Obsidian Wings

And Another Thing ...

by hilzoy

In my post last Friday on domestic violence, I wrote: "I will also refer to abusers as 'he', and to their victims as 'she'; this is accurate in the overwhelming majority of cases." I think this was a mistake. I could just as easily have written that I would use these pronouns because while writing s/he is relatively easy, writing 'his or her', 'himself or herself', etc., throughout what I knew would be a very long post would be awful, or because I know the dynamics of relationships in which women are the victims of abuse better than others. I should have. 

Some commenters provided cites to statistics about the relative frequency of abuse of men by women as opposed to abuse of women by men. (I had checked the Department of Justice statistics before I posted, but some commenters questioned them.) I can think of a lot of reasons why any statistics on this topic might be wrong: reasons why either gender, or both, might underreport abuse; questions about whether violence in self-defense was being counted as abuse, and if so which gender was more likely to be overreported as abusive; etc. These cut both ways, and working through the arguments on both sides would take time. And I stopped, because on some level, I don't really care what I would find. It's not a contest. If anyone, of any gender, is being abused, that's awful; and that, it seems to me, is what I need to know.

What mattered more to me were the comments by men who had suffered abuse at the hands of women. As I thought about it, I thought: I'm not particularly interested in sorting out who has it worse. Surely there are especially bad things about being a woman who has been beaten up by a man -- the fact that men tend to be stronger leaps to mind -- but one thing that must be especially tough about being a man in that situation is that it is nearly invisible, especially when compared to domestic violence committed by men against women. Imagine being in this situation: who would you tell? And how? It's tough telling people if you're a woman who has been beaten by a man, but at least you don't have to wonder whether everyone will think it's funny, and you certainly don't have to worry that no one will have heard of such a thing.

I hate the fact that I added to this, and I apologize.

I think it's important, in thinking about this, for those of us who are feminists not to be distracted by the fact that there are also men out there who are using the idea of male victims of domestic violence as a sort of rhetorical club to use against feminism and the battered women's movement. ("What about battered men??? Huh???", said in the same tones in which one might say: but what about the white victims of racism???) They certainly exist, and I ran across a number of them before I stopped trying to wade through the statistics. I don't much care for them. 

But their existence does not imply that there are no men out there who are married to, or romantically involved with, abusive women. Pick the human tragedy of your choice: somewhere, there is probably someone trying to fake that tragedy to make some political point. It's bad enough that there are such people; we should not compound that problem by dismissing the concerns of quite different people who deserve to be heard. People who use tragedies that way have already hardened their hearts; we should not let them harden ours.

A belated note regarding gay marriage

by von

I intended to post this note after some misinterpreted my brief comments congratulating Vermont for passing gay marriage "the right way" (my words).  It's safe to say that I'm a little slow.  Still, here goes. 

By praising Vermont for passing gay marriage the "right way," I implied that there was a "wrong way" to make gay marriage the law.  Some took that implication to mean that I thought that the marriages of gay folks in, say, Massachusetts -- which allows gay marriages by reason of a judicial, not legislative, decision -- were illegitimate.  That wasn't my intent, and it's my fault for being unclear.  I regard gay marriages as legitimate as my own marriage, which is of the non-gay variety, regardless of whether any state recognizes them.  If folks have a problem with that, frak 'em, as some may say. 

(Well, as some may say on Caprica.)

Still, process matters .... And here is where I reveal my Federalist Society chops.*  I don't see a right to gay marriage in the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution.  (That's the logical place to locate such a right at the federal level.**)  We can get into the whys and wherefores in the comments, but suffice it to say that I tend to interpret the Constitution conservatively.  We've also had some experience with trying to divorce the Fourteenth Amendment from its original meaning.  It didn't work out so good.  The Fourteenth Amendment was foremost intended to end discrimination by slaveholders against former slaves.  That's the context, that's the history, that's the reason for the words.  This historical and literary truth was meaningless in the face of Judge Brown's creativity in Plessy v. Ferguson, however, which upheld segregation.***  

You never know who will next hold the judicial pen, or how they will use their creativity, until it is too late.  Better that process strip judges of some of their creativity, Skeksis-style.  You never get perfect justice.  Let the legislature, which is more accountable, try first. 

