of citizens of Haiti, which is at the root of Haiti's political turmoil.

It is a political virtue conducive to the enjoyment of life, liberty and prosperity - and contrary to the normal human inclination to unreasonable self-preference - for every member of a society to regard every other member as an ultimate value. Until Haitian mothers and fathers, schools, churches, and political parties begin inculcating this virtue in Haitian children from infancy till maturity, it is a virtue which no amount of American belief in the goodness of Haitians, no quantity of American money, and no American force of arms however large or long deployed, will be able to impart to Haitian people.

Opportunism and Electoral Politics
If you set out to devise a system for rewarding opportunism, you would be hard pressed to improve upon the efficiency with which democratic electoral processes do just that. No person who finds it revolting to act opportunistically advances past the level of dog catcher in today's American politics, and at the level of contests for the national presidency, the level of opportunism is pathological. To the extent that other Americans regard these powerful men as role models and emulate their conduct, we can expect this disposition increasingly to be manifested in every form of public and private interaction within our society.

Hypothesis:
There are populations which are best served by being deprived of self-government, and only the irrational fetishization of democracy prevents this from being widely recognized.

Double Predestination in Haiti
In John Calvin's theological universe, only God could effect salvation. The logic of that position led to the notorious doctrine of "double predestination" by way of the argument that, should God choose not to cause any individual's salvation, his deferral was tantamount to a decree of damnation. It appears that American interventionism in a world with only one superpower has created a similar climate of thought in international affairs, such that, by the very act of refusing to guarantee the authority of Haitian president Aristide's government in the face of opposition by armed mobs of his countrymen, the United States is said to have removed him from office by a coup. If this logic is carried far enough, George W. Bush will be assigned moral responsibility for every burglary in Borneo.

Is this what Adam Smith meant by "invisible hand"?
Pyramid Healthcare Inc. fired a drug and alcohol counselor because a robbery at her home "raised safety issues for our staff and clients", and Frank's Pizza fired a deliverywoman for stopping to aid the victims of a double shooting. Urban legends? Nope. Read about it in Brian O'Neill's column in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

American History 101
William Raspberry's op-ed column on reparations for blacks in the USA, in today's Washington Post, includes a history lesson that merits more attention than it has received. He tells of "Prince Edward County, Va., where what we used to call the 'white power structure' shut down the public schools rather than integrate them in accordance with the 1954 school desegregation decision. The schools remained closed from 1959 until 1964, during which time there was no tax-paid education for black children. (White youngsters were sent to a newly established 'private' academy.)"

Sideshow
Militant vegetarians are spamming the alt.food.barbecue mailing list, and preparing a billboard campaign featuring the words "He Died for your Sins" over a picture of a pig. That these people have so much time and money on their hands is perhaps an indication of inefficiencies in the volunteer rectruiting and fundraising arms of Ralph Nader's presidential campaign. Meanwhile, enquiring minds need to know: does the same principle which accords rights to pigs apply also to mosquitoes, salmonella bacteria, and HIV viruses? If not, why not?