What about Bush?

Over at Reason there's a discussion going on about the most overrated and underrated Presidents of all time. It's pretty predictable, with snarky libertarians taking the piss out of Reagan (liked for his economics, hated for his foreign policy) and Lincoln (who expanded wartime executive powers).

This got me thinking about President Bush. Commentators have speculated on what his legacy will be. Of course, a certain contingent will always find him the worst President of their lifetimes or even of all time. For the all time-worst I would pick James Buchanan, the man who directly proceeded Lincoln. If Lincoln overstepped his bounds and did unconstitutional things to win the war or squash dissent, Buchanan failed his oath of office by tacitly allowing secessionists to maneuver themselves into positions that would make some military confrontation inevitable for his successor.

But I digress. Now certain people are worried that if Iraq succeeds, Bush will be seen as a genius and that his history will be whitewashed. Exactly what a successful Iraq looks like is also up for debate. What I know is this: Iraq will not be settled within Bush's term. It will definitely be up to the next President to finish it in whatever way they do.

So what will Bush's legacy look like? I think history will record him thusly:
Immediately following 9/11, Bush enjoyed ridiculous levels of support (92%!). No human could maintain that level. If Jesus was President he couldn't keep his approval rating that high. The problem is not that his ratings fell afterwards but how ready Bush was to spend that political capital in divisive areas and how quickly it vanished.
The invasion of Iraq has three parts: convincing the public, winning the war and holding the territory. Convincing the public seemed to go over pretty well at the time. Approval for the war was about as high as any other modern-era war at its start. Bush seemed to be too much in a hurry though, which made it appear that he was set upon invading even if there were no weapons of mass destruction or a program to make them - which was the case that an obviously uncomfortable Colin Powell presented to the American public.

Once engaged, winning the war was easy. With the US military apparatus as it is now, I could even have won the war. I'm not saying I have any military skill, I'm saying that the US military is the best at what it does in the entire world.

Holding the territory and making something out of it is where Bush's legacy truly hinges. I think history will remember him thus: whatever the US ends in Iraq, Bush pursued a policy - even in the face of on-the-ground failures and much criticism - that very nearly made it impossible for any change in strategy to make anything of Iraq.

The point at which Bush's Iraq strategy changed most noticeably was after the 2006 midterm elections, which were heavily about Iraq and in which Bush received a "thumpin'". American have generally been most satisfied with government when the executive and legislative branches have belonged to different parties. While some would argue that the current congress had been relatively do-nothing, I think that the effect of a big loss, no matter how it was followed up, changed Bush's plans for Iraq. He substituted in new people who were not committed to the 'it will be easy' view of things. The new policy was slower, more pragmatic, more willing to make concessions.

If this is the policy that stabilizes Iraq and creates a democracy there, it won't be recorded as some massive work of genius on Bush's part. The policy congealed over literally three years, lacked real coherence until midway into the 'surge' and was produced more by events than by Bush's central planning.

I think this will be the legacy view of President Bush - that during his second term (especially since 2006) he saved Iraq from his own first term. Someday way into the future, archives will be available that will tell us exactly who knew what about Iraq and when. That will settle the debate about whether Bush's war pitch was a lie, and what the original goals for invading Iraq were. Until that time, I'm not worried that he'll be unduly canonized. There is no doubt that the Bush presidency has had far-reaching effects on the world, but if the War on Terror is not similarly pursued by the next President, Bush's terms may seem more of an aberration than a epoch-making event.

What is a religion?

I've been prompted to write about this for two reasons. One, a post at the Volokh Conspiracy, is titled Soldier sues army, saying his atheism led to threats. The other is the website Fundamentalists Say the Darndest Things, which I check from time to time.

While Volokh's discussion of possible unfair discrimination against atheists in the army is evenhanded, the quotes featured on FSTDT new are: it is a repository of things that are supposed to be far-out. It encourages a kind of distancing, since most of the quotes are from political Christians, and this allows us, as readers, to dismiss the entire movement as a 'bunch of crazy people'.

First, about the army. I don't doubt there are some people in the army command structure who want their soldiers to all be Christian. Some may promote this either by preferring Christians or discriminating against non-Christians. This has doubtless happened. This particular case, I am not entirely sure since I haven't read enough about it. And if something improper did occur, the army has a culture in which it rarely admits such mistakes. It will probably not do such a lot in this case, not because it shares a Christian agenda but because it does not appreciate outside pressure or transparency.

But is atheism, as so many commentators on FSTDT say, a religion? Basically the answer is "maybe." To know if something is a religion, we would have to define what 'religion' is. Yet I've never seen a satisfactory definition of religion in my life. I'm tempted to just ask atheists if it is religion, but no matter what they tell me, that won't solve it. Many Africans who practice traditional religions see these practices as part of their culture, not their religion. The entire term is so annoyingly subjective.

The fact is that atheism is a system of belief. It receives input from science and logic and reason, but so do other systems that we commonly consider religions. I can imagine atheists who are horrified as a say this but atheism may indeed be a religion. And so what if it is? There are wonderful arguments that patriotism forms a kind of civil religion, since it comprises a large number of the same functions as things we commonly see as religions (Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, etc.).

Eventually I will start a series of posts on various topics from FSTDT, simply because it captures a massively important part of American culture that just isn't given the serious appraisal it deserves.

Alternate History #5: Roe v. Wade heads back to the states!

Recently, certain states in Mexico have begun to legalize abortion in increasing numbers of circumstances. Mexico is generally more culturally conservative than the US, but it has worked out a totally different system of federalism and states' rights for abortion. The central government won't dictate policy, and each state can set its own limits. The more developed, cosmopolitan states have begun to legalize more kinds of abortions.

Obviously there are opponents to this measure, but in the state which have legalized, these objectors - mainly religious Catholics - are seen as needlessly domineering. Could something similar have happened in the US?

Some people have argued that Supreme Court decisions dictate American culture - Brown v Board eliminated the validity of segregation which was still enjoying some popular support in the south. Yet sometimes Supreme Court decisions create opposition movements - Roe v Wade is the most obvious of these. Before Roe, abortion law in the US was a patchwork of permissive laws in liberal states to total restriction in the conservative ones to any number of moderate limitations in the Midwest.

When Roe made all US abortion law uniform by making it a right, it didn't change the culture the way Brown did. The reason for this difference escapes me - why did one decision make the result more popular, the other make it less popular? Both decisions were for generally liberal causes, done in the face of large opposition which was largely in the south. However, the difference between the cases does not change this fact: in Roe, a large number of states were dragged further to the political left in abortion law than they were willing to accept.

But what if the Supreme Court had decided that they couldn't form a majority opinion in Roe? What if they decided that any result would have been too divisive for both Court and Country? What if the Court had given a unanimous opinion that abortion policy was a state matter, not to be handled at the federal level?

Several things would change. First, I believe that a large amount of the power and popularity enjoyed by the pro-life movement comes, originally, from the top-down manner in which Roe imposed new law. Roe created a rally point - the number of religiously-motivated politicians vowing to 'overturn Roe' is proof of this. Without something both symbolic and federal, the pro-life movement could never have attained its current clout and power.

So in 1973, when abortion becomes a state matter, the laws are all over the place. What this means is that some states with total bans would border others with very slight restrictions. It's unlikely that laws prohibiting travel across state lines to procure abortion would have passed - they might be ruled unconstitutional by state or federal courts. This means that each state is not a 'black box' - people in restricted states could travel into a neighboring state if they wanted an abortion.

In an article about the Mexican state laws, the commentator, a rather utopian libertarian, pined that if Roe had gone back to the states, laws all around the nation would be much more liberal and acceptable. I think this is a bit naive, since it seems to assume that the wave of cultural conservatism starting in the 1980s, and possibly ending with this current election, would not have happened, or would be much weaker. I personally think Roe help the political Christian movement - always present but dormant until the 80s - come back into the mainstream. Roe woke up the religious conservatives but did not create them. What this means is that if abortion law was a state matter today, the red states might even be tightening their restrictions or banning the process entirely. To assume that, without Roe, abortion law would gradually 'progress' to liberal law is wrongheaded.

But in red states, where religious conservatives sought to ban all abortions, there might be an additional wrinkle. Even with Roe, certain states (I'm looking at you, South Dakota) have tried total bans anyway. If Roe was liberal overreaching at the federal level, there's no reason to think there wouldn't be conservative overreaching at the state level. In this alternate timeline, during the apogee of the conservative Christian movement certain states would have issued total bans and found their general population just as upset as people were over Roe. The reason abortion law becomes so contentious is that it is often settled by one side muscling its morality upon the other. This creates resentment, and the conservatives who tried total bans in their states would find that out for themselves.

