A New Years Thought

I was talking with a friend recently about thinking and doubt. My friend told me that he has been questioning ideas and beliefs that he's held for a very long time.

Personally, I agree with Socrates, who insisted that the "unexamined life is not worth living." And lest anyone think he didn't really mean that, Socrates uttered those words while explaining why he couldn't abandon his practice of questioning prominent Athenian citizens as an alternative to execution.

I, of course, am not as courageous as Socrates. But I agree that examining one's beliefs is, on the whole, a good thing. A scary and dangerous thing. But in the end, a good thing.

So I commended my friend.

He then added that, because he no longer feels as certain as he once did about traditional theological teachings, many people in his church fear that he has gone off the deep end. In response, and off the top of my head - while pumping gas no less - I replied:

"No one goes off the deep end by not believing something."

The more I think about that statement, the more convinced I am that it is true. The deep end and beyond is for believers, not skeptics. Unbelievers may be many things, but they rarely become nut jobs. Believers, on the other hand, frequently do somersaults with a twist off the ten-meter board and plunge into deep waters. Some of them never come up for air.

Even more interesting is the fact that in American politics, "people of faith" tend to be associated with what we call "conservativism," whereas secular people tend to be "liberals." The reason this is interesting is that skepticism is the conservative epistemological posture. Belief is the wild-eyed liberal practice.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not criticising people for believing things - I believe many things myself. I just think we ought to acknowledge that belief, not doubt, is the path to crazytown, and the less skepticism we bring to the practice of forming our beliefs, the more likely we are to arrive at that destination.

Happy New Year

Joe H.

Move Your Money

I think this is a great idea. If any of you have money invested in one of the big Wall Street investment banks, bust a move.

Joe H.

Republican Nihilism

This is a pretty fair explanatory treatment of conservative resistance to progressive change and the crippling effect an inflexible anti-government ideology has on the conservatives' ability to address social problems. The article is a bit long, but it will provide you with insight and perspective on the reasons, and methods by which, conservatives resist progressive change. Apocalyptic hysteria - what I call the "the sky is falling, we do this at our peril" strategy, is not new. It greets all major reform efforts.

"Death Panels," anyone?

The authors have also traced and reprinted conservative predictions of the doom to come after the enactment of each major reform - going back as far as the enactment of restrictions on child labor in the early 1900's. The alarmism is remarkably similar in each case.

And it always turns out to be dead wrong!

Note - as a caveat, let me say that I respect the conservative impulse to go slow and change incrementally. There is wisdom in recognizing that human reason is limited and fallible, particularly in its ability to predict the effects of interference with complex organic systems. Thank God we have a food and drug administration.

That being said, I think the article definitively establishes that we should ignore the entirely predictable alarmism that precedes all political efforts to reform broken systems and/or end injustices.

I am upset that there is no public option - and that insurance will be mandatory albiet with no effective price control - except community pricing, which I favor. I think that is a big give away to the insurance industry that was unnecessary.

Nonetheless, the legislation is a major step in the right direction.

Merry Christmas!

Joe H.

Death Panel Redux

For those of you who refuse to believe that Sarah Palin is a pathological liar, I give you death panel redux.

What's remarkable is that even when she's caught red - handed in a lie, her supporters suffer no cognitive dissonence, and the press continues to take her seriously.

Actually, that is not merely remarkable - it is terrifying.

Joe

Decade of the Con

In this column, Frank Rich gets the last decade exactly right. 2000-2009 was the decade of the "Con."

Consider the disasters wrought by our credulity. Rich lays them out for us to behold. I have already confessed that I am among those taken in by Obama's con - not his timidity, as Frank describes it, but his rank dishonesty and/or political cowardice in refusing to do what he promised.

My wife and I watched "Invictus" yesterday afternoon. At one point in the movie, Nelson Mandela, who has become the president of South Africa after a 30 year imprisonment for his opposition to apartheid, opposes his political party's plan to rename the national rugby team and replace its traditional Green and Gold colors - a name and emblem revered by by white Afrikaners, but despised by the black majority as symbols of their former oppressors. Knowing that this would confirm the worst fears of White Afrikaners, Mandela risks his political standing to challenge his supporters to rise above their legitimate grievances and hatred and be better than than they are expected to be - and he succeeds. But the most moving part of the scene is when he is travelling to meet with his supporters and his aid is urging him to not to intervene and risk losing their support. Mandela responds with "the moment I am not willing to risk losing their support is the moment that I am unfit to lead." Enough said.

