Saturday, March 19. 2005
Ideological absolutism and Terry Schiavo
Francis Porretto writes about Terry Schiavo:
To tell you the truth, I'm actually more sympathetic to her husband than to the pro-death activists and the judge. He's killing her for money (and also possibly to cover up evidence of previous crimes). This is an exaggerated form of the sort of base evil to which all of us are occasionally tempted (although thankfully the overwhelming majority of us have the moral strength to resist). It is profoundly evil, but it is nevertheless comprehensible. I can see myself in his shoes, although I pray I'd never make his choices, no matter the circumstances.
But to torture this woman (and forced starvation constitutes torture by any recognized definition of the word...even on the Left) purely for the advancement of an abstract principle about the right to die, as the judge and the pro-death activists are doing, is a truly incomprehensible abomination.
It is indeed an echo of the abortion debate, where the issue is so fiercely polarized that pro-choice forces are finding themselves arguing that there's no moral difference between expelling a microscopic clump of cells and killing a viable infant in mid-birth, but that there is a difference between killing the infant during birth and killing it immediately afterward.
In service to their ideology they've entirely sacrificed both reason and humanity. Compared to that, a man who wants to kill his wife for money is easy to sympathize with.
Short of a patient who's sitting up in bed screaming and begging for her life, there really aren't any worse example cases for the pro-euthanasia argument than this one.
Mr. Porretto and I differ in our beliefs about abortion and euthanasia. I believe there are circumstances in which both are acceptable in a least-of-all-available-wrongs sense, whereas he, as I understand his beliefs, does not accept any set of circumstances in which either would be an acceptable choice. I can respect that...especially since my moral views are far closer to his than my pro-choice stand would imply.
But only someone so fanatical about their ideology that they're incapable of true thought or feeling would think that the Terry Schiavo case is anything but an argument against sanctioned euthanasia...and a compelling one at that.
Watching pro-euthanasia forces on the wrong side of Terry Schiavo may well turn me against euthanasia, just as watching pro-choice activists fight for "partial birth abortion" has all but completely turned me against abortion.
Let's be perfectly candid about what Michael Schiavo intends for his helpless wife: he wants her dead. His claim that she would want the same is hopelessly tainted by his pecuniary interest in her demise. He insists on killing her even though the sole legal way to get her into her coffin is to subject her to two weeks of excruciating torment.
Were a condemned serial killer to be sentenced to the same ordeal, every civil-rights and humanist group in the country would be up in arms. Nay, it would arouse every such group in the world. Such groups cannot abide the death penalty even for men convicted of the most heinous crimes. The United States would be castigated in every organ known to Man for its callousness, its brutality, and its lack of respect for human life.
Strangely, those groups have been quite silent about the plight of Terri Schindler-Schiavo. A few have even trumpeted the "right to die" mantra, as if they possessed telepathic time-travel powers that allow them to read Terri's desires retroactively from this point in time.
To tell you the truth, I'm actually more sympathetic to her husband than to the pro-death activists and the judge. He's killing her for money (and also possibly to cover up evidence of previous crimes). This is an exaggerated form of the sort of base evil to which all of us are occasionally tempted (although thankfully the overwhelming majority of us have the moral strength to resist). It is profoundly evil, but it is nevertheless comprehensible. I can see myself in his shoes, although I pray I'd never make his choices, no matter the circumstances.
But to torture this woman (and forced starvation constitutes torture by any recognized definition of the word...even on the Left) purely for the advancement of an abstract principle about the right to die, as the judge and the pro-death activists are doing, is a truly incomprehensible abomination.
It is indeed an echo of the abortion debate, where the issue is so fiercely polarized that pro-choice forces are finding themselves arguing that there's no moral difference between expelling a microscopic clump of cells and killing a viable infant in mid-birth, but that there is a difference between killing the infant during birth and killing it immediately afterward.
In service to their ideology they've entirely sacrificed both reason and humanity. Compared to that, a man who wants to kill his wife for money is easy to sympathize with.
Short of a patient who's sitting up in bed screaming and begging for her life, there really aren't any worse example cases for the pro-euthanasia argument than this one.
Mr. Porretto and I differ in our beliefs about abortion and euthanasia. I believe there are circumstances in which both are acceptable in a least-of-all-available-wrongs sense, whereas he, as I understand his beliefs, does not accept any set of circumstances in which either would be an acceptable choice. I can respect that...especially since my moral views are far closer to his than my pro-choice stand would imply.
But only someone so fanatical about their ideology that they're incapable of true thought or feeling would think that the Terry Schiavo case is anything but an argument against sanctioned euthanasia...and a compelling one at that.
