Isn't the problem *NOT* the "closet creationists" that might be hiding in the system but the "out and proud creationists" that are the ones with The Children that they are sending to the schools and demanding that their world views be treated respectfully?
If the price for getting buy-in from an additional 20% of parents out there is to allow an "ID" disclaimer taking up all of 3 minutes on the first day of Biology class, are we willing to pay that?
Would the ID disclaimer poison all of the children in the class and thus prevent us from having a new generation of doctors?
On the other end of the spectrum, I've got a friend who teaches math in Pennsylvania (the not-Philly, not-Pittsburgh part) and he told me that he has a lot of rules for his word problems that he has to give the students. He can't assume a rural setting, he can't assume an urban setting... and so this means he can't have "Billy" walk a certain number of blocks in an hour. He has some students that are low income and, as such, he can't give "Billy" a bike to ride. Lots of little rules dictating what he can and can't have "Billy" do in a word problem before we even get to the math part.
What price are we willing to pay to teach the things we want taught?
Are we willing to deal with the indignities of sure, maybe evolution is God's design?
Are we willing to inflict the indignities of "Billy" riding a bike and going 16 blocks in 8 minutes upon poor rural students?
I don't have kids and, as such, don't really have a dog in this fight outside of wanting the best education for the kids of my loved ones... but it seems to me that there are a lot of things we ask the schools to do that do not involve stuff like "teaching math or science" and it sometimes feels like those things are given a higher priority than "teaching math or science"... and, as such, we oughtn't be surprised when our children are slipping when it comes to math or science.
It has been established that Batman, and by extension, DC Comics in general is far, far superior to Marvel.
To be honest, I have to question whether someone who argues pro-Marvel sentiments is on the payroll, or is related to someone who is, or is merely stupid, or just enjoys being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian without having any real opinion of his or her own like some soulless golem who was programed by his or her rabbi to spout nonsense in the face of studied research.
It's libertarians like that that give the other 5% of us a bad name.
I would have gone down the "what other groups do you think ought to have their First Amendment rights restricted?" road, myself. Depending on whether I had been drinking, maybe I would have worked book burning into the question... sigh. Woulda coulda shoulda.
In any case: Don't trust the 95% of Libertarians who respond to every issue as if you were on Team Blue... whether or not you happen to be.
Team Gold is not Team Red and ought not argue as if they were.
A "bad" teacher is not only a teacher that you would choose to not teach your children, but the children of a dear friend of yours who has moved to another state entirely and who you will most likely not see again excepting various holiday-related reasons.
given the huge societal disparities between 2006 Gaza and 2011 West Bank
I'm a fan of a three-state solution, myself... but there have been no shortage of plans for the last 6,017 years. One thing that has been shown by Iraq (and Egypt and Libya and other places acrost the Middle East) is that culture is very, very, very, very important when it comes to establishing a State.
No plan survives first contact with culture.
But I would also respond with a question: is your (admittedly impossible) thought experiment meaningful in the context of reaching a realistic, viable Palestinian state? If not, why does it interest you?
Only insofar as if every single Jewish inhabitant of Israel leaving at noon on Ash Wednesday would not result in a realistic, viable Palestinian state (or, hell, even providing the foundation for such), I don't think that someone waving a piece of paper in the air would do it.
But, hey, maybe I'm wrong. As I said, they seem to be on a good vector. I hope they stay on it.
I suspect that a "meaningful" (whatever that means) Palestinian State requires, among other things, "meaningful" attempts at a Palestinian State's creation.
Dig, if you will, the idea of Israel disappearing entirely. Whoops! Where'd they go? They were all raptured? Now... that doesn't make any sense at all... but here we are and every Jewish inhabitant of Israel is now gone. Vanished.
Is it more likely that:
A) The Palestinians move into Israel and ask a handful of other countries to give help with engineers who can train the Palestinian people to run the electric plants and maintain the electric grid, run the water plants, and run the sewage processing plants?
B) The Palestinians burn down the (now empty) Synagogues and any other buildings that offend their sensibilities?
It seems to me that B is more likely (though I base that pretty much on what happened after the Gaza withdrawal and, as we all know, anecdotes are not data!)
As B strikes me as more likely, I have come to the conclusion that a "meaningful" Palestinian State is not possible. If A were more likely, I suspect that there isn't much that most folks could do to *PREVENT* the Palestinians from establishing a meaningful state, like, 20 minutes from now. (They're in a much, much better place than they were in the 90's and, for that matter, the early oughts and, as such, I see them on a good vector and maintain hope that A will be more likely at some point... I don't know that they're necessarily there, though.)
Thinking about this some more, this also applies to most forms of prohibition.
Severe gun control (in America, anyway) means that we get all of the downsides of gun ownership (bad guys having guns) and none of the upsides (good guys having guns).
Prohibition of alcohol meant that we got all of the downsides of alcohol consumption (drunken Irish people urinating publically) as well as a handful of new downsides (Al Capone) and none of the upsides of alcohol consumption.
The War on Drugs means that we get all of the downsides of drug use and none of the upsides of drug use (Medicinal MJ, for example... but, in Colorado Springs anyway, we've got 8 pages of ads in the local weekly rag for medicinal weed so *THAT* is finally falling away too).
Making X illegal tends to mean that you only get the downsides of X... which, of course, makes it easier to double down and make the downsides even more stark, which, of course makes it easier to double down...
And that means politics and policy changes, and maybe even pretty serious revisions of some basic institutional structures.
I agree in theory. Sure.
What will it mean in practice?
Here's my suspicion: in any argument over who needs to change, the emphasis will be on the need for the needy to change and not on the need for the decent enough Samaritans who walk around saving the drowning at little to no cost to them.
I defended the idea, in theory, of long (but certainly not indefinite) detentions without the pressing of charges in the cases of really, really bad terrorism cases such as, in theory, the dirty bomb.
Hey, look at it this way, I said. Imagine if Jose had succeeded in building a dirty bomb and having it go off in, oh, the Sears Tower. Dozens, maybe hundreds, would die in the panic and ensuing fallout, radiation sickness, so on and so forth. Additionally, there would be that backlash against Muslims that everybody has been waiting to have happen.
You put both of these things on the scale, it's obvious that the long (but surely not indefinite) detention of Jose Padilla without charges is the lesser evil!
And then the day came that they charged him and it was chewing bubble gum on Sunday type charges.
All of my "surely, in theory, we agree that you can't yell fire in a crowded theater" rhetoric was used in defense of throwing a guy in jail for distributing pamphlets. Proverbially.
Since then I've been a lot more humorless about this stuff.
(Ironically, I've noticed a lot of Democrats gaining a sense of humor about this stuff in the wake of Obama's election. "Well, to be sure, you have to understand...")
Now you’re telling me that the disproportionate number of poor people (is that right?) in jail is the result of mutual obligations.
Not quite.
The disproportionate number of poor people in jail is the result of "society" not seeing poor people as holding up their end of the mutual obligations.
I'm not talking about murder, or property crime, or assault. I'm talking about the mind-bogglingly huge number of folks in prison for reasons related to the drug trade (and that's without getting into the sheer number of murders, property crimes, and assaults related to the drug trade).
Stillwater: do you agree that society in general contains the attitude that Food Stamps ought to be used for Healthy Food?
This premise to my argument seems fairly evident to me in looking at society. If you do not see that this premise has any foundation, I suppose I can find articles or something.
Do you agree that society in general has different attitudes toward drunkenness and/or drug use in the powerful/productive and those who are on the wrong side of the tracks?
Again, this premise to my argument seems fairly evident to me in looking at society. If you do not see that this premise has any foundation, I suppose I can find articles or something.
Do you see these as mere assertions, unfounded as likely as not?
Fulfilling an affirmative obligation is not an exchange: they need not express either obedience or gratitude for having received that action.
I can appreciate that in theory.
In practice you have people explaining that food stamps ought to be used for "healthy" food and not Doritos and Pepsi.
It was done, on the suppositions built into the framework, because it was the right thing to do, because we care, even at a minimal level, about the welfare of others. End of story.