My opinion is that by 2008, all or almost all state laws would allow abortions for rape, incest and the health of the mother. A great number would allow it fully, and a few states would have no parental consent laws for minors. Abortion law handled at the state level is less divisive and creates less hatred between pro-choice and pro-life. Plus it pushes the aggregate law towards moderation since any overstepping will cause an adverse reaction.

Alternate History #6: Ottoman Colonialism

The start of the colonial period, in the mid-1500s, was not a time of European supremacy. In fact, the Islamic Ottoman Empire might have been the most powerful force in the world. China was also strong, but far away. There was a viable Iranian Safavid Empire, and a forming Empire in Mughal north India. The Europeans were the ones who colonized for a few reasons:

1. Their ships could reach the other lands
2. They built trading empires which liked the goods colonization could bring
3. They were geographically placed to send many expeditions
4. They had the wealth to do all this

China fulfills all but the first; they could build better ships, but those kinds of ships were sometimes banned or their voyaging paths restricted. The Islamic Empires fulfill all but the first and third. However, massive ocean-going ships would have been copied from Europeans...if the Islamic Empires had had need of them.

What really changed things was the European control of Gibraltar. The Ottomans couldn't leave the Mediterranean. So how might things have come out differently? Until the very late 1400s, there was an Islamic power controlling southern Spain. If it had somehow held out for another hundred years, it would have afforded safe passage to Muslim ships seeking the Atlantic - specifically Ottoman ones.

In schools, children are taught that the Muslims were pushed out so the Spanish kingdom could be unified. This means that it's unlikely that a Muslim state - Grenada - could have survived as Spain's power rose. Yet the Spanish rulers did not find it necessary to control Portugal in order to 'complete' their country. Yes, Portugal was also Catholic, but the rules had found in necessary to consume the various other Catholic factions of Spain. What I mean by this is that the conception of 'complete' Spain was relatively arbitrary; had the rules been more concerned with French encroachment, or regional separatism, or Portuguese land-grabs, they might not have had time for Grenada.

So Grenada survives. The Ottomans, at that moment trading heavily with Italian powers, get and copy maps of the new world. We have one of those maps, the oldest to accurately map the coast of Brazil. It has captions on it which basically amount to "There are good lands out there and we should go seek them." If, as some would argue, there is no overseas-colonial instinct in the Ottoman world, I would use this map to argue there was.

Where might the Ottomans have colonized? My first guess would be West Africa and the entire western coast of Africa. While the Ottoman slave system was different from the chattel-slave system in West Africa, there were other Islamic (and Eastern European) powers who might have been very willing to take an influx of slaves. There had been an experiment in plantation slavery (like the southern USA) in souther Arabia early in Islamic history, but the Zanj (Black) Revolt had ended the systematic enslavement of East Africans. West Africans, taken far from home and disoriented, might have been easier to control. A large plantation-based system might arise in Iran and south Arabia, but would not likely prosper within the Ottoman lands themselves.

Seeking to keep its sea lanes open, the Ottomans would become heavily involved in politics between Grenada and Spain. When Spain, hoping to cut of the Ottomans and solidify Christian rule over the Peninsula, attacked Grenada, the Ottomans send a massive fleet and army. Spain is beaten back, and Grenada becomes a puppet of the Empire. Ottoman access is never endangered again, as Spain fears a Portuguese-Ottoman alliance if it tries to take Grenada.

Once colonies in West Africa were set up, the Ottomans might have either settled down or kept on sending ships out. I think that once the instinct sets in, they would have kept going. Central America would have been totally under Spanish control; the Ottomans would have sought to balance this. It is possible that South America, or at least the coasts, would be filled with Ottoman traders. North America, especially New England and Canada, would have been cold and unpleasant; the Ottomans might have wanted to keep the southern US and the extremely profitable Caribbean islands, however.

Many European states prohibited slavery on their own soil but allowed and financed it in the New World. The Ottomans might have set up slave systems in the islands and south, much like the ones Europeans set up. By the time France and England began to seriously try to colonize, the continents would have been claimed by Spain and the Ottomans. The only open zone would be in the northern US and Canada, where England was most successful at setting up permanent settlements.

Obviously, attempts to convert the natives to Islam would have been undertaken; the Ottomans in this period had great tolerance for Christians and Jews, but not for polytheistic pagans. The conversion mission might have been even more important to Muslims than Christians, since Muslim empires are very concerned with getting their citizens to worship only one god - no Islamic empire has long allowed a substantial portion of its population to remain pagan/shamanistic/polytheistic.

Ottoman influence would extend down along the coast of Africa. If it reached the Cape, it would have cut off the zone that the Dutch and English used to access their colonies in Asia. If the Ottomans controlled southern Africa well enough, the Europeans might never have been able to station and supply enough troops to take India.

The world would then look like this: Portugal, Netherlands have lands in Asia, mostly islands. Ottomans have some control over the African coast but not inland, as well as the Brazilian coast and southern North America. These zones would be converted to Islam, and would probably speak both their original languages and some dialect of Turkish. They would all use the Arabic writing system, though not many could actually speak the Arabic language. Spain would be worried as hell about messing with Grenada, but would be flush with gold from Central America.

Maybe sometime I will write up a possible Chinese/Japanese colonial race, since that could also have happened if a few things had happened differently.

A Four-Party America?

For a politician to advocate lower taxes, they must also be pro-life. For a candidate to support affirmative action they must also support environmental regulations on businesses. The fact that the US has only two viable political parties makes it nearly impossible for anyone to deviate too far from the central platform on any issue. In these examples, there is no good reason why supporting on requires supporting the other.

There are actually a number of different strains in American politics. If we had a parliament instead of an executive/legislative balance, they would split into four or more parties within a couple elections. Let's take a look at what these parties actually are:

Fiscal Responsibles: mostly they vote Republican, but don't like the moralizing or war affinity. Generally oppose any social programs or anything that gives money to the government. For lower taxes most of the time, but a principled FR might support raising taxes to pay off a budget deficit inherited from a previous government.

Christian Wing: the other major sector of the Republicans, more approving of foreign policy 'agendas' and highly demanding on the social front. Various goals include condemning oppression of Christians worldwide, abstinence education, regulation of TV/internet content, and pro-life goals. Economics is not a priority for this party, as social policy was not for the FR.

Civil Rightists: A traditionally Democratic group, they have become even more so under President Bush's various suspensions of assumed rights. Anti-censorship, often interested in fair prison sentences and even drug decriminalization. Mostly opposed to adventures abroad, unless the US makes up only a small part in a multilateral operation. Basically the opposite of the CW; economic policy is not a priority once again.

Equality and Justice: The economic sector of the Democrats. Protectionist and neoliberal at the same time, they like the social programs set up by FDR and Johnson, but want to reform them to fit the current era. Bill Clinton is their most obvious success. Highly concerned with minority issues, they also support extensive foreign policy, along the lines of Bosnia, not Iraq.

These are the four major types of political thought in America, but they've been lassoed together so that a Civil Rightist has to end up supporting the agenda of an Equality&Justice candidate, or vice versa. Meanwhile these categories aren't perfect but the ideas in each do make more sense as a package than our current setup.

So how would a hypothetical four party system work? The parties would have to form coalitions. These could be the same kind that we currently see - CW and FR, CR and E&J. But there are lots of other ways to organize the parties, and the current setup is not self-evidently the best one. A FR+CR coalition would be a libertarian's wet dream. An E&J+CW coalition would be wonderful for compassionate Christians (not Compassionate Conservatives specifically but those who like overseas promotion of American values as well as well-funded public social and education programs).

The point is not that the parties should split like this, but that these are the big strands of American politics. If the US government was organized differently, they might be viable. I think that our executive-headed system makes it difficult for more than two parties to grow very large, at least for more than one election.

I was right (enough) about Pennsylvania

It was kinda boring except when early polls said Obama might win. So Clinton won by ten points. She picked up 15 delegates at most, meaning she's only behind by 130 now. Maybe if she's reached that 12-point win, it really would've meant something. A bunch of people predicted Obama wouldn't get over 43%; he got 45%.

Both Democrats still beat McCain in Pennsylvania, so Clinton's assertion that Obama can't win big states does not make sense in this case.

I really had hoped for something spectacular to happen, but it's two steps forward two steps back. I might just swear off posting about the Democrats until they sort this thing out.

Why is black America so different?

Bill Cosby complains about it. He wrote a book chastising black Americans for not living up to the potential given to them. The book is called "Come on People!" Unfortunately, he didn't notice that there should be a comma there. The book went to print as "Come on People!" instead of the (clearer) "Come on, People!"


I've talked about how blacks are more likely to get abortions because they are more often in the financial/relationship situations that make women want to get abortions. The question I've never gotten around to is why this status is the case.

