What’s Bad for the Goose

Posted: February 15, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Politics | Tags: , , , , , | 1 Comment

Earlier this week, Glenn Greenwald wrote an excellent piece excoriating many Democrats for supporting the infamous “DOJ kill list memo”. While I agree and sympathize with the point he made, I would like to further expand upon it: I would like to shame all politicians who have not come out against these tactics on both sides of the aisle. They are reprehensible and should be stopped. The fact that they haven’t is, for me at least, further proof that they are neither right nor left, but more concerned with advancing the power of the State, even unto the point of controlling (or ending) the lives of every man, woman, and child they can get in their sights.

The means by which they have done so are particularly reprehensible. To quote Mr. Greenwald:

[T]his document helpfully underscored the critical point that is otherwise difficult to convey: when you endorse the application of a radical state power because the specific target happens to be someone you dislike and think deserves it, you’re necessarily institutionalizing that power in general. That’s why political leaders, when they want to seize extremist powers or abridge core liberties, always choose in the first instance to target the most marginalized figures: because they know many people will acquiesce not because they support that power in theory but because they hate the person targeted. But if you cheer when that power is first invoked based on that mentality – I’m glad Obama assassinated Awlaki without charges because he was a Bad Man! – then you lose the ability to object when the power is used in the future in ways you dislike (or by leaders you distrust), because you’ve let it become institutionalized.

When you take away liberty or give power to the state for any reason – because someone said something you dislike, because someone used guns irresponsibly, because some people drink too much or smoke too much or eat too many doughnuts, because there are bad people in the world and the system is preventing us from keeping our children safe from them – you are not simply giving up that liberty once; you are not giving power to the state for only the uses you have in mind. Power is like a bottomless box of matches, and those you have given it to can light as many fires as they want.

My friend and I discussed this policy over lunch the other day, and how it was a vast expansion of executive power. In less than twenty minutes we worked out a system of checks and balances among the three branches of government that would preserve the purpose of this doctrine while providing some modicum of oversight. After we congratulated ourselves for our brilliance, I pointed out to him that neither this nor anything like it would ever happen. When he asked me why, I posed the age old question, “Cui bono?” (“To whose benefit?”) It’s a familiar question among lawyers, and politics is full of them. Neither side really wants to reign in this sort of power, because they want their guy to have access to it; or, to go back to Mr. Greenwald, “To endorse a power in the hands of a leader you like is, necessarily, to endorse the power in the hands of a leader you dislike.” This is the weakness inherent in the State.

Conversely, to endorse a liberty in the hands of a person you like is, necessarily, to endorse that same liberty in the hands of a person you dislike. We are forever caught in this tension; do we entrust power to an elite of those we distrust, or do we entrust the power of freedom, and all the danger that comes with it, to the masses? The truth is that bad people do bad things, and the more freedom they have to move and act the more bad things they can do. But the more we take away their ability to do harm, the more we take away our own ability to do good; and the only way to do either is to give even more ability to do harm to a handful of people who have proven only two things categorically. First, they believe they know better than you what is best for you, at all times and in all situations. Second, the rules can and should be set aside when they become an insurmountable obstacle to the goal at hand, not because the rules don’t matter, but because the goal is more important, because the end always justifies the means, and because there is no law so high that they cannot see above it.

The Social Consequence of Gay Marriage

Posted: January 25, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Culture, Politics | Tags: , , , , , | 5 Comments

This post is a long overdue promise to The Frazzled Slacker outlining my views on gay marriage. All opinions are my own. No legal advice is intended or implied. Not taking my advice is a good idea in any case.

So at long last the Supreme Court is addressing the issue of gay marriage. I for one am thrilled, since it’s about time we get some clarity and put this issue to rest once and for all, as we have with other contention issues before.

All joking aside, I do think it’s time the high court stepped in. We have a plurality of answers on this question in different jurisdictions, and it is a matter that has implications both nationally and across state lines, which is a proper role for the Supreme Court. More so, it is a civil rights question, in that the heart of the matter is to what extent the State can and should regulate the institution of marriage.

And that right there is the first point I believe needs to be made in this debate, and one that seems to be lost in much of the heated rhetoric. Before anyone makes demands about what should and should not happen, we need to draw the lines very clearly: this is, and should remain, strictly about the role of the State in the institution of marriage. No person or group’s personal beliefs should impact, or be impacted by, these cases. If a particular religious organization wants to refuse to marry a gay couple, they should maintain the right to do so; it is theirs to decide, in the same way they can decide not to marry a straight couple on any grounds (IMNSHO).

