Comes now Arsalan Iftikhar, an international human rights lawyer, founder of TheMuslimGuy.com, and contributing editor for Islamica magazine in Washington, to claim that religions don’t inspire murder.

Clearly, they do.

Iftikhar claims:

First of all, someone simply saying “Allahu Akbar” while committing an act of mass murder no more makes their criminal act “Islamic” than a Christian uttering the “Hail Mary” while murdering an abortion medical provider, or someone chanting “Onward, Christian Soldiers” while bombing a gay nightclub, would make their act “Christian” in nature.

Simply put; murder is murder and has no religion whatsoever.

Let me try to wrap my head around this logic. He just gave three clear examples of religion inspired murders, then a blatant non-sequitur. It’s worse than a non-sequitur, it’s an out-and-out contradiction of the very facts he just presented.

I know Iftikhar wishes it were otherwise. He condemns the Fort Hood atrocity. If it were an isolated incident, he’d have a point. But the famous website The Religion of Peace has documented over 14,000 separate acts of Islamic murder since 9/11. And the count goes up almost every single day.

In the U.S., we are still freshly smarting from the Christian murder of Dr. George Tiller. The case of the LGBT center shooting in Israel is barely 3 months old.

Iftikhar is in a monumental state of denial. Of course we should not respond by demonizing all Muslims. Most are peaceful people, if a bit overwrought in the name of their Prophet. But this is a Muslim problem, and it must be dealt with by Muslims if they want to avoid the backlash. The way forward is through facing the cancer of militancy by going to the source: the murderous language in their central scripture, the Quran. For it is the Quran (and the Bible, and nearly every other Abrahamic scripture) that contains the violent passages.

The most peaceful religious people are the ones who ignore their scriptures and follow humanistic ethics. It would not be inaccurate to say that adherents who kill unbelievers in the name of their God are technically the most faithful. They are doing what they have been told will secure them a place in heaven.

Editorials slamming “new atheism” as “strident,” “tedious,” “uninformed,” or the kicker, “fundamentalist” crop up every week like new mushrooms sprouting on cow dung after a rain. They dish out the same false claims, straw men and ad hominem attacks against high-profile atheist intellectuals, and get thrashed for it every time on the same grounds by other atheist writers. Then there’s the variant that promotes accommodation of believers, expressing concern that we are too harsh, we need to woo people with honey rather than vinegar. It’s just good “marketing,” you understand.

Most of the time I don’t comment on these stories, it’s just too repetitive. If we’re turning people off, then believers should be all-too-happy to see us fall on our faces and commit rhetorical suicide.

In this case, it’s Hitchens’ new film that’s being targeted. Instead of engaging with the debate, Ottawa Citizen editorial page editor Leonard Stern tries to act as if he’s above it all, explaining to Hitchens how childish it is to discuss the claims religions are actually making.

My favorite trope, which Stern plows like a familiar rut, is the “literal-mythological” dichotomy. It involves the comparison that while some fundamentalists take the patently absurd stories they read in the bible literally, atheists are guilty of the same thing when they mock them. “No one really believes those absurdities anyway, so mocking them proves nothing.” Or–they do in fact believe absurd stories, but it doesn’t matter because we are ignoring the true (and far more complex) purpose, function and dynamic of how religion is “actually lived.”

Wilson really believes, for example, that Noah crammed all those animals on a single boat. I wonder how many times Hitchens has patiently crunched the numbers for his pal, calculating the mass of the animals in order to show that Noah’s task was an engineering impossibility.

The problem with this pedantic brand of atheism is that it conceives of religion in very narrow terms. Religion is ridiculous for Hitchens because, in his view, it means that you necessarily believe that Eve was made from Adam’s rib. No disrespect to pastor Wilson, but this ignores the reality of how religion is actually lived.

Hitchens is pedantic, and a nerd to boot. Welllll…..Really?? It’s not important that they believe that stuff? It’s not important that otherwise sensible people go to church and take communion, in which they pretend that a cracker and some wine becomes the literal body and blood of a person who may have never existed, but even if he did he’s been dead for two millenia. This is far stronger than a belief, it’s action. And to prove how seriously they take it, try walking out of a Catholic church sometime with the “host,” and see the kind of death threats you get. Or desecrate a “host” and post the picture on the web. Two thousand comments later you might start to understand how strongly they really do believe in the very absurdities we are talking about, and how much a myth can very much affect real life. If myths are so beneficial and not harmful to society, shouldn’t host-desecration cause a lesser offense than constitutionally protected flag-burning?

A different sect of so-called moderates want to see their children full-immersion baptized even though it would be patently absurd to think going swimming in a special pool gets you anything other than wet. But they consider this some sort of conditioning that–notwithstanding hair dryers–makes it impossible for their kids to later renounce their faith. For the record, I’d call it a form of hypnotic shock induction to reinforce childhood indoctrination and prevent defections. But that’s just me.

So it’s ritual, then. Humans have performed rituals for all sorts of nonsensical reasons throughout history. Believe it or not, I’m OK with that so long as no one gets hurt. Most of what we humans do has very little concrete purpose, so if doing a rain dance makes you feel better about yourself, or gives you a sense of control over your crops, I’m fine with that. I’m even fine with people being baptized or taking communion. I’m fine with chanting, I’m fine with people sitting around thinking positive (or negative) thoughts. I’m fine with rituals involving talking to the dead (as long as you don’t pretend they talk back).

And this is the point. Rituals can’t hurt anyone unless they are claimed to be something beyond the symbolic. And that’s where the problem comes in: they nearly always *are*. No one wants to think their rituals are meaningless. People think chanting changes the world. They think their positive thoughts affect matter. There’s no end of absurd claims people make about their wishing and willing. When one group makes such concrete claims, then expects others to accept it literally, it becomes a problem. What they are really asking non-believers to do is to grant unearned respect for their sheer earnestness–even if the end result is opaque or useless.

It’s galling to me that religions claim to offer people objectively valuable purpose and meaning, yet thousands of them perform different and often conflicting rituals. If there was really a God watching up in the sky–he could only see these as billions of thoughts and sentiments blended into a haze of vague desiring and begging for “something more.” I think any God worthy of the name would find it all rather amusing: “Children, children, be of good cheer, I regret to inform you I can’t prevent you all from dying some day, so in the meantime–do your homework, love each other and your planet, and eat your vegetables.”

Stern continues:

I’ve known many devout people from a variety of faith communities. They are religious in the sense they believe there is purpose and meaning to the universe. They believe in a creator — an infinite presence that our finite minds cannot comprehend but know is there. They believe it’s important to feed the poor and help the sick not just because it alleviates human suffering but because doing so contributes in some inchoate way to the cosmic order.

Vague, vague–piles and heaps of vague. I love the use of the word inchoate. Talk about about an intellectual surrender! We see the next fallback position of the confused apologist is to say that it’s really not about belief anyway, but about action, “how you live.” This is just a bastardized version of humanism (but to them, humanism’s “not good enough.”) We humanists feel that how we treat each other and the kind of world we make has ultimate value because it’s all we have and all we will ever have. The apologist distorts this to say that treating others with kindness could only have meaning if it pleased the Almighty, “contributed in some inchoate (ill-formed and incomplete) way to the cosmic order,” and upped our chances at immortality. That’s just naive Pascal’s Wager tripe anyway.

The humanist makes the greater contribution, because she does it without the expectation of any other reward than feeling good. The only ‘cosmic order’ of any consequence to humanity comes through the promotion of human unity and the alleviation of suffering.

The point here is that moderate religion stripped of the hierarchy, belief, and ritual is at its core humanism. It came from naturally evolved morality, which is based on reciprocity and empathy. And that’s the stuff we all strive for, strive to become better at, strive to express in ever more powerful world-changing ways. Or we should. The problem is that any religion that is based on the reification of myths is bound to drain resources, talent and time from accomplishing things in the here and now. It’s bound to be less agile at responding to the changing circumstances of life, since it’s based on stories that have remained the same for hundreds of generations.

Believers are taking up a large portion of their brain power running an overlay simulation that they attempt to blend seamlessly with the natural, observable world. In this sense the myths become very important to them because without them the simulation collapses. Without the attendant grandeur and promise of eternal life, finding motivation or purpose becomes, well, what it really should be, a personal, interior journey.

And what of the myths themselves? There are good ones and bad ones. Believing in stories that are absurd and impossible cannot be good for anyone. Look at the damage the idea of original sin and the virgin birth does. It turns ordinary “good” Catholics into crazy deranged people blocking access to birth control and abortion services and ensuring the spread of the deadly plague of HIV around the world. How much suffering can be laid at the feet of this one despicable idea?

Sure there are positive metaphors and lessons in myth: renewal, sacrifice, loyalty, betrayal, superhuman strength, conflict, or intelligence. But we have to evaluate each one. Is it a good myth? Or does it promote the same old pathologies of abuse of hierarchy or authority. Does it help people see things as they are? Or will it confuse them further?