If I could answer it simply, I'd have a wonderful solution all packaged for you. Unfortunately the explanation I find most convincing is so nuanced that I have not idea how to change the situation. The man who explains the problems of gangs, drugs, pregnancy and educational/achievement failure in black communities is Elijah Anderson. I read his book, Code of the Street, two years ago and had a number of conversations with people about the ideas.

He bases the book of off immense amounts of case-study research. A single case study is just an anecdote, but a lifetime of them is better than any survey or statistical analysis because such 'hard math' often fails when applied to sociological issues.

Anderson has one gigantic idea from which many of the problems in black communities can be derived. I call it the 'shortened time horizon'. For one reason or another, African-Americans in poor communities do not consider a long scope of time ahead of their present position.

This might sound like some simple, subtly racist idea: "blacks can't think ahead and plan."
That's not it at all, and if you think that's what I mean, please read the book.

The point is that a huge web of factors cause it to be impossible to get enough time perspective to create large change within a community. Only certain select people can save themselves from this - personal redemption only, like in The Wire, which is easily in the same vein.

Here's an example of how interconnected the whole mess is: Anthony grew up without a father, raised mostly by his grandmother. None of the other men around him have jobs besides selling drugs or gang-related activity. That's because all the jobs are far away from the ghetto where Anthony lives, and you have to move out to get one that's worthwhile. Within the community, living to 35 is a blessing for a man. The school Anthony goes to is full of kids who don't give a shit about learning because they don't expect to use anything they've learned in school. Even if Anthony wanted to learn, there are social pressures against it (acting white - which is often overstated in my opinion) and failing that his classmates have disrupted the whole idea of school so totally that no one but a real, gifted teacher can hook more than a few kids. When Anthony goes home he sees his mom come home from one of her several, very low-paying jobs. He expects, just like everyone else around him, that he'll be dead within ten to fifteen years. He needs or wants money, for his family or just for himself. There is a way to get it - he sees people making easy money selling drugs. Most of them get killed eventually, but he'll be killed anyway before long and the money is important.

This isn't exactly taken from Anderson's book, but the basic idea is: there is a huge set of social, cultural and institutional factors that all do one thing: make everyone within them pessimistic about the future. Maybe this sounds too neat and tidy, as if having a sunnier outlook could cure gang violence. The lack of role models is especially important. No, black sports-players don't count. I might even argue they detract, giving people a chance to lie to themselves about whether they can become real athletes and not work towards a living the way most people do. When I say role models, I don't mean it in the normal sense, but in the sense that Anderson uses it: if you don't live near anyone who has a real, steady job that supports them, it's easy to imagine a hopelessness setting in.

The shortened time horizon not only explains poverty and gang-drug connections, but also alarming numbers of single parents and very young mothers. Seeking to prove themselves under social pressure (just like anyone) young black women try to form attachments to men around them - who might be gang members simply because of the statistics of it - and the way they do this is with sex. The downsides of having a child young mostly lie in the far future - the costs aren't always apparent. Anderson makes the argument so much better, but I've tried to summarize a few bits here.

Code of the Street uses a few concepts such as reputation and shortened time horizon to explain most of the peculiarities of black America. He applies it to conspicuous consumption, consumption beyond one's means, violent bravado, and on and on. One thing he doesn't do - and maybe he doesn't know the answer - is explain why and how the institutions he analyzes came into being in the first place.

He also does not go into the specific contours of gangs and drugs, which are often the most incomprehensible part to outside observers. What's interesting to note is that as more Hispanics move into the US, ones that settle in areas near or similar to ghettos begin to develop a Hispanic-inflected culture that is very similar to the black one Anderson describes. This suggests, but doesn't prove, that the environment in which a culture survives is very important in how it defines goals and time horizons.

Pennsylvania - maybe something interesting can come out of this

Winner still undecided. Looks closer than I had predicted though.

Interesting thing from CNN exit polls:
Obama won those who never go to church and those who go more than once a week. Clinton won the moderate - once a week to once a month churchgoers. Sarcasm: Can Obama unite the highly religious and highly secular against the moderate middle?

Another thing:
Among voters who said gender was important in picking a candidate, 70% went for Hillary. I know its an exit poll, and I know people lie. But this is a much larger margin than any random act of lying could create. We've heard all the arguments about people not wanting a woman CiC because she'd get hormonal, or that women are weaker or less decisive. Apparently, the real gender aspect works the other direction. Maybe a longer analysis later.
(only 21% said gender mattered to them; those who didn't care nearly split between Clinton and Obama)

More on Blacks & Abortion from TVV

TheValuesVoter, the author of the post which I critiqued a while back, has posted several comments on this blog. One is the series of statistics I had mentioned in that critique. These stats continue to uphold my assertion that black people in America find themselves in the situations that cause people to want abortions more frequently than whites or other groups do. This accounts, I would argue, for the imbalance in abortion rates between communities - not some plan to slow the growth of the black population or some ill-defined idea of 'coercion' that TVV sometimes talks about.

I'd like to take an opportunity to talk about another of TVV's posts on the subject, one comparing the unacknowledged personhood of slaves to the unacknowledged personhood of fetuses/embryos/whatever word you want to use.

The big quote to critique:

They're not pro-abortion. They're pro-choice!! And to the people who would reply this way, there is some huge difference in the two.

Let me try to quickly explain why there isn't really any.

Unfortunately, the justification boils down to the following: slavery was bad, and slaves weren't seen as people. Thus, another case where something seen by only certain persons as 'human' is also wrong.

There can be a huge variance between what you think about 'conception and such' and the response you give to the question, "Are you pro-choice?" This reminds me of Presidential Candidate Santos on the last season of the West Wing, who was pro-choice in most respects but believed abortion to be murder. He gained this belief from his religious values, and he asserted that it wasn't his place to let his religious values guide his policies.

There's something vaguely unhinged behind TVV's little essay, which does a good job of picking out quotes that make it seem like an easy equation between living slaves and living fetuses. But when does like begin? I will answer that question: I don't know. We don't know and can't know scientifically right now. If life did begin at conception, and you could prove it to me, I'd have to think differently than I do now. If your only proof is a religious idea or a suspicion, I cannot accept it in determining my opinion.

And for all you feminists out there, I haven't left out the concerns of the mother because she's not important. I just wanted to answer TVV on his own terms on the subjects he talks about. But, coming soon, an alternate history in which Roe V. Wade is...dismissed.

Pennsylvania primary boring

It's not that exciting, really. Hillary Clinton needs a victory by 10-12 points to really have a chance at a Superdelegate-stolen nomination (which wouldn't happen anyway, so never mind). She's going to beat Obama by six to eight points. That gains her 15 to 30 delegates on Obama, who leads by at least 140 delegates. Even if Hillary really pulls it out at the last minute and wins by 15 points, than big chunk of gained delegates will be equalized in North Carolina, where Obama will win by more than 10 points (maybe as high as 20). At that point the situation will be the same as it is right now.

If Obama pulls off a close loss - within five points of Clinton, I think - then there will be another round of "Hillary, please drop out" op-eds in the papers. A debate performance generally regarded as hostile and lackluster did not damage Obama, and didn't help Clinton either. Not much has changed in a long time. This political situation is stuck on a treadmill, and Clinton is running low on endurance.

I almost hope something important happens tomorrow, just so I can be wrong and have a chance to explain why I was wrong.

Only one good thing has come from this Pennsylvania mess for the democrats: whichever one wins, the nominee will have a very good chance to beat McCain in this crucial state.

The historiography of grand strategy computer games (aka. the most boring title ever for a post)

I have been playing a computer game recently, and it's good. It's addictive and eats up time. It's called Europa Universalis, and it's one of the most complicated and historiographically acceptable of any of the 'conquer the world' games I've played yet. The combat of armies, the loose political organization, the factoring in of culture and religion in a non-trivial way all make for a fun but also acceptably historical game. It's nothing like another favorite of mine, Medieval: Total War, which makes each playable faction out to be an empty container that can build a massive force and steamroll across Europe regardless of culture and religion.

But amid all this is a disturbing little nugget: the way that EU calculates the rate at which your government researches technology exposes two important ideas about how nations advance, both of which are faulty.

First, advances in technology - from governmental forms to new types of military to better trading practices - come about only by direct investment from the player. Since you play as the central government of your faction, this seems to be telling us that governments create innovation, and that advances are made only this way. I give the developers a huge amount of leeway since they had to think of some system, and even if they didn't mean this, I must discuss it.
Most large advances in any area of technology came from individual or group (though not always private) experimentation or thought. They did not come from governments pouring big buckets of money into an idea. This only began to happen when new technology became expensive. The first big tech breakthrough totally made by governments was, in my opinion, the atomic bomb. There is only one other big breakthrough since then: spaceflight. Some would even argue that the government spaceflight programs are a dead end, marking not a breakthrough but a hobbled mistake that needs to be ditched. The major breakthroughs until then, from Longbows and heavy armor for knights and horses to powered flight to electronic components were mostly free of government funds. Most great political thinkers weren't subsidized.

