A Host of Contributing Factors

And then there were none

2009-06-10T20:56:00.000-07:00

Today, a horrible crime was committed by an extremist who, in cold blood, gunned down a security guard at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. There is no excuse for such a crime, and I have no tolerance for anyone who thinks the same way or supports this act of hate.

I pray for the family of Stephen T Johns, the security guard killed in the attack, and that justice is served swiftly and coldly against this killer.

Within minutes of discovering the identity and possible onetime military affiliation of the shooter, Shepard Smith, of Fox News, made the following astonishing leap of logic: that this shooting validates the contents of the DHS report labeling veterans as potential right wing extremists. A good synopsis of Smith’s statements and their context to the DHS report can be found at Mudville Gazette. In one statement, Smith and Fox News advanced the damage already caused by the original report. Now, the leftist blogsphere is alight with the very kind of rhetoric that has spilled into every channel of media blovating, including now Fox.

Unfortunately for Smith and all of the other people out there who want to desperately believe that those who serve in the military, support the idea smaller government, and believe that people should be able to believe whatever they want even if it offends others, the murderer in this case proves nothing about the DHS report. The murderer was 89 years old, may have never served in the military (the only available confirmation of his service is his own claim that he served), but was an extremist in every other sense. The report, on the other hand, is explicit in its reference to modern veterans returning from places like Iraq and Afghanistan:

(U) Disgruntled Military Veterans

(U//FOUO) DHS/I&A assesses that right-wing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat. These skills and knowledge have the potential to boost the capabilities of extremists—including lone wolves or small terrorist cells—to carry out violence. The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today.

–from Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment (.pdf)

Now, it no longer matters what the facts of the shooting are and what the DHS report said. The cultural meme that veterans are dangerous extremists who murder people out of hatred has been created and will continue to persist. Now, people who do not bother to differentiate between those with legitimate philosophical disagreements about beliefs and politics will be even more invigorated in their intolerance of people with differing views.

It does not help that too many people out there in the ether of the internet take their disagreements to extremes when responding to such events on both extremes of political belief. People sending email to Shepard Smith today only reinforced the stereotypes too many people have of the conservatively minded as surely as liberals have done in past instances, only proving how uninformed and reactionary they are themselves.

We live in a time of strong, sometimes even radical, disagreements about the way forward for our nation and for the world. I have been a part of that debate for a long time, and it saddens me more than I can convey with these words that our national discourse has degraded into shouting and increasingly hostile accusations against one side or the other. Certainly, I believe that some of the things being done by liberals are destructive to our country, and I believe it is my place to argue against those actions with the hope that something like the middle ground–and often the best–solutions can be achieved.

However, I do not now, nor will I ever condone violence against those with whom I disagree either now or ever. The threshold for taking up arms in support or opposition is very high, something anyone who has sworn the oath to protect and defend the Constitution should inherently understand.

The distinction between this view and that of the murder in question is rapidly being lost, and with that loss comes the loss of the very things the veterans now being steadily maligned hold dear. I ask the same question now as when this idea first reared its ugly head: what happens when those who have decided that what their nation stands for is worth fighting for are no longer willing to do so because what they believe in has become criminal? How can any nation survive criminalizing a way of thinking? How can any nation survive criminalizing its defenders?

First they came for the Communists but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists but I was not one of them, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews but I was not Jewish so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.

Martin Niemoeller

We are sliding down a very slippery slope. God help us all.

Veteran+Conservative+Private firearm ownership supporter+Rough economy=New domestic terrorist

2009-05-18T21:13:00.001-07:00

Hello. I simply wanted to reintroduce myself as the new face of terrorism in the United States. Because I am a veteran, politically conservative, support the private ownership of firearms, live in a country suffering from an economic downturn, and apparently have no mind of my own, I am now susceptible to recruitment by so-called "right wing" groups that support the violent overthrow of the United States government.

Granted, this new designation and susceptibility means that the government-working-against-its-citizens shoe is now on the other foot and that the very mechanisms of surveillance and operation that I still support will now be turned on me, but I am not concerned because, as a veteran, conservative, firearm owner now purportedly surrounded by like-minded extremists, I think I have a pretty good shot at resistance.

Which is probably a good thing considering that the same government that felt the need to create this new definition of terrorism also has plans to restrict the First Amendment, scrap the Second, and ignore the Fifth. Perhaps what this government fears is not terrorists, but citizens who dare to be the individualists the Founders envisioned.

Whatever the reason, I think I am comfortable with my new label. I think that it means my government fears me, and in my view, governments should always fear their citizens. It helps keep them honest.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

--Second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence

Obama: 1, journalists: 0

2009-01-23T06:37:00.000-08:00

Perhaps the love affair between mainstream journalism and Obama has ended. After two days of snubbing the White House press corps, the corps get testy and so does Obama.

Obama's money quote:

"Ahh, see," he said, "I came down here to visit. See this is what happens. I can't end up visiting with you guys and shaking hands if I'm going to get grilled every time I come down here."

Just wait until they start asking real questions, Mr. President.

Change = free money

2009-01-20T14:49:00.000-08:00

I don't know how to do a screen grab, so this will have to do.

To the right of a Google search, this was the sponsored link:

Obama Inaugural Speech

Change is on its way with Obama.
Start applying for free money.
www.EarnCashFromGrants.com

Puppies and sunshine - random thoughts

2009-01-20T14:39:00.000-08:00

Based on the collective swooning from my esteemed colleagues here at the university, I am fully expecting to see the sun break through the clouds, frolicking puppies and kittens as far as the eye can see, and the earth swallow all forms of evil.

Can any one of my esteemed colleagues really expect the new president to do all the things they have heaped in a pile in front of him? One blog I read stated that not since Jesus has one person been expected to do so much.

Does anyone really think that Barack Obama, George W Bush, Bill Clinton, or any president for that matter, wield so much power and sway that others will just bend to their wishes? Has anyone noticed how much all politicians change their tune when they start learning actual information and have to make hard decisions?

Consult a Constitutional Lawyer

2009-01-20T10:20:00.000-08:00

A previous post asked "what happens when the court charged with determining the legality of warrantless searches for the purpose of intelligence agrees that the president has the right to order such searches after millions of people have invested themselves in the premise that such searches were immoral because they were illegal?"

If you are a Constitutional lawyer, like Glenn Greenwald, you read carefully and apply legal knowledge to the false claims of reporters who can't be bothered with little details like facts.

The rule of law

2009-01-15T13:00:00.000-08:00

So what happens when the court charged with determining the legality of warrantless searches for the purpose of intelligence agrees that the president has the right to order such searches after millions of people have invested themselves in the premise that such searches were immoral because they were illegal?

Blessed New Year

2008-12-31T07:51:00.000-08:00

I pray that all of you have a blessed New Year. May we never stop thinking and pulling the great ship of society toward a center of liberty, peace, and prosperity.

Dennis

Read this article

2008-12-09T08:44:00.000-08:00

I believe this article by Robert Gates, current and continuing Secretary of Defense, represents why he will continue as Barack Obama's defense secretary for at least a little while. A previous post on this weblog talked about the idea of centrism, and I believe that Gates' article represents one of the most centrist presentations on the current and future military I have read in years.

My concern is that very few people are listening to the very practical and forward thinking ideas Gates presents. Without a balanced approach to how we defend ourselves, we risk losing our way in long wars and short ones in the years to come.

There's unrest in the toychest...

2008-12-09T01:35:00.000-08:00

...there's trouble with the toys.

I thought this was incredibly cool and strikingly poignant considering they're just little plastic army men. This person has made a lot of these, this is just one of them.

Reigniting an old fire

2008-12-08T14:47:00.001-08:00

Clearly, the issues surrounding wiretapping terrorism suspects and using the FISA court are still not resolved. The Wall Street Journal reports that New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly recently exchanged a series of angry correspondence with US Attorney General Michael Mukasey where he accuses the Department of Justice delays and flawed standards in giving non-federal law enforcement agencies access to the FISA court.

Of course, there are all kinds of things we do not know about these cases, but what I believe we can, at least, discern that Kelly believes there is a credible threat of terrorist related activity in New York City's jurisdiction that neither New York City nor, presumably, the federal government is acting against. It is this very kind of scenerio that led me to be skeptical of the changes made to the FISA laws in its latest amendment, and which lead me to believe the potential continues to exist for terrorists operating in the United States to use our own laws against us in the prosecution of their cause.

I agree that there has to be a balance between the Constitutional concerns of the use of powers like warrantless wiretapping and security, but as the recent events in Mumbai showed everyone, the enemies of freedom are still intent on causing harm through their very effective means of terrorism. If we are not going to actively pursue the ongoing threat by using such means, then what is the answer? Doing nothing cannot be the answer we choose.

Follow the globe-trotting box

2008-11-18T15:15:00.000-08:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/business/2008/the_box/default.stm

The Beeb has sent a cargo/shipping box along its merry way (with a smashing paint job and a GPS) to see the effects of globalization. The load it carried to the first port of call in Shanghai? Whisky.

Tally-ho...

Who's not going to get bailed out?

2008-11-14T16:24:00.000-08:00

And that is asked in complete sincerity, after the events of the past few weeks.

What's to stop me from not paying my mortgage or my lines of credit? May as well live high, then jingle-mail the keys and default on the credit. To the abyss with responsibility, morals, and the high road.

What happened to sense (I won't even call it "common"), personal responsibility, and the tenets of the free market - if you can't compete, you go under.

Yeah, I am a little bitter and cranky.

Soft Money Suit

2008-11-14T15:52:00.000-08:00

So, according to the Wall Street Journal, the Republican Party has filed a law suit to finally destroy what's left of the McCain-Feingold laws governing soft-money contributions to political campaign

"Mr. Duncan, the RNC chairman, said the soft-money rules are too broad and prevent the party from participating in state-level races in which no federal politicians are running for office. The rules as written would also prevent the party from directly participating in state redistricting, which will begin following the 2010 census, and from lobbying on state issues."

Didn't the 50-state ground game waged by Mr. Obama and Howard Dean just disprove that thesis? Big donations weren't the key to the Obama electoral college landslide... it was the ground organization that put them over. I'm not saying the man got to the Whitehouse without big donors, but it was the small donors, millions and millions of them making small donations made one at a time, again and again by normal people who put him in Washington atop a wave of populism.

I'm the first to admit that - for better or worse - Barack Obama's fundraising juggernaut changed the face of American politics, especially presidential elections. This still seems like the GOP is fighting the last war rather than learning from the thrashing they just took and applying those lessons in the new arena.

Isn't the Republican party missing the lesson of this election? Do they think that "This Candidate Brought To You By AT&T" is going to trump "This Message Made Possible By 100 Million People Just Like You"?

Or am I the one who is missing something here? What's the angle?

Nebraska's Camel

2008-11-14T09:40:00.000-08:00

This morning, I was reading news and blog postings on the ongoing situation in Nebraska and it got me thinking...

First of all: I'm not going to defend the law. It's a mess, there is no doubt. I have any number of friends from NE who may well respond to this and I encourage them to do so. I would love to hear from you.

On the whole, I think it's important to acknowledge that this legislation came from a good place and is the result of Nebraska lawmakers being progressive in the only way that the state as a whole generally allows.

But it's nevertheless a camel: A horse built by a committee.

Nebraska's history in the realm of child welfare is one spot where they can be justifiably proud of their record. Boystown and Girlstown are institutions of great merit, or so I believe. In some ways, I see this as an extension of that history, and an attempt to pave a highway with good intentions... but we all know where such roads inevitably lead.

I lived in Omaha for a time and found the experience not at all as appalling as my blue-state cohorts would assume. But the winters very nearly defy description. I'm not sure I can adequately describe to those who have not experienced it the full brunt of a Nebraska winter what it is like. Maybe the number of people posting here who live in Ohio makes that unnecessary, but it's true. I have been caught in blizzards high atop Rocky Mountain passes, weathered nights in a tent at temperatures well into the negatives and even lived in Milwaukee... and nothing compares to the full brunt of Nebraska's winds howling in off the great plains, coating the world in a rime of ice. It is beautiful if viewed from a cozy redoubt, assuming you don't want to go anywhere until it passes.

And I remember all too well stories of babies found abandoned and blue in the fierce winters of that corner of the world. Anything done to save a child from such a fate is worth the effort, even when the results are so tragic as these have been.

Of course, the larger and most devastating part of this is the lives of the children so abandoned, their families shattered. Older children brought in from out of state by parents pushed beyond their limits. Using statistics I found in one blog, 33 of them since the law's inception. (I'll attempt to verify those numbers later, they're only peripherally germane to this commentary.)

I don't know any of those families, I don't share their situations, and I won't pretend to understand what drove them to act in extremis in the manner which has garnered so much national press coverage.

Parenting in this country is a quiet and growing tragedy and this is simply the exposed wound that has been hidden, quietly progressing into gangrenous rot. Not entirely unlike the manner in which the aftermath of Katrina/Rita forced us to realize the depths of racial division still extant in our country and the tragic poverty that still grips far too many. So too with the rearing of children, and now that the bandage is off, and the exodus of parents with children they cannot afford or cannot handle turns toward the Sand Hills... I ask: now what?

The problem lies in the attempt to find solutions to the symptoms without addressing the disease. This attempt to legislate away the point of the lance, fails to take into account the shaft of the weapon or the momentum of the rider and horse. Ignoring my personal outrage as someone who would give anything to be a parent that any children are 'unwanted', there are deeper issues here than this or any law can adequately address. The problem lies deeper than the disposition of unwanted children, the problem lies in the societal forces creating children who will one day fall into this category.

Our national discourse on sex and procreation is a travesty. Our culture wars are operating on a layer too thin, a veneer over the real issues. As we argue about the sanctity of life and marriage we forget the rest of the lives we are so cavalierly ignoring in favor of these two universal points.

What greater good are we serving by saving a fetus only to abandon the child?

What greater good are we serving by telling Barry he cannot marry David if we're telling young Louise that the MUST marry Jimmy?

What greater good are we serving by refusing to discuss the results of a child's actions when those actions might result in more children?

Even the best intended legislation cannot solve any of these issues by addressing the results but not the causes. This cultural war will never reach an armistice at the ballot box. Just as the Gordian Knot could only be untied by Alexander's sword, a more direct and comprehensive solution is called for...

Unfortunately, I don't know where to find Alexander's sword anymore than Nebraska's lawmakers do. Or California's. Or the ones in Washington DC for that matter. I do know that the greater good can only be served by opening up the floor for a more reasoned debate and taking one more step back from these issues to better see the full scope of the decisions that are so quickly desolved into soundbytes for the next election cycle.

In the words of Albert Einstein: "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."

Godspeed, everyone.

More conservatism

2008-11-12T08:58:00.000-08:00

So that it does not get completely buried, Scott posted a good pos t asking questions about where conservatism goes from here. I think the questions are worth answering and the idea is worth discussing.

Signs the the rhetorical cold war has only just started

2008-11-12T08:11:00.000-08:00

Paul Waldman presents in his article "Goodbye and Good Riddance" one of the best examples yet of why I believe we find ourselves in the middle of a rhetorical or ideological cold war that has only just started. While I respect Mr. Waldman's right to his opinion, I think his vociferously overstated case reveals the depth of the divisions that currently haunt the United States that electing Obama or anyone else in this cycle could not have overcome.

From my point of view, Mr. Waldman's article reveals the depth of the divide of a nation pulled in half for reasons I am not sure I entirely understand. What I do understand is that there are screaming ideologs on both sides of the divide who have become so blinded by something more fundamental than ideology that they can no longer see that their rage serves only to ensure that their opponents will never listen to anything they have to say.

In the mean time, many people far closer to the center find themselves caught in a malestrom of such intensity that they have lost the ability to discern where their interests actually lie. I wonder how many people ended up voting for Obama simply because they wanted to make the TV stop shouting at them about how bad Bush is. This is not to say that their best interests may not still lie with Obama, but I wonder whether they actually know that.

I know that George Bush made all kinds of mistakes during his presidency, but so did all 42 other presidents who proceeded him . I also know that many of the things George Bush has done can only be best evaluated once they become history years from now, perhaps long after he is dead. Unfortunately, the raging ideologs want us to either hate or love Bush before we can accomplish anything else.

This insistance ensures is that one half of the divide will continue to hate the other half of the divide and refuse to cooperate with them so that nothing will get done that actually benefits the United States in the near future. This hatred almost ensures that Obama faces the potential for opposition as vociferous and insulting as the oppostion Bush has faced until this point, opposition that will serve only to be obstructionist instead of centralizing.

What remains is a nation divided by ideology that insists that half the people are uninformed, misguided, and deluded whichever side one happens agree with. What remains is the reality that, before we can come together as a nation, we must first take a hard look at ourselves and realize that maybe we are just screaming instead of thinking.

Bothered but listening

2008-11-11T18:50:00.000-08:00

If Barack Obama is able to put the ideas contained in this document into action in a way that does not take more power out of the hands of the American people or cost them more, then he has scored his first, cautious support from me. I have long supported the idea of expanded options for national service, especially in return for easier access to higher education, and if Obama follows through, then I can see myself adding my support to this idea.

I admit that I came across this proposal of Obama's not on my own but because of the diligent work of a fellow blogger (HT: Scott) who sought to diffuse my instinctive reaction to a sound bite taken out of context that potentially frames Obama as saying something he did not mean in the way the sound bite makes it sound like he meant it. I also want to point out that it is this very kind of thing that has the potential to get Obama in all kinds of trouble with the 48 percent of people who did not vote for him in the same way his careless comment to Joe the Plumber did (I think the election would have been less close if not for that gaffe).

Here are two other things that I think highlight the potential for future debate:

First, I think it is possible to disagree civilly with the ideas of a president without the disagreement degenerating into a shouting match. Granted, future disagreements may not result in a change of mind (just wait until we get to socialized medicine), but I think the potential exists.

Second, I asked a question, argued my point, and was convinced of the point made by someone who disagreed. While I do not promise this will always happen (in fact I generally think it will not), I think it demonstrates that at least one "conservative" is capable of the kind of rational thought people of that political persuasion are often accused of not having.

I point these things out because I think it is important to remember that those in the "opposition" are always looking for ways to bring the debate to the center. Issues like these present great opportunities for centrism if they are taken.

The whole video

2008-11-11T13:32:00.000-08:00

Because these words make more sense when viewed in context...

Why should this not bother me?

2008-11-11T12:04:00.000-08:00

While this idea is only barely making the news cycle, the evolution of Obama's idea to have a domestic national security force that rivals the department of defense is really starting to bother me.

What I want to understand is how this idea is any different from warrantless domestic wiretapping and why it should not bother me as much as wiretapping bothered so many other people. This question is not intended as a challenge so much as it is a legitimate attempt to discover if there is something I am missing.

(Please note that, while I supported the Bush administration program that used domestic warrantless wiretapping, I have never supported unchecked use of warrantless wiretapping itself. It would be far better for us to redevelop and fund legal and legitimate intelligence programs; however, these programs do not currently exist, but the threat does, resulting in my support for those programs.)

Conservative

2008-11-11T10:51:00.000-08:00

"The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made. This quarrel is the subject of civil history. The conservative party established the reverend hierarchies and monarchies of the most ancient world. The battle of patrician and plebeian, of parent state and colony, of old usage and accommodation to new facts, of the rich and the poor, reappears in all countries and times. The war rages not only in battle-fields, in national councils, and ecclesiastical synods, but agitates every man's bosom with opposing advantages every hour. On rolls the old world meantime, and now one, now the other gets the day, and still the fight renews itself as if for the first time, under new names and hot personalities."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

We like to pretend that the cultural war raging around us is a new phenomenon... or at least the press does. And while I (and many others) would argue that recent American political history reached the tipping point in 1968 when the peace movement sold its soul for spectacle at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, some might disagree. Nevertheless, so much of the conservative movement that has dominated politics since that time was borne of the backlash from those events as the electorate recoiled from that horrible spectacle and voted for the guys they saw as promoting "stability" for another thirty years while their more liberal counterparts retreated into a mantra of 'My vote doesn't count anyway' which held until a presidential election was decided by a little over 450 votes, which signaled a shift in the tide as young people (and certain candidates) suddenly woke up to the power of the franchise.

This was recent history, but is not the entire history of the struggle between those forces known as liberal, and conservative. Emerson wrote the essay I quoted above in 1841. The same forces were at work in the English Civil War and earlier.

Every few generations, the battle is renewed, and in the course of the ensuing conflict, out terms are redefined. So-called 'Liberals' so often allow themselves to be defined by their opponents. "Socialist" was a word bandied about a great deal by the McCain campaign in the wake of "Joe the Plumber's" entrance onto the world stage. But nothing they did seemed to stick. Maybe because of the bailout plan and the nation's $700bn experiment with state banking, everyone looked like a socialist this year. Maybe Barack was just the teflon candidate. Maybe he defined himself strongly enough to defy his opponents' efforts. Maybe he defies description.

I think some temporal distance will be required before we can really get a good read on that. As Denny and I recently noted with regard to W, true historical perspective requires a certain amount of distance to really grasp.

But I digress...

In the wake of election day, I posted a series of questions that can be summed up as: "What now for conservatives?" But as I read the press coverage of the Republican's 2008 denoument (which sounds so much better than "Sniping and finger-pointing") the central theme seems to have shifted from "What now" to "What is conservative?"

Perhaps that conversation was inevitable, especially in the wake of a campaign that seemed tailor-made to shatter what remained of the Reagan coalition. A candidate that first ran away from the social-conservative base and then ran back to reluctantly embrace it and then didn't seem to know what to do with them once they started showing up.

Here on HOCF, I've heard any number of views on conservatism, but nothing that approaches a definition. So I'm curious: What is conservative to you?

Not "What is the fantasy conservative candidate", but what really makes a candidate a "Conservative"... or a political party for that matter. What is it?

And does it matter at all? Do the labels mean anything anymore? Does Emerson's bald description of the conflict as being between the party seeking a status quo and a party seeking to advance into something new still hold?