Process matters for pragmatic reasons as well.  The pragmatic reason to oppose gay marriage via the Courts is because Court decisions aren't lasting without public support.  See California, for instance.  See, in the case of racial discrimination, Brown v. The Board of Education.  Brown was an exactly-correct decision that belatedly corrected the stain of Plessy.  The correction, however, took decades.  And recall that Brown didn't mean a whole lot until folks made it mean something in the 1960s.  Segregation remained the rule until a lot of people bled, cried, and died to convince a majority of the country that it had to end by any means necessary.

You've always got to win the argument in the court of public opinion.  That's the road to legalizing gay marriage.  Legislation is the road to lasting victory.   Every other victory is temporary, Pyrrhic, or potentially at risk.  Don't be afraid of the fact that there is another side; that you might lose.  We are going to win the argument because we are right and they are wrong. 

Yes, sometimes, that's all there is to it.

*I've never been a member of the Federalist Society, it should be noted, but that's more out of laziness than anything else.

**I have no opinion re: state constitutions.

***Really, how much of a frakin' asshole do you have to be to pin the blame for discrimination on the folks being discriminated against?  ("We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it." Yeah, and I consider you to be a frakin' racist idiot, on Caprica or any other planet.)

UPDATE: Nonsubstantive edits to improve clarity.

Rectification Of Names

by hilzoy

It has been brought to my attention that I have never 'made it clear' that I would rather be known, on blogs, as hilzoy, and not by my actual name. I had always imagined that signing my posts 'hilzoy' was a clear enough indication of how I would like to be known on blogs; however, to preclude any further misunderstanding, I thought I should state this explicitly.

I realize that my identity is not much of a secret, though I myself have never given permission for my name to be used in connection with my blog posts in print. Moreover, unlike other pseudonymous bloggers whose jobs or relationships might be at risk were their identities known, my reasons for using a pseudonym are not particularly dramatic. They are, however, mine, and I do not think that anyone else ought to take it upon him- or herself to disregard them, especially if s/he does not know what they are.

It has also been brought to my attention that Slate's policy is that once an article has been published, it cannot be changed unless it is in error. Since my actual identity was published in Slate, and the article in which it is published is not in error, their policy precludes their replacing it with my pseudonym. This does not matter that much in my own case, but for what it's worth, I think this policy is misguided. Suppose that Slate had published (accurately) my home address and phone number, or entries from my journal, or anything else that most people would think that I ought to be able to keep private, and that its editors had not known (as they did not in this case) that I had not agreed to the publication of those things. Would their policy prevent them from deleting that information? I hope not.

In any case, once more for the record: on blogs, I would rather be known as hilzoy. Thanks.

Why Elections Matter

by hilzoy

If you have been reading public health blogs for a couple of years, you probably know, and miss, Confined Space, a blog about worker health and safety issues. If you don't, you missed a great blog, the kind that really educates you about an issue that it's hard for non-professionals to learn about otherwise. To quote revere at Effect Measure:

"It wasn't just a health and safety blog. It was the health and safety blog. It was almost the only way most health and safety professionals could keep track of what was happening in their field politically. (...) Jordan wasn't just any old blogger, either. As a blogger myself I now appreciate much more fully the skill and dedication it took to put out such a high quality product every day, day after day. He was an amazing writer and reporter and he did it all at the end of a long workday, on his own. And as a defender of workers and their health and safety he was in the very top rank."

Confined Space closed up shop a bit over a year ago when Jordan Barab, who wrote it, went to work for the House Education and Labor Committee. (Earlier, he "spent 16 years running AFSCME’s health and safety program; served as a Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary for OSHA; was a recommendations specialist for the Chemical Safety Board.")  And now guess what? From the Effect Measure post that I linked above, which is aptly titled "Miracle at OSHA":

"Jordan Barab has been named Deputy Assistant Secretary for OSHA and until a permanent OSHA Director is named he will be Acting Assistant Secretary (i.e., OSHA Director) (...)

If you go back through the archives of Confined Space you'll find post after post taking the Bush administration OSHA to task for falling down on the job of protecting workers' health. Now the hand that typed those posts will be running the agency.

The bottom line here is that workers who would have died under the old regime will now live. Mirabile dictu!"

This is a wonderful, wonderful thing. 

Prosecute Them

by hilzoy

Scott Horton at the Daily Beast:

"Spanish prosecutors have decided to press forward with a criminal investigation targeting former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and five top associates over their role in the torture of five Spanish citizens held at Guantanamo, several reliable sources close to the investigation have told The Daily Beast. Their decision is expected to be announced on Tuesday before the Spanish central criminal court, the Audencia Nacional, in Madrid. But the decision is likely to raise concerns with the human-rights community on other points: They will seek to have the case referred to a different judge.

