« January 2006 | Main | March 2006 »
February 28, 2006
A Manifesto for Freedom
This manifesto is making its way around the blogosphere:
Together facing the new totalitarianismAfter having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.
We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.
The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.
Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man’s domination of woman, the Islamists’ domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.
We reject « cultural relativism », which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia", an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.
We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.
We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.
12 signatures
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Chahla Chafiq
Caroline Fourest
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Irshad Manji
Mehdi Mozaffari
Maryam Namazie
Taslima Nasreen
Salman Rushdie
Antoine Sfeir
Philippe Val
Ibn Warraq
Posted by Conor at 11:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
E-ducation
I suspect that online colleges will become increasingly popular in coming years. This may hasten that process:
It took just a few paragraphs in a budget bill for Congress to open a new frontier in education: Colleges will no longer be required to deliver at least half their courses on a campus instead of online to qualify for federal student aid.That change is expected to be of enormous value to the commercial education industry. Although both for-profit colleges and traditional ones have expanded their Internet and online offerings in recent years, only a few dozen universities are fully Internet-based, and most of them are for-profit ones.
The provision is just one sign of how an industry that once had a dubious reputation has gained new influence, with well-connected friends in the government and many Congressional Republicans sympathetic to their entrepreneurial ethic.
The Bush administration supported lifting the restriction on online education as a way to reach nontraditional students. Nonprofit universities and colleges opposed such a broad change, with some academics saying there was no proof that online education was effective. But for-profit colleges sought the rollback avidly.
Posted by Conor at 09:23 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
A Critique of Diversity
This is a rather eloquent critique of diversity as currently practiced:
Diversity practitioners claim that individual life experiences matter, and contribute to various positive outcomes. The claim is understandable; but the practitioners do not follow their own claim. Instead, individuals are stripped of life experiences that matter, and an externally-applied group identification is substituted. Worse, the group identification is often antithetical to reasoned judgment based on facts, logic, or even empathy.The group identification is applied involuntarily (that is, by force). It is an outrageous violation of its own fundamental principle, that individual life experience matters. It is a miscarriage of justice, in that benefits and penalties owed to individuals are applied by group identification, even if the individual did not participate in, or inherit the results of, the attributed behaviors and experiences of others.
Posted by Conor at 07:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Talking About Islam in Europe
In Holland it's come to this:
"Would you write the name you’d like to use here, and your real name there?� asked the girl at reception. I had just been driven to a hotel in the Hague. An hour earlier I’d been greeted at Amsterdam airport by a man holding a sign with a pre-agreed cipher. I hadn’t known where I would be staying, or where I would be speaking. The secrecy was necessary: I had come to Holland to talk about Islam...That seems an appropriate classification for free speech in Holland.The event was scholarly, incisive and wide-ranging. There were no ranters or rabble-rousers, just an invited audience of academics, writers, politicians and sombre party members. As yet another example of Islam’s violent confrontation with the West (this time caused by cartoons) swept across the globe, we tried to discuss Islam as openly as we could. The Dutch security service in the Hague was among those who considered the threat to us for doing this as particularly high. The security status of the event was put at just one level below “national emergency�.
Posted by Conor at 07:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Wednesday Column
In an essay about the threat that radical Islamic immigrants pose to Western societies Francis Fukuyama offers this sound analysis: “Governments need to clamp down on extremists and jihadists in ways that do not risk further alienating minority communities; their aim must be to integrate moderate Muslims better while avoiding a right-wing populist backlash.�
Let’s understand his advice by applying it to a hypothetical situation.
Imagine that another terrorist attack occurs within the United States, and that Islamic radicals are behind it.
The government might round up all those already under surveillance as suspected terrorists. It might round up all foreigners from terrorist sponsoring nations on expired visas. It might round up all foreigners from terrorist sponsoring nations. Or it might round up all immigrants from terrorist sponsoring nations, even those who are United States citizens.
Some Americans, supported most vocally by a faction on the political right, would argue that all immigrants from terrorist sponsoring nations should be detained and questioned—when the stakes are as high as American lives better safe than sorry, they’d argue.
Many would object, myself included, that profiling so broadly is wrong, and that all United States citizens possess constitutional rights prohibiting such a round-up regardless of their nation of origin.
Francis Fukuyama may well agree with that.
But if I’m interpreting his quotation correctly he’s saying something more: that rounding up, for example, all immigrants from terrorist sponsoring nations shouldn’t be done for practical reasons.
I think that is correct.
A great struggle now exists between radical Islamists who hope to destroy Western societies and the rest of us, who hope to defeat them. Anyone who pays attention to how many fellow Muslims these radical Islamists kill can attest to the fact that moderate Muslims and radical Islamists are antagonists.
Here’s the question: does the antagonism between those two groups surpass the antagonism between moderate Muslims and the west?
At present it does.
But if certain far right policies are adopted in the United States or Europe—if one’s core liberties are gravely threatened simply because one is a Muslim or comes from a terror sponsoring nation—Muslims will find themselves in an awful predicament.
They will be forced to choose between a society treating them unfairly despite their innocence… and Islamic radicals whose ideas they don’t share, but who offer refuge, support and protection.
What would happen if the United States or a Western European nation began rounding up all Muslims? All Muslims would suddenly find themselves antagonists to that nation, with moderates and radicals forced together by a society suddenly out to get them all.
The same phenomenon can occur on smaller scales.
If we wrongly imprison a dozen Somali immigrants from an enclave in Manhattan, other Somalis within that enclave will be more inclined to mistrust our government and its safeguards, and some will embrace radical Islam, however wrongly, as the appropriate response. It is human nature among some to act as though your enemy’s enemy is your friend, particularly when that supposed friend is offering help, as radical Islamists looking to recruit are apt to do. Other Somalis may only begin attending a radical mosque themselves; perhaps one among their sons, thus exposed to the radicalism, will be the only one to take up the radical jihad.
In this hypothetical, safeguards to ensure the dozen Somali immigrants wouldn’t have been wrongly detained would’ve eliminated one terrorist as surely as a CIA agent assassinating a terrorist somewhere in the world.
There is an important lesson here for our discourse on immigration and terrorism: aggressive action can and should kill terrorists, but reducing the number of terrorists can also be a matter of carefully ensuring that we do not meanwhile create terrorists by wrongfully persecuting Muslims.