The second problem with EU's historiography is again about technological research. In the complicated formula determining how quickly an area of research is completed, there is a variable based on which major culture group your faction belongs to. Based on which group you belong to, your research speed gets multiplied by a number. The groups and their values are:

• Latin (Western Europe): 1.0
• Eastern (Eastern Europe): 0.9
• Muslim: 0.8
• Indian (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh): 0.5
• Chinese (and Southeast Asia): 0.4
• African: 0.2
• New World: 0.1

Well if that isn't Eurocentric and condescending! This feature actually wasn't required to make the game playable, unlike my first complaint. Even taking the actual values very lightly, there is a startling downplaying of New World tech and ideological prowess. Africa likewise gets shafted. The game begins in 1453, when Muslims, not Westerners, were the preeminent culture group. China's technology rivaled Europe's for maybe another two centuries.

What this means is that by the time you being to colonize as a European faction, the African and New World ones are pushovers. Your troops cut them to bits and settle on their lands. There are, however, good arguments to be made that New World tech was actually much more advanced in some areas than European kinds. The bows Amerinds made were superior to European bows and guns, and hardened leather armor they used could actually repel bullets up until better methods were found in the 1840s.

This game, like almost every other I've played, seems dead set on explaining that Europe really was the best in most every way. It's nearly impossible to play as a New World faction, and I (playing as England) ripped apart an Amerind alliance of three nations comprising the entire Southern US, then without stopping conquered all of Mexico and Central America. From this game, it's pretty evident that a kind of Eurocentric and imperialist attitude to history still exists.

(For more on Amerind sophistication, read 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. Charles Mann is an amazing popularizer of real, substantial history.)

Refining my ideas on China, with thanks to xiaoyong

A commenter here named xiaoyong has said some interesting things about my posts on China, the wider world, and Tibet. I know nothing about this person except that they are Chinese and that English is not their first language. They made some good points, though sometimes I couldn't understand what they were trying to say.

When they made their first comment, I wanted to write something snarky like, "someone responds to posts about China overreacting by...overreacting." But there are some good points in there: China did raise the standard of living for many of its citizens. Tibet was a backwater before China took over. These things are true, but we need to have a discussion over whether the human rights violations required to obtain them were worth it.

I may have been overly harsh in characterizing the Chinese people, but I stand by my idea that an international diplomatic culture has not yet developed among the citizenry. This means that in the face of criticism, the Chinese are more likely to huddle together in nationalism and not respond fully. Plus, calling people who try to put out the Olympic Torch terrorists does not help mellow the image.

Obviously, xiaoyong is a proud Chinese nationalist. That's fine, and they do notice that people overreact and find it embarrassing. What I would ask of this person is to note the bad things that China has done and continues to do. No country is perfect, least of all the US. We have a history of slavery, problems with religious, racial and gender equality and a host of other things. I love to critique the US. When I ask my country to be better, it shows I am a part of it. I hope that Chinese citizens can find an opening to do the same and not whitewash their own past.

Tibet, and more on childish China

Ah, Facebook. That place where everyone under 25 spends at least twice as much time as they want to. It's the place where you can find the most unintelligent debate on any subject. Girls asking if, as a Catholic, she can call herself a Christian. People asking if Obama is a secret Muslim who prays to idols and shouts 'Allahu Akbar!'

And then we get to the Tibet groups. There is the obvious Free Tibet group. There is the Tibet IS China group. But last of all, there is the most interesting. It is the group called "Tibet WAS, IS AND WILL ALWAYS BE a part of China." It has some 23,000 members. It is the most virulent pit of childishness and petty attacks that I have seen (save a few groups directed against Bush and a few against abortion). Now I know that what's said on facebook is exaggerated and often intentionally so, but I think that the constant overreaction of Chinese nationalists is yet another symptom of the lack of a worldwide diplomatic culture in China.

The group is mostly in English, otherwise I couldn't read it. One section is: "An applaud to Jin Jing for her valiant effort to protect the torch in Pairs and shame to the terrorists who attacked her." There we have it. Protesters trying to put forward a political point (in an inflammatory and probably illegal way) aren't just wrong. Neither are they simple lawbreakers. They're terrorists! I could make a joke about how only China is more willing to label people as terrorists than the USA...wait, I already made it.

What I really wanted to do was critique the name of the group. It makes three claims:

1. Tibet was part of China (presumably in the past)
2. Tibet is part of China
3. Tibet will always be part of China

Tibet was part of China: This one is the hardest to talk about, simply because I don't know what 'was' means. There have been many periods in history where Tibet was independent of China. The traditional zone of China rarely extends as far inland as Tibet. Most of the Chinese Empires were more coastal. That deals with the far past. How about the near history? Until the late 1950s, Tibet was independent. Whatever the status of the people - poor, oppressed, etc - it does not change the fact that Tibet was not a part of China, at least de facto, less than sixty years ago. So the first claim is false, Tibet has not always been part of China. It is culturally related, but not the same. It is ethnically related, but not the same.

Tibet is part of China: Yeah, of course it is. No one would argue with this. Some people would say that it should not be, but that's normative. This claim is descriptive.

Tibet will always be part of China: I don't know how to assess a statement that must apply throughout all time. Besides, if something will go on forever that does not necessarily make it good or acceptable. Inequality and unfairness will go on forever, but they are neither good nor acceptable.

The reason I went through the name is that is becomes some sort of slogan for pro-China groups. There are ten groups with variations on this slogan, which does nothing to attempt to convince people who don't already believe. It's childish to suppose that saying this over and over will do anything but make undecided people suspicious of the seeming craziness of the slogan itself. Besides, for a group that finds history so important it's pretty historically inaccurate.

China whines, "Why can't we force people to like us?!"

This whole long mess over Tibet and human rights abuses, brought to a head by the Olympics, demonstrates one important thing: China is an economic power, but not a mature country.

What I mean by this is that Chinese citizens and politicians and diplomats and businessmen have been isolated from the world for so long that they have absolutely no idea how to respond to people disliking them. Of all the expressions of nationalism I have seen, China's is the most hair-raisingly unthinking. The Chinese people have not developed a cultural system to deal with being criticized by other countries.

France floated ideas about a boycott over the Tibet violence, and Chinese citizens reacted by trying to organize a total boycott of French goods. Now, you might point out that French opposition to the Iraq war almost resulted in a harrowing 'Freedom Fries' schism. There is, however, a fundamental difference between the American overreaction and the Chinese. The US wanted support on specific policies, France refused. China wanted other countries to like and respect it, and France refused.

The American reaction was citizens registering displeasure because they felt France was wrong. The Chinese wanted to force France to like them by hitting them with an economic club. They did not want diplomatic relations, or the kind of 'friendship' the US enjoys with, say, Saudi Arabia. They wanted to be liked as a country and a people by the French country and people.

What it does is make China look idiotic. And it happens over and over: another country expresses displeasure at China and gets a huge nationalist backlash from the Chinese. China's big debut on the world stage may go over without violence, but its citizens are building a nasty reputation for themselves as the most childish of all great powers. The 'mature' Europeans often scoff at American enthusiasm and hotheadedness, but even the worst of Americans are being made to look measured and thoughtful by the Chinese reactions.

The USSR never had this problem, even as it far more despised by the West. Neither is it a problem of being non-European. Japan does not constantly overreact. South Korean has indeed had its missteps, but more often than not they're things like attempting to apologize for the Virginia Tech killings, simply because the shooter was Korean. Venezuela does not go crazy when important US spokesmen insult Hugo Chavez.

I suspect that if Kim Jong-Il's regime collapsed tomorrow, the North Koreans would have a similar problem to the Chinese: they've been out of the loop of global discourse for so long, they don't understand how to respond. Eventually the Chinese will toughen up and learn to either take criticism or change. For right now, citizens may be undermining the Chinese government's claim that it's ready to stand tall on the world stage.

McCain hasn't spoken yet...to his benefit right now

McCain is either leaded or close behind Obama or Clinton in head-to-head polls. Over the past number of weeks, the margins between him and the Dems have fluctuated, but I noticed something important: they only move based on what the Democrats do.