With that out of the way, we are led to the question of “what exactly is the role of the State in the institution of marriage?” As I understand it, the State has traditionally had a handful of roles, and in recent history (the last hundred years or so) has taken on a few additional roles as well. Once we define those roles, it should be relatively easy to tease out the question as to whether or not (a) homosexuals share those rights with heterosexuals, (b) whether heterosexuals would suffer any significant harm in sharing those rights with homosexuals, and (c) whether society writ large would suffer any harm from allowing homosexuals to exercise those rights.

The traditional roles, as I understand them, are to encourage child rearing, social stability, and guide the process of inheritance. End of line. The additional roles that the government has taken on have been to grant certain rights such as tax benefits, Social Security benefits, and various and sundry other spousal benefits such as visitation rights, next of kin in medical matters, etc. to married couples.

To the first question: do homosexuals even have these rights? According to the state of Kansas, a lesbian can be a single parent, so by logical extension, a homosexual can have parental rights. While Kansas has in this case proven they prefer not to encourage child rearing, one would think it would be desirable to support couples that prefer to rear children together rather than attempt to sue someone in an iffy court case, and that’s of course assuming there was no proper waiver and doctor present to even allow a lawsuit to move forward.

As for social stability, setting aside the obvious counter-argument that rhymes with “fifty percent bivorce rate” there is the simpler counter-argument: given a choice between encouraging couples to be monogamous and stay together rather than NOT encouraging them to do so, when your purported goal is a more stable society, why wouldn’t you?

Finally, the question of inheritance is, again, simple on the face of it. Any individual has the right to assign their estate as they see fit in a will; simply assuming that next of kin would be the logical beneficiaries in the absence of such is a grace and mercy to a bereaved family, as well as relieving an overburdened court system. Insisting that one segment of the population does not have that right and must go through an onerous process by virtue of who they love is demeaning and unbefitting of a civilized society.

Most spousal benefits are in the same category as inheritance; they can, with time, money and effort be resolved through other legal means (power of attorney, etc.). It is simply demeaning to insist that one segment of the population is required to climb an extra hurdle because they have a consensual relationship between two adults that others do not approve of (c.f. miscegenation). The only exceptions are such things as Social Security and tax benefits, so I shall address them as such: are homosexuals exempt from paying Social Security and other taxes in ways I am not aware of, or do they receive other special benefits to compensate them for their inability to access these benefits?

Moving on to the question of whether heterosexuals would be significantly harmed by sharing these rights with heterosexuals. That’s a bit of a tricky one, because there are two important words there: significant and harm. Would I be “harmed” if someone else were paying lower taxes? Arguably, yes. Would it be significant? If they did so in large enough numbers, maybe. Does that mean I should be able to deny them their rights? I do not see how. True harm is if I were to lose something I were otherwise entitled to, and I am not entitled to having first claim on someone else’s life, their labor, or their choices, so long as those choices do not interfere directly with my ability to make choices. And seriously, I don’t see how homosexuals choosing to marry impacts any heterosexual’s choices, unless they have secrets they aren’t sharing (in which case the statement is still valid).

Would society suffer any significant harm in allowing homosexuals to exercise their rights? Again, it depends on how you define society and how you define harm. Considering the potential good outlined above, and the societal purposes that marriage serves in the first place, I see no evidence that expanding the civil tradition of marriage could bring. There will be those who will not be able to accept this gracefully, and they may even commit violent acts in response. This would not be a direct result of allowing homosexuals to exercise their rights; this would be a result of people who are unable to accept change attempting to use violence and fear to coerce others when all else fails. There is a word for that: terrorism. It should be dealt with as such.

In the final analysis, there is no good reason to continue to deny a significant portion of our population the same rights that the majority have enjoyed for so long. The Supreme Court should step in and, as it has a few times in its long history, strike down the laws of oppression and let liberty carry the day.

The Fiscal Fix

Posted: January 23, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: MNSHW, Politics | Tags: , , | 1 Comment

Once again, a brief interlude from My Not So Humble Wife.

After weeks of foreboding speculation about the impending fiscal cliff, the New Year came and went with no evidence of the sky actually falling. This might be due to the fact that our decisive and ever diligent Congress and Senate solved the fiscal crisis on New Year’s Eve by kicking the deadline out until March. A brilliant piece of legislative procrastination.

Now we’re in for more endless argument over what combination of  1) spending cuts and 2) tax increases should be enacted to reduce our roughly $16 trillion federal deficit. But there is a third option that I’ve never heard mentioned. Do you know how the government handles budgets? If not, this will astound you.

Throughout all government agencies, the military, and governmental run programs each department is generally given an annual budget amount to play with for the year. Here’s the problem: at the end of the year if the department didn’t spend all their money, they won’t be able to get a budget increase in the next fiscal year.

Let me say that again,  if they don’t spend all the money they asked for last year they won’t get more money in their budget for the next year.