I agree with this in theory.
In practice, we have people who say "I thought that we agreed with this because we care, at a minimal level, about the welfare of others... and they're using the money to buy Doritos and Pepsi instead of Milk and Oatmeal and I Can Read books for their children."
I don’t see this following at all from the simple premise of affirmative obligation. For you to derive this conclusion from that premise requires an extensive argument, one which you haven’t provided, and one which I don’t think can be made without the inclusion of contingent (and disputable) premises.
It's my best shot at explaining the data contained here:
It seems to me that what used to be considered "none of my business" became "my business" with the creation of the Welfare State. At that point, people became intensely interested in who was eating Doritos and drinking Pepsi using fungible funds.
Oh, I'm sorry. “You don’t get no mo’, brudder. You done been he’ped enough.” isn't intended to invoke particular mental imagery?
Uh-huh.
Moving along, You may be justly accused of despising the poor, given your rant at #100.
My rant at #100 (it's #100 right now, anyway) is not my take on the poor it's my take on society's take.
If you'd like to explain to me how, no, society actually really likes the poor and only someone who hates the poor would think otherwise, I'd enjoy reading the argument.
Again: My saying "I think that society thinks X" is not the same as "I think X".
And, again, I'd prefer arguments of the form "society doesn't think X" to "only bad people think that society would think X".
But, hey. That's probably more difficult a point to wrestle with than having an opportunity to explain how, no, you once shared a pummelo with a Uighur in India who had married a Gurkha and so you'll be god damned if you have to listen to anybody explain that they hate the poor.
Those intuitions are not *MY* feelings. They are what I suspect are the "feelings" of "society at large".
I'd appreciate counter-arguments of the form "of course society at large doesn't think that" to "only a racist would think that society is imprisoning 1 out of 20 black men for insubordination!"
That is not what I am trying to say. I appreciate that you went straight for the "he must be racist" though. That's awesome of ya.
(It makes me suspect that there is a secret obligation that I am failing to meet by engaging in this argument)
Here are my intuitions:
It has been internalized that we have positive obligations to each other. Everybody is obliged to everybody.
"Our" obligations to "them" include a lot of things in Maslow's hierarchy. Food, shelter, etc.
Their obligations to us include "gratitude" and "obedience". If they include the latter but not the former, they are considered merely ungrateful. If they include neither, they will be incarcerated disproportionately.
The attitude that all of us have positive obligations to each other is the foundation of the modern prison state given the nature of the majority of the imprisoned... it ain't murder, or property crime, or assault that put them in prison, after all.
Now, what I have noticed in this very conversation is a great deal of pissiness (for lack of a better term) in response to the questions of what I am obliged to do and what they are obliged to do.
I think that it's pretty freakin' obvious that, according to society at large, that my obligations are not, in fact, limited to offering my hand to a drowning person (or to people in analogous situations). There are a hell of a lot more than that... but, for some reason, it makes folks uncomfortable to talk about them out loud. Doubly so to talk about the ones that they have.
To look and say "there are a lot of people out there who think that food stamps only should be used on healthy food" gets, paraphrased, a response of "I can't believe you'd say something so racist!" tells me that there are a lot of things bubbling under the surface.
And, for some reason, nobody wants to talk about these things.
On “Why does the Finnish public school system work?”
Isn't the problem *NOT* the "closet creationists" that might be hiding in the system but the "out and proud creationists" that are the ones with The Children that they are sending to the schools and demanding that their world views be treated respectfully?
"
What price are we willing to pay?
If the price for getting buy-in from an additional 20% of parents out there is to allow an "ID" disclaimer taking up all of 3 minutes on the first day of Biology class, are we willing to pay that?
Would the ID disclaimer poison all of the children in the class and thus prevent us from having a new generation of doctors?
On the other end of the spectrum, I've got a friend who teaches math in Pennsylvania (the not-Philly, not-Pittsburgh part) and he told me that he has a lot of rules for his word problems that he has to give the students. He can't assume a rural setting, he can't assume an urban setting... and so this means he can't have "Billy" walk a certain number of blocks in an hour. He has some students that are low income and, as such, he can't give "Billy" a bike to ride. Lots of little rules dictating what he can and can't have "Billy" do in a word problem before we even get to the math part.