Watching pro-euthanasia forces on the wrong side of Terry Schiavo may well turn me against euthanasia, just as watching pro-choice activists fight for "partial birth abortion" has all but completely turned me against abortion.
Saturday, March 12. 2005
Joining the insurrection
The McCain-Feingold Insurrection
Oh, I know. I'm minor. I'm a nonpartisan libertarian. I'm not the sort of person who'd quote or link to a candidate's press releases or a party's site. They'd have to imprison hundreds, maybe thousands of bloggers before my name would rise to the first page of the priority list. And I don't intend to go out of my way to provoke them. Gandhi or Martin Luther King I most emphatically am not.
But I will not submit. The first political controversy in which I ever became involved was over free speech online. That's what taught me that the two major parties are not to be trusted. When I cried foul over CDA, my offline friends and family laughed...they said "oh, no...the First Amendment is about POLITICAL speech...and no one's ever going to attempt to ban THAT...not in AMERICA...and if they did, it would NEVER survive the courts!".
When McCain-Feingold was passed, and I went back to the same people, expecting them to eat their words and join me in charging the metaphorical barricades, the verses changed a bit ("no no no...Campaign Finance Reform is about MONEY...and money isn't speech!") but the refrain was the same ("you're just paranoid...they'll never come after the rights of individuals to speak freely").
Now this. A federal judge has ruled that the law must be applied even to noncommercial internet speech by individuals. It will shortly be against federal law to publicly state your opinion for or against a candidate for office within 60 days of a national election (unless of course you work for a major media conglomerate...THEY got a special exemption).
In some ways I look forward to seeing how those same friends and relatives react to this news. Will they be able to rationalize it and continue to bury their heads in the sand? Do we absolutely have to have martyrs to the cause sent to prison before offline people will realize that the political class is at war against ordinary citizens?
We shall see.
But like the other members of the "McCain-Feingold Insurrection", this is my line in the sand. I won't change the kind of blog I run in order to deliberately provoke a test case, but nor will I censor myself. And if by some (remote) chance they do come for me, I intend to go down fighting.
So help me God.
Oh, I know. I'm minor. I'm a nonpartisan libertarian. I'm not the sort of person who'd quote or link to a candidate's press releases or a party's site. They'd have to imprison hundreds, maybe thousands of bloggers before my name would rise to the first page of the priority list. And I don't intend to go out of my way to provoke them. Gandhi or Martin Luther King I most emphatically am not.
But I will not submit. The first political controversy in which I ever became involved was over free speech online. That's what taught me that the two major parties are not to be trusted. When I cried foul over CDA, my offline friends and family laughed...they said "oh, no...the First Amendment is about POLITICAL speech...and no one's ever going to attempt to ban THAT...not in AMERICA...and if they did, it would NEVER survive the courts!".
When McCain-Feingold was passed, and I went back to the same people, expecting them to eat their words and join me in charging the metaphorical barricades, the verses changed a bit ("no no no...Campaign Finance Reform is about MONEY...and money isn't speech!") but the refrain was the same ("you're just paranoid...they'll never come after the rights of individuals to speak freely").
Now this. A federal judge has ruled that the law must be applied even to noncommercial internet speech by individuals. It will shortly be against federal law to publicly state your opinion for or against a candidate for office within 60 days of a national election (unless of course you work for a major media conglomerate...THEY got a special exemption).
In some ways I look forward to seeing how those same friends and relatives react to this news. Will they be able to rationalize it and continue to bury their heads in the sand? Do we absolutely have to have martyrs to the cause sent to prison before offline people will realize that the political class is at war against ordinary citizens?
We shall see.
But like the other members of the "McCain-Feingold Insurrection", this is my line in the sand. I won't change the kind of blog I run in order to deliberately provoke a test case, but nor will I censor myself. And if by some (remote) chance they do come for me, I intend to go down fighting.
So help me God.
A late response
I haven't actually been reading Kim du Toit or Mrs. du Toit since they had their big CSS change...my broswer doesn't work well with the new stylesheets and so I've fallen behind. But for unrelated reasons, I happened upon this post from February 11 (link is the printer-friendly version, since the regular permalink goes to the wrong place) this evening, and felt a need to reply.
Some of it may be that. Some of it, though, may be a reaction to the anti-reform propaganda.
Even if you discount all altruistic motives (which is silly, but let's grant the premise for the moment), people around my age (I'm 29) have really good reasons not to want Social Security to completely die (which is what AARP et al are implying will happen if any reform is attempted). We know we're getting totally cheated on Social Security. We know there will be no payments to us when we're ready to retire unless we save the money ourselves.