When Clinton looks down, she loses ground versus McCain. When Obama says something dumb, he moves down versus McCain. Nothing McCain has done or said has effected the polls one way or the other. That's because he's not done anything of note since becoming the nominee except some small foreign policy gaffes that most Americans didn't hear about and don't care about. Right now, McCain looks like he's tried to portray himself - a maverick, centrist Republican who's not afraid to stand up to his party. The fact is that, as much as he has stood up to his own party, his political positions are pretty generic. Right now he looks like he could be a change candidate, and well-qualified to lead. I'm not disputing the fact that many people see him as most qualified, but his image of renewal can only wear away once he opens his mouth versus the final Democratic nominee.

Something like 15-25% of Democrats say they'll vote for McCain if their candidate doesn't get the nomination. They may think so right now, but Clinton and Obama aren't much different on policy. The big split is in their personalities and styles, with Hillary representing the 'old power' with experience to start right away, and Obama the 'new thinking' that might let American get over partisan woes. The faithful may think they'll go for McCain, but when he becomes known - as a slightly rebellious Republican, but a solidly Republican candidate - these 'party traitors' will change their minds. Not all of them, of course, but a number.

Plus, the head-to-head polls already factor the protest vote for McCain. As Democratic protest votes drop away from McCain, he will fall at least a few points. Since Obama will be the nominee, and he is tied or up 2 points on McCain, expect him to gain 3-5 points on McCain over the course of a few weeks after the nomination. Of course, Obama will also lose the support of some moderates once he gets the nomination, since he'll have to open his mouth just like McCain. Maybe the 3-5 point bump won't show up, but I will be willing to bet money that a poll the day before the election asking Clinton supporters if they're voting McCain in protest will show that 25% of them didn't defect. Maybe 5%. Maybe 10%. I don't even think it will go that high.

Laicite versus Separation

The United States has a political philosophy of separation of church and state. The US government (specifically congress) may make "no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". This is from the First Amendment, probably the most important for preserving rights in America, and a personal favorite of mine. This doctrine has been interpreted to mean that the US takes no sides in religious disputes, that it does not legislate something because it is religious (though debate over legislating semi-religious morality is ongoing) and does not ever ever EVER promote a religion of inhibit another. Of course, the US often fails in the these goals, but they are an idea to live up to not a template from which the US will be docked points. Despite ahistorical assertions protestations by those who want a larger role for Christianity, the Separation doctrine is the current law of the land.

France and Turkey are examples of another philosophy of secularism. I believe that secularism of some form is the best way of organizing a democracy and modern government. Turkey draws its tradition of secularism directly and explicitly from France, which created this philosophy, laicite (actually laïcité but I don't want to spend ten years typing out diacritics). Laicite arose during the French First Republic, which tried to change the governmental order so completely that it made many Europeans sure the End Times were near.

Laicite is not Separation; it is a policy of 'active noninterference' on the part of the state. This leads France to seriously contemplate banning headscarves in its universities, as they are a religious symbol. Laicite prefers religion and religious activities to be private (in the sense that they're not state-supported) and private (in the sense that they take place out of the public eye). Turkey is similarly inclined.

Now which of these philosophies is theoretically superior for maintaining secularism? If the 'active noninterference' of laicite were always carried out by a just government (as defined by whose standards?) then the two might be near-equals. My argument is that Separation is more universal and laicite is more discretionary, which means that Separation can more easily balance between secularism and freedom of religion.

First off, laicite is indeed discretionary: the government must positively decide to act to preserve secularism. This means that sometimes it will not act. The government action will have a stated purpose: the headscarf ban construes the wearing of scarfs with Islamic denigration of women. However, some Muslim women see the headscarf as a thing of pride since it was originally for Muhammad's wives. It is, to them, respectful and superior to wear a scarf. By banning the headscarf in universities, laicite has cut into religious freedom.

This is not to say that Separation does not sometimes abridge religious freedom. Of course it does. Rules for the slaughtering of animals, or the possession of items the government designates as 'drugs' do indeed curtail some religious traditions. That is sad, sometimes bigoted, and unfortunately unavoidable to some extent.

The difficultly that laicite has to cope with, which Separation avoids, is discretion. Sometimes, a laicite-style government will choose not to act. Have crucifixes been banned in universities, seeing as Jesus advocated nonviolent overthrow of the state economic system? Some would argue Jesus did such a thing, and so a call to ban symbols of his teaching would not be impossible under laicite. Even in more subtle situations, the government may not act. My argument, sure to be accepted by anyone cynical enough to read this post, is that when choosing to act/not act, a laicite government will overall prefer the religious interference of whatever faith is the majority in the country at the expense of minority faiths.

Separation avoids this fate by have a default position of non-action, and by creating a dynamic tension between many different faith groups. If the government tries to curtail the religious freedoms of, say, the Seventh Day Adventists it will be more obvious that this action is targeted. There is a reason that the greatest court cases in favor of religious liberty were all won by Jehovah's Witnesses. Much like the distinction between unitary and federal states, the Separation doctrine makes assaults on any one group much more visible by all the groups, and more likely to be opposed.

Both systems are superior to a non-secular system, but within secular systems Separation more easily preserves both secularism and religious freedom.

To sum it up in a just-so-story kind of way:
The USA got religion right, France and Turkey slightly off, Iran got it wrong.

The False False Flag: Why I never paid much attention to the 9/11 Truth movement

Q&O has a small article making fun of Richard Falk, just chosen by the UN to talk about human rights in the Israel-Palestine conflict. What the post points out is that Prof. Falk is also sympathetic to/involved in the 9/11 Truth movement. It argues, and I agree, that this makes him a suspicious and not very good choice to investigate the human rights mess he's been assigned.

9/11 Truthers believe one of a number of things. Either the Twin Towers were blown up by the government or someone working for them, or the hijacking plan was known but not stopped to further certain interests. These are the two most moderate theories. There are others, like the idea that lasers from either aliens or satellites destroyed the Towers, or that the Towers were 'transported' away and not destroyed.

A big chunk of the US population thinks the Truthers are on to something. The number of believers ranges from 10% (probably about right) to 50-60% in some clearly alarmist surveys. These people don't necessarily accept Truther methods or even conclusions, but they think there's something vital the government won't reveal. Here's the real truth: there is indeed material and records the government won't reveal, but that material is not going to be vital to understanding 9/11.

We really do know the important stuff already: President Bush got a security briefing mentioning a possible terrorist attack by airplane. The Twin Towers had been targeted years earlier. The Pentagon is also an obvious place to hit. By some failed bureaucracy and a sense of 'this can't happen here,' Americans and the Administration failed to anticipate and take action against such a terror plot. Terrorist captured planes, used them before a coherent response could be formulated. The Towers were weakened by the hits, and they fell, killing more than 3000 people in total.

That's the vital information. That's the outline. There's nothing in this outline that pretends to know 'why' certain people did what they did. Since we can't reach inside their minds, we will never actually know why people did certain things. One big Truther mistake is to think they can do just that. They 'know' what Bush, or Bin Laden, or the international Zionist Conspiracy was thinking.

A lot of Truther support comes from this feeling of "How could they let this happen?" We're told the US is the most powerful country, but it was hurt by eighteen guys with sharp objects and flight training. What this view misses is that the US is a massive leviathan of interlocking systems, not a centralized and unitary item. Each bit can make a small mistake, and over time these add up to a large security hole.

The moral of the entire story is not to simply dismiss the Truthers but to understand that, given the choice between an act of stupidity and an act of malice, assume stupidity until you have perfect evidence to prove otherwise.

Alternate History #4: There is no viet nam but Vietnam, and Ho Chi Minh is its President

When I read William Duiker's amazing Ho Chi Minh: A Life, I was not only adding to my collection of communist leader biographies, I was also constantly looking for alternate histories. Duiker's work, the best English biography of Ho, and the first to use Vietnamese-language sources that aren't full of suspicious propaganda, portrayed Ho in a way that most Americans would not be familiar with.

He wasn't a communist radical, but he was a communist. He wrote to expand Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory. He was very important in the 1920s in getting the Vietnamese communist movement off the ground, but his school of thought fell out of favor. It was only a very lucky change of theory by the Communist International that catapulted Ho Chi Minh to the leadership of the 1940s resistance against Japan. By 1946, his Viet Minh had managed to securely control all of northern Vietnam. France, which had ruled the area before Japan took it, wanted the colony back. A series of autonomy measures were proposed, but constant governmental changes in France and a stubborn colonial attitude caused all these to fail.

France tried again to assert control, and at this point Ho begins to fall out of power. His military role is taken mostly by General Vo Nguyen Giap (who is still alive, amazingly), his political role taken over more and more by Truong Chinh. The reason for this is that both new men were fiery, passionate. They were full of vitality, whereas Ho was by that point much more laid-back.

