Month: May 2010

Kos explains.

Joe Carter goes after David Hart for finding virtue in a particular type of atheism:

While there have always been people who deny the existence of a deity, it has not been a prominent view among intellectuals, much less a serious alternative to Christian theism. What previous cultures instinctively understood, and that we in turn have forgotten, is that atheism is a form of (self-imposed) intellectual dysfunction, a lack of epistemic virtue, or–to borrow a term from my Catholic friends–a case of vincible ignorance. Vincible ignorance is lacking knowledge that is within the individual's control and for which he is responsible before God. 

Dreher writes that Carter "goes too far here." Razib Khan pounces:

Let me do a substitution on the part I have emphasized: While there have always been people who deny the existence of Allah, it has not been a prominent view among intellectuals, much less a serious alternative to Muslim theism. For much of the history of the West there were strong social sanctions against public expressions of atheism. And quite often the sanctions were not simply matters of ostracism, they were of capital consequence. The last person executed in the British Isles for atheism suffered such a punishment around ~1700 (see How the Scots Invented the Modern World). There were almost certainly many atheists at the commanding heights of intellect in the pre-modern era in the West, but they would certainly not be open about their views lest they suffer extreme punishment.

That's Dan Amira's guess of what the final vote will be on the Kagan nomination.

Drum objects to asking public figures about their sex lives. So do I. I have zero interest – less than zero, actually – in Elena Kagan's sex life or lack of it. I do have an interest in someone's public identity. And how many times can I say this before my straight friends get it? Being gay is not about your sex life. It's about a core element of your identity, one that no gay person can bypass or ignore.

Lane Wallace makes a similar category error here:

In short, while a potential justice's personal life or sexual orientation can certainly influence her innate understanding and experience in the world, it is no more relevant than thousands of other factors in her life experience.

This is a sentence that could only be written by a straight person.

This is what a gay person must go through to get to adulthood: he or she must figure out she's different at varying ages, but usually, clearly by mid-adolescence. The dating question looms, as does the marriage question. What do you do? Many gay kids pretend to be straight for a while (mercifully fewer than in the past); many come out and begin the difficult pursuit of love and intimacy and, in some states, marriage; others make a strategic decision to lie about themselves or to construct a public persona drained of any emotional or relationship content so they always avoid the question. At every stage of this evolution, the gay person is made deeply aware of his or her marginalized status as a citizen and as a human being. Few identities expose as much how the law can oppress, stigmatize and alienate.

With all due respect, this is more relevant than "thousands of other factors" in someone's life. This experience, certainly for someone of my generation and older, cannot but be formative, whether it is repressed, engaged, hidden or run from. To remain closeted requires a massive use of emotional and psychological resources to distract, dissociate, lie, euphemize, cover, appease. It requires deception every day.

This question is not about someone's sexual preferences – by which I mean, whether you like your partners tall, short, hairy, buxom, skinny, fat, whatever, and what you might like to do with them. It's about your emotional core and the integrity with which you have lived your life. It matters if a Supreme Court Justice has lived his life as a convenient careerist lie. It tells us a lot about him. And for gay people who have had to make these choices, and risked a huge amount to do so, it is somewhat offensive to be told this experience is just not that big a deal.

Really? You try it.

(P.S. Mark Warren at Esquire does get it.)

Bernstein asks:

I was talking to a staunch Republican former student a couple of weeks ago, and mentioned that one of the biggest surprises to me during the Bush years was that Cheney had turned out to be a lot less capable than I had expected.  My student was utterly shocked that anyone could think that. 

This depressed me no end.  He's an open-minded guy, and certainly not prone to believing that whatever Republicans do is always correct.  But it was clear that within his information bubble, the possibility that Cheney just wasn't very good at his job had never been raised.  Bush, too.  He did recognize that things had gone wrong, but saw it more as policy choices and, to some extent, ideology.  In my view?  Even something such as torture, which I think was a (outside of the morality of it) disastrous policy, was far more a case of incompetence than it was ideology.  What scares me about that is that if my former student represents the view of establishment Republicans, it's possible that they don't quite realize how damaging it was to them to have had a president not up to the job, and how dangerous it is to nominate another one.

Drum differs slightly on one of Bernstein's other points.

Conor features a Future of the City reader:

Recently, Portland residents have noticed that The New York Times has become fascinated with our city: coffee culture, carts that sell everything from Bangkok street food to fine crepes stuffed with artisanal ham, automated public restrooms, art fairs. The Times observes that no book store in New York compares with Powell's here in little Portland, Oregon, and sighs.

It makes me think that New York is envious of a city where the gravity is so light that new culture can actually form like bubbles and rise to the sky. How long has it been since a cultural phenomenon began and grew in New York? There are hip-hop, gay balls, punk rock — but those famously began in the outer boroughs, not Manhattan. Has New York's gravity become so heavy that nothing new can grow?

