1. The rise and continuing insularity of the religious right. There has always been a religious right in the United States that has opposed Evolution, Darwinism, and anything that contradicts their biblical worldview. However, I think they spent most of the 20th century being rather silent. Largely because they were mocked to death by H.L. Mencken during the Scopes Trial. However in the 1970s, they are trying to seriously assert themselves on the national scene and erase/challenge all science that drives them bonkers. Now they are very well-funded and can build "museums" that show Cavemen riding Dinosaurs.
2. The modern conservative movement seems to have a love/hate relationship with the elite academic institutions of the United States. This has been true since William Buckley published God and Man at Yale and made his famous quip about preferring to be governed by the first 2000 names in the Boston phone book over the Harvard Faculty*. Conservatives love to decry the elite U.S. colleges and universities but most of their stars have also attended the same universities. Rehinquist went to Harvard and Stanford. Scalia is Harvard/Harvard (and won't take any clerk who was not from a Top 5 law school). The list goes on. There is a small shadow universe of Liberty, Oral Roberts, and Patrick Henry but these people are not making it the Supreme Court anytime soon,
3. Universities are a mixed bag. All large universities are going to have a decently sized presence of Young/College Republicans. A small liberal arts college like Oberlin or Reed probably will not. I'm sure universities in the South probably swing more conservative than liberal in terms of student body politics but the behavior of college students is largely the same. College students like to party generally whether liberal or conservative. Stanford has the conservative Hoover Institution, The Claremont Review of Books is conservative. The Mecauter Center at George Mason is libertarian/free market.
However, conservative student publications at a lot of institutions seem very juvenile. They are more aimed at provocation/trolling than making any serious argument for conservatism. They seem to honestly morn the opening of universities to women and minorities during the 1960s.
I was also raised in Nassau County. So were my mom, uncle, and brother.
My mom's childhood on Nassau County it was certainly a bastion of the Republican Party. This was during the post-War years. She told me that her parents felt very isolated because they were staunch Democrats in a sea of Republicans. They disliked when Salisbury Park was rennamed Eisenhower Park.
The Nassau County of my youth seemed a bit more Democratic. Though this could be because I grew up in Gary Ackerman's district and my hometown bordered Queens (ten points if you can guess my hometown) Come to think of it, I went to high school with a girl whose last name was Woodhouse and her house was two minutes down the road. I think she had a largeish number of siblings but could be wrong.
I think that in terms of local and state politics, Nassau County is still very Republican. However in terms of national elections, they now go more Democratic.
The only Republican Congressperson from Queens is the rather horrible Pete King. According to Wikipedia, King's District is the only one in Nassau County to vote for Bush in 2004 and McCain in 2008 by a majority. Previously they were: Clinton, Clinton, Gore.
You are being a harsher critic than the rest of the blogosphere which seems to think of it as a big win for Obama and a poor(ish) performance for Romney. There are some exceptions and some wondering whether Obama's good performance will help in the polls or not.
I think he made the base happy (based on very unscientific facebook live-blogging by my friends) which is important and gave them energy. Note that most of my friends live in New York or California though.
I don't know what your stance on gun control and the Second Amendment is but what do you think a pro-Gun Control but not flub answer would look like?
Those are valid points but they can be changed based on how you structure the rent control. New York has rent control fixed to a family. San Francisco has rent control fixed to a building. In San Francisco, if a building was built before a certain year (sometime in the 1970s) it is rent-controlled. I moved to San Francisco in 2008 with no connections and got my apartment off of craigslist. I am still protected by rent control because my building was built sometime during the 1940s.
What I am trying to find is a policy that allows renters to have stability in their life. Some people like moving from apartment to apartment every year or so. It might even be really fun to do this when you are in your twenties but it is not so fun as you get older.
Humanity seems unable to get out of boom and bust cycle economies. Right now, San Francisco is going through another tech boom because of Twitter and other new net/social media companies moving into the city. I am very suspicious that many of these companies will last (especially twitter). However, they are jacking rents way up. In my neighborhood, rents on a one bedroom have soared by hundreds of dollars in the last few months especially as compared to when I moved in during the housing bust.
I don't think that landlords should be able to raise the rent as high as they want to take advantage of a boom and displace long-term and hardworking residents. Suppose someone was renting a one-bedroom at 1800 a month for the past three years but his or her landlord jacked up the rent to 2600 because a boom made that the average price of the neighborhood. Where does this person go? What if they discover they are outpriced of the entire city? They still have a job, but now need to increase their commute significantly possibly. Plus all the incurred expenses from moving and possibly losing the fabricate and life they have built up for three years, sometimes much more.