Most important was where they differed. Ho lost clout and leadership powers as he failed to secure South Vietnam. By the time the US arrived, Ho was very old and had no powers beyond meeting with Chinese leadership. He cared more about a united, free Vietnam than about a communist Vietnam.

How might things have gone differently? The main reason that Ho's control never reached all the way south was because the Party apparatus there had decided to rise up in 1940. It was easily crushed by Imperial Japan, which at this point was at its most vital in history. In fact, the Japan which South Vietnam attempted to dislodge was the most powerful state in Asia, and the most powerful Japan in history. The Japanese put down the nationalist-communist rebels easily, and this basically killed Party power in the south. By revolting earlier (the north took over in 1945, and succeeded against a terribly shattered Japan) the south fell far behind in terms of organization.

But what might have happened if the south had, like the north, allowed resentment to build against the Japanese and waited until the US wore the Empire down? Ho Chi Minh favored this tactic, and it worked marvelously. A more patient south might have been able to join the successful revolt against the crumbling Japanese power. This would leave one unified Vietnam under the main leadership of Ho Chi Minh, now with extra credibility for having united the land with a relatively short military struggle. With this extra political capital, Ho might have remained the center of Vietnamese politics with Giap as his arms and Truong Chinh as the liaison with staunchly communist China and Russia.

France would not want to give up claims in Indochina, since it was losing Vietnam that turned France from being an imperial power. However, Ho would be in a very stable position to negotiate. France used the weaker south to gain currency as imperator; here a strongly-held south would give France no easy way in. From Duiker's analysis, Ho seemed to have been ready to sacrifice total autonomy in exchange for guarantees of local control and good conditions for the Vietnamese people. In this alternate history, he would not have to give up even so much. France could either fight (a more difficult option than in our history) or allow for a very loose colonial framework. Maybe France would agree to limited input on Vietnamese foreign policy and no trade barriers, as well as property rights guarantees for white Europeans in the country. This would establish a very loose connection, much like the one between Canada and Great Britain.

It is my personal opinion that Ho would have accepted this measure, seeing as he said something along the lines of, "Better to eat French shit for fifty years than Chinese shit for one thousand." France would serve as a protector from undue Chinese influence, and from overreaching by the Comintern or USSR.

The major effect of a united, protected, moderate-nationalist-socialist Vietnam relates to the US. The US would never need to get involved, since the issue would have been settled by 1955, just as the US came out of Korea. To image that the US would jump from Korea directly into Vietnam, which would have been solidly under control since 1945, is ludicrous.

It is also my opinion that a Vietnam united earlier would have been more heavily influenced by Ho Chi Minh. It would have indeed been Communist, but French cultural influence along with Ho's moderation would likely have guided it down a less repressive path. It might have emerged into the modern world much like South Korea did. It's strange to imagine that a more decisive Communist victory would have been nearly all positive (compared to our timeline) for the country, but as I see it this is true.

Blacks and Abortion

I found this little something-or-other via Real Clear Politics under the title "How Obama lets us down on abortion" or somesuch. The real name of the article is "The Impact of Abortion on African Americans". It is, quite simply, a black-solidarity call to oppose abortion. Unabashedly pro-life, it does not descent into moralistic shouting which means that the statements made in it can be legitimately critiqued.

A quote will give a bit of the tenor of the article:

Although African Americans make up 12.4 percent of the U.S. population we make up 35% of the abortions

Note the 'we'. The article has black solidarity and unity running constantly through it. The reasons given to oppose abortion are not conservative or morality-based, though I do detect a certain abortion-is-murder mentality to the article. The real reason to oppose abortion, the author argues, is specifically black:

Even though abortion usually
happens as the result of a voluntary action by the expectant mother
(but not always), it has long been suspected that certain organizations
have encouraged blacks in particular to have abortions.

"Which organizations would these be?", you might ask:

Planned
Parenthood, which has long been suspected by many of placing its
clinics in areas with high concentrations of African Americans, and
whose founder once spoke at a Ku Klux Klan meeting and who spoke at
another point with Nazi anthropologist Eugen Fischer, stated that it had taken "corrective action" against the individual.

Despite the conspiracy-theory suggestions and the obligatory mentioning of Nazis and the KKK, the tone remains level-headed. When someone says such things as this but doesn't bluster, you must actually answer their statements with your own.

What the article gets wrong is the cause of abortion. It's not availability of clinics, though this does have an influence. When asked why they choose to have an abortion, the plurality of women pick, as the most important reason, 'could not support child financially.' {This is from a Time Magazine article about a year ago, I cannot find a link to it} Other important reasons include: 'unstable living arrangement', 'unstable partnership', and 'too young to take care of a child.'

The fact is that African-Americans are more often in the situation that causes women to want an abortion. It's not that they're black, it's that blacks are poor and/or financially unstable in much higher proportions than whites, at least in urban areas where clinics are more available.

So even though some people do approve of the overwhelmingly disproportionate number of black women who have abortions [They exist. I have met them.] the purpose of supporting choice for women is not to keep any racial group from out-breeding whites.

As to the question of how to end the racial imbalance of abortions, the answer is to find some way to make real lasting wealth available to African-Americans who are in a bad way. This explicitly does not mean some kind of welfare payment, since that does not fit my definition of 'lasting wealth.' This issue is far too large to deal with in one post, but I've done what I came to do: refute the notion that blacks must stand together in opposing abortion because of its effects on the black community and population. As with any group of people, no political affiliation is required by ones race. Meanwhile, for those who say that only liberal causes play identity politics, I suggest you take a good hard look at "The Values Voter's Blog."

FP Passport Cares about Absolut History

Despite being totally uninfluenced by my previous post, FP Passport has a new post today about the Reconquista-based vodka ad. This happens on the internet, as a bunch of blogs hover around the same material, picking at it like vultures on a decaying carcass.

Also, I had previously referred to third-party hypercandidate Ross Perot as "batshit". I do not hold a negative opinion of Perot, and probably should have called him "hilariously unpredictable, like unto a distant relative who married into your family."

A revolutionary feminist theology in Genesis 3:16

Everyone knows the Adam and Eve story. Eve temps Adam to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and he does, and so God curses them and expels them from the garden. God curses Adam and Eve differently, giving Eve pain in childbirth and forcing Adam to toil for his food.

But the verse in which Eve is cursed, Gen 3:16, holds a possibly revolutionary idea. From the King James Version:

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy
conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire
shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

This an many other verses elsewhere in the Bible combine to create a theological idea of female submission to rightful male dominance domestically and politically. The highlighted portion especially is used, since it is God's decree to humankind.

But is that the end of it? No, if it was I wouldn't be writing this post.

These curses are punishments that diminish humanity in retaliation for disobedience. If, as a plain reading of this verse suggests, male rule over women is a punishment, then total sexual equality would be the Edenic ideal. The other punishments on humanity, while impossible to undo in the past, have come to be less problematic in recent years. No longer must men physically toil to obtain food. An epidural during childbirth can alleviate the pain. If the undoing of these parts of the curse by technology are acceptable, as the whole world seems to think, then why is the most pervasive part of the curse accepted as normative, the way things should be.

The curses established a new order, but did not make that order good. Women's pain was not good, it was punishment. You could easily argue that male rule over women was not meant to be good, but rather punishment as well. Certain types of discourse, such as feminist critical theory (which evaluates gender inequalities) can be considered technologies of ideas. If physical technologies allow humanity to undo parts of the curse, why not employ idea-technologies to fully undo the curse?

Opponents of this view would obviously quote the next verse in refutation (Gen 3:17)

And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of
thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee,
saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in
sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

Since God criticizes Adam for listening to his wife, they argue, it shows male dominance to be correct. But you could easily argue that God criticizes Adam not for listening to Eve in general but rather in this one specific disobedience. If the clause "and hast eaten of the tree" is connected to the highlighted clause, as proponents of this theory would argue, then Adam's mistake is not listening to women but disobeying God.

So, at the end of it, male and female equality are affirmed but disobedience to God is prohibited in strongest terms. And who says feminists have to be atheist lesbians?

10 things to know about McCain

I received an email today titled "10 things to know about McCain (but probably don't)." It originated from MoveOn.org, a liberal/progressive organization that always goes Democrat. It lists ten things about McCain that it wishes to warn people of. But are these really such revelations?

No, not really. The list mentions standard Republican platforms and facts about McCain that were already well known. I'll go through them one by one. There's not a thing in here that's a surprise.

1. John McCain voted against establishing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now he says his position has "evolved," yet he's continued to oppose key civil rights laws.
Maybe McCain just didn't want another holiday. Of course you can say he 'opposes civil rights laws' but without saying what effect they have I tend to disbelieve. In fact, I can't really think of much legislation nowadays that would really be called 'Civil Rights.' Just because it pertains to blacks or black issues does not make it Civil Rights. Voting against King was probably a bad move for McCain's Presidentail run though.