By the way, all of the disasters of 2000-2009 will pale in comparison to the disaster we'll visit on our children if we do nothing about global warming. Consider this scenario.

At any rate, I know that emotion is far more powerful than reason. But the only way humanity is going to survive is if it develops a passion for the truth, the capacity for critical analysis, and a clear headed appreciation of the inexhaustible willingness of people - even our erstwhile allies - to deceive us for personal gain.

Over 100 years ago, William Kingdom Clifford penned this short article - "The Ethics of Belief." His conclusion is overstated and surely wrong. But his basic point - that each and every one of us has a moral obligation to exercise our faculty of belief responsibly - and the arguments he he invokes in support of that conviction - are our only hope of survival.

Joe H.

What Drives Me Crazy

Do you know what drives me crazy? I am a Christian. I believe in one God, the father, the almighty, the maker of heaven and earth, and of all things seen and unseen. I believe in one lord and savior, Jesus Christ, . . .

And yet I have far more in common with Rachel Maddow than I do with the yahoos she's making fun of for their "prayercast" efforts to defeat healthcare reform. Health care reform that will save tens of thousands of lives and provide security against bankruptcy - medical bills are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States -is opposed by Christian leaders.

How did we get to this point?

Joe

"Health Care Reform Please - and hold the Crap!"

Regarding his opposition to the current senate healthcare reform bill, and his relationship to Obama - some have speculated, and I have even wondered, whether he might mount a primary challenge to Obama in 2012 - Howard Dean responded:

"I remember what it was like to have George Bush as president and I'm not on a mission to destroy the Democratic Party, having rebuilt it. But we didn't elect Democrats to pass crap. We elected Democrats to make a difference"

Here here!

Joe H.

Substance vs. Lunacy

This is from Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly. His Blog is called "Political Animal." Its a great blog for politcos. I agree with him entirely on this issue.

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THE KIND OF DEBATE THAT'S LONG OVERDUE.... Maybe this is an esoteric point, but it occurs to me that the quality of the policy debate between competing progressive contingents is infinitely better and more interesting than the policy debate between Democrats and Republicans we witnessed over the last eight or nine months. It's probably an inconsequential observation, but I think it nevertheless speaks to a larger truth.

The thought came to me after reading two op-eds this morning -- Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) attacking health care reform from the right in the Wall Street Journal, and former Gov. Howard Dean (D-Vt.) going after reform from the left in the Washington Post. Both called for the defeat of the Senate Democratic plan, and both were written by leading figures on their respective side of the ideological fence, but only one had something sensible to offer.

Coburn's piece was absurd, wildly misleading, and included arguments that seemed oddly detached from the substantive reality of the debate. Dean's piece, which I personally disagree with, was nevertheless policy focused, serious, and credible. Dean's piece conveys the concerns of someone who cares deeply about health care and improving the dysfunctional system, while Coburn's piece reads like someone auditioning to be Sean Hannity's fill-in guest host.

Of course, it's not just two op-eds on a Thursday that bolster the point. Much has been made this week of the often-intense dispute between activists and wonks -- progressive reform advocates who think the Democratic plan has merit and is worth passing, and progressive reform advocates who think the Democratic plan is a failure and should be defeated. It's an important dispute, with significant implications.

But notice the quality of the debate. Note that Howard Dean, Markos Moulitsas, much of the FireDogLake team and others are raising important questions and pointing to real flaws. At the same time, note that Ezra Klein, Jonathan Cohn, Nate Silver and others are offering meaningful defenses of the Democratic plan, based on substantive evaluations.

Progressive Activists and Progressive Wonks are at each other's throats this week, but they want largely the same goals. Their differences are sincere and significant, but the intensity of their dispute is matched by the potency of their arguments.

And then turn your attention to the other side of the divide, and notice the quality of the arguments conservatives and Republicans have offered -- and continue to offer -- in this debate. Death panels. Socialism. Hitler. Government takeover. Socialized medicine. Incomprehensible charts. Incessant whining about the number of pages in a proposal.

The United States could have had a great debate this year about one of the most important domestic policies of them all. But Americans were denied that debate, because the right didn't have an A game to bring. Intellectual bankruptcy left conservatives with empty rhetorical quivers.