Stern seems to think it doesn’t matter–that even false histories can have value:

The Canadian theologian Rabbi Gunther Plaut talks about how American tradition mythologized the frontiersmen, presenting them as enterprising pioneers and courageous adventurers. The truth, of course, is that many pioneers, having failed in the east, had no place to go but west, and were motivated as much by a desire to get rich as anything else. “But Americans have preferred to see their past in an idealized light, (emphasis added) and their admiration of the value of personal independence and frontier virtues has itself shaped the psychology of the nation.” In the same way, says Plaut, Biblical narratives “mirror the collective memory of our ancestors, and in the course of centuries this record became a source of truth,” incorporated into “the consciousness of the people.”

“Preferred to see their past…” But what is the value of ‘truth’ that’s not true? And if we accept a historical error of our collective memory as truth, is it not corrupting? Stern tries to assert the value of biblical stories that are not literally true by bringing up false perceptions about frontiersmen. I think he’s arguing against himself. Romantic notions of history blunt the real lessons of that history. If we have a rose-colored view, it’s just as bad as a blinkered one. Let’s just take off the rose-colored glasses altogether and see things for what they are. That includes Bible stories and other myths. Let’s ask whether the story we’re reading makes a point of value measured against modern, universal, inclusive human ethics.

Stories that directly conflict with science are the most corrosive, and so should be out at square one. Tossed, kaput. That means “creation,” the talking ass, the virgin birth, water into wine, the Eucharist, the Resurrection, and all the rest. Myths are only valuable inasmuch as they provide a supportable moral lesson, cautionary tale, or inspiration. Many things about the great American explorers were laudable. But that doesn’t mean some of them weren’t also deeply flawed. Since when did their ambition to get rich become a moral failing on its own? Doesn’t it matter more *how* the explorers’ fortunes were made? And whether they treated the native peoples ethically? Those are the questions we should be asking, because they require greater nuance. The answers can be brought to bear on how we should behave as we explore our own frontiers today.

In the end, this is not a battle between religion and atheism, nor even between literalism and metaphor. It’s a battle between glossing over unpleasant truths and facing them. For humans, these truths are the inevitability of death, and the competitiveness and rapaciousness of our untempered nature. In the face of these, religion and its apologists have made a cowardly stand for pleasant but corrupting stories that hold us back. Why can’t we simply find the courage to face the truth of our history and existence? I don’t care how many times people say “that’s not nice.” It’s a stage we’re going to have to get through if we want to slog our way forward.

In the grand scheme of American politics, the gay marriage issue seems like it should really be a footnote. It affects so few people, how could it be so important?

The question is simple enough, right? Either you think same-sex marriage is a symbol of plummeting morality and the decline of Western Civilization, or you see it as a fundamental human right. Like abortion or gun control, it’s not a subject that lends itself to much middle ground.

And with 10.2% unemployment, a war raging in Afghanistan, and the worst mass-murder on a military base in US history having just occurred, it might seem trivial to discuss it. And if you’re not gay, why should you care?

Well, a few days ago, voters in Maine shamefully denied same-sex marriage rights, as they have done in all 31 states where the question has made it to the ballot. This completely mocks the idea of equal protection under the law, and exposes the tyranny of the majority–what my sister called the “fly in the soup” of democracy. And I will demonstrate that this is no empty metaphor.

To put it in perspective, let’s start with something that should send a chill up the spine of every American–even in “red” states: Opposition to gay marriage is what gave George W. Bush a second term. And the second Bush term is what plunged us into the “Great Recession.” Lest you think I’m overstating the case, Bush’s own Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in 2008 in this report:

The turmoil in financial markets clearly was triggered by a dramatic weakening of underwriting standards for U.S. subprime mortgages, beginning in late 2004 and extending into early 2007. (emphasis added)

Most of this gross malfeasance took place under the second Bush term. And it cost Republicans dearly in the 2008 election. It’s also a well-known political fact that John Kerry lost the state of Ohio in 2004 because of aggressive pastoral support for the Ohio Marriage Amendment. While other factors may have played some role in the outcome, both academics and Catholics acknowledged that the marriage amendment is what gave Bush the edge.

From The Religion Card: Evangelicals, Catholics, and Gay Marriage in the 2004 Presidential Election, Notre Dame University, Brigham Young University:

Does George W. Bush owe his re-election to the groundswell of opposition to gay marriage? We find that while gay marriage was not necessarily the most important factor overall and did not matter equally for every voter, it did matter to white evangelical Christians and Catholics. Specifically, evangelicals and Catholics were more likely to turn out to vote in states with a gay marriage ban on the ballot.

Catholic News Service article:

But when it was all said and done, 22 percent of all voters across the United States picked “moral values” as the most important issue facing the nation, followed by the economy and jobs (20 percent) and the war on terrorism (19 percent). Eighty percent of those who saw moral values as the most important issue voted for Bush, according to post-election data released by the National Election Pool.

Eleven state ballots included measures similar to the Federal Marriage Amendment, revising state constitutions to limit marriage to its traditional definition. The measure was approved in all 11 states, including Ohio, where a Bush win secured his victory in the Electoral College, (emphasis added) and eight other states won by Bush.

“Clearly the supporters of traditional marriage helped President Bush down the aisle to a second term,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.

Why can’t they just have civil unions? What’s the big deal about calling themselves “married?”

In the runup to California’s infamous Prop. 8, someone I once greatly respected asked me this question in a disparaging manner. I lost my respect for them in a big hurry. It’s amazing how similar this sentiment is to labeling African-Americans “uppity” for wanting full equality. “Separate but equal” doctrines were struck down by Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954. Still it took until 1964 for full equality under the law to take effect with the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

1964 was the year of my birth, which means it’s been my entire lifetime since this issue was legally settled. Yet Americans still quibble over whether gay people are worthy of having their rights protected. Slightly over half of voters in at least 31 states feel they are not.

On the same day Maine decided to scrap its marriage law, Washington voters narrowly approved a separate-but-equal version, granting all domestic partners the same rights and obligations as married couples. I’m happy about the historic passage of Washington R-71, but even though it marks the first time recognition of gay unions has ever succeeded at the ballot box, it’s bittersweet. Gays can now have ‘weddings’ legally in Washington, but they still can’t drink from the same champagne fountain.

“He is entitled to his opinion”

The young son of a friend of mine posted his opposition to gay marriage on a Facebook poll. I took issue with it, told him he was homophobic, and ended up hearing back from the father: “He assures me that he is not homophobic.  He simply opposes granting special status to gay unions by legalizing them as marriages.” And that “there is plenty of reason for well-meaning people to differ on this one.  He is entitled to his opinions and, at fourteen, I would expect him to evolve as he grows up.”

I hope so. But in this case, it’s pretty damn clear that the young man had been influenced not only by his peers and locale (a strong red state), but also by the attitudes of his parents. And I’m not sure I agree at all with the idea that “well-meaning people” can differ. I think being opposed to gay marriage entirely excludes a person from the category of “well-meaning.” Exactly what “well-meaning” or humanitarian goal is being served by denying an entire class of Americans the right to join one of civilization’s most important legally-defined subgroups? How does such a “well-meaning person” sleep better at night knowing they’ve seriously degraded someone else’s quality of life–a state of affairs they could reverse at zero cost to their own well being?

Just as blacks were once considered by many Americans to be sub-human, so are gay people today. And this exclusionary attitude should be treated by all “well-meaning people” with utter contempt. The fiction that such opinions are within the range of acceptable dialog serves only to reinforce and prolong bigotry.

What about the children?

In an article about the Maine vote, political consultant Frank Schubert (who was also instrumental in passing California’s Prop. 8 ) said he discovered a deep vein of fear and disgust while conducting focus groups on the issue.

Schubert said he had an ah-ha moment in California when a focus group watched a campaign commercial featuring a Massachusetts couple who described how their 7-year-old son came home from school and explained that a man can marry another man, something he learned in a children’s book.

One of the members of the focus group shook his head, and Schubert asked the moderator to inquire. The participant said he would be angry if something like that that happened to his kids.

“So that was sort of a light-bulb moment, that this education issue was really going to be a powerful one for us,” said Schubert, who with Flint was named the “public affairs team of the year” for 2009 by the American Association of Political Consultants.

I talked about this on Facebook, and one friend of mine–who has four delightful kids–wrote “Kids should be taught about sex - period! Enough with the lies and denial, kids are aware of sex and if you put fairy wings on everything they will think that sex is a shameful thing.” I replied with the following comment:

I agree. Careful surveys (or eavesdropping) should be done to figure out at what age kids are already talking amongst themselves about sex. Then schools and parents should pre-empt them slightly with better information. But that would be using logic.