Amusing

2008-11-08T15:38:00.000-08:00

more music charts

Overstated cases

2008-11-07T10:43:00.000-08:00

After eight years of the worse governance since James Buchanan...
-Linda Hirshman

Now, I understand that many people are unhappy with G.W. Bush's presidency, but come on. How can any intelligent person make the kind of a statement Hirshman makes with a straight face? I have heard this kind of rhetoric from all kinds of Bush detractors and it sounds a lot like people trying to wish history into making it true.

I agree that Bush has made mistakes, even some big ones. It turns out every president is guilty of that flaw to one degree or another. The only thing that really makes Bush different is the feedback loop created by 24/infinity media combined with the internet.

Further, the election is over, folks. Bush lost--oh, wait, Bush did not run. For people who claim their objective in supporting an Obama presidency based on high flying rhetoric like hope and change, maybe they also need to add the additional practical rhetoric of getting over it.

Whether Bush turns out to be the worst president since Buchanan will be decided by people writing history books many years from now who have the advantage of looking at everything that has happened over the past eight years and the years yet to come with a degree of detachment. I wonder how history will record such powerful pronouncements of disdain when that history is written.

By What Standard Does the President Govern?

2008-11-07T00:11:00.000-08:00

I recently read an article on my cell phone, the headline of which repeated the adjectives favored by the left when describing the Bush presidency. Leaving aside fact that the headline completely belies the content of the article to support a partisan bias, one particular sentence caught my attention:

"[Bush] is seen as pushing for an agenda to the right of the nation and doing so through executive power that ignored the popular will..."

So I ask the Contributing Factors, by what standard should the president govern? Is the executive office of our government bound to do only the will of the populace, or, once elected, is he free to act by the guide of his judgment and the will of his conscience?

It is striking to me that a large part of our current President's unpopularity has as much to do with the wedge of which Scott spoke so eloquently as his actions. But that said, was he supposed to have compromised his beliefs to do the will of the people (and thus gain popularity), or is that duty more accurately assigned to the Congress?

Moreover, what does this mean for our next President? Does Barack Obama have a mandate to act only on the will of the people, or is he free to act on his own agenda, with the aid and consent of a friendly Congress?

My Republic

2008-11-06T18:35:00.000-08:00

There's no government like no government

I have something of a dark confession to make: if I had my way I would be a classical anarchist. I absolutely believe in the supremacy of the individual and that every individual should be free from the constraints of the forceful regulation that organized, compulsory government demands.

Unfortunately, the reality of large-scale social interaction denies the application of universal anarchism in any practical way. What a pragmatic anarchist is left with is working toward some sort of extremely limited government wherein personal liberty is maximized.

I am blessed to live in a nation governed by a constitution that makes the best attempt to maximize individual liberty by enumerating the powers the government has and remanding any other powers to the states and the people.

Under this constitution, it is at least possible to imagine the kind of federal government I would create if it was up to me. The easiest way to imagine this government would be to imagine how much it would cost.

My federal government would be one where its primary function was national security--the guns and intelligence pointed out to keep the inside secure. The only thing it would collect direct taxes for would be to perform this function. These taxes would be levied in the form of a per citizen bond scaled to the net worth being defended (kind of like a property tax but with a wider definition).

In my federal government, any other function it performs, rigidly bounded by the constraints of the constitution, would be paid for on a per use bases. Want to use government roads? Buy a government license. Want to use government sponsored schools? Then pay the appropriate fee. This structure would include states buying into government arbitration for things like trade disputes.

My federal government would remand all other authority to the states and the people where it belongs. Notice, that this government does not include any mention of federally mandated programs for anything, let alone social welfare.

Now, I understand that some people may recoil at my vision of federal government, but I wonder if they ever consider what the current version means. The current version plans to spend $3.1 trillion on $2.5 trillion in receipts in 2009. Barack Obama wants to add a trillion dollars in new spending to that number (over the course of four years). $4.1 trillion per year represents almost 30 percent of the United States annual GDP. If we add in the true, long term cost of the recent financial bailout, the current version of the federal government could end up controlling almost half the total GDP through spending and stock holdings in once private institutions.

Numbers like that do not just make me sad, they make me angry and fearful.

If we take a look at these numbers, the current federal government will spend $13,667 per person living in the United States right now per year if Obama gets his additional spending. That is $35,400 per average household per year. Subtracting the roughly $660 billion per year currently planned for military and homeland defense spending, that is $11,500 per person per year or $29,700 per household per year.

Even if one takes a reduced number based only on the FY 2009 budget with no spending increases and with defense and homeland security taken out, the federal government plans to spend at least $32,500 on my behalf over the next four years. That's 8,133 gallons of $4 per gallon gas, or seven years of filling my gas guzzler once per week.

Is the current federal government providing me $8,133 in annual services beyond defense and homeland security? I contend the answer is no.

Now, consider what you would do with $8,133 extra dollars a year. Even if that money went to taxes to your state or local government, imagine what the difference might be.

Of course, not everyone would just have $8,133 dollars in hand. Instead, that money, all $2.4 trillion of it, would be back in the economy. That would be $2.4 trillion in business investment and jobs. We would see that money in the form of higher wages, lower prices, and more personal economic autonomy.

Perhaps as importantly, that would be $2.4 trillion available to Americans to help themselves and each other. That kind of money could raise millions of people out of poverty. That kind of money could ensure people could afford their own health care. That kind of money could help millions of more people go to college.

I understand that all of these numbers are a simplification. I understand that there are probably some other federal programs that might deserve some kind of guaranteed funding. I understand that many people believe that the only way to ensure certain people are treated fairly is to invest that power in the federal government.

What I want those people to show me is a single government program outside of the Department of Defense that has conclusively improved the lives of the demographic it was designed to serve. To me, the evidence of this success would be that the demographic no longer needs the program because its circumstances have improved beyond the need for it.

I believe there are no such programs. Instead, we have more people living in poverty, more people struggling to make ends meet, and more people without the ability to pay for health care. Even worse, we are not secure. We cannot even control our own borders let alone keep tabs on and deter our enemies.

This is the kind of result that demonstrates the failure of our current federal system, whether that system is run by a Democrat or a Republican. This kind of result is why I reject the idea that somehow I should believe that things will not be so bad under an Obama presidency. I want the government to barely exist and he wants to grow it by a trillion dollars.

Sure, I supported McCain for president and, in many ways, he was just as bad, but at least he paid lip service to the things I want the government to do for me. Obama has promised to do everything but what I want, and for that reason alone, I cannot be content with him as president.

What does this all really mean? It means, for me at least, a critical line has finally been crossed. It means that I can no longer sit back as I have hypocritically done for so long and hope things will go my way. It means that I must now actively work to deconstruct the $4 trillion monster that our federal government has become. It means that I can no longer accept the status quo, even if that means my opinion, my actions, and my vote become marginalized by the monster enthralled mainstream.

Maybe it means that I will have my way after all. I will be the practical anarchist trapped in a socialist democracy. At least I will have an excuse to justify being cynical and angry most of the time.

Why McCain Supports Should Be Hopeful

2008-11-05T10:48:00.000-08:00

There was a lot of talk during the election cycle about how dangerously liberal Barack Obama is. It was and is crap, but it represents a very real concern for conservative voters who want to see their conservative values continue to guide the national course. McCain supporters and conservatives in general should relax.

The one attribute that Barack Obama seems to possess that gives me the most hope as our country faces the next four years is that, unlike his predecessor, President-elect Obama seems to have an open mind. Bush supporters always revelled in his "I never change my mind or admit I'm wrong" approach. And who could blame them. When someone is doing what you want him to do, you don't want him to stop just because others (even the majority of others) disagree. However, this approach to the Presidency has great flaws in a world that seems to change with each passing day. Resoluteness of purpose may be admirable, but a staunch refusal to accomodate new facts (or any facts) and new conditions is simply bull-headed and more importantly, dangerously ineffective.

While about half the country surely disagrees with President-elect Obama's core beliefs, I think they can look forward to a Presidency marked by open-mindedness and a willingness to hear any and all points of view, to reassess information, and to willingly reconsider ill-conceived courses of action. This same trait may annoy the bejeebers out of Mr. Obama's staunch liberal supporters who might like him to shove a liberal agenda down the throats of those, in their eyes, deserving Neo-Con "hatemongers," but it will almost certainly result in a much more balanced and sane form of government.

We can only hope that Congress, the media, and the rest of the Washington insider elite will take a cue from the new President and actively build a more civil, reality-based approach to government that takes the views of all Americans and the facts into consideration before precipitously sending the country lurching forward on national and international misadventures.

An exit-poll...

2008-11-05T09:23:00.000-08:00

Last night a friend of mine was pulling up to her polling place and noticed there was a line. As she approached the building, she met an elderly black man coming out and held the door open for him as he exited, slowly, leaning heavily upon his walker.

"How long's the wait?" she asked.

"200 years" he replied. "Go in there and make history, young lady."

I admit it: that made me cry.

Transition

2008-11-05T00:14:00.001-08:00

As a proposed topic for discussion going forward as we try to transition from a blog where we debate the election. Here's an interesting (I thought) early look as Team Obama makes their plays on the transition...

Standout quote:

“You better damn well do the tough stuff up front, because if you think you can delay the tough decisions and tiptoe past the graveyard, you’re in for a lot of trouble,” Mr. Panetta said. “Make the decisions that involve pain and sacrifice up front.”

Thoughts?

Innumerable thoughts occur to me... but I'll try to put them down.

I'm curious about our conservative members' thoughts on their party's run and future...

What's next for McCain? Party elder? Will he have the clout to bring anything to the table in the coming term? Where do the Republicans go from here? Is Palin the new face of the Republican party? Or did her candidacy turn off those crucial swing voters? Or were they simply defeated because McCain got dealt a bad hand -- doomed from the outset by being handcuffed to an ever more unpopular lame duck president?

And what does it really mean to be conservative in this new paradigm? Is the Christian right going to continue to reign, or will fiscal/business conservativism overtake the GOP because of it's draw across party lines? Or can the Republican party still forge a workable coalition from the disparate and bickering elements from this defeat? Where's the conservative path to a win for the midterms?

Most importantly - to me at least - is the call for a bipartisan effort from McCain in his concession speech... pretty words? Will reaching across the aisle to work with the new Democratic majority hurt or help the Republican cause in the next election? Is bipartisanship even possible on any real scale when the power rests so securely in the hands of one party.

As a side-comment: It is the ultimate irony to me that the party that spoke so brazenly awhile back about eliminating the filibuster from Senate rules must now rely upon it to get any voice in events that will transpire. As many commentators at the time noted, take a move that will effectively disenfranchizing a minority from their ability to block the majority from walking all over them is fine... when you're the ones in charge. Thank God cooler heads prevailed.

The Thin End Of the Wedge

2008-11-04T20:53:00.000-08:00

In 1858, a man stood up and walked to the lectern at the front of the assembled dignitaries of the Illinois Republican party. Three hours previous, the assemblage had appointed him their candidate for the United States Senate. In his acceptance speech, this man – in his high reedy voice – would famously paraphrase Jesus's words in Matthew chapter 12: "…every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand."

He was talking about slavery, of course. And he lost that election… according to many at the time, he was doomed from the outset because of the political incorrectness of that speech which went on to forecast the coming storm. As every schoolchild knows, he became our 16th president, emancipated the slaves, brought the southern states to heel and was assassinated in Ford's Theater by John Wilkes Booth, who raised the murder weapon before the crowd and shouted "Sic simper tyrranis". The state motto of Virginia then as it is now... "Thus always to tyrants."

Today, we a young black man stepped up to succeed him as president. He began his run on the steps of the old Illinois state capitol building where Lincoln made that speech. And as some have pointed out, he finished his run in Manassas, VA near the battlefield known as Bull Run, the touchpoint of the American Civil War.

As I have repeatedly noted here and elsewhere, we have been quietly fighting a new civil war, one which has been largely fusillades of divisive rhetoric rather than fusillades of musket shot. In this – the longest campaign for president in history – America has stripped itself naked before the entire world, exposing our scars and our still-seeping wounds wrought by wars both figurative and literal, our economic woes ground like glass into the unhealed wounds of the 11th of September seven years past. As the campaign dragged on, we have been forced to come to terms with our feelings about race, gender and age... or refuse to as the case may be.

And here we stand at the touchpoint of another tidal shift in American history. It is quite possible that the energetic young black man who began his campaign in the shadow of Lincoln – in every imaginable sense – has just fulfilled the motto of the state where he concluded his run. And gave new meaning in the minds of the current administrations detractors (myself included)

I admit a degree of shadenfreude that frightens me as I whisper softly 'Sic semper tyrannis' in the wake of two eloquent speeches. One conceding, one accepting the mantle of the presidency. We know he can lead, we know he can speak, can he unify us?

I cannot stress enough the degree to which this campaign season has changed the dynamic of American politics. Whether for the better or the worse remains to be seen. For one thing, this is very likely the end of presidential candidates trying to exist solely on public financing. And the part that alarms me the most... they have driven the wedges ever deeper into the cracks that divide us. Hammered them home for two straight years with speeches invoking words of hatred and division, invoked images of fear and the ineffable other.

On the bright side (and almost ironically) both campaigns have brought women and minorities deeper into the process than every before.

Which brings us back to Lincoln... sort of.

Awhile back I opined that America had embarked upon a "Rhetorical Civil War". It's interesting to me to see that this idea isn't unique to me and has found traction in both the right and left as those few pundits with the clarity of vision to realize what's happening are standing agog, at a loss for how to stop it.

Recent conversations I have had and observed with those I usually consider to be calm and logical thinkers frighten me. The ad hominem attacks both against the candidates and against their opposite number in the argument have escalated. Names have been called. Teeth bared. Crowds in front of Palin and McCain have chanted "Terrorist" and "Bomb Obama" and "McCain, not Hussein", "Get him", and raising in an ever more shrill fashion the specter of otherness that they wrapped around their opponent.

I listened to McCain's concession speech tonight with an air of surprise. This was the man that I admired what seems so many years ago. A man who - had he shown up for the campaign - may yet have won my vote. He spoke well. His words were well-intentioned, I doubt not, and I do not cast any doubts upon his intention to try to heal the wounds of this campaign. It was an honorable speech. But I hoped for more. I still do.

Too late McCain's effort came during the campaign to halt the whispers that Obama was a Muslim. He told that woman that the senator was an honorable man who they need not fear. But I fear it was too late, too little, too inadequate. And no attempt from the firebrand of the campaign who seemed so eager to unleash the rage of the chanting crowds. I look for Palin to help put the pin back in that grenade, but as a resident of the Northwest, I am all too aware of her style, tone and rhetoric and I despair that she recognizes the damage that has been done to the fabric of the republic on this quest for glory.

For most of my life I have watched as political operatives found and focused on specific issues, wedges to drive between the voters. Wedges that are hammered home with such blind zeal that any attempt to repair the broken social security system has been toxic to the career of anyone daring to assay such a thing. It has been called "the third rail of American politics." Abortion, defense spending, the war on drugs, pick your issue and find the single-issue voters who will relentlessly punish the candidate who crosses their involate line, no matter what else the might offer, no matter their intentions, no matter their reasoning...

In a change for me, I have taken an active hand in this election cycle. I have stepped out of the shadows where I have – as a rule – hidden my political opinions for most of my life. I didn't want to get involved. George W Bush and especially Dick Cheney changed that. They tortured people in my name. They broke the constitution, or at least bent it until it began to show stress fractures. And thus will you find it inscribed on the straw atop a broken camel somewhere behind me.

I have engaged. I have fought. I have won and lost and fought to a draw. I clawed with those opposite me in the political spectrum. I have been labeled a liberal, a conservative, a libertarian, an elitist, a peacenik, a warmonger, a Jesus freak and many other less pleasant names besides. Some of them are even true.

I have been living on the thin end of the wedge.

About a month ago I realized that if McCain won, my world would not end. And began to notice the conviction with which my opponents were convinced that theirs would if the opposite were true. At that point, I began to come to grips with the core of the issues that divide us, with the dimensions of the gulf that yawns at our feet...

And I do not have the answers. I certainly hope someone does.

One thing I do know: I will continue to speak. That genie is decanted and there is no cork that could reseal that bottle. What is done cannot be undone.

As I saw it then and see it now: neither Mr. Obama nor Mr. McCain were launching a wholesale assault upon my life or system of beliefs. Truthfully, if you hold these past 21 months up to the light, you might well find that to be true for yourself as well.

My candidate won tonight, but I am not a Democrat. Too many pay lip-service to any party's political platform as the forge a path of their own devising for me to willingly surrender my desire to vote the candidate rather than the party. From the liberal-leaning Republicans to the "Dixi-crat" Democratic senators of the Clinton era, Rinos and Dinos make me cynical of any party-line vote.

The names tossed at me that I mentioned before are nothing as to what has been bandied about with abandon in this campaign, mostly from the Reds to the Blues, the gloves coming off and the nails coming out as we find ourselves in politics embodying what Tennyson might have called 'politics, red in tooth and claw.'

For too long we have sat and listened and watched in silence as our putative leaders drive in the wedges, chant and wave signs and trade barbed verbal attacks in rallies and on the internet, tell lies and sling mud as they pound gleefully upon the wedges without regard for those on the thin end. Wedge issues abound in this election, made all the more virulent by the stark differences in the candidates, the attachment of ageism to the one and the dangerous and ineffable 'other' to his opponent.

This is what scares me about an Obama victory.

I watched and listened as this election has unfolded, as we regressed from a national conversation to a national argument with shouts of "Terrorist" and "Commie" coming from the cheap seats. And it has become increasingly clear to me that we stand at the potential flashpoint of our hitherto rhetorical civil war. It scares me to think that I might be right, that the leaders who set this fuse might not be able to walk back the damage they have done. That we might not heal. I can't help but think that every time we walk down this path it gets more difficult to walk back. If 21 months is the new standard for presidential elections, then we have 24 months to rest - at most - before we do this again.

Rest, America. You've earned it. Communicate with your leaders. Tell them what you want from them in the next cycle of elections as the midterms already loom large on the horizon.

Tonight, John McCain made an excellent speech. An eloquent concession and call for unification. But it cannot pass mention that those calling and hooting from the gallery were only told 'please'. And there was no direct address to walking back the charges made, the whispers spoken on the internet.

We need more. The man has yet to assume the office and already two bizarre plots to kill him have been stopped. This is a dangerous time, a time that can be the time of honor and disciplined governance from both sides that our nation needs. A time of healing and statesmanship. A time of civilized discourse and earnest disagreements given voice with passion and erudition.

In the past 232 years, we have endured 43 men in the office of the presidency. Some have sought the office. Many assumed the mantle in a time when it was considered more appropriate that the office seek the man rather than vice versa. There have been successes and failures, giants and poltroons. And the republic still stands.

Whomever is reading this, I implore you to take a deep breath. If he's not your guy, this too shall pass as the 43 men before him have. If he is, enjoy this moment. Do you utmost to see to it that your candidate becomes the president that you saw in him. That his potential is fullfilled.

I believe that the thin end of the wedge to end all wedges is poised above us. It is up to us to see to it that it is never driven home. To re-couch the words of Lincoln from the speech with which I began this rambling blog post, from the conclusion of his famous speech, his words describing the insurgent Republican party of the election of 1854, but better still they could describe the coalition of Americans we need now from all points on the political spectrum:

"Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy. Did we brave all them to falter now?-now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail-if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate, or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come"

God bless, everyone. And God bless the United States of America.

A quick thought on "the right to vote"

2008-11-03T08:19:00.000-08:00

I have heard several times now in the past twenty-four hours the contention that the Constitution does not contain a right to vote. It appears, based on the words from his own mouth, that this meme started with Neal Boortz, who I expect to make such a general and incendiary comment in order to rattle people.

The question of the right to vote is one of the several questions of Constitutional politics that cannot be reduced past its inherent level of complexity. Boortz statement insinuates that there is no right to vote at all, a claim that violates the requirements of both logical thinking and irreducible complexity.

First, consider what kind of government we have. We are a constitutional democratic republic. In order for our republic to be democratic, it must, by definition, have a demographic that votes. Therefore, there is an inherent right to vote built into the very idea of the kind of government we have. Without that right, our government is not a democracy.

Second, consider what kind of right voting might be. It is not an inalienable right like life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness. It is not a right like the ones specifically enshrined in the Constitution and its amendments. Instead, it is a conditional right, one which the Founding Fathers and anyone who reads the Constitution with any kind of intellectual honesty will admit can and should be regulated for the good of the democratic process. We accept that regulation often without thinking when we do not let children or felons vote.

Third, consider the kind of regulation applied to voting. Aside from the broad protections provided by the Constitution and its several amendments that apply to voting, what kind of regulation should be applied to who can vote? Frankly, that is a matter left up to the states and the people and regulated itself by the Constitution and the promise of equal protection. Certainly, as the people we have the right to control who votes, but that control necessarily applies equally, everywhere to all people.

So, how should the right to vote be regulated? That kind of regulation is a dangerous and slippery slope. Some people want a test. I once agreed with and advocated a system that would require voters to be net tax-payers. I am sure there are other ways people want to control who votes.

The problem with all of these ideas is that they run afoul of a basic tenet of the very fabric of our democracy: the fabric of liberty. The regulation of voting is an idea borne out of wanting to prevent people from voting whose ideology, reasons, or knowledge differs from our own. The regulation of voting is rooted in the tribal desire for my side to always win and for the side I disagree with to always lose.

The regulation of voting always threatens liberty and democracy, and it is an attempt to intimidate opponents instead of convincing them. I am not saying that some regulation is not necessary--obviously children should not be allowed to vote--but I am saying that any regulation that exists should be as little as possible.

Instead of focusing on some kind of regulation, we should focus on the irreducible complexity of the problem that leads people to want to regulate in the first place. I think most informed people agree that many, many people who vote do so in an ill-conceived and ill-informed way. Instead of trying to prevent those people from voting, we should concentrate on explaining to and informing them. I know that is a very complex problem, but I also know it is the one that actually needs to be fixed.

-=DLH=-

Cross posted from Dennis L Hitzeman's Worldview.

Shameless plug

2008-10-31T13:34:00.000-07:00

Next Tuesday, Nov. 4, I will be liveblogging all day at my other weblog, Worldview. I am inviting anyone who reads this blog to feel free to come over there and comment. If I anything really good happens over there, I may post it here as well.