The six defendants -- in addition to Gonzales, Federal Appeals Court Judge and former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, University of California law professor and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, former Defense Department general counsel and current Chevron lawyer William J. Haynes II, Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff David Addington, and former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith -- are accused of having given the green light to the torture and mistreatment of prisoners held in U.S. detention in "the war on terror." The case arises in the context of a pending proceeding before the court involving terrorism charges against five Spaniards formerly held at Guantanamo. A group of human-rights lawyers originally filed a criminal complaint asking the court to look at the possibility of charges against the six American lawyers. Baltasar Garzon Real, the investigating judge, accepted the complaint and referred it to Spanish prosecutors for a view as to whether they would accept the case and press it forward. "The evidence provided was more than sufficient to justify a more comprehensive investigation," one of the lawyers associated with the prosecution stated. (...)

The Obama State Department has been in steady contact with the Spanish government about the case. Shortly after the case was filed on March 17, chief prosecutor Javier Zaragoza was invited to the U.S. embassy in Madrid to brief members of the embassy staff about the matter. A person in attendance at the meeting described the process as "correct and formal." The Spanish prosecutors briefed the American diplomats on the status of the case, how it arose, the nature of the allegations raised against the former U.S. government officials. The Americans "were basically there just to collect information," the source stated.The Spanish prosecutors advised the Americans that they would suspend their investigation if at any point the United States were to undertake an investigation of its own into these matters. They pressed to know whether any such investigation was pending. These inquiries met with no answer from the U.S. side."

As I have said before, we should investigate and prosecute members of the Bush administration who authorized torture. They have violated our own laws, and respect for the rule of law requires that holding high office does not get you off the hook when you knowingly break the law. But investigating and prosecuting people who authorize torture is also required under the Convention Against Torture, to which we are a signatory. It is not optional. It is not something that we can put aside because it would be too divisive.

It is a requirement of law, the law that the Constitution requires Obama, as President, to faithfully execute. He should not outsource his Constitutional obligations to Spain.

Hang It Up, Norm

by hilzoy

From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

"After a trial spanning nearly three months, Norm Coleman's attempt to reverse Al Franken's lead in the recount of the U.S. Senate election was soundly rejected today by a three-judge panel that dismissed the Republican’s lawsuit.

The judges swept away Coleman's argument that the election and its aftermath were fraught with systemic errors that made the results invalid.

“The overwhelming weight of the evidence indicates that the Nov. 4, 2008, election was conducted fairly, impartially and accurately,” the panel said in its unanimous decision.

In rejecting Coleman’s arguments, the panel said the Republican essentially asked it to ignore Minnesota election requirements and adopt a more lenient standard allowing illegal absentee ballots to be counted."

The court's decision is here (pdf). Coleman's lawyers have announced that he will appeal this decision to the State Supreme Court. Rick Hasen thinks that Coleman is not likely to win that appeal; certainly, Franken's margin is now sufficient to withstand losses on some of Coleman's most promising points (e.g., the 132 missing ballots from Minneapolis 3-1.) But neither that fact nor the fact that Coleman has been ordered to pay court costs will necessarily determine what happens next:

"While some election law experts say it's unlikely that Coleman, a Republican, could win in federal court, his party might have much to gain. A federal challenge could leave a Minnesota U.S. Senate seat vacant for another six months or more, depriving Democrats of a vote needed to pass some of President Obama's agenda in the event of GOP filibusters.

The success of such a "scorched-earth" strategy, as one political scientist dubs a federal appeal, depends heavily on the definition of state courts."

Norm Coleman has a legal right to appeal this case. But that doesn't mean that exercising that right is the right thing to do. At some point, when the chances of winning get sufficiently remote, a person who cared about his state would think: I am depriving my state of its normal complement of Congressional representatives. In so doing, I am harming my state, and I am doing so in order to prolong a lawsuit that I am very unlikely to win. It's time to hang it up.

In my judgment, we've reached that point. Five months is long enough.