(Photo by Flickr user Thomas Hawk)

A reader writes:

E.D. Kain asked:

Is anybody made better off by being incarcerated for a non-violent crime such as smoking marijuana – their records tarnished, their ability to get a job or even sometimes an apartment permanently hindered?

Great, passionate rhetoric, and yet hopelessly flawed.  People in the U.S. ARE NOT incarcerated for "smoking marijuana."  I would encourage you to read the annual report compiled by the Bureau of Justice Assistance which details demographic information about prisoners.

As you can see on pages 37 and 38, the majority of offenders in state prisons are there for violent offenses (50%). Another 20% are there for offenses that, while non-violent, take a significant financial and emotional toll on victims (burglary, fraud, etc.).  Another 10% are there for "public order" offenses, which sound innocuous, but which mean things like driving under the influence.  Is there really anyone out there who is going to argue that drunk drivers should be left out on the streets?

The last 20% are there for drug offenses.  But, they aren't there for simple possession.  They are there for possession with intent to distribute or trafficking charges that require possession of drugs in greater quantities than the average user is going to have on-hand, and often coupled with weapons possession or other charges.

People who get busted in possession of small quantities of drugs, such as a single joint, almost 100% of the time are going to be slapped on the hand, pay a fine, or do community service.  In a worst-case scenario, they may get probation, but that will usually only occur if the possession charge occurs in the same incident as other offenses or if the offender already has a criminal history and is on probation/parole.

I've worked in the field of gangs for close to 20 years.  I've never yet, even out of hundreds of gang members that I've known and worked with, seen a person locked up for possession. 

We simply do not have the jail/prison space anywhere in the U.S. to house offenders for low-level offenses like that.

Simple possession, 99% of the time, isn't even going to result in an individual going to the local county jail. 

In federal prisons, it is true that a large number of inmates are there for drug charges, but they tend to be major drug traffickers who are operating at a high enough level that they've been the focus of joint task force investigations and have caught the attention of federal prosecutors. 

Again, they aren't the guy down the street.  Federal prosecutors and federal law enforcement agencies don't have time to bother with those folks.  The people they focus on are criminals from organized crime groups and street gangs who usually have also been involved in multiple violent, weapons-involved crimes.

In my opinion, marijuana should absolutely be legalized.  But not because average users are being put in prison.  Rather, it should be legalized because the profits of marijuana help to feed drug gangs such as the Arellano Felix Cartel, which is responsible for dozens (hundreds, potentially) of murder.  And, those profits feed American and Central American/Mexican street gangs who kill more people on an annual basis in the U.S. than have ever been killed by terrorists.   And, because the costs of policing marijuana growers and distributors are prohibitive and pointless.  And, because marijuana usage is simply too common in the mainstream to make eradication efforts possible.

I understand that a lot of the drug war sites put out this kind of misinformation.  But, as a responsible and respected commentator, instead of taking their word for these kinds of claims, you need to do some fact-checking.

"The prime minister of Israel has repeatedly compared the establishment of a Palestinian state to the Holocaust. His foreign minister, and protégé, has flirted with advocating the physical expulsion of Israeli Arabs. The spiritual leader of his government's fourth-largest party has called for politicians who advocate ceding territory to the Palestinians to be struck dead. West Bank settlements are growing at triple the rate of the Israeli population, and according to a recent Tel Aviv University poll, 80 percent of religious Jewish Israeli high schoolers would refuse orders to dismantle them. One-third of Jewish Israelis favor pardoning Yigal Amir, the man who murdered Yitzhak Rabin.

I hate writing these words. I was raised to love Israel, and I will teach my children to love it. But we don't get to choose what is true. And if you love Israel not only because it is a Jewish state but also because it is a liberal democratic Jewish state, a state that strives to embody the best in the Jewish ethical tradition, there is only one decent response to these truths: fury. If you're not angry, you're either not paying attention or you don't care," – Peter Beinart.

He goes on to counter Chait's criticisms of his NYRB piece one by one. Read it all. It's a devastating expose of Chait's own indifference to the changing realities in Israel, and of his anti-anti-Israel position. What I found particularly depressing about Chait's response was the failure to respond to the specific facts Peter has laid out. Instead we have a condescending psychoanalysis of Peter that is built on a previous piece and that seeks to explain Beinart's evolution as being about Beinart, not Israel or reality. Why does that non-argument sound familiar? It's about as relevant as where Peter's essay was published (although it is interesting that a former editor of TNR could never have such an essay printed in its pages). 

I await Chait's future engagement with the facts on the ground. If only he were as tough on Israel's right as he is on America's.

Ann Gordon and Lynn Sherr, authors of "Failure is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words," fact-check Palin's invocation of the feminist icon:

The [Susan B. Anthony] List's mission statement proclaims, "Although [Anthony] is known for helping women win the right to vote, it is often untold in history that she and most early feminists were strongly pro-life." There's a good reason it's "untold:" historians and good journalists rely on evidence. Of which there is none.