Obsidian Wings

On Tolerance

-by Sebastian

In light of Hobby Lobby and the surprising and welcome storming of the gates by gay marriage advocates in recent years, there seems to be quite a bit of talk about the virtue of tolerance.  I'm not philosophically trained but much of it seems confused.  The proximate causes of this post are this post by John Holbo and this post by Damon Linker.  Both seem to be confused about the nature of the civic virtue of tolerance.

Tolerance has at least two facets of civic importance.  First it lets people of somewhat differing moral values live together in peace.  Second it fosters a humility about one's own beliefs that can be very useful if it turns out that some of those beliefs are wrong. 

Tolerance has been fostered in Western societies in a few ways that I can identify, though I'd be happy to see more examples.  First, we allow each other 'wrong' beliefs.  This seems obvious, but in much of human history ostracism or forced re-education were the norm.  Second, we allowed for a private and public sphere with differing levels of tolerance in each.  This seems to have been undermined by drastically shrinking what counts as private dealings.  Third we launder responsibility for violations of private moral judgments through the democratic allocation of taxing and spending functions of the government.  So you may personally disagree with methadone treatment for opium, but as a society we've decided to do it.  Your tax dollars will go toward it, but we won't force you to personally give methadone to patients if you disagree with it. 

 

Linker's piece is a mess because he attacks the issue through the lens of intolerance as a form of bigotry.  This obscures the methods and purposes of civic tolerance.  Holbo's response is difficult because it treats all forms of democratic government action as equal in terms of their tolerance effects. 

This is a essentially thinking aloud, but there are key differences between the government allowing something (not making it illegal), promoting it (usually by paying for it with tax dollars), and madating it (making citizens subject to penalties for not going along).  Permitting something can allow for tolerance.  Promoting it makes tolerance harder but not impossible.  Mandating it makes tolerance tough. 

By way of example, take the death penalty. The US federal government allows it.  Certain state governments use tax dollars to engage in the death penalty.  This is a source of contention for those who are against the death penalty and who then try to change the law.  No one however is personally required to execute prisoners in violation of their moral normas (whether religiously derived or not).  No US government body will take a doctor and force him to execute a prisoner.  We tolerate dissent of the death penalty enough to allow people who disagree with it to avoid personally engaging in it.  This is a good thing, and allows the political process to continue. 

Part of the conservative pushback on 'toleration' is mere rhetoric to complain about losing the political contest on such issues.  The gay marriage issue is such a case.  No one is proposing that conservatives be involuntarily forced into a gay marriage.  The government isn't particularly supporting gay marriage--there are a few tax breaks and a number of shortcuts through medical and estate planning.  Many people don't like the idea of gay marriage, enough people do that it gets through in many places, and thats the political process for you.  The virtue of tolerance comes in because you don't have to have a gay marriage yourself, nor associate with people who do (if you're an asshole--which lots of people are). 

But some of the conservative pushback on toleration is well founded, and this is in the areas where the government goes beyond permitting or supporting, and into mandating.  This is especially tricky as we approach the problem of services.  The current progressive approach is to treat services exactly as we might treats goods (which is a bit ironic considering that many progressives would rail against the idea that workers are interchangeable widgets).  The civic value of toleration suggests that whenever feasible we shouldn't force people to personally engage in a violation of their morals.  We shouldn't force someone who is against the death penalty to kill a prisoner.  We shouldn't force a doctor who opposes abortion to engage in a medically unnecessary abortion, or in a medically necessary abortion where another doctor is available without harm to the patient.  Further we realize that entering the stream of commerce doesn't throw toleration to the wayside.  If your housemaid strongly is against adultery, she should be able to quit if she finds evidence that you're cheating.  Similarly a wedding planner should be able to quit if she finds out that your wedding involves two men.  Hiring services isn't the same as selling groceries.  There isn't any obvious reason why we should treat them identically.  If you are a writer, and strongly support gay rights, you should be able to refuse a commission to write a reparative therapy tract. 