This means there is no incentive whatsoever for any government funded agency to save money. In fact, starting around October, government agencies that have a budget surplus rush out to ditch any remaining cash. Under our current budgeting system, they pretty much have to or they risk being underfunded in the next fiscal year.  Excess spending of this nature may be relatively small potatoes for any one agency or department but all together it’s a significant amount.

What to Do With Extra Budget Money at the End of the Fiscal Year?

Deficit spending

Photo Credit: USBacklash.org at http://usbacklash.org

I’ll admit with no hesitation that I’m not an expert on finance or government spending. However, I think that a different budget process that incentivized saving over spending might reasonably be developed. One idea would be to place more emphasis on accurate estimations. Suppose there are two possible budget proposal review processes, one for those groups whose spent close to what they were budgeted for the prior year and one for those groups whose budget wasn’t accurate for actual spending.

For example, the newly proposed budget for groups whose spending was within say, 5%  of their budget from the prior year could be on a fast-tracked approval process. Those groups whose spending differed (either over or under) by more than 5% would face a review that required additional justification. To avoid having departments just spend money until they were within the 5% range, you could allow money to be designated as savings without any penalty and which would then just be applied to the next year’s budget. This would provide incentive for departments not to overspend and would remove the current undesirable incentive of spending additional funds wastefully.

This one example could make the difference between funding or not funding a critical program and there are probably other systemic issues that could be addressed as well. So I hope that as we continue to debate how to balance the national checkbook we look for savings within the systems as well as at cut and tax remedies.

I Will Choose a Path That’s Clear

Posted: January 18, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Culture, Musings, Politics | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

Recently on Facebook I’ve been having a spirited (but civil!) debate with a friend of mine regarding gun control. Unsurprisingly at some point relatively early in the discussion my argument incorporated the issue of defense against tyranny, which is an argument that I stand by. He actually pivoted from there to a surprisingly apt and unusual comparison, one that I have not before seen, invoking the specter of 1984 before I could, but then he made the point that “Brave New World illustrates that humanity can be lulled into submission into serving the interest of a minority by luxuries and promoting self interest.”

It was a different tack, and one that at least took our discussion in a new direction, but it also got me thinking. One of my great loves is dystopian literature (although the sub-genre of cyberpunk is my favorite), and obviously I have given more than a little thought about what shape society takes both now and as we move into the future. So as we continue forward, which is the move likely totalitarian prospect: the iron hand or the velvet glove?

Historically I would say it’s both. Consider one of the most successful (if you can use the word without being offensive) totalitarian regimes in history, the Nazi regime. By combining a rule based on fear and oppression with strong economic growth that gave the “approved” majority of the populace not only the necessities they had been denied but the luxuries they craved, the Nazis turned Germany from a failed state into a powerhouse virtually overnight. I’d have to do a lot more research than I’m ready to right now to call this a thesis, but it does provide some (disturbing) food for thought, if anyone has a strong enough stomach for it.

The iron hand is easy to fear, and just as easy to dismiss. We always assume we’ll see it coming; after all, why would we allow someone or some government to drag people out of their homes in the middle of the night, lock them up for no reason, torture them, or execute them without good reason? We’re good people, we live in a good society, we’re better than that. But then, all it takes is one bad day; one evil act. Then the world changes.

On the other hand, the velvet glove seems far more likely. Stories of people giving in to addiction, vice, and other temptations are as old as… well, stories, and the idea of the guy who controls your hunger controlling you has a great deal of appeal. But consider the recent Occupy movement. Here is a case of rebellion against a system that tried to control the populace by controlling luxury, Big Business in cahoots with Big Government (and the system fought back). Keep in mind plenty of Occupy supporters were not the homeless, the starving, or folks who struggled their whole lives to make it day to day; they were college graduates, middle class and above, theoretically bought and paid for.

So what do they both have in common, and how is it that tyranny in any form finally does manage to take hold? If the neither the iron hand nor the velvet glove is sufficient unto itself, how do they succeed together? Is it simply that “one hand giveth, the other hand taketh away” is enough to confuse people? I wonder. Perhaps it’s more complex, or perhaps it is simpler than that.

According to the Declaration of Independence, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”. It’s an interesting philosophy, but what if it goes further than that? Can it be posited that nobody can truly be governed without their consent? After all, you can put a gun to my head but that won’t make my body move; you will simply be putting me under duress. If it is sufficient duress, I will take action, but it is still my action, not yours. Your action was coercing me in the fist place. Coerce enough people and you have a tyrannical government, but it is by the consent of the governed, even if that consent is given under duress.

Viewed in that way, we are always standing between Scylla and Charybdis, between totalitarian oppression and totalitarian luxury. The only thing that prevents it is our exercise of free will, a refusal to allow ourselves to be ruled by others. So long as we view certain things as right and others as wrong, and we hold to those principles in the face of opposition (even unto death), we can and will stand against tyranny. That is the cost of freedom. The cost of society, of civilization, is learning to live with each other, to find the reasonable compromises between my ideals and principles and yours, such that we can live together without my bowing to your tyranny or you bowing to mine.