Never happen in a million years. Parents seem to experience an epidemic of prudishness when their kids are young. And that’s a trait that crosses the liberal-conservative divide.

Parents, if you don’t like being seen that way, then do something about it!

There’s an interesting herd phenomenon in social psychology that people act as if the group is more prudish than they are. To avoid being viewed as crass or amoral, they profess to be offended by something long before it actually offends them. They are more concerned with having the “correct” response to something that is seen as controversial than about authentically expressing their own opinion, particularly when it involves a risque topic.

And all it takes is one person to ratchet up the prude factor in a group of parents. It’s far easier to provoke a group shaming response than one of acceptance. We all know this, know it’s a problem, but there seems to be no way to fix it. “For the children” seems to be the most prominent thought-stopping tactic in politics.

So the end result is that anything about expanding sex education or reducing the age at which it is offered is political kryptonite.

Standing for Liberty and Freedom

We Americans seem pretty pleased with ourselves, as if we were some kind of bastion of liberty and freedom–a beacon to the world. Horseshit. We must recognize that the greatness of our society is measured specifically in how we treat our pariahs–gays, Muslims, atheists, and illegal immigrants. We must learn to be very disturbed as long as any American minority is committing suicide at several times the rate of other citizens (as gays do). Lives are literally at stake. And that’s not all.

There once was a Republican Unity Coalition, way back in 2001, dedicated to making sexual orientation a “non-issue” in the GOP. It was chaired by Alan Simpson, joined by former President Gerald Ford, and counted such prominent members as John Danforth, Mary Matalin and Diane Ravitch. But that was before–before the religious right devoured the soul of the former party of Lincoln and Eisenhower. The “Log Cabin Republicans” have likely never seen a worse time in the party’s history. Why can’t today’s arch-conservatives remember the words of President Ford?

I think they ought to be treated equally, Period. I have always believed in an inclusive policy, in welcoming gays and others into the party. I think the party has to have an umbrella philosophy if it expects to win elections.

But Ford did not forsee the rise of the exact inverse strategy: today’s relentless wedge politics. The story of how the radicals stole the party from the moderates is outlined in Max Blumenthal’s horrifying book Republican Gomorrah. Ford couldn’t have grasped the towering ideological collapse of a party which could so quickly be seduced by the scent of raw power into straying so far from its principles of limited government and individual rights.

But we had better learn to understand why and how they are succeeding. First and foremost, we’d better come up with a better rejoinder to help American parents get rid of their squeamishness over their children learning about gay marriage and gay sex. Whether it’s actually taught in schools or not is irrelevant. Many parents have bought into the idea (or fear) that it will be. If we can’t beat them on this messaging challenge, the radical Tea Party Republicans will milk this issue again and again and again to put their people in power and roll back progress on everything we hold dear: health care, the climate, renewable energy, corporate accountability and a host of other vital issues.

I’ve never been a huge Michael Moore fan. Still, his latest documentary Capitalism: A Love Story is powerful and entertaining. Variety’s review is on the nose, and I won’t repeat it here.

The film builds its case well, which is that modern American capitalism has taken over the government, and turned the economy into something akin to an organized-crime racket. And in some ways Moore is right. Financial deregulation that began under the Reagan administration and continued with the destruction of even more laws under George W. Bush encouraged the flagrantly fraudulent sales of sub-prime mortgages and their derivatives. When the taxpayers bailed out Wall Street in 2008 instead of Main Street, it became the mother of all swindles. To this day, no one has a proper accounting of how the $700 billion was spent.

Having said that, my biggest problem with Moore is his tendency toward oversimplification and sentimentality. He substitutes outrage for analysis. And he lets American borrowers and consumers completely off the hook. Sad as it may be to see someone getting tossed out of their home, no one forced them to take out a bad mortgage. Moore’s lurid populism strip-mines the “poor me” attitude of people who were only too happy to spend other people’s money without reading the fine print. Sadly we all had to be reminded that we don’t get something for nothing.

But this is picking nits. There is a larger problem with populist anti-capitalism: it ignores the realities of power and competition. Moore and other economic liberals love to disparage “greed.”  Why can’t people just be satisfied with “enough,” they ask. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Humans were shaped by evolution to be opportunists. And it’s not just about living “happily ever after.” Humanity has conflicting drives for cooperation and dominance.

And “dominance” can mean exactly that: slaughtering the neighboring tribe, stealing their women, sowing their fields with salt. Sure, we are “civilized” now, which means dominance is expressed through deception and arcane financial instruments. It means a person, family, or tribe can fall into a trap in which their dignity is completely stolen. Instead of being slaughtered, they’re still walking around wondering what the hell happened. It’s no less brutal–as Moore showed in a powerful scene when a family was paid $1,000 in a “cash-for-keys” scheme that required them to clean and prep their own foreclosed home for its next owner.

Moore took issue with another corporate practice known as “dead peasant” insurance: A company takes out life-insurance policies on all its employees and collects the benefits when they die. It’s sad, of course, to see the bereaved talking about how much they miss their husband or wife. But blaming the corporation for their pain is disingenuous. Moore isn’t even claiming that the corporation killed them, but he’s implying it.

I object to this because it creates fake outrage, and it’s manipulative. The reality of the financial crisis is bad enough without having to manufacture new issues. People are free to take out their own life insurance policies if they want, and many do. This corporate practice feels unsavory, to be sure. But that’s not the same thing as it being illegal or even necessarily unethical, although new rules have been passed in the last few years. It’s basically placing an impartial “side-bet” on employee life expectancy. If they did it for just one person, it would be creepy. But doing it across the board for thousands of employees is little different than a corporation trading options. And this is my issue with Moore. He confuses being “nice” with following the law. We all wish people would be “nicer.” But relying on it is a recipe for disappointment. And there are countless business practices that are not “nice” but make economic sense.

And this is not the fault of capitalism. Regardless of economic or political system, people are always going to try to take advantage of others’ misfortune. It’s how power works. Its even necessary as evolution and counter-evolution make people and companies stronger and more efficient. The debate then is not between capitalism and some other economic system, it’s finding out how to design a world that works well in spite of or even because of the rapaciousness of human nature.

One answer to the dilemma Moore presents is improved voluntary cooperation. To the extent that people can come together and unite around common goals, they can subordinate and temporarily sublimate their competitive drives. I support this wholeheartedly. Moore showed two examples of companies which ran as co-operatives. To me, this was the best and most hopeful part of his film. Still, all the voluntary cooperation in the world won’t get rid of cheaters and slackers. Nor will it get rid of the vultures, who occupy an important evolutionary niche.

The failures of American capitalism can also be largely chalked up to continued governmental indifference to externalities (costs and benefits accruing to non-participants in an economic transaction). It’s easy to focus on inequality and growing disparities between super-rich and everyone else. But this does nothing to solve the underlying problem: Systemic unpaid externalities that benefit the top 1%.

We should be far more concerned with externalities than with indiscriminately raising taxes on the rich. Taxing the rich punishes all wealth, whether it was acquired ethically or not. Taxing externalities targets specific bad behavior. This one concept has the capacity to transform the debate about everything from health care to green energy. Put another way, we won’t solve these problems until corporate profits are calculated based on their full long-term impact on society. It’s a conversation no one really wants to have, because it requires we face structural abuses and get our act together. (Even consumers don’t want to talk about externalities, because doing so might raise prices in the short-term.)

Finally, Moore presents a false dichotomy as the climax and summation to his film. He contrasts capitalism with his preferred alternative, “democracy.” Obviously, democracy is a political, not economic system, and it can co-exist with a wide range of economic methods. But Moore continues to muddle the two by showing a stirring clip from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt about a second bill of economic rights.

I agree with many of FDR’s “rights” on a humanitarian basis. But you can never guarantee such positive outcomes. Churn and loss are an essential part of social and economic evolution. When better ways of doing things come along, some people will inevitably suffer temporary pain. I’m all for government safety nets, and I’m all for a more egalitarian society. Unfortunately, I don’t think Moore’s liberal populism will get us there any faster than Glenn Beck’s “know-nothing” conservative populism.

Human rights only survive when backed by superior force. The opportunism of corporations and bankers will only be brought under control when the common people become smarter and even more ruthless in the wielding of their own political strength. The rape of the planet which many blame on “capitalism” will only be stopped by capitalism when the people demand full financial accountability on corporate balance sheets of every form of externality.

But clearly such policy details have little to do with the art of documentary filmmaking–which is finding an emotional connection with your audience. This Moore accomplishes. Audiences will find his sentimentality and japery far more satisfying than the cold, dry prospect of improved policymaking.

Moore theatrically declared that “you cannot regulate evil,” but this is exactly what we must do. The first step is to stop demonizing it. Such black and white rhetoric is no different than what we were hearing from John McCain when he said: “How do you deal with evil? Defeat it.” Fail.