We begin to get into serious problems when the government starts to mandate things instead of providing them.  It sounds stupid to me, but it turns out that contraception is a hotly contested political issue. If enough people like me win in Congress, and we want to provide contraception, we should vote to spend tax dollars to do so.  That allows tolerance for people who disagree, but lost in the political process.  What we should not do is force people who (admittedly seem to me to have silly views) don't like contraception to actively engage in providing it.  If enough people think the death penalty is a fair and good idea, the state should still not force pro-life doctors to kill criminals.  What the current debate on tolerance seems to be missing is the idea that people seem to respond differently to having tax money allocated to things they don't like than they do when they are forced to engage more directly in things they think are morally wrong. 

V-boat: V stands for...

by liberal japonicus

I've often threatened to write a post about Japanese sexuality, but after several tries, I never really was able to actually explain anything. Below the fold is the Daily Show's take on one recent news story which kind of gets at my confusion. I will never understand this country...

Japanese education in three pictures: an education open thread

by liberal japonicus

Take a look at these three pictures and tell me what you see

What you are seeing is my youngest daughter's kokugo jiten, or Japanese dictionary. 

No, she doesn't have a condition that has her obsessively using post-its. This is the latest thing. Elementary school students are encouraged to, when they use their Japanese dictionary, mark the work and write it on the post-it. I'm not precisely sure when they start, but I'm thinking that this is going on at least a year or two of post-it-ing. The aim is to then make it a competition, so that kids compare how many post-its they have and have a visual record of how much they go to their dictionaries.

While the foreign barbarian in me resists, wondering why a race to put post-its in one's dictionary is something to do, the long term Japan watcher realizes that this is yet another way of introducing conformity. I pull my hair out when my students don't really think for themselves, but there is not an insignificant amount of comfort in doing something that everyone else is doing.

 

Any thought about education, conformity or anything else about the process of drawing out from students that you want to mention?

Don't bring back the draft, bring back war taxes

by Doctor Science

One thing we agree on about the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars is that the (American) human costs were borne by only a small part of the population. For people in the military and their families the war was a constant and excessive burden, but most Americans felt no direct consequences at all. And I think we all agree that one reason these wars dragged on so long -- the longest of *any* of this country's wars -- was because the burden was so very unevenly distributed, so that the public -- and their representatives, and the media -- could basically forget about the wars for weeks or even months at a stretch.

As usual when this topic comes up, in our discussion last month we talked about whether having a draft instead of a voluntary military would ensure that more Americans had "skin in the game", and would take war with more of the seriousness it deserves.

But there's another way to give more people skin in the game. It's a truism that wars have a cost in blood and treasure. Afghanistan and Iraq were different from past wars on the "treasure" axis: there was no explicit war tax. On the contrary, one of the "selling points" of the war was that it would pay for itself, so there was no need to increase federal revenues (=raise taxes) to pay for it. In finance this is called a leveraged buyout, but in politics it's either imperialism or just plain plunder. There was plundering in Iraq, all right, but it didn't end up with the people who fought or paid for the war.

The Bush Administration didn't just refuse to consider a war tax, they actively worked to reduce tax rates (and thus federal revenue) while the war was in progress. The enormous cost of the wars were almost entirely financed by borrowing, along with cutting other programs. Some of those program cuts were at the Veterans' Administration, the principle vehicle for helping the people who'd be paying the "blood" costs of the war.

Right now, the United States is mostly a plutocracy. Wealthy people tend to be very interested in politics, have access to politicians, and have different priorities and opinions from most other Americans. Because politicians depend so much on the wealthy for campaign funding, what we get are public policies that are heavily weighted toward things the wealthy are worried about, and toward solutions that they favor.

In other words, for war to be taken seriously the top 1% -- and even 0.1% -- of Americans have to have "skin in the game".

Bringing back the draft won't affect these people significantly, because there aren't very many of them, they're almost all over 40, and their children and grandchildren will have lots of ways of getting around military service or of getting nice, cushy postings if they don't. No, the way you motivate the wealthy and get their attention is with *taxes*.

I'm not saying all wars need to be directly paid for by increased revenues immediately. Every war of the past few hundred years, at least, has been paid for by a mix of borrowing and immediate taxation. But I think there has to be *some* immediate taxation, at least 25% of the cost of the war, year by year.

And those war taxes need to fall on the upper end of the income scale. The poor and middle classes will pay for war with their blood; the treasure needs to come from the rich. If we weren't a plutocracy, maybe we could look for a "fairer" system where all classes contribute both blood and treasure, but that's not what we've got. I'm pretty sure that if there'd been an Iraq War tax that hurt the 0.1% as much as stop-loss policies hurt military families, the war would have ended by 2005 if it had been begun at all. The wrath of the rich would really have concentrated Congress's mind, as the mere human cost did not.

O-hisashiburi open Friday thread

by liberal japonicus

Which is basically, 'long time, no see' in Japanese. Though the formality marker at the end is probably too much.

I hope this article, pulled from the LGM thread, is of interest. I loved it and don't skip over the footnotes at the end. 

What is everyone else reading?

A Parenting Scene Open Thread

by Ugh

The Scene:  Saturday, Pizza Joint
The Players:  Ugh, Ugh’s almost 3 year old
The Setting:  Pizza ordered, just sat down to wait.

Almost 3 Year Old (cheerily):  I want pizza!

Ugh:  Okay, it’s coming soon.

[30 seconds later]

A3YO (cheerily):  I want pizza!

Ugh:  Don’t worry, it’s coming.

[30 seconds later]

A3YO (cheerily):  I want pizza!

Ugh:  Good, it will be here in a little bit.

[repeat for 20 minutes until pizza arrives, pizza is the make and style favored by the A3YO]

A3YO:  Nooooooooooooooo! Not dat one!!!!!  Nooooooooooooo!!!! [throws self on floor]

Ugh:……………………………………….

[7 minutes later]

A3YO:  Oh, pizza! 

[happily eats the same pizza that arrived 7 minutes earlier]

 

Talk about whatever.

My Cyborg Spouse

by Doctor Science

On Wednesday my husband D had both his old knees replaced with new, shiny robot knees. I am now married to a cyborg.

We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better...stronger...faster.

D and I met in 1974 (as friends, we didn't start dating for 10 years), when The Six Million Dollar Man was starting its first season. I'm pretty sure D owned a jacket very like that one, too. Ah, 70s fashion.

We've had the technology for a while, but because of the frakked-up US health care system, we haven't had the *money* until this year. You don't get to talk about "wait times" in the US unless you factor in the people who have to wait years -- or forever -- because they can't afford care they need.

The list of people we didn't spy on is shorter

by Ugh

The dribs and drabs of N!S!A! and other U.S. intelligence apparatus spying news continue to flow from the Edward Snowden Files^TM and elsewhere.  Here is a story about how even "incidentally" collected information is stored and searched.  Most disturbingly (to me at least, there are many other disturbing details) in that story, is that "The NSA treats all content intercepted incidentally from third parties as permissible to retain, store, search and distribute to its government customers."  So, where is the incentive to keep from "incidentally" collecting so much information?  Indeed, it seems there are 9 "incidental" monitorings for every intentional one.

But we need to trust them, except later on "For close to a year, NSA and other government officials have appeared to deny, in congressional testimony and public statements, that Snowden had any access to the material.  As recently as May, shortly after he retired as NSA director, Gen. Keith Alexander denied that Snowden could have passed FISA content to journalists."  But it's okay, because they were really just talking about "raw intelligence," and that journalists and congresspersons didn't understand the unstated and composed-in-hindsight distinction is their own failing.  

Also, too "'If I had wanted to pull a copy of a judge’s or a senator’s e-mail, all I had to do was enter that selector into XKEYSCORE,' one of the NSA’s main query systems, [Snowden] said. The NSA has released an e-mail exchange acknowledging that Snowden took the required training classes for access to those systems."  

Then there is the intentional spying on people because they are muslims (warning:  Glenn Greenwald link!  So, a Wired story on the same subject).  This including this charming bit "In one 2005 document, intelligence community personnel are instructed how to properly format internal memos to justify FISA surveillance. In the place where the target’s real name would go, the memo offers a fake name as a placeholder: 'Mohammed Raghead.'"  

