A Few Updates

I'll point to a few news stories that have a bearing on things I've recently written about.

The Chinese Threat to Taiwan

[Update: For related posts on China, go here.]

The Guardian has an excellent article on the large and growing threat posed by China to Taiwan, which includes present and future abilities to threaten American military and civilian interests.

"If Beijing keeps building up its strength, our analysis is that by 2008 to 2012, the balance of power will tip towards China," Mr Tsai said.

While Taiwan's air force pilots and "counter-forces" are better trained and technically equipped than their Chinese equivalents, according to Mr Tsai, this advantage is threatened by China's investment in new forms of electronic warfare.

"More than 700 ballistic missiles are deployed across the coastal province of China. We expect that to increase to 800 by 2006, including about 100 long-range missiles capable of delivering a warhead more than 12,000km (7,500 miles) - capable of hitting California or any part of the Pacific region, including Taiwan, Korea, Japan."

Read the whole thing.

A Call to Abolish the IRS?

No sooner do I post about the threat of the IRS being "re-fanged" do I find a story about an attempt by one Republican to replace the income tax with a national sales tax. His proposal is far from ideal, but it would be a step in the right direction.

His bill would abolish the IRS and the many billions of tax forms it sends out and receives. He would erase the federal income tax system -- personal and corporate income taxes, the regressive payroll tax and self-employment tax, capital gains, gift and estate taxes, the alternative minimum tax and the earned income tax credit -- and replace all that with a 23 percent national sales tax on personal consumption. That would not only sensitize consumers to the cost of government with every purchase, it would destroy K Street.

"K Street" is shorthand for Washington's lawyer-lobbyist complex. It exists to continually complicate and defend the tax code, which is a cornucopia from which the political class pours benefits on constituencies.

I do like that part about "sensitizing" the citizenry to the costs of government, but another part of the proposal (an advance monthly rebate) would partly undercut that. I especially agree with the article on one thing, though. If we do this or something like it, we need to follow up with a repeal of the sixteenth amendment.

Jeb's Rebellion

Dick Morris discusses how what he calls the "moderate" part of the American electorate reacted to the Terri Schiavo debacle. He disappointingly devotes no ink to the lawlessness of what the governor of Florida attempted to do, but he offers the following encouraging political insight. Jeb Bust may have not only shown himself unfit for office, he may have rendered himself unelectable.

... Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.) better look for a new line of work. The right is mad at him for not standing in the hospice door. The center is furious at his butting in where most Americans, and Floridians, feel [sic] he has no right to be. Only the left is overjoyed to see a possible presidential contender caught in the crossfire. ...

[B]y taking a doctrinaire position and then backing off it, Jeb Bush has shown us that he would charge where others would tread with caution. Too bad. We might have needed him to stop Hillary.

With the way Hillary is cozying up to the religionists, it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing for her to win if that knocks some sense into the secular conservatives. Furthermore, I'd rather have a secular Republican to oppose her. It's probably too much to hope for, but such a race could offer a stark contrast between candidates for a change. (And there's one less religionist in the field!) A religious leftist versus a secular capitalist! Hillary would much more likely to lose such a contest than the one between her and Bush, which would consist entirely of groveling before the religious right.

In any case, I'm glad he likely took himself out.

-- CAV

Updates

4-17-05: (1) Added two hypertext anchors. (2) Added reciprocal link to index post for section on China.

Another Bad Sign...

We have come a long way, and in the wrong direction, since the days when Republicans openly discussed abolishing the IRS.

In the Houston Chronicle, there is a report that the IRS is going to be auditing "the rich" more often. Remember that, thanks to inflation, $100,000.00 is not really all that much.

Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Mark Everson has a message for wealthy Americans and U.S. corporations: After almost a decade of going easy on taxpayers, the tax collector is playing tough again.

The IRS has increased audits of those who earn more than $100,000 by 40 percent in the past two years, has begun examining companies' current tax bills instead of ones that are five or six years old and has taken aim at shelters.

Fantastic! Good thing the the GOP is in control!

Everson, 50, is a former airline catering executive and Reagan administration official who spent two years in President George W. Bush's White House. From the moment he was sworn in on June 11, 2003, Everson has tried to invigorate enforcement, which languished after Congress criticized the agency in a series of hearings in 1997 and 1998.

"There's been a recognition in this administration that this needs to be rebalanced, that you need to provide good service but you also need to enforce the law," Everson said.

The enforcement push is an about-face for the Republican Party, which rose to power in the 1990s partly by exploiting pollster Frank Luntz's observation that "nothing guarantees more applause and more support than the call to abolish the IRS."

I guess elephants do forget. Maybe we bloggers ought to help voters remember, come election time. And if the above isn't sufficient motivation, it might help to remember how "enforcement" is parsed in bureaucratese: "quotas."

Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents most IRS workers, said some employees are concerned that Everson's emphasis on meeting enforcement goals will send the wrong message.

"The pendulum is swinging back to enforcement," Kelley said. "They are worried about it swinging back to quotas."

While quotas have long been illegal, the Senate hearings in 1997 and 1998 uncovered cases in which IRS employees received more favorable performance evaluations when they increased audits and collected more unpaid taxes.

This is in due in part to the nature of a bureaucracy and in part due to the mission of this bureaucracy in particular. In a bureaucracy, performance cannot normally be measured in terms of profit. But in the IRS, money is collected, and the gross amount of money is turned into a crude measure of performance, the quota. Unfortunately for us, the method of achieving optimal "performance" is the taking of money away from ordinary citizens by force. It doesn't take a genius to see that the minor matter of whether a given ordinary citizen actually "owes" the money might become a consideration of something less than the first order.

I've never been audited, but I did once get squeezed between the Naval bureaucracy and that of the IRS. The Navy goofed up my pay account, suddenly fixed the problem two years after I finally gave up trying to get it straightened out myself, and then reported a revised figure to the IRS. The IRS simply added the revised income to what the Navy reported the first time and sent me a huge bill and a very nasty letter. I had to hire a lawyer just to straighten the mess up. In the end, it turned out that they owed me money!

My story was amusing, but go here for a tiny peek at what things used to be like. (In more ways than one: when the IRS was the "American Gestapo" and when the Republicans were trying to protect us from them.)

The Internal Revenue Service was once again under fire on Capitol Hill Tuesday, as a Senate committee launched another round of hearings, this time focusing on alleged abuses of power inside the tax agency.

In the first of four days of testimony from taxpayers and agents, the Senate Finance Committee heard instances of the IRS stepping over the line, including stories of retaliation against whistleblowers and raids on taxpayers' homes that may not have been justified.

Unjustified raids on taxpayer homes?!? And let's also recall who conducted them.

Senators also heard of problems within the IRS workforce, as a senior IRS executive testified that whistleblowers at the agency can lose their jobs, while senior level managers often go unpunished.

Yvonne DesJardins, chief of the IRS employee and labor relations section who appeared as a surprise witness on the hearings' opening day, said, "The whistleblowers are ostracized and careers destroyed and those senior officials who engaged in the misconduct which was reported and substantiated are not only protected from receiving any disciplinary actions, but are often times rewarded [emphasis mine]during the same year the misconduct occurs. Again, I speak from personal experience."

The prospect of a return to tax collection quotas plus the complete lack of accountability within the IRS bureaucracy make this most recent Republican reversal quite ominous indeed. Daily Pundit should update his list to an even dozen.

-- CAV

The Undercurrent

First of all, ...

Welcome, Undercurrent Readers!

Yesterday, in his newsletter, TIA Daily, Robert Tracinski made the following point about the Terri Schiavo case. It is on the money and ominous at once. The "fight for Terri Schiavo" is really the fight against an idea symbolized by another lady: Liberty. That is, it is a symptom of a deep animus against individual rights by the religionists. This battle will not end with Terri Schiavo's death because Terri Schiavo was just a symbol, and, sadly, only a means to an end.

[The religious right] cannot value liberty, because there is an inescapable connection between faith and force. As Ayn Rand explained in her 1960 essay "Faith and Force: Destroyers of the Modern World" (reprinted in Philosophy: Who Needs It):

Reason is the only objective means of communication and of understanding among men; when mean deal with one another by means of reason, reality is their objective standard and frame of reference. But when men claim to possess supernatural means of knowledge, persuasion, communication, or understanding are impossible. Why do we kill wild animals in the jungle? Because no other way of dealing with them is open to us. And that is the state to which mysticism reduces mankind--a state where, in case of disagreement, men have no recourse except to physical violence.

