Category: Logic

Spite: Another Argument Against Majoritarianism

We’re all hearing how Sen. Clinton’s supporters may protest and either refuse to vote for Sen. Obama or go the extra step and vote for Sen. McCain in November. I don’t think that’s too realistic on a large scale because I think most people realize how ridiculous that logic is. The latter, especially. I didn’t doubt that it will occur on some scale before yesterday, but I overhead confirmation.

While in Whole Foods yesterday, a man talked on his phone (loudly) to a friend about Clinton. He was clearly a Clinton supporter, but had enough sense to understand that Obama basically matched his policy hopes. His friend, not so much. He eventually asked his friend if he was seriously going to vote for McCain because Clinton didn’t win the nomination. (I got the impression his friend holds the “stolen nomination” view.) The friend clearly indicated yes. Are people really this stupid and spiteful?

To his credit the man in Whole Foods responded to his friend’s answer with “three words: John Paul Stevens”. Indeed.

John McCain endorses majoritarianism over individual rights.

From John McCain’s speech to the NRA:

Real activists seek to make their case democratically — to win hearts, minds, and majorities to their cause. Such people throughout our history have often shown great idealism and done great good. By contrast, activist lawyers and activist judges follow a different method. They want to be spared the inconvenience of campaigns, elections, legislative votes, and all of that. Some federal judges operate by fiat, shrugging off generations of legal wisdom and precedent while expecting their own opinions to go unquestioned.

Is there an upper bound on how many individuals may have their rights violated before we conclude a constitutional solution is better than a democratic solution? If so, what’s the number? Is there a distinction marking which rights are sacred and which may be violated at will by a majority? Is there any reservation worth considering to limit this complete trust in The People that might acknowledge those hearts and minds that are either incapable or unwilling of being won?

Like every politician, John McCain is a propagandist unworthy of being in a position of leadership. He will not behave as a leader.

Do a child’s eyes belong to the child’s parents?

As a thought experiment, consider:

LASIK surgery in children.

AIMS: To report success in the treatment of high myopia in children with LASIK. To report the visual results, complications and postoperative management of children with high myopia. METHODS: Six children (seven eyes) with high myopia were included in this series. Preoperative and postoperative refraction, visual acuity, and pachymetry were compared. RESULTS: Six children with high myopia ranging from -5.00DS to -16DS were treated. There were three males and three females. Five children had improved refraction and visual acuity post-LASIK. Age ranged from 2 to 12 years. Five of the children had unilateral amblyopia preoperatively. One had bilateral high myopia. CONCLUSION: High myopia in children may be treated safely and effectively with LASIK.

Now consider this story, via Amy Alkon:

Most Lasik recipients do walk away with crisper vision, and the American Society for Cataract and Refractive Surgery reviewed studies showing about 95 percent of patients say they’re satisfied with their outcome.

But not everyone’s a good candidate, and an unlucky fraction do suffer life-changing side effects: poor vision even with glasses, painful dry eyes, glare or inability to see or drive at night.

How big are the risks? The FDA agrees that about 5 percent of patients are dissatisfied with Lasik. How many struggle daily with side effects? How many are less harmed but unhappy that they couldn’t completely ditch their glasses? The range of effects on patients’ quality of life is a big unknown — and the reason the FDA help a public hearing Friday as part of its new move.

“Clearly there is a group who are not satisfied and do not get the kind of results they expect,” said Dr. Daniel Schultz, the FDA medical device chief. The study should “help us predict who those patients might be before they have the procedure.”
…

Doctors advise against Lasik for one in four people who seek the surgery, said Dr. Kerry Solomon of the Medical University of South Carolina, who led a review of Lasik’s safety for the ASCRS. Their pupils may be too large or corneas too thin or they may have some other condition that can increase the risk of a poor outcome.

Solomon estimates that fewer than 1 percent of patients have severe complications that leave poor vision.

Should parents have an unchallenged option to choose Lasik surgery for their children for any reason?

Bonus question: Should they have that unchallenged option for only their children of one gender, with the exclusion based on a societal belief such as the (non-)desirability of glasses?