Among some Americans today there is a certain antagonism toward anyone who condemns abuses like those that occurred at the Abu Ghraib prison, or who questions whether sufficient safeguards are in place to prevent people from being wrongly accused of terrorism, or who opposes racial profiling for terrorists.
It is said that these people are naïve, that they are valuing the rights of terrorists over the lives of Americans, or that they don’t understand what it takes to win the War on Terror.
One convincing counterargument—an entirely pragmatic one—is that carefully preserving the rights and liberties of Muslim Americans, apart from being the right thing to do, is the surest way of keeping moderate Muslims where their beliefs ought to put them: squarely allied with us against the terrorists.
That alliance helps our success in the War on Terrorism, as do those who cultivate it.
Posted by Conor at 04:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 27, 2006
Patents and Prosperity
Thomas Lifson has written an excellent essay on intellectual property and radical Islam.
Posted by Conor at 11:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
High and Inside
If there was any doubt that Roger Clemons raised his kids in a competitive household it has vanished:
KISSIMMEE, Fla. - Roger Clemens’ son took dad deep on the Rocket’s first pitch of spring training, crushing a trademark fastball over the left-field fence Monday.“That was probably one of the harder fastballs I cut loose,� Roger Clemens said after throwing to Koby and other Houston Astros minor-leaguers. “He got my attention.�
Then the Rocket got Koby’s. The next time his oldest son came to the plate, Roger buzzed him high and tight with another fastball. The younger Clemens dodged the pitch, then smiled at his father.
Posted by Conor at 06:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Road to Serfdom
Former Societ dissident Vladimir Bukovksy worries that the EU will eventually become a totalitarian government unless it is dismantled:
The ultimate purpose of the Soviet Union was to create a new historic entity, the Soviet people, all around the globe. The same is true in the EU today. They are trying to create a new people. They call this people “Europeans�, whatever that means.According to Communist doctrine as well as to many forms of Socialist thinking, the state, the national state, is supposed to wither away. In Russia, however, the opposite happened. Instead of withering away the Soviet state became a very powerful state, but the nationalities were obliterated. But when the time of the Soviet collapse came these suppressed feelings of national identity came bouncing back and they nearly destroyed the country. It was so frightening.
PB: Do you think the same thing can happen when the European Union collapses?
VB: Absolutely, you can press a spring only that much, and the human psyche is very resilient you know. You can press it, you can press it, but don’t forget it is still accumulating a power to rebound. It is like a spring and it always goes to overshoot.
PB: But all these countries that joined the European Union did so voluntarily.
VB: No, they did not. Look at Denmark which voted against the Maastricht treaty twice. Look at Ireland [which voted against the Nice treaty]. Look at many other countries, they are under enormous pressure. It is almost blackmail. Switzerland was forced to vote five times in a referendum. All five times they have rejected it, but who knows what will happen the sixth time, the seventh time. It is always the same thing. It is a trick for idiots. The people have to vote in referendums until the people vote the way that is wanted. Then they have to stop voting. Why stop? Let us continue voting. The European Union is what Americans would call a shotgun marriage.
PB: What do you think young people should do about the European Union? What should they insist on, to democratize the institution or just abolish it?
VB: I think that the European Union, like the Soviet Union, cannot be democratized. Gorbachev tried to democratize it and it blew up. This kind of structures cannot be democratized.
Posted by Conor at 05:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Great Triangulator
Andrew Sullivan wants to send Bill Clinton to Iraq to help avert a civil war between Sunnis and Shiites. It seems worth a try to me.
Posted by Conor at 03:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Flamenco in Seville and Beyond
When I lived in Sevilla I often visited a small dance studio where locals gave flamenco performances a few times a month.
Flamenco is huge in Sevilla, from the high-end clubs that cater to tourists throughout the Barrio Santa Cruz to Carbonaria, a bar and flamenco venue that attracts tourists and locals alike, to the many little known bars spread throughout the city where that distinctly Andalusian dance form is simply part of life's rhythm.
This week's New Yorker discusses the form flamenco performances now take in New York.
I took the photograph below at that neighborhood venue I mentioned--it's on Castellar near Calle Feria (vaguely near the Alameda de Hercules if you're familiar with the city).
Posted by Conor at 02:41 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Radical Islam and the Political Landscape
I think Francis Fukuyama is right about this:
The dire diagnosis of Europe's domestic situation is perfectly justified: Well before last year's riots, the French internal intelligence agency noted that there were dozens of neighborhoods where the French police dared not set foot. The problem is how to address the situation from here on out, and the basic issues are clear. Governments need to clamp down on extremists and jihadists in ways that do not risk further alienating minority communities; their aim must be to integrate moderate Muslims better while avoiding a right-wing populist backlash. Unfortunately, anyone looking for more specific prescriptions from America—where, after all, assimilation has a long history—will find more sound and fury than useful insights.I see the following dynamic: on the fringe right there are people willing to criticize radical Islam for the wrong reasons--they are racist and xenophobic, and their worldview is wrongheaded generally even if they are right that radical Islam poses a threat to Western Civilization.
In the vast middle most politicians are unwilling to condemn radical Islam or to vocally defend Western Civilization, though they know in their hearts that the former threatens freedom and basic human rights. They are cowed into silence by fear of appearing racist or xenophobic.
On the fringe left are those unwilling to criticize any culture or system of beliefs or ideas except whatever happens to predominate in the West. They label anyone who does criticize radical Islam, or who asserts the greatness of Western Civilization, as racist or ignorant.
In the United States and Europe there is a need for the vast middle to unite, articulating non-racist, non-xenophobic arguments for condemning radical Islam and defending Western Civilization. Moderate Muslims ought to be a part of this coalition.
Posted by Conor at 02:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Explaining VH1's Success
To understand the much-heralded renaissance of VH1, in which the network has gone from unwatchable to riveting, the place to start is with its inferiority complex.I think the place to start is Pop-up Video.