Curiously, the left is always right

2008-10-20T18:45:00.001-07:00

We're all independent voters trying to make an informed choice, blah, blah ,blah...

I'm always curious how the left side of the debate over Obama and his policies always seems to believe it is inherently correct because it disregards or dismisses evidence it disagrees with while the right side is constantly playing defense trying to convince people that Obama actually said what the left dismisses.

I'm always curious how the left side of the debate dismisses the fact that at least 44 percent of the people who plan to vote (53 million by my count based on the numbers for 2004) disagree with quite a bit of what left side says for principled and informed reasons, yet their disagreement is cast as being "Dangerously Misinformed: McCain Isn't the Only One Who Doesn't Understand".

Now, to defeat my own argument to an extent, I agree that Obama's tax plan sounds great on paper, at least for people who don't make a lot of money. Unfortunately for Obama, he's not the Congress, which actually passes taxation legislation that the president merely vetoes or signs and enforces. It turns out that Bush was not Congress in 2001--a Democrat Congress--and 2002--a Republican Congress--when the tax cuts were put into effect.

There's the rub with Obama's tax policy: it has to get through a Democrat leadership who will likely have solid, veto-proof margins in Congress who want the Bush tax cuts to go away altogether. If Obama wants to get his $1.5 trillion in new spending through Pelosi and Reid, he's probably going to have to do it by raising taxes on every last one of us.

Hence the reason that voting for a president based on domestic policy issues, inherently the domain of Congress, is dangerously misinformed. If we would stick to voting for presidents on issues they are constitutionally tasked to perform, like international relations, national security, and domestic enforcement, we would not have this dangerous misinformation floating around, nor would we be surprised by the fact that most presidents prove they deluded their voters after about a hundred days.

Dangerously Misinformed: McCain Isn't the Only One Who Doesn't Understand

2008-10-20T11:01:00.000-07:00

A recent post here at AHOC declares that Barack Obama is a "danger" to and will be "harmful" to our country. The reason? Taxes!

Taxes are always a sore issue with Americans. Hey, we started a revolution because of taxes. Our whole country is based on an aversion to taxation. Reasonable people can have reasonable disagreements about the role of government and taxation in the running of our country and its economy. However, the assertion that Barack Obama's tax plan somehow constitutes a danger to this country is an overly dramatic scare tactic and the post in which this claim is made overstates the reasons for and misstates the facts regarding the assertion.

First, the author attacks Obama's common sense: "As usual, the flowery rhetoric of Obama is completely lacking in any economic common sense." Leaving aside the clearly personal distain with which the author treats Obama's rhetoric, he attacks as "lacking in any economic sense" a tax plan that Obama claims is essentially the same tax structure that existed in the 1990s -- a decade that saw us return a budget surplus and a decade in which we saw economic expansion far exceeding that which has occurred under the current "trickle down", "no oversight" government management. So you ask yourself which makes more common sense: spending more than you take in, or balancing the need for enough income to offset your spending?

The author then proceeds to "put aside the fact that the tax increases proposed by Obama essentially constitute a substantial hike in the taxes on small businesses, since this has been very well covered." I would put this aside too if my best source for this inaccurate statement is the Grover Norquist article to which the post links. Norquist's article sources virtually nothing. I must confess, I was unable to even locate the IRS document to which he refers in making his point. However, real common sense should do the trick.

If you didn't bother to read the article, Norquist posits that "Obama’s plan to raise taxes on households making more than $250,000 will raise taxes on most small-business profits in America." The data I did find at IRS.gov does tend to support this statement. Norquist also rightly points out the tax rate increase Obama proposes would raise the top rate for those making over $250,000 from 35% to 39.6%. He further indicates that sole proprietorships and general partners (a two-person partnership) would face an increase from 37.9% (higher than other S corporations because of the need to pay Medicare in addition to income tax) to 50.3%. He doesn't provide any links or justification for this number, and it is not discussed in Obama's fact sheet for his tax plan (and if Norquist is right, who could blame him?)

Where Norquist jumps the tracks, however, is to equate Obama's plan with the plan some other Democrats have put forth (he claims) to extend the 50% rate to all S corporations. Norquist then goes on to paint a bleak picture of what life would be like in THAT instance. But of course, that ISN'T the tax plan Obama is advocating, so for either Norquist or AHOC's poster to act as though Obama is advocating such a dire plan is erroneous. For what it's worth, I tried to find out what percentage of S corporations sole proprietorships and partnerships comprise with no luck. Even without that information, it is difficult to envision a meltdown of the economy due to stifled small business when it is the small businesses that actually employ people that most impact the economy in general (at least among the small business subset we're discussing).

The author of the post in question then goes on to play on our misguided love of all things simple. He's a simple man, you see, so he's going to simplify the situation for us. And he does so quite effectively:

"I can't think of a single middle-class or low-income American who employs a a single worker. It is irrefutable that the responsibility of employing America's workers and creating new jobs is solely the station of those who control the companies, corporations and businesses that make up the U.S. economy. Raising taxes on high-income Americans can only have one effect, and that is to hurt job growth in an economy already struggling with rising unemployment."

The problem here is that we've simplified the facts right out of that statement. The author is now mixing up the discussion of corporate taxes with individual taxes. Individual income taxes on people who make more than $250,000 a year -- people who run these companies, corporations, and businesses, is not going to hurt job growth in the least. These people don't pay their employees out of their own pockets. We're talking about taxing these people's income, their pay.

Even when we get back to talking about small businesses whose owners pass through their business income to their personal income tax (a benefit that allows them to skirt additional income taxes for their employees that bigger C corporations have to pay), we're still talking about taxing the business owner's income after the employees have been paid. For most of these people, then, we're talking about the difference between taking home $65 per $100 of profit and taking home $60.30 per $100 of profit. I don't know anybody who would decide not to start or continue a business over a mere $4.70. Oh, and it isn't even that bad. The 39.7% tax rate only applies to profit over $250,000. The rates up to that point are less, and only the penultimate tier is also being raised (to 36% from 33%). The other brackets leading up to those that are being raised, are staying the same.

The author then proposes to attack the myth of corporate taxes, arguing that those additional costs to the business will be passed on to us. That argument makes a modicum of sense, to be sure. But it doesn't address the converse assumption that somehow a lesser tax rate is passed on to us. Do we really believe that if taxes were lowered, prices would somehow be lowered? Will there really be more wages? More benefits? More jobs? Or will it continue to be a matter of the rich getting richer? Hey, I don't have a problem with someone --even a rich someone -- making a buck, but let's not pretend that if we somehow lower taxes that the wealth will really trickle down. It never has, and it never will and for the very same reason you don't want to pay taxes in the first place -- you want to keep what you consider to be yours.

The author further contends (without attribution) that "Obama is advocating a tax plan that will raise the capital gains tax rate to as high as 28%." According to the fact sheet on Obama's web site,

"Families with incomes below $250,000 will continue to pay the capital gains rates that they pay today. For those in the top two income tax brackets – likewise adjusted to affect only families over $250,000 – Obama will create a new top capital gains rate of 20 percent. Obama’s 20% rate is equal is the lowest rate that existed in the 1990s and the rate that President Bush proposed in 2001. It is almost a third lower than the rate that President Reagan signed into law in 1986."

In short, the author's contention that Obama's tax plan is somehow dangerous to America is overstated at best, and flat out wrong at worst. Like Obama, don't like Obama. Vote for Obama, don't vote for Obama. I don't care. But you needn't fear that Obama's tax plan is somehow going to make your life any worse than it's been for the last eight years. I dare say, there is reason to think it just might get better.

The Danger of Obama: Taxes

2008-10-18T15:41:00.001-07:00

As promised, I'd like to go into more detail about why I believe the election of Barack Hussein Obama (yeah, I said it) would be dangerous and harmful to our country.

Obama (despite his oft-repeated assertion that he is something new and different) has put forth the same old tax plan that those on the left in this country have been pushing for years. In a typical play on the class envy of the average American, Obama claims that he will be taxing only the "rich", and that Joe Schmoe will not see a a tax increase, but instead will enjoy a tax cut.

As usual, the flowery rhetoric of Obama is completely lacking in any economic common sense. I will put aside the fact that the tax increases proposed by Obama essentially constitute a substantial hike in the taxes on small businesses, since this has been very well covered. But since I am something of a simple man, I will present the matter simply. I can't think of a single middle-class or low-income American who employs a a single worker. It is irrefutable that the responsibility of employing America's workers and creating new jobs is solely the station of those who control the companies, corporations and businesses that make up the U.S. economy. Raising taxes on high-income Americans can only have one effect, and that is to hurt job growth in an economy already struggling with rising unemployment.

[As an aside and speaking of jobs, the most recent Obama propaganda I've seen on TV features a downtrodden auto worker talking about how his friends are losing their jobs, and he's concerned about the future for his grandchildren. The ad goes further to assert that John McCain simply "doesn't get it" and that McCain's friends are getting rich while the speaker's friends are losing their jobs. This is blatant class warfare, untrue, and absolute rubbish. I wish I could speak briefly with the person in the commercial (though I'm sure he's a paid actor), because I would tell him in no uncertain terms that it is his fault alone, and that of their friends, that they aspired no higher than the manufacturing jobs that they are now losing. Manufacturing is a dying industry in America, and has been for decades. If you really, truly want the same crappy jobs for your kids and grandkids that you and your father were able to get as high school dropouts or worse, I would tend to question your benevolence towards your progeny.]

But I digress. What sense does it make to increase the taxes on corporations, investments and the wealthy, in an economy that is already ailing? One mantra of the Obama campaign is that they're going to aid job growth in this country by "ending tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas." That's sounds great, but then why would you increase taxes for companies who do business here? Somehow, I just can't see how a tax policy even more punitive than our current one is going to spur economic growth.

Allow me to address one other myth: Corporate Taxes. I've got news for all the mindless drones on the left: Corporations don't pay taxes. I know, I know, just when you thought they couldn't get any more evil, now I'm going to tell you they don't even pay taxes?! But it's true, and I'll explain it to you. Unlike private individuals, companies in business to make money don't have discretionary income. They only have two categories of money, which are costs and profits. Taxes are costs, and like any other costs, must be rolled into the price of their products. If taxes on corporations are raised, they must roll that increased cost into the price of their products. This raises the cost of living for everyone else, but has little direct effect on the company, particularly if what they are producing is a staple (read: oil companies). If the price increase required by the tax increase would cause the company to not be competitive in their market, their only other choice is to try and cut other costs, like employee salaries, entire positions, or decrease the quality of their product. Any way you slice it, the average American is still getting hosed by corporate taxes.

Every day for the last several weeks on the news, the lead story has been what the stock market is doing. Record falls in the market indices were used to push for an economic bailout plan that the public didn't want, and if you listened to most of the major news services, you'd have though that the sky was not only falling, but that it was covered in sharp objects laced with anthrax. But in the midst of all this, Obama is advocating a tax plan that will raise the capital gains tax rate to as high as 28%. Investors are already wary of buying anything, fearful of a further market downturn and uncertain what is going to happen, with large domestic companies failing, and an ambiguous bailout plan having just been pushed through Congress. Now Obama's going to tell them that even if they do invest, and are somehow able to make money, the government is going to take nearly a third of their profit. What possible positive effect is that going to have on the stock markets? Further removing any incentive to invest in America's economy, at a time that it is already weakened, is a certain recipe for disaster.

So there you have it. Obama's tax plan is far more than ill-advised, it is dangerous and harmful to our country. It cannot and will not result in any economic growth, but will instead gravely harm the very people it is purported to aid. A vote for Obama this November is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a vote against our country.

~Cephas

Wavering Enthusiasm vs. Diehard Resolve

2008-10-13T13:02:00.000-07:00

[Cross-posted from The Free Radical]

Like many conservatives in this election cycle, I have found myself riding alternating waves of excitement and disappointment over the prospects of the Republican nominee for President, John McCain. He is an admitted centrist, a moderate Republican whose bragging about reaching across the aisle may endear him to voters on the fence, but simultaneously raises the eyebrow (and sometimes plants forehead in palm) of true conservatives. On the one hand, his military service and leadership experience is remarkable, and certainly unrivaled in the current election, but on the other he has advocated and espoused policies on immigration and the environment that are sharply at odds with my own.

Allow me to whine for a moment. It almost seems unfair! Election after election (since I started paying attention to politics at age 7), conservatives are seemingly forced to settle for a candidate that is seemingly reluctant to carry the conservative mantle. Meanwhile, liberals are so fortunate as to have their pick of rock-solid leftists, and are usually also given a heaping helping of charisma as well (the obvious exception being FrankenKerry).

The young idealist in me is inclined to agree and side with those conservative friends of mine who have thrown in the towel in this election, or worse, decided to vote for Obama out of some sort of reverse-psychology protest. And I acknowledge that the last time we had a president as inept as I believe Obama will be, he was followed by one Ronald Reagan, so that ended up pretty well for the country, right?

But when I consider these courses of action, I keep running back up on one giant problem with their reasoning. I love my country. And I don't mean that in the pop-culture, politically expedient manner that most celebrities and politicians say that they love it. I mean I love my country. I go to work every day in her service. I love our history, what we've overcome, what we've stood for, and what we offer to the common man. I love our national compassion, our work ethic, our innovation, and our attitude.

Because I love my country the way that I do, I want nothing but the best for it. I cannot stomach the thought of handing her over to someone who does not have her best interests in mind, or else has ideas that I believe would be harmful to her. And I believe wholeheartedly that Barack Obama fits that description in nearly every aspect.

His stated plans for taxes, health care, defense spending, social security reform and others seem to be looking out not for the best interests of us as a nation, or of the citizens as individuals, but instead for the perpetuation of government. His proposals stand to weaken our security, take more money from the people, hurt our economy, and lay the foundations of a truly socialist state. My posts over the next few weeks until the election will go into these aspects in greater detail.

And so, despite my enthusiasm over the McCain campaign wavering from time to time, my resolve to do what is best for my country remains. Sometimes, doing what is best does not include doing what is perfect, or what you would prefer in an ideal world, but doing what is least bad, in some ways. I retain hope that in a future election cycle, a candidate will arise that will represent what I and millions of other conservatives believe more closely. But in the mean time, we are only given the choices we currently have, and must choose what is best for our country from those choices.

At the end of the day, it seems no matter how much frustration and disagreement I have with John McCain over domestic issues, the alternative presented by the DNC is exponentially worse. And while it may not assuage the idealism of the conservative base to vote for yet another moderate Republican candidate, it is still what is best for the country. I cannot, and will not, vote for someone who I know will harm my country in myriad ways. I ask my fellow conservatives to put aside their idealism for another day, and do what is right and pragmatic, and join me in voting for John McCain this November.

~Cephas

The Center Holds?

2008-10-07T15:16:00.001-07:00

Interesting speculation about what might be termed a “shadow third-party” in the US. I’m not sure how likely (or even accurate) any of this is, but it seems like food for thought.

At least a snack, anyway.

Hope everyone enjoys the debate tonight!

The Myth of Corporate Greed

2008-10-02T07:43:00.000-07:00

I heard it again today. With the so-called "financial crisis" making hot and heavy headlines, the phrase has been running rampant: corporate greed. "We must fight corporate greed." "We must not reward corporate greed." The problem with these understandably emotional verbal skewers of corporate greed is that corporate greed is a myth. It doesn't exist.

Surely that is a ludicrous statement to make, that corporate greed doesn't exist. Corporations are well known for shipping jobs off shore, fixing books, lobbying for corporate-friendly legislation, and now, taking tax-payer dollars to bail them out of financial crisis. Only an idiot would say that corporate greed does not exist, right? Maybe. I mean, I could be an idiot, but that assessment is a separate issue from the myth of corporate greed.

Here's the thing: a corporation is just a legal classification and grouping of assets and people. A corporation is inanimate. It cannot be greedy. You want a villain? Here they are: people. People are greedy. Is this a distinction without a difference? I don't think so.

When we make a monolith of something we bascially create a black box around the facts. The black box effect is one that I observed in my time as a technical writer. Software developers would refer to any system or part thereof that we had to interact with, but didn't need to understand, as a black box. In other words, we didn't need to understand the inner workings of the thing, we just need to know what input or output was necessary from our system to interact with the black box. Our whiteboards were full of drawings of black boxes.

When we make a black box of corporations we fail to understand that people and, in many cases, individuals make the decisions for a corporation. A person or group of people can be greedy and often times are. These are the people who may well deserve our wrath and certainly deserve our scrutiny. These are the people that we must seek to remove to ensure that our corporations are healthy and can serve their higher purpose.

When we allow ourselves to believe that corporations are bad, we miss out on all that they do and can do for us. When ethical people run corporations, or a business of any size, they provide jobs for us and our neighbors. They pump not only money, but products and services into our economy. They solve problems. A business under ethical leadership that pursues its goal of profit with a broad definition of that term -- one that encompasses not only CEO and stockholder profits, but also profit to the employees and community in which it is situated -- is a boon to all it comes in contact with. It is, in a very real way, the key to the American dream.

The things that plague us in our time and every time -- evil, greed, hate -- are individual sins, if you will. To attack the vehicle by which individuals or groups of individuals commit their acts of evil is to miss the target. Corporations, competition, the search for profit, these are not inherently bad things. In fact, they can be quite beneficial when they are run or pursued with ethical energy.

You want to attack greed? Attack greed in individuals -- including yourself. That is where the problem lies. When individuals pursue more than what they need or just more than what they can reasonably use, bad things are sure to result for those left in the wake.

I don't know if that is compelling to you. It may still seem to be a pedantic difference. It matters to me because for a long time I believed business was bad. I didn't want to have any part of it. But this irrational view kept me from being able to improve both my economic condition and my life in a broader sense as well. Taking an active role in an ethical business is one of the most rewarding experiences, not only on a financial level, but from the sense of accomplishment that comes from solving a problem or actually creating something.

I know too many good young people who want nothing to do with business because they view it as a greedy blight on the world. The problem is, that attitude robs business of truly talented and ethical people who could actually make a difference by contributing to a well-run business, thereby making not only their own lives, but the lives of others better. That's a difference worth making and that's the difference that results from making the distinction between corporations and the greedy people who sometimes run them.

The blame game

2008-09-30T08:10:00.000-07:00

An iteresting take on the current financial crisis. It's lengthy, but in my opinion, worth the watch:

h/t to Winds of Change

Why military technology matters

2008-09-26T13:13:00.000-07:00

h/t to Mrs. Greyhawk

Why the candidates’ views on military spending matter

2008-09-25T13:43:00.001-07:00

One of the questions raised by the discussion of the previous post has been whether the amount we spend on providing the US Military with modern, sophisticated, expensive weapons systems is justifiable. The discussion centers on the perceived notion that John McCain supports continued spending on such systems while Barack Obama supports cutting or eliminating a large amount of such spending.

This discussion represents a debate that has existed, I believe, since at least the beginning of recorded history and that has never had a concise answer. Before Americans can achieve their own answer to that debate, they must first answer some very important other questions.

First, what is the scope of the US’s defensive interests? Should the US Military only be capable of defending US territory, or should we define defense more broadly? Central to this question is the definition of US interests and their value to US national security. The broader this definition becomes, the more expensive the resulting military force becomes. Is the defense of national interests a justification of an expensive military?

Second, what should the trigger for the use of the US Military for national security purposes be? When we invaded Afghanistan, few people questioned the validity of that use of the military because the trigger was the violation of national sovereignty. Far more people questioned the invasion of Iraq because the triggers were far more esoteric. The reasons for the use of military force in Bosnia and Kosovo were even less clear. A military force prepared for employment for less defined reasons is more expensive. Is national interest enough reason to justify the use of military force?

Third, what should the employment cost of such defense be? When we use the US Military, we cannot just measure the cost in dollars but also in lives and time. There is a clear relationship between the sophistication of military equipment--sophistication is usually more expensive--and the cost in time and lives of any military operation. Certainly, our military is capable of winning with less sophisticated weapons, but is that a cost we are willing to pay?

The differences between McCain and Obama on these questions are clear. McCain believes in a broad scope of US defensive interests while Obama believes that much of that scope is better resolved through diplomacy and through the actions of other nations. McCain believes in a far lower threshold for the use of military force than Obama. McCain believes that the employment cost should be as low as possible--recall he has a lower threshold for use--while Obama seems to support a higher cost of employment because he envisions far less military use.

From my perspective, our government provided the answers to these questions for me in the 70s and 90s.

In the 70s, we allowed the government to decimate military spending because of the unpopularity of the Vietnam War. The result was that, in 1979, we did not have the capacity to deal with the Iran Hostage Crisis, and by 1980, there was a very real sense that we would lose if the Soviets invaded Western Europe. We spent most of the 80s correcting that mistake, only to make the same one again in the 90s.

In the 90s, the end of the Cold War and the success of Operation Desert Storm convinced many people that the need for a large, expensive standing military was no longer necessary. The 90s evisceration of the US Military made the 70s look loving by comparison. Unfortunately, the handwriting was already on the wall in the 90s. Various adversaries threatened and attacked US interests around the world with virtual impunity. Tribal warriors equipped with khat, AKs, and RPGs forced the US Military to withdraw from Somalia. Al Qaeda attacked the US Military directly and we were not able to respond.

On 9-11, al Qaeda drove this reality home. We have spent the past seven years rebuilding the force we should have had in 1993 when al Qaeda unmistakably attacked us for the first time.

I grant that military spending often seems like a waste. Standing militaries are unwieldy and inefficient entities that only achieve their peak when employed and even then are wasteful. Nevertheless, the value of maintaining such a force is clear.

I believe Obama’s position on this question represents a dangerous return to an idea already proven false and made even more dangerous by the current world situation. McCain’s position on this question is virtually indistinguishable from my own, hence my unwavering support for him.

-=DLH=-

The Much-Reviled Single Issue Voter

2008-09-21T13:46:00.000-07:00

[Cross-posted from The Free Radical]

Yeah, that's me.