And that is where the faith-driven crusade of the religious right is leading us. The overall pattern of the religious right's approach to the Terri Schiavo case shows us the steps along the way: a desperate grabbing onto any lie, rationalization, or pseudo-scientific claim needed to prop up their dogmas; an attempt to knock flat the whole structure of American government, from the separation of powers between the state and federal government to the independence of the judiciary, to eliminate anyone who can raise a principled objection to their goals; the demand for Jeb Bush to drop the process of legal argumentation altogether and simply exert raw executive power; and, as the final step, the ominous threat of mobs of religious fanatics resorting to violence against
government officials.

As ominous as that progression is, it is also instructive--and that is why it provides an opportunity. It provides an opportunity to show those who are attracted to the right for essentially secular reasons--a love of liberty and an admiration for the American system--that the religious right is no friend of those ideals. At the same time, the left no longer provides a living ideological alternative, as its absence from the controversy has demonstrated.

This is an unprecedented opportunity to make the case that the right needs to seek out a different moral foundation, a secular moral foundation for the principles of individual rights and limited government. There is only one such foundation for liberty, and it was provided by Ayn Rand: the view that liberty is a necessary requirement for the survival and happiness of a rational being here on this earth. [Some fomatting and link added.]

After reading this, I am doubly happy to have taken a small part (as a contributing author) in the birth of a new Objectivist publication, The Undercurrent, to which I have added a sidebar link. From the web site:

"It was as if an underground stream flowed through the country and broke out in sudden springs that shot to the surface at random, in unpredictable places." -- Ayn Rand

The Undercurrent is a student-run newsletter. Its content is written primarily by college students across the country, with additional articles from the Ayn Rand Institute op-ed program and other writers. The paper's goal is to persuade students of the truth and relevance of Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism.

We aim to release a print edition once a month. The Undercurrent is distributed to college campuses nationally. If you're interested in distributing on your campus (or anywhere else), more information can be found here.

In its inaugural issue, editor Gena Gorlin welcomes her readers, starting off by saying what the newsletter is not:

Welcome to the The Undercurrent. Before we begin, let us tell you what we are not. We are not a political journal (though politics will be discussed); we are not a humor magazine (though we have every intention of being, at times, knee-slappingly funny); we are not a literary publication (though rest assured, arts and culture will get plenty of coverage). Our aim is deeper and more basic than all these. We aim to introduce you to a practical philosophy--one that could radically alter politics, culture, and every avenue of your life.

And then she ends by telling us what the newsletter is.

Philosophy, unbeknownst to most, runs through every nook and cranny of our culture. It is like an undercurrent that flows beneath our feet and determines our direction. Today, religion and its alleged opposite, relativism, are steering our culture toward disaster. But a new undercurrent--which has inspired thousands of people to live purposeful, productive lives and vigorously pursue their values--is slowly but surely spreading. It is Ayn Rand's life-giving philosophy of Objectivism. With your help, it can win.

In other words, there is a viable alternative to the "choice" in our culture between faith and relativism, and The Undercurrent is here to make that alternative known. I like how Noumenalself puts it in the context of the "academic freedom" debate, another front in the culture wars: "Only a philosophy that celebrates the power of the mind to know can motivate students to learn, and professors to advance the frontiers of science. Readers of The Undercurrent should have no difficulty learning which philosophy I think that is." (And this goes for my readers, as well.)

And this is what I like so much about this publication. Polemics have their place, but for the battle of ideas to be won, people have to change their minds about some very fundamental issues. They will not even consider thinking about ideas unless we make the case for the relevance of ideas to their lives, and therefore, of the great value that our ideas represent. The Undercurrent does a good job of this.

I strongly urge my readers to visit this site and look through its first issue, and then come back for more each month. This newsletter is off to a promising start, and as someone who values individual rights, I see this as a publication whose time has come. As Robert Tracinski put it in the title to the piece I quoted from, "A 'Crack-Up of the Right' Is Not a Threat--It's a Goal." But it is not a final goal, and it will be for naught, unless those of us who value our freedom propose a positive, radical alternative to the nihilistic and the religious ideologies that are threatening our freedom today.

I would like to close by again thanking the staff of The Undercurrent for holding the blogger contest, and for their professionalism. As I put it in an email to Gena Gorlin:

I've written opinion columns before, but never for an Objectivist publication. The process was harder in some respects, but for all the right reasons.

It was especially nice that the changes actually improved the piece, and that I didn't find myself either (a) fighting a hostile or indifferent editor intent on butchering what I wrote or (b) being totally surprised by the changes. This was a great experience.

Keep up the good work! I'm impressed!

PS: I have to say that I laughed out loud when I learned that my piece was being edited by the ever-elusive Noumenalself! I may be protective of my actual identity, but I have nothing on this guy. "Noumenalself is a graduate student in philosophy at an undisclosed location. His blog is found at www.noumenalself.com."

-- CAV

Dump the Religious Right

A letter from one Jay Palmer to the editor of TIA Daily raises an interesting point.

The action of the conservatives in passing the legislation in Congress is a wake-up call that shows how dangerous the religious right is. And it has gotten me to consider: just what is the motivation behind the conservatives' call for "states' rights" over the past years?

This reminds me of a related point I've made here before a couple of times on the subjects of legalization of marijuana and banning abortion. In the former post, I said the following.

The phrase "States Rights" comes to mind. And a big Libertarian fave also comes to mind: legalization of marijuana, which would certainly be easier in some states if this matter were left to them to decide. But what might the religious right get out of it? A chance to ban abortion, as I blogged about long ago. "But doesn't that mean some states would become able to tell a woman what to do with her own body?" you might ask. "And doesn't this contradict the very idea of individual rights, and thus of freedom?" Yousefzadeh will cut you off at this point, yelling, "Extremist."

And this is precisely the point. The religious right don't give a damn about states' rights (or individual rights for that matter). Interestingly, the fact that they so quickly jettisoned their enthusiasm for the concept in the Schiavo case reveals why they were so enthusiastic about it in the first place!

Note that in the link on "banning abortion" above, that David Limbaugh is using a states' rights argument as a way to permit some states to ban abortion. To that, I said:

Most revealingly, the above states' rights argument comes from an advocate of a federal amendment defining marriage! Why not also an amendment banning abortion? I think the answer to this question might explain the inconsistent approach: what's the easiest way to have Christian values codified into law? I suspect that a slim majority of Americans would not favor a constitutional ban on abortion while a marriage amendment would enjoy popular support.

So the inconsistent stand is a tactical approach to getting religion codified into law, which is what the religious right wanted to achieve at the federal level in the Schiavo case. But is there even more to it than that. Yes. As I pointed out in my hypothetical question to "Simplicissimus" Yousefzadeh above, "[D]oesn't [telling a woman what to do with her own body] contradict the very idea of individual rights, and thus of freedom?" In other words, the concept of states' rights has been subverted to imply that states can somehow pass laws that fail to respect individual rights. This is preposterous. Here is what the text of the tenth amendment says:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

And what sorts of things might be prohibited to the states? The Preamble might give us a hint.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Certainly, a state establishing laws that endanger the general welfare (which would be more properly rendered as "individual rights" than the modern meaning of "government handouts") is beyond its rights. Let's momentarily consider both sides of the abortion coin. If a fetus is a human being, abortion is murder. If it is not, a ban on abortion is essentially slavery. Since murder and slavery both violate individual rights abortion is a federal issue either way.

If, as David Limbaugh wants, individual states can make their own decisions on this one way or the other, some states will almost certainly end up infringing upon individual rights. Either some states would be permitting murder or some slavery. (Didn't we go to war with ourselves over that already?) And so we see that the religious right is wrong no matter how you cut it. Is abortion murder? Then outlaw it everywhere, if you mean what you say. Is banning it slavery? Then the religionists are simply wrong to attempt to ban abortion anywhere. (And this is where I stand, holding that a fetus is only potentially a human being.) The religious right does not care about individual rights as much as they do their theocratic agenda, which involves the imposition of a form of slavery: that of a woman to a potential human.

The only valid application of the notion of states' rights is to permit states to handle relatively unimportant matters as they see fit. This allows, for example, a thinly-populated state like Nebraska to have a unicameral legislature, or a state originally settled by the French, like Louisiana, to base its legal system on Napoleonic Code rather than English Common Law. In neither case are individual rights being violated.