Posted by Conor at 01:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Costs Rising, Quality Falling
William Stuntz is pessimistic about the future of American universities:
Three key American enterprises have seen costs rise much faster than inflation over the past generation, and all three are enterprises in which America leads the world: housing, health care, and higher education. Houses have grown bigger and better, as anyone who has looked at contemporary bathrooms and kitchens knows. Doctors do things they could not imagine a generation ago. Costs may have risen faster than quality, but there is no doubt that quality has risen, and risen substantially.Today's college students do get a whole lot more for their money than their predecessors. The problem is that the new amenities include better dormitories, lavish college funded parties and expensive celebrity guest speakers... not a particularly better education. The hyper-specialization that has enabled advances in scholarship has simultaneously hurt undergraduates, who might know more about, for example, pottery in ancient Sumaria than the modern transition from representational to abstract art.Higher education is similar--on the cost side. Benefit is another story. There is little reason to believe that undergrads and graduate students are better educated today than a generation ago. More likely the opposite. Teaching loads of senior professors have declined; probably teaching quality has declined with it. The culture of research universities has grown ever more contemptuous of students, especially undergraduates, who are seen as an interruption of one's real work rather than the reason for the enterprise. Which means that, year by year, students and their parents pay more for less. That isn't a sustainable business plan.
Posted by Conor at 01:06 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Advice for the Host
Lee Siegel is giving Jon Stewart Oscar advice.
Posted by Conor at 01:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Self-Defense or Vigilantism
How far should citizens be allowed to go when attacked in a public place?
ATLANTA – Instead of embracing a citizen's "duty to retreat" in the face of a physical attack, states may be taking cues from the days of lawless frontier towns, where non-deputized Americans were within their rights to hold the bad guys at bay with the threat of deadly force.Its debates like this that highlight the cultural gulf between the United States and Europe, where such laws wouldn't even be discussed in polite company.First enacted in Florida last year, "Stand Your Ground" bills are now being considered in 21 states including Georgia, according to the National Rifle Association and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. The South Dakota senate approved one just last week.
These new measures would push the boundaries beyond the self-defense measures already on the books. Twelve states already allow citizens to shoot intruders in their homes, and 38 states permit concealed weapons in public places. The "Stand Your Ground" laws would allow people to defend themselves with deadly force even in public places when they perceive a life-threatening situation for themselves or others, and they would not be held accountable in criminal or civil court even if bystanders are injured.Laws putting more judgment in an individual's hands stem from people's increased concern about crime in their communities. Proponents say it helps shift the debate from gun control to crime control, and that these laws are part of the rugged individualism of Americans.
Posted by Conor at 12:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A Taliban Official At Yale
Did you know that an official spokesman for the Taliban now attends Yale? John Fund has objections.
Posted by Conor at 12:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 26, 2006
Mardi Gras
The New Orleans Times Picayune has lots of Mardi Gras coverage.
Posted by Conor at 11:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A War We'll Continue Losing Until It Ends
The Wall Street Journal has published an op-ed that questions the most ill-conceived war in American history: the War on Drugs.
Economist Milton Friedman predicted in Newsweek nearly 34 years ago that Richard Nixon's ambitious "global war against drugs" would be a failure. Much evidence today suggests that he was right. But the war rages on with little mainstream challenge of its basic weapon, prohibition.Read the whole thing.To be sure, Mr. Friedman wasn't the only critic. William Buckley's National Review declared a decade ago that the U.S. had "lost" the drug war, bolstering its case with testimony from the likes of Joseph D. McNamara, a former police chief in Kansas City, Mo., and San Jose, Calif. But today discussion of the war's depressing cost-benefit ratio is being mainly conducted in the blogosphere, where the tone is predominantly libertarian. In the broader polity, support for the great Nixon crusade remains sufficiently strong to discourage effective counterattacks.
In broaching this subject, I offer the usual disclaimer. One beer before dinner is sufficient to my mind-bending needs. I've never sampled any of the no-no stuff and have no desire to do so. So let's proceed to discuss this emotion-laden issue as objectively as possible.
The drug war has become costly, with some $50 billion in direct outlays by all levels of government, and much higher indirect costs, such as the expanded prison system to house half a million drug-law offenders and the burdens on the court system. Civil rights sometimes are infringed. One sharply rising expense is for efforts to interdict illegal drug shipments into the U.S., which is budgeted at $1.4 billion this fiscal year, up 41% from two years ago.
That reflects government's tendency to throw more money at a program that isn't working. Not only have the various efforts not stopped the flow but they have begun to create friction with countries the U.S. would prefer to have as friends.
As the Journal's Mary O'Grady has written, a good case can be made that U.S.-sponsored efforts to eradicate coca crops in Latin America are winning converts among Latin peasants to the anti-American causes of Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Their friend Evo Morales was just elected president of Bolivia mainly by the peasant following he won by opposing a U.S.-backed coca-eradication program. Colombia's huge cocaine business still thrives despite U.S. combative efforts, supporting, among others, leftist guerrillas.
More seriously, Mexico is being destabilized by drug gangs warring over access to the lucrative U.S. market. A wave of killings of officials and journalists in places like Nuevo Laredo and Acapulco is reminiscent of the 1930s Prohibition-era crime waves in Al Capone's Chicago and the Purple Gang's Detroit. In Afghanistan, al Qaeda and the Taliban are proselytizing opium-poppy growers by saying that the U.S. is their enemy. The claim, unlike many they use, has the merit of being true.
Posted by Conor at 04:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Anti-Semitism in France
Mark Steyn writes about anti-semitism in France:
In five years' time, how many Jews will be living in France? Two years ago, a 23-year-old Paris disc jockey called Sebastien Selam was heading off to work from his parents' apartment when he was jumped in the parking garage by his Muslim neighbor Adel. Selam's throat was slit twice, to the point of near-decapitation; his face was ripped off with a fork; and his eyes were gouged out. Adel climbed the stairs of the apartment house dripping blood and yelling, "I have killed my Jew. I will go to heaven."Here's hoping that more hate crimes against Jews aren't perpetrated in Europe, though I'm not optimistic.Is that an gripping story? You'd think so. Particularly when, in the same city, on the same night, a Jewish woman was brutally murdered in the presence of her daughter by another Muslim. You've got the making of a mini-trend there, and the media love trends.
Yet no major French newspaper carried the story.
This month, there was another murder. Ilan Halimi, also 23, also Jewish, was found by a railway track outside Paris with burns and knife wounds all over his body. He died en route to the hospital, having been held prisoner, hooded and naked, and brutally tortured for almost three weeks by a gang that had demanded half a million dollars from his family. Can you take a wild guess at the particular identity of the gang? During the ransom phone calls, his uncle reported that they were made to listen to Ilan's screams as he was being burned while his torturers read out verses from the Quran.