I'm one of those simpletons, a Bitter Clinger, as Barack Obama would characterize me. I will vote in this election, as I did in the last election, on a single issue alone. There has been much talk about single issue voters this election, and much of it negative. We're portrayed as ignorant, poorly educated, mindless evangelical drones who care only about one aspect of our favored candidate, be it abortion, gun control, gay marriage or school vouchers. What's worse, from the perspective of most media pundits, these issues are supposed to be unimportant, or else already won by the liberals in the government. How dare we, the unwashed masses who went to public schools and got jobs where our hands get dirty, choose our candidates based on their stances on issues that don't fall within their worldview as something important?

In my recent discussions with liberal acquaintances of mine, I've discovered that they honestly feel those of us on the right, who opposed McCain in the primaries with some vehemence and now support him outspokenly, are rather shallow of intellect, and care only about winning (well, yeah, winning is pretty important). On the other hand, they view themselves as intellectual superiors, choosing their candidates based on some transcendent understanding of things far above the minds of us plebes, and a broad agreement across a variety of policies.

But I would challenge any of them, and indeed anyone from the left, to demonstrate to me how any issue, or any collection of issues, is more important than the single issue on which this voter is making his decisions. The simple fact is that in this era, national security is more important than anything else at stake in the coming election. Truth be told, it always has been, but we were more than fortunate for a good 40 years or so to not have to worry about it so much as we do today. But today, at this critical juncture in American history, we face an enemy so evil and bent on our destruction that we must elect government officials who are going to stand strongly in our defense. If we lack security, nothing else matters. We can continue to bail out Wall Street giants, send out stimulus checks, reform social welfare programs and improve our education and healthcare systems, but if people who are bent on our destruction are not stopped, it is all for naught.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The primary purpose of any government is to ensure the sovereignty of its nation, and to protect its citizens from foreign attack. Everything else is a far distant second.

While I do not agree with Senator McCain on a variety of issues (economic policy and environmental policy come to mind), I trust him infinitely more than Obama to do what is necessary to defend our nation and its interests from foreign attack. I believe that a President Obama would leave us incredibly weak and vulnerable to aggressive rogue nations like North Korea and Iran, and to new, anti-American alliances like the one forming between Russia and Venezuela. The world is only getting more dangerous by the moment, and we need a president who is prepared and resolved to do anything necessary to ensure our survival in it. John McCain fits that description, and Obama simply does not.

So call me simple, or uneducated, but that's the single issue I'm voting on. And it will continue to be so, until we have two candidates who are equally capable of preserving our union.

~Cephas

Voting for America’s king

2008-09-14T11:39:00.001-07:00

All of this talk in this presidential election cycle about who has the most experience to be president leaves me wondering when we developed an American nobility only from which can our candidates for president be chosen. When did some sort of ephemeral experience at being “presidential” become the prerequisite for being president?

Even more, what kind of experience qualifies someone to be president? We are electing someone to represent us, not rule us, the last time I checked. If some kind of executive-international experience is what qualifies someone to be president, then why is the last commander of Central Command not the universal candidate for president?

After all, since 1976, the man whose experience was arguably closest being presidential was George H.W. Bush, who was vice president for eight years and ran the CIA before that, and we only elected him for one term and replaced him with the licentious governor of Arkansas. The other three presidents in the same period were also governors whose résumés certainly beg the experience question.

From my view, there are two basic qualifications for my support for a presidential candidate.

The first qualification is Constitutional. My support is contingent on the candidate being a natural born citizen of the United States who is at least 35 years old and who resided in the United States for the past fourteen years.

The second qualification is that the candidate demonstrates the worldview, positions, and mettle I expect a president to demonstrate while in office. I believe discovering those qualities is what campaigns and journalists--when they bother to do their jobs--are supposed to accomplish.

Certainly, experience can help show how a candidate fulfills the second qualification, but such experience does not somehow pre-qualify a candidate to be president. Such pre-qualification is the stuff of monarchies, not democracy.

Therein lies the reason that I support John McCain for President of the United States, all the more so because he picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. Granted, neither of them is perfect, but as an aggregate on issues important to me and especially on my deal-breaking issue of foreign policy, their worldview, positions, and mettle proves to match my own views. Experience factors into my support for McCain only inasmuch as his history of service to his nation proves his qualification by my standards.

So, before you choose a candidate based on experience, consider what that experience really means. Frankly, Dick Cheney and Al Gore are eminently more qualified to be president by the experience measure, but who is going to vote for them? Instead, we should consider which candidate believes what we do about America and its future and pick that person to represent us for the next four years.

-=DLH=-

Cross-posted on Dennis L Hitzeman’s Worldview Weblog

From the shadows, emerges...

2008-09-13T18:40:00.000-07:00

Yeah, here I am.

My on-again, off-again flirtation with political writing has again reared its ugly head. There was a time, some years ago, when I was a walking talking-points memo, a repository of political discourse far out of place with my station in life. I dabbled in podcasting for a bit at the advice of close friends, but I found its medium to be insufficient to effectively express myself. Around that same time (shortly following the 2004 presidential election), I became increasingly disillusioned with politics in general. The election had yielded us a moderate president who was stellar on a single, overarching issue, but basically lacking in nearly everything else. I was, I admit, a bit emotionally drained from the drama and fighting of the previous six months of campaigning, and I looked at Washington, my generation, and the world as a whole as being too big, too complicated, and too far gone to solve.

And yet, here I am again, doing all the proverbial "arguing on the internet" that my new marriage and employment schedule allow. I have held off of solo writing (well, I had a LiveJournal some years ago, but I was rather bitter and lonely at that time in my life...), preferring instead to participate in the epic displays of intellectual might known as... message boards. I hid there, in a way, stirring the pot of angry liberals and taking pot shots here and there when someone would make a particularly asinine comment. I almost have the feeling, at times, that what I'm doing there is almost unfair. After all, arguing with facts and logic, as I do, against those armed only with several pages of emoticons and a vocabulary restricted to what they can type to their homies on their cell phones, is something like fishing in a kiddie pool. With a hand grenade.

But nevertheless, I stayed far clear of making any forays into the world of political writing proper (well, as proper as blogs can be considered to be, anyway), because I've always found myself to be much more gifted in the discipline of dialogue, but somewhat uncomfortable and unsuited to monologue. To say it more directly, I am not a creative person. I would much rather let someone else plunge into the waters of public discussion, and then come swooping in with my own replies and rebuttals. Far easier than actually coming up with your own subject matter, your own topics to research and points to raise. So yeah, in short, I was being intellectually lazy.

But something has changed this year for me that has driven me not only back into arguing on the internet, but to even try my hand (er... keyboard) at writing my own things. More accurately I suppose, several things have changed.

I would not be here typing this rambling nonsense if the Presidential tickets were Romney-Tancredo and Clinton-Daschle. But two things have brought me, and thousands of others like me, back to the table of discussion for this election. First, the Democrats accidentally nominated Barack Obama as their nominee for president. I say accidentally because, watching the primaries, it seemed as if, at the last moment, they realized their mistake and tried to reverse course, only to find it was too late. Obama coasted to the nomination on pure momentum, all the while getting beaten and bloodied by a clearly experienced (and equally ruthless) Clinton campaign. I believe, for reasons I'm sure we'll cover later on, that the election of Barack Obama to the highest office in the world would be a dangerous and grevious error for our country, and one the consequences of which may prove eventually mortal to the survival of our nation. See here for a taste of what I'm talking about.

My second motivation to return to this wild, silly, confused and contentious arena we call American politics is the rebirth of the McCain campaign, of which the nomination of Sarah Palin is the primary example. For months (unable to fully take my fingers off the pulse of the political scene) I watched and scratched my head as McCain, apparently fully able to take advantage of an early start to the campaign over his Democrat rivals, seemingly floundered and bumbled his way about the country, not really doing anything of note, at all. I was actually starting to believe the assertions of guys like Michael Savage, who insisted that McCain was nominated to lose the race for the GOP on purpose. But then, something happened. The McCain Machine fired up, opened up the gun case and unleased with all barrels on the Obama campaign, with an aggression and purpose that I haven't seen out of a Republican since, well, never (I was a bit young for politics when Reagan left office).

So count me among the growing demographic of conservatives coming out of the shadows, heartened by a candidate showing every mark of a true leader, as well as a true resolve to hit our esteemed opponents from across the aisle right where it hurts. A few months ago, I was going to hold my nose, close my eyes and pull the Republican lever. Now, I can't wait to pull it, and want to do everything I can to convince everyone I know to pull that lever with me. Even my mother-in-law.

Till next time...

~Cephas

New subscription feature

2008-09-13T10:19:00.000-07:00

For those of you who may be interested, you can now subscribe to comments on Contributing Factor by using the tool below "The Factors" on the right.

Something Which is a Sign of Something I Know Not What, if in Fact it is a Sign of Anything at All

2008-09-10T15:58:00.000-07:00

So I was watching Die Hard 2 - a movie in which a team of former Army special ops guys takes over Dulles International Airport in an attempt to free a Latin American drug lord only to be foiled when a cop from New York blows up their 747 with a f*&$ing cigarette lighter - and for some reason the only quibble I had while watching was, "There's no way that old lady would be allowed to bring a stun gun onto an airplane!"

Now it’s time to fight

2008-09-05T05:29:00.001-07:00

With John McCain’s acceptance speech last night, the general election campaign officially begins.

This campaign, perhaps more than any in decades, represents a fight for the future of the United States and libertarian republican democracy around the world. In the choice between McCain and Obama, we have the distinction between someone who believes in America and everything it stands for and someone who believes that American is fundamentally flawed and can only be fixed by the benevolence of government.

Let us make no mistake, if you choose to vote for Barack Obama, you are voting for someone who does not believe in you as a citizen. Barack Obama believes in bigger government, bigger taxes, the demise of individualism, and the rise of the socialist state. Barack Obama believes in reducing life to a choice. Barack Obama believes in subverting the wellbeing of the United States to the will of the international community who never has this nation’s best interests at heart. Barack Obama believes in reducing the United State’s ability to defend itself. Barack Obama believes in his destiny as president over his duty to serve the people.

The contrast is clear. If you choose to vote for John McCain, you are voting for someone who has dedicated his life to the service of the republic. He stands for the Constitution and the ideals our Founding Fathers put forth. He believes in smaller government, lower taxes, the supremacy of the individual, and the inherent dignity of every life. John McCain believes in making the United States stand strong in the face of a world bent on taking advantage of this nation’s strength while standing for peoples who cannot stand for themselves. John McCain believes that libertarian republican democracy can only be preserved through strong defense. John McCain believes in the destiny of a nation governed of, by, and for the people that he will serve if elected.

If you believe in the vision John McCain supports, then consider yourself my friend, whatever differences may lie between us. I hope we can work together to get McCain to the White House.

IF you believe in the vision of Barack Obama, then consider yourself my objective. It is my goal over the next weeks to convince you that Obama is not the right candidate for president now or ever.

From today until 4 November, my goal is to convince everyone that I can reach both in person and via this weblog that my view is the right view, and that John McCain is the right man at the right time to be President of the United States.

It is my hope and my prayer that you will see my vision and join me in my quest.

-=DLH=-

Cross-posted on Dennis L Hitzeman’s Worldview Weblog

A Brief Foray Into Politics and Such As...

2008-09-04T13:34:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody. I've had posting privileges on this site since it started up but I've been too much of a little wussy to write anything here. But then I figured, screw it. Read, contemplate, digest, discuss, and recognize.

I mentioned in this post my opinion regarding the upcoming Presidential election. I’ve never been enthusiastic about voting since I became legally old enough to do so. I guess my own values/opinions on government must be pretty far outside the mainstream, because I’ve never seen a candidate that I liked. There’s just always been the guy I don’t like and the guy I like less than the other guy.

My opinion on this election has changed somewhat. I don’t know if it will last, and if history is any indication it probably won’t. Still, for once I see a candidate that I can get enthusiastic about. Too bad she’s running for Vice President.

I thought that Sarah Palin did a pretty good job in her speech last night. Before she came out I wasn’t sure if her experience in Alaska would prepare her for a moment like yesterday’s, what with the big huge crowd and all the BS that has been spinning around since the announcement of her selection. I thought she might be outwardly nervous or trip over her own feet or try and take out a reporter with an elephant gun or do something else that would be ridiculously embarrassing.

That didn’t happen, and I’m glad for that. Well, I’m glad that everything but the elephant gun thing didn’t happen. That would’ve been kind of awesome to watch.

I thought picking her was a brilliant move. The media and the Democrats (insert joke here about them being one and the same) seemed to be as surprised as I was but for a different reason. They’d never heard of her; I just figured McCain would pick some jackass no one outside of Washington gave a damn about. They immediately began with the “research” and “vetting” and other euphemisms for “bending over backwards to destroy her reputation and that of her husband and children in a vain attempt to get her to drop out of the race.” I had a feeling they’d be pretty nasty and try and paint her as some hillbilly, gun-toting Jesus freak. (I didn’t expect the party ostensibly in favor of “women’s rights” to suggest that she should stay home and raise her kids instead of work outside the home for a living, but I guess I was expecting their refusal to support the liberation of millions of women in Iraq as a one-time bout of hypocrisy.) Anyway, having seen her speak a few times on Youtube and other websites, I had a feeling that this strategy of attack wouldn’t be very effective, because she has her shit together. She reminds me of other women I’m a big fan of, like my wife, my grandmother, and others (like Big K, for example) who don’t take any crap from anybody and respond to insults with a well-placed cutting remark that makes the attacker look like a complete imbecile.

Anyway, with four or five days of the media and the Democrats (insert joke about me repeating myself here) lowering the bar of expectations for her, she came out last night and ripped Obama a new one. Between her and Giuliani, I think Barack is going to be limping around wearing some of Uncle Joe’s Depends for a few days.

This is part of the genius behind the pick. The opposition couldn’t help themselves trying to denigrate Palin’s experience. Which of course opens the door for McCain - and Fred! and Giuliani and Palin - to respond by pointing out that Obama’s experience, to put it nicely, is non-existent. Unless you count his Presidential campaign. I seem to recall Obama catching himself when discussing why Clarence Thomas wasn’t a good choice for the Supreme Court because he wasn’t exper- I mean wasn’t the kind of legal thinker blah blah blah. Obama knew that experience was his weak point and he tried desperately to pretend that argument didn’t exist. Until he and his supporters put on their blinders and jumped in with both feet.

The Democrats got played for suckers in this one and I think they know it. They’re going on and on, talking about how she isn’t qualified for the job and how she is a terrible choice for Vice President and so on. If Palin really was such a bad choice I doubt the Democrats and their friends would be so outspoken about it. Really, the Vice President is not the most vital office that will be filled in this election. A smart strategist would work overtime to ignore her if she was so bad, because you don’t interrupt your opponent when he’s making a big mistake and you certainly don’t go out of your way to tell everyone why it’s such a big mistake. You keep your damn mouth shut and hope they don’t figure it out until it’s too late. And psst! that’s why you don’t hear Republicans talking about how god-awful a pick Joe Biden was. Then again, I’m probably overestimating the intelligence of a group that has somehow managed to have a majority Congress with worse approval ratings than an unpopular president and nominate a guy who has never done anything impressive aside from write a couple of autobiographies and get elected as a Democrat in Chicago.

I hate politics. I try to stay informed on things so as to be a responsible citizen and whatnot, but really I wish that we could eradicate the earth of the political class; people who have done nothing with their lives other than run for office and be in office. I doubt it’ll ever happen, but I have hope that someday things will change for the better.

See what I did there? That was clever, if you ask me.

Anyway, barring a disaster of some kind like a revelation that Sarah Palin is actually a mole in the employ of a Czech arms dealer sent back in time to kill the leader of the resistance against an effort to convert humanity into a power source for a race of artifically intelligent machines, I’m going to vote for someone in this election and not feel like getting ridiculously drunk afterwards. And that’s a good thing.

Cross-posted on Current Events

Contemplating Things Automotive...

2008-08-19T16:01:00.000-07:00

I bought an SUV the other day. A 2004 Nissan Xterra. I needed a hauler, a light truck or something, and the SUV was - contrary to news reports - the most economical option. It's not something to drive every day on our commute (that's what the Honda Accord is for). There are several Hybrid trucks and SUV's out there now. Contrary to the reports I've been reading and hearing, they're not even all that hard to find sitting on the lots. The Toyota Dealership I went to had 35 Priuses sitting on the lot. 25 new ones and 10 used (returned lease vehicles, I believe). And despite this evidence that the scarcity that is being alleged in order to inflate the price is either exagerrated or non-existant, the prices are exhorbitant.

I wanted to buy a truck, not put myself in hock. So we bought the Xterra. It's a really nice truck. It's bright freaking "CAN YOU SEE ME NOW?" yellow, which someone who has recently been injured (though not as badly as I might have been, thank God) in a major auto accident finds especially attractive.

I really like the idea of kissing Shell and Exxon-Mobile goodbye, but how is it possible? The market is extremely confused right now. A four-cylinder 2000 truck that's been beat to hell would cost more than a 2004 pristine V-6 SUV. And don't even try to buy a hybrid Chevy Tahoe or Ford Explorer or any of the Japanese brands. Forget it.

I know the arguments for allowing the market to address issues like this, that supply and demand will eventually self-correct. And to a certain degree, that may be true. But watching over the course of the two months I've spent shopping for cars has made it abundantly clear to me that the current market-that-is has to date utterly failed to take us off the greasy grid. And until today (I'll get to that in a minute) I had despaired that it ever would.

For some time now, Denny and I have corresponded offlist - dating back to before the formation of this blog, I believe - regarding the feasibility of alternative automotive technology. We've touched on hydrogen and hybrids, but mostly, this has centered around the always-on-the-horizon Chevy Volt electric concept car.

I have my doubts about the feasibility of electric or hydrogen motoring stepping in to take the place of the Petro-mobile for many reasons (at least anytime soon) not the least of which is the lack of supporting infrastructure. To get, say, Hydrogen cars into every driveway in America is beyond daunting. It would require either our government or an entity the likes of a Standard Oil to step up to the plate and say: "We're focusing all of our energy and billions in capital on this technology to the exclusion of all others. We will develop and implement the infrastructure, the technology, the science and then we will convince the American people (or the Russian people, whatever) to buy into it."

Uh huh. Good luck with that. And good luck convincing a risk-averse Wall Street to pay for it.

The government has historically lacked the political will. The petroleum companies are paralyzed with indecision, and I've been convinced up to this point that they were ultimately going to have to be the ones to admit that the need for another option is indicated. This is complicated by the complexity of the technologies in question. Gasoline infrastructure was pretty easy to create by comparison. An internal combustion engine was an internal combustion engine. By the time it got more complicated than that, the standards were engraved in stone. Now, there are so many competing technologies, fuels, alternatives and (heaven help us) PAC's pushing thier pet solution(s) that it boggles the mind. And no standard has presented itself. No infrastructure plan has sounded workable. And - again - who will pay for it?

I know that there are many and diverse opinions here about the veracity and scope of global climate change claims, and to be honest, I don't care what you think about the Greenhouse Effect. Because it's a reality that what we're really facing on the ground is a choice between energy independence and the continued yoke of the oil states, including the one that just invaded Georgia, a debutante by a reemergent economic and military power bouyed by petroleum revenues.

For as long as our dependency on oil continues, this will be the state of things and our claim to Superpower status will continue to be undercut by global petro-politics. They have it, we don't. But we need it. We can wring the last drop of oil out of every moose in Alaska, put up a wall of oil derricks off the shores of both costs and the likelihood of truly slipping the noose of Asian and sub-Saharan oil oligarchs is a vain hope. It's a wyrm that eats its own tail.

So... electric? Where does the electricity come from? How many people can plug cars into a powergrid already groaning under the load of booming demand and brownouts up and down both coasts? More nuclear? More coal? Wind? Solar?

Unless someone steps up and says "I have an idea" and goes on to prove that it's not only a good idea, but it's scalable to the demands beyond just the coastal population centers, that it's affordable, feasible now... well, if you followed the link to the Wired.com article above, you'll find an intriguing article about a guy that's thrown his hat into that ring. Shai Agassi not only has an idea for an infrastructure, but a way to implement it using existing technologies. No waiting for better batteries to be invented (as in the case of the Volt), no waiting people to get over a generational hindenberghydrogenophobia.

The guy's a dreamer on a grand scale. What if we could tell the entire oil-producing world "Thanks, but we've got another idea..." What if the need for oil was reduced to plastics and lubricants? How would our lives be different if we didn't need the good will of countries like Saudi Arabia? Russia?

It's not a perfect plan. Neither was gasoline, frankly. Outside population centers it will be slow to catch on, but then, so was electricity and telephones and broadband, and... and... and... I'm not convinced that the extant grid can accept the additional load, but if he builds power generation plants dedicated to this specific use... I think it could work. In fact, he's sold a lot of people on the idea, including venture capitalists, the governments of Israel and Denmark. Proof of concept will be those two countries.

Here' s the idea in a nutshell (and feel free to correct any errors or omissions).........
You own the vehicle. The company owns the battery. You pay by the mile, like a cell phone plan. The car's OS calculates your destination and how much power it will require. If you have enough time to generate a charge, you plug into the grid and charge normally. There will be stations set up at population centers where you would generally expect to find a gas station. If there's not enough time for the desired charge to be generated, the computer contacts a repository (think a Jiffy Lube for batteries) and arranges for you to have a fresh battery installed for your longer trip. Fully automated. No charge for the change because the batteries belong to the company in much the same way your Visa card belongs to the issuing bank.

One of the drawbacks to electric cars is the time necessary to generate the charge necessary to go, say 100 miles, as it compares to the amount of time it takes me to put 100miles worth of gasoline in my gas tank. This system would - in theory - eliminate that drawback with it's battery exhange program.

Until the personal teleporter is perfected, this might just be the ticket we need to cut the middle eastern apron strings.

So this isn't a polemic, I don't think either of the presidential candidates is saying anything compelling or new about energy. This is just Official Notice That Scott Is Intrigued... in case anyone cares. I want to learn more. And I want to know what everyone else thinks.

RE: Denny's Farming Post

2008-08-04T17:53:00.000-07:00

What can I do about it? This guy had an interesting idea. A return to the Victory Garden, anyone?

The demise of the American fish wrap

2008-08-04T09:47:00.001-07:00

Recent news reveals the rapid decline of the American newspaper. Some even claim that the American newspaper is dead. Many people put forth many reasons why, but I believe the answer is simple.