But as it turns out, it's not too late for the debate, we were just looking in the wrong place. We expected the fight of the generation to occur between the right and left, when the more relevant and interesting dispute was between left and left.

Time will tell who'll win, and no matter what happens, the argument will continue beyond this one piece of legislation. But regardless what side of the dispute you're on, it's worth appreciating the vibrancy, energy, and seriousness with which progressives are engaging in the debate, as compared to the incoherent, ridiculous, and dull qualities our friends on the right have brought to the table.

Joe H.

Storms of Stupitity

Climate change and mass stupidity. This may be a lethal combination.

Joe H.

If I Were a Senator - Update

Although the other Democratic senators appear to be angry with Joe Lieberman for preventing a medicare buy in for people aged 55-64, or a genuine public option that would compete with private insurers, I'm pretty sure its feigned anger, entirely contrived.

Why?

Well, if I were a senator, I would immediately announce my intention to join a Republican filibuster unless one of these two options was included in a final bill -and I'm pretty sure Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sherrod Brown of Ohio could be coaxed into joining me.

What then? Harry Reid has expressed strong support for the Public Option in the past - so he should be open to forcing the Senate to have an actual debate - a real filibuster - going on 24 hours a day, until somebody blinks.

Joe Lieberman is currently under a lot of pressure for opposing a measure that he has long endorsed, purely out of spite. There is no evidence whatsoever that he believes any of the factually false and ever changing arguments he's given for his opposition to lowering the age for Medicare eligibility, or creating a public option. There is lots of evidence to the contrary.

How long would it take for Lieberman to blink? Not long, I suspect, particularly if Harry Reid simply refused to allow the Senate to move on to new business until cloture was achieved (cloture is a vote to end debate and vote on the underlying bill). If Reid had any perspective, and he surely does, he'd see that a month of wasted Senate time now, could give him a legacy rivaling progressive giants of the past. If he really wanted it, he'd use his power to get it.

Paying homage to an idea is one thing - fighting for it with all the tools at your disposal is another. So I think this is all an act. We're getting the bill that the insurance companies wanted - mandates for individuals to buy insurance, government subsidies for poor people to buy insurance, but no limits on premiums (community pricing assures that high risk individuals will not be priced out of the market, but there is no control on the community price that everyone will pay, as there is no effective competition).

So, we have a Democratic Congress and Administration herding American citizens into the loving arms of private insurance companies. Who would have believed this was possible?

And to think - someone my age and with my education believed that "yes we can" bullshit.

Joe H.

Update: Nobody says it better than Olberman.

Dear Nobodies

This was sobering - but I suspect it accurately describes the state of American Democracy.

Joe H.

Holy Joe - UPDate

Each year, ten's of thousands of people suffer and/or die in the United States prematurely, due to their lack of access to health care. The House of Representatives recently passed a reform bill that (1) disallows insurers from screening applicants for preexisting conditions, or charging higher rates for health insurance to select high risk groups;(2) prevents insurers from dumping insureds once they become ill; (3)mandates that everyone purchase health insurance and provides tax payer funded subsidies to poor people for this purpose - a real "win win win" for poor people who get health care, insurance companies who get millions of new customers, and the public at large who get healthier more productive fellow citizens; and (4) creates a public insurance option that will not be tax payer subsidized - except for the subsidies for the poor, which can go to all of the health plans.

The Senate is debating health care reform right now. Joe Lieberman insists that there be no public insurance option. He threatened to join a Republican led filibuster - senators must continue to debate a bill unless 60 of them agree to end debate and vote on the bill - if a public option is in the final senate legislation.

Okay, Joe's a senator from Connecticut, the insurance capital of the world. And he's bitter at the Democrats for a variety of reasons - despite the fact that they let him keep the chairmanship of the Committee on Homeland Security - despite his campaigning for John McCain in the general election. But threatening to join an opposition led filibuster on your caucus' signature domestic issue? That's too much.

Hold the phone - some crafty senator or staffer comes up with a compromise alternative - expand the eligibility to buy into medicare to age 55. No new government run insurance program - which was Lieberman's big problem with the House's bill. Not only that, it is an idea that Lieberman himself endorsed just three months ago. Wait . . . turns out he's endorsed the idea for years!

I guess that solves the problem.

Eh . . . no, not really. Lieberman has says he will filibuster that compromise as well. He is joining the opposition to fight a proposal he's championed for years!

What kind person holds up major legislation that will save thousands of lives out of narcissistic spite? It has, after all, been definitively established that Lieberman is not holding things up out of principle - the compromise is the one he has championed in the past. That means he's either acting out of greed, or spite, or the need to draw attention to himself.

Throw his ass out of the caucus. He's evil and we don't need him.

Joe H.

Update: Ta-nehisi Coates put the point perfectly. Liberman is has utterly dishonored himself.

Fundamentalism

I have previously described "fundamentalism" as the inability to seriously entertain the possibility that your belief in a particular proposition, or collection of propositions, is wrong. I adopted this view after reading "Kindly Inquisitors" by conservative author Jonathan Rauch - a book I cannot recommend more highly, despite the fact that it is over 20 years old.

Anyway, in today's New York Times, Paul Krugman suggests an equally apt definition - the inability to be persuaded or dissuaded by evidence. Krugman is discussing the United States experiment with financial deregulation, beginning in the 1980's, and the corresponding financial calamities that it has spawned. His discussion is highly worth the time it will take you to read it.

The interesting thing is that not a single Republican voted for the reform bill last Friday, modest though it was in its re regulatory efforts. Not one!

Amazing.

Joe H.

American Exceptionalism

I recently saw a clip of Karl Rove criticizing President Obama for not believing in "American Exceptionalism." That term, of course, means different things to different people. But the basic idea is that America and Americans are "exceptional," in one way or another and, because we are exceptional, America has a special role to play in world affairs.

Exceptionalism, or a belief in the superiority of one's "kind," is a universal phenomenon. Much of the time, it remains an unspoken assumption among the members of a population. And when it is stated, it is usually stated indirectly. "God Bless the USA" - when spoken by an American, or displayed on a car bumper - translates roughly as "we're better than anyone else."

Here's a little secret. I've long believed that America, as a nation, is superior to every nation on earth. Individual Americans fall along a wide spectrum ranging from truly extraordinary to vile. But America, as a nation, is, or at least was, exceptional.

But given that Karl Rove has publicly endorsed government sponsored torture - or what amounts to it - and participated in an administration that lied and/or scared the nation into invading a country that was not threatening us, and criticized every Supreme Court Decision limiting the Bush Administration's power to detain "suspected terrorists" without due process, I'm pretty sure Karl Rove understands that term in a very different way than I do.

America, as I understand it, is a social contract. America is an agreement of a population to govern themselves according to certain key political ideals - the rule of law, due process, equality before the law, political equality, governmental respect for individual rights, respect for property rights, liberty and justice for all, and so forth.

We have never lived up to these ideals perfectly - we have never even fully understood what they require of us. But we have tried live up to these ideals. And to the extent that we have lived up to them, we have prospered and benefited ourselves and the rest of the world like no other nation before us.

Karl Rove speaks of "American exceptionalism" and yet endorses state sponsored torture, indefinite detention without due process, government spying without judicial warrants, and so forth.

Come to think of it, so does 47% of the population of this country.

Devotion to a political movement or agenda (or to a leader) often overwhelms devotion to overarching political ideals. We've seen that time and time again. It is very dangerous when people overwhelmed in this manner come to control the power accumulated by those who came before them and who remained faithful, albeit imperfectly, to our overarching political ideals.

Karl Rove is no patriot. His understanding of America and American exceptionalism is very different from mine. He doesn't love our country. He loves power, pure and simple.

Joe H

Group identity and Corruption - Follow Up

In my previous post titled "Group Identity and Corruption," I noted that the tendency of Obama supporters to excuse Obama's adoption of noxious and unamerican Bush administration policies on civil liberties - policies that Obama and they rightly denounced the Bush administration for - was a product of celebrity and/or hero worship.

Apparently I was right.

Joe H.

The Importance of Obeying the Constitution

This short article by Owen Fiss, crystallizes in clear, unequivocal prose, the damage to our constitutional system that a program of indefinite detention without trial for terrorism suspects would cause. I hope you'll take the time to read it.

I used to teach political philosophy. The most fundamental issue in political philosophy is power - who may legitimately exercise coercive power over others, and under what conditions? What renders the exercise of coercive power against the unwilling legitimate?

Our answer, courtesy of John Locke, has always been, "the consent of the governed." The constitution, and in particular, the Bill of Rights, including Amendments 13, 14, and 15, is a statement of the terms of our consent. It is the agreement, and more importantly, the moral commitment, that our founders, and all subsequent Americans, have made with each other to limit the power of our government to act against any person in the world. Adherence to the constitution's limitations is a necessary condition of the legitimacy of our government. Period!