I say it's time for an end to the Republican coalition between small government conservatives and the religious right. Sure. They might win an election with their brothers-in-spirit, the Democrats. We may well have to suffer through a Jimmy Carter. But one taste of that will straighten out a lot of people. And if they lose, our country will become much better much faster. If they dump the religious conservatives, it will not be a question of if, but of when our country improves. And so, the question of getting the religious right out of government is also not a matter of if, but of when.

-- CAV

I'll Be Back ...

... for Seconds!

This story, "The Tuminator" cracks me up mainly because it looks like it will be such a rich vein for comedians.

It took Arnold Schwarzenegger years of pumping iron to build the body that won him stardom in movies such as Conan the Barbarian and The Terminator. But it has taken just two years of good living as the governor of California for the 57-year-old's shape to go somewhat belly-up.

I doubt this took just a couple of years, though. My uncle was into body-building for awhile and warned that, unless you keep up the strength regimen, you'll suffer a fate like this. It'll start turning to flab as you age.

And this story, by making me think of the nickname, "The Governator," reminds me of something I was always miffed about: our illiterate press! Back when Jesse "The Body" Ventura was governor of Minnesota, I was just waiting for some major political pundit to tatoo him with the following nickname: Jesse "The Body Politic" Ventura! If that ever happened, it never picked up steam, and I never heard about it.

But it has occurred in the blogosphere!

-- CAV

The Gus Van Horn FAQ

This FAQ has been replaced by a newer version.

The blog is closing in on its sixth month. I'm still writing. I am also still enjoying it. Since I plan to be doing this for the foreseeable future, and I've actually gotten a few questions from time to time, it's time to create the first ...

Gus Van Horn FAQ

Note: Some of this material is from the old "Gus Van Horn Pseudo-FAQ," but much of it is new. I plan to make this accessible via permalink to the main page of the blog and update it as necessary. It will be closed to comments. If you've a concern, question, or suggestion, please email me.

1. Are you the Gus Van Horn I went to school with?

2. Neat! You're the guy from that pot luck dinner/party!

3. Ooh! I you sound just like _______ !

4. What is the "Gus Van Horn Circle of Trust?"

5. How do I join?

6. That sounds burdensome! What are the benefits?

7. Why would I join?

8. How did you come up with your pseudonym?

9. Why do you sign all your posts "CAV?" Aren't your initials "GVH?"

10. Do you have a photographic memory?

11. Why don't you write under your real name?

12. One day, you're attacking the religious right and the next, you're ripping the Democrats a new "deal." Why are you so inconsistent?

13. Oh! So you're a Libertarian?

14. What are you, then?

15. What right have you to mock the Houston Atheist Society or insult a nice man like Michael Medved?

16. What are your blog policies?

17. Why do you link to so-and-so?

18. Why do you use the antiquated spelling "Moslem?"

19. What's with the occasional submarine posts?

---

1. Are you the Gus Van Horn I went to school with?

No. This is my pseudonym. See also question 11.

2. Neat! You're the guy from that pot luck dinner/party!

I may or may not be. See question 4.

3. Ooh! I you sound just like _______ !

If you're about to guess who I am, please refrain from doing so publicly. Aside from the fact that this is my choice, I write under a pseudonym for some very good personal and professional reasons. And no, I do not feel free to elaborate upon them here Thanks in advance for not speculating publicly on my identity.

If you wish, you may email me with your speculation, but I will not necessarily tell you that you are correct or incorrect. Do not take this personally.

It might help to consider this from my point of view. Imagine that you maintain a web site and receive mail from total strangers around the country. Most are very nice people, but some really, really hate you. You wish to remain anonymous and get an email. Its author may or may not be who he says he is, but for some reason, he wants to know who you are. What would you do?

4. What is the "Gus Van Horn Circle of Trust?"

This is a secret society consisting of all people who know my real name and the fact that I write under this pseudonym.

Of course, I ripped this term off from Meet the Parents, one of my favorite comedies. Robert De Niro's character reminds me a little of what I might be like if I were getting ready to marry off a daughter!

5. How do I join?

Well, the club is not actively seeking members, but there are two ways. (I deliberately keep this group small to protect my anonymity from innocent slips of the tongue.)

(1) From time to time, I may decide to admit people, but I am very circumspect about such things. Part of this stems from my own absent-mindedness. I see myself getting ready to sign an email with my actual name and not "Gus" frequently enough without multiplying the odds by sharing the information.

(2) There is enough biographical information scattered about here for someone who knows me well to figure out who I am. But since you had to read this material to figure that out, you have automatically become a member whether you want to be or not! What a deal! Please see question 4 if you skipped to this.

6. That sounds burdensome! What are the benefits?

You get to help keep one of my favorite running jokes going indefinitely. You will also earn my gratitude for keeping your mouth shut. This is a secret society!

7. Why would I join?

Beats me.

8. How did you come up with your pseudonym?

Most of the story is explained in my first post. I don't know how we came up with "Gus." We all find it a funny-sounding name. (My real first name is funnier!) The "Van Horn" comes from a mental association of mine. Since I'm a supposed to be a"trial lawyer from West Texas," a map of West Texas once showed up in my mind's eye. There is a town called "Van Horn" off of I-10 out there and that name was in the center of this image, but as a county name. (The county in which the name appeared was actually Jeff Davis, though. In defense of my oddball recollection, the town of Van Horn is at least close to that county!) So that became the last name. (When I have some time to kill, I'll add a map here. Neither Google Maps nor Mapquest shows county lines.)

9. Why do you sign all your posts "CAV?" Aren't your initials "GVH?"

It's for Caesar Augustus Van Horn, of which "Van Horn" is a last name. See the link in question 8 above. But since I use "Gus," which is short for "Augustus," other people often end up using "GVH." My real name is somewhat quirky, but it isn't that hard to deal with. Leave it to me to come up with a pseudonym that is even more cumbersome than my real name!

10. Do you have a photographic memory?

No. Just a fascination with maps.

11. Why don't you write under your real name?

I started out with some ambivalence about becoming a blogger and an opinion writer and decided that using a pen name would give me an easy way to back out. As of this writing, I suspect that I'll be plying my craft for quite a while. Nevertheless, though I am not well-known, I have learned that there are other benefits to the cloak of anonymity. The main one is that with the ease of searching the internet, it would be extremely easy for people I don't necessarily want reading my blog to find it. There are some other advantages that I choose not to elaborate upon, but there is one other fact that N.Z. Bear points out: Once I reveal my actual name, there's no going back. (See also question 1.)

12. One day, you're attacking the religious right and the next, you're ripping the Democrats a new "deal." Why are you so inconsistent?

I am actually quite consistent. It is the Republicans, who want you to keep your money, but forfeit your mind to religion, who are inconsistent. And the Democrats, who want you to have a few personal liberties, but no property, and very little else.

13. Oh! So you're a Libertarian?

Not with a capital L. That party is hardly a friend of liberty, given that their lack of a coherent philosophical approach makes them unable even to define the term. Peter Schwartz wrote a devastating critique of Libertarianism in a tract called Libertarianism: the Perversion of Liberty some time ago. As far as I can tell, the article is unavailable from the Internet, except for purchase. I'd like to recommend it as it does a good job of showing the practical consequences of what the Libertarians try to do. They want pretend that a concept as sophisticated and controversial as freedom is whatever anyone, no matter how mindless, wants it to be. I discuss this problem in some detail here. But the Schwartz critique is still far more exhaustive and devastating.

14. What are you, then?

I consider myself an Objectivist, but have no official connection with ARI. As Ayn Rand put it when asked whether she could describe her philosophy while standing on one foot, this philosophy takes the following positions in each of its four branches: metaphysics: objective reality, epistemology: reason, ethics: self-interest, and politics: capitalism.

In normal conversation, I've variously described my politics with the following imperfect shorthand terms: small-L libertarian, secular Republican, fiscal conservative/social liberal, and laissez-faire capitalist.

15. What right have you to mock the Houston Atheist Society or insult a nice man like Michael Medved?

Freedom of speech.