Somewhere along the line, American newspapers stopped providing Americans the resources they wanted.

Since the advent of television news, American newspapers felt they had to compete with other forms of media to remain the source of breaking news and to remain the source of record. Along the way, however, Americans realized that they can get different kinds of news from different kinds of sources, but many newspapers failed to adapt to the new niches new ways of delivering the news created.

One niche that newspapers have ignored is local news. I am not talking about reporting on how many murders or fires happened, but what is going on in the place that the paper claims to serve. I am not talking about a glorified community calendar, but in depth coverage of what is going right, what is going wrong, and how the paper’s readers can be involved.

Newspapers have also missed the niche of impact. Local newspapers are in a better position than any other kind of news organization to deliver in-depth coverage of local, state, national, and international news in a way that makes such news relevant to local readers.

How can papers fill these niches? Simply by focusing themselves locally. Bigger papers need to create multiple, hyper-local editions. Smaller papers need to focus on what is going on outside their own front doors. Papers need to employ people who write for the benefit of other people, even if those writers are not “trained journalists”. Papers need to focus not just on events, not just on problems, but on trends, ideas, and solutions as well.

The newspapers that will survive the current changing marketplace will be the ones who see these niches and exploit them. The ones that fail will be the ones that continue to try to be something their readers to not want or need them to be.

Maybe I should go start a paper. I bet I could buy the Dayton Daily Fishwrap (News) in a couple of years because I understand what would sell papers.

-=DLH=-

Cross-posted on Dennis L Hitzeman’s Worldview Weblog

Cross-posted on Journalistic Pursuits

What can I do about it?

2008-07-22T12:22:00.001-07:00

I had an interesting conversation over the weekend that, in my mind at least, centered around the idea of personal responsibility for everyday choices.

In my view, we live in a society that has progressively disavowed itself from responsibility for its actions. This subject is a tired one for some, but it is also a subject that I believe underlies most of the problems that face the United States right now.

In particular, my weekend conversation focused on the otherwise innocuous idea of buying groceries. With each passing day, I become more skeptical of the industrial system that dominates our modern food chain from farm to factory to supermarket. There are thousands of problems endemic to this system, from the nutrition of processed foods to the safety of those same foods.

My contention is that it is time for all of us to take responsibility for our food consumption actions, an idea that elicited the inevitable “well, what am I supposed to do about it” response from some participants in my conversation. This response struck me as both odd and short sighted.

This response strikes me as odd because it implies, at the least, that where, how, and when one buys food is out of one’s control. It is that attitude that is part of the problem. As a society, we have fallen for the story told to us with such force through advertising and sheer presence that the megamart is the only place we can feed ourselves. We do not tend to think beyond the advertising for reasons that are sometimes inscrutable to me.

This response also strikes me as short sighted because it ignores the alternatives hidden just out of sight of the megamart ad. The proliferation of farmers markets, buying clubs, and reborn specialty grocery stores tells a story that the megamart does not want us to hear, but it is one we can find if we just look.

So what remains is that so many of us simply do not take responsibility for our grocery buying decisions. We make a choice to follow the lead of the megamart advertisement, but when we get fat or sick because of that choice, suddenly it is not our fault, even though there were alternatives available all along.

This idea is not just limited to groceries either, but the food buying example serves the whole problem well. Whether we are talking about groceries or gas prices or politics, the same “what am I supposed to do about it” ducking of personal choices and their consequences seems to reign, yet many people continue to be surprised when the consequences continue even as they continue to make the same choices.

This process implies that these problems--be they groceries or gas prices or politics--are unsolvable when they are entirely solvable if we choose differently. What is missing is the resolve to do the different thing, even when the benefits of such a choice are obvious.

While it is a painfully slow process, I am working to wean myself off the industrial farm system and replace it with food bought locally, from the producers, and in season. I am going so far, if everything works out as I hope it will, to take over a farm in the attempt to transform it into a sustainable one. These are active, conscious choices that I believe fly in the face of the “what am I supposed to do about it” mentality with regard to the grocery question.

We can apply this same process to most of our other everyday choices. If we do not like the price of gas, we can drive less. If we do not like the job our politicians are doing, we can involve ourselves in the political process. What we have to do, however, is choose to do something different from what we have always done.

This change in choice involves more than just shopping at a different grocery; it necessarily involves consciously choosing to accept the consequences that result. Sure, locally produced, in season food is more expensive. Driving less alters my lifestyle. Being politically active requires action and commitment on my part. These are consequences, yet to me at least, these are consequences I accept because of their benefits to my quality of life and wellbeing.

What can I do about it? I can choose responsibly being fully conscious of the consequences I accept as part of the choices I have made. I can change my grocery shopping habits because I believe it is the right thing to do for reasons that transcend convenience, slick advertizing, and habit. I can apply this same model to whatever I do, no longer doing them by rote but because I am trying to make something happen.

In making such choices, I become part of the solution instead of part of the problem. At that moment “what am I supposed to do about it” becomes an invitation rather than an excuse.

-=DLH=-

Cross-posted on Dennis L Hitzeman’s Worldview Weblog

Do you want to know why?

2008-07-07T12:32:00.001-07:00

In the years since the invasion of Iraq, both sides of the resulting debate have had much to say about why President Bush pushed forward. Opponents claim Bush lied; proponents say that the invasion was inevitable. Opponents claim it was not the US’s responsibility; proponents say freeing Iraq is at the heart of our responsibility.

Unfortunately, the rhetoric and punditry has long since drowned out the complexity that is Iraq. As a result, neither side works with the facts anymore but instead with assumptions contrived to fit political positions. The resulting positions of both sides inform not just the debate on Iraq but also the debate over the US role in the world.

On May 2, a category 4 typhoon hit the Irrawaddy Delta in Myanmar (Burma) killing tens of thousands and leaving untold numbers destitute. The military junta that rules Myanmar refused to let most international relief personnel and aid into the country, meaning that the toll on the people of the Irrawaddy Delta will be unimaginably higher over the next months and years.

Perhaps the greater tragedy is that the United States Navy sat off the coast of Myanmar for more than a month with massive amounts of support and aid capability but powerless as people died and continue to die because the junta refused to let them help. There was even short-lived talk in the media about delivering the aid anyway, but that idea never received more than a hat tip from the talking heads.

Meanwhile, Michael Yon helps document the consequences of the typhoon and the free world’s paralysis. What he shows are a people in desperate need of the support of the free world condemned to suffer because the free world cannot bring itself to do what it really needs to do.

Therein lies both the reasons for the invasion of Iraq and the consequences of the nature of the current national debate. Five years after the invasion and seventeen years after Saddam Hussein invaded and raped Kuwait, too many involved in the debate have forgotten the lesson now recently brought to light again by the travesty in Myanmar.

This lesson is simple. If the free people of free nations believe that all people are equal and equally deserving of liberty, then it is incumbent upon those free people to liberate those who cannot liberate themselves. Tyranny, whatever form it may take, is the natural enemy of liberty, and for that reason alone, free people must act against tyrants even when such tyranny does not directly threaten.

Of course, this is an ideal far more easily spoken than acted on, but it is this ideal that formed the foundation for the invasion of Iraq and should have formed the same justification for the forced delivery of aid to the people of Myanmar. Free people cannot sit idly by while others suffer and die because of the actions of tyrants. Free people are obligated to intervene by the nature of their own liberty.

Once upon a time, someone said, “When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” A corollary to that claim is that that the only tool for the nail is the hammer. It is the inevitable obligation of free people to spread liberty, whether in Iraq or Myanmar. Wherever tyranny prevails, there is a nail that needs to be whacked. It is because of that proposition that the invasion of Iraq was right and why the invasion of Myanmar would have been.

-=DLH=-

Cross-posted on Dennis L Hitzeman’s Worldview Weblog

Why we are free

2008-07-04T16:39:00.001-07:00

Petty Officer Second Class Michael Monsoor is a true American hero. His mettle is a testament to what it means to be a citizen of the land of the free and the home of the brave. I can think of no better way to celebrate independence than to remember this man.

A video tribute.

Happy Birthday!

2008-07-04T16:04:00.001-07:00

Happy Birthday, America and my fellow citizens.

Something we can all agree on. Listen here (requires Realplayer).

America's Birthday...

2008-07-04T12:49:00.000-07:00

Can't get more American than the Muppets... go wave some sparklers and celebrate with me the fact that we're allowed to have these discussions! Then we can get back to arguing.

Cheers!

RIP George Carlin

2008-06-23T08:31:00.000-07:00

Always (in the words of the United States Supreme court in FCC -v- Pacifica) "Indecent but not obscene" the man said the things that no one dared to say and he managed it with a strange variety of class always imitated, but never duplicated.

From one "Disappointed Idealist" to another... rest in peace, man.

Lying to those who love you...

2008-06-19T11:20:00.001-07:00

An open missive to the people of the United States of America

Benjamin Disraeli once said: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics." He has since been quoted in this context by everyone from Mark Twain to the writers of Westwing. In modern parlance, I would add one to Mr. Disraeli's list... "Lies, damn lies, statistics... and email." I might eventually go so far as to add a fifth "Poltical bloggers" but that's not what this is about.

I commend to all thinking people of this benighted country the following article from FactCheck.com, appropriately entitled:

That Chain E-mail Your Friend Sent to You Is (Likely) Bogus. Seriously.

I will go so far as to say that this article (accessed by clicking the above link) should be required reading for every American voter.

The most pernicious part of this trend in American political mudslinging isn't that there are lies being told about candidates, it's that they are a cynical abuse of friendship and filial devotion whereas we are inclined to believe a story simply because we love, respect and trust the person telling it to us. It is made even more of a sin because it's not consonant with chatting your neighbor up over the garden fence, it's about the widespread and largely innocent promulgation of lies among loved ones.

This is an abuse of the Great American Grapevine by some venal cur hiding in a bunker deep underneath a white marble facade in Washington DC. It is about taking those closest to you along in the grand and sweeping lies promulgated by the extreme wings of some political party. And it needs to stop.

For heaven's sake, people, it's time to make up your own mind based on something other than internet rumors. This is an important election. You need to be thinking clearly, not loading yourselves up with lies.

Think. And stop lying to those who love you.

That is all.
Scott

(cc'd to every blog where I have a stump to stand upon)

Executive Expectations

2008-05-26T05:58:00.000-07:00

George Will should contribute to this blog.

Closing the Greatness Gap

2008-05-01T07:18:00.000-07:00

I've recently been absorbed with Jim Collins' book, Good to Great. It is a fascinating and thoroughly researched book that uncovers the qualities that differentiate merely good companies from great companies.

There are a number of reasons I'm so fond of this book. I'm fascinated by efficient processes, creative and strategic planning, leadership, and most of all, greatness. I have a deeply rooted (and to me surprising) drive for perfection, for greatness. That will surely seem to some to be an arrogant drive and will no doubt explain for some the perception they may have that I am an arrogant person. So be it.

I know perfection is not a realistic goal, but my philosophy is that I may be able to achieve greatness in something or, at the very least, success by striving for the impossible. By pushing toward an unreachable horizon, I place myself on a path to surpass what I might otherwise accomplish if I set a less lofty goal. (Then again, I might just end up flying too close to the sun and plummet to the earth in an ignominious, squishy, and enduring defeat.)

It is this same mentality (or mental instability, depending on your view) that causes me to be so critical of, well everything really, but certainly our government and almost all things "political." Many mark this critical nature as a sign that I don't love my country. These are the same people that shout down any criticism as "blame America first" behavior. They are probably the same people who refuse to take responsibility for their own behavior even as they cry about how other people should learn to take responsibility. To me it makes sense to "blame America first." After all, I'm an American, and I am much less likely to exert any control or even significant influence on the behavior of others. We can't fix the behavior of others, but we can fix our own. Furthermore, it is precisely because I love my country that I am critical of it. I desperately want for us to close the gap between our merely good performance and our absolutely great potential.

And that leads me back to Collins' book. One of the things he notices in great companies that differentiates them from the merely good companies is a real focus on what that company can be great at -- what he refers to as a Hedgehog Concept. I've long observed that most people who achieve some level of greatness do so because of an almost single-minded focus on what they do. This is why, for example, you don't see any truly great two-sport athletes. There are some who have done well in a second sport -- Bo Jackson comes to mind -- but how many can you name that truly achieve greatness in two sports? Bo Jackson was a phenomenal athlete. He was an excellent football player and a good baseball player, but he wasn't great at both sports.

One of the observations Collins makes is that, in addition to finding a focus on what you can be great at, you must also identify those activities that don't contribute to that focus. In other words, great companies are just as diligent about identifying what to stop doing as they are about identifying the right things to be doing. It is that thought trajectory that brings me to this post.

I have a wide range of interests, including politics. This wide range of interests is what ultimately keeps me from being great at any one of them. I'm a mile wide and an inch deep on any number of subjects. The issues we discuss here are very important. The level of discourse, while at times personal and volatile, is at least aimed in the right direction -- finding meaningful answers to the problems of the day. That's a great endeavor, and I applaud Denny for starting this blog and inviting people with differing viewpoints to contribute. I've appreciated the opportunity to sharpen my argumentative skills and clarify my thinking through the process of sparring with each of you here.

But as imporant as the subject matter is, I cannot consistently contribute up to the standard that I set for myself. I do not have the time to pursue lines of inquiry as deeply as I would like. I'm leaving a record of thought here that most readers will take to be an end and not a data point in a process. I'm not comfortable with the idea of leaving a trail of thought that isn't more thoroughly vetted. More importantly, as passionate as I am about some of these issues, the temptation to spend my time and energy here is too great and distracts me from things on which I can have a more real and pronounced impact. I owe my family, my employers, and myself a better effort on their behalf, and I don't feel like I can accomplish that if I'm spending my time here.

So, thank you for the opportunity. It's been great. I hope you all continue to thrash it out here at AHOCF. Denny, Keba, stay safe and be happy. Scott, keep these folks in line, will ya. And if you'd like to stay in touch on a professional basis to discuss writing center matters, I'd love to do so. Chris, I expect I'll see you around and that we'll have the opportunity to quaff some suds together from time to time. As for the rest of you, who the hell are you and why don't you ever post here?

Have fun.

Note: Edited to add a link.

A recession recession

2008-04-30T14:47:00.001-07:00

What happens when pundits keep swearing the US is in a recession--most significantly characterized by two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth--but the GDP keeps growing, even with the weak dollar?

I wonder what that's called?

Speaking of battles

2008-04-29T08:40:00.000-07:00

The Global Climate Change battle rages on.

Nationalized Healthcare...

2008-04-28T07:44:00.000-07:00

...Is a divisive subject, of course, so examples like this one are sure to inflame people on both sides of the debate. In summary, a girl with a serious congenital disorder, who was covered as a child under one government health care program, is now being denied coverage as an adult under another government health care program.

Granted, the circumstances of the case are not completely cut-and-dried, but they drive to the heart of my question about nationalized health care: how is the government system going ensure quality care for people?

From my view, so much of the problem in the health care debate is that it has been reduced to numbers, but just as focus on the numbers to not tell the real story of Iraq, the focus on the numbers about health care do not tell the real story of caring for people.

Given government's record of caring for numbers instead of people, I am skeptical that it is possible for it care about people on the scale a nationalized health care system would require. I also concede that something needs to be done to make health care accessible--note that I did not say affordable, which means I oppose government price controls--to people who would not otherwise have access to such care.

How to do so? If the government is to have a role, then its role should be to guarantee a system of accessibility--government insured medical accounts provided by the market--combined with regulating the parts of the existing system that are driving prices up--tort reform, medical research regulation reform.

But even before such reform can begin, it needs to start with a different reform: The government needs to remember that the people in question are people, not numbers or constituents. Being people, each case has to be treated differently keeping in mind its unique circumstances.

If the government can change its attitude about people, then maybe it has a chance with health care.

Jetpack Watch (Part MCXVIII)

2008-04-25T21:06:00.001-07:00

"He stood a stranger in this breathing world,
An erring spirit from another hurled;
A thing of dark imaginings, that shaped
By choice the perils he by chance escaped;
But 'scaped in vain, for in their memory yet
His mind would half exult and half regret..."
-Lord Byron
Lara

As most of you know, I regularly train a jaundiced eye on the unkempt horizons of Tomorrowland in a (Quixotic) quest for my Jetsonian future as embodied by the ever-elusive personal jetpack.

This post has nothing to do with jetpacks.

Come to think of it, the jetpack posts don't either, not really. They're about the stagnation of mechanical technology. Of our pointless navel-gazing that has led to a virtual iceage of technological advancement. A brief glimmer of hope may lie ahead as space travel becomes commercially viable, but at present our needs are too few to play matron to invention of aught more than a more efficient delivery system for junkmail and a higher resolution platform from which to observe a more expensive and divisive political campaign.

Nevertheless, part of that quest - the dark side as I refer to it - has always been comparing the practical realities of today with the cybernetic prophecies dreamt up by dark visionaries from the early socialist morality tales of Fritz Lang (Metropolis) to the advanced 'hard' science fiction and dark futures of Phillip K Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) , William R Gibson (Neuromancer), and Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash) which gave rise to the term "Worlwide Web" (Gibson), "Cyberspace" (ibid) and thence "Cyberpunk" (ibid) and the eponymous genre of games and movies that followed.

Recent developments at Cern give me some hope that at least the computer-culture, or rather computers as a virtual co-existent world where digital spirits swirl and interact, where the dangers and possibilities play on the fringes of the lost digital frontier. That at least the 'good' (or perhaps 'less bad') parts of the Cyberpunk pipedream might yet coalesce in the breathing world... for better or for worse.

Assuming Cern doesn't suck us all into a quantum singularity first.

Kawoosh!

Momma Said Knock You Out...

2008-04-25T20:33:00.000-07:00

Earth Day is Rosie Day. And don't you forget it, punk.

Photoshopped by Scott. While his biscuit's flipped by painkillers. (Quite legally, I assure you, officer. All my papers are in order...) With the amateur-level 'Elements' version of Photoshop. It took me longer to type this and I could do better if I pulled out the tablet PC.

So really... there's no excuse for shoddy work from a pro. Purely illustrative of course, but really... how hard is it to be elegant, or at least inoffensive, as well as evocative?

Punks.

It's all about Personal Responsibility

2008-04-25T11:21:00.000-07:00

Meanwhile, at the Battle of "Contributing Factors"

2008-04-23T11:02:00.001-07:00

I previously asked questions about whether or not we can define the current political divide in the United States as a cold civil war. In the mean time, ongoing debate here on Contributing Factor has helped answer, at least in part, some of my questions.

The posts and comments have presented this answer in the form of an idea that we seem to repeat frequently: “Then we are at an impasse,” or “Then we disagree.” As I understand such a comment, once we utter it, we create a barrier through which we can achieve no compromise.

From my understanding, compromise is the fundamental objective of diplomacy. When sides cannot compromise, then diplomacy has failed. If the issues at stake require action by one side or another if they do not achieve compromise, then in my view, the sides have reached some state of conflict beyond that which required diplomacy to begin with.

In a cold civil war, the battlefield is politics and the goal is the ownership of the means by which one side can enforce their ideals on another. This state of affairs differs from normal politics in that the ideals in question are ones the other side is fundamentally, even morally, opposed to and must continue to resist even after those ideals become law and are enforced.

If this definition holds true, then I believe that we find ourselves in the midst of a cold civil war in the United States. Even among the posters and commenters on this site, the lines seem to be clearly drawn beyond which no negotiation can take place. This is not an indictment of either side, but rather an acknowledgement that further changes in views by either side threatens to compromise their fundamentals.

Of course, the definition I present here may still be flawed, but it is my operating hypothesis. What remains for me to define is how such a war is fought and, more importantly, how it is ended.

In Light of Recent Developments...

2008-04-22T17:51:00.000-07:00

"I'd wager good money that 89% of the journalists in the US would rather eat glass than engage in yellow journalism. The 11% that would, work for the papers and media outlets that get off on that sort of thing."

-Scott

In light of Time Magazine's long-anticipated defection to the join the yellow menace... I raise my assessment to 15%. The bastards.

Cold Civil War?

2008-04-21T14:51:00.001-07:00

Scott once opined that he believed that the political debate over American ideals had become “a non-shooting civil war of sorts for our own country”. Tim Oren at Winds of Change recently presented a post focused at the same topic, asking the question without providing a conclusion.

At first, I am tempted to dismiss such a conclusion as over dramatization of historically American political debate, but then I look at the facts on the ground and wonder: Are we in the midst of a crisis of definition that looks a lot like a cold war? As I consider those facts, I find myself beginning to believe that maybe we are.

If we are in a cold civil war, as Oren asks, how is it defined? What are the sides? The objectives? The final goal? How does a cold civil war end? Does it go hot, or does some remarkable change or event render the issues underlying the conflict irrelevant?

A biased post about biased review of a biased book about a biased war

2008-04-20T12:36:00.001-07:00

Michael Yon, the perennially embedded independent journalist, recently released his latest book, Moment of Truth in Iraq. JR Michaels, Greyhawk of The Mudville Gazette, writes a review for the New York Post. I think Yon’s book should be required reading for everyone who wants to have an informed opinion on Iraq.

Feel free to flame. I couldn’t help myself.

Re: Journalistic Integrity, Media Bias, Objectivity, Professionalism, etc.

2008-04-18T10:27:00.000-07:00

So…Time magazine PhotoShops a tree into the famous Iwo Jima flag raising photograph as part of its cover story on climate change. I’m not going to pretend I know how my grandfather, or anyone’s grandfather, would react to the image. But the Marine that I just talked to said, “Oh, my goodness. That’s pretty pathetic.” Anyway, enough about the picture.

More interesting to me is the story behind the story. Or, if not the story, at least the justification for it. In this interview, Time’s managing editor Richard Stengel says some pretty interesting things, not all of which completely jibe with my interpretation of what journalism is supposed to be (but it does, sort of, underscore what I think most journalism actually is). And, I daresay, those things mightn't meet Scott’s lofty journalistic ideals discussed, in part, in this post.