This time around, the French media did carry the story, yet every public official insisted there was no anti-Jewish element. Just one of those things. Coulda happened to anyone. And, if the gang did seem inordinately fixated on, ah, Jews, it was just because, as one police detective put it, ''Jews equal money.''
Posted by Conor at 04:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 25, 2006
Banned Books and City Lights Book Store
This is disappointing news about City Lights bookstore in San Francisco:
A FRIEND OF MINE took his young daughter to visit the famous City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, explaining to her that the place is important because years ago it sold books no other store would — even, perhaps especially, books whose ideas many people found offensive.What's repugnant is the extent to which the left today has become a political force for reducing freedoms rather than expanding them.So, although my friend is no fan of Ward Churchill, the faux Indian and discredited professor who notoriously called 9/11 victims "little Eichmanns," he didn't really mind seeing piles of Churchill's books prominently displayed on a table as he walked in.
However, it did occur to him that perhaps the long-delayed English translation of Oriana Fallaci's new book, "The Force of Reason," might finally be available, and that because Fallaci's militant stance against Islamic militants offends so many people, a store committed to selling banned books would be the perfect place to buy it. So he asked a clerk if the new Fallaci book was in yet.
"No," snapped the clerk. "We don't carry books by fascists."
Now let's just savor the absurd details of this for a minute. City Lights has a long and proud history of supporting banned authors — owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti was indicted (and acquitted) for obscenity in 1957 for selling Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," and a photo at the bookstore showed Ferlinghetti proudly posing next to a sign reading "banned books."
Yet his store won't carry, of all people, Fallaci, who is not only being sued in Italy for insulting religion because of her latest book but continues to fight the good fight against those who think that the appropriate response to offensive books and cartoons is violent riots. It's particularly repugnant that someone who fought against actual fascism in World War II should be deemed a fascist by a snotty San Francisco clerk.
Posted by Conor at 06:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Muslim Madonna
Andrew Sullivan reports on "the Muslim Madonna." It looks as though my satirical post is coming true sooner than I enpected.
Posted by Conor at 06:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Pill for Men?
Will there ever be a male birth control pill?
Lisbon - Pharmaceutical companies could produce a male contraceptive pill but do not, because men would refuse to take it, one of the pioneers of female oral birth control pills said in an interview published on Friday in Portugal.What say you, male readers? Would you take it?"It would be possible to make a male pill today. We know how hormones work and we could use the same principles that are used to make the female pill," Carl Djerassi, 82, told weekly news magazine Sabado.
Posted by Conor at 03:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Best a Man Can Get?
A man who knows his shaving samples the Gillette Fusion, the 5 bladed razor I'll one day try myself. Meanwhile this blogger says the blogosphere beats the mainstream media when it comes to razor reviews.
Posted by Conor at 02:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 24, 2006
The Prejudice Inherent in Multiculturalism
In the 1967 film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner actor Sidney Poitier plays an accomplished black doctor hoping to marry a beautiful young white woman…if only her staunchly liberal parents will approve.
The father of the bride respects his daughter’s fiancée, and doesn’t doubt that the young couple loves one another deeply. At first, however, he refuses to give his blessing, arguing that a bigoted society won’t accept their marriage.
“There'll be 100 million people right here in this country who will be shocked and offended and appalled and the two of you will just have to ride that out, maybe every day for the rest of your lives,� says Spencer Tracy, playing the role of the father. “You could try to ignore those people, or you could feel sorry for them and for their prejudice and their bigotry and their blind hatred and stupid fears, but where necessary you'll just have to cling tight to each other and say ‘screw all those people’!�
A modern viewer can’t help but feel gratified at how far society has progressed since those days. Today’s interracial couples may face difficulties, but nothing compared to what their predecessors faced even a generation ago.
At another point, however, I couldn’t help but feel pessimism.
“I love you,� Poitier’s character tells his father. “I always have and I always will. But you think of yourself as a colored man. I think of myself as a man.�
As modern America accepts immigrants from all over the world (and racial divisions remain even among those born here), it is as important as ever to think of ourselves as human beings rather than members of a racial group.
Yet a strain of thought exists—it is called multiculturalism—that encourages us to think of people whose race, religion or cultural background is different from our own as somehow essentially different from us.
Multiculturalists believe that even within our own country positive steps should be taken to keep different cultures from blending together. They believe that group rights often trump individual rights. They assume that a person’s race, religion and cultural background always says something important—something quintessential—about who they are.
Whether or not the individual considers his race, religion or culture a defining trait is never considered.
A passage I read in The New Republic this week explains this dynamic nicely.
“If a young girl in a conservative immigrant family wants to go out on a date with an English boy, that would certainly be a multicultural initiative,� Amartya Sen writes. “In contrast, the attempt by her guardians to stop her from doing this (a common enough occurrence) is hardly a multicultural move, since it seeks to keep the cultures separate. And yet it is the parents' prohibition… that seems to garner the loudest and most vocal defense from alleged multiculturalists, on the ground of the importance of honoring traditional cultures--as if the cultural freedom of the young woman were of no relevance whatever, and as if the distinct cultures must somehow remain in secluded boxes.�
In 1967 liberals watched Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and cheered the idea that secluding people into boxes due to their race is a wrongheaded approach to the world. Today a faction among liberals takes the contrary view—that enlightened people must view those whose race, religion or cultural background is different through the prism of that trait.
Perhaps a remake of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is in order. Will Smith can play a successful black doctor who wants to marry a Persian beauty whose immigrant parents, moderate Muslims both, fled Iran during the Islamic revolution. In this remake the parents, seeing the love that exists between Smith and his fiancée, can support the marriage immediately. Society can be on board too, with friends, neighbors and colleagues celebrating the engagement.
Meanwhile a leftist ethnic studies professor, an activist group composed of her students and a traditionalist Islamic advocacy group can object to the marriage, not because they fear for the couple’s happiness or society’s tolerance for their union, but because they prioritize maintaining distinct cultures above individual happiness.