On a less flippant note, I will not hesitate to point out major philosophical errors that threaten to cloud further the already muddied waters of intellectual discourse. In the case of the HAS, we have an organization that holds itself out as pro-secularist, but undercuts the cause by (1) running an unprofessional web site that potentially insults random Christians who might actually favor separation of church and state, and (2) advocates all kinds of positions that really have nothing to do with keeping our government out of religious affairs. In the case of Michael Medved, he not only insulted atheists by implying that they all agree with Michael Moore, he did the truth a disservice in doing so. If man is, as Aristotle says, the "rational animal" and Medved argues as if he has been lobotomized, then he surely deserves the scare quotes I used in this post. Truth and justice demanded them, too.

16. What are your blog policies?

I have them, but choose not to reveal them unless absolutely necessary. This is because such policies play a role similar to psychological boundaries. As such, I have found that people who are possessed of class and common courtesy really don't need to be told what I expect. Conversely, it is generally the people who have to be told about such issues who will ignore what I have to say or deliberately flout it anyway. So why give them ideas?

17. Why do you link to so-and-so?

Because I find the link interesting, important, or worth keeping an eye on for some other reason. Links to other web pages do not necessarily constitute endorsements.

18. Why do you use the antiquated spelling "Moslem?"

Because I'm old enough to remember when this was the "correct" spelling. I also remember when we bombed Tripoli and there were at least eight spellings of "Qaddafi." These are both Arabic terms and are merely transliterations of a language that can't keep track of its own vowels anyway! And, to top it off, "Muslim" strikes me as political correctness, especially when I hear some condescending, sanctimonious, and very American-looking apologist for Islamofascism on Fox News hypercorrectly beating me over the head with "Moooossleem" every five seconds. Since his religion says I should be summarily executed anyway, I'll spell it how I damn well please. When they stop insisting I convert, submit, or die, I'll revisit this Earth-shattering issue.

For that matter, it will be a cold day in Hell before I use the term "African-American" for "black", "BCE" for "BC", "god" for "God", or "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas," although HH is just fine if it includes Christmas and New Year's or Boxing Day, or whatever else. Oh yeah. And I'm part American Indian, unlike Ward "Cherokee" Churchill. "Indian" will also do nicely. (And I'd use these terms even if I weren't.)

I use proper English grammar. This means I use masculine pronouns generically, among other things.

I oppose multiculturalism and I find attempts to dictate how I speak and write repugnant, so I ignore them. This movement opposes Western civilization, which I value. The fight back starts with preserving the integrity of my native tongue.

19. What's with the occasional submarine posts?

I was once a submariner. I was an officer aboard a Los Angeles class nuclear submarine.

-- CAV

Updates

3-25-07: Added note on version 2.0 to head of post.

Bag o' Burning Blogger

I'd been hearing rumblings around the blogosphere about my fellow bloggers having difficulties with Blogger, but so far, my difficulties had been minimal, probably owing to my whacked-out (read: frequently past midnight) posting schedule. But yesterday was horrid! I now understand, on a visceral level, why such heavyweights as the Belmont Club left. Closer to home, Martin Lindeskog has at least considered the possibility with dread at the implied prospect of having to change his URL. That post, dated March 18, quotes Blogger Status as saying,

Users with more than 500 posts are also being severely hampered at this time. We believe this is due to an improper use of system resources when users of such blogs either access the Edit Posts page or attempt to publish. We will be testing a potential fix to this problem over the next couple days and hope to push it to production early next week. Because of the extent of the change, we need to fully assess the impact on the service before deployment.

If anything, I've noticed a degradation in service since then. I was about to complain that it has been more than a weeks since that last post, but I checked Blogger Status just now and found a possible explanation for the agony I experienced last night in lieu of the ecstasy of a good blogging session: They made a bad kernel upgrade and are now in the process of rolling it back. If this is true, then they will be going back to the earlier operating system kernel that they obviously felt the need to upgrade! Yes, they have more servers now, but my confidence is quite understandably shaky at the moment.

So last night, I actually got home before 8:00 pm! The wife was hard at work on her dissertation, so I decided to make lemonade out of that lemon: "Wow!" I thought. "I have five hours to edit a post, maybe write another, and work on my blog template!" What actually happened in that five hours?

1. The post I thought I'd saved was gone. It took me at least ten login attempts to learn this sad truth.
2. In no mood to rewrite that one over a phone modem, I chose a quicker topic to write about. This time, I used my Mozilla editor (which I'm doing now) so that Blogger couldn't eat it, too.
3. After some outrageous number of logins and internal server errors, I finally got the post up. Twice. A third version was saved as a draft. This took at least 30 minutes to fix.
4. I got to remove the remodeling message from my template. I tried a few other edits, but these were going nowhere and it was already closing in on midnight.
5. I set a new record for Blogger logins!

Five hours, and the most noticeable long-term effect for me is that my wrists hurt a little, I have the lesser of two blog entries posted that I wrote, and my template is barely passable. For reasons I am keeping close to the vest, I will have an influx of new readers soon. Hopefully, the content will keep them coming back, 'cause the template probably won't exactly be eye candy by then.

So here's my gripe about Blogger right now. This is my hobby. I love to write. I like the fact that I have a chance to get intelligent feedback from my small, but loyal band of regular readers. I have even made a handful of new friends doing this. This has been a rewarding hobby, but Blogger managed to turn this delightful pastime into a penance last night. After that experience, I woke up hating my blog this morning and resenting having lost nearly a quarter of a day of my life (and a fun five hours it was supposed to have been).

Like Lindeskog, I'd rather stay put at this web address, but I won't if I come to dread every attempt to publish or make a small change to a template, or answer comments. He wants to throw eggs at Blogger. He's a lot nicer than I am. About now, I feel like touring the corporate offices of Google, or whoever else owns them and stopping at each office door with a little surprise.

Each occupant will hear a knock. He'll answer the door. And he'll be stamping out a burning bag of Blogger to the tune of the sounds of me running off!

Well. I feel better now. But then, I still have to publish.

And that's my long way of saying, "I might take the rest of this evening off from Blogger." I may write something, but if I do, it may save it for posting in the morn.

-- CAV

PS (aka Blogger User Testimonial, an abbreviation that happens to spell the conjunction most commonly used after praising Blogger's performance): I'm on Blogger now. Login and "new post" went quickly. The spellchecker has failed four times. I will try once more before just reading it. Make that five. Great. No spell-checker in this editor. And something is whacked about cut-and paste from there, so I can't use Star Office for that. Don't have the time or patience to figure out why. I'll just read the damned thing. Oh! Sixth time's the charm! Well, that's probably all the luck I'm going to have. No preview. Just .. publish ... after ... pasting .. into ... Mozilla's ... editor.

C'mon, Blogger guys! Customers who go through this don't remain customers for long. Please fix this. I want to stay.

3-30-05 - (1) Blogger is quite zippy today. This is quite nice. I hope it lasts! (2) Yes. Blogger is monetarily free. But since the owners either make money from it or hope to, the question becomes, "Why do they go through all the trouble of hosting the service at all?" Because they attract viewers and hence advertisers through the free content we bloggers provide. While we don't pay in money, a trade is going on. So my beef is completely legitimate. (In case anyone out there was starting to wonder whether I was some whining socialist idiot savant who has "writing hard-hitting Objectivist commentary" as his "splinter skill.")

Updates

3-30-05: Corrected a bunch of typos and added two more PS notes.

Faux Progress fo' Faux Immigrants

According to an article in Pittsburgh Live, the Detroit city council has hatched a plan to help "the underserved [by whom?] majority" of the overwhelmingly black city. To wit:

"The idea is to build an 'AfricaTown,' similar to Little Italy and Chinatown," explained Charles Oliver ..., referring to the vote by Detroit City Council to spend $30 million a year in public money to develop a blacks-only, race-based district of entrepreneurship in downtown Detroit.

"By a 7-2 vote," reported Oliver, "the council has decreed that only black businessmen and investors can qualify for the money." The concept of this black version of Little Italy originated in a $112,000 report commissioned by the council: "A Powernomics Economic Development Plan for Detroit's Under-Served Majority Population."

Blacks only? Race-based? Nevertheless, in case you are still wondering whether something whose name evokes the memory of "Ebonics," that old excuse for not teaching black children proper English, could possibly be good, consider the following.

[T]he report complains that entrepreneurial immigrants from Latin America and the Middle East are opening up too many stores and selling too much of everything to blacks. In doing so, it's alleged that these money-grubbing greenhorns are stealing jobs and business opportunities from blacks.