What price are we willing to pay to teach the things we want taught?
Are we willing to deal with the indignities of sure, maybe evolution is God's design?
Are we willing to inflict the indignities of "Billy" riding a bike and going 16 blocks in 8 minutes upon poor rural students?
I don't have kids and, as such, don't really have a dog in this fight outside of wanting the best education for the kids of my loved ones... but it seems to me that there are a lot of things we ask the schools to do that do not involve stuff like "teaching math or science" and it sometimes feels like those things are given a higher priority than "teaching math or science"... and, as such, we oughtn't be surprised when our children are slipping when it comes to math or science.
"
"If you want Finland’s fruits, you must also accept its branches, trunk and roots."
Does that include the homogenous society thing?
On “Labor Roundtable: The Labor Movement, Redistributive Justice, and Procedural Fairness”
It has been established that Batman, and by extension, DC Comics in general is far, far superior to Marvel.
To be honest, I have to question whether someone who argues pro-Marvel sentiments is on the payroll, or is related to someone who is, or is merely stupid, or just enjoys being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian without having any real opinion of his or her own like some soulless golem who was programed by his or her rabbi to spout nonsense in the face of studied research.
Which of those are you?
"
It's libertarians like that that give the other 5% of us a bad name.
I would have gone down the "what other groups do you think ought to have their First Amendment rights restricted?" road, myself. Depending on whether I had been drinking, maybe I would have worked book burning into the question... sigh. Woulda coulda shoulda.
In any case: Don't trust the 95% of Libertarians who respond to every issue as if you were on Team Blue... whether or not you happen to be.
Team Gold is not Team Red and ought not argue as if they were.
"
A "bad" teacher is not only a teacher that you would choose to not teach your children, but the children of a dear friend of yours who has moved to another state entirely and who you will most likely not see again excepting various holiday-related reasons.
This seems a good enough measurement for me.
On “Live from the J Street National Conference”
given the huge societal disparities between 2006 Gaza and 2011 West Bank
I'm a fan of a three-state solution, myself... but there have been no shortage of plans for the last 6,017 years. One thing that has been shown by Iraq (and Egypt and Libya and other places acrost the Middle East) is that culture is very, very, very, very important when it comes to establishing a State.
No plan survives first contact with culture.
But I would also respond with a question: is your (admittedly impossible) thought experiment meaningful in the context of reaching a realistic, viable Palestinian state? If not, why does it interest you?
Only insofar as if every single Jewish inhabitant of Israel leaving at noon on Ash Wednesday would not result in a realistic, viable Palestinian state (or, hell, even providing the foundation for such), I don't think that someone waving a piece of paper in the air would do it.
But, hey, maybe I'm wrong. As I said, they seem to be on a good vector. I hope they stay on it.
"
I suspect that a "meaningful" (whatever that means) Palestinian State requires, among other things, "meaningful" attempts at a Palestinian State's creation.
Dig, if you will, the idea of Israel disappearing entirely. Whoops! Where'd they go? They were all raptured? Now... that doesn't make any sense at all... but here we are and every Jewish inhabitant of Israel is now gone. Vanished.
Is it more likely that:
A) The Palestinians move into Israel and ask a handful of other countries to give help with engineers who can train the Palestinian people to run the electric plants and maintain the electric grid, run the water plants, and run the sewage processing plants?
B) The Palestinians burn down the (now empty) Synagogues and any other buildings that offend their sensibilities?
It seems to me that B is more likely (though I base that pretty much on what happened after the Gaza withdrawal and, as we all know, anecdotes are not data!)
As B strikes me as more likely, I have come to the conclusion that a "meaningful" Palestinian State is not possible. If A were more likely, I suspect that there isn't much that most folks could do to *PREVENT* the Palestinians from establishing a meaningful state, like, 20 minutes from now. (They're in a much, much better place than they were in the 90's and, for that matter, the early oughts and, as such, I see them on a good vector and maintain hope that A will be more likely at some point... I don't know that they're necessarily there, though.)
"
_The Dark Ages_?
On “Delusional goat-herds with box-cutters and other threats to the Republic”
From what I understand, the fall of the Berlin Wall was a surprise to the TLAs in Warshington.
On “Incoherent Democracy, Again”
Thinking about this some more, this also applies to most forms of prohibition.
Severe gun control (in America, anyway) means that we get all of the downsides of gun ownership (bad guys having guns) and none of the upsides (good guys having guns).
Prohibition of alcohol meant that we got all of the downsides of alcohol consumption (drunken Irish people urinating publically) as well as a handful of new downsides (Al Capone) and none of the upsides of alcohol consumption.
The War on Drugs means that we get all of the downsides of drug use and none of the upsides of drug use (Medicinal MJ, for example... but, in Colorado Springs anyway, we've got 8 pages of ads in the local weekly rag for medicinal weed so *THAT* is finally falling away too).
Making X illegal tends to mean that you only get the downsides of X... which, of course, makes it easier to double down and make the downsides even more stark, which, of course makes it easier to double down...
On “Delusional goat-herds with box-cutters and other threats to the Republic”
A lot of people had no idea until, like, the 90's.
On “The Crime of Making the Government Look Foolish”
The problem is that he was tried in the court of public opinion for being a terrorist who was building a dirty bomb.
The stuff that they could make stick was stuff like "conspiracy".
"
That was Herbert's.
On “Incoherent Democracy, Again”
And that means politics and policy changes, and maybe even pretty serious revisions of some basic institutional structures.
I agree in theory. Sure.
What will it mean in practice?
Here's my suspicion: in any argument over who needs to change, the emphasis will be on the need for the needy to change and not on the need for the decent enough Samaritans who walk around saving the drowning at little to no cost to them.
On “The Crime of Making the Government Look Foolish”
The Italian Prime Minister's philandering being made public?
"
It was Jose Padilla that made me wake up.
I defended the idea, in theory, of long (but certainly not indefinite) detentions without the pressing of charges in the cases of really, really bad terrorism cases such as, in theory, the dirty bomb.
Hey, look at it this way, I said. Imagine if Jose had succeeded in building a dirty bomb and having it go off in, oh, the Sears Tower. Dozens, maybe hundreds, would die in the panic and ensuing fallout, radiation sickness, so on and so forth. Additionally, there would be that backlash against Muslims that everybody has been waiting to have happen.
You put both of these things on the scale, it's obvious that the long (but surely not indefinite) detention of Jose Padilla without charges is the lesser evil!
And then the day came that they charged him and it was chewing bubble gum on Sunday type charges.
All of my "surely, in theory, we agree that you can't yell fire in a crowded theater" rhetoric was used in defense of throwing a guy in jail for distributing pamphlets. Proverbially.
Since then I've been a lot more humorless about this stuff.
(Ironically, I've noticed a lot of Democrats gaining a sense of humor about this stuff in the wake of Obama's election. "Well, to be sure, you have to understand...")
On “Incoherent Democracy, Again”
Now you’re telling me that the disproportionate number of poor people (is that right?) in jail is the result of mutual obligations.
Not quite.
The disproportionate number of poor people in jail is the result of "society" not seeing poor people as holding up their end of the mutual obligations.
I'm not talking about murder, or property crime, or assault. I'm talking about the mind-bogglingly huge number of folks in prison for reasons related to the drug trade (and that's without getting into the sheer number of murders, property crimes, and assaults related to the drug trade).
"
Stillwater: do you agree that society in general contains the attitude that Food Stamps ought to be used for Healthy Food?
This premise to my argument seems fairly evident to me in looking at society. If you do not see that this premise has any foundation, I suppose I can find articles or something.
Do you agree that society in general has different attitudes toward drunkenness and/or drug use in the powerful/productive and those who are on the wrong side of the tracks?
Again, this premise to my argument seems fairly evident to me in looking at society. If you do not see that this premise has any foundation, I suppose I can find articles or something.
Do you see these as mere assertions, unfounded as likely as not?