Of course, I’m being naïve. These days Hollywood doesn’t produce films that challenge orthodoxies of though on the left. So let’s take it upon ourselves to reject the prejudices and stereotyping inherent in multiculturalism. I don’t know whether or not Sidney Poitier will be behind the effort. But his character in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner would’ve been.
Posted by Conor at 12:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 23, 2006
The Patriot Act &The War on Drugs
When the Patriot Act is criticized its proponents, usually Republicans, justify it by raising the specter of terrorism. We musn't fall into a pre-September 11 mindset, they say. Law enforcement needs new tools to keep America safe from Al Qaeda, because this is a new kind of enemy, we're told.
I agree that terrorism presents new challenges for American law enforcement, and that we might have to sacrifice some liberty to attain an acceptable level of security.
I'm sympathetic to those who worry about the Patriot Act, however, because Congressmen make statements like this one:
“The growing availability of methamphetamine is a form of terrorism unto itself,� Congressman Dent said. “This bill will help reduce the supply of this deadly drug by making it more difficult to obtain the ingredients necessary for production. It will also stiffen existing penalties for anyone caught producing or trafficking in meth."Funny thing, it frightens me to think of my next flight blowing up or a dynamite clad youth blowing himself up next time I see a band play at the House of Blues.
The growing availability of methamphetamine, however, doesn't scare me at all. It's too bad for those addicted to it. I'll be the first to tell them that developing a meth habit is an awful idea. But am I willing to curtail civil liberties to extend the drug war? Certainly not.
Neither are most Americans. That's why Congress is inserting this nonsense into the Patriot Act, a bill whose name grows more Orwellian each time a provision unrelated to terrorism is added in conference committee. The additions:
The Methamphetamine Epidemic Elimination Act, included in the conference report on H.R. 3199, the USA PATRIOT and Terrorism Prevention Reauthorization Act of 2005, will do the following to reduce the supply of meth and punish meth producers, traffickers, and smugglers:Yes, that's right: the Patriot act now has among its provisions restrictions on buying Sudafed over-the-counter.* Restrict the sale of precursor drugs (common, over-the-counter medicines used in the production of meth);
* Require exporters and importers to report on their traffic of precursor drugs to prevent diversion of these drugs to meth production;
* Toughen federal penalties for methamphetamine traffickers and smugglers as well as those who produce or deal meth in the presence of children.
Hit & Run touches on one irony of this legislation:
Ironically, some Democrats who objected to National Security Agency wiretaps in December actually championed provisions that step on privacy in the name of stopping meth. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, (D-Calif.), who voted for a filibuster after the revelation of the National Security Agency's domestic spying program in December, co-sponsored the CMA and helped insert it into the PATRIOT Act conference report after failed attempts to pass it through other legislation. The new provisions were stalled with the filibuster and temporary PATRIOT extensions, but now appear to be poised for passage with the compromise bill.When you're operating on the premise that the availability of meth is a kind of terrorism, I suppose it makes sense to keep track of who buys Sudafed--which contains an ingredient used to make meth--and to consider them terror suspects whose behavior justifies greater police scrutiny.The CMA would move cold medicines such as Sudafed behind the counter, on the grounds that their active ingredient, pseudoephedrine, is a potential meth component. In DiFi's words, the solution to this non-problem would include "requiring purchasers to show identification and sign a log book."
Once you sign for your medicine, your name becomes part of "a functional monitoring program" that would "allow law enforcement officials to track and ultimately prevent suspicious buying behavior of ingredients for meth production," according to a Feinstein press release describing a similar stand-alone bill.
Meanwhile those of us who haven't lost our minds would prefer that the government spend its precious intelligence resources tracking the other kind of terrorists--you know, the ones who fly planes into buildings and blow up pizzerias full of women and children.
This little kerfuffle also puts the controversy over the NSA wiretaps into a new perspective. President Bush justifies it by saying that the government only cares about listening to your conversations if you're engaged in behavior that endangers national security.
If these days we've set that bar as low as "buys Sudafed now and then" his explanation seems far loess comforting.
Posted by Conor at 08:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
One Foot In Ankle Deep Water, Other Foot in Mouth
New Orleans officials seemingly don't have that little voice inside their heads that tells them when to keep their mouths shut:
New Orleans doesn't want its poorest residents back — unless they agree to work.It's like the immigration debate, but with Americans.That was the message from three New Orleans City Council members who said government programs have "pampered" the city's residents for too long.
The news that some New Orleans City Council members weren't keen on the city's poorest returning home added another layer of discomfort in Houston, where local residents and elected officials alike have stretched to meet the needs of thousands of Louisiana residents in the months after Hurricane Katrina.
Chief among the complaints: Houston didn't discriminate when New Orleanians — from the poorest to the richest — filled this city's homes, hotels, motels and shelters. And Houston didn't flinch when nearly 100,000 evacuees needed subsidized housing for up to a year. So why, asked one Houston city councilman, are only the educated, healthy and employable welcome back in New Orleans?
Posted by Conor at 01:53 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
The Pathology of the Tehran Times
Yesterday I suggested that given the outrage seen in the Muslim world it would be interesting to see the reaction to mosque attacks in Iraq, where Shiite and Sunni Muslims are blowing up one another's holy sites and killing one another.
The Tehran Times takes up this issue:
The serious crime of the terrorists who bombed the holy shrines of the tenth and eleventh Shia Imams, Imam Hadi (AS) and Imam Hassan Askari (AS), on Wednesday in Iraq was an insult to the sanctities of all Muslims.Yep, that's right, they're blaming the Danes. The mind reels. (Hat Tip Andrew Sullivan)Undoubtedly, it is a new plot which first of all can be considered as the continuation of the disrespectful move of the European newspapers that published cartoons of the Prophet of Islam.
Posted by Conor at 01:50 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
A Press Failure?
Alan Dershowitz and William Bennett have written an odd-couple op-ed in the Washington Post asserting that the press has failed us throughout the Danish cartoon affair:
Since the war on terrorism began, the mainstream press has had no problem printing stories and pictures that challenged the administration and, in the view of some, compromised our war and peace efforts. The manifold images of abuse at Abu Ghraib come to mind -- images that struck at our effort to win support from Arab governments and peoples, and that pierced the heart of the Muslim world as well as the U.S. military.I think that last assertion is correct, and I wish more newspapers would admit that they haven't published the cartoons largely because they're afraid someone will end up dead if they do.The press has had no problem with breaking a story using classified information on detention centers for captured terrorists and suspects -- stories that could harm our allies. And it disclosed a surveillance program so highly classified that most members of Congress were unaware of it.