Gentrification might be a fact of life but we need to find ways to mitigate the circumstances and have it involve less displacement. Neo-liberals often seem not to care about this and simply say "Look nice upper-middle class businesses. Growth good."
That being said, I wonder how much of the difference between neo-liberal/libertarians and liberals on some issues like rent control are about placing importance in unquantifiable values.
The arguments I have seen against rent control are largely about things that can be easily quantified to a certain extent. Stuff like opportunity. Rent Control keeps people from taking opportunities and moving because they don't want to lose the low rent.
My pro-rent control beliefs come from issues that are not easily discussed in "wonk" white papers. Stuff like the right for families and people to remain in their hometowns or close to if desired or whether they want to stay put. The right of children especially the children of working class folks to stay in the same school and develop communities without needing to move year after year chasing the job market.
I've come to the conclusion that for the sake of a functioning democracy (or even just society) we simply need to take claims of sincerity on face value or we will be stuck in a La Brea Tar Pit of constant questioning and accusation. We might really know that the person is bullshitting and being sarcastic but need to take it as sincere to protect the truly sincere. The best example of this is The Fying Spaghetti Monster.
Or me. I consider myself to be Jewish culturally and ethnically. I go to Synagogue on the High Holidays and celebrate Passover and other holidays. However, when it comes to whether God exists or not, I am a large apathetic agnostic and strongly leaning towards no. My view is that Torah is philosophy and ethics via metaphor and story with some factual elements that have been proven by archeology.
However, I have some friends who are hardcore Dawkins styled Atheists. It infuriates them to no end that I identify as Jewish. No amount of explaining can get them to understand or accept the concepts of cultural and/or ethnic Judaism. I imagine they would think me insincere.
Chen is an Internet journalist who generally goes against places like /b and reddit and challenges the professional troll presumptions. The one he challenges most often is "Don't take things too seriously on the Internet"
Chen and his wife have been the victim of general /b style attacks because of his articles. I think a lot of people are angry at him for breaking a sacred code as you put it. They want the Internet to be a separate place from the real world and they want their actions on the net to be free of consequence.
Almost everyone seems to agree that Bustch's posts are morally or ethically reprehensible in some way. His defenders don't want any real world consequence for these actions.
Why shouldn't visual art like Robert Mapplethorpe? Music like Philip Glass? Or performance art like Karen Finley and Meredith Monk be protected under the First Amendment?
Humans do just as much communication through visuals, dance, sound, and music as we do through speech. Why should law be allowed to punish Andre Serras for a photograph called "Pissed Christ" over a speech that communicates the same idea?
I don't see this as a worthy distinction.
Also should the law always just do what three out of five experts say? Certainly experts and academic arguments should be considered but there are broader, more philosophical considerations that are also important that cannot be quanitifed. Including non-vocal communication in Free Speech is one of these ideas. It allows people to communicate in ways that are more emotionally evocative and produce a strong emotional reaction. Visuals often do produce a strong reaction than speech.
Your arguments on a very limited First Amendment are not very liberal.
If that is the case, then his actions were not legal.
Talking about what is and what is not child pornography is a very tricky issue. I've read stories in the news about parents who came under the heat of investigation for simply taking bathtime pictures of their kids. The most recent story I heard was about an anti-Coal environmentalist in West Virginia. She was doing a presentation about how Coal hurts the environment in front of the West Virginia legislator and one of her pieces of evidence was a picture of kids (maybe hers but I'm not sure) bathing in black, disgusting water that came out of the tap. The coal-shill Republicans began immediately opining about whether the pictures were child pornography to shut her up.
Agreed on the healthcare and I support single-payer. In some ways, single payer (and other safety net stuff) would make me more willing to support at-will employment because people will not be completely fucked if terminated.
What gives me pause is her screenname of not_so_violentacrez. This means she knew about and approved of her husband's activities. What the fuck?
And then there is the other story (which I still hope is false) about his nineteen year old stepdaughter and a previous wife.
Here I disagree and so does the law, speech is not just literally the words you write or speak. Images count as speech. Actions count as speech (like burning the flag). The Government can not censor or punish either Larry Flynnt or Robert Maplethorpe for the images they take.
I am not sure how I feel about Haidt's work. His whole "Conservatives have a more full way of looking at things" strikes me as being a good way for a liberal to get lucrative speaking gigs.
While you might not be concerned, plenty of more moralistic employers are concerned.
IIRC from my employment law class, there are four states with "lifestyle protection" laws that prevent employers from firing employees for lawful out of work activity. In all other U.S. jurisdictions, firing for any out of work activity is fair game. At-Will really does mean At-Will for the most part. Any employee can be fired for a good reason, bad reason, or no reason at all.