2. According to Bloomberg News, McCain is more hawkish than Bush on Iraq, Russia and China. Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan says McCain "will make Cheney look like Gandhi."
McCain is more hawkish. This is his official position. If you've never heard this before, then you're under-informed, not deceived.

3. His reputation is built on his opposition to torture, but McCain voted against a bill to ban waterboarding, and then applauded President Bush for vetoing that ban.
Because, like so many others, he would argue waterboarding isn't torture. This simply goes hand-in-hand with McCain's conception of large expansive executive powers and 'emergency measures.'

4. McCain opposes a woman's right to choose. He said, "I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned."
This is part of his party's platform. He would not be on anyone's radar if he was a pro-choice Republican. Meanwhile, McCain places pro-life issues at a much lower priority than most other candidates did.

5. The Children's Defense Fund rated McCain as the worst senator in Congress for children. He voted against the children's health care bill last year, then defended Bush's veto of the bill.
I don't know what "for children" means here. Is banning pornography on the internet 'for children'? Is regulating down to the most ridiculous detail what can be served in school cafeterias? Is opposition of abortion? I guess health care is, but the bill mentioned here could simply have been a bad bill. We're supposed to assume that McCain's opposition makes the bill a good one, but what if he opposed it because it was single-payer instead of universal? Or vice versa?

6. He's one of the richest people in a Senate filled with millionaires. The Associated Press reports he and his wife own at least eight homes! Yet McCain says the solution to the housing crisis is for people facing foreclosure to get a "second job" and skip their vacations.
So what if he's rich. So is everyone else. Owning lots of homes makes him susceptible to the subprime mess, and having a big chunk of cash makes him less likely to need money from lobbyists. The Clintons are ridiculously rich, but no one tells them to drop out of politics because of it. I would be less hasty to hold someone's personal wealth against them unless they're batshit like Ross Perot.

7. Many of McCain's fellow Republican senators say he's too reckless to be commander in chief. One Republican senator said: "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He's erratic. He's hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."
Of course, the source is unnamed because he didn't want to seem unfaithful to his own party. But that makes me suspect whether it was said at all. This might be the only item on the whole list that would sway undecided voters, since all the others simply assume a liberal outlook. An undecided might want a calm and collected Commander, and this is the only item here that might sway them towards the Democrats.

8. McCain talks a lot about taking on special interests, but his campaign manager and top advisers are actually lobbyists. The government watchdog group Public Citizen says McCain has 59 lobbyists raising money for his campaign, more than any of the other presidential candidates.
He's also been in politics longer than Clinton or Obama, and is the decided nominee. Lobbyists will coalesce around whichever Democrat wins too. No lobbyists go near Ron Paul because he scares them. Lobbyists aren't automatically evil either, nor are they automatically corrupt. There are lobbyists for liberal causes too, and I'm sure that a few of those have talked to McCain.

9. McCain has sought closer ties to the extreme religious right in recent years. The pastor McCain calls his "spiritual guide," Rod Parsley, believes America's founding mission is to destroy Islam, which he calls a "false religion." McCain sought the political support of right-wing preacher John Hagee, who believes Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for gay rights and called the Catholic Church "the Antichrist" and a "false cult."
McCain is, yet again, just reflecting his party makeup and platform. This isn't new or special, though it might concern Muslim Republicans, or gay Repulbicans, or any potential antichrists out there who've just lost their title. Besides, didn't we hear all about the separation between religious and political messages with regard to Rev. Wright? Again, McCain puts religious issues at a lower priority than other Republican candidates.

10. He positions himself as pro-environment, but he scored a 0—yes, zero—from the League of Conservation Voters last year.
Would MoveOn have preferred a lobbyist convince him? That would count for him in part 10 but against him in part 8.

The problem with this list of grievances is that it won't convince undecideds. This is a mistake for MoveOn, and for Democrats who publicize this list. It just assumes a liberal position on environment, health care, abortion, etc. Only part 7, which details McCain's most well-known character flaw, could sway an undecided. That said, there are myriad reasons to vote for McCain and myriad to vote against him. Neither party will win without convincing moderates to join it, and this series of problems will not do that. It may make Democrats angry, get them pumped up for a fight, but it won't do much more. The point of dissecting this email isn't to slam McCain, or to slam MoveOn but rather to muse upon a mass-mailing that's much less effective than it thinks it is.

There is no liberal Great Awakening

Over at Reason, there is an article called "The New Age of Reason" that has the small undertitle "Is the Fourth Great Awakening finally coming to a close?"

The short answer, from the article and reality, is yes. Great Awakenings are periods of religious ferment, when faith becomes far more popular an prevalent. While historians only truly recognize the first three, the Fourth is the one in which our current political climate is being formed. The Fourth started with the re-emergence of the Christian Right, reached its greatest political popularity with President Reagan and its greatest political power with President George W. Bush. What I mean by this is that Reagan was elected with the help of the Christian Right, Bush was elected by the Christian Right.

McCain's selection as the republican nominee over Huckabee, a much more religious man, and Romney, who tried to paint himself as a religious true conservative, shows that the political power of the groups that came from the Fourth Great Awakening is fading. True, McCain does support many Christian Right positions on foreign policy but does them out of a secular neoconservative philosophy rather than a religious one.

However the author of the article, Ronald Bailey, speculates that religious sections from the Fourth Great Awakening may find root in the Democratic Party, making a Religious Left. As a writer for a libertarian magazine, Bailey opposes any such move just as he opposed the Right in its religiously-inspired moralizing. Here, Bailey is wrong in a very obvious way. As examples of liberal religious moralizing he cites: "anti-smoking campaigns," "health-related legislation," and "apocalyptic environmentalism." If Bailey actually thinks that liberals support these causes out of religious enthusiasm, he is massively disconnected from reality. The only religious proof he gives on these subjects is that

The contemporary cult of the body [which he sees as responsible for legislation on obesity and smoking], with its obsession with diet and
exercise and its emphasis on beauty and perfection, has roots in the
biblical notion of the body as a “temple of the Holy Spirit.”

This is very weak proof indeed. Just because the movement has metaphorical similarities to religious moralizing does not make it religiously motivated.

There is indeed more religious Democratic enthusiasm than has been seen in some time, and Obama seems more openly religious than the average Democratic candidate [read: John Kerry], but religiously-minded Democrats will never make up the deal-breaking sector of the party the way they did among Republicans. Christian Leftists may be a part of the Democrats from now on, but they will no more control the party than the radical environmentalists. The core of the Democrats will be civil liberties, social justice , economic issues and liberal foreign policy voters.

What happened during the height of the Fourth Great Awakening was a religious imbalance within the parties. The Democrats were quite a-religious in the most religiously active Western country, and the Republicans were heavy-handedly religious in a country of moderates. The current election is showing a realignment towards an equilibrium that makes sense demographically: religious sectors of each party that influence, but do not control, the parties they vote for.

Someone else cares about alternate history!

For once, alternate history goes mainstream and isn't about the Civil War or WWII. This time, the Nazis don't win, the Confederates don't win. Mexico wins:
(Courtesy of poor targeted advertising)

Sure, it's an ad for vodka, but it's also got a map, and I love maps. Now I know next to nothing about the Mexican-American war, where the US gained the land that makes up its current boundaries. I can't point to some specific thing that could have been changed in 1848 to tip the balance in favor of Mexico.

There's only one thing that I do know. Within the US, the Democratic party of the time supported the jingoistic war with Mexico and the opposition Whigs, generally more anti-slave, were split over support. When the US won, anti-war Whigs fell out of favor. Among these were Abraham Lincoln and many members of his cabinet. If the US had outright lost, the Democratic party would have taken a huge hit in popularity at the same time the Whigs were in deepest crisis. Instead of breaking up as they did - into pro-slave elements that largely joined the democrats and anti-slave coalitions that swept up other constituencies into the anti-slave Republican party - the Whigs might have been able to go though an election without a real opposition. In power for at least four years, they might have been able to coalesce into a united party again. Thus, the slave issue would not be sorted out by political parties.

In addition, a western politician like Lincoln who opposed the war vocally and from the start would have been especially viable as a candidate. Combine that with Lincoln's double-talk on slavery and you might have a powerful candidate. So maybe Lincoln would have been president anyway; the Democrats certainly would not have held the office for a couple terms.

Thank you, Absolut, for caring about alternate history in a creepily ethno-nationalist way! I'm sure your ad will go over well with all dozen serious supporters of an 'American Reconquista.'

Some politicians are done #2

Hillary Clinton has lost the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama.

No it's not official yet, but the media and the politicos have registered their tiredness with Hillary. The math, whether you go by delegates or states, is against her. Obama is closing in in Pennsylvania, where Hillary needed a 12-point win to really stay in it. She's now up by 6, or down by 2. Either way, her lead isn't big enough.

The Bosnia story hurt her. I do not know why someone would invent such a story. I'm not truly convinced she even knew she was lying. I have often remembered events that did not happen in such-and-such a way. What makes me wonder is how her staff let her repeat it. Did they check the facts? If so, why let her lie? If not, they should be fired for negligence.

Obama didn't implode over the Rev. Wright mess. It hurt him, but not so much as everyone seemed to think. I guess democrats and independents realized that they weren't voting for Wright. It might have hurt Obama more if anyone but Sean Hannity really believed he agreed with Wright's positions.

A few mistakes from Hillary's campaign coupled with her long run of not-winning and not-winning-by-enough seem to have convinced non-partisan observers that she's lost. You don't need to support Obama, or the democrats, or even the USA to reach this conclusion. You can believe that Obama can't win in November and reach this conclusion.

Expect more stories about Hillary's distasteful behavior to come out as the "she's a candidate, let's have some respect" aura fades from her. Cautious Hillary supporters may begin to pressure her to leave, since her insistence on staying may do damage to the democrats.

What makes me wonder, once again, is how she and Bill behave towards Obama. Do they honestly think that being mean to him, demanding delegates, being inflexible and denying reality ("there's no such thing a a pledged delegate") will win Hillary the nomination? What makes the Clinton Campaign so sure that people would even vote for such a personality, especially since McCain is making himself out to be a measured and thoughtful man?

Stranger still is the fact that Bill Clinton seems dead-set, Jimmy Carter-style, on making far-out assertions are ruining his own legacy. Carter, until a couple years ago, was a kind man and religiously-minded moderate. Now he calls Palestine an apartheid (Ask a South African and he will sharply disagree) and says a lot of mind-bogglingly non-moderate stuff. Bill Clinton seems to be going down a similar path. It's a bit distasteful to watch.

I thought people were supposed to mellow with age.

Some politicians are done #1

A bit ago, I said:

If there were real elections in Zimbabwe, my cynical side tells me
Mugabe and ZANU-PF would still win, since the average Zimbabwean
doesn't have much basis for comparison. Mugabe did indeed end Western
control of the country. He does have popular support. Forcing him not
to propagandize a couple months before an election wouldn't undo the
pervasive effects of his twenty-five years of propaganda. But the
opposition party, the MDC, would probably get quite a few seats - a lot
more than Mugabe would like. It would set itself up as a real
opposition party, waiting for the elderly Mugabe to kick the bucket.
Zimbabwe is not, and has never been, a real democracy. But I hold out
hope that sometimes soon, it may join the club. [Important section highlighted]

Why was I wrong? I was indeed wrong, since it seems that the MDC
opposition has won more seats than ZANU-PF. Mugabe is currently
looking for a way out. He may, it seems, remain in power but this
looks less likely as time goes on. I said there won't be real
democracy in Zimbabwe until Mugabe dies. What did I get wrong?



I didn't anticipate that people could actually see through Mugabe's
propaganda. The average person noticed that there was 200,000%
inflation and that all Mugabe did about it was blame white people and
imperialists. The average person noticed that the opposition, while
not likely to wave a magic wand and end the crisis, at least provided a
possible way out.

I don't doubt that Mugabe wanted to rig the elections if the opposition looked likely to win. What happened, it seems, is that people were so totally against him and his party that a vote-rigging became impossible. If he had done it, it would have been the most transparent move ever. Even South African President Thabo Mbeki might have broken off relations. The overwhelming support for the opposition was aided by the fact that Mugabe is a petty, not authoritarian dictator. Petty dictators are found all over Africa and Latin America. They cannot control all aspects of their population, but rely on rich supporters and the military to do it. They often arise when the leader of a 'freedom fighting' anti-imperialist group simply never leaves power. Authoritarian dictatorships, like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, North Korea, etc. have more power over their population. The leaders have religious or semi-religious origins and are often military.

An authoritarian would never have lost this election. Mugabe's own status, which made him less of a human rights violator (though still a bad one) caused his party to lose the election. I am amazed at what happened here. I don't count on the MDC to be some kind of savior-party, nor is their leader Morgan Tsvangirai a Nelson Mandela. What amazes me here is that a non-western country has made a true opening for democracy with no western democratic help. Zimbabwe may not capitalize on this chance and might slide into one-party rule again, but a window of opportunity has been bought. The country pulled itself up by its bootstraps. This is the way things should happen - a model of democratizing without western takeover and occupation. I truly think most countries around the world want some kind of democracy. They may not recognize all the rights we do, and may have different ideas about freedom and religion and the role of the state, but I think that most people who know about elections and voting prefer the idea.

Too much democracy? What's the point?

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy (an unbelievably smart clan of politically astute lawyers) there is a growing series of posts about a recent UN Human Rights Council resolution. The resolution is being condemned by all commentators there for being...against human rights.

Which, in fact, it is.

The resolution urges the member states of the UN (not just the ones who voted for this measure) to use legislative and police means to prevent any incitement of hatred or violence against a race or religion. This provision in and of itself would not likely be abused too badly by strong democracies. In the US, the government may act against hateful speech if it seems likely to cause actual violence. A legitimate threat enables the government to go against free speech to preserve the more fundamental right of freedom from harm. Of course, religiously divided countries would use this provision to go after opposition. Countries with ethnic minorities that accuse the majority of 'imperialism' could also find this measure used upon them. For some regimes, opposition to total rule by a foreign ethnic group is racial incitement.

Fine, fine. The UN has no enforcement apparatus. Any state that wanted this stuff could/would do it anyway. Now they just get to point to the UN resolution and say 'hey, it's all right.'

But:

10. Emphasizes that respect of religions and their protection from
contempt is an essential element conducive for the exercise by all of
the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion;

This is incorrect. This is wrong. This is the section that violates the human rights the council is supposed to uphold. There are strategies for allowing free exercise of religion. One is government noninterference, a separation of church and state. This is a strategy that I personally do like. But no modern democracy should ensure that a religion will be 'respected'. What standard will be used to judge 'protection from contempt?' If someone rails against religious creationists saying that their faith blinds them to scientific consensus, does this constitute contempt? I think it very well might.

States should not act to prevent defamation of religions. Discrimination, yes. The banning of religious groups from activities is a violation of rights. But is there a right to not be offended? There is none. People whose religion is being attacked can do two things in a free society: suck it up and ignore the shouting defamer, or try to rebut them. They may not ban the defamer or send the police after him.

When you look at which countries voted in approval of this resolution, it becomes apparent that the ones who did are in no way strong democracies. They are, for the most part, human rights violators of the worst sort. This resolution is religious-collectivist nonsense that does far more to undermine rights and freedoms than to uphold them.

This brings me to a quandary: should rights violators be allowed on the UN Human Rights Council? No. So what is the council for?

The council runs into the following problem: it's too democratic. Sure, that word has become a loaded buzzword in recent times. 'Democracy = good' is a simple equation. But how permanent and important are any rights that 50%+1 countries can just add or take away at any time? The lack of structure in the UN makes it a very bad contender for a world-wide government.

An essay (which I cannot remember now) said that, as a governing body the UN was destined to fail, and it deserved to. But as a stage, a place where discussions can happen and the proclivities of other nations can be determined, it is actually valuable.

So what about a Union of Democracies? Under the best circumstances, the UD could be set up by a number of strong democracies from around the world. Imagine how much clout something such as this could gain if the original members were smaller but strong democracies. The larger ones would wait until the organization was set up, then apply for membership. Watching the process of admitting states like Germany, the US, France, and the UK to something started by smaller states would be amazing.

My dream team to start the UD:

1. Mexico - sure it can be corrupt, but they love to vote and don't like vote-rigging
2. South Africa - yes it's a one-party state right now, but that's because no other party can define itself well enough to capture a new segment of the population. It is, however, a model African democracy
3. Turkey - hopefully there won't be any more military coups. Another model - a working, secular Muslim state
4. Czech Republic - Eastern Europe should be represented in here somewhere.
5. South Korea - not Japan, because it's too well established as a democracy. The whole point is to let upstarts found the organization

This gives one African, one Muslim, one Asian, one American and one European member to the founding group. Immediately afterwards, the US and friends (Western Europe, Canada, Japan, etc) would apply and go through the formal vetting process. States get into the UN quite easily, but getting into the UD would be something to get excited about. This is not to set up the UD as a world government, but rather to let someone other than Cuba and Egypt set the human rights agenda for the world.