In its zeal to publish stories critical of our nation's efforts -- and clearly upsetting to enemies and allies alike -- the press has printed some articles that turned out to be inaccurate. The Guantanamo Bay flushing of the Koran comes to mind.
But for the past month, the Islamist street has been on an intifada over cartoons depicting Muhammad that were first published months ago in a Danish newspaper. Protests in London -- never mind Jordan, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Iran and other countries not noted for their commitment to democratic principles -- included signs that read, "Behead those who insult Islam." The mainstream U.S. media have covered this worldwide uprising; it is, after all, a glimpse into the sentiments of our enemy and its allies. And yet it has refused, with but a few exceptions, to show the cartoons that purportedly caused all the outrage.
The Boston Globe, speaking for many other outlets, editorialized: "[N]ewspapers ought to refrain from publishing offensive caricatures of Mohammed in the name of the ultimate Enlightenment value: tolerance."
But as for caricatures depicting Jews in the most medievally horrific stereotypes, or Christians as fanatics on any given issue, the mainstream press seems to hold no such value. And in the matter of disclosing classified information in wartime, the press competes for the scoop when it believes the public interest warrants it.
What has happened? To put it simply, radical Islamists have won a war of intimidation. They have cowed the major news media from showing these cartoons. The mainstream press has capitulated to the Islamists -- their threats more than their sensibilities.
Posted by Conor at 01:19 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Al Qaeda, Homeland Security Faltering
Austin Bay has excerpts of a letter from an Al Qaeda operative criticizing Osama Bin Laden. It suggests that the terrorist organization is plagued by setbacks--good news for the civilized people of the world.
And lucky for us that they are faltering, because America's homeland security efforts have been lackluster, to say the least.
As Peggy Noonan writes this week: "Look at the airports. Why would terrorists bother with seaports?"
Posted by Conor at 01:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Letters to the Blogger - Gay Adoption
In comments Brian Chadwick writes:
I think gays shouldn't be allowed to adopt to protect the child because kids can be very cruel, and growing up with two dads and two moms just seems kind of weird.I think Brian is correct that the children of gay parents are more likely to experience teasing at school.
But do we really want to enact adoption policies that hinge on how school kids will react to them?
After all, some kids will make fun of mixed race parents, overweight parents, nerdy parents, poor parents, parents who dress sloppily, parents who have bad teeth, orthodox Jewish parents, Muslim parents, parents who drive old, beat up cars, etc.
Should all these people be prevented from adopting?
Additionally, would you rather be raised by gay adoptive parents who your classmates make fun of but who love you very deeply... or by an orphanage or a succession of mediocre foster parents, some of whom couldn't care less about you?
That's the choice faced by many kids. I think the vast majority would choose the loving gay parents, ridicule by schoolyard bullies be damned.
Posted by Conor at 01:01 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Offensive Speech and How We Ought to React To It
I'm all for sensitivity when people interact with one another, and I doubt I've seriously offended many people in my personal life, if anyone.
Good manners. however, ought to be outside the realm of public policy. David Berstein articulates several sensible reasons why:
One price of living in a free society is having to tolerate those who intentionally or unintentionally offend others. The current trend, however, is to give offended parties a legal remedy, so long as the offense can be construed as "discrimination." Yet the more the American legal system offers people remedies for offense, the more they are likely to feel offended. This is true for two reasons. First, as economists point out, when you subsidize something, you get more of it. Therefore, if the legal remedies of antidiscrimination law, particularly monetary remedies, subsidize feelings of outrage and insult, we will get more feelings of outrage and insult, a net social loss. Second, economists have also noted the psychological endowment effect, which, in effect, means that people tend to consider something they own to be more valuable than it would be if they did not own it. Similarly, once people are endowed with a right, they tend to overvalue it and react passionately when it is interfered with.I noticed this phenomenon as an undergraduate--on campus these days hypersensitivity seems the norm.Unfortunately, Americans increasingly coddle and even reward the hypersensitive, perversely encouraging ever more hypersensitivity.
After much reflection I decided that often there's a good case for eschewing offense--or at least overblown offense--even to objectively offensive actions.
I remember, for example, a time when an unknown vandal scrawled the word "fag" in a shower stall. I find that epithet quite offensive, and I'd let anyone I heard using it know as much. My alma mater, however, reacted to the grafitti with three all campus e-mails, several meetings for students to air their hurt feelings, calls for mandatory sessions on tolerance and a general outcry.
My contention is that reacting to offensive speech in that way does too much to empower those who use it. A lone bigot shouldn't have the ability to upset large groups of people, to interrupt their lives, etc.
Thus the proper reaction to morally offensive speech is to forcefully articulate it's wrongheadedness, ignore the speaker and move on.
The opposite approach plays into the hands of bigots and provacateurs everywhere, people who deserve to be deprived of the attention they seek.
Posted by Conor at 12:29 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Are Conservatives Happier Than Liberals?
George Will thinks so:
Conservatives are happier than liberals because they are more pessimistic. Conservatives think the book of Job got it right (``Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward''), as did Adam Smith (``There is a great deal of ruin in a nation''). Conservatives understand that society in its complexity resembles a giant Calder mobile -- touch it here and things jiggle there, and there, and way over there. Hence conservatives acknowledge the Law of Unintended Consequences, which is: The unintended consequences of bold government undertakings are apt to be larger than, and contrary to, the intended ones.What's amazing is the faith liberals have in government despite its track record. They see Hurricane Katrina, for example, and conclude that more government resources should be devoted to disaster preparedness.Conservatives' pessimism is conducive to their happiness in three ways. First, they are rarely surprised -- they are right more often than not about the course of events. Second, when they are wrong they are happy to be so. Third, because pessimistic conservatives put not their faith in princes -- government -- they accept that happiness is a function of fending for oneself. They believe that happiness is an activity -- it is inseparable from the pursuit of happiness.
The right to pursue happiness is the essential right that government exists to protect. Liberals, taking their bearings, whether they know it or not, from President Franklin Roosevelt's 1936 State of the Union address, think the attainment of happiness itself, understood in terms of security and material well-being, is an entitlement that government has created and can deliver.