"
Fulfilling an affirmative obligation is not an exchange: they need not express either obedience or gratitude for having received that action.
I can appreciate that in theory.
In practice you have people explaining that food stamps ought to be used for "healthy" food and not Doritos and Pepsi.
It was done, on the suppositions built into the framework, because it was the right thing to do, because we care, even at a minimal level, about the welfare of others. End of story.
I agree with this in theory.
In practice, we have people who say "I thought that we agreed with this because we care, at a minimal level, about the welfare of others... and they're using the money to buy Doritos and Pepsi instead of Milk and Oatmeal and I Can Read books for their children."
I don’t see this following at all from the simple premise of affirmative obligation. For you to derive this conclusion from that premise requires an extensive argument, one which you haven’t provided, and one which I don’t think can be made without the inclusion of contingent (and disputable) premises.
It's my best shot at explaining the data contained here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States
It seems to me that what used to be considered "none of my business" became "my business" with the creation of the Welfare State. At that point, people became intensely interested in who was eating Doritos and drinking Pepsi using fungible funds.
"
Yeah, yeah. See you soon. Perhaps you can accuse me of hating Canadians or something next time.
"
Dude, you came out and said "You may be justly accused of despising the poor, given your rant at #100."
You said that.
My point is not that I feel X about the poor, but that it seems to me that society does.
In response, you said "You may be justly accused of despising the poor, given your rant at #100."
And now you're saying "Nobody has said anything of the sort. This is all a product of your own fevered imagination."
"
Oh, I'm sorry. “You don’t get no mo’, brudder. You done been he’ped enough.” isn't intended to invoke particular mental imagery?
Uh-huh.
Moving along, You may be justly accused of despising the poor, given your rant at #100.
My rant at #100 (it's #100 right now, anyway) is not my take on the poor it's my take on society's take.
If you'd like to explain to me how, no, society actually really likes the poor and only someone who hates the poor would think otherwise, I'd enjoy reading the argument.
Again: My saying "I think that society thinks X" is not the same as "I think X".
And, again, I'd prefer arguments of the form "society doesn't think X" to "only bad people think that society would think X".
But, hey. That's probably more difficult a point to wrestle with than having an opportunity to explain how, no, you once shared a pummelo with a Uighur in India who had married a Gurkha and so you'll be god damned if you have to listen to anybody explain that they hate the poor.
"
I should clarify:
Those intuitions are not *MY* feelings. They are what I suspect are the "feelings" of "society at large".
I'd appreciate counter-arguments of the form "of course society at large doesn't think that" to "only a racist would think that society is imprisoning 1 out of 20 black men for insubordination!"
But, hey. Whatever gets you through the night.
"
That is not what I am trying to say. I appreciate that you went straight for the "he must be racist" though. That's awesome of ya.
(It makes me suspect that there is a secret obligation that I am failing to meet by engaging in this argument)
Here are my intuitions:
It has been internalized that we have positive obligations to each other. Everybody is obliged to everybody.
"Our" obligations to "them" include a lot of things in Maslow's hierarchy. Food, shelter, etc.
Their obligations to us include "gratitude" and "obedience". If they include the latter but not the former, they are considered merely ungrateful. If they include neither, they will be incarcerated disproportionately.
The attitude that all of us have positive obligations to each other is the foundation of the modern prison state given the nature of the majority of the imprisoned... it ain't murder, or property crime, or assault that put them in prison, after all.
Now, what I have noticed in this very conversation is a great deal of pissiness (for lack of a better term) in response to the questions of what I am obliged to do and what they are obliged to do.
I think that it's pretty freakin' obvious that, according to society at large, that my obligations are not, in fact, limited to offering my hand to a drowning person (or to people in analogous situations). There are a hell of a lot more than that... but, for some reason, it makes folks uncomfortable to talk about them out loud. Doubly so to talk about the ones that they have.
To look and say "there are a lot of people out there who think that food stamps only should be used on healthy food" gets, paraphrased, a response of "I can't believe you'd say something so racist!" tells me that there are a lot of things bubbling under the surface.
And, for some reason, nobody wants to talk about these things.
Even someone like me can see that.