But we had a task force look into all this right?  Right, from the Wired story "Richard Clarke, a former counterterrorism official in both the Bush and Clinton administrations who served on a recent task force examining the government’s surveillance, told Greenwald that had he seen the list of targeted Americans months ago, he would have scrutinized the surveillance programs more stringently and demanded the Justice Department provide a counting of how many Americans are targeted."  But alas.

There is this story about the German government expelling the CIA station chief from Berlin (and you thought Brazil had it bad), in response to the U.S. recruiting spies from the German intelligence service to spy on Germany (although one wonders why there isn't a standing order from all countries that the CIA station chief be expelled, once known).  This all, of course, follows on the U.S. government spying on German Chancellor Merkel's cell phone, which was stopped once it became politically embarrassing.

From the wayback machine, the FBI spying on Nelson Mandela after he was released from prison.  

Finally, IIRC, Greenwald (look away!) says the most shocking story is still to come.  So, stay tuned, true believers, for the next episode of your friendly neighborhood spyderman.  

Attempted Jury Duty Notes

by Ugh

I had the, um, pleasure of being called for potential jury duty today.  I was not placed on a jury (although likely would have been had I been closer to the front of the line) but had some thoughts about it and the US criminal justice system generally.

First, I'm not sure I'd want a jury of my "peers" determining my guilt.  People can't seem to follow simple directions.  People can't seem to pay attention.  People don't seem to realize that, yes, the judge is serious about you showing back up to the courtroom when she says.  Or that, sitting down in the jury box and typing away on your phone so intently that you don't hear the judge when she addresses you might be a bit inconsiderate, especially after being told more than once to turn your phone completely off (and this particular person somehow showing back up in the court room after being dismissed from potential service in that trial, oblivious to all).  And god help those trying civil cases that involve things more complicated than a traffic accident.  

Second, the underfunding of public defenders' offices is a national scandal.  Overhearing just one conversation with such an attorney and the family of her client made me better understand just how hard a job this is.  Not only do you have to deal with all the legal issues, but also be the defendant's and defendent's family's emotional counselor, often for defendants and families that are not familiar with even basic legal concepts.

Third, that what might seem fantastical to the "average" person may in fact be true.  "If you weren't guilty why did you run out the back door when the police arrived?"  "Because I thought they were going to plant evidence to frame me."  Seems a little far fetched and "convenient", but not in the context that I heard it.

Fourth, this all seems rather obscenely expensive, inefficient, and of dubious utility.  Repeated warnings from the judge that testimony from police officers is to be given no greater or lesser weight than testimony from others do not bring confidence.  Nor does the fact that 60+ people were called to fill 14 juror/alternate slots for a trial over an assault that happened more than a year ago and in which the defense apparently planned to call no witnesses vs. the prosecution's 6-8, all but one of which would be police officers, seem a good use of time.  That every one of those 60+ people would rather be doing something else does not seem likely to lead to accurate outcomes.

Not that I have any great ideas to make things better, other than perhaps a lot more funding for public defenders and ways to make jury service more palatable (such as paying people more than the $4 I received).  And perhaps despite all this juries generally do a "good" job, although I would like to see some pretty concrete evidence of that.  

Your O Say Can You See open thread

by Doctor Science

There are a lot of arguments about which recording of The Star-Spangled Banner is the best, but for my money this one blows the rest away:

 
Direct YouTube link.

The music is Chase Holfelder's minor-key version. The visuals are from the Captain America: The Winter Soldier trailer. Fanvid by Camunki.

We had a lovely Fourth, exceptionally cool and pleasant for this time of year -- Arthur completely passed us by. We had a cookout with old friends, then went to fireworks and played with sparklers. Well, other people played with them, I prefer to watch. It's a nice change to watch fireworks on a July night that's cool and just a little breezy: not getting eaten alive by mosquitoes really raises the tone of the Independence Day experience.

Talk about your day, or whatever.