Many conservatives agree, but the primary lesson they take from Katrina is that it's a good idea to have bottled water, canned food, a flashlight and a gun on hand should a catastrophic disaster strike.
If it comes to that I think I know who will be happier in its aftermath.
Posted by Conor at 12:18 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 22, 2006
Dress Kevin
Experiencing empty nest syndrome? Help dress this man each day.
Posted by Conor at 01:53 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Stick Figure Cartoons Will Break My Bones But Bombs Will Never Hurt Me
In Iraq Muslim extremists are blowing up one another's Mosques:
SAMARRA, Iraq - Insurgents detonated bombs inside one ofYou'd think this would be an affront to the world's Muslims, evoking outrage and triggering protests across the Arab world. Apparently, though, this is more important.
Iraq's holiest Shiite shrines Wednesday, destroying its golden dome and triggering more than 90 reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques.
Posted by Conor at 01:49 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Citizen Justice in Venice, and Its Implications for America
If you've traveled around Europe you know that pickpockets are a scourge, and nowhere more so than in Italy. When my father came to visit me there last May, pummeling a pickpocket who tried to steal his wallet in the Rome metro with several body blows, I liked to think my family did its part to fight back against the pickpockets.
Now the Italians themselves seem to have joined the fight, thanks to
...a civilian antipickpocket patrol called Cittadini Non Distratti, or Undistracted Citizens. Members, who call themselves "Citizens," walk around Venice looking for pickpockets. As thievery spikes during Carnival, when tipsy tourists mob the streets, the group increases patrols. The Cittadini Non Distratti look for a number of giveaways. Most pickpockets are men, they travel in small division-of-labor teams behind tourists, they stop when tourists stop, and their eyes concentrate on vulnerable pockets and bags—not gondolas and pretty buildings. The presence of a teenager is another clue (minors risk lighter punishment). Sudden distractions are an even bigger tip-off: directions sought by a map-wielding questioner, food spilled on a tourist by an apologetic stranger, a heated argument that diverts attention.With significant reductions in pickpocketing what's not to like?More than 200 Venetians have paid a nominal fee for a Cittadini Non Distratti membership card (considerably fewer walk regular beats). The group's cat-and-mouse game is legal, as long as members are unarmed and grab suspects only after they've slipped a hand into another's pocket. They must then call the cops immediately.
The city has refused Cittadini Non Distratti's requests for official recognition and logistical support. "It's do-it-yourself justice; it's a negative gunslinger culture," says Giuseppe Caccia, until recently Venice's deputy mayor for social affairs. That remark belies what is likely a greater concern: embarrassment. City Hall officials privately acknowledge that the para-police group is bad PR, leading some to think that the city can't adequately protect Venice's lifeblood—its tourists.In a way this reminds me of the Minuteman patrols on the Mexican border. Citizens assist a law enforcement effort handled poorly by government; government gets angry.
As long as efforts like these don't morph into vigilante justice I'm all for them. The Italian critic in the story objects to do-it-yourself justice. When the alternative is thieves running free, however, do-it-yourself justice beats no justice at all.
Government officials who object to citizen patrols should realize there's an easy way to stop them: maintain a police force and presence that makes them unnecessary. Absent that, the civic impulse to fill a societal need is laudable, a point that seems to lost on those so enamoured with government that they object to any civic engagement aside from paying taxes.
We'd do well to remember that on Sept. 11, 2001, the only actors who successfully stymied the terrorists were regular Americans on board that plane over Pennsylvania--a group that combatted Al Qaeda more effectively that day than the entire federal government, despite the numerous warnings the feds had at their disposal.
Can an even more engaged citizenry help prevent future evils, from street crime to terrorist attacks? I think so.
Posted by Conor at 12:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Four Non-Blondes
In an entertaining photo essay Jack Shafer of Slate reflects on the predominance of blondes in the television news business.
Posted by Conor at 12:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Virtue of Self-Censorship
Robert Wright has written a New York Times op-ed arguing that the Muslim response to the Danish cartoon affair doesn't demonstrate as wide a chasm between our culture and theirs as it at first seems.
Posted by Conor at 01:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Ideas Matter
Armed and Dangerous writes:
Americans have never really understood ideological warfare. Our gut-level assumption is that everybody in the world really wants the same comfortable material success we have. We use “extremist� as a negative epithetic. Even the few fanatics and revolutionary idealists we have, whatever their political flavor, expect everybody else to behave like a bourgeois.We don’t expect ideas to matter — or, when they do, we expect them to matter only because people have been flipped into a vulnerable mode by repression or poverty. Thus all our divagation about the “root causes� of Islamic terrorism, as if the terrorists’ very clear and very ideological account of their own theory and motivations is somehow not to be believed.
By contrast, ideological and memetic warfare has been a favored tactic for all of America’s three great adversaries of the last hundred years — Nazis, Communists, and Islamists.
Posted by Conor at 12:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Cartoons Pit Muslim Against Muslim
The New York Times has published a must-read story about the Danish cartoon affair:
AMMAN, Jordan, Feb. 21 — In a direct challenge to the international uproar over cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad, the Jordanian journalist Jihad Momani wrote: "What brings more prejudice against Islam, these caricatures or pictures of a hostage-taker slashing the throat of his victim in front of the cameras, or a suicide bomber who blows himself up during a wedding ceremony?"Read the whole thing.In Yemen, an editorial by Muhammad al-Assadi condemned the cartoons but also lamented the way many Muslims reacted. "Muslims had an opportunity to educate the world about the merits of the Prophet Muhammad and the peacefulness of the religion he had come with," Mr. Assadi wrote. He added, "Muslims know how to lose, better than how to use, opportunities."
To illustrate their points, both editors published selections of the drawings — and for that they were arrested and threatened with prison.
Mr. Momani and Mr. Assadi are among 11 journalists in five countries facing prosecution for printing some of the cartoons. Their cases illustrate another side of this conflict, the intra-Muslim side, in what has typically been defined as a struggle between Islam and the West.
The flare-up over the cartoons, first published in a Danish newspaper, has magnified a fault line running through the Middle East, between those who want to engage their communities in a direct, introspective dialogue and those who focus on outside enemies.