I am generally opposed to this. I am more for Just Cause firing (aka as good reasons only) and will easily and without a fight concede that Violentacrez easily falls into Just Cause termination. So I recant and apologize for any previous defense.
I feel sorry for his victims and hope they sue and win (possibly even from reddit). I feel sorry for his wife because she is very sick. Though according to the gawker story she seems to have full knowledge of his trolling activties which gives me pasue. I think her on-line name was not_so_violentacrez.
No it isn't okay and should result in some kind of civil lawsuit. Perhaps even against the employer if said harassment was done during work hours and with work resources. Then the guy could fired.
Allowing employer's to fire for any off-work reason is tricky and often wrong. Perhaps sometimes an employer needs to and with good cause but I am trying to think of a system that protects most people,
How would you write a law that allows an employer to fire someone like this idiot while protecting another employee who belongs to an S and M type group/club or some kind of transgresive performance collective?
Though I have to admit, I understand and empathize with anyone who would be creeped out by violentacrez and not want to work near him. I would fire him before telling my innocent employees to deal with the situation if I were the boss.
The story about the police officer from Brighton is a false equivalence. He was abusing his power as an officer of the state and should be punished for that. This is different than a police officer making a sextape with his consenting wife or girlfriend.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Conservatives and Science”
I think this is happening for a few reasons:
1. The rise and continuing insularity of the religious right. There has always been a religious right in the United States that has opposed Evolution, Darwinism, and anything that contradicts their biblical worldview. However, I think they spent most of the 20th century being rather silent. Largely because they were mocked to death by H.L. Mencken during the Scopes Trial. However in the 1970s, they are trying to seriously assert themselves on the national scene and erase/challenge all science that drives them bonkers. Now they are very well-funded and can build "museums" that show Cavemen riding Dinosaurs.
2. The modern conservative movement seems to have a love/hate relationship with the elite academic institutions of the United States. This has been true since William Buckley published God and Man at Yale and made his famous quip about preferring to be governed by the first 2000 names in the Boston phone book over the Harvard Faculty*. Conservatives love to decry the elite U.S. colleges and universities but most of their stars have also attended the same universities. Rehinquist went to Harvard and Stanford. Scalia is Harvard/Harvard (and won't take any clerk who was not from a Top 5 law school). The list goes on. There is a small shadow universe of Liberty, Oral Roberts, and Patrick Henry but these people are not making it the Supreme Court anytime soon,
3. Universities are a mixed bag. All large universities are going to have a decently sized presence of Young/College Republicans. A small liberal arts college like Oberlin or Reed probably will not. I'm sure universities in the South probably swing more conservative than liberal in terms of student body politics but the behavior of college students is largely the same. College students like to party generally whether liberal or conservative. Stanford has the conservative Hoover Institution, The Claremont Review of Books is conservative. The Mecauter Center at George Mason is libertarian/free market.
However, conservative student publications at a lot of institutions seem very juvenile. They are more aimed at provocation/trolling than making any serious argument for conservatism. They seem to honestly morn the opening of universities to women and minorities during the 1960s.
On “Nassau County is Not an Obama Love-fest”
Not that I mind an advantage to Obama but here is the data from wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York%27s_2nd_congressional_district
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York%27s_3rd_congressional_district
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York%27s_4th_congressional_district
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York%27s_5th_congressional_district
Obama won the 2nd, 4th, and 5th Districts by 56, 58, and 63 percentage points. McCain won the 3rd Congressional District with 52 percent of the vote.
"
I was also raised in Nassau County. So were my mom, uncle, and brother.
My mom's childhood on Nassau County it was certainly a bastion of the Republican Party. This was during the post-War years. She told me that her parents felt very isolated because they were staunch Democrats in a sea of Republicans. They disliked when Salisbury Park was rennamed Eisenhower Park.
The Nassau County of my youth seemed a bit more Democratic. Though this could be because I grew up in Gary Ackerman's district and my hometown bordered Queens (ten points if you can guess my hometown) Come to think of it, I went to high school with a girl whose last name was Woodhouse and her house was two minutes down the road. I think she had a largeish number of siblings but could be wrong.
I think that in terms of local and state politics, Nassau County is still very Republican. However in terms of national elections, they now go more Democratic.
The only Republican Congressperson from Queens is the rather horrible Pete King. According to Wikipedia, King's District is the only one in Nassau County to vote for Bush in 2004 and McCain in 2008 by a majority. Previously they were: Clinton, Clinton, Gore.