The truth is a lot subtler, and we are all a part of the problem. Human “greed” is simply the fulfillment of evolutionary conflicts and metabolic needs. Without smart regulation, any attempt at reducing consumption will simply lower commodity prices and make it cheaper for others to consume. So we need to stop the hand-wringing about our immutable nature. We need to legally compel everyone to pay the true costs of what they buy. And we need to incentivize good corporate citizenship.  Then, and only then, can we achieve a society that is fully functional.

It’s almost as if some people wish the Cold War had never ended. There was something attractive about the US-Soviet bipolar world. Kind of like the religious black-and-white thinking of absolute good and absolute evil. All you had to do is choose sides and keep score. So recent changes on the planned US “missile shield” in Europe comes with a bit that old thunder-on-the-right you might have heard in 1956 or 1968 when the Soviets rolled tanks into Budapest or Prague. Drudge couldn’t resist noting it was the “70th anniversary of…” something awful Russia once did.

Except it’s nearly 2010, the Soviet Union doesn’t exist, and the country brutally suppressing demonstrations is not Russia. And the “betrayal” is a strategic change initiated by the Obama administration responding to developments in the budding nuclear state of Iran. Not to mention the fact that the non-existent missile interceptors were planned to be the wrong type. As Newsweek commented:

The Czechs and the Poles, who had hoped that the system would somehow protect them against Russian aggression, were appalled. (The Polish prime minister refused to take a call from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton informing him of the decision.)Conservative Americans, who counted on the missile shield to contain Iranian missiles, decried Obama’s move as dangerous, or even treasonous. Only Russia, which believed that the system would somehow impair their ability to use their own nuclear missiles, was delighted. The real question, though, isn’t whether Obama is right or wrong about the system’s efficacy. (He’s obviously right.) The real question why everybody cares so much. How did a piece of technology years from reality work its way to the center of so many diplomatic crises?

To begin with, it’s important to remember that while plenty of missile defense systems capable of hitting short- and medium-range missiles exist (remember Patriots and Scuds?), none are yet capable of knocking out long-range ballistic missiles. So far, that is a theory that looked good on network-news computer graphics but that never actually existed. The idea was for radar stations in the Czech Republic to monitor missile launches from the Middle East, and for interceptor rockets in Poland to shoot them down en route to their targets. The interceptor rockets, though, don’t even work; after years of trials and billions of dollars of research, a prototype tested in Alaska still can’t reliably tell real missiles from decoys or kill missiles that change course midflight, as truly sophisticated weapons can. Not that it would have mattered: no country in the Middle East actually possesses the kind of missiles that could reach the United States, or even Northern Europe. No, what ultimately killed off missile defense was the news that Iran has nothing like the kind of long-range, Soviet-style ballistic missiles that the system was supposed to stop.

So why the fuss? Simple: a missile-defense system is a great symbol—far more potent than any practical weaponry could ever be. Among Eastern Europeans, it became a totem for American protection against a resurgent Russia, even though the system was never designed to guard against Russian missiles. The basic point is that, by design (and remember we’re talking about something that never got beyond the drawing board), the system was designed to intercept ballistic missiles in the stratosphere and low orbit. A simple glance at the map shows that such intercontinental ballistic missiles are not what Russia would fire at Poland, just a few hundred miles away.

Symbolism. Rah-rah chest beating. That’s what all the fuss is about. With deployment many years away, now is the time to tweak strategy, not after billions have been spent. Now is the time to recognize that with military weapons, unlike the cartoon fun house of tabloid news, truth does matter. When it comes to the physics of blasting missiles out of the sky, paranoia, patriotism and faux outrage won’t get the job done.

From the Christian Science Monitor:

Some critics worry that Washington is “appeasing” Russia, encouraging more bullying from this bear. But the United States isn’t abandoning its European friends under pressure from Russia. Washington still wants to involve Eastern Europe – specifically the Poles and Czechs – in an antimissile shield directed at Iran. It just wants to do it later, and with more up-to-date equipment.

The Bush plan had called for an antimissile shield in those two countries that was aimed at detecting and knocking out long-range Iranian nuclear missiles that might threaten the US and Europe. The installations were expected to be ready in 2017 or 2018.

As Defense Secretary Robert Gates explained today, however, intelligence shows that Tehran is developing short- and medium-range missiles much more rapidly than the long-range missiles for which the Eastern European shield was intended. At the same time, technological advances in the US military’s ability to shoot down short- and medium-range missiles has vastly improved.

That argues for the more flexible, two-phased approach of the Pentagon: sea-borne interceptors first, land-based by around 2015, all the while continuing to work on the trickier technology of intercepting long-range nuclear missiles.

None of this nuance is likely to blunt the furor. It’s funny how on the issues that matter, like climate change and strategic politics, Eastern European governments and media are as crazy as Glenn Beck. I’m glad our President isn’t being swayed by any of it.

America’s got to end its deadly devotion to democracy

via Christian Science Monitor

Democracy is a messy business, even in wealthy countries. One look at the Tea Party demonstrations proves that. But a new book called Democracy Kills by Humphrey Hawksley posits that democracy actually increases violence if forcibly implemented (irony alert) in countries with under $2,700 per capita GDP. I would add that a sound public educational system is also an essential prerequisite. Most Americans can’t articulate a coherent political philosophy–understanding how a set of principles leads to one’s choice of candidate. If we can’t do it, how can we expect it of those who are far less educated? This sounds elitist and condescending, no doubt. But isn’t it something worse than elitist to impose a system that we know, for sure, will cause an increase in violent death? In which country are we doing this–right now?

St. Andrews, Scotland – Usama Rehda is a photographer who lives in Baghdad. Crossing his city to ply his trade means running a gantlet of bandits, extortionists, and snipers, not to mention suicide bombers. While he once despised Saddam Hussein, he admits that life was easier under the dictator. “You know what they say,” he remarked to a colleague bitterly. “Be nice to the Americans or they’ll punish you with democracy.”

America needs to rid itself of the hopelessly naive attitude that all nations are capable of becoming sustainable democracies.

“What’s so good about having the vote?” veteran BBC foreign correspondent Humphrey Hawksley asks in his new book, “Democracy Kills.” In Britain, Japan, and the United States, the answer is easy. In the developing world, however, identifying the benefits of democracy can be anything but.

In the Ivory Coast, for instance, democracy and its sidekick – free market economics – have brought political instability and economic ruin. Cocoa producers are paid the same for a kilo of beans as 30 years ago, even though the price of a chocolate bar has risen fourfold. Adults have the vote, but their children are essentially slaves.

Mr. Hawksley’s book is a chronicle of how economic despair leads to political alienation and often violence. There’s nothing new to that story, but what is surprising – uncomfortably so – is this: Evidence shows that attempts to democratize the developed world have made internal tensions much worse. Often, as in Iraq, voting actually offers a new forum for acting out ancient animosities.

During the cold war, the US supported brutal dictators overseas in the interest of political stability. In contrast, since 1989, Americans have tried to stabilize developing nations by creating governments similar to their own. Ballots have become a substitute for aid, a policy the foreign correspondent Misha Glenny calls “kumbaya politics.” The theory seems noble, but the practice often facilitates poverty, disease, exploitation, and murder.

When democracy mixes with poverty the result is often explosive – literally. The Oxford academic Paul Collier proposed in “Wars, Guns and Votes” a formula to explain this volatile chemistry. He believes that the critical point lies at a per capita income of $2,700 per year. Below that level, democracy has a difficult time taking root.

I knew my article on immigration would get some attention, but I didn’t realize it would be such a textbook example of the hatred and bigotry I was talking about. It’s depressingly predictable:

You are a complete idiot on the issue of illegal aliens from Mexico invading the U.S. They spread filth, disease, crime, drugs and gangs. Why is that OK with you?

The women drop an anchor baby every nine months at American taxpayer expense. Illegal aliens are responsible for the health care crisis because THEY NEVER PAY! WE PAY FOR THEM IN HIGHER PREMIUMS AND HIGHER COSTS.

Their filthy children over crowd our schools and spread lice, scabies and SWINE FLU to American children.

Mexico exports its human garbage for us to take care of.

I say deport all of them back to Mexico and let the Mexican government take care of its own people.

American taxpayers take care of Americans, but we are not going to continue to take care of illegal alien invaders from Mexico!

You are the one who should be ashamed for being so STUPID!

I responded:

They won’t pay taxes–because we won’t let them pay taxes. All most of them want to do is get a social security number so they can work legally and support their families.

Have you seen “Gangs of New York”? Every immigrant group starts out with a high criminal element. And it’s not like we don’t have plenty of US citizens involved in gangs. I’ll go along with getting rid of the Mexican criminals if you’ll agree to deport US citizens who commit the same crimes.

Take a look in the mirror. Your rhetoric is hateful, racist, and bigoted, and you don’t even seem to care. You had nothing to do with choosing the land of your birth, it was a happy (for you) accident. So stop lording over the privileges you were so lucky to be afforded because your parents happened to conceive and give birth to you in this country.