As soon as I get that one figured out, I’ll let you know.

On A Road to Nowhere

Posted: January 16, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Politics | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

For as long as I can remember living in Virginia (so basically since I was 16), traffic congestion has been an ongoing issue. In particular, the debate has raged about whether and how to pay for road maintenance, road expansion, public transportation, the works. The most common answer has been raising the gas tax, but both Virginia and Washington state are discovering that this is becoming less viable as vehicles become more fuel efficient, particularly as people switch over to alternative fuel vehicles (darn those perverse incentives!).

Naturally, I wouldn’t broach the issue if I didn’t have a suggestion to offer, and naturally it’s one that would never fly in the world of real politik, but I’m going to throw it out there anyway. It seems to me what we have here is an issue of putting the cost in the wrong place (as usual), and even the attempts to switch the cost are being driven by (at best) political expediency and (at worst) political ideology. I suggest we get back to the original issue, determine where the costs are being created, and find a way to apply those costs to the people creating them in the first place in the most direct way possible.

The first step is this: consider the actual cost we are facing. The issue at hand is not one of too few roads, or too many cars, or too few people taking public transit. The issue at hand is choice in transportation. That choice is influenced, at least on the margin, by cost (convenience and accessibility obviously play a factor as well, but those are ultimately a factor of cost as well). The issue is not a matter of whether people are or are not purchasing gasoline, nor the purpose to which they put it. After all, I use gasoline to run my lawn mower, but that has no impact on the quality of the roads in Virginia or anywhere else; however if my neighbor down the street owns an electric car he uses no gasoline as he adds stress and traffic to the highways and byways. The same applies for buses, rail, or any other form of transit. Let the cost fall where it should, and let the revenue generated be applied to support the source that generated it.

How would we do it? One example that easily presents itself is the new toll lanes on 495. All that is required to use these express lanes is an E-ZPass, which can also be used on any road that accepts E-ZPass in VA or thirteen other states. Right off the bat you can start charging people for the roads they use, not the gas they burn, and you can even track where the funds are being generated so that you know which roads should get the funding for either repair or expansion. Taking this idea one step further, you could even set varying levels of tolls depending on the level of anticipated traffic demand in the area, charging more for high-traffic times and less for lower traffic times (somewhat like Metro does with their Peak and Off-Peak fares).

And hey, speaking of Metro, how about we stop subsidizing public transportation and actually charge people what it costs? I’m sure once we stop subsidizing the roads people will see the real value of public transit, since the real cost of public roads is significant but most people never see them, what with it being paid for out of taxes. Shift that burden onto drivers, and suddenly folks will actually be able to make a real apples-to-apples comparison: is it really worth the cost of driving to work considering the tolls, gas, cost of a car, parking, etc., or would you rather have the inconvenience of taking Metro? Speaking as a driver myself… I have no idea. I’ve never paid the real cost, up front, of driving on a road anywhere, so I can’t make a serious informed decision. I can only make a decision based on the reality in front of me, which is that roads are free, my car is convenient, and Metro is neither.

And of course that’s why it would never fly. Any time you try to shift the actual cost of a thing or service to the people who actually benefit from it there are howls of outrage. “It’s unfair!” “It’s regressive!” “Let the rich pay their fair share!” (That last one is my favorite.) Setting aside any argument about whether the rich actually benefit more from the existence of public roads (I didn’t realize they enjoy driving more than I do), let’s tackle the other two.

As for being unfair, I’ll speak as a driver once more when I say it’s unfair for someone else to shoulder the burden of paying for the roads I drive on. Every day I drive to work, someone else is paying for every mile I drive. That’s pretty much the definition of “unfair”. As far as being “regressive”, my understanding of that argument (and I could well be wrong here) is that it hurts people more the less they make. While there could be a kernel of truth to it, I would like to point out that the less money you have, the less driving you are likely to do. Ergo, the less likely you are to be hit by a toll. This plan is no more regressive than the gas tax or any tax on vehicles, and in many ways is less so, in that it only charges you for distance spent driving on public roads; any other use of gasoline (including time spent idling in traffic) doesn’t count against you. In many ways that would seem to me to at least be less regressive.

Is this a perfect plan? Far from it. But it at least starts to shift the costs where they belong, aligning incentives so that people will have a reason to consider the choices they make, and if nothing else it will more honestly generate revenue in line with the source of the costs. That’s a far better thing than simply waving a hand and declaring a fiat fix based on political whims.

Who’s Your Daddy?