A few thoughts. First, Stengel makes the point that he wanted to stop being descriptive and start being prescriptive. He says, “The cover story, I mean there's been so many stories about the environment and we see them all the time. And they're often just descriptive. And what we decided is we wanted to do something that was prescriptive.” I know what happens when that starts to occur in theology, and I’m guessing it’s equally bad in reporting.

Second, Stengel says this:
“I think since I've been back at the magazine, I have felt that one of the things that's needed in journalism, is that you have to have a point of view about things. You can't always just say ‘on the one hand, on the other’ and you decide. People trust us to make decisions. We're experts in what we do. So I thought, you know what, if we really feel strongly about something let's just say so.”

“People trust us.” That’s true, but in a way it’s sad. But don’t use that as a justification for abusing that trust.

"...to make decisions." Really? Do we? Decisions about what?

“We’re experts in what we do.” And what is it, exactly, that you do? Inveigh or inform? Report or rabble rouse?

Finally, I didn't think "real" reporters were supposed to worry too much about how they felt about a particular topic. (I know what happens in theology when that starts to happen, too.)

So much for vaunted “unbiased, objective reporting.” To tell the truth, I’m getting kind of sick of people (not necessarily on this blog, but in general) claiming that such a thing exists anywhere ― and, wonder of wonders, that when it does it unfailingly agrees with them.

But I’m a little bitter right now, so maybe I’m just over-reacting to all of this. Maybe I need you guys to adjust my attitude a bit.

What do you think?

Against contempt

2008-04-16T09:46:00.001-07:00

This post comes closer that any I have read for a while to summing up the feelings of those, including myself, who have served honorably and with distinction while being vilified by a broad swath of our society, politicians, and media. I think that the post is worth reading simply to glimpse a view of what the people who man and support that thin line of defense think.

We're on the right track

2008-04-16T07:29:00.000-07:00

Apparently, quarreling is very American. Go us!

Slipping between the cracks

2008-04-10T08:55:00.001-07:00

Violating basic American rights is not just for governments anymore.

Victor, Victor, he’s our man…

2008-04-10T05:32:00.000-07:00

The optimism of this piece makes me happy.

Thoughts, anyone?

A Modest Proposal

2008-04-09T13:27:00.000-07:00

Denny has previously made the claim that our democracy works precisely because its flexible nature allows it to withstand temporary threats to its basic principles. He has pointed to our debates here as evidence that the democracy is working because it indicates that there is sufficient transparency to allow the mechanism of our government to work through its problems.

I would argue that a similar trend is in action here at AHOCF. We have, from time to time, strayed from the path of reasoned debate into the more contentious and less civil discourse, only to recover time and again. Cooler heads do prevail and our path is once again set aright. Huzzah indeed.

In recognition and support of this resilience, I'd like to offer up a modest proposal.

Denny and I have concluded a truce of sorts -- to be humorous about it -- over at his Worldview blog. More accurately and more seriously, I think we've come to an understanding. We each took time to calmly clarify our positions about a disagreement we were having about who characterized what statements inaccurately. While we may not have reached a perfect harmony, I think both of us are satisfied with the results. We have concluded that further discussion -- I stress that term, discussion -- of the legality of warrantless surveillance is, um, warranted. It is upon this question -- is warrantless surveillance legal -- that our disagreement seems to rest.

So to my proposal. As a writing teacher, I have often used an approach with my students to attempt to get them to see other sides of an issue they have chosen to write about. We often talk about counter-arguments, but this term seems to denote a "thing" they have to create rather than a natural set of ideas that exist that they must discover. To overcome this misunderstanding as well as to encourage reason over emotion, I'll often ask them to argue the opposite of what they currently believe about an issue. This forces them to take seriously other points of view and, just as importantly, to understand them.

I would like to think we don't need this lesson and that it would merely be an interesting exercise, but our history calls that hope into question. Nevertheless, I think it would be an interesting exercise and might well benefit our discussion.

I think we can reliably, at this point, propose two theses: 1) Warrantless surveillance is legal, and 2) Warrantless surrveillance is illegal. Before we begin to argue, in the best sense of that word, those points, we might want to work together to further clarify or focus those theses. For example, would it be helpful to define warrantless surveillance of whom is legal/illegal? We want our theses to actually represent the core of the current argument, after all.

So, is anyone interested in trying this approach? If so, shall we begin by clarifying those basic theses so we actually spend our time trying to argue precisely what we want to argue? And as we choose up teams, who wants to be shirts and who wants to be skins?

Facts and Opinions

2008-04-08T13:50:00.001-07:00

At the risk of stirring the hornets' nest this weblog can sometime be, I want to take a moment to discuss something that is important to debates such as the ones that often rage here. In these debates, as has been true for most of human history, an ongoing confusion of the understanding of fact and opinion has occurred that has served to cloud the debate and make it more vociferous.

Fact and opinion can be hard to define because the difference between the two is often subtle and sometimes imperceptible. An example of where this definition as become extremely difficult is in the use of information in the ongoing warrantless surveillance debate.

Both sides of this debate have reached very clear and opposing conclusions, ones supported by the citation of information from a variety of sources--some reputable, some not--which information itself is also a conclusion based on information gathered from still other sources. This chain of information and supporting conclusion extends back until it, hopefully, reaches facts, such as the citation of specific laws or the Constitution.

The semantics of the above description are important because those semantics represent definitions of logical debate. While conclusions and the information used to support them are powerful and important, they are not facts.

In a way, this is a legal definition as well. Conclusions are opinions, as informed and reasoned as they might be. This is the same definition used by the constitutional courts of the United States (appellate and supreme) in referring to their own conclusions about the law. This terminology is used because the judiciary has always accepted the inevitability that some of their conclusions will be overturned by the conclusions of future courts.

Such conclusions can be deeply held, but ultimately they are still opinion. Such conclusions should be based on facts, but even with a majority of facts, they are still opinions. Because they are opinion, they can still be proved wrong by better conclusions or facts.

Because such conclusions are opinion, how they are used in the course of logical debate is very important. The use of conclusions as a proof of the wrongness of an opposing conclusion is a tricky proposition because of the risk that the conclusion used might yet be proven wrong.

Fact, on the other hand, has none of the potential ambiguity of opinions. Fact is irrefutable and empirical. Semantically, fact is. Fact serves as the basis for everything else including debate.

In the course of logical debate, it is possible for certain opinion to become fact-like, due to agreement or inattention. This conversion does not imply that such opinion is fact; rather, that it is being used as fact in the absence of more obvious fact.

Understanding of these distinctions cannot help but strengthen the nature of logical debate. Conclusions, though opinion, are the inevitable result of the absence of definable fact, but such conclusions must fulfill other requirements before they can be facts. In logical debate, the use of conclusion must be tempered by its nature, or the debate ceases to be anything more that argument.

That’s my opinion. Let the stinging begin...

-=DLH=-

Balance Unlooked For

2008-04-08T12:17:00.000-07:00

Robert Kagan was (I think that's the correct tense) a member of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). This is the group, a core of which formed an influential cadre within the Bush Administration, whose doctrine helped guide America into its war with Iraq and has helped to set much of its foreign policy in the nearly eight years of Bush's "reign."

As a member of this group, Robert Kagan is one of the last people I would expect to find myself agreeing with. However, if you haven't already read this article, (found at WorldAffairsJournal.org and linked to at RealClearPolitics.com) you should. I can't vouch for all his facts, but a casual first reading of it didn't set off any real warning bells. He offers a very sober view of American history and behavior, and a very balanced view of the current foreign policy and cultural debates in our country. I found it to be an excellent article that based on my own understanding of our history, flawed as it might be, rings true.

I think all contributors and readers at Contributing Factors will find something of value in it.

Free Tibet?

2008-04-07T21:38:00.001-07:00

So... off the elections for a bit to let everyone get their thoughts together and on to a new and potentially divisive topic.

Today the Olympic torch had to be extinguished - or at least turned down so far you couldn't see the flame - in order to put it on a bus because it became impossible to get it through Paris for all the protests. Athens, London... chaos. Paris... third verse, same as the first.

On the one hand, no one's been killed or injured really as far as I can tell. It's much in the news and NPR reports that the IOC has been mentioning that if this doesn't stop, they'll abandon the torch relay altogether. On the other hand this is largely peaceful resistance, albeit rather noisy and chaotic peaceful resistance. This isn't the WTO and the 'Battle in Seattle', at least not yet. On yet a third hand we now know that Parisian police wear roller blades while doing crowd control duty. (!?!)

Now it's our turn... so how do you think we're going to handle it? Do you forsee a downward spiral debacle ala the aforementioned WTO riots in my beloved city not all that long ago, where peaceful protest was overcome by radicals looking for an excuse to break windows and burn things? Do you think any of this is doing any good at all?

The torch reaches our shores soon in San Francisco. This morning, during rush hour three climbers scaled the bridge to hang a sign from the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/07/MN6L101A0U.DTL&tsp=1

I know a lot of people in San Fran, early on I thought there were frankly alarmingly good odds that I know one of those three, or their crew. I don't recognize any of the names, but I'd bet that I at least know someone who does. (Somehow my separation never seems to reach six degrees, more like two. But I digress...)

It was certainly a bold feat but, I fear, ultimately pointless.

While I see the value of getting your message out when it's being stifled ala Dr. King, I'm not really convinced that's the case here. I can't turn on the radio or the computer without seeing stories about Tibet. It's a tragedy, no doubt. So it goes back to the simple fact that I've never been convinced that you can create a positive impression of your message by creating a negative impression on the people viewing your message. I am intrigued by the fact that NPR reports that they're thinking of calling off the rest of the torch relay if this keeps up.

And what will that prove except to prove that if you act badly enough you can create a two-day news furor that will not equal the value of the coverage that would have been had you been less anarchic with your attempts to get your message across. And the coverage will eventually sour... because that is the way of things. The world has been swayed by the serenity of the Dalai Lama in the face of relentless aggression and misinformation coming out of the PROC. If Tibet just becomes yet another hotbed of unrest... what then?

Positive image from negative actions? It strikes me as singularly un-Buddhist...

An Interesting Anniversary

2008-04-07T16:29:00.000-07:00

Huzzah!

Well worth the read, im(h)o.

Hmmmm...

2008-04-07T16:16:00.001-07:00

The wages of sin? Well... the oval office anyway.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/07/ex.presidents/index.html

Words By Which To Live

2008-04-06T12:05:00.000-07:00

For all of us would-be writers:

"The road to hell is paved with adverbs." - Stephen King

Laugh about it, shout about it...

2008-04-04T21:49:00.000-07:00

Keba asked:

"But, as a general rule, wouldn't the opinions expressed (by the editors, not the general public 9n the "speak-up" part) in the opinion/editorial sections be a good indication of the bias of the overall publication?"

No.

Listen, for one thing it occurs to me that there is not now, nor ever has been, nor ever will be, any place of business larger than ten employees where everyone in the place agrees on your choice of subject. Getting more than half to agree on anything is almost as hard. Newspapers are no different.

What is most significant, though, is that most of the people writing or contributing to the editorials actually have very little (if anything) to do with the day-to-day operations of a newspaper. Newspaper operations are overseen by a specific editor, usually the Managing Editor or editor. Each section generally has their own editor and the editors meet regularly as the 'editorial board' much as a company board of directors would meet.

Unless you see an endorsement signed by the "editorial board" (such as the endorsement of a political candidate, for instance) you are most definitely not seeing a consensus opinion. The NYT makes a habit of endorsing a candidate from each of the two major parties during the primary season (I believe they endorsed McCain and Clinton this year) and will often - though not always - endorse a presidential candidate during the general. This does not mean anything about how the hard news editors will guide the coverage of the election. Most op/eds and editorials are submitted by either private citizens who have the credentials to speak with authority on a given topic and/or by contributing editors or columnists.

Beats are assigned based on talent, seniority, and a host other considerations. Most mature (as in mature in their profession) journalists have a great deal of latitude on which stories they cover with the editors choosing from what is brought to them rather than assigning every story in the paper. It is a collaborative process. Most of these news editors are former journalists, so we're talking about stories assigned by journalists to journalists. Some stories are gimmees, some come as press releases, some as tips, some off the wire services that require local followup.

There are definitely kinks in the system and no system is immune from abuse, but the level of malfeasance alleged in most complaints about the media boggles the mind. While I cannot say that every news editor or managing editor out there doesn't have an ax to grind with one thing or another... there are governing boards, professional boards, standards and practices, libel manuals, and a host of safeguards (which don't always work, I'll admit) to keep the news as honest and free of bias as it possibly can.

Is it 100%? No. No system can be. And there are definitely news outlets that I view with a skeptical eye, but the level of accuracy attained is remarkable and a lot of hard work to produce.

That's the American model.

There have been outlets in recent memory who have been taking the British model of delivering a well-understood and tacitly acknowledged slant to their news reporting. In the British papers, as I have noted recently, bias is not only ok, it isn't hidden. My British friends tell me that everyone in the country takes numerous papers, knowing that they're slanted and derives their news by sipping from every cup. Maybe that's a better system, but I don't think it is. But some think so and there are definite interests out there wanting to make that model more American (such as Rupert Murdoch, who just purchased the Wall Street Journal). I find that distressing.

The system isn't perfect. There's a lot of infotainment out there. Go click on my "And now... the News" post to see a distressingly accurate take on cable news et al.

The trouble currently is that broadcast news is leading the charge into the British sensationalist system, no longer delineating a line between editorializing and news reporting. Commentators come on and give their spiel, often 'interviewed' by the talking heads using pre-arranged prompts with no indication to an unwary public that they're blurring an important line. Military experts give their opinion on whatever happened in Iraq without caveat, pundits report statistics and polls as facts without clarification.

The American people have become so numbed and complacent with being spoon-fed news on the 24-hour cycle that print is dying because it cannot keep up. Thank you CNN. I recently heard a media commentator refer to a newspaper's website as the reincarnation of the 'afternoon edition'. And that's pretty accurate. Maybe the internet can save Journalism (with a capital 'J') but that's the full half of the glass talking.

I want it made abundantly clear that while there have been more than a few bad apples in recent memory, either tugging their forelock to the administration or foaming at the mouth and pursuing them with the avid determination of a Zombie mob out trolling for brains. I'd wager good money that 89% of the journalists in the US would rather eat glass than engage in yellow journalism. The 11% that would, work for the papers and media outlets that get off on that sort of thing.

They can't always be right, but they damn well try.

Media consolidation, FCC deregulation of television stations, reduced markets and other forces are driving the publisher into the newsroom, begging for ratings. The TV news (which I never, ever watch) has eroded the confidence the press feels in themselves. The need to play 'gotcha' to get ratings is feeding public dissatisfaction with a press that can't figure how to respond to a readership that decries the sex scandals and death tolls while buying ten times as many copies when those stories are featured.

Journalists are people. No better, no worse than you or I. Except that they are trained, rigorously by the schools that award them degree, to sublimate their own opinions and dwell in the realm of facts no matter how they feel about it. They have their own opinions and their own ideas and are less inclined than most to allow anyone to tell them what to think. Are trained - in fact - to resist editorial pressure. To cling to the truth. They're people, though, right? So not everyone can or is willing to do it.

About the only things they can be said to agree on 100% is that it would be nice to win a Pulitzer, Peabody, Nobel and/or Murrow.

By way of illustration: My last act as a journalist, back in college, was to accept three major awards from the Missouri College Newspaper Association. I beat out reporters and editors from the University of Missouri School of Journalism - the oldest journalism school in the world and still one of the most prestigious.

They were presented to me by a dean that would - within months - be forced out in disgrace because of the news story and editorials I was receiving the awards for. I had known her and her family for my entire life.

Nothing happens for only one reason, but that was the main reason why I walked away from it.
I couldn't do it anymore and changed my major, walked away from a promising career because I had looked in the teeth of what it meant to be that dispassionate, that detached from the story I was reporting.

That is the pool journalists are drawn from.

Cuba libre

2008-04-04T20:14:00.001-07:00

I had the privilege of seeing the Cuban timba and son band Tiempo Libre perform on 4 April 2008. Their music was engaging, lively, and spirited as one would expect Cubano music to be.

Interestingly, they closed their performance with a song dedicated “to the greatest nation in the world, the United States of America.” Their words, not mine.

This leaves me wondering: What would a bunch of twenty-something natives of Castro’s Cuba think about the assertion of oppression made by some Americans against the Bush administration? What would they think about the political and personal wrangling that has surrounded issues like warrantless surveillance?

Now, I know that the immediate response will be something like “We oppose the Bush administration so that we don’t end up like Cuba.”

Somehow I think the response should be “Yeah, we are the best nation in the world, but we have problems. What can we do about that so that we can be even better?”

Cuba no es libre pero todavía somos. Viva la libertad.

...and you must speak JAVA

2008-04-04T19:58:00.000-07:00

This is funny because it's late, and I know lots of Mexicans. It also has a ring of truth to it, in a strange way.

If you read it on the Internet, it must be true.

2008-04-04T15:10:00.001-07:00

More examples of “media malpractice,” this time courtesy of The Weekly Standard.

(In case that last wasn’t unambiguous, it’s the Standard that seems to be reporting on the malpractice, rather than necessarily committing it. But maybe there’s media bias in the article about media bias. You never know…)

I Lied About Surveillance and So Did Mike Mukasey

2008-04-04T07:16:00.000-07:00

In the comments to another post, I made the statement that I was done commenting about the warrantless surveillance issue. I lied. I really didn't mean to, but here I am talking about it again, so there is only one conclusion to draw. I lied.

And apparently so did Attorney General Michael Mukasey when he commented publicly about a pre-9/11 call the U.S. intercepted from Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Furthermore, to date, the media has failed to pick up the story demonstrating once again that folks on all sides of the issues of the day have cause to doubt the professionalism of our fourth estate.

It also points out a main reason I've been so shrill about the whole warrantless surveillance issue. Denny has argued here that the action of our government and the telecoms was justified for national security reasons. While I disagree with this view and have taken even greater issue with some of the factual and logical inconsistencies in the arguments he has put forth to make this point, the point itself is not completely without merit. We disagree on the degree of the threat facing us and on the relative priority national security, in this instance, and adherence to the law among our leaders must take in our calculations of right action. Despite some of the harsh words I have lobbed at Denny, this is ground upon which reasonable people can rightly disagree.

What makes me unreasonable is the growing mountain of evidence of the government’s dishonest attempts to avoid any accountability for their actions at any cost. I may have overlooked something, but I have heard no one from the government who was in a position of responsibility for the illegal surveillance they conducted come forth and make precisely Denny’s argument – “we broke the law, but the national security need was so great we felt we had to. Please don’t hold the telecoms responsible for responding to our need. We paid them and leaned on them to comply; it’s not their fault."

No. Instead we have been presented with an array of factual inaccuracies about the law as it exists today and spurious claims of the need to protect state secrets, claims that have persisted even in the face of solutions offered by the House of Representatives to all of the supposed problems. Moreover, the administration has consistently used scare tactics to convince us to comply with their wishes, telling us that we're wide open to threat -- that this is a zero sum game: either pass this new legislation with telecom amnesty or be killed by terrorists. The Mukasey performance was just the latest in this long series of parlor tricks.

Here are a couple of mutually referencing links to another discussion of the situation:

Center for Citizen Media

Glenn Greenwald

2008-04-03T14:33:00.000-07:00

I would like to start by saying that I haven’t been following every one of the conversations on this blog recently because of time constraints, and also for the general bloviating that has been occurring. In commenting to posts, people have taken writings by other posters and read them through their own particular biases and beliefs. Nothing wrong with that – we all do it.

However, as a reader, a contributor, and an intelligent person, the veiled and not-so-veiled “he’s a big poo-poo head” comments recently have started to concern me. It seems that contributors have moved away from serious conversation and debate and have descended into mud-slinging and semantics. Seriously, aren’t we a little more mature and confident in our beliefs than that?

Some things in the last several posts/responses that have jumped out at me now follow. I have a lot more, but these in particular stood out. And no, I'm not "picking" on anyone, so don't go there.

“I'm given to wonder what you expected when you decided to create this blog and invited intelligent people of diverse beliefs and backgrounds to have an ongoing and reasoned discussion and/or debate about the issues of the day.”

Here’s what I expected – intelligent people of diverse beliefs and backgrounds to have an ongoing and reasoned discussion and/or debate about the issues of the day. I think we all expected that…maybe not. Is that what is occurring? Not so much anymore. Reading through the comments was more of Laws and Surveillance Redux was more of a playground fight than a debate.

“We can’t stop just because you don’t have the answers to our questions” – ok, fine. Since when has anyone had all the answers to every question that has been asked of them? If there is no answer (and I’ve had questions answered with “I don’t know how to respond to that”), move on. That seems pretty arrogant to assume that every question will be able to be answered – doesn’t happen in life, isn’t going to happen on a blog.

Based on the dominant personalities on this blog, people are not going to change their worldview just because others do not agree with them. Think about what they believe, why they believe it, and how to articulate and defend that belief? Yes. Become more informed about what other people think? Yes. “Convince” people that they are wrong? Not likely.

“Quibbling” is a term that flies around in responses. In many of the contexts I’ve read, it appears that “quibbling” is a snarky way to say “I’m going to ignore what you said because I think you’re wrong and your point isn’t worth it”.

“You don't have to concede that you are wrong. Merely state the truth. Repeat after me, "I believe what I believe because I believe it. My President would never harm me, unless he were a panzy-ass Democrat with no taste for war. Otherwise, any Republican President who agrees with my already held beliefs may do anything he pleases to see that my agenda is made real. By definition, it is good because I say it is."” That is reasoned discussion and debate?!

If we are intelligent people having reasoned discussion and debate, let’s do it. If we are going to stomp our feet when others either a) don’t agree with us, b) don’t answer every single question we ask, or c) ask us questions we don’t like, take that discussion off list. I know every contributor on this list and I certainly know that we are all capable of acting like intelligent adults.

Laws of surveillance

2008-04-03T09:33:00.001-07:00

The United States of America faces a difficult and ongoing issue that was brought into dramatic focus on 11 September 2001: agents of foreign enemies are operating on American soil with the intention of killing American citizens, and in great part, the government does not know who they are.