Rights, Science, Tradition. Not Tradition, Science, Rights.

Last week I wrote about baby tossing, making a comparison to infant male circumcision. Today, via Kevin, M.D., here’s a story that includes a debate among doctors.

“Of course there is risk of injury in this practice. Missing the stretched cloth might be fatal and even landing on it wrong might cause a limb fracture,” said Dr. Joseph R. Zanga, past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics and a professor at the Brody School of Medicine, Greenville, N.C.

Objectively identifiable risk for a subjective, perceived benefit. End of discussion. Yet:

“I would not suggest that we try it in the U.S., but if they have been doing it for 500 years without any injury I’d be wary of stopping them,” Zanga said.

When faced with a tradition of stupidity, it’s best to focus on the stupidity, not the tradition. Science over superstition.

Dr. Michael Wasserman, of the Ochsner Health System in New Orleans, felt the same pull toward cultural sensitivity. “It is hard for one to disagree with religious rituals, as they are private choices, at the same time, there is a real danger?” Wasserman said.

This is not about disagreeing with religious rituals. If people want to toss themselves over a building’s edge in a “controlled” manner, have at it. This is not that. This is people intentionally endangering another person – a child – for no objective gain to the person being tossed. Jumping and being tossed are quite distinct. The former is a ritual. The latter is madness.

However, some doctors thought the health risks trumped cultural sensitivity in this case.

“The idea that parents would participate in such a harmful practice and that no one would point out the dangers to them seems inconceivable,” said Dr. Astrid Heppenstall Heger, professor of clinical pediatrics and executive director of the Violence Intervention Program at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

While this sentiment is based in logic, it’s not really inconceivable. American parents participate in a harmful practice that disregards risk in favor of cultural sensitivity more than one million times each year. The parents have “rights”, you know. As long as the tosser¹ finds value in the act, the tossed is merely the necessary pawn assumed to value the subjective gain more than the objective risk. He or she² isn’t completely worthy of individual protection because the group finds some benefit.

¹ No derogatory pun intended.

² Except for genital cutting, of course. There the comparison allegedly breaks down. Cutting healthy boys is valid tradition, but cutting healthy girls, that’s barbaric, even when it’s tradition. Half of that rationale is wrong. Would doctors suggest it’s okay to toss only male children from a building?

A Hypothetical Argument Against Tradition

A common defense used to justify continued legal indifference to the clear rights violation of male child circumcision in the United States is tradition. The sometimes-blurry distinction between ritual and social tradition is mostly irrelevant. The argument is that humans have been circumcising male children for thousands of years. In the United States, the tradition approaches 150 years. Tradition relies on “if it ain’t broke” without questioning whether or not it’s broken. I reject this, obviously, but I’d like to offer a hypothetical scenario:

A family gathers every Thanksgiving at the home of the family matriarch. This has continued for decades, and now includes children, grandchildren and a few great-grandchildren. Every year, the menu remains constant. The festivities start at the same time. Afterwards, there’s football in the yard before watching football on television.

One family member does not participate because he chooses to spend the holiday at with his wife’s family.

Those who defend tradition seem to argue that an opposition to male child circumcision rejects this. Reject tradition-inspired circumcision and you reject a family’s ability to decide. This is not the case, because the correct equivalent includes one additional piece of information not yet expressed in the hypothetical.

The man who chooses not to participate is physically forced by his blood relatives and barred from leaving the family’s holiday celebration. When he objects, he is restrained. At the end of the festivities each year, he is permitted to leave.

If he sought state intervention, would he have a valid claim of false imprisonment? Does the family’s claim of tradition supersede his right to be free in his movements and activities? The answers are undeniably “yes” and “no”, respectively.

Obviously the age of the individuals is an essential variant in the discussion. Let’s consider it. If the family refused to circumcise a son in childhood, when do they lose the right to circumcise him? At age 18? If at 18, is it not contradictory to permit them to circumcise him without need before that age? In doing so, they are effectively granted the right to choose circumcision for him at 18, 28, 38, 48, etc. He can’t unchoose what they’ve imposed. The permanence of the decision separates it from every other parental responsibility claimed as an equivalent. Those alternate claims involve life-sustaining needs (food) and/or objective benefits (education). Circumcision fits neither category, while also lacking the affected individual’s ability to overcome poor choices by his parents contained in legitimate choices based in parental responsibility.