Why Larison Should Have Douthat's Job, Part 2,349

by Eric Martin

While I said at the time that Douthat represented an improvement over his predecessor at the New York Times (William Kristol), as well as some contemporaries (Charles Krauthammer, George Will, Jonah Goldberg), and was better than some of the other names in circulation at the time (David Frum), the fact remains that Daniel Larison would have been the far better choice given the Times' obvious prioritizing of right/left "balance" on its editorial page.  There are few conservative voices as devoid of partisanship, as lacking in tendentious impulses and as fair in his criticisms (of each side of the aisle) as Larison.  His take on Obama's recent world tour is refreshingly honest, in both its defense and critique: 

Alex Massie gets at the heart of what has been bothering me about so much of this Republican yapping about Obama’s so-called “apology tour” and the idea that Obama has been demeaning and denigrating the United States during his first trip abroad as President. It’s not just that these claims are false, which they clearly are, but that they have absolutely no connection to reality: there were no apologies, and there was no denigration. One might think that this would satisfy his Republican critics, but that is not the case.

Reading some of the complaints, such as Krauthammer’s, one might think the critics were five years old. They seem to think that the hard work of rebuilding America’s reputation in the world, a reputation that the very same critics and their confreres spent years dousing in gasoline and setting on fire, yields instant gratification, as if repairing frayed relations and coordinating international policies could have overnight results. The same people who grew weepy at the thought of History vindicating Bush decades or centuries hence are prepared to declare his successor a failure after less than three months. The people who contributed directly to pushing the good name of our country into the muck are now crying that Obama has not yet, in his first set of meetings, successfully cleaned up their mess. They and their arguments deserve little more than scorn. [...]

The mainstream right’s reaction to Obama’s European trip has reminded me of the claim some on the Anglophone right were making during the election that the election supposedly pitted an advocate of “global universalism” against a defender of American exceptionalism. As I said then, it was never clear which one was supposed to play which role, because both of the candidates were American exceptionalists and universalists in their respective ways, but this basic truth that Obama is an American exceptionalist and one steeped in Americanism is simply inadmissible for some of these people. I don’t know why I have to keep telling so many of you Republican globalists this, but on most of the major policy questions Obama is on your side.

Even though this is incontrovertible and well-established, it has to be denied vigorously in order for the critics to lay sole claim to Americanism and to define it in its most aggressive, nationalistic form. There is a partisan purpose in doing this, I suppose, but more important than mere political advantage is the need to claim some sort of monopoly on national pride. This is a bizarre mutant strain of nationalism on display. You would think American nationalists would tend to see the broad, bipartisan embrace of exceptionalism, hegemonism and national security ideology as vindication of their own views, but instead they look for reasons to complain that left-liberal adherents of these things are lacking in zeal and are somehow intent on insulting the U.S.

As ridiculous as it is, all of this seems misguided and counterproductive for the critics on their own terms. They have gone to the well of national security demagoguery too often in the last decade, and now it is virtually dry. Most people aren’t buying what these critics are selling, and the critics are destroying whatever credibility they might have still had.

Here, taking on a "typical [Jonah] Goldberg production:

It shouldn’t surprise me, but Jonah Goldberg is mixing up conceptual categories and mashing together foreign policy positions that don’t necessarily have anything to do with each other in this column. In other words, it’s another typical Goldberg production. Consider this jumble:

Or take a look at Cuba. There’s a fresh effort under way, particularly from the left wing of the Democratic party, to lift the U.S. embargo against Cuba. Just this week, members of the Congressional Black Caucus junketed to Cuba to celebrate the heroism of Fidel Castro.

The arguments in favor of lifting the embargo are routinely swaddled in talk of realism. The Cold War is over; it’s time to throw away anti-Communist anachronisms. The only way to change Cuba for the better is to “engage it” with trade and tourism and exchange programs. The funny thing is, if you made the exact same arguments about South Africa in the 1980s, many of the same people would call you not merely an ideologue but a racist for not supporting sanctions. Indeed, today the anti-Israeli sanctions movement is infested with people who claim we must lift the embargo on Cuba.

This is a mess, which isn’t helped by the vague generalizations. It is strange that Goldberg chooses to cite a policy that is roundly condemned as a failure in his indictment of realism. The embargo of Cuba is obviously an anachronism and a complete failure on its own terms, and ending it and restoring normal relations with Cuba are long overdue. Normalization of relations with communist Vietnam occurred fourteen years ago, and obviously normalization with China took place thirty-seven years ago, and it is pretty much indisputable that this engagement and the subsequent commercial relationship established with both countries have been beneficial to those countries (or at least to portions of the population of those countries who would otherwise not have benefited). While critics of large trade deficits might be skeptical about how much all of this has benefited the United States, as far as I know there are virtually no proponents of a status quo Cuba policy who worry about such things. [...] 