Whether or not the current struggle represents the beginning of a long war against fundamentalist Muslim jihadism or a short-term fight against a flare-up of terrorist activity by the same, the United States has a problem: First, it has enemies on its own soil. Second, its laws are not adequate to deal with the existing threat.

In 2001, President Bush decided to address part of that problem by authorizing warrantless surveillance in order to discover who the enemies were and then pursue lawful actions to stop them. This authority was derived from well-established and historical precedent established by many previous administrations and in is in keeping with the actions of administrations throughout American history in dealing with crises that threaten the Republic.

This authority also represents a temporary and constitutionally difficult solution that is far better resolved by better-crafted laws targeted at dealing with the nature of the issues at hand. If there is any mistake in the administration’s handling of these issues, it has been that it did not aggressively pursue legislative remedies to these issues far sooner.

Now, the administration and Congress have no choice. The methods the administration was using have been compromised and legally challenged. In order to resolve these issues, the administration and Congress must craft laws that simultaneously protect the American people from potential abuse and also grant the intelligence agencies the ability to discover who the enemies are so those enemies can be stopped.

Unfortunately, it seems that the politicians and thinkers responsible for crafting such solutions are too fixated on politics to fulfill their obligations. This fixation seems to be a national infection, which results in no solutions being presented even as the threat continues and, perhaps, even grows.

In an effort to counter that infection and help guide the national discussion in a direction that may lead to solutions, here are presented several ideas that can form the basis of those solutions.

First, any law that is created must ensure that the liberty of the American people is preserved to the greatest extent possible and that the Republic is defended so that this liberty can be enjoyed. Therefore, the intelligence agencies must be granted the ability to establish causal evidence against enemies of the United States, but they must be constrained from using that evidence for any other purpose than cause by continual and practical oversight. The most effective way to accomplish this end is to create a function, probably judicial, that reviews gathered evidence and certifies it for legitimate use as causal evidence against agents working militarily against the United States on behalf of foreign enemies.

Second, any law that is created must protect intelligence sources, methods, and means from disclosure to protect intelligence agents and those cooperating with them. Specifically, this law must exempt those who cooperate from civil liability over the collection of causal intelligence in order to ensure continued cooperation for that purpose.

Third, the law must clearly state that any punitive action requires the securing of warranted surveillance and authority to act as clearly established by the Constitution. Due to the sensitive nature of these warrants and resulting cases, federal jurisdiction must be clearly established over them, the FISA court must be greatly expanded to accommodate the legal function of the intelligence services in this capacity, and a parallel court must be established to handle cases resulting from this activity.

Fourth, any law must be clearly set to expire on a regular basis, forcing the existing administration and Congress to review the law for applicability and flaws.

Finally, any law must specifically and explicitly apply only to the gathering of causal intelligence against agents of foreign enemies acting on American soil; however, this law must apply to the activities of both foreign nationals and natural citizens acting in this capacity.

This list is neither exhaustive nor complete. Such a law is very complex due to the nature of the problems it deals with and must be carefully crafted before it is implemented. This list simply gives a place to start the conversation, one that will hopefully happen quickly and for the benefit of the United States and its citizens.

-=DLH=-

Cross-posted on Dennis L Hitzeman’s Worldview Weblog

Laws and surveillance redux

2008-04-01T16:24:00.001-07:00

[T]hat government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

-The conclusion to the Gettysburg Address, President Abraham Lincoln, 1 June 1865

The Civil War was the greatest Constitutional crisis the United States ever faced, not just because of the obvious schism of the Republic, but also because of the things the government of the United States, including President Lincoln, decided to do to weather the conflict. Yet, even in the midst of that crisis, the goal of the Union was always clear: to preserve the Republic against forces that would destroy it from within and from without.

That effort was a difficult, costly, and bloody one. Things were said and done during that effort that still reverberate through American society one hundred forty three years after it ended. Broad wounds left from that effort took decades to heal. Some scars are still visible, and some argue that those scars have not completely healed.

In 2008, new threats loom against the Republic both from within and without. Much like the government of 1861 discovered, the counters to these threats are neither always clear nor always the best. Unfortunately, as with all threats in all times, the government of the United States in 2008 must respond with the resources it has available to it, not the resources it wishes it had.

The chief role of the Executive of the government of the United States is to preserve the Republic. Without the Republic, there is no Constitution, there are no citizens, there are no liberties, there are no laws. In 2001, President George W Bush, seeking to fulfill his role against the threats he and his administration perceived as arrayed against the Republic, authorized the warrantless surveillance of individuals in the United States believed to be operating in a military capacity against the United States in cooperation with foreign enemies.

According to the Congressional Research Service (.pdf, 44 pages), every President since Franklin Roosevelt has asserted the right to and used warrantless surveillance against perceived threats to the Republic. Since the Carter administration, warrantless surveillance has been a regular part of every administration’s actions to counter terrorist threats. Warrantless surveillance against agents of foreign enemies is a well established and well documented method for countering the threat these agents possess.

The matter at hand in the several posts on A Host of Contributing Factors has been whether or not the President violated established law by using warrantless surveillance to gather information on the activities on fundamentalist Muslim jihadis working on behalf of al Qaeda and other similar organizations and--I am speculating--working on behalf of some nations against the United States.

Empirically, I do not believe this violation has occurred, for the very same reasons that Lincoln, Roosevelt, Carter, Clinton, and Bush did not believe they had occurred. I believe these violations have not occurred because there is a well-established and historic body of evidence saying that the current administration has acted in accordance with the actions of many previous administrations in dealing with threats against the Republic in times of crisis.

I believe that the current problem that lies before the administration and Congress is that the current body of law that exists to describe the bounds of this well-established and historic authority of the President did not anticipate the contradictions within that body of law itself. A particular portion of this contradiction is granting immunity to telecommunications providers when this authority is exercised. This immunity is important not just to protect telecoms from liability for cooperating, but also to prevent the disclosure of sources, methods, and means in open court, thereby compromising active intelligence operations and personnel.

I also believe that this method of collecting intelligence against foreign agents is the worst solution to a very complicated and ongoing problem. The administration has made countless decisions in implementing and carrying out this program that would have been far better done through better legislation and its accompanying oversight. I have and continue to advocate for those better solutions even as I grant that the existing solution must be allowed to continue until those better solutions exist.

Further, I believe these solutions are necessary because, like any conflict, the current conflict is not isolated to a single front. Certainly, fighting our enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq has substantially reduced those enemies’ ability to bring the fight to us, but they still have some capacity, and it is that capacity these solutions are designed to protect against. In the same way that Civil Defense was organized to combat the domestic threats posed by America’s enemies during World War Two and the Cold War, so these solutions in conjunction with law enforcement combat the domestic threats posed by our enemies now.

I think the problem that has presented itself in the warrantless surveillance debate and is repeated in so many of the debates surrounding the actions of the current administration since 2001 is that one side in the debate typically demands that the other side concede or agree to some significant point before any further debate can be had. As a result, there is no opportunity to move beyond the point of concession because these are often fundamental points that the other side cannot concede.

I do not and will not concede that warrantless surveillance has violated the law, nor will I ask anyone who believes that such surveillance does violate the law to set aside that belief before I am willing to discuss better ways to solve the problems of collecting intelligence against foreign agents on American soil. I also grant, even with as strongly as I state my position, that I may still be wrong; however, I believe that the case for my being right is compelling and I will stick with it.

If those who believe that I am wrong wish to pursue their conclusion to its logical course, that is their right, even their Constitutional responsibility. I find that such a pursuit is destructive in a time of conflict, but I concede that our nation is capable of enduring even that kind of destructive behavior if it sets its mind to it.

In the mean time, my greatest wish is to move beyond the “Bush lied, broke the law, knows the size of my underwear…” debate to come up with solutions to the problems that remain whether anyone concedes or not. It is clear to me that our government and its supporting appendages in think tanks and like organizations are so fixated on one problem that no one is coming up with solutions. In the same way that the border with Mexico remains unsecured because of the Washingtonian fixation on comprehensive immigration reform, so the United States remains vulnerable to the actions of the agents of foreign enemies because one side of the debate wants someone to go to jail.

If someone going to jail is the solution to this impasse, then fine, I volunteer. In the meantime, let’s concentrate ourselves on finding solutions to this mess before it really does destroy the Republic.

-=DLH=-

Of laws and surveillance

2008-03-31T13:30:00.001-07:00

Now, O king, issue the decree and put it in writing so that it cannot be altered—in accordance with the laws of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be repealed."

Daniel 6:8

In his post “Code Violations”, Scott asked some pointed questions about the legality of the telecommunications companies’ cooperation with warrantless surveillance with regard to the law as contained in the United States Code. The appeal made in the post was, in my view, to the inviolate nature of the laws that these companies and the current administration purportedly violated and how this violation proves the wrongness of the activity.

Fortunately for us Americans, unlike the Medes and the Persians, our laws are not inviolate. They can be and are often changed for a variety of reasons. This ability to change our laws represents one of our greatest strengths as a republican democracy: the ability to adapt and change our governance to keep it consistent with the circumstances at hand.

When the current body of telecommunications and foreign surveillance laws were originally crafted, their writers did not anticipate the circumstances that currently challenge those laws. Those writers did not anticipate a situation where our intelligence agencies are a fraction of the size and budget that existed at the time the laws were crafted. Those writers did not anticipate a situation where an enemy was present on American soil in numbers sufficient to be a military threat.

Those writers and very few Americans anticipated a situation where 19 foreign militants would take advantage of the protection of those laws to strike and kill nearly three thousand of our fellow citizens. Since 9-11, attempts have been made to rectify the significant shortcomings those laws proved to have in fighting an enemy that is not a state and already among us, but those attempts themselves have failed to appreciate the sheer scope of the threat.

The result of this shortcoming has been that the current administration chose to more widely execute an already existing executive power. From the moment that decision was made, the administration, the legislators in oversight, and the professionals of the executive agencies knew this was an inoptimal decision that would have to eventually be resolved legislatively rather than executively. Before the existence of this temporary solution was made into a headline, the administration and the Congress were already working to resolving the problem.

Now, this resolution is stalled, not because it is unneeded, but because some want an admission that the original laws were broken. Some want the inviolate nature of the original laws to be confirmed before they can be amended to more adequately deal with the circumstances that actually exist now and were not anticipated when they were crafted.

Hypocritically, some of those who want this admission were involved in the crafting of the original laws, were aware of the temporary solution, were involved in the derailed solution, and were part of drafting the current compromise. What purpose does this appeal then serve? Not to make the law better, no to solve the problem, not to give the professionals the tools they need, but to score political points against an opponent that something was done wrong.

Even this desire to score political points would be forgivable if some kind of alternative was being offered, but instead the demand is that the inadequate laws be left in place and wrongdoing be admitted. Meanwhile, America’s enemies continue to exploit flaws in its own laws against it. How many political points are scored with dead citizens?

I know that there will be many, many people who disagree with my view. Some have gone so far as to declare the government the enemy because it violated the law, ignoring the damage the enemy has done exploiting the same. Nevertheless, the one option we do not have is to do nothing, because that option has already been proven not to have worked.

There are compromises that can be reached that would likely make everyone happy. Some options might even leave these much vaunted laws untouched. Of course, any of these alternatives cost the kind of money that very few seem to be willing to spend and require a political will of their own.

What remains is that inadequate laws governing telecommunications and foreign intelligence need to be amended to deal with the circumstances at hand. Will we manage to accomplish that task, or will our belief in the inviolate law simply make us victims of our own rigidity?

Deterrence the Third

2008-03-31T12:37:00.001-07:00

In previous posts, Scott brings up the interesting concept of deterring terrorism in part by engaging in a form of soft deterrence that turns the terrorist networks’ own communications tools against them. As characterized, I find that I disagree with the premise that fundamentalist Muslim jihadis can be deterred in this fashion for any meaningful length of time; however, I also believe that the idea of soft deterrence deserves further exploration as a concept.

The concept of soft deterrence against operational jihadis is flawed because it is so easily subverted by the jihadis themselves through the very kinds of countermeasures businesses and websites use every day to prevent the same kind of disinformation on their own networks. As part of a far larger countermeasure against jihadis, soft deterrence is a useful tool, but it will never be a tool that can be used alone.

This tool, however, can be an incredibly useful one if applied to a different part of the equation. As I have mentioned several times on this weblog, one of the goals that must be achieved in order to defeat fundamentalist Muslim jihadism is to deny the enemy a pool of recruits to recruit from. As David has pointed out previously on this weblog, there is a difference between a fundamentalist and a jihadi, and I believe that soft deterrence focused at that difference can work powerfully toward destabilizing the recruit pool using the very same methods being focused on active jihadis.

Despite the current more effective use of the media by the jihadis, the United States actually enjoys a significant advantage in the potential use of media targeted at fundamentalists who have not yet become jihadis. The existing problem is that advantage has not yet been employed. A focused effort on the part of the United States to target potential jihadis with an avalanche of counter information could help fatally destabilize the recruit pool, thereby denying active jihadis the ability to replace those lost to other, more active means.

Essentially, this means a widespread and focused advertising campaign focused at fundamentalist Muslims, particularly in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and places where people of those nations congregate designed to convince them that jihad does not further their goals of spreading Islam. If the United States cannot accomplish such a task, then what nation can?

In this way, I believe the tool of soft deterrence can be effective against jihadis, not by deterring the jihadis themselves, but by preventing them from being able to find more.

Deterrence II

2008-03-26T23:18:00.000-07:00

One of my daily rituals is to listen to the program "To the Point", hosted by Warren Alney and broadcast by NPR.

Alney read the article I linked to from the New York Times too and started asking questions, which ended up with a large portion of his show devoted to the topic. He certainly racked up a very interesting and enlightening series of guests to talk about it.

While it's billed as 'soft deterrence', by my read, what it really seems that they're up to is a basic psy-ops and disinformation campaign balanced with liberal doses of new works by prominent Muslim clerics who have changed their minds on the purpose and scope of Jihad as it is preached by the militants. Essentially muddling the internet communications network by making them all wonder which posts are real and which are disinformation. If you can make your target second-guess their every move... you win.

It's an interesting application of an old idea and made for an interesting show. I encourage all of you to click the link above and listen. The array of experts ex-CIA and ex-State Dept that he got on the show were illuminating and often frustrating. I'd be curious to hear the crew's take on things.

Deterrence?

2008-03-23T03:56:00.000-07:00

I posted this in the depths of the comments behind my last post and it passed without comment, by which I take it no one saw it, so I shall post it again out here. I find the idea vaguely intriguing and certainly would like to hear others' thoughts on the new tool in the box... so to speak.

Deterrence? For terrorist networks? Sure, why not?

Code Violations...

2008-03-23T02:13:00.000-07:00

I have to admit, I find it all a little confusing. At the very least I'm experiencing a bit of rhetorical whiplash trying to parse the dialog coming out of Washington.

For the past few years we've heard the collected conservative members of the United States congress practically threatening to tar & feather anyone who mentions the word amnesty with regard to illegal immigration...

"…We will not grant amnesty to illegal aliens in this Congress or, hopefully ever again. We did that once. Everybody said it was a one time deal. We were to never do it again. The problem with doing it was we reward people who violated the law. We reward people who came into the country illegally.”
- Senator Phil Gramm, (R-Texas)

“I thought then [1986] that taking care of three million people illegally in the country would solve the problem once and for all. I found out, however, if you reward illegality, you get more of it." - Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)
(Quoted in the New York Times)

These are only two that I found when I looked. There are more, lots and lots more. Those two aren't the only ones reciting this mantra or one like it. Anyone who broke ranks was vilified. Even the president. It damn near derailed John McCain's hopes for the White House and might yet. I talk to people all the time, conservatives who are still pissed at him for crossing the aisle.

But that's not the half of it. We were repeatedly warned of the dangers inherent in amnesty, in the rewarding of those who break the law by allowing them to get away with it. And to be frank, it wasn't just the Republicans. This is a bucket of tar that spared few politicians and just about everyone had a slightly feathery look about them at the time... such were the prevailing winds in Washington. But I digress. What I want to focus on here is the sentiment: 'If we let them get away with it... what's to keep them from doing it again?'

That's a hard line, a conservative line. And though I disagree strongly with most of the rhetoric about immigration, at least I can respect a principled stance. And I'm not immune to the conservative thought process here... laws exist for a reason. They're the guideropes that show you the edge of the cliff. If you step beyond this point you're Wile E. Coyote. If you step across the barrier and don't fall... why wouldn't you cross the barrier again? Hey mom! See what I can do?

Look ma! No consquences!

So - somewhat related to our debate here of late - you can understand my confusion when I see that there a Conservative push underway to grant an amnesty by applying retroactive immunity to the telecoms after they violated the laws? Not once, but literally millions of times? Each time carrying a specified penalty under federal law.

USC Section 18,2702 and 2703 lay out the parameters in which a telecommunications company whether internet, wireless or land-based may share information in their possession or moving across their equipment with the government. And it's a pretty clear law...

"A governmental entity may require the disclosure by a provider of electronic communication service of the contents of a wire or electronic communication, that is in electronic storage in an electronic communications system for one hundred and eighty days or less, only pursuant to a warrant issued using the procedures described in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure by a court with jurisdiction over the offense under investigation or equivalent State warrant."
usc sec 18, 2702 - Cornell Law usc sec 18, 2703 - Cornell Law

So what is in that law that's supposed to make me want to give them a pass? They stepped off the ledge... why shouldn't I want to see them hold up a little sign that says 'Yipe!' and then plummet to the desert floor below?

They might be able to argue a case under 2702, subsection c4, but in order to prove it there needs to be an adjudication by the judiciary and the rest of the two codes are demonstrably written to prevent just such a deviation from the law.

There are laws on the books for a reason, not least of all because information has value. The SEC has an entire body of case law governing who can know what, when and what you can do with what you know for exactly this reason. Information is money. It's also power of a more ephemeral kind, as the columnist at Wired said, and the disparity of power felt by a citizen when they are dealing with someone who knows everything about them when they have no idea who has their information or what uses it's being put toward... well, it isn't going to make us feel safe & secure so much as violated. So the laws were broken.

And because the bulk of information that flows across the electronic hubs of our nation's telecommunications array is unprecedented, and if you're trying to 'find out who the bad guys are' it's a daunting task. I get that, I really do. But I keep coming back to a single salient question... why cut out the judiciary in the first place?

The telecoms should have demanded the legally mandated subpoenas. Because they didn't, they're in legal jeopardy. But I don't buy the argument that if we don't indemnify them after the fact they won't cooperate in the future... in fact, they'll just adhere to the laws. Like they were supposed to do in the first place. If some nice person in a snappy government suit shows up with a writ, you bet your bippy they're going to cooperate... because they won't have a choice. And they will be protected by the code they adhered to...

"No cause of action shall lie in any court against any provider of wire or electronic communication service, its officers, employees, agents, or other specified persons for providing information, facilities, or assistance in accordance with the terms of a court order, warrant, subpoena, statutory authorization, or certification under this chapter."
USC 2703 e

That is how you protect yourself and your shareholders from litigation. You obey the law and the law protects you. You step across the line and... Wile E. Coyote time.

And I'm still wondering and no one has yet answered me... why didn't the NSA just ask for a legal finding on what they were up to? How again did a FISA hearing somehow impede them from protecting us? Before they built a secret router into AT&T's facility to monitor internet traffic (Hi guys!), before they asked (politely, I'm sure) for the 'largest database ever assembled' to thumb through for information... where was the judge in all this? The laws of our land demand one. Explicitly. Do they think Al Qaeda has infiltrated the Federal Bench? Or do they just see the judiciary as a hurdle to be cleared or gone around so they can do their jobs as they see fit...

I've told you most of what I think on the subject of FISA and warrantless wiretaps, not to mention combing the calls and internet postings. But a subject we've largely ignored is the Telecom issue and I think it needs to be addressed because I - for one - am angry at the flagrant abuses I see in all this. The lawbreaking was so profound and the audacity of the legislators trying to double-talk and pretend that it's ok sickens me. Because, as the distinguished gentleman from Iowa reminds us "if you reward illegality, you get more of it."

War is hell

2008-03-19T13:45:00.001-07:00

March 19^th, 2008 is the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by a coalition of military forces led by the United States. Today is the fifth anniversary of an odyssey for people around the world into the nature of politics, religion, war, patriotism, and the role of powerful nations in the ever-merging global community everyone calls home.

The conflict in Iraq has brought home the nature of war and its consequences in a way that has never been experienced before. The ubiquity of the 24-hour news cycle and the internet have allowed war to be brought to televisions and computers, even cell phones and car navigation systems.

What this exposure has revealed is a truth that has been known to soldiers since the beginning of time: War is hell. Whatever the reasoning and justifications, war is immoral, irrational, and inhumane. War causes people to do unspeakable things to other people. War causes people to dehumanize, brutalize, maim, and kill other people. War is hell.

There has been a lot of visceral reaction to the war in Iraq. Citizens of the United States and the world have been forced to see things most of them never wanted to see. Everyone has learned of war’s depravity, and most have come to realize just how thoroughly they hate war. Quite a few have decided that they will invest a great deal of themselves in stopping this war before it can harm anyone else.

Yet, war is hell. It does not go away just because someone wishes it to. War has causes and effects that reach far deeper and further than the lens can see or the pen can pierce. Wars sometimes are easily started, but few are finished easily or cleanly. More often than not, one war begets another, then another.

Perhaps it is fair to say that war is the final expression of all that is wrong with humanity. Humans are ignorant, selfish, twisted creatures who want everything they want but are unwilling to accept the consequences. Perhaps war represents the last way to avoid those consequences before self-destruction. War reveals humanity to itself, and the view is always horrifying.

War is hell, and what remains is to find the path back from its depraved depths. That path is neither clear nor easy, anymore that the path to it proved to be. In Iraq, as in every other war that has ever been fought, these realities prove to be true, even if they are ignored.

Therefore, the only way is forward. The past is done; the depravity of war has already been unleashed. What is done in the present is what sets the course for the future. However the war in Iraq is finished, there will be consequences. The only question that remains is what those consequences will be.

And those consequences carry their own threat. The war in Iraq did not happen in a vacuum, whatever the truth of its causes may have been. It will not end in a vacuum either, but how it ends will determine whether the threat of war remains.