Posted: January 14, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Politics | Tags: , , , | 3 Comments

In case you haven’t heard, there’s another guy trying to dodge child support payments, and the state of Kansas is going after him with everything they’ve got. Of course, this one’s a little different. Turns out there’s three parents involved, and according to him, he’s not one of them. Unfortunately for him and the other two parents, Kansas doesn’t recognize gay marriage, so the government has decided he’s on the hook.

Here’s the story: a lesbian couple advertised for a sperm donor, a man answered the ad, and nine months later a baby was born (I’ll assume you can fill in the details). There was a contract between the three of them stipulating he had no parental rights or responsibilities. However, there was also no doctor involved. Later the couple in question split up, and the custodial parent (according to Kansas, the only parent) applied for state benefits. In accordance with state law, the state of Kansas went after the non-custodial parent for child support, including back payments. But wait, were you paying attention earlier? Kansas doesn’t recognize same-sex unions in any way, so there is no non-custodial parent, right?

Wrong.

According to Kansas law, because there was no doctor involved, the sperm donor wasn’t legally a sperm donor, he was the daddy. Never mind he had a contract stating otherwise that all three were a party to.

To add to the fun of all this, the government of Kansas is sending mixed messages. According to an interview on NPR, “[i]n 2007, we had a case involved where a guy who had been a sperm donor donated sperm for a woman to become pregnant and then decided afterwards that he wanted to be considered the father, wanted to have parental rights and responsibilities. That case went clear to the Kansas Supreme Court and they said that he doesn’t get the parental rights and responsibilities.” What’s the difference? Well, there’s one I know for sure, and one I can guess. The one I know for sure is there was a doctor involved in the 2007 case. I’m also guessing the woman wasn’t in a lesbian relationship.

So what we have is the State of Kansas making two different arguments: you don’t get to be the father of a child unless we say you are the father of the child, and the only time we will say you are the father of the child is when it benefits us to say you are. Clearly that would be when there’s money on the line, but there’s also an insidious whiff of anti-homosexual backdoor lawmaking going on here. After all, if we can scare enough people into not helping homosexuals have children, we can make sure no homosexuals have children, right?

There’s three problems I see here. The first is that this is a clear case of violation of private contract. This isn’t one party to the contract saying the contract is unfair or invalid, nor is it a case of the state having a serious vested interest in stepping in to prevent one person from being taken advantage of. Three adults entered into a mutual, legal contract, and the state simply didn’t like the contract they entered. The fact there is a third adult party willing to play the role of non-custodial parent if she were legally allowed to only strengthens that point.

The second issue is that this is clearly a case of inconsistent law enforcement. If the state does not want sperm donors to have parental rights once they have signed a contract as such, then they need to enforce that consistently. The presence of a doctor does not change anything (although if they wanted to require a lawyer, notary, or other witness that is consistent with legal proceeding that might be different). Either the case in 2007 was wrong, or this one is. While I have my preference as to which is the correct answer, at least a consistent ruling makes for sound governance. Doing otherwise is simply making up the rules as they go along, picking and choosing whatever is most convenient at the moment, and the word for that is “dictatorship”.

Finally, I have no idea who they think they’re helping. This doesn’t make either of the mothers better off; the sperm donor is certainly no better off; the child in this case is no better off; and the people of the state of Kansas are made to look like backward fools because of their politicians. At this point the best possible outcome would be an outright dismissal of the case with a strong admonishment from the bench for the foolish notion that the state can simply pick which contracts it will or will not enforce based on its own twisted ideas of what’s right or, worse, its own convenience.

No Time For Politics

Posted: December 17, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Politics | Tags: , , , , | 11 Comments

In the wake of the awful shootings in Connecticut and Oregon, the debate is raging once again over the appropriateness of allowing common citizens to own and carry firearms. Both sides are falling back on the same tired arguments, none of which are likely to sway anyone, nor do I think they are meant to, except in the most deluded cases of those who truly believe that their cause is so righteous that only the willfully blind could ignore it, and all it would take is the proper spin on a terrible enough tragedy to get them to see.

The fact is that both sides of the debate are using each of these atrocities, and every one that precedes them, and each one that follows, as yet another piece of ammunition in their ongoing war (and yes, I chose those words quite deliberately). They have abandoned reason and logic to fall back on fallacies and emotion. These are emotional situations, and rightly so, but the discussion at hand is not. It is one of how we order a just society, and letting that be ruled by emotion always will lead to short-sighted decision making and partisan sniping at best; at worst, I do not even want to contemplate what it could lead to, for fear of being accused of making an argument ad hitlerum myself.

First, allow me to address the “right to bear arms” crowd. As an acknowledged supporter of the Second Amendment myself, I hope that you will not see it as an attack when I say: STFU. Please. Just for five minutes. If I hear one more person say how this was a tragedy about people and not guns, or some other such bullshit, I am going to scream. This was a tragedy involving guns, just like every other school shooting, mall shooting, celebrity shooting, and every other shooting you have to get out in front of in an attempt to defend the vast majority of responsible gun owners. Notice how I tossed you a bone at the end there? There’s a reason for that. I get it. I agree. I’ll even repeat it: the vast majority of gun owners are responsible, law-abiding people. That still doesn’t do a damn thing to bring back a single one of the lost and wasted lives, or repair the shattered lives of those who are left behind. Repeat it like a mantra all you want. It. Does. Not. Change. A. Thing.

Here is the reality we have to live with: if we allow people to own guns, then the possibility of something like this happening again approaches a near certainty. That much has become obvious, and we need to accept that and stop running from it. We, as a society, have to be aware of it, and while we can do everything in our power to minimize it, it is almost impossible to prevent someone who is determined enough from getting their hands on a gun and killing people. That is a fact, and it is unavoidable.

Now, having put all that on the floor, let me speak to the gun control advocates. If I hear one more person make un unfalsifiable claim about how those kids would still be alive if we had better gun control, I will be violently ill. Aside from taking shameless advantage of a terrible situation, you’re also full of shit. Here’s an example of someone using a knife to attack school kids. Now think: do you know anyone who knows how to make dynamite? If the answer is no, come on by and I’ll introduce you to some rednecks I know. It’s not very difficult, and if you can walk into a school with an assault rifle, you can walk in with several sticks of dynamite hidden about your person. My point is not how easy it is to hurt people, my point is that a determined person will find a way, and simply waving a hand and screaming “GUN CONTROL!!!!!” doesn’t change that.

Here is the reality we have to live with: every day in this country, citizens protect themselves, their families (including young children), and their neighbors against violent offenders with lawfully purchased and licensed firearms. Handguns, shotguns, and yes, even “assault rifles”. If you take them away, you leave people vulnerable. Don’t try to claim the police will fill the gap, because the Supreme Court has made it very clear that the police have no duty whatsoever to prevent crime, only to prosecute it (and in some neighborhoods it seems, not even that). We, as a society, have to be aware of this fact, and if we take away people’s right to defend themselves, we are leaving them vulnerable. While we can do everything in our power to minimize it, we have already proven we are not willing to invest the resources even in the best of our communities to protect people against all crimes (even if we could, and we cannot); in our worst neighborhoods we would be leaving them utterly at the whims of the criminals. That is a fact, and it is unavoidable.

These, then, are the costs as I see them. I am not trying to stifle debate, I am trying to start it. Real debate, not simple sloganeering and screaming of worn-out catchphrases from both sides. It is time that everyone admit that there is no good answer, there is no simple, cost-free solution where we all live happily ever after. Maybe then we can decide which costs we are willing to shoulder, admit that we have to pay them, and move on.

And one more thing. I think it’s time we call out the real villains in all of this, and for that I’m turning over the floor to My Not So Humble Mother:

When did a discussion over the necessity of gun control become news?  The shooting at the school was a tragedy, no doubt; but using the rapt attention of folks who live off these tragedies as an audience for gun control is not reporting.  It’s the worst sort of soapbox scare tactics I’ve ever seen!

I couldn’t have put it better myself. (Now you know where I get it from. Well, half of it at any rate.)

Here is the reality we have to live with: So long as “if it bleeds, it leads” is the mantra that drives “news” reporting, then the message that is being sent is “if you want to be famous, kill people”. So long as editorializing (on both sides of the aisle) replaces honest discussion of the issues, we will never have a meaningful debate, nor will we ever come to a place where we can have any sort of comity in our neighborhoods, in our malls, or in our schools. That is a fact, and it is unavoidable.

Anarchy X: There and Back Again

Posted: December 12, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Anarchy X, Politics | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Several months ago I started out on a personal journey of discovery. Unlike many authors who seem to feel they need to take to the road, I abhor travel, so I decided to turn inward and try to explain, as best I could, what I believe, who I am, and the filter through which I view the world. It’s no small thing to encapsulate a worldview; greater thinkers than I am have filled volumes with better writing than I will ever manage trying to do the same, and making it approachable is even harder. The best I could do was pour my simple knowledge and limited understanding onto this page (yes, even now I still think of it as a page) and hope that it makes some sense and connects somehow with someone. While I would never be so presumptuous as to suggest I have scaled Mount Doom, I do feel confident saying what a long, strange trip it’s been.

This series has been as much an exploration of my principles and beliefs as it has been an explanation of them. In the course of that exploration I have discovered (or perhaps reaffirmed) that I am more William Wallace a là Braveheart than I am Patrick Henry; I believe that everyone is born with liberty, and it is not something that can be given or taken away. At worst, someone can violate my rights, even my right to life; as the movie goes, they can take my life, but they can never take my freedom. More than that, I have found, or at least I hope I have found, some semblance of support for that view, or an argument to be made for support, in two of the sources for much of the political discourse in America, The Bill of Rights and the Ten Commandments.

It is possible along the way I have given the impression that I am somehow not proud of my country, or that I am less than a patriot because I do not support every decision that the government, my government, makes; I do not believe that anything could be farther from the truth. I believe there is always, must be, a place for the loyal opposition, and that so long as one is adhering to the core principles that the country is founded on as you understand them then you cannot be said to be unpatriotic. You may be wrong, but being wrong has never been treasonous; if it were, we would all of us be good company for each other in Coventry.

I also believe that it is possible for good people to disagree with my interpretations of these key and critical documents and still be good people. Who knows, they may even be right. I never made any claims to omniscience, nor would I want it; it would take all the fun out of surprise parties. What I do believe is that most people are mostly good most of the time; or as John Agresto put it:

Everywhere we see people fighting for their religion, for their cultural values, for the traditions of their fathers, for their idea of justice. Warped and destructive as they sometimes are, every day we see people driven not by “the economy” but by their creed, their values, their sense of honor. People sacrifice not for things beneath them, but for ideals they believe are higher than they are. And we Americans, with our pride and creativity and sense of duty, patriotism and love of country, are no different.

I couldn’t agree more. I have expressed my creed, my values, and my sense of honor in these posts as best I can. I hope they have resonated with you.

Does that mean this is the end of the Anarchy X series? For now. I promised myself when I started I would take it this far, and now my creativity and pride are driving me to try something new. Perhaps someday I’ll come back to it; after all, America has been around for a very long time, and I expect will be here long after I am gone. Politics, I fear, will last even longer, so I will have no shortage of things to write about.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

(Sorry, I just couldn’t resist.)

How the iPod is Killing Political Discourse

Posted: December 7, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Culture, Internet, Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

I was discussing gun control with My Not So Humble Wife the other night, and something strange happened. She’s mostly libertarian like me, but unlike myself, she actually believes in putting certain limitations on gun ownership. Tanks, for example, are straight off her list for private ownership (no, I am not kidding, this was a serious part of the discussion). I personally see no problem with it for several good and sundry reasons that I won’t get into now, so she upped the ante to nuclear weapons. I couldn’t name even a theoretical reason why someone might want a nuke (self-defense? sport? cocktail party conversation starter?), and I had to concede that even my tank argument didn’t apply. Let’s face it, if you need a nuke to defend yourself against the government, the situation is already well beyond salvageable.

This is when things got weird: we talked it out and came to a reasonable solution we could both be okay with. She conceded that the government didn’t need to have gun registration laws (it’s no business of theirs who owns which guns), and I conceded that certain classes of people (namely felons) shouldn’t be allowed to buy guns, so background checks are acceptable. I couldn’t get her to budge on non-violent felons, but my big beef there is with drug laws, and that’s a different issue anyway, so I was willing to concede the point. We also both agreed that waiting periods should be abolished, because the technology exists to do immediate background checks, and those checks should be done everywhere, including gun shows.

What’s so weird about all of this? Watch fifteen minutes, or even five minutes, of political television and then ask me that question again. Granted, we came from roughly the same starting place, but we still had some strong views that we disagreed on, and we both gave a little to get to something we could agree with. It’s called “compromise”, for those of you too young to remember what it looks like. And I blame the iPod for its absence in contemporary politics.

Sounds crazy, right? Bear with me for a little while and you’ll understand. When I was a kid, we had one TV in the house (well, two, but the one in the basement was tiny, black and white, and got crap reception, so it doesn’t count). It got exactly two channels: whatever my sister and I could agree on, and whatever Dad decided to put on when he got home. Occasionally, when I was very lucky, my sister would be at a friend’s house before my folks got home and I would have a few hours of TV to myself, but that was a rare luxury and one I didn’t count on.

Growing up like that I had to learn the art of compromise. Granted it usually involved a lot of yelling, screaming, cursing, and more than a little hitting, but that’s politics for you. What I didn’t learn was an attitude of entitlement, one that said I could have whatever I want whenever I want and everyone else could go suck an egg. That all changed when the iPod came along.

Don’t get me wrong, the iPod was and remains one of the greatest inventions in human history. The chance to have your music, your way, whenever you want wherever you want is a glorious thing. But it shapes expectations; people become accustomed to having what they want, without having to negotiate with others. It’s not like the boom boxes and ghetto blasters I had as a kid, when “sharing” music was a very immediate and sometimes involuntary experience. Facebook and other social media have only exacerbated the phenomenon; people choose the stories they want to hear, and they shape the media they are exposed to before and as much as the media shapes them.

