If you can't overturn Roe v. Wade, why not just put out an all encompassing health services search engine that simply pretends abortion doesn't exist? Again, if you don't know it's there, you can't even think of doing it.
I think we need something like the Washington Post fact checker's Pinocchio rating, but rather an Orwell rating to grade each event's relation to our slow slide into 1984. This would maybe be a Orwell rating of 2 (out of four, since I'm using the Pinocchio scale). Not sure what exactly this rating means - perhaps I need to flesh it out more. But 2 sounds about right.
UPDATE: They apparently reversed the censorship the same day. At least someone had some common sense.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Friday, April 4, 2008
Michigan Preiew Weekend
At Michigan's Preview Weekend now. Strangely not too many people here right out of college - most seem to have worked two years or so. And lots of people also want to do good things in the world, for many independent and interesting reasons, too.
I've already begun to establish my reputation as a gregarious, loud, and fairly opinionated person, who's hopefully at least entertaining amidst the many rants. Though I suppose it's a good sign that within a few hours I had someone tell me they'd vote for me if I run for office. Anyway, I have a mock torts class tomorrow and a real Con Law class, so hopefully I'll have a good idea for a blog from it - I'm already a couple ideas behind. I should quit my job or something... Oh wait.
I've already begun to establish my reputation as a gregarious, loud, and fairly opinionated person, who's hopefully at least entertaining amidst the many rants. Though I suppose it's a good sign that within a few hours I had someone tell me they'd vote for me if I run for office. Anyway, I have a mock torts class tomorrow and a real Con Law class, so hopefully I'll have a good idea for a blog from it - I'm already a couple ideas behind. I should quit my job or something... Oh wait.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Interesting Post on Prisoners' Rights
The Debate Link discusses voting rights for prisoners. I recently had a similar discussion about Justice in the context of whether, even given Bush's war crimes, he should, or in fact must, be given the death penalty if convicted.
The main justification for the death penalty in this case is that no one person has committed crimes the level of his in the history of the USA, and since we are willing to put some people to death, how can we justify not doing so to a war criminal? Though the death penalty is an extreme and irreversible punishment, and exercising mercy in a capital case would not necessarily undermine our entire system of justice, especially if length of time in jail is the standard metric, as David suggests.
The main justification for the death penalty in this case is that no one person has committed crimes the level of his in the history of the USA, and since we are willing to put some people to death, how can we justify not doing so to a war criminal? Though the death penalty is an extreme and irreversible punishment, and exercising mercy in a capital case would not necessarily undermine our entire system of justice, especially if length of time in jail is the standard metric, as David suggests.
Schools Training Americans to be Subservient
We all know school is as much about training kids to respect authority and function in a hierarchical society as it is about math, science, social studies, and language arts. But lately we've seen a few cases where school teaches us that authority is absolute and can do whatever it wants with regard to students' rights. We've seen unauthorized locker searches be justified, but strip searches of 13 year old girls? With no real cause?
When Wilson ordered the search, the only evidence that Savana had violated school policy was the uncorroborated accusation from Marissa, who was in trouble herself and eager to shift the blame. Even Marissa (who had pills in her pockets, not her underwear) did not claim that Savana currently possessed any pills, let alone that she had hidden them under her clothes.
Savana, who was closely supervised after Wilson approached her, did not have an opportunity to stash contraband. As the American Civil Liberties Union puts it, "There was no reason to suspect that a thirteen-year-old honor-roll student with a clean disciplinary record had adopted drug-smuggling practices associated with international narcotrafficking, or to suppose that other middle-school students would willingly consume ibuprofen that was stored in another student's crotch."
Does anyone still wonder why no one is in a major uproar about wiretapping and an authoritarian state? We're being taught that this is how it's supposed to be at the earliest levels. Or am I mixing up cause and effect - are they teaching it because it's become the norm in society? I hope so - at least that might be more quickly correctable.
Fixing the MSM
Yesterday I blogged about the Responsible Plan to End the War, and to me the most striking part of it is that they do take the media to task for not doing their job. However, the Plan is fairly limited in suggestions for how to fix the MSM, and so I wanted to reprint an idea I had that was buried in my longest post ever.
The real difficulty in disseminating truth lies in the reality that most people out there do not read blogs. Television news and print journalism are not going to go away for a long time, if ever. A great many people like their news fed to them passively, so I don't think the blogging community will overtake the MSM completely any time soon. Also, there are a great many blogs with no editors - some will be heard, some say truly inane things, and some will just be lost in the shuffle. Only our readers' willingness to fact-check gives us credibility. If the MSM were somehow just replaced by blogs everyone would go deaf with the noise. We need some sort of hybrid of the two.
Here's an idea: The government could establish a national Ombudsman department, under either the FCC or DOJ, with subpoena power. Hopefully they could be independent, just as we hope in the future the DOJ will also be. The department's first task would obviously be checking on the government's behind the scenes connections to the media and finding ways to sever them. More generally, they'd be checking that national media outlets were living up to some journalistic standard, and would perhaps air a 30 or 60 second report on each news program with their most current accuracy rating and breakdowns of how their news reporting time is spent. Maybe the report could include a "breakthrough score" to indicate how well the station does on investigative journalism - to bring that back into style.
With enough media outlets to choose from, this could actually be a sort of free-market, competition-based media solution. The news stations would stop telling us what we want to see, and instead, we choose to watch the stations that we want to watch, complete with ratings and reminders about how accurate and relevant they are. The stations will be forced to tailor their content to compete. Right now, there is not enough competition in the media to make this work, and people are forced to watch or read something. But that's where the blogs come in. Television and internet are converging, and soon the playing field between the MSM and the blogs may be leveled. To help that goal, along with the creation of the national Ombudsman, if it is possible to lower the barrier to entry further to allow blogs to catch up to the MSM in production capability, that will foster the competition needed to hold the news accountable. Maybe, for example, the government could create low-interest loans to start a new national news station, and limit what the distributors could charge for a good news station (remember, there are ratings now). I'm sure this is not the perfect solution, but maybe between the Ombudsman and competition, or some other method, we can fix the MSM, and make sure that we are not lied into an unnecessary war again.
The Responsible Plan talks about FCC regulation of media ownership. It seems the idea of killing off the oligopoly is the one they want to take. But they are talking about new ownership, not dismantling the current model like Bell Telephone. I think if we could find a way to break the current national media oligopoly, it is another alternative. Though we can't do it based on region like Bell. We have local news already, and it serves a different purpose. Anyway, I'm guessing that reducing barrier to entry further will create the same effect if not give better results, and may be inevitable given technology, but I'd be willing to explore either option.
War Criminals
Is John Yoo a bigger war criminal than Bush or Cheney? He certainly gave them the license to torture.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
A New Contract with America
The Responsible Plan to End the War. It's got a nice ring to it, no? It's purpose: to take us back to the most fundamental, perfectly idealist view of how a Republic should work, using a purely progressive agenda as a platform. It's a thing of beauty. Honestly, in order to really appreciate this, two things need to happen. One, you just need to read the document. Two you need to see how many Congressional candidates have signed on. Hell, even the Washington Post picked it up.
First the document itself: In 22 pages, the Responsible Plan calls for the following items: End U.S. military action in Iraq, using U.S. diplomatic power, addressing humanitarian concerns, restoring our Constitution, restoring our military, restoring independence to the media, creating a new, U.S.-centered energy policy. The first three deal with fixing what we created in Iraq. The gist of it is that it is nation-building we need, not military occupation. We need to build up their infrastructure and economy or their government will not be worth much, and may collapse. "The Departments of State, Agriculture, Commerce, Transportation, Justice, and Treasury must be directly engaged in creating this solution," the document says, as well as asking for a higher level of international cooperation. I agree completely with the sentiment, and they go further in demanding this not be a leverage point for oil, but that we focus solely on the stability and health of the country.
I am even more excited by the second half of the document, titled "Preventing Future Iraqs". The biggest problem with this whole debacle is not that the Bush Administration made a mistake, or even that they lied once. It's that, as a nation, we were not prepared for the possibility of an out-of-control executive and thus could not handle it. Our Constitution, our checks and balances, and our media failed us and as nobody stood up, it only got worse. Right now, it addition to fixing the mess we're in now, we must reinforce our safeguards so that this can never happen again. When the ship is sinking, you must both bail the water and fix the leak. This is what the second half of the Responsible Plan demands - fixing our government's leak. If ratified by election of the supporting candidates, it is a formal mea culpa from the people of the United States for our complacency, and a resulting acknowledgement that all we can do now is ensure that it can never happen again. This is the only way the ideal of America can survive.
The second point that makes Darcy Burner's creation so amazing is that getting candidates (in addition to Gen. Eaton, Brig. Gen. Johns, Dr. Korb and Cpt. Seaquist - some orignal endorsers) to sign on creates a direct mandate from the American people. If we manage to vote these people into office, they will all clearly be required to advocate this plan, and since so far 42 candidates (38 House and 4 Senate) have signed on, they will have the power to do so. That is nearly a tenth of Congress, and seeing the effectiveness, more sitting senators and representatives will surely sign on. The progressives are angry, and we're taking back our country by using the very ideal our government set forth. We're writing a new Contract with America, and this time, America actually gets a say first.
First the document itself: In 22 pages, the Responsible Plan calls for the following items: End U.S. military action in Iraq, using U.S. diplomatic power, addressing humanitarian concerns, restoring our Constitution, restoring our military, restoring independence to the media, creating a new, U.S.-centered energy policy. The first three deal with fixing what we created in Iraq. The gist of it is that it is nation-building we need, not military occupation. We need to build up their infrastructure and economy or their government will not be worth much, and may collapse. "The Departments of State, Agriculture, Commerce, Transportation, Justice, and Treasury must be directly engaged in creating this solution," the document says, as well as asking for a higher level of international cooperation. I agree completely with the sentiment, and they go further in demanding this not be a leverage point for oil, but that we focus solely on the stability and health of the country.
I am even more excited by the second half of the document, titled "Preventing Future Iraqs". The biggest problem with this whole debacle is not that the Bush Administration made a mistake, or even that they lied once. It's that, as a nation, we were not prepared for the possibility of an out-of-control executive and thus could not handle it. Our Constitution, our checks and balances, and our media failed us and as nobody stood up, it only got worse. Right now, it addition to fixing the mess we're in now, we must reinforce our safeguards so that this can never happen again. When the ship is sinking, you must both bail the water and fix the leak. This is what the second half of the Responsible Plan demands - fixing our government's leak. If ratified by election of the supporting candidates, it is a formal mea culpa from the people of the United States for our complacency, and a resulting acknowledgement that all we can do now is ensure that it can never happen again. This is the only way the ideal of America can survive.
The second point that makes Darcy Burner's creation so amazing is that getting candidates (in addition to Gen. Eaton, Brig. Gen. Johns, Dr. Korb and Cpt. Seaquist - some orignal endorsers) to sign on creates a direct mandate from the American people. If we manage to vote these people into office, they will all clearly be required to advocate this plan, and since so far 42 candidates (38 House and 4 Senate) have signed on, they will have the power to do so. That is nearly a tenth of Congress, and seeing the effectiveness, more sitting senators and representatives will surely sign on. The progressives are angry, and we're taking back our country by using the very ideal our government set forth. We're writing a new Contract with America, and this time, America actually gets a say first.
Monday, March 31, 2008
American Anti-Intellectualism
Anti-intellectualism is the root of all evil. Or at least the root of all willful stupidity and ignorance. Anyone got suggestions on how to correct this? Will it self correct? Do we have to get to the point where America falls behind the rest of the world before we remember that trying to be the smartest is what got us on top in the first place?
From Singapore to Japan, politicians pretend to be smarter and better- educated than they actually are, because intellect is an asset at the polls. In the United States, almost alone among developed countries, politicians pretend to be less worldly and erudite than they are (Bill Clinton was masterful at hiding a brilliant mind behind folksy Arkansas sayings about pigs).Alas, when a politician has the double disadvantage of obvious intelligence and an elite education and then on top of that tries to educate the public on a complex issue — as Al Gore did about climate change — then that candidate is derided as arrogant and out of touch.
Maybe when we elect Obama, it will signify the end of it - he is a Harvard-educated policy wonk. Though he'll likely be elected in spite of that. As long certain talk show hosts feed the hatred of the educated, intelligent, and informed liberal, I'm not sure how to fix anti-intellectualism. I'm not sure there is a way. This might be the one issue I'm really not optimistic about. It's going to take more than an ad campaign. It might take a realization that evolution-doubting, UFO seeing, "elitist"-hating America has suddenly become a second citizen in the world. By the time we stop being anti-intellectual, the world may be so fundamentally changed that the best we can hope to climb back to is not dictating world affairs, but being a good world citizen. Hell, maybe that's a good thing for all of us.
When did "elite" stop meaning something to strive for, and begin meaning something to despise?
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