But it has also underscored a political struggle involving emerging Islamic movements, like Hamas in Gaza and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and Arab governments unsure of how to contain them.
"This has become a game between two sides, the extremists and the government," said Tawakkul Karman, head of Women Journalists Without Constraints in Sana, Yemen. "They've made it so that if you stand up in this tidal wave, you have to face 1.5 billion Muslims."
The heated emotions, the violence surrounding protests and the arrests have sent a chill through people, mostly writers, who want to express ideas contrary to the prevailing sentiment. It has threatened those who contend that Islamic groups have manipulated the public to show their strength, and that governments have used the cartoons to establish their religious credentials.
"I keep hearing, 'Why are liberals silent?' " said Said al-Ashmawy, an Egyptian judge and author of books on political Islam. "How can we write? Who is going to protect me? Who is going to publish for me in the first place? With the Islamization of the society, the list of taboos has been increasing daily. You should not write about religion. You should not write about politics or women. Then what is left?"
While the cartoons have infuriated Muslims, the regional dynamics underlying the conflict have been evolving for decades, during which leaders have tried to stall the rise of Islamic political appeal by trying to establish themselves as guardians of the faith.
In the end, political analysts around the region say that governments have resorted to the very practices that helped the rise of Islamic political forces in the first place. They have placated the more extreme voices while arresting and silencing more moderate ones.
Posted by Conor at 12:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
What Does A Chinese Keyboard Look Like?
Slate explains.
Posted by Conor at 12:07 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 21, 2006
Shouted Down
A student at Pomona College, my alma mater, is criticizing the all too common campus occurence of guest speakers being shouted down by protesters:
I attended the debate on Guantanamo Bay last week, and I found myself confronted by something I find very disturbing: a “liberal� protest that ran counter to everything I love about liberalism. The protest, which interrupted the question and answer period of the event, was simply rude and counterproductive.Liberal students on college campuses are far out of the American mainstream on most issues. They can express their views only because people who disagree with them value freedom of expression and tolerate ideas they disagree with. How ironic that these same students, whose views would surely lose out if public discourse turned into a shouting match, do their best to turn it into just that.Now generally I’m all about the liberal protest. I grew up in San Francisco. I’ve been called a terrorist by passersby while marching past police in full riot gear. I love being a liberal because to me being liberal means being open minded and questioning everything: the government, the army, the media, social structures, religion, prejudice, and, above all, myself. Which is why I enjoyed listening to John Yoo so much: he made me think and doubt some of my past assumptions. The question and answer portion presented an opportunity for faculty and students to participate in a dialogue with the presenters. The protesters interrupted this dialogue. They halted the learning process. They purposely stopped a process of discussion and questioning, the essence of liberalism, to make the point that some people here don’t like Bush. What a shocker. Somehow I think Yoo already knew that. And so I have a simple message to those protesters: stop making me look bad. Your actions, made in the name of liberalism, degraded liberalism and the value of protests. Your actions exemplify the type of liberalism that many resent here at Pomona, a liberalism that jumps down the throat of any conservative sentiment and stifles open discourse that everyone could learn from. I’ve seen this liberalism in classrooms, and I’m ashamed that the presenters had to witness it as well.
UPDATE: This piece suggests that the bulk of Pomona students behaved admirably.
Posted by Conor at 06:10 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Islamophobia
Within a short while—this is a warning—the shady term "Islamophobia" is going to be smuggled through our customs. Anyone accused of it will be politely but firmly instructed to shut up, and to forfeit the constitutional right to criticize religion. By definition, anyone accused in this way will also be implicitly guilty.I fear he is right.
Posted by Conor at 06:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Should Gays Be Allowed to Adopt?
USA Today is covering the growing backlash against gay adoption:
Efforts to ban gays and lesbians from adopting children are emerging across the USA as a second front in the culture wars that began during the 2004 elections over same-sex marriage.As a staunch supporter of gay marriage--though an opponent of attempts by courts to impose the practice--gay adoption seems to me the most difficult question society faces with regards to gay rights.Steps to pass laws or secure November ballot initiatives are underway in at least 16 states, adoption, gay rights and conservative groups say. Some — such as Ohio, Georgia and Kentucky — approved constitutional amendments in 2004 banning gay marriage.
"Now that we've defined what marriage is, we need to take that further and say children deserve to be in that relationship," says Greg Quinlan of Ohio's Pro-Family Network, a conservative Christian group.
On most matters, marriage included, I find it morally impermissible for society to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, a trait I regard as intrinsic, not chosen.
Moreover my gay friends and acquaintances leave me quite convinced that the love gay couples feel for one another is no different than the love felt for one another by heterosexuals, and that the benefits they'd garner from marriage are as profound.
If you believe that committed, monogomous relationships are the best chance for a happy life and a good society, as many conservatives do, extending marriage rights to gays seems like a no-brainer.
Gay adoption is trickier because even those of us who normally demand that the law treat gays equally must weigh the welfare of another party: the child. When it comes to the system we set up for adoption, I care very little about fairness for adoptive parents because my priority is the welfare of the child.
So the question arises: is a child better off with heterosexual parents?
I don't know the answer. But my intuition is that all else being equal heterosexual parents are better for a child. People relate to men in ways largely influenced by their own father, and to women in ways largely influenced by their own mother. Since every child must relate to men and women in their lives, it makes sense to me that the lack of either sex as a primary caregiver is less than ideal.
That leads me to a conclusion I'm rather uncomfortable with: if forced to choose between a heterosexual couple and a gay couple I'd award adoption rights to the hetereosexual couple first, assuming that all else is equal.
That said, I find an outright ban on gay adoptive parents foolhardy. After all, all else is seldom equal. Sure, consider whether perspective parents will be able to provide a child with a role model of each sex. But there are many other factors that determine whether someone ought to be a good parent. An appropriate decision will weigh all these factors.
Moreover, it isn't as if we have so many willing adoptive parents that we ought to be turning good couples away simply because they're gay.
Julian Sanchez makes the same point in Reason Magazine:
...visit Florida and ask a child in foster care which makes him feel more threatened: the thought of being raised by homosexuals, or the prospect of an indefinite number of years spent passing through an indefinite number of homes.His whole essay is a quite convincing argument against bans on gay adoption.
Posted by Conor at 03:36 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack