Month: October 2005

An emailer makes a good point:

[The NRO editorial] even more bizarre than you claim. Consider: “If the president withdrew the nomination, we believe that he would seek a replacement who could unite conservatives – as he no doubt expected Miers to unite them. But that nominee would be tarnished, perhaps fatally, by the suspicion that the president was forced to pander to the Right.” But the first sentence makes clear that NRO does want Bush to “pander to the Right” — they just want him to do it sub rosa and untraceably.

That’s certainly the impression. But maybe my bullying point is a little unfair. Another emailer comments:

The NR can’t “bully” anyone. It is a magazine. They have no authority – only the power of persuasion. The last time I looked, engaging in that is called exercising one’s First Amendment rights. (Or does your occasional stridency make you a bully too?)

Point taken. What I was trying to say is that it isn’t a nominee’s responsibility to withdraw. And she cannot really defend herself right now. It may well have been a bad decision, but she deserves a hearing. Bully the president, not her.

The pressure being piled onto Harriet Miers right now strikes me as inappropriate, and bordering on public bullying:

Some conservatives have called on the president to withdraw her nomination, and a few have urged senators to vote against her. If the president withdrew the nomination, we believe that he would seek a replacement who could unite conservatives – as he no doubt expected Miers to unite them. But that nominee would be tarnished, perhaps fatally, by the suspicion that the president was forced to pander to the Right. The president, moreover, surely does not want to risk looking less than strong and steadfast. The prudent course is for Miers to withdraw her own nomination in the interests of the president she loyally serves.

Miers has been nominated. The president made the decision. If her nomination is to die, then the president should make that call; and take responsibility for it. Trying to force Miers to fall on her own sword for the sake of the “conservative movement,” whatever that means any more, seems deeply unfair to me. Besides, I thought the Republican mantra has been clear in the past for judicial nominations: they should all be allowed an up-or-down vote in the Senate. Miers should be given a chance to testify; or the president should withdraw his nomination. Those are the honorable courses. The bullies at NRO can go pull a Cheney.

One of the greatest pop artists of our time turns out to be a defender of “people of faith.” Here’s a transcript of a chat between Madonna and Stuart Price, the musical director of her 2004 Re-Invention Tour:

Madonna: (speaking about Stuart) He doesn’t believe in God and he’s not spiritual at all.

Stuart: Eh.. No. I don’t.. I don’t really believe in God.

Madonna: That really hurts me to hear that.

Stuart: Why does it hurt you? Why does it hurt anyone to hear that someone doesn’t believe in God? What’s the problem with that?

Madonna: Because then you don’t – you don’t believe in anything past this physical life that you live.

Stuart: You can believe in certain policies without having to believe in God.

Madonna: Do you believe in reincarnation?

Stuart: Yeah.

Madonna: You do?

Stuart: I believe in lots of things that are beyond the physical world.

Madonna: You don’t believe that there’s a supreme power or higher energy force that had something to do with the creation of the world?

Stuart: Yeah, but why does that have to be labeled “God”?

Madonna: Ok, how bout “Energy”?

Stuart: Yeah.

Madonna: Or “The Light”?

Stuart: [rolls eyes] Alright, how bout “Energy”?

Madonna needs to have a nice little chat with my friend, Bill Maher, doesn’t she?

I’m as big a defender of drug patents as anyone but there’s always an exception for epidemiological emergencies. With avian flu, we could be facing an emergency that makes Katrina look like a sunny day. Right now, we should do all we can to accelerate the difficult process for a vaccine, but that may take too long and production of sufficient vaccine is often a logistical nightmare. The second best option is mass distribution of Tamiflu and similar drugs that can ameliorate symptoms and could cut the death rate. I just want to second Stephen Gordon. We have no time to waste.

As so often, Charles Krauthammer cuts through to a central question of our time. His column today is a chilling one, and it’s about the potential for both a natural or a deliberate outbreak of a deadly flu virus. Money quote:

[R]esurrection of the [1918 flu] virus and publication of its structure open the gates of hell. Anybody, bad guys included, can now create it. Biological knowledge is far easier to acquire for Osama bin Laden and friends than nuclear knowledge. And if you can’t make this stuff yourself, you can simply order up DNA sequences from commercial laboratories around the world that will make it and ship it to you on demand. Taubenberger himself admits that “the technology is available.”

I fear we are close to the moment when our intellectual capabilities as human beings overtake our moral capacity for self-restraint. We are becoming too smart for our own good. We know too much, and have too much potential for massive destruction for major shit not to hit the fan relatively soon. I’m not even talking about unintended consequences of intellectual or scientific advances. I’m talking about deliberate use of destructive technologies to end our civilization as we have known it. Have we advanced morally as a species at the same pace that we have advanced technologically? The question answers itself. In the recent past, we feared nuclear immolation at the hands of governments, but the logic of mutually assured destruction kept the peace. Now, the very technology that empowers a blogger like me can also empower any number of murderous lunatics to kill on a massive scale. What are the grounds for hoping that the worst won’t happen in our lifetimes? What are the odds? If someone out there can provide an argument to cheer me up, I’d be grateful.

A reader emails:

You’re being somewhat unfair to the researchers who attribute suicide terror to “altruism.” We generally use the word “altruism” in a positive sense — an “unselfish concern for the welfare of others,” as defined in The American Heritage Dictionary. However the same dictionary defines the scientific term “altruism” as “instinctive cooperative behavior that is detrimental to the individual but contributes to the survival of the species.” There are no value judgments inherent in this scientific definition, which seems clearly to be the meaning intended by the researchers in the article to which you link. The conclusions reached by the researchers may or may not be accurate, but understanding the mind of the suicide bomber is both a worthy and necessary goal.

Huh? Let’s concede for the sake of argument that altruism in this sense means precisely “instinctive cooperative behavior that is detrimental to the individual but contributes to the survival of the species.” You’re saying that the murderers of 9/11 were exhibiting “cooperative behavior” for the “survival of the species”? Suicide bombing is an upper-middle class form of mass murder, attached to a psychotic, narcissistic version of religious faith. If someone wants to martyr himself as a protest, that’s one thing. If he wants to take other innocent people with him, it’s quite another. I would think that distinction is an obvious one. Within the confines of today’s value-free academia, it apparently isn’t.

Mystery Pollster has some very credible doubts that Bush’s approval numbers are that low.

That’s a new “theory” on the motivations of suicide bombers. Read the piece detailing the study and see if you can find a distinction between martyrdom – which kills only oneself – and suicide-bombing, which, of course, kills others. Money quote:

[S]o long as group mentality motivates the suicide, it is still altruistic, Pedahzur and his colleagues claim. They claim individuals who kill themselves in search of ‘a lofty and glorious place for themselves’ fall into a different but closely related category – ‘acute altruistic suicide.’

Acute altruistic suicide ‘stems from a strong religious conviction in the glorious destiny which awaits the perpetrator in the afterlife,’ Pedahzur said. ‘With a serene conviction derived from the feeling of duty accomplished, this person is carried to his death in a burst of faith and enthusiasm.’

Faith alone, however, does not a terrorist make, Ginges cautioned. ‘I found personal devotion to and belief in Islam unrelated to support for terrorism,’ he said. Religious organizations find it easier to generate support for terrorism not because of their beliefs but rather ‘because of the link between collective rituals and altruism,’ Ginges said.

It seems to me that if Islamic fascists wanted merely to blow themselves up, few of us would object. In fact, it might be worth encouraging. Win-win: they go to “heaven”, we get to ride the subway in peace. But these people are mass-murderers. I guess it takes an academic to see that as altruism.

“She’s a good person? Well I’m relieved, because after all, that’s half the battle. What I really want to know is whether she is a dog person or a cat person, and what is her favorite Britney Spears album. Come on! Other than the scary butt-kissing correspondence to the most brilliant person ever, I don’t think anyone has really been attacking the woman personally. Whether or not she is a nice person or functional party guest probably won’t make a bit of difference as to her abilities as a supreme court justice. The elephant is still sitting in the middle of the room – she may be an excellent corporate lawyer and personal attorney, but there is no way this person would have been nominated if she hadn’t been Bush’s friend.”

“A few weeks before the wedding, over coffee at Starbucks, I asked Jamie why he wanted to marry. For my generation of gay men (I am 45), legal marriage was unthinkable, and emerging into the gay world often meant entering a cultural ghetto and a sexual underworld. Jamie, who could just about be my son, replies with an answer that turns the world of the 1970s and 1980s upside down. Once he realized he was gay, he says, he simply expected to marry.

‘Why does anybody get married?’ he asks. ‘I wanted the stability, I wanted the companionship, I wanted to have a sex life that was accepted, I wanted to have kids. For me, it’s not a choice. A marriage evens you out.'” – Jonathan Rauch’s latest column. What many opponents of marriage for gays have yet to grasp – because so many have sadly such limited awareness of or interest in actual gay lives – is that the revolution has already happened. Or, rather, the evolution. This was not a function so much of activism, although that played a part. It was a human maturation – and one of the most encouraging, healing social changes in years. I believe that one day, most conservatives will see that. I try and describe the deeper, structural change in gay self-consciousness in a new essay here. The New Republic has also kindly collected a series of my essays on gay life in the last two decades here.