This sort of “a la carte media” has expanded into all aspects of life. If you can’t find a cable channel that caters to your specific tastes, there’s a YouTube channel that will. Streaming radio will introduce you to new music, unless you skip past a song you decide you don’t like in the first few beats. And there’s a website out there dedicated to every conspiracy theory known to man, and a few that aren’t.

What is the net result on politics? The politicians we elect reflect the media of our time. It used to be that politicians were like mass media: they appealed to broad demographics, even to the point of being criticized for chasing “the lowest common denominator”. But hey, at least they were accessible to everyone. Now every politician is like a personalized playlist, narrowly targeting key demographics with a hyper-partisan message, and who can blame them? The electronic graffiti that litters the walls of our social media pages screams for it, begs for it, demands the same hyper-partisan rhetoric they are only too happy to deliver. If we aren’t getting the politicians we want it’s only because we’re getting the politicians we’ve been asking for, and maybe deserve.

Anarchy X: The Tenth Commandment

Posted: December 4, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Anarchy X, Culture, Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s.”

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come not to praise this Commandment, but to bury it. For all the good that it may have done in its social graces, so has it been undone in the policy sphere.

Let me begin by saying that I am a child of the Eighties. It was a decade known both affectionately and without irony as both “The Decade of Greed” and “The Decade of Excess”. If the Sixties were a party and the Seventies were a hangover, the Eighties were the day everyone went back to work, ready to get things done. It’s like the entire country decided one day that free love might be great, but everything else worthwhile costs money, and they were going to do whatever it took to get as much of it as they could.

You want to talk about coveting? Oh, they had coveting down. The official motto of the decade was “he who dies with the most toys wins”. It wasn’t enough to keep up with the Joneses. You had to beat them into the ground and then rub their noses in it. Everything had to be bigger and louder, faster and cooler, newer and just plain BETTER. Too much was never enough, and style always trumped substance. If you don’t believe me, let me point out that this was the decade that glam rock reigned supreme, and even Poison packed stadiums (sorry, Bret Michaels, you know I’m still a fan).

Is it any wonder my generation turned out to be a bunch of slackers? We had seen what commercialism and the desire for what the other guy has (y’know, coveting) had wrought, and we wanted none of it. Well, until we had kids of our own and needed to get a mortgage, but that’s a different story. The point is, I see the social value in this Commandment, truly I do. But I fear the policy implications far more.

Consider for a moment: what exactly is coveting? Is it an action? When you covet a man’s house, do you go inside of it? When you covet a woman’s ox, do you take it from her? When you covet your neighbor’s wife, do you bash him over the head and drag her off? Or even attempt to woo her away? The truth is, coveting something may drive you to do any of these things, but it is not the same as actually doing them. In the same way I might think about giving to charity, but go buy a burrito with the money instead. Do I get good karma for the thought, even though I don’t carry out the deed?

When crafting laws, it is important to make a distinction between action and motive. Motive is an element of a crime, but it is not a crime in and of itself (which is good for me, because as Prince wrote, “if a man is guilty for what goes on in his mind, give me the electric chair for all my future crimes.”) But the truth of the matter is that we do have crimes in this country that are based solely on what goes on in a person’s mind. They are called “hate crimes”.

Now I know there are those of you who are thinking “what does that have to do with coveting?” and that’s a fair question. To me they are one and the same. The motivation to commit an act is an element of thought, something that exists solely in the mind of the individual. Hatred, while it is something that we as a society should stand against, is no more or less repugnant that wanting something just because someone else has it. And just like covetousness, hatred in itself should not be a crime, nor should it be an additional element that can exacerbate a sentence.

Consider: if I were to propose a law against covetousness, such that if someone were deemed to have committed a crime out of covetousness, would that be acceptable? Would that be something that should warrant a harsher sentence than committing the same crime for another reason? If I stole your jacket “because I wanted it” rather than “because I was cold”, you still don’t have your jacket. By the same token, if a person has been assaulted, to me it does not matter why; the assailant should be punished.

When we start defining motivation itself as a crime, we are delving into thoughtcrime. For any literate person that should be enough to give them pause; for any moral person that should be enough to give them concern; for any just person, that should be enough to give them fear. Unfortunately, for politicians it doesn’t even seem to lose them a single moment of sleep.

UPDATE (12/16/12): I recently discovered The Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law, which I highly recommend to everyone. Of particular relevance to this post is “Part 7: The Axes of Evil”, which discusses culpability,  responsibility, and depravity in relation to crime. In the issue of hate crimes, I would consider those a matter of depravity, which is an element of the crime to be considered when determining the total punishment to be served, but again (as I stated above) not something to be charged as a separate crime. In the same way that we would consider any other element of a person’s mental state, of course we should consider their total relationship to the victim, and that includes any specific prejudice they may have IF it was a motivating factor.

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