We must not forget this most basic fact because we are afraid, or because cynical political opponents will accuse us of "endangering the homeland," if we don't abandon the constitution. We must remember that "America" is only worth dying for to the extent that we remain committed to the basic ideals of Due Process, Equal Protection, and Liberty and Justice for all.

Abandon these ideals and you've abandoned America.

Joe H.

A Good Question

Regarding the new Pew Poll showing the 47% of AMERICANS believe it is permissible to torture SUSPECTED terrorists, Glen Greenwald asks:

"[H]ow is it possible to credibly maintain that we believe torture is some sort of extreme crime and absolute evil when we sat by while our political leaders did it and now refuse to comply with our obligations to prosecute it?"

Good question Glen. I really don't know:

"By doing that, aren't we implicitly though unambiguously conveying that, whatever our rhetoric, we don't really think torture is all that bad?"

Another good question Glen. I guess so:

"We don't "Look Forward" when we think truly awful crimes have been committed; we Look Backwards (sometimes very far backwards) and prosecute them. Whatever else is true, that's the message most Americans have received and embraced: torture is not really worth prosecuting so it must not be truly heinous."

Precisely. And now this view has gained near majority approval.

What's amazing to me is that we did what we did to defend ourselves from terrorists. We seem incapable of understanding that a terrorist's main purpose is to create fear sufficient to cause its objects to harm themselves. I'd have to agree that when a terrorist succeeds in getting half the population of a constitutional democracy to abandon the core principles of that democracy out of fear, they've accomplished their purpose.

Joe H

Group Identity and Corruption

I used to tell my students that labeling themselves was the quickest way to develop a knee-jerk belief system. Identifying with a group, any group, creates psychological pressure to adopt that group's belief system. This pressure, coupled with our inherent laziness, leads us to adopt beliefs that we have not investigated, scrutinized, or critically assessed. I'm a liberal. Liberals oppose the death penalty. I oppose the death penalty. Jeez, that was easy.

The reason I mention this is that group devotion may be destroying our ability to govern ourselves while maintaining our moral bearings. Today I read that a new Pew Research poll found that 47% of Americans believe that it is acceptable to torture suspected terrorists in order to keep the country safe.

FORTY-SEVEN PERCENT! SUSPECTED TERRORISTS!

I know, I know. We shouldn't torture anyone - ever. But I am slightly more sympathetic, just slightly, to the idea of torturing confirmed terrorists in contrast to suspected terrorists. Is that wrong?

Anyway, I've also noted recently that most of Obama's supporters are making excuses for his reversals on key civil liberty issues, despite the fact that both THEY AND HE repeatedly and categorically denounced these policies during the Bush administration and during Obama's campaign.

What's happening is clear. Identity is trumping moral appraisal. Bush and Cheeny set up a torture regime. They're my guys - they're on my team - my team needs to win - I guess I support torture (or at least am willing to overlook it). Indefinite detention without due process - or even after due process acquits one of wrongdoing -is unconstitutional and tyrannical - wait . . . say what? . . . Obama now wants to implement a system of indefinite detention - oh well, he's on my team - my team needs to win - I guess I'm down for indefinite detention after all.

That's why I find these kinds of statements so refreshing - we need more public rejections of this sort.

Joe H.

On Tiger Woods - UPDATE

Considering the Tiger Woods fiasco, I'm reminded of the scene in The Princess Bride during the duel between Wesley and Inego Montoya. Inego, astonished at Wesley's swordsmanship, asks him, forthrightly, "who are you?" When Wesley replied "no one of consequence," Inego insisted "I must know." To this Wesley coyly replied:

"Better get used to disappointment"

I admired Tiger Woods, just as I once admired Barack Obama, Eliot Spitzer, and Michael Jordon. Admiration seems to be a one way ticket to disappointment.

Still, there's really little room for stone throwing. In the immortal words of Oscar Wilde:

"Every saint has a past. Every sinner has a future."

Joe H.

UPDATE - This article by Jack Shafer explains my disappointment with Tiger Woods pretty well. And to think that if you'd have asked me if I was a sucker for marketing just two weeks ago, I'd have said "no."

Tom Tomorrow and the Stupidity Crisis

This is an idea worth pursuing!

Joe H.