On “Town Hall Debate: Ten Points”
You are being a harsher critic than the rest of the blogosphere which seems to think of it as a big win for Obama and a poor(ish) performance for Romney. There are some exceptions and some wondering whether Obama's good performance will help in the polls or not.
I think he made the base happy (based on very unscientific facebook live-blogging by my friends) which is important and gave them energy. Note that most of my friends live in New York or California though.
I don't know what your stance on gun control and the Second Amendment is but what do you think a pro-Gun Control but not flub answer would look like?
On “Violenceacrez, Reddit and Abuse of Power”
at North:
Those are valid points but they can be changed based on how you structure the rent control. New York has rent control fixed to a family. San Francisco has rent control fixed to a building. In San Francisco, if a building was built before a certain year (sometime in the 1970s) it is rent-controlled. I moved to San Francisco in 2008 with no connections and got my apartment off of craigslist. I am still protected by rent control because my building was built sometime during the 1940s.
What I am trying to find is a policy that allows renters to have stability in their life. Some people like moving from apartment to apartment every year or so. It might even be really fun to do this when you are in your twenties but it is not so fun as you get older.
Humanity seems unable to get out of boom and bust cycle economies. Right now, San Francisco is going through another tech boom because of Twitter and other new net/social media companies moving into the city. I am very suspicious that many of these companies will last (especially twitter). However, they are jacking rents way up. In my neighborhood, rents on a one bedroom have soared by hundreds of dollars in the last few months especially as compared to when I moved in during the housing bust.
I don't think that landlords should be able to raise the rent as high as they want to take advantage of a boom and displace long-term and hardworking residents. Suppose someone was renting a one-bedroom at 1800 a month for the past three years but his or her landlord jacked up the rent to 2600 because a boom made that the average price of the neighborhood. Where does this person go? What if they discover they are outpriced of the entire city? They still have a job, but now need to increase their commute significantly possibly. Plus all the incurred expenses from moving and possibly losing the fabricate and life they have built up for three years, sometimes much more.
Gentrification might be a fact of life but we need to find ways to mitigate the circumstances and have it involve less displacement. Neo-liberals often seem not to care about this and simply say "Look nice upper-middle class businesses. Growth good."
"
Well said in all your points.
That being said, I wonder how much of the difference between neo-liberal/libertarians and liberals on some issues like rent control are about placing importance in unquantifiable values.
The arguments I have seen against rent control are largely about things that can be easily quantified to a certain extent. Stuff like opportunity. Rent Control keeps people from taking opportunities and moving because they don't want to lose the low rent.
My pro-rent control beliefs come from issues that are not easily discussed in "wonk" white papers. Stuff like the right for families and people to remain in their hometowns or close to if desired or whether they want to stay put. The right of children especially the children of working class folks to stay in the same school and develop communities without needing to move year after year chasing the job market.
"
Basically, the only way to protect the truly sincere is to give facevalue to claims of sincerity from the insincere.
If someone can come up with a foolproof way to protect the sincere without doing so, please tell me. As far as I can tell, none exists.
"
Well that is the problem, isn't it.
I've come to the conclusion that for the sake of a functioning democracy (or even just society) we simply need to take claims of sincerity on face value or we will be stuck in a La Brea Tar Pit of constant questioning and accusation. We might really know that the person is bullshitting and being sarcastic but need to take it as sincere to protect the truly sincere. The best example of this is The Fying Spaghetti Monster.
Or me. I consider myself to be Jewish culturally and ethnically. I go to Synagogue on the High Holidays and celebrate Passover and other holidays. However, when it comes to whether God exists or not, I am a large apathetic agnostic and strongly leaning towards no. My view is that Torah is philosophy and ethics via metaphor and story with some factual elements that have been proven by archeology.
However, I have some friends who are hardcore Dawkins styled Atheists. It infuriates them to no end that I identify as Jewish. No amount of explaining can get them to understand or accept the concepts of cultural and/or ethnic Judaism. I imagine they would think me insincere.
Which one of us right? Which one of us decides?
"
If it is sincere belief, then it would probably count as religious discrimination.
The First Amendment does not give the Courts or Congress much power in saying what is and what is not a sincere religion.
"
Chen is an Internet journalist who generally goes against places like /b and reddit and challenges the professional troll presumptions. The one he challenges most often is "Don't take things too seriously on the Internet"
Chen and his wife have been the victim of general /b style attacks because of his articles. I think a lot of people are angry at him for breaking a sacred code as you put it. They want the Internet to be a separate place from the real world and they want their actions on the net to be free of consequence.
Almost everyone seems to agree that Bustch's posts are morally or ethically reprehensible in some way. His defenders don't want any real world consequence for these actions.