The plan is to create a black Little Italy, dubbed AfricaTown, funded in large part by taxpayers' dollars and made up of black-owned businesses catering to a black clientele. The analogy to Little Italy, of course, doesn't work. There's nothing about the proposed development of AfricaTown that bears the least resemblance to how Little Italy happened.

First of all, I hope Detroit is the only city in America whose government feels the need to "solve" the problem posed by hard-working immigrants. (And these are the very immigrants who might help the city finally reverse the fifty-plus year decline that has seen it lose over half of its population!) Second, let's set aside for a moment how many of the same politicians who passed this racist plan would react to, say, a developer who wanted to build a whites-only real estate development over the ruins of some old neighborhood there. The racism, though insulting to whites, is nothing compared to what Detroit's government is doing to its black citizens! The author hints at the answer late in the article.

Across the board, reported [Dr. Kate Holliday] Claghorn[, author of a 1901 report on Italian immigrants], rich or poor in Little Italy, "all classes are highly industrious, thrifty, and saving" -- the exact formula for upward mobility and business expansion. "The tradespeople prosper rapidly," she reported. "The Italian barber enlarges his shop, perhaps finally sells out and becomes a banker; the fruit peddler buys a little shop, then a bigger one and may finally become a wealthy importer; and in like manner with other shopkeepers. The more ambitious and successful move to the suburbs and become property owners in Long Island City, Flushing, Corona, Astoria, etc."

That's how Italians got rich. It's how America got rich. Or as historian John Steele Gordon explained it: "If America is famous for its get-up-and-go, it's because we have ancestors who got up and came."

Little Italy, in short, was successful because the spaghetti was good, not because someone got a handout from city council.

Dare I say, "Amen, brother!" to that last sentence. There is a vicious cycle of dependency and handouts going on in Black America. Politicians like these pander to an electorate wanting to be bailed out of their problems. And an electorate unwilling to pay their dues vote for politicians who are willing to substitute stolen money for work on the part of their constituents. Round and round she goes. The rot goes all the way through this culture, from the bottom to the top.

Getting to America is more than a trip on a boat or life in an ethnic enclave. It's the mental decision to live coupled with the willingness to face the fact that no one can live for you. Until blacks start making this journey, there will be no real "Little Africas." There will only be government-sponsored bad jokes like this will surely be. A government that makes excuses for failure and insulates its citizens from the consequences of not working is only providing reasons not to make this journey. Read again how the Italians prospered and then ask yourself again who is "underserving" Detroit's majority. The freely-elected politicians are, but then, they are freely elected. The majority is, in fact "underserving" itself! Until either the welfare state is totally abolished or more blacks understand that they are doing this to themselves and to each other, they are doomed as a minority.

To the blacks: Please stop oppressing yourselves. Come to America. We'd love to have you here, but you still have to get here first. To those who would like to see blacks become prosperous: quit supporting the welfare state.

-- CAV

Reason Roundup and Around the 'Sphere

Reason Roundup

Be sure to stop by the Charlotte Capitalist for this week's Reason Roundup, which has a nice collection of links to what various Objectivists had to say about the Schiavo controversy. But that's not the only thing there, in case you're getting tired of that story. Another really good roundup this week!

If you're not tired of the Schiavo controversy, be sure to stop by Cox and Forkum for their cartoon and excellent roundup on the subject. They also point to a Tracinski blog entry on a column I had wanted to blog Friday. However, I found him already there, and having likely done a far better job anyway! The last two are must-reads.

Around the 'Sphere

I also recommend a visit to Joe Gandelman's site, The Moderate Voice, for today's installment of his occasional link roundup, Around the 'Sphere. There is no one theme to this collection, but the links all look interesting.

-- CAV

Updates

3-28-05: Added a second paragraph to the first part of the post.

Remodeling Feedback Wanted

I spent the greater part of the weekend refreshing my decade-old (but very rusty) knowledge of HTML as well as learning a little bit about cascading style sheets (CSS) in an effort to get the blog into a cleaner-looking three-column format. It looks great on Mozilla, but terrible on Konqueror. I use Linux exclusively at home, so I will be unable to check it out on the Windows platform until tomorrow. I will be unable to look it over on a MacIntosh any time soon.

About half of my regular visitors use Windows and just under a fifth use Macs. Please let me know via email whether (1) the three columns line up as they should (or the middle one drops down as it does for the Konqueror browser) or (2) any other problems crop up. Use multiple browsers if you really have time to burn.

Thanks. If the template is troublesome for too many people tomorrow, I will revert to an earlier template until I have the time to try this again.

-- CAV

Updates

3-28-05: (1) Big hat tip to the General for his input. Looks like the blog loads properly on IE 6 and Konqueror now! And now that the page isn't a complete disaster, Curtis gets a tip o' the hat as well for helping me get up to speed on CSS in the first place. (Didn't want to make anyone look bad by tippin' hats and droppin' names too quickly....) Also, I recommend this page as a good introduction to CSS. It cuts through the cognitive clutter inherent in the markups so the reader can understand what's really going on. The concept behind CSS is actually quite easy to grasp.

Any remaining issues are either my fault or Bill Gates's fault -- for turning out non-standard-compliant browsers in the first place and then not fixing them.

(2) Hat tip to reader Adrian Hester for checking on Mac viewability. I can tweak style a little now, and then get back to writing!

Mystic Gripes at "Prospect" of Proof

I saw an interesting editorial in the Houston Chronicle today that echoes part of my reaction to the recent award of the Templeton Prize to Charles Townes, but from, shall we say, the other side. In "Faith doesn't need science," self-described "lapsed Catholic" Margaret Wertheim attacks the premise behind awarding the Templeton prize for an interesting reason: The very same reason I said religion needs science.

Here's what I said.

[The] epistemological approach [of science] is the diametric opposite of that of religion. Faith is the acceptance of a belief unsupported by evidence or logic. Many claims made by religion, especially when it has the upper hand in a culture and starts trying to explain ordinary facts, can easily be made mincemeat of by science. And worse, if the light of reason can cast these claims into doubt, all the others become suspect as well. And when people start questioning religious tenets, the power of the church to run things diminishes. This is why the church, when it was the most powerful cultural force, tried its damnedest to, shall we say, "spar" science out of existence.

And that is why the Templeton Award exists today, and why such a big fuss is made whenever some opportunistic "scientist" pretends to have found evidence for some religious claim. Religion is weak as a cultural force today and needs the credibility that "useful 'geniuses'" like Townes can lend it. Don't underestimate the value of someone like him pretending that the limitations of science can be made up for only by faith, as if philosophy doesn't exist. Otherwise, why would religionists -- who always want donations -- be passing out the big bucks?

Wertheim at least appears to disagree with me, and makes the argument that science focuses too much on God the creator rather than God the redeemer. (Yes, I capitalize God although I am an atheist. Unlike multiculturalists, I realize the following: Words don't oppress people. People oppress people. And besides, if God represents the best that is morally possible, why not? The first person singular pronoun has the same honor, after all.)

From the 13th through 17th centuries, the Pythagorean notion of an underlying cosmic harmony gradually gave rise to the idea that the Judeo-Christian God had created the world according to a divine mathematical plan — the "laws of nature." To discover and understand these laws was to decipher God's plan, and therefore an essentially religious act.

As Isaac Newton's great predecessor, Johannes Kepler, wrote: "For a long time, I wanted to become a theologian. ... Now, however, behold how through my effort God is being celebrated in astronomy." Newton himself saw his scientific work as one long argument for a beneficent Creator. The elision of God and physics today follows directly from this tradition, but there is a critical difference between the scientific theologizing of Kepler and Newton and that of physicists like Hawking and Townes.

The Christian God has two aspects: God the Creator and God the Redeemer. The former acts at the beginning of time, the latter reigns at the end. For most of Christian history, intellectual reflection was focused on God the Redeemer, for the core of Christian theology and faith has always been the end-time promise of resurrection and atonement. Christ died and rose to heaven as the guarantee that eventually all true believers would follow him into the everlasting bliss of paradise.

And what is wrong with this, from her point of view? If we prove the existence of one "aspect" of God, doesn't the rest follow? Why doesn't she seem happy at the prospect?

"Progress" in religion must be judged not by our knowledge of particles and forces but by action toward a more just, equitable and humane society.

By equating God with the "structure and function" of the material world, Christians play a losing game. As the Jesuit philosopher Michael Buckley has pointed out, rational inference can never substitute for personal experience of the divine — which is, and must remain, the grounding of faith.