That returns the defense to tradition. Children may be forced to attend the family gathering for Thanksgiving. Conceded. But the logic – defined loosely – needed for forced circumcision of minors based on tradition requires a familial right to override an adult’s liberty to refuse attendance at all present and future gatherings. No such right exists. There can be no consistent rule based on tradition. Thus, tradition can’t be an acceptable defense for a permanent reduction of another’s future bodily choice, barring objective medical need. We must rely on principles rather than tradition. Principles center exclusively on the individual and his natural rights.

Sanity on the Limitation of Parental “Rights”

A few days ago, in the context of the current FLDS story, Timothy Sandefur posted a principled defense of children and their rights against the (religious) claims of their parents. It’s very similar to what I’ve written about circumcision generally, and ritual circumcision specifically. The parents’ religion is not enough to justify the objective harm under civil law, regardless of the sanctity and tradition of the action. Still, Mr. Sandefur’s wonderfully stated words are worth posting here. (Note: I have no idea whether he would apply this to the medically unnecessary circumcision of minors. I suspect he does, but I do not know.)

The starting point of the analysis must be the principle that children have rights valid against parents, including the right not to be raised in an abusive or neglectful environment. The state has the legitimate authority to enforce these rights against parents. The state obviously has the legitimate power to take a child away from parents who beat him, or from a family of homeless alcoholics who neglect him. The fact that parents act abusively or negligently because they believe that God wants them to does not change the analysis. It cannot change the analysis, because it would, of course, create an easy route around laws that validly protect the rights of children: just assert that abuse is part of your religion. Heaven knows that’s been tried many, many times.

We do not allow parents to beat their children, yet that almost always leaves no permanent physical damage, unlike circumcision. Of course the psychological damage of physical abuse is undeniable. But is parental intent really enough, which is what seemingly allows circumcision while prohibiting other abuse? (cf. this post) Since one excuse used in favor of infant circumcision is that the boy won’t remember it, I say no. If a parent punches an infant, the infant will not remember it. But the act itself, separate from other considerations, is antithetical to the child’s individual rights. The motivating intent we assume (or discover) of the parent is irrelevant. As Mr. Sandefur’s statement declares, we shouldn’t excuse abuse just because parents claim God made them do it.

Mr. Sandefur continues:

… —and the state has the legitimate authority to defend that right [not to be imprisoned in an asylum], again, within certain (often vague) boundaries set by a parent’s right to direct the upbringing of a child. The latter right, however, must yield to a child’s objective welfare. In other words, while a parent has broad discretion to direct the education and upbringing of a child, that discretion exists within boundaries which the state may police, and keeping children away from education, medicine, &c., are things which—at least at some level—exceed those boundaries. …

The surgical alteration of a healthy child’s genitals exceeds those boundaries. We already recognize this for female minors. The Female Genital Mutilation Act explicitly denies parents the option to cut their daughters for non-medical reasons. The 14th Amendment, among other Constitutional claims, implicitly requires us to prohibit genital mutilation of male minors.

Perhaps more succinctly, Mr. Sandefur clarifies his point in a follow-up to his original post. Discussing the implications of two court cases, Yoder and Pierce, and the constitutional limits imposed on parents, he writes:

… The fact that some communities claim that God wants them to abuse or neglect children is just not a good reason for allowing them to do so, and the state is and ought to be more concerned with ensuring that children’s rights are protected than with whatever excuses parents give—mystical or otherwise—for violating those rights or for neglecting those children. …

I can make no comment on the validity of his legal analysis; I am not an attorney. But his reasoning is logical and based in individual liberty. The family is not society’s building block, with parents acting as property holders of their (male) children until the children reach the age of majority. What’s in the best interest of the family is collectivist, anti-liberty nonsense. Cutting is objective harm. The absence of medical need demonstrates that there is no corresponding objective benefit to be gained that would permit a discussion of parental