On “Learning to Fall Out of Love with Hate, Part 2: Violentacrez Loses His Job”
I don't think anyone knows. My gut would tell me it was probably negative publicity but could be a bit of both.
On “Violenceacrez, Reddit and Abuse of Power”
How about what artists say?
Why shouldn't visual art like Robert Mapplethorpe? Music like Philip Glass? Or performance art like Karen Finley and Meredith Monk be protected under the First Amendment?
Humans do just as much communication through visuals, dance, sound, and music as we do through speech. Why should law be allowed to punish Andre Serras for a photograph called "Pissed Christ" over a speech that communicates the same idea?
I don't see this as a worthy distinction.
Also should the law always just do what three out of five experts say? Certainly experts and academic arguments should be considered but there are broader, more philosophical considerations that are also important that cannot be quanitifed. Including non-vocal communication in Free Speech is one of these ideas. It allows people to communicate in ways that are more emotionally evocative and produce a strong emotional reaction. Visuals often do produce a strong reaction than speech.
Your arguments on a very limited First Amendment are not very liberal.
"
If that is the case, then his actions were not legal.
Talking about what is and what is not child pornography is a very tricky issue. I've read stories in the news about parents who came under the heat of investigation for simply taking bathtime pictures of their kids. The most recent story I heard was about an anti-Coal environmentalist in West Virginia. She was doing a presentation about how Coal hurts the environment in front of the West Virginia legislator and one of her pieces of evidence was a picture of kids (maybe hers but I'm not sure) bathing in black, disgusting water that came out of the tap. The coal-shill Republicans began immediately opining about whether the pictures were child pornography to shut her up.
"
This was almost cute. Not really though.
"
Agreed on the healthcare and I support single-payer. In some ways, single payer (and other safety net stuff) would make me more willing to support at-will employment because people will not be completely fucked if terminated.
What gives me pause is her screenname of not_so_violentacrez. This means she knew about and approved of her husband's activities. What the fuck?
And then there is the other story (which I still hope is false) about his nineteen year old stepdaughter and a previous wife.
"
Here I disagree and so does the law, speech is not just literally the words you write or speak. Images count as speech. Actions count as speech (like burning the flag). The Government can not censor or punish either Larry Flynnt or Robert Maplethorpe for the images they take.
"
No worries. Sorry if my reply sounded snarky.
"
I know about at-will. I studied it in my employment law and discrimination classes in law school.
I disagree with the At-Will system and would replace it with Just Cause.
"
To answer your question (hopefully it was not rhetorical)
1. He will never be hired anywhere again.
2. He will look for employers too lazy too google or get "lucky" and find one that sympathizes.
3. He will need to lay low for a few months and then start looking as this story fades into Internet memory.
"
I am not sure how I feel about Haidt's work. His whole "Conservatives have a more full way of looking at things" strikes me as being a good way for a liberal to get lucrative speaking gigs.
"
While you might not be concerned, plenty of more moralistic employers are concerned.
IIRC from my employment law class, there are four states with "lifestyle protection" laws that prevent employers from firing employees for lawful out of work activity. In all other U.S. jurisdictions, firing for any out of work activity is fair game. At-Will really does mean At-Will for the most part. Any employee can be fired for a good reason, bad reason, or no reason at all.
I am generally opposed to this. I am more for Just Cause firing (aka as good reasons only) and will easily and without a fight concede that Violentacrez easily falls into Just Cause termination. So I recant and apologize for any previous defense.
I feel sorry for his victims and hope they sue and win (possibly even from reddit). I feel sorry for his wife because she is very sick. Though according to the gawker story she seems to have full knowledge of his trolling activties which gives me pasue. I think her on-line name was not_so_violentacrez.
"
This is true. He deserved to be fired for that.
"
No it isn't okay and should result in some kind of civil lawsuit. Perhaps even against the employer if said harassment was done during work hours and with work resources. Then the guy could fired.
Allowing employer's to fire for any off-work reason is tricky and often wrong. Perhaps sometimes an employer needs to and with good cause but I am trying to think of a system that protects most people,
How would you write a law that allows an employer to fire someone like this idiot while protecting another employee who belongs to an S and M type group/club or some kind of transgresive performance collective?
"
Though I have to admit, I understand and empathize with anyone who would be creeped out by violentacrez and not want to work near him. I would fire him before telling my innocent employees to deal with the situation if I were the boss.
"
The story about the police officer from Brighton is a false equivalence. He was abusing his power as an officer of the state and should be punished for that. This is different than a police officer making a sextape with his consenting wife or girlfriend.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.