The way to tell an ideologue from a realist, and the reason realists are not simply ideologues posing as something else, is that the ideologue will persist in a course of action long after it has failed and long after everyone knows it has failed because he thinks that his “values” demand it. Instead of “let justice be done, though the heavens fall,” the ideologue says, “I am right, and the world can go to hell if it doesn’t agree.” The ideologue is terrified of having to make adjustments and adapt to the world as it really is, because these adjustments reveal to the ideologue just how far removed from that reality he has become. The ideologue keeps redefining the justification for the policy, he keeps rewriting history to suit his own purposes, and he never accepts responsibility for the failure of his ideas, because he believes they have never been faithfully followed. For the realist, cutting one’s losses and reassessing the merits of a policy are always supposed to be possibilities, but for the ideologue the former is equivalent to surrender and the latter is inconceivable. In his greatest confusion of all, Goldberg manages to mix up realists with their opposites.

Imagine the Times actually had the gumption to put a right leaning voice that wasn't a party apparatchik - one willing to level criticism at his or her side of the ideological spectrum when warranted (while not exactly sparing the left)?  Now that would be an interesting read.

Bend, Break and Head Fake

by Eric Martin

Anatol Lieven makes an excellent point regarding the stress that our US-centric policies in Afghanistan/Pakistan are putting on Pakistani political life.  The short story is that, in pressuring the Pakistanis to take on the Taliban, we are asking the Pakistanis to act in a way that runs counter to: (a) public opinion in a democracy; and (b) Pakistani national security interests by urging the Pakistani government to assail a former and potential ally in Afghanistan (the Taliban) in order to ensure the dominance of an Indian ally (the Karzai government) in a territory (Afghanistan) viewed by Pakistan's security establishment as vital to Pakistan's security vis-a-vis India:

The problem is Pakistan. As the new [Obama administration] strategy recognises, [Afghanistan and Pakistan]are now hopelessly interlinked, with a Taliban insurgency rooted in the Pashtun populations of each raging on both sides of the border. Putting greatly increased US pressure on the Afghan Taliban will indeed be immensely difficult if this is not accompanied by real help from the Pakistani state and military against Taliban support on their soil.

Yet the US may well have no choice but to proceed without Pakistan. Here, it seems to me, the Obama administration still does not fully recognise the depths of the problem it is facing, or the tremendous risks it will run by trying to bend Pakistan to its will over the Afghan war. For as both opinion polls and my own research on the ground have made abundantly clear, the truth is that a large majority of ordinary Pakistanis are bitterly opposed to Pakistan helping the US, especially if this involves the Pakistani army fighting the Taliban.

It is true that calculations by the Pakistani security establishment and intelligence services also play a part in limiting Pakistani actions against the Taliban; but the basic problem is a democratic one. A democratically elected government cannot afford simply to defy a public opinion this strong. Nor indeed can an army that has to recruit its soldiers from Pakistani villages – not from Mars or Pluto – and ask them to risk their lives. As a Pakistani general put it to me last year: “We can survive without American money and arms if we have to, though of course we don’t want to. But we cannot survive without the loyalty of ourjawans [men].”

In a sense, the messy, democracy-related hindrances are reminiscent of the Bush administration's difficulties in securing long term basing rights and free reign in Iraq going forward: the Iraqi people weren't on board with that game plan, and thus the Maliki government was not in a position to comply absent massive voter backlash.  Of course, it's also likely the case that the Maliki government preferred greater autonomy and wasn't really all that interested in the terms of the SOFA as initially proposed by the Bush administration (with US control of Iraqi airspace, immunity even for contractors, carte blanche in terms of troop increases, movements and actions, as well as the right to launch military operations from Iraqi soil - both internally and externally, etc.).

In a similar vein, while Lieven is right to emphasize the democratic aspect of the problem which doesn't get the attention it deserves, the resistance from the Pakistani security establishment should not be underestimated.  As in Iraq, Pakistani politicians will likely make a big show of how their hands are tied by popular will - which is true for what it's worth.  But regardless of the pleas of impotence to act as the US desires, those factions of the Pakistani government holding the brief on security aren't really ruing the fact.  Which is a nice segue to Lieven's recommendations:

If the Obama administration wants to have any hopes of transforming such public attitudes in Pakistan then it will need to fund Pakistan to a vastly greater degree than is envisaged in its new strategy, in ways that will visibly transform the lives of many ordinary Pakistanis. This requires above all massive investment in infrastructure – especially relating to water – in ways that will also generate many jobs. At $1.5bn (€1.1bn, £1bn) a year, the new US aid that is promised sounds like a lot – until you remember that Pakistan now has about 170m people. Eight dollars per head is not going to transform anything much in the country. More-over, the US statement emphasises that the aid will be made conditional on Pakistan’s help to the US against the Taliban. This is a recipe for constant hold-ups, congressional blockages and the wrecking of any consistent, long-term programmes. [...]

If on the other hand Washington thinks that it can play Pakistani governments like a fish on an aid hook in order to extract much greater help in the Afghan war, then it will undermine and finally destroy those governments, as it did that of Pervez Musharraf. Even more importantly, if it does succeed in forcing the Pakistani army to do things that its soldiers detest, it may destroy the army. This would be a catastrophe for the US that would dwarf even defeat in Afghanistan.

There is a potential for a vastly increased amount of economic aid to assist our efforts - to the extent that such aid can be funneled to militant groups to woo them away from al-Qaeda type international terrorists, and otherwise to sway public opinion.  The problem is, however, that the Pakistani government (with its myriad moving parts often working at cross-purposes) may not be fully on board with that agenda, and thus the aid might not get to the intended parties (if our experiences funneling aid through Pakistan to the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet campaign are any indicator, there are reasons to be concerned as the ISI siphoned off money and arms for themselves, and favored those factions most amenable to their interests, not necessarily ours). 

This effort will be made especially problematic because, as Lieven notes, making the aid conditional has its own drawbacks, which leaves few options outside of writing checks and banking on the good will - and unified purpose - of a dysfunctional government pushed to act against its interests.

Color me skeptical.

Battered Women: The Sequel

by hilzoy

As a followup to my last post on this topic, I wanted to consider this passage from Linda Hirshman's post. She's discussing Leslie Morgan Steiner, author of a memoir about her abusive relationship:

"It is difficult to understand why she stayed in this awful relationship, given that she was not risking starvation and had no children with her abuser. Which is why, no matter how many times Steiner and Marcotte and the others tell them not to, people keep asking the question. And it's terribly important to do exactly that. Asking why women participate in destructive relationships is a mark of respect. The amazing thing is that, four decades after the birth of feminism, we are still arguing about it."

Is it "terribly important" to keep asking why women stay in abusive relationships? And is it true, as Hirshman says, that "the current love affair with understanding stops feminists from calling victims on taking responsibility for their own well-being"? I want to break this topic down into several parts, which I will consider below the fold.

The Regulatory Origins of the Internet

by publius

Patrick Ruffini argues that Obama's alleged regulatory overreaching could (or at least should) move Silicon Valley back into the Republican camp.  I'm not really diving into that, but I wanted to quibble with this statement:

The irony here is that many of the entreprenuers who succeeded in the most unregulated environment possible -- the Internet -- are at once hyper-capitalist and socially-liberal Obama voters. (Good luck creating Twitter or Facebook in any industry as tightly regulated as the auto or banking sectors in the Age of Obama.)

This really can't be repeated enough -- the Internet was regulated.  Regulation is what made it work.  Indeed, the Internet's phenomenal success stemmed directly from the underlying common carrier regulation that made it possible.

There was no immaculate conception.  The Internet came about because of sustained federal funding for research and development.  Originally, the data services that ultimately evolved into what we now call "the Internet" depended entirely on access to the underlying phone networks. 

And so when these data services got going, the federal government faced a choice.  A crossroads, if you will.  The government could ensure that Internet/data services had nondiscriminatory access to the underlying phone networks on which they "rode."  Or, it could have allowed the phone companies (i.e., AT&T) to dictate the terms of access.  (This is basically how most wireless service in America works -- it's the "walled garden" approach.  And don't you loves it?).

Wisely, in the Computer Inquiries proceedings, the FCC opted for open, nondiscriminatory access.  The Twitters of yesteryear didn't need permission from AT&T to start their business.  The nondiscriminatory access that made the Internet successful didn't happen because AT&T was full of benevolent, far-seeing souls.  It was because of government regulation.  (On an aside, that's why the fight over net neutrality is actually a battle to maintain a ridiculously successful status quo).

Given that the Internet is probably the single greatest advance of mankind since the printing press, you could plausibly argue that the Internet is regulation's crown jewel.