You had nothing to do with it!

“Human garbage.” Listen to yourself. What makes you think you’re not the garbage? Our country was founded on “all men are created equal.” That doesn’t mean just Americans. What happened to “innocent until proven guilty”? Or does that not count for immigrants either? I’m a white American, and you make me ashamed to share your country or your race. You’re probably religious, too. Where’s the Christian love?? Human garbage? What would Jesus say about that level of hatred?

You blame Swine flu on the Mexicans? Diseases know no borders. And then there’s diseases of the mind, like the one you have, that makes you think you’re so special. Sick shit, lady, and I’m using the term “lady” very, very loosely.

If you want the facts, read the economic analysis of illegal immigration I linked to at the end of my article. Or just keep the blinders on and keep going to your Tea Parties and hating the President and everyone who’s not like you. The world is mostly black and brown and getting more so. The days of white American privilege are over. Soon we will be the minority in the good old US of A. So get used to it. Your date with the clue-by-four of the new reality is coming.

I can’t even believe narrow-minded atavistic people like you still exist…whoa.

Apparently emboldened by the success of Prop. 8, it seems California religious nutters are now gathering signatures to put an initiative to ban divorce on the ballot in 2010. I still can’t figure out if it’s supposed to be a piece of political theater. But CNN covered it in a serious way–and they’ve filed the necessary paperwork–so…?

If serious, it’s a similar approach to the evangelical “covenant marriage,” another last-ditch attempt to keep the bible relevant as some kind of source of morality, or worse, law.

I’m not particularly worried about this. With tens of millions of dollars spent on Prop. 8, it was an extremely close race (52-47). This time, they’ve struck right at the heart of the freedom of the heterosexual majority. I don’t think all the Catholic and Mormon money in the world could get this through in CA. But the fact that they’re trying should once again make people think twice about the abuse of the initiative process to pass some truly onerous laws.

On the other hand, maybe this is a brilliantly subversive Onion-style prank by John Marcotte. The website is suspiciously tongue-in-cheek. But it’s nowhere near April 1. What do you think?

Coal Industry Still Poisoning America’s Water

via New York Times

…and they’re getting away with it. Even Obama’s EPA can’t seem to get a handle on the corruption, bullying and intimidation that keeps the sludge flowing into America’s groundwater. And many people in coal mining states are paying the price with terrible health problems. It’s a sad commentary that our appetite for cheap energy is so non-negotiable that even when the good guys are in charge, money still means more than human life.

When people talk about cheap energy, what they really mean is that the think the lives of people in coal states are expendable. And they won’t pay a few more cents per kilowatt-hour for solar or wind that would end this dumping entirely. Who said humans were the smartest mammals? We can’t even figure out how to stop poisoning our own–even when it’s completely unnecessary.

Jennifer Hall-Massey knows not to drink the tap water in her home near Charleston, W.Va. In fact, her entire family tries to avoid any contact with the water. Her youngest son has scabs on his arms, legs and chest where the bathwater — polluted with lead, nickel and other heavy metals — caused painful rashes. Many of his brother’s teeth were capped to replace enamel that was eaten away.

Neighbors apply special lotions after showering because their skin burns. Tests show that their tap water contains arsenic, barium, lead, manganese and other chemicals at concentrations federal regulators say could contribute to cancer and damage the kidneys and nervous system.

“How can we get digital cable and Internet in our homes, but not clean water?” said Mrs. Hall-Massey, a senior accountant at one of the state’s largest banks.

She and her husband, Charles, do not live in some remote corner of Appalachia. Charleston, the state capital, is less than 17 miles from her home.

“How is this still happening today?” she asked.

When Mrs. Hall-Massey and 264 neighbors sued nine nearby coal companies, accusing them of putting dangerous waste into local water supplies, their lawyer did not have to look far for evidence. As required by state law, some of the companies had disclosed in reports to regulators that they were pumping into the ground illegal concentrations of chemicals — the same pollutants that flowed from residents’ taps.

But state regulators never fined or punished those companies for breaking those pollution laws.

This pattern is not limited to West Virginia. Almost four decades ago, Congress passed the Clean Water Act to force polluters to disclose the toxins they dump into waterways and to give regulators the power to fine or jail offenders. States have passed pollution statutes of their own. But in recent years, violations of the Clean Water Act have risen steadily across the nation, an extensive review of water pollution records by The New York Times found.

In the last five years alone, chemical factories, manufacturing plants and other workplaces have violated water pollution laws more than half a million times. The violations range from failing to report emissions to dumping toxins at concentrations regulators say might contribute to cancer, birth defects and other illnesses.

However, the vast majority of those polluters have escaped punishment. State officials have repeatedly ignored obvious illegal dumping, and the Environmental Protection Agency, which can prosecute polluters when states fail to act, has often declined to intervene.

“You lie!” shouted Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) at President Obama, in what Bill Maher compared to an episode of Tourette syndrome. Wilson’s unprecedented breach of legislative decorum concerned the President’s statement to a joint session of Congress that illegal aliens would not receive free health care under reform legislation. Why should the mere suspicion of a compassionate stance toward aliens stir such a display of outrage?

Xenophobia

Like crime-scene evidence–whether a telltale stain or the unmistakable stench of rotting flesh–Wilson’s outburst was testimony to America’s mouldering xenophobia. This oozing pustule of tribal hostility erupts from unseen depths of the paleoconservative psyche. It’s a visceral reflex that operates far below the radar of intellectual argument about immigration, legal or otherwise. As such, it is of little value here to discuss those arguments, which can’t even break the surface tension of the radical Right’s cauldron of resentment. They’re so worried that a Democratic president would extend benefits to ‘non-Americans’ they forget it was their hero Ronald Reagan who recognized the simple truth that it was un-American to have illegal aliens dying in our streets. It was the paragon of modern conservatism who signed the law requiring universal no-questions-asked emergency-room treatment.

Civilized ethics can be boiled down to two broad questions: Do you think in terms of short-term or long-term self-interest? How large is your “in-group,” or circle of concern? The right-wing mindset is typefied by incredibly short-term thinking and an extremely tiny and fragmented circle of concern. Therefore right-wingers can’t seem to manage much empathy, and they find any excuse to marginalize and dehumanize broad segments of Earth’s population. It’s especially easy when those “others” speak a different language, have a different culture or religion, or most importantly have a scrappy work ethic that threatens to upend the unearned privileges many Americans enjoy through the simple accident of having been born into the world’s dominant empire.

Meritocracy, a “Conservative” Value

It’s a fool’s errand to demand equality of capabilities, or to demand equal outcomes. Only the most idealistic anarcho-communists or new-age dilettantes cling to the fantasy of eliminating money, hierarchy, or private property. The rest of the world realizes there will always be haves and have-nots (or have-lesses), and the haves will always attempt to consolidate their advantages regardless of the sociopolitical system. But it is still profoundly unethical to deny equality of opportunity as a foundational principle of our society.

Whatever the reality on the ground, we should at least aspire to the idea that equality under the law and equal opportunity for advancement are worthy goals. And we must admit it’s extremely hypocritical in a ‘meritocracy’ to deny people the right to work wherever their skills are in demand. Free competition–and that includes the right to sell your labor–is the hallmark of free enterprise. Many conservatives rail against the minimum wage for this very reason, yet when a whole group of hardworking Central and South Americans tries to work for sub-minimum wages, the Right would just as soon arrest them, deport them, or worse.

American paleoconservatives also claim to respect our founding documents, the spirit and letter of which they routinely ignore. For example, the Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal.” Setting aside the obvious problems of this phrase–being poorly worded, creationist, and gender exclusive–it has also been roundly mocked: Not only by a grossly unequal American society, but even in the Orwellian doublespeak of Animal Farm, articulating the bankrupt right-wing attitude that “some are more equal than others.”

That’s felony-level hypocrisy, and conservatives definitely know better.

Otherness

But the faulty rationale of anti-immigration-pro-free enterprise demagogues is irrelevant to those who cultivate and feed off the bottomless pit of America’s primal fear of “otherness.” The scoundrels who slobber at this trough could care less about intellectual integrity. And it’s not just fear. Before you can foment fear, you have to fully demonize the out-group.

Let’s try to analyze this set of attitudes, by starting with the just plain “wrongness” of the above road sign. American drivers hit about 1.5 million deer every year. But we don’t consider it to be the deer’s fault. We built roads through their habitat, and they’re not smart enough to get out of the way. We may feel a slight twinge of sadness when a deer dies, but we’re far more concerned about damage to our cars and human fatalities. But in this instance, the silhouetted hazard looks more like a typical American middle-class family late to a baseball game than desperate Mexicans running for their lives. The woman is wearing a skirt, the daughter has a pony-tail. If it weren’t a highway sign, it would be totally Norman Rockwell. What’s incongruous and what horrifies me most about this little tableau is that a family of flesh-and-blood human beings have been morally reduced to a road-hazard. Compare that to the far more dignified universal pedestrian symbol: Unhurried, walking between the lines, belonging.

Beyond the unfortunate roadside symbolism, it is the disparity of circumstances that is most galling. Being apprehended or struck by an automobile are the least of an illegal immigrant’s worries. They are also separated from their families for years–not crossing the road hand-in-hand. They often pay thousands of dollars to “coyotes” who get them across the US border and desert at risk of starvation, dehydration or violence. Once here, it often takes a long time to pay off their passage, so going home to see their families is out of the question.

Slamming shut the “golden door”

I’ve talked to recent immigrants from Europe who hate illegal aliens almost as much as American paleoconservatives. Few things are more shocking to me. Sure, it’s tough to go through the process–my wife’s doing it right now. But empathy makes me want to liberalize and streamline the process–not make it worse. Why should anyone else suffer needlessly? But the resentment that someone else is perceived to have taken a shortcut turns some lucky legal immigrants into frothing neo-fascists. And we’re not even talking about a real shortcut. The life of an illegal alien is nightmarish by any standard. To be brutally honest, it’s a life on the lam. Who would take that deal if they had any choice at all?

Like American paleoconservatism, I think we can chalk up these bad European attitudes to unearned privilege. People in the first-world just can’t imagine the levels of desperation that consume the lives of the bottom billions. Nor the value system of someone who would risk their life to clean toilets for $5.00 an hour. Europeans have also benefited from America’s liberal immigration policies toward friendly countries, and the “visa waiver program” that allows people from those countries with clean police records to simply buy a ticket and arrive.

But there’s something else about Europe that might be causing this bad attitude: They have an immigration problem of their own. And they’re not handling it well. Instead of requiring their immigrants assimilate into European society, they’re allowing them to import their culture and build mosques and enclaves where people are encouraged to defy the rule of secular law. And they have not strengthened their constitutions against the onslaught of these Muslim immigrants who would undo the long European tradition of separation of church and state to implement sharia. If they don’t fix this loophole, democracy will collapse in on itself once Muslims have become a majority–and Europe will become a very different place than it is today.

An informal case study

Recently, I befriended an illegal immigrant from El Salvador. He cleans the bathrooms at night on every floor of a building in Los Angeles where I work from time to time. He works as a carpenter during the day–six or seven days every week. He’s the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet, loves America, has learned pretty good English. He’s been here for seven years and he has a nine-year-old daughter he hasn’t seen since she was two. He also has a wife and five-year-old daughter in the US. He owns a relatively new pickup truck he bought on credit and pays $500/month, contributing to our economy. He sends money home regularly, but dreams of being able to get his green card and bring his daughter to the US, or even to visit her one time.  But it won’t happen. By being here illegally for more than one year, this man has triggered an automatic ten-year ban on legal immigration. Under current law, his case is hopeless. He is permanently separated from one daughter, and he is only a traffic stop away from being deported and separated from his wife and his other daughter. With immigration reform, this man and millions like him could become tax-paying citizens of the United States. They could contribute to our health-care system instead of draining it. Most importantly, they could be treated like the human beings that they are.

But allowing such an obvious solution would require logic and an open mind. And red-meat Republicans are not interested in either. Their goal is to preserve American exceptionalism, narrow ideas of tradition, and the privileges of the patriarchy. We therefore have twelve million hard working illegals who live in this limbo, who are suffering through every day as official “non-persons”  in the desperate American gulag of illegal immigration–a cesspool of utterly pointless human misery. Why? So they can clean our toilets, mow our lawns, pick our lettuce, and otherwise make our society work. The way we have treated these hard-working people is disgusting, immoral, despicable and outrageous. They are accorded little more respect than slaves. It’s especially hypocritical, since most of the ‘patriots’ who oppose immigration reform claim to subscribe to individualism, a strong work-ethic, and religious notions of morality which hold precepts like “be your brother’s keeper,” and “if you’ve done it unto the least of these my brethren, you’ve done it unto me.”

I urge all Americans to reconsider their opposition to immigration reform. Let’s keep our golden door open. Let’s acknowledge the valuable contribution made to our country and our economy by all immigrants, legal and otherwise. I don’t advocate this out of some sentimental notion of morality or charity–but rather because it is in our long-term national self-interest.

A few weeks back a friend of mine on Facebook asked me to fill out a questionnaire of “50 things about me.” Though the list included many interesting personal details, I really didn’t feel like it covered the most important aspects of who I am. So I didn’t fill it out.

What you believe, focus on, and accept philosphically says more about who you are than what your favorite sports team is, or what films you like to watch. Over the course of writing the thousand or so articles on BSJ during the past eight years, I’ve had to think carefully about a lot of big questions. Most of these questions have sparked endless debates and flame wars which will never, ever be resolved. And there’s a reason for that. These types of discussions go to the heart of who we are as human beings. Many of the conclusions I’ve reached involve direct challenges to feel-good conventional wisdom. But that doesn’t really concern me. The only question that matters to me (and should matter to anyone) is:

“Is it true?”

If you know me at all, one thing you might understand is that I believe ideas are far more important than people. Everyone alive today will be gone in 200 years. That’s an eyeblink in cosmic time. But the ideas we discuss today will live on forever. Ideas can lubricate society and promote progress, or they can steer the world down centuries-long blind alleys. Ideas also have the potential to destroy the world completely.

As long as intelligent life exists in our corner of the universe, the stakes in this “war of ideas” will continue to increase.

Three very bad ones dominated the 20th century:

1. Economic growth based on unsustainable methods.
2. Militarism and world wars.
3. Repressive communist and fascist dictatorships.

Imagine what life might be like today if someone had intellectually defeated those bad ideas circa 1900.

Many progressive ideas and structures also expanded during the 20th century:

1. Tolerance and political equality for minorities, women’s suffrage, Civil Rights Act.
2. Environmentalism and sustainability.
3. Democracy and personal freedom.
4. International organizations such as the UN, IMF, WHO, WTO.
5. Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders.

It’s nearly 2010. My question is, can’t we finally grow up, stop being our own worst enemy, face the misconceptions we’ve held about ourselves, and get on with it?

Column 1 is a list (in no particular order) of ideas I think will stand the test of time. Column 2 is a list of fallacies I hear nearly every day, which I think are seriously holding back human progress.

Marketing as Seduction

We assume marketing relies on a certain amount of hype, and consumers willing to suspend their disbelief. But does it? No one readily admits to believing any product will provide them with ultimate happiness or inner peace. But every good marketer knows that the key is a pitch that speaks to our emotions, which at least pretends to fulfill some primal need. And consumers seem eager to cooperate.

It’s a bit like romance. Everyone wants it. But make it too obvious or crass, and it’s a turn-off. Too passive or indirect, that’s unattractive too. But just the right message at just the right intensity will seduce the target consumer into a sale. A seduced and happy customer will be grateful to the marketer for providing a bridge to an improved life experience. And such a happy customer will come back for more, developing brand loyalty, the holy grail of marketing.

People spread their entertainment dollars widely– religion is only one venue. Churches have a bit tougher job than–say–theme parks, since what they provide is both less and more. Less tangible yet more socially immersive. Watching a film, for example, the price of admission is declared in advance. The marketing is over once the trailers end and the opening credits begin. The film is the product, an end in itself. You are free to leave.

At church, the cost and experience can vary widely, depending both on the denomination and on the personality of the preacher.  When the service starts, the marketing is just beginning. Savvy pastors never stop selling. And they’re deadly earnest–it’s no mere entertainment. And they weave guilt and redemption into a sort of ballet. They ask their congregations to “dig deep.” And the appeals can be wide ranging–from fund drives for church expansion to poverty initiatives. And they expect you to come early and often and stay until the end.

In a casino, the customer responds to a changing emotional landscape of winning and losing with impulsive spending decisions. In church, a similar emotional process applies. Customers may try to purchase salvation or assuage their guilt, spending far more than they might have expected. And it’s up to the preacher to ratchet up that pressure, dwelling on “sins” that people might have committed that very week. Or simply the sin of having been born.

We see that this is how religions have adapted. They began as authorities. As their power has waned, they’ve resented having to accommodate a consumer-friendly environment: Authorities dictate, marketers persuade. Authorities threaten, marketers run focus groups. Authorities have subjects, marketers have customers. Customers demand, marketers obey.

From Seduction to Fear

But there’s more than one type of marketing, and religions have realized that seduction is not the only road to a sale. There’s also fear, handmaid of authority. Religions’ trick has been to convince people they are naturally deficient. It’s a similar sell to life insurance. “You may think you’re a good provider, but we all die someday. Will your family be protected when you’re gone?” No one with any kind of concern for their loved ones can resist the logic. Fear sells up a storm. So life insurance companies have become some of the wealthiest organizations in the world. And churches are in the same business. They actually sell Eternal Life Insurance. Some even have the blind audacity to call it that.

Life Insurance:

1. “You love your family.”
2. “You never know when you might die. Everyone dies.” (deficient provider)
3. “You would do anything for your kids wouldn’t you.” (guilt)
4. “If you want us to provide for your family when you’re gone, you must pay the premiums.” (If you want peace of mind, pay us.)
5. “Let us help you decide how much protection you need.” (We’ll debit the premium right out of your bank account.)

Eternal Life Insurance:

1. “God loves you.”
2. “Everyone is a sinner.” (deficient soul)
3. “Jesus would do anything for you, he died to pay for your sins.” (guilt)
4. “You must pay the price for your sins, unless you accept that Jesus paid it for you.” (And if you want a clear conscience, pay Jesus.)
5. “Pray and recieve Jesus Christ as your savior.” (Donate generously, or anything could happen.)

There’s one important difference between the life insurance product and the Eternal Life Insurance ‘product.’ Though you might personally never see a penny from your life insurance policy, by law someone gets paid.

With Eternal Life Insurance, no one seems to worry about the “company” delivering on its promise. Even the mafia was never this slick. The Constitution blocks any government regulation of the industry. Pundits bristle at the slightest notion of disrespect.  And that, my friends, is how thousands of Eternal Life agents all over these great United States continue to get away with collecting tax-exempt premiums every day for a non-existent product.

And why should they stop? It’s working brilliantly. And people who’ve invested their hard-earned dollars into Eternal Life Insurance give eternal brand loyalty. So sign up at your local branch or at Faith Baptist Church today. Pastor Tim Rasmussen is standing by in Canoga Park, California to serve your Eternal Life Insurance needs.

Do you know for sure that you are on your way to heaven…?

My wife just mentioned a term I hadn’t heard before: Glurge. But I’ve certainly experienced it. Now you can, too…   You’re welcome. The image below is exactly how this came to me.

I struggle to comprehend the utter desperation of this writer. I don’t even care if the incident described happened in Kingston, Tennessee. It’s probably fabricated. My sense of it is that a public school principal who gave such a speech would lose their job–quickly. But perhaps not in the South.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. What’s important is to observe what happens when a majority develops a persecution complex. How absurd. There are churches on nearly every street corner in the South. Christians are literally overwhelmed with places to pray. From what I understand, workplaces are pretty religious, too. First thing you’re asked by co-workers is what church you attend.

So it’s a good thing the law provides that place of refuge, where you just can’t lead public prayers where people of other faiths or of no faith might be present. The Constitution requires we recognize the public space as neutral territory.

(Thank you Thomas Jefferson and the rest!)

But that’s not good enough. These loons aren’t happy unless everyone is praying to the Christian god.  And persuasion has completely failed to bring this about. The legal system has ‘let them down’ by refusing to enforce it. So now it’s all about shouting to friends and family in 36-point colored italic script, trying to guilt them into further spreading their demands. Because God’s law trumps man’s law, of course.

More on Human Nature, and the Free-Rider Problem

“Why are people such assholes?” Someone asked me the other day.

I replied, “Because that’s what we do.” They were talking to me about having witnessed the ‘inhuman’ and ghastly behavior of some powerful friends–friends who were so far up the ladder in the financial industry they didn’t even flinch at the economic crisis. The game changed slightly for them, of course. Things reconfigured, but they continued to accomplish their goal: to extract as much loot as possible from the common folk, and keep the good times rolling for themselves. Monarchy has never gone away, and these financial ‘wizards’ are the new royalty. Like Madoff, some of them get deposed. Others are just more careful and manage to keep their crowns no matter who’s in the White House or at Downing Street.

Whole industries are closing, hundreds of thousands of people are being laid off every month. And  ”nobody cares,” my friend said. “Aren’t we better than that?” In a word, no. Can’t we learn to be better than that? No.

We must look at biological systems the same way we look at all systems. We ask ourselves, what are the inputs and what are the outputs? How does the system behave, and what goals does it try to accomplish? If we are talking about life, there is one primary goal: metabolism. Consume resources, extract value, excrete waste. Reproduction is also a part of evolving systems, but it’s secondary. You can’t reproduce if you don’t eat. Metabolism forces food-seeking behavior. As soon as that imperative is introduced into any evolving and self-directed system–biological or mechanical–competition and deception ensue (even for robots). Examine human history. What’s the primary driver? Access to resources. When the planet was large and humanity small, waste disposal was not an issue.

Today that has changed. The most important current global political issue is climate chaos, which is being driven by disposal of the products of human, animal and machine metabolism into our most important commons, the atmosphere and the oceans. And what are many people doing about it? Lying to themselves and others to promote the idea that the problem doesn’t exist. The goal? To keep consuming resources and excreting waste products without paying the price.

This terrible misanthropic behavior–which is supported not only by the fossil fuel conglomerates but also their customers (and we are all still customers)–delays us from devloping and evolving smarter ways of living. Just as organisms compete for food, they also compete to avoid expending scarce resources–in this case money to mitigate global warming pollution and rebuild our energy infrastructure. It appears to be a no-win situation. Though it’s possible from a technical standpoint to reduce atmospheric CO2 levels, the changes we must make might be too large for politicians to accomplish in time. And they would not be made at all under any form of anarchy, which relies on voluntary cooperation and abhors regulation.

Under our current system, campaigns are short, and politicians need to win elections. In the short-term, what’s good for the individual (and thus politicians) is bad for the planet. What’s good for the planet is bad for the individual, and horrible for political campaigns (”you want to raise our energy prices–in a recession?“). Humans evolved to mostly weigh these short-term costs. With abysmally short life-expectancies (35-40 years before the modern era), the goal of human life has been violent competition for highly localized resources and breeding rights, with a window of 20 years (give or take) between puberty and ‘old age’ to get it all done. So thinking on longer time frames and with global concern is just not something we humans do very well.

In the long term, it is in everyone’s interest to protect the commons and become more efficient about how we use energy. Why can’t we cooperate? Because short-term competitive thinking dominates. It got the best results in our evolutionary history, so many people just instinctively go with it.

What is it about our vast consumption and waste disposal that has evolutionary support? Comfort, wealth and security lead to greater feelings of well-being. And we are all addicted to the brain’s chemical reward system, which essentially drives us from birth to continually seek food, sex, social value, self-actualization, and dominance. The more we get, the more we seem to want. There is secondary evolutionary support for community-building behavior, but it is a means to an end. The transactional “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” becomes the strategic “I’ll scratch your back today–because I’m gambling that it will increase the chance that you’ll be there later when mine needs scratching.”

Disagree? Stop helping your friends out, and see how quickly you will lose them. And every lasting formal or informal community punishes or expels free-riders. Or it would be bled to death.

If we are willing to lie to ourselves so blatantly about something as threatening as climate change, how can we learn to care about others’ lesser concerns? The unfortunate answer is, I don’t think we can. People insist they “care about others” but how practical is that, really? How many people can you truly include in your circle of concern, and how do you effectively prioritze? Start asking yourself those tough questions, and you’ll find–if you’re brutally honest–that you’re a selfish bastard like the rest of us. And a limited cooperator, too. The mirror neurons which give us empathy for others provide a signal that’s far weaker than the one we experience when we are in pain. There is no realistic choice. Absent external motivation, we value our own pleasure and avoidance of pain far more than the success or comfort of others. And it will always be so.

And how. Here’s a simple question: Would you give up your TV remote if it would completely solve climate change? Most Americans would not. Here’s another example: Smart-grid management might require homes to slightly reduce their air-conditioning use on hot days, by bumping the thermostat up a few degrees. This would reduce the use of existing natural-gas peaking power plants, and might allow the delay or cancellation of new power plants. What’s the response? Do you expect any less from ‘cooperative’ humanity? People say “Hell no, no one’s fucking with my thermostat.” We will need to offer people a financial incentive–if we want them to sign up for such programs.

Let’s take a look at the internet. Up to this point, I’ve been talking in generalized terms about human nature. Here’s where I’ve been going: The internet is the closest thing we have right now to anarchy. The open-source movement is the closest example we have of mutualism. And it works pretty well, right?

Maybe for the very narrow goal of open-source software development. But even Wikipedia has moderators. It works as well as it does because there are competent authorities who have absolute power. Otherwise it would degenerate into a mess of “edit wars,” vandalism, and PR hacking as various coalitions vied to promote their info-interests. Just look at how many controversial articles receive “protected” status.

And what about spam? Why hasn’t that problem been solved? It would be in everyone’s interest to crack down. No one wants it, but it just keeps coming. The free-riders of the internet adapt to every spam filter almost immediately. They increase their volumes exponentially every year. They establish vast bot-nets so that many of us may be actually participating in their theft of bandwidth, time, and attention. It’s hideous. Where’s the mutualist solution to this problem? There isn’t one. If governments got serious and started throwing spammers in jail and treating the issue as the global security problem that it is, this would quickly change. Anarchy fail.

Let’s take another example: The game EVE online was suffering from a huge performance issue because people were using the in-game currency for real-world speculation–in gross violation of the terms of service. Sysadmins estimated that the added load on each computer CPU caused by the free-riders was an astounding 30%! So they came up with a scheme to identify the abusers by their currency trading patterns, and decisively shut them down. That’s the RPG version of a government crackdown. And that’s what was needed and appropriate. And you can’t lay the initial trading problem at the feet of capitalism. It’s a fantasy game. Sure, game currency could be traded for the real thing. But trading objects of value is the basis of all human relationships, and has been since before we became homo sapiens sapiens. Some anarchists assert that we should eliminate money entirely.

If only…

The vulnerability was an open system, defenseless against the unfettered avarice and opportunism of one group of users against the EVE ‘community.’ Anarchy fail.

It’s really nice to be able to discuss disagreements about political philosophy without being called a liar, lunatic, thief or worse. Longtime BSJ reader Matt Crandall gave me the opportunity to do just that with his post The Anarchist Strawman: We Need Government at his new blog sent-rif -ick-al-fors.

Crandall took a polite, collegial stance and discussed the ideas I raised. Thanks, Matt!

“Humans have an even longer history of violence than do governments”…Sean then makes quite a leap in saying that it’s government that can take the credit for this, and I find that claim to be a bit spurious.  I find it curious that with all of the possible places to attribute this credit, Sean lays it right at the feet of governments throughout history.

Since there are many causal factors in the reduction of violence, I agree it would be a mistake to only credit government. You are correct that education, science, and rising living standards should all get some credit. But I would counter that it’s impossible to divorce these factors from government, which has been pivotal in advancing universal public education, at least in the developed world. It has also invested heavily in basic science research. Applied science has also gotten a big boost from military spending and technological arms races, however you may feel about them. Ideological competition between nation-states has spurred development nearly as much as warfare, as launching communication satellites not only proved technical prowess, but also that a state could just as easily build a nuclear-armed ballistic missile. Finally, putting a man on the moon was so expensive and daunting that it was only done by one nation and–after the initial landings–never repeated. Since the Apollo program was at least 50% political theater, it’s a virtual certainty it never would have happened in the absence of opposing governments.

And we haven’t even discussed the role of the United Nations or its predecessor The League of Nations. Arguably, these two bodies and the ideals behind them provided humanity’s first real alternative to warfare. Seems like the UN doesn’t do a whole lot, right? Imagine a world without a permanent place for nations to talk to each other, or Africa (for example) without peacekeeping troops. However flawed it may be, imagine no UN Human Rights Council. Imagine no International Court of Justice. These are inter-governmental organizations, and as such rely on sovereign governments to operate. As these and many other IGOs came into existence since World War I, violence has dramatically waned. Isn’t that a little too much for coincidence?

It was government that kept some of the greatest scientific discoveries, as well as literary and artistic achievements repressed (and yes, I’m including the Catholic Church as a government here, and I think it’s fair to say that they are a government, not just a religious organization) throughout history.  Just to name a few: the concept of the Earth being round, and not flat; the idea that Earth is not the center of the Galaxy; the art and sculpture of some of the master artists of the last thousand years; medical advances such as stem cell research; the list truly does go on and on.

This is a terribly flawed argument. Separation of church and state required centuries of conflict in Europe. England finally created its own church to avoid the long reach of the Vatican. Then the Anglicans in turn persecuted the Puritans. Removing this potential pitfall of government was considered such an important step that the founders of the US put it in the Constitution. So if you say the Catholic Church was a government, then you have redefined the word as it exists in modern usage, and ignored all of that history. I would certainly agree that we have no need for any kind of theocratic government. In that sense I, too, am an anarchist, as was Thomas Jefferson and every one of his compatriots.

“Humans universally manipulate for power and profit” This is perhaps one of the most classic strawmen against anarchistic philosophy of all time: humanity, as a rule, are motivated by power and profit and therefore need strong leadership (aka the State) to keep them in check.  One of the most fundamental problems with this argument is that governments are made up of humans.

Actually, John Adams articulated that governments are made up of laws, not men. I understand that humans made the laws. But with the framework properly constituted, men and women are bound to follow them. This can operate on a personal as well as political level. For example, If I wanted to prevent myself from taking a particular action with an object, (say, a controlled substance), I could obtain a box, put the substance in the box, lock it and throw the key down a storm drain. This is the function of a Constitution. We have the liberty to vote on changing our laws, but we cannot vote to take away the Bill of Rights even if the majority desired it. In a sense, the addictive controlled-substance of the past was tyranny. With the Constitution, we have locked the tyranny box and thrown away the key.

That doesn’t mean it’s perfect. But it does mean it’s possible. What has happened since 1787 is that powerful interests in American society have evolved ways of thwarting some of the intent of the Constitution. Business has become bigger than ever, and begun to shape the electoral process. Taking advantage of voters’ emotions and heuristics has allowed interest groups to practically purchase elections, and control the political conversation. It is time to re-evaluate and strengthen the Constitution. We need to modernize the two-century-old document with stronger guarantees for minority rights, limits on corporate lobbying and political advertising, prevention of environmental externalities, and bans on deficit spending.

Our laws are our only defense against our worst tendencies.

“It is not possible to “opt out” of society” This is something I’ve described to people as the “false parasite” theory…There are two major problems with this assumption: 1)  If I’m born into a society that restricts my movement in and out of that society, that educates me (forcibly) in that societies educational institutions and prevailing doctrine, that really gives me no choice but to be a part of it (in other words, to live off of it to some degree), it’s then really fallacious to argue that I don’t have the moral right to opt-out of it.

You do have the theoretical moral right to opt out. So long as you don’t use any government services. Now remember if you opt out, that really means “opt out.” You don’t get to go to any public hospital, and police will not help you if you are being attacked. And of course, your kids could not go to public school. You could not use national parks, playgrounds, roads, or other public facilities.

Even if you “opted out” of all of that, you are still being protected from criminals (prison system) and external threats (military) by virtue of living in the society. So you would still have some moral obligation.

If you really wanted to fully “opt out,” you could leave and go to a different country, or make a life for yourself on the high seas.

Think of someone who grew up living in a compound of a religious cult – they fed, watered, educated and raised you from infancy to adulthood – you’ve lived and benefited from their largesse – do you then lose the moral right to cry foul?  Do you lose the moral right to think for yourself, and reject them?

No. I had the right to leave, and I did. At the moment I was no longer benefitting from those services, my moral obligation ended.

…there is no reciprocity between myself and the individuals that make up the government.  If truly someone claims they have the right to arbitrarily decide I ‘owe’ a certain amount for living in a society, what gives me any less of a forcible moral claim?

Because we are a nation of laws, not men. The laws say that we vote in a government to make those policies. We are limited in our ability to change the laws, since it is a republic, not direct democracy. According to my “revised” constitution, deficit spending would be illegal, tying people’s use of services to their willingness to pay taxes. I think under those circumstances, you’d see a lot more user fees, and people would be far less willing to enact high general tax levies. Right now, Americans live a charmed life and get the best of both worlds: deficit spending–service delivery and low taxes.

“Without regulation, humans exploit and destroy common resources.” …what makes the government any better of steward of this property then a private owner?  Because don’t mistake: there is no difference between the government setting aside a piece of land, or a private owner doing so – just because the government has set aside a tract of land as a ‘national park’ doesn’t mean that if there were sufficient reason, they wouldn’t plunder it as readily as people accuse private land owners.

Agreed. The Constitution needs to be revised to reflect environmental concerns, and recognize the value of commonly-owned natural resources (instead of giving them away to corporations who turn around and sell them back to the public). When the document was written, the whole of the country wasn’t even explored let alone settled. The idea of humans consuming all the resources or destroying the enviroment would have been unimaginable in 1787. Policy is the only defense against such environmental plunder.

If humanity at a biological level can evolve beyond where we were thousand and millions of years ago, can not society as well?  Sean is a huge proponent of folks like Ray Kurzweil, who propose that humanity will continue to evolve through technological means, well beyond what might have been the limits of our natural biological evolution.  So I’d ask, why can’t some of the same technological means make a voluntary society a possibility?

I think it’s possible. I think we’d first have to move beyond scarcity. But even then, there would have to be some controls. There would have to be punishment for cheaters and slackers. Someone would have to enforce the rules. In the Singularity, laws might be replaced by protocols that would simply disallow certain functions or behaviors. But like the hackers of today, tomorrow’s criminals would still seek to game the system. It’s evolution as you said. Point, counterpoint, and it never stops.