But we're young enough to remember living with our parents, and WE DON'T WANT THEM MOVING IN WITH US! We'll compromise our political principles and economic self-interest to any extent necessary in order to prevent that from happening. I consider myself a more principled person than is typical among my generation, and am adamantly opposed to the present SS system, but if I were presented with a choice between continuing social security as it exists today and having my mother move in with me, I'd choose the status quo in a heartbeat, and not look back. Indeed, if that prospect were weighed against any alternative (except of course for the obvious one...mom being homeless) I would choose the alternative. Higher taxes? Yes. Having to work two day jobs to meet the SS burden? Yes. I honestly think I'd volunteer to give up a limb if it would somehow prevent my mother's Social Security benefits from getting cut.
Now of course some of us are intelligent enough to know that no reform plan that would cut current benefits is being considered, and no hypothetical reform plan which would have that effect would ever get passed in Congress. I suspect that most people perceptive enough to realize that are in the pro-reform camp.
But those who don't know better will listen to the scaremongering of the Democrats' interest groups. And the subtext of that scaremongering (or at least the subset of it that's directed toward my generation) is "Oppose reform or Mom and Dad will have to move in with you, and you'll never be free to enjoy your life again!"
Is there really any wonder that folks who have that message ringing in their heads would be anti-reform?
The Social Security debate has always frustrated me because I was never able to figure out why anyone would support the idea. I understand that near to- and retired workers would not want the program to change, but why would younger workers not want reform or to eliminate the program (even if current and near current recipients were protected)?
[...]
It isn’t that they trust the government. It isn’t that they don’t understand that the program has been a boondoggle from the beginning. And it isn’t even that many might also understand that the program will be bankrupt (and they’ll get nothing) in as soon as 20 years. Nope… it’s much more simple than that (and much more difficult to fix).
They don’t trust THEMSELVES.
They don’t trust their ability to save on their own, manage (meaning open the mail and do nothing) their own retirement account, or want to deal with the matter at all. They do not believe they are capable of managing the account, contributing to it, and they don’t want to think about it.
Some of it may be that. Some of it, though, may be a reaction to the anti-reform propaganda.
Even if you discount all altruistic motives (which is silly, but let's grant the premise for the moment), people around my age (I'm 29) have really good reasons not to want Social Security to completely die (which is what AARP et al are implying will happen if any reform is attempted). We know we're getting totally cheated on Social Security. We know there will be no payments to us when we're ready to retire unless we save the money ourselves.
But we're young enough to remember living with our parents, and WE DON'T WANT THEM MOVING IN WITH US! We'll compromise our political principles and economic self-interest to any extent necessary in order to prevent that from happening. I consider myself a more principled person than is typical among my generation, and am adamantly opposed to the present SS system, but if I were presented with a choice between continuing social security as it exists today and having my mother move in with me, I'd choose the status quo in a heartbeat, and not look back. Indeed, if that prospect were weighed against any alternative (except of course for the obvious one...mom being homeless) I would choose the alternative. Higher taxes? Yes. Having to work two day jobs to meet the SS burden? Yes. I honestly think I'd volunteer to give up a limb if it would somehow prevent my mother's Social Security benefits from getting cut.
Now of course some of us are intelligent enough to know that no reform plan that would cut current benefits is being considered, and no hypothetical reform plan which would have that effect would ever get passed in Congress. I suspect that most people perceptive enough to realize that are in the pro-reform camp.
But those who don't know better will listen to the scaremongering of the Democrats' interest groups. And the subtext of that scaremongering (or at least the subset of it that's directed toward my generation) is "Oppose reform or Mom and Dad will have to move in with you, and you'll never be free to enjoy your life again!"
Is there really any wonder that folks who have that message ringing in their heads would be anti-reform?
Tuesday, March 8. 2005
Why should conservatives care?
Professor Bainbridge asks:
It's a question that a lot of social conservatives seem to be asking, lately. But such questions reflect, I think, an extraordinarily short time horizon, both in memory and in prognostication.
If the Democrats collapse before the end of the terror war, the Republican party will fracture into at least two pieces. Along what lines, we can't yet be sure, but it's an absolute certainty that today's GOP coalition is an artifact of opposition to the Democrats. My fondest wish would be to bid farewell to those for whom social conservatism is their primary electoral goal...some of them (such as the esteemed Professor) are reasonable human beings I respect as adversaries, and some of them I even count as friends, but in a just world we don't belong in the same political party, and we're only together in this one because of the threat posed by an opposition that both groups regard as worse.