War is hell. Will that fact be a guide or a promise? What is done in Iraq from this day forward will be the judge.

-=DLH=-

Cross-posted on Dennis L Hitzeman’s Worldview Weblog

Death and Taxes...

2008-03-18T07:33:00.000-07:00

By the way... I think I'm beginning to understand why Denny gets that glint in his eye whenever the tax issue comes up. I've been helping my parents research some Ohio tax questions regarding my grandmother's estate and ya'lls tax system has a serious infestation of the Byzantine.

The whole time I'm reading these things, my grandma's voice keeps whispering in my ear, a favorite expression of hers from years gone by... Oh, for the love of Ned!

(I never found out who this Ned was, but apparently he shared grandma's general dismay with all things that were too convoluted for their own - or anyone else's - good. Like the Ohio state tax system.)

Rule Number One Of Pillow Fight Club...

2008-03-15T21:22:00.000-07:00

Screw finding common ground; let's fight!
http://www.pillowfightclub.org/

Sacrifice

2008-03-14T22:00:00.000-07:00

PART I
Enemies Foreign and Domestic

The United States is an idea. An idea enshrined in the document that frames it's ideals and protects the people from the government meant to serve them. The United States and our Constitution are an idea worth dying for. So it says in the oaths taken by every soldier and every elected official since it was ratified in 1787. Every fourth January 20th (formerly March 4th), the president-elect becomes president only when he places his hand on the Book and swears this oath before the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court and the assembled public...

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

In order to become a citizen of the United States of America, each immigrant must raise their hand before a duely-appointed official and state the following oath:

I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.

I find it distressing, demoralizing, and deplorable that we ask of the immigrant what we're not willing to give of ourselves. But I'll get to that in a minute.

I often hear - as I have here from Denny a few months back - that the opponents of the excesses of the current administration and those who would oppose the actions supposedly taken in the name of our protection need to 'grow up'. That the pragmatic approach is the only one that makes sense. Frankly... those are fighting words. And the assertion is patently false. I posit instead that those who think that we need to surrender to the terrorists by allowing them to undermine our most basic principles and persuade us through the threat of actions to turn our republic into a police state, handing over vast and unchecked powers to the government... they are the ones who are refusing to make the grown-up choices. All the worse, I find that by refusing to engage fully in this debate, I have certainly been immature, but no more.

As such I am not ready to seek the middle ground for I have yet to fully speak my piece. I've held back to this point because of the very things you recently invoked in your 'finding common ground' post, and I find it is not to my credit. You were trying to tone down the rhetoric, remind us we're all friends here. And I applaud that. We can continue this in the spirit of friendship, that's fine.

But where are all the heroes?

My grandpa Perkins was a great man in a quiet unassuming way. Chris will attest to that. A decorated war hero. Won the bronze star. During fighting on Luzon during the liberation of the Philippines, a unit of my grandpa's battalion was pinned down by Japanese fire. It was a bloodbath. Men were wounded, dying, and there was a crossfire with wounded men lying beneath the arcing streams of gunfire crisscrossing the jungle clearing. Grandpa didn't hesitate. He crawled in on his belly and dragged a half dozen or more men to safety, going back into the firefight repeatedly to get the next guy until the last guy was out. He had a wife at home. If he'd been shot, my dad and my aunt wouldn't exist today and the world would be the poorer for it. But he was willing to risk life and limb. For his buddies. For those who died at Pearl. Because the president told him to. And because he took an oath to defend America and the Constitution.

I look around me at the America that has arisen in the wake of the latest assault on our country and I want to cry. I cannot believe for a moment that my grandpa, my hero, would approve of the torture of enemy soldiers in our hands. I cannot imagine that he would approve of the conduct of the country as it faces this threat. And I cannot help but wonder how I - who am not in the military or part of the shooting-portion of this war - how I am living up to his example... and how I am not.

The arguments for allowing the broadening of police and surveillance powers to the government are so often 'to protect us' and 'because they'll get us if we don't' or other similar arguments. Because if we don't... people will die. And I agree. If we don't allow the FBI, NSA and CIA to have vast and unfettered power, access to every minutia of our daily lives, then people will die.

The pragmatic choice, the choice of the moment, the obvious choice is to hand the executive branch all the power they can fit in their pockets and hide under our beds waiting for them to blow the all-clear. It's still the wrong choice. Because that's exactly what terror is intended to do. Change the people it's aimed against. Whether we capitulate or not, it's aim is to change the playing field, provoke us, make us retaliate in kind, get dirty, fight their way, change what it is that makes us Americans, that makes us not like them.

But people will die.

Yes. They might. That doesn't make torturing detainees the correct choice. It doesn't make setting aside the ideals and the ideas of the America that my grandfathers fought for the correct choice.

It doesn't ok torture.
It doesn't ok illegal and amoral behavior.

And we are not absolved of the sins committed on our behalf and at our behest simply because it seemed like the right choice at the time. Because someone might die if we don't allow it. Yes, they might. And it might be someone I love. It might be me. And I accept that. I'm a citizen. And as such I "support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by law..." And that means even unto death. Without blinking. Without shirking. Without ceding the high ground to my enemies or giving in to their aims to change what makes us not like them.

This is a war about ideals. If it's a global war on Fundamentalist Militant Islamic Fascists or not, it has become a non-shooting civil war of sorts for our own country, a war between the needs of the now versus our contract with the future, our constitutional ideals and the backbone of what made us who we are... were.

I look at my government's actions and I am ashamed. I feel sullied by the acts undertaken on my behalf, bloodied by the innocents dead on 9/11, yes, but soiled by the actions taken by the administration in my name - and allegedly on my behalf - since then. And the two do not equate. I don't care what we're supposedly fighting for.

Denny's right. We need to empower the clandestine forces to act on our behalf. We need common-sense protections and laws that allow the protection of our homeland from the dangers of the world at large. I'm not advocating that we stand aside and look while another airplane ploughs into another building. But such laws and such agencies CANNOT act in an atmosphere without checks and balances. And they cannot sacrifice what they are fighting for in order to win the fight.

Do I think the rest of America agrees with me? That we're all willing to die for the ideals and ideas that have lit the world for over two centuries? No. But then, some people believe that a lapel pin is all it takes to be a patriot.

Nobel Laureate Hans A. Bethe once famously noted (regarding war with H-bombs), "If we fight a war and win it... what history will remember is not the ideals we were fighting for but the methods we used to accomplish them. These methods will be compared to the warfare of Genghis Khan who ruthlessly killed every last inhabitant of Persia." The same can be said of our current course. And it is incumbent upon every citizen sworn of the United States to shoulder their share of that burden.

I find the current debate about warrantless wiretapping and the illegal behavior of the current administration to be part of a larger and far more important debate. And I fear that in the focus on minutia and pragmatism the larger debate is getting obscured.

Our constitution isn't a contract we make with ourselves, it's a contract we make with our kids and our grandkids. We can bequeath to them a country proud and free, protected by a government of, by and for the people, or we can bequeath to them the first tentative steps toward authoritarianism and darkness.

The first step to fighting a war against "Terror" is to stop being afraid.

PART II
The Way It Is As I See It...

We live in a time of vast and far-reaching challenges to our republic. But the greatest threats are not from without, but rather from the manner in which we are reacting to those threats and what it is doing to us as a country.

What does it say to you when the FBI's own inspector general annually comes out with ever more appalling reports on the manner in which the agents of our government are abusing the powers vested in them? And some that most certainly were not. We see our government taking more and more power for itself, law enforcement essentially issuing their own subpoenas on-spec with no oversight, no checks and balances. And now they want more power with less oversight.

The Attorney General of the United States of America has refused to enforce Congressional subpoena and censure, precipitating a constitutional crisis that has yet to be resolved as two branches of our government vie against one another. By refusing the mandate of the constitution for checks and balances and oversight, the executive is shaking the foundations of our country when we can ill afford to do so. As they keep reminding us, we're at war, and we can't afford these distractions. No. Before you ask, no, I do not hold the congress accountable for the crisis. For once, I think they're doing what they're supposed to, exercising oversight. Too late, I fear and for the wrong issue, but something is better than rubberstamping the executive's whims.

I feel this is further compounded by Mukasey taking the chair but refusing to repudiate his successor's arguments for the legality of a practice pioneered the the Inquisition. And I refuse to vote a man for the presidency when he, an officer in our armed force who was captured, imprisoned and tortured as a POW in Viet Nam, who has vehemently opposed such practices has now reversed himself as long as it's the CIA and not the army doing it. ("Abusive interrogation tactics produce bad intel, and undermine the values we hold dear." -John McCain, 2005) Torture's ok for you, but not you. If the CIA gets the bad intel from torturing detainees in black sites, that's ok. As long as it's not Our Boys doing it...

The mistreatment of prisoners harms us more than our enemies. I don't think I'm naive about how terrible are the wages of war, and how terrible are the things that must be done to wage it successfully. It is an awful business, and no matter how noble the cause for which it is fought, no matter how valiant their service, many veterans spend much of their subsequent lives trying to forget not only what was done to them, but some of what had to be done by them to prevail.
- Senator John McCain, Newsweek Op-Ed, 2005
(linked above)

It's pathetic. And in case you had any doubts, this is when he lost all hope of my vote.

We live in a time of constitutional crisis, when the vice president is operating under the illusion that he is a fourth branch of government and a law unto himself (since no laws apply to this fictitious fourth branch) with vast extra-constitutional powers.

We live in a time when dangerous precedents are being sought and set regarding the extra-constitutionality of presidential powers, of the Executive branch as a law in and of itself and of military bases as living outside the scope of federal law governing the manner and conduct of those who reside there or are held there. The president has spent his entire presidency shoring up the belief that he is a law unto himself, that he can create, ignore and set aside laws and policies both foreign and domestic without recourse to constitutional channels. Vast extra-constitutional powers that include the ability and right to choose which laws he shall enforce, the right to act in a complete blackout from congress and the people who elected him. A man who has repeatedly attacked the separation of powers encoded in the constitution and in many ways failed to live up to an oath we all watched him take. Twice, God help us.

This is a time when heroes are needed. Men and women willing to face the fire, willing to shoulder the burdens of life in an uncertain world. Citizens willing to sacrifice all for the ideals and to set aside the terror engendered by that horrible act on that fateful day. America changed that day, yes, but not for the better.

PART III
So... Now what?
There isn't anyone in the political arena who speaks to these issues adequately. Not one. Because no one wants to hear it. No one wants to think about what it really means to fight a war, not at the mall, or in Iraq, but in our own hearts and minds, knowing that it might mean our fellow citizens might die horribly before our very eyes... that we might be sacrificing ourselves for a higher ideal.

As Denny has noted, our diplomatic corps is woefully anemic. Our foreign policy has been a mess for years. And our once mighty economy is coming down around our ears... and now here I stand, talking about sacrifice. Real, honest-to-God sacrifice... or the potential thereof.

I'm willing to die for this country. I'm willing to risk it all to save something worth the sacrifices of my forebears, worth the risks endured by the immigrant who threw it all away to sneak aboard that ship and come here illegally. Just as they were, so am I.

We make dangerous decisions without thinking forward to the time when those empowered will be asked to return those powers to us. I hear confident speech that the government works for us, they'll do what I ask or I'll vote them out. Good luck. I am not so optimistic. Every legal decision to uphold this implacable erosion of freedoms and protections from search and seizure, every time we hand more power to the government, it gets harder to take it back. The courts can't help us if we keep handcuffing them by removing them from their constitutional role of oversight. And the principles of stare decisis we heard about so much during the Supreme Court nominee hearings awhile back are very real, and those alone make these decisions perilous. Future attempts to roll back such expansions of surveillance powers are eroded with every law and decision affirming this. When the time comes... how will we get back what we have so blithely given away?

Our nation is risk-averse. We're coddled and spoonfed. And we'd rather take the surety of the current course than plot a new one so uncertain as what I've been talking about here. And my vision is a worst-case. I'm not advocating throwing it over and letting them come... we'll fight them on the streets of New Jersey and Deleware. I'm advocating a real view of what we're talking about and assessing what has already been sacrificed to get it for us, and whether we - as a nation - are really, truly willing to throw it away in the throes of the current conflict.

Our grandparents are called the "Greatest Generation" and indeed there were giants in their midst. Men and women of stature and integrity. There was also Joe McCarthy and the travesty of HUAC and the Red Scare and all the rest.

Or forebears have made manifold mistakes. Each generation compounding them as they think of the now and put off 'til tomorrow what we should pay for and do this day. This is manifest in our debt, in our crumbling infrastructure, in the deplorable waste and embarrassing contempt our elected officials show for us, the electorate that put them where they are. Our dismantling of the intelligence gathering apparatus and our inward navel-gazing that has allowed so much unrest to fester in the world when we could have done something about it... or at least kept a closer eye on it so we would see it coming.

Our country's history since 1945 is a litany of unbelievable potential largely gone unrealized. As great as we became, we could have been better and I find that sad. Fellow citizens and closely-held freedoms cast aside in the interests of the moment. And that is what is being asked of us once again. A new era of fear and surveillance. Of being allowed to hide from the unknown until someone in a government-issue suit sounds the 'all clear'. It took an act of greatness to set aside HUAC, heroism on the part of those who found themselves at the nexus of a historical moment doing the hardest thing a human can do... make the right decision. The decision that sets aside the certainty of personal safety in the interest of preserving our integrity.

We can fight this war with honor and inside the rule of law. No one has yet convinced me that the loose constraints of the FISA courts place an undue burden on law enforcement and intelligence gathering.

Denny's first real post on this site asked "Where Are the Heroes?" Where are those willing to die that others might live, that others might be free? I ask again. Where is the informed citizenry raising their fists to the sky, saying "We will not let them change us! We will fight with honor and we will win with honor?"

My forefathers did not sacrifice so much to preserve what we have only for me to buckle to the pressures of the present and set aside the promise of the future. I am here to keep the pact we have made with the future. A promise enshrined in the constitution - with all its flaws - a promise not to me, but to my nephews and children yet unborn (God willing). It is something I am willing to fight for. Something I am willing to die for.

I am not a child. I do not need to 'grow up'. I don't need to be coddled, I do not need to have my patriotism defined for me. I know full well what I ask of myself and my fellow man. And I bear the full and total responsibility of my actions and those undertaken on my behalf. I feel that the ideals and the aims of this country would be better served if the citizenry would wake the fuck up from our media-induced coma and believe in something... and fight for it.

There is risk. Some may die. But only so that others may truly live in freedom. In this country and others. I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.

Now you know where I stand. Now... only now can we see if there's a middle ground somewhere on which we can meet and agree. I don't know. You tell me.

Politics of everything but the point

2008-03-14T15:02:00.001-07:00

Here on A Host of Contributing Factors and across the media cyberscape, debates rage with incredible ferocity and vociferousness about politics and policy without ever really reaching what anyone can honestly call a point.

Here on AHOCF, the debate du jure has been over the legitimacy and consequences of warrantless wiretapping and its many associated concerns. Yet, somehow lost in this debate are the concerns that brought it to light to begin with. The result is that those concerns continue to boil and burn even as we beat ourselves to intellectual death by mischaracterizing another’s views, ignoring the subtleties of another’s points, and refusing to consider that at least some of our own views might actually be flawed, misguided, or just plain wrong.

What results is a debate sans points and many, many questions sans answers. Even in this little corner of cyberspace is gathered a group of people of considerable knowledge, intellect, and logic who have turned those gifts to digging trenches rather than building bridges. No one benefits from more fortifications, but everyone benefits from more dialogue.

I am just as guilty of contributing to this phenomenon as anyone, but I would like to believe that I can be part of the change needed to put and end to it. That change is why I started writing on the internet to begin with. That change is why I gravitate toward asking questions and trying to discern out points of commonality, as flawed as those attempts may be.

So, here again I offer an opportunity, not to beat to death another set of points that apparently cannot be reasonably resolved, but to find those points of commonality and create solutions that are actionable.

Let’s start with the debate du jure: I agree that warrantless wiretapping is not the best method to gather intelligence on enemies residing within the United States because of the risks involved in compromising the liberty of the innocent, however I also agree that the better methods of gathering that intelligence are either not available to our intelligence agencies or are now impractical or impossible to implement. Therefore, we Americans have a very clear problem: Our enemies are operating on our own soil and the apparent solutions to finding and stopping them are not the ones we really want to use. Our choices are clear: Use the methods we have available or find some other way.

Therein lies my question: I am not asking anything other than how do we do what needs to be done if we do not use the methods we have? I do not claim to have an answer, hence the reason that I have come down on the side of using the methods that are available. I believe, however, in the collected group present on this weblog, an answer can be discerned if we try. There is no deception or attempt to trap buried in this question, simply an honest attempt to coax out ideas that may be buried within the collected intellect of the group.

Of course, the moment I end this post, its interpretation is left with the reader. I hope the interpretation is as I intended it. Otherwise, all that is left is to try again.

Disparity of Powers – Redux

2008-03-13T13:01:00.000-07:00

Posters at this space have linked to what has now become a debate between two contributors to WIRED. David Brin has responded to Bruce Schneier’s article, “The Myth of the ‘Transparent Society” with his article entitled, “David Brin Rebuts Schneier In Defense of a Transparent Society.” Sadly, neither author hits the right mark.

The major failing in Brin’s response is the petulance he exhibits in response to an imagined attack on his book, The Transparent Society. Brin overstates Schneier’s assessment of societal transparency, characterizing it as a “major departure from our present social contract” even as he correctly quotes Schneier merely saying it would be “different than before.”

Brin’s pique continues when he accuses Schneier of suggesting “that transparency would end privacy, making everyone walk around naked.” Schneier does, indeed, say that under a system of mutual disclosure of information “[w]e both have less privacy,” but less privacy is not the same as no privacy. Further, Schneier never even implies we’d all be walking around naked, literally or metaphorically. Brin is clearly misusing Schneier’s doctor’s office example to create a “caricature” of Schneier’s position. The hypocrisy of this rhetorical maneuver is stunning because it comes in the very line of the article in which Brin accuses Schneier of caricaturing the argument in Brin’s book.

Perhaps these inaccuracies stem from a misunderstanding Brin brings to the table. He seems to think that Schneier has criticized The Transparent Society on the basis that it “doesn’t address ‘the inherent value of privacy.’” Brin quotes Schneier’s words accurately, but ignores the context. While Brin is busy being offended that Schneier missed the “several chapters” in his book that do address the value of privacy, he ignores the fact that Schneier wasn’t criticizing the book for this lack, but rather was criticizing the concept itself for not addressing the value of privacy. That may seem like a small distinction, but the fact that Brin misses it and doesn’t address the actual argument Schneier makes only makes it clear that Brin’s is a personal beef.

What Brin does very well is provide a wonderful analogy for his vision of a transparent society. Brin gives us the “restaurant analogy” that demonstrates the privacy to be found in a crowd and the resulting transparency of any efforts to eavesdrop on our conversations. It is only when we erect barriers between the tables, Brin says, that we allow others to listen in with impunity. In making this point, Brin seems to think he is shattering Schneier’s case when, in fact, he is supporting it. This unfortunate misunderstanding is the result of Schneier’s own inability to clearly articulate his point.

Schneier argues that transparency is ultimately an ineffective and perhaps unattainable goal because of “the crucial dissimilarity of power” that exists between “the governors and the governed.” He illustrates this point with an example of a police officer demanding to see your identification. A similar demand on your part for the officer’s identification, Schneier argues, “gives you no comparable power over him or her. The power balance is too great and mutual disclosure does not make it OK.”

Schneier is right to suggest that the power imbalance is a determining factor in the value of transparency to this situation. He misses, however, the flaw in his example. Not only is the power imbalance present, but there hasn’t actually been equal disclosure. While you may be in possession of the officer’s name and badge number, you also don’t have access to the wealth of information about the officer that he is privy to about you. It is not only power that is an issue in this example, but access to information.

Schneier opens himself to Brin’s attack because he fails to connect the dots. Schneier’s argument is quietly premised on the current power imbalance. His argument sounds as if he believes, as Brin accuses him, that “light should shine in one direction, from masses onto elites, not the other way around.” In fact, Schneier’s argument is that it should shine in both directions and as equally as possible. As he says, “All aspects of government work best when the relative power between the governors and the governed remains as small as possible – when liberty is high and control is low.”

Ultimately, though, Schneier’s argument is weakened because he does not state explicitly that because of the growing inequities of power, the light is becoming more unidirectional, shining from the government on the governed because bidirectional transparency is effectively being blocked by the use of the government’s power. As Brin might say, the government has erected “shoji screens,” the better to “press their ears against the screens and peer through the slits with impunity.”

This is clearly the case when the government seeks to gather information about its citizens through, as Schneier says, “Ubiquitous surveillance programs that affect everyone without probable cause or warrant” but refuses to submit its actions to any kind of review. Certainly, there are legitimate national security concerns in an open, transparent society, but when national security is used as a shield for blocking any attempts at transparency, the power imbalance is only exacerbated. This is ultimately Schneier’s argument, that “no one is safer in a political system of control.”

About that, he is correct, Brin’s accurate statements about our “openness experiment” and its imperfections notwithstanding. While he criticizes Schneier’s argument on all the wrong points, even Brin concludes, “All of the great enlightenment arenas – markets, science, and democracy – flourish in direct proportion to how much their players (consumers, scientists, and voters) know, in order to make good decisions. To whatever extent these arenas get clogged by secrecy, they fail.

That is the danger with which we are currently faced and the one about which Schneier is trying to warn us. Despite his misunderstanding of Schneier’s point, it is clear Brin essentially agrees with Schneier about the value of transparency. They just can’t seem to agree about whether or not we have a sufficient amount of light shining in both directions at the moment.

A Host of Contributing Factors

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Obama: 1, journalists: 0

Change = free money

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Shameless plug

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The Myth of Corporate Greed

The blame game

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Why the candidates’ views on military spending matter

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What can I do about it?

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Re: Journalistic Integrity, Media Bias, Objectivity, Professionalism, etc.

Against contempt

We're on the right track

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A Modest Proposal

Facts and Opinions

Balance Unlooked For

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An Interesting Anniversary

Who's not going to get bailed out?