Ah! But Wertheim does agree with me. Let's concede that the "music of the spheres" could somehow prove that God -- hers in particular -- exists. She'll still thumb her nose at the scientist who does and claim that he's just a nerd in lab coat, and that his proof is irrelevant. This is interesting coming from someone who ought to be excited by such a proof.

Why the lack of enthusiasm? She gives her answer in the sentences forming the alpha and the omega of the above quote: because (alpha) she wants us to follow the altruistic morality of religion and that (omega) no one whose mind is on a steady diet of facts and logic will just roll over and sacrifice himself as she wishes, and her imaginary friend requires.

In dismissing the fundamental question of whether her God exists by shifting our focus from that question to what she wants us to do, Wertheim implicitly acknowledges what I said. The light of reason is a big threat to those who wish to cripple our minds by faith so that they can live as parasites off the fruits of our efforts. Mystics know that their fantasies are impotent unless they can get those with some shred of rationality to capitulate. The con man who is about to be found out leads a joyless existence indeed.

-- CAV

Jeb Bush: Unfit for President!!!

I saw this story buried in the front section of the Houston Chronicle this morning and mentioned by Matt Drudge. It is a reflection of the sorry intellectual state of our media that Terri Schiavo's physical state, and not this, made the front page. (And that the version I saw there was so short on detail.) Depending on what, exactly, occurred, it may be that Jeb Bush very nearly caused a constitutional crisis! Did the governor of one of our biggest states just subordinate the law he was sworn to uphold to the wishes of the religious right? This is much more important.

[A]gencies answering directly to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush had planned to use a wrinkle in state law that would have allowed them to legally get around the judge's order. The exception in the law allows public agencies to freeze a judge's order whenever an agency appeals it.

Participants in the high-stakes test of wills, who spoke with The Miami Herald on the condition of anonymity, said they believed the standoff could ultimately have led to a constitutional crisis - and a confrontation between dueling lawmen.

"There were two sets of law enforcement officers facing off, waiting for the other to blink," said one official with knowledge of Thursday morning's activities. In jest, one official said local police discussed "whether we had enough officers to hold off the National Guard."

"It was kind of a showdown on the part of the locals and the state police," the official said. "It was not too long after that Jeb Bush was on TV saying that, evidently, he doesn't have as much authority as people think." [italics mine]

If the Schiavo case was a trial balloon for the religious right, this could be a shot across the bow. What does Jeb Bush mean when he says he "doesn't have as much authority as people think?" Was what he did legal or illegal? How, exactly, would this have caused a constitutional crisis? Was the pulling back of state law enforcement an admission that he acted illegally and that he was merely outgunned? Did Ann Coulter basically get her wish after all? This article raises lots more questions than it answers.

The Schiavo controversy has thus taught us two things. First, of all the possible GOP presidential candidates for 2008, Jeb Bush may very well be the least fit for office and the one to oppose most vigorously. Second, and more important, the religious right is far more dangerous than they looked a few weeks ago.

Update (3-28-05) Robert Tracinski of TIA Daily calls this episode "Jeb's Rebellion." The following quote (which I missed) from the story supports the implied interpretation of these events: "Alerted by the Bush administration that Schiavo might be on her way to their facility, officials at Morton Plant Hospital went to court Wednesday, asking Florida Circuit Judge George Greer, who ordered the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube last week, what to do."

No more need for a question mark in the title. I would also agree with Tracinski that, "[T]his is an extremely important story that ... ought to dominate the headlines."

-- CAV

Updates

3-26-05 Since it is not yet completely clear that Jeb Bush himself ordered this, I changed some of the wording.
3-28-05 Added last paragraph.

Religionists Reenact Recount

The Terri Schiavo case is the 2000 recount of the religious right.

The Schiavo fiasco remains fertile blogging ground. Yesterday, I discussed a Michelle Malkin column at length and took Malkin to task for implicitly supporting the unconstitutional shenanigans of the religious right. Readers who doubt me or didn't see this after their own reading of the column can check out this post, in which she approvingly quotes from a column in which Ann Coulter reaches a new low: "So how about a Republican governor's sending in the National Guard to stop an innocent American woman from being starved to death in Florida?"

That Ann Coulter column is a doozy and should be read in full. Here are a few quotes:

Democrats have called out armed federal agents in order to: (1) prevent black children from attending a public school in Little Rock, Ark. (National Guard); (2) investigate an alleged violation of federal gun laws in Waco, Texas (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms); and (3) deport a small boy to Cuba (Immigration and Naturalization Service).

So how about a Republican governor's sending in the National Guard to stop an innocent American woman from being starved to death in Florida? Republicans like the military. Democrats get excited about the use of military force only when it's against Americans.

So if the Republicans are supposed to start acting just like Democrats, on what basis is Coulter such a fervent Republican? Or does Coulter hold that such action would be fundamentally different and might be legal? And might she have managed to argue that it conforms to the way the Founding Fathers organized our government? Let's see for ourselves.

First, Coulter evades the fact that the Schiavo case has already undergone due process. This allows her to equate Jeb Bush calling up the National Guard to save her life with Eisenhower's use of the military to enforce desegregation of the public schools in Arkansas.

None of these exercises of military force [cited in the above excerpt] has gone down in history as a noble moment, but that's because of the underlying purpose of the force, not the fact that force was used.

To the contrary, what has gone down in history as a glorious moment for the republic was when President Dwight Eisenhower (Republican) called out military force of his own. In response to Gov. Faubus' abuse of the National Guard, Eisenhower simultaneously revoked Faubus' control of the National Guard and ordered the 101st Airborne Division to escort black students to school.

As important as it was to enforce the constitutional right to desegregated schools, isn't it also important to enforce Terri Schiavo's right to due process before she is killed by starvation?

And then, in case you don't buy this, she later basically says, "Oh, to Hell with separation of powers. He should do it anyway."

President Andrew Jackson is supposed to have said of a Supreme Court ruling he opposed: "Well, John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it." The court's ruling was ignored. And yet, somehow, the republic survived.

If Gov. Jeb Bush doesn't say something similar to the Florida courts that have ordered Terri Schiavo to die, he'll be the second Republican governor disgraced by the illiterate ramblings of a state judiciary. [Update: Details are sketchy, but it may be that Jeb Bush basically did do this, by ordering state law enforcement to seize Terri Schiavo.]

She conveniently forgot to add to that last the "illiterate ramblings" of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals as well as of the Supreme Court of the United States (which "illiterately rambled" about this same case no less than five times). So we survived the foolishness of Andrew Jackson. How many more similar episodes can we survive as a country? Ann Coulter is OK with a nation of men and not laws on a case-by-case basis, but someone needs to explain to her that law doesn't work if it is not applied consistently. So no. Coulter has no problem using the same tactics she despises Democrats for using and apparently doesn't really care whether such tactics might be inconsistent with our form of government.

I also find interesting how Ann Coulter's regard for the court system has changed so much over the past five years. In 2000, she had this to say about the Florida recount battle:

In "interpreting" the Florida election code so as to impose a 19-day deadline where the actual law had required a seven-day deadline, the kangaroo court may as well have declared war on Canada. And the real Supreme Court most likely would have issued a similar ruling: "As a general rule, this court defers to a state court's interpretation" of the law -- but not if the state court declares war on Canada. See, e.g., the Constitution.

Most amusingly, the U.S. Supreme Court professed confusion over the SCOFLA's (Supreme Court of Florida) ruling -- the one it went ahead and vacated just to be on the safe side. Not to put too fine a point on it, but these guys understand the Law of Perpetuities. Turgidity is their life's work. But they didn't understand the SCOFLA's opinion? Oh, OK.

While claiming total befuddlement, the Supreme Court indicated that it sure hoped the court hadn't ignored the Constitution and federal law! This is how parents discipline small children: I sure hope no one's reading under her covers after bedtime! The face-saving directive was clear to all but the willfully blind.

Of course, the SCOFLA found the meaning of the word "seven" to be an impenetrable mystery, so there's no assurance that subtlety will work with these guys. But there is one entity for whom we can be pretty sure the Supreme Court's ruling will not be a devilish puzzle -- the Florida Legislature.

As the Supreme Court reminded the world, the Constitution provides that states "shall appoint" presidential electors "in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct." So knock yourself out in Seminole County. Exclude votes from the military, taxpayers, all registered Republicans. The Florida Legislature has the last word.