But let's suppose the Democrats manage to hang on to viability long enough for the war to end. Before things started changing willy-nilly in the Middle East, I'd have bet pretty heavily against this outcome...but I think they've got enough inertia to last until the elections of 2012, and it's increasingly looking like by that time the war may be, if not over, then at least transferred to an intensity level that doesn't promote the fear-of-Democrats that currently prevails.
In that sort of situation, the Republicans will NEED us. The Clinton legacy will be either forgotten or papered over by then, and so without the terror war as a unifying factor, the present era of Republican dominance will come to a swift and crashing end. 2000 (the last national election before the war), if you all remember, was an EC squeaker and a popular defeat. The first national election after the war could be the same, if the Republicans continue to alienate the small-government set.
Why should somebody who holds those (admittedly extreme) views care whether the libertarians stay or go? To pick up a few extra votes for the GOP? Sorry, but as Young admits, many libertarians defected from the GOP in 2004 to cast protest votes for the LP candidate or even for John Kerry. And it didn't matter one iota.
My point is not that Locke is right in his description of libertarian. My point is that the libertarians need to do a much better job of articulating what they are willing to bring to the table to make it attractive for social conservatives to maintain the old alliance.
It's a question that a lot of social conservatives seem to be asking, lately. But such questions reflect, I think, an extraordinarily short time horizon, both in memory and in prognostication.
If the Democrats collapse before the end of the terror war, the Republican party will fracture into at least two pieces. Along what lines, we can't yet be sure, but it's an absolute certainty that today's GOP coalition is an artifact of opposition to the Democrats. My fondest wish would be to bid farewell to those for whom social conservatism is their primary electoral goal...some of them (such as the esteemed Professor) are reasonable human beings I respect as adversaries, and some of them I even count as friends, but in a just world we don't belong in the same political party, and we're only together in this one because of the threat posed by an opposition that both groups regard as worse.
But let's suppose the Democrats manage to hang on to viability long enough for the war to end. Before things started changing willy-nilly in the Middle East, I'd have bet pretty heavily against this outcome...but I think they've got enough inertia to last until the elections of 2012, and it's increasingly looking like by that time the war may be, if not over, then at least transferred to an intensity level that doesn't promote the fear-of-Democrats that currently prevails.
In that sort of situation, the Republicans will NEED us. The Clinton legacy will be either forgotten or papered over by then, and so without the terror war as a unifying factor, the present era of Republican dominance will come to a swift and crashing end. 2000 (the last national election before the war), if you all remember, was an EC squeaker and a popular defeat. The first national election after the war could be the same, if the Republicans continue to alienate the small-government set.
Thursday, March 3. 2005
DotCom comes to politics
From Rolling Stone:
Anybody remember the DotCom boom? Anybody besides me suffer through economic purgatory for years when it collapsed?
Does anybody but me remember WHY it collapsed?
This whole attitude of "get a cool idea, get folks to invest lots of money in your idea because it's so cool, relax because your work is done" seems more than a little familiar.
And you know what? That's perfectly fine if you're running a nonprofit web site pushing political ideas. But these people are taking over a major American political party, and they still don't seem to have realized that for a party, the ultimate currency is not coolness or even donations, but VOTERS. If your hip and cool appeal to the radical fringe of your base pisses off the majority of voters, you'll get...well, what the DotComs got. Which, now that I think of it, looks remarkably like what the Democrats have been getting lately.
I've changed my mind. MoveOn.org and the DNC are a perfect fit. :)
For MoveOn, "the work" consists of looking for spikes in e-mail traffic and monitoring online forums to divine the issues that drive its members. Boyd and Blades have bitten hard on the "wisdom of crowds" concept. They believe that strategies posted and rated by fellow activists provide the basis for picking campaigns that members will pay to support. "We've discovered a way to engage people so that they want to open their wallets," says Boyd. "If we can come up with a great campaign, we know it will get funded."
Anybody remember the DotCom boom? Anybody besides me suffer through economic purgatory for years when it collapsed?
Does anybody but me remember WHY it collapsed?
This whole attitude of "get a cool idea, get folks to invest lots of money in your idea because it's so cool, relax because your work is done" seems more than a little familiar.
And you know what? That's perfectly fine if you're running a nonprofit web site pushing political ideas. But these people are taking over a major American political party, and they still don't seem to have realized that for a party, the ultimate currency is not coolness or even donations, but VOTERS. If your hip and cool appeal to the radical fringe of your base pisses off the majority of voters, you'll get...well, what the DotComs got. Which, now that I think of it, looks remarkably like what the Democrats have been getting lately.
I've changed my mind. MoveOn.org and the DNC are a perfect fit. :)