I never imagined I would be as thankful for Bill Clinton as I am at this moment (or ever, for that matter), but thank goodness he refrained from pulling an Andrew Jackson! The recount did not occur in Florida against the ruling of the Supreme Court. Jeb Bush didn't have to send in the National Guard to stop a recount. And Bill Clinton didn't make the recount happen anyway by sending in the army. Thank you, Bill Clinton, for behaving properly as the Chief Executive after that decision. And shame on you, Ann Coulter, for your hypocrisy! You say in your first column that, " Liberals' newfound respect for 'federalism' is completely disingenuous." Well, what is your "fair weather" respect for federalism to be called? I don't know, but it is anything but "respect for federalism."

Be careful what you wish for. If Presidents start ignoring the Supreme Court, a President you don't particularly care for might feel free to ignore a ruling you happen to agree with. And for that matter, the Supreme Court will be rendered moot if Presidents can pick and choose which rulings to enforce in any event. Just as the time to reform voting procedures in Florida was after the election, so, unfortunately, is the time to reform Florida's custody law after Terri Schiavo dies. We have to accept rulings we disagree with from time to time because lawlessness would be far worse. (By the way, it is only in a lawful, peaceful society that someone like Schiavo can survive at all. So this attack upon our nation's foundation is doubly hypocritical.)

The Terri Schiavo case is the 2000 recount of the religious right. In 2000, Al Gore and the Democrats attempted to misuse the judicial branch to overturn an election. In 2005, the religious right is trying to misuse the executive and legislative branches to overturn a legal decision that has been effectively upheld by the very court the Republicans were thankful for in 2000. In the 2000 case and in this one (so far), a political faction lusting after power has been thwarted by the foresight of our Founding Fathers, who split the power of our government into three competing branches. Our government was designed to get in its own way for a very good reason: to prevent any one man from being able to accumulate (and abuse) too much power. A crucial part of how this works is that those in positions of power act responsibly, especially in the executive branch -- the one that enforces the law.

Thanks to Bill Clinton's acceptance of the SCOTUS ruling on the 2000 election, we now have the able leadership of George W. Bush in the war we find ourselves fighting today. And if President Bush is the patriot I think he is, he will enforce the decision rendered by the courts in this matter and, in doing so, will protect our nation's precious respect for the law.

-- CAV

Updates

3-25-05: (1) Clarified which Bush Coulter wants calling in the 'Guard. (2) Corrected wording of two sentences. (3) Fixed a typo. Hat tip to Adrian Hester.
3-26-05: Linked to next post.

Revisiting Tiananmen

[Update: For related posts, go here.]

Several items came up today that have a bearing on the compound threat of China and terrorism I recently discussed.

First, in the Washington Post, Jim Hoagland discusses something that may turn out to be welcome news. The West might finally begin pressuring China to begin recognizing the rights of its own citizens. How?

Chinese officials made a quiet but insistent request [last fall] to European Union leaders: You have changed. So have we. Lift the arms embargo imposed after the 1989 "events." The Chinese request seemed to be, well, another geopolitical slam-dunk.

Except suddenly it isn't. The United States and Europe have stumbled into an increasingly bruising dispute over the efforts of E.U. leaders to remove one of the few remaining symbols of international condemnation of a human rights atrocity.

Score the fact that the dispute has broken out as a good thing. It delays a decision that should not be taken lightly.

That last sentence is not just an understatement: We're talking about something that shouldn't even be on the table! This is the silver lining on the cloud of China's recent "anti-secession" law aimed at Taiwan and other recent behavior. Hoagland points out that the E.U. embargo is largely symbolic with Russia undermining it. However, it is the purpose for which the embargo was placed that makes this interesting: China's suppression of the uprising of 1989. With other tyrants being toppled or threatened around the world, this is not something China's tyrants really want on the minds of its inmates -- I mean, citizens.

The Chinese leadership has provoked exactly what it could not have wanted: renewed international attention to the meaning and legacy of the Tiananmen protests. That is the first useful purpose the U.S.-E.U. embargo tiff serves. Because China's government hides the truth about June 3 and 4, 1989 -- and the six weeks of protests that preceded the use of brute force -- those events live on in China's political present and future.

So while not removing an embargo is what we're ostensibly doing, this little reminder might be ultimately more useful. The rest of the article makes much of the many contradictory faces China presents to the world, but ends on the right note.

[T]ime has not wiped away the essential truth the Chinese government continues to deny: The 1989 protests were among the greatest acts of mass valor and decency in that or any nation's history. Millions of people living in impoverished circumstances went to the streets to defend the lives and reputation of idealistic students, civil servants and workers who were seeking democratic change. The essential meaning of "Tiananmen" is one of Chinese glory and not shame, as the government's secrecy suggests.

Strategic dialogues, or arms embargoes, will not produce much change until there is a government in Beijing that sees what happened almost 16 years ago that way.

In the meantime, in China's own back yard, the Tulip Revolution has toppled a Putin crony in Kyrgyzstan. (Spelled it right on the first try!) Publius Pundit has the full report with pictures.

Besides the basic human drive for freedom that is comparable in each revolution, each has had a flower and each set of protestors has given them to the security forces. Even in the recent Tulip Revolution!

Those riot police kind of lose their ferocity after receiving bouquets from pretty revolution babes!

Why is it that hot babes make dictators impotent? This isn't just a bad pun. While it is obviously true that the troops do not morally accept their role in enforcing tyranny, I think that the babes do two things: (1) They remind the troops that it's human beings they'll be killing if they repress the revolt. (2) They remind the soldiers that they're men. Real men do not bully women around or pick unfair fights with them. And all these women ask is to be allowed to live freely.

The leaders of China might try reconsidering Tiananmen in that light, if they've the guts to look at their past failings. But if they don't, we can hope that her people do, and then become China's leaders themselves.

But the news is not all good. As I discussed earlier this week, China poses a bigger threat to us from the south than Russia ever did, and its lapdog, Hugo, barked at us today.

Venezuelan troops, seeking 'gas smugglers,’ actually crossed the border into Colombia and occupied a little Colombian village for several hours, abusing the villagers. This is no bounty hunter incident, this is a bona fide military invasion. And probably a practice run for a real invasion, because Colombia is a country that Hugo Chavez, along with Fidel Castro, has long had designs on.

It’s also a strike against Colombia’s ally, the U.S.

Hugo Chavez’s policy of rhetorical confrontation has been a failure. Now, he hopes to confront the U.S. through Colombia - right when Donald Rumsfeld is on tour in South America.

I was discussing Chavez with a Colombian acquaintance of mine recently, and he was concerned that something like this might happen eventually.

-- CAV

Updates

3-25-05: Fixed a typo, courtesy of Adrian Hester.
4-17-05: Added reciprocal link to index post.

Hiding an Agenda behind Facts

Nearly a decade ago, I read Animal Liberation by Peter Singer and was struck by his method of "argument". He presented numerous facts about animal husbandry and included numerous photographs of the conditions in which food animals are maintained. But did he marshal these facts to support his argument: that animals have rights? No. His thesis trivialized the idea of individual rights by taking the highly abstract concept of "rights" for granted, and then arbitrarily asserting that its basis consists in the ability of a being to "feel pain". If the photographs and lurid accounts of how livestock are sometimes maintained prove anything, it would be that these animals usually do suffer. But that does not prove Singer's contention that animals have rights. What it does do is distract the reader from the fact that Singer should be making an argument, but is not. In addition, it makes the reader emotionally predisposed to accept the thesis by taking advantage of his sense of decency.

Today, I saw a column by social conservative columnist Michelle Malkin that does the very same thing Peter Singer did in Animal Liberation. Namely, she poses as an objective reporter who pays scrupulous attention to facts in order to whitewash the shameless power grab by the religious right on Terri Schiavo's "behalf". The title is "The MSM's life and death distortions." Malkin starts out by making a valid objection to the methodology (push polling) of the ABC poll widely cited in the media to demonstrate American support for the termination of the life of Schiavo's body.

Here is how the spinmasters framed the main poll question:

As you may know, a woman in Florida named Terri Schiavo suffered brain damage and has been on life support for 15 years. Doctors say she has no consciousness and her condition is irreversible. Her parents and her husband disagree on whether or not she should be kept on life support. In cases like this who do you think should have final say, (the parents) or (the spouse)?

A follow-up question asked:

If you were in this condition, would you want to be kept alive, or not?

The problem is that, contrary to what ABC News told those polled, Terri Schiavo is not on "life support" and has never been on "life support." The loaded phrase evokes images of a comatose patient being artificially sustained by myriad machines and pumps and wires. Terri was on a feeding tube. A feeding tube is not a ventilator. Terri can breathe just fine on her own.

These are valid concerns and, frankly, it angers me that the media did a push poll for such an important matter. The results are questionable, though I suspect that a more honest poll might have gotten similar results. (See Michele Catalano's remarks below.) But we'll never know now. What's worse, is this plays right into the hands of the religious right as silliness by the left does so often these days.

Malkin immediately goes on the attack.

And as many of her medical caretakers and parents have argued, if given proper rehabilitation, Terri could learn to chew and swallow on her own as well. She is disabled, not dead.

Caretakers? I doubt these are physicians or, God forbid, specialists in neurology. Her parents? They have my sympathy, but they understandably might have unrealistic hopes here. Nowhere in the article does Malkin address what medical experts say, except to discount one as a buffoon for using what is obviously an exaggeration to describe how common a medical procedure is. (Malkin should take note: Those strange letters appended to these "experts'" names, like "M.D." or "Ph.D." aren't the cryptic foreign abbreviations of leftist guerilla organizations in cahoots with MSM. They're credentials.) That's OK. I'll do it for her. (A more extensive quote and a reference are supplied here.)

Medical experts said those behaviors are the cruelest aspect of a terrible condition: Grimaces and other facial expressions give families of tens of thousands of such patients hope, but they are evidence only that Schiavo's brain stem is working, keeping alive reflexes and routine bodily functions. They do not suggest that the higher areas of brain functioning needed for her to regain conscious awareness will return

Malkin is thus quick to reveal someone else's bad methodology, but is perfectly happy to indulge in her own. Here, she's relying on anecdotal evidence to make her case rather than the scientific variety. Notice that she holds herself out as being against media bias, but that she goes beyond that into advocacy of her side of the Schiavo controversy. The fact that the media did a lousy job in polling that supports the other side does not automatically make Malkin's case. But then, as we will see, neither does she. And although Malkin never explicitly says that the religionists should shred the Constitution, this is, at the moment, the only way to spare Schiavo's life.

But let's forget, for a moment, Malkin's egalitarianism about medical expertise, and assume that her next bit of medical evidence is solid, and not taken out of context. (I am not sure myself about this, but as you will see, this doesn't really matter.)

Imagine how the poll results might have turned out if ABC News had made clear to participants that Terri is not terminally ill. Not in excruciating pain. Capable of saying "Mommy" and "Help me." And of "getting the feeling she's falling" or getting "excited," in her husband's own testimony, when her head is not held properly.

Imagine how the poll results might have turned out if ABC News had informed participants that in a sworn affidavit, registered nurse Carla Sauer Iyer, who worked at the Palm Garden of Largo Convalescent Center in Largo, Fla., while Terri Schiavo was a patient there, testified: "Throughout my time at Palm Gardens, Michael Schiavo was focused on Terri's death. Michael would say 'When is she going to die?' 'Has she died yet?' and 'When is that bitch gonna die?'"

Now, if you were in this situation, would you want to be kept alive, or not?

Michele Catalano (hat tip: Martin Lindeskog) does a much better job than anyone of addressing the issue posed by the first and third of these paragraphs. Namely: If Terri Schiavo is, in fact, not brain-dead, would she want to live? Malkin is inviting us to speculate on what Terri Schiavo would want: I'm just taking her up on it.

One of my greatest fears is of being buried alive. The dark side of my imagination has created a scenario in which this happens and it appears in my dreams every once in while: Imagine being held down, underneath layers of dirt or stone or maybe in a wooden box. You see a pinpoint of light above. Just out of reach. You can hear muted voices above you; there are people out there. Living, breathing people who are going about their daily lives while you are trying to claw your way out of your trap, while you are trying to shout to them. But no one hears you. No one knows you are in there.

When people tell me that Terri Schiavo is aware, that's what I imagine. That's how I envision her every cognizant moment to be. I don’t know that this is true. I’m no medical expert. But no one knows what’s going on inside Terri’s mind, do they? If anything is going on in there. The fact that she has no working cerebral cortex makes me inclined to believe that she isn’t aware of anything. But I try to put myself in that place. Is that a way I would want to exist for fifteen years? Hell, I wouldn't want to live that life for fifteen days.

So, the answer to the push-poll question above is also, "No!" And then Charles Krauthammer (an M.D., by the way) does a good job demolishing the notion (that Malkin apparently has) that the fact that the husband is likely a slimeball merits the jettison of our Constitution.

The crucial issue in deciding whether one would want to intervene to keep her alive is whether there is, as one bioethicist put it to me, "anyone home." Her parents, who see her often, believe that there is. The husband maintains that there is no one home. (But then again he has another home, making his judgment somewhat suspect.) The husband has not allowed a lot of medical testing in the past few years. I have tried to find out what her neurological condition actually is. But the evidence is sketchy, old and conflicting. The Florida court found that most of her cerebral cortex is gone. But "most" does not mean all. There may be some cortex functioning. The severely retarded or brain-damaged can have some consciousness. And we do not go around euthanizing the minimally conscious in the back wards of mental hospitals on the grounds that their lives are not worth living.

Given our lack of certainty, given that there are loved ones prepared to keep her alive and care for her, how can you allow the husband to end her life on his say-so? Because following the sensible rules of Florida custody laws, conducted with due diligence and great care over many years in this case, this is where the law led.

For Congress and the president to then step in and try to override that by shifting the venue to a federal court was a legal travesty, a flagrant violation of federalism and the separation of powers. The federal judge who refused to reverse the Florida court was certainly true to the law. But the law, while scrupulous, has been merciless, and its conclusion very troubling morally. We ended up having to choose between a legal travesty on the one hand and human tragedy on the other.

There is no good outcome to this case. Except perhaps if Florida and the other states were to amend their laws and resolve conflicts among loved ones differently -- by granting authority not necessarily to the spouse but to whatever first-degree relative (even if in the minority) chooses life and is committed to support it. Call it Terri's law. It would help prevent our having to choose in the future between travesty and tragedy.

Before we go for the kill, let's grant Malkin her premise: that Schiavo is merely "disabled." How would junking the Constitution help her? How will anyone, much less Terri Schiavo, survive for long if we abandon the very foundations of our civilization? Indeed: how would junking the Constitution help anyone? I have to bring up another quote from ASV: "

Honestly, I don't think anyone involved in this case any longer has the benefit of Terri Schiavo in mind. It's way past that. It's all about pushing agendas now. If people really, truly cared about making sure all lives are equal, whether brain dead or not, why weren't they rallying at the bedside of Sun Hudson?

This also brings up an issue that is totally, unforgivably absent in Malkin's piece: Why is she so concerned about the what the polling data say that she feels the need to construct a sort of push poll of her own, but pushing in the opposite direction? Because this poll indicates public disapproval of the extralegal efforts of the Bush administration to "save" the life of Terri Schiavo.

And this is what Malkin means by "life and death" matter when she opens her column. Schiavo's life is basically over whether she gets the tube reinserted or not. But if the tube is not reinserted, the great power grab of the religious right has failed and, God forbid, it wasn't such a popular move in the first place! This column is not just an emotional appeal in support of Bush under the guise of a call for accurate reporting, it is also damage control for the religious right.

What ABC did wrong does not make what Bush did right. And no matter what the American people really think or feel about this case, what Bush did was still wrong. Is Schiavo's husband a slimeball? Looks like it. Bush is still wrong. Might Schiavo be conscious? Bush is still wrong. Ditto if Schiavo wants to live. Read Krauthammer again.When you're done, Bush will still be wrong.

For the record, I'm guilty as charged of pushing an agenda. Here's mine: I want rule of law. My life depends upon it.

-- CAV

PS: For some good further reading on this matter, see this Joe Gandelman post over at the Moderate Voice. He opens by pointing to another poll that vindicates my belief that the Schiavo case is a huge political miscalculation by the religionists. The title pretty much hits the nail on the head, too: "This Unfavorable Poll Must Also Be 'Biased,' Right?

Updates

3-24-05: (1) Corrected several typos. Made a few clarifications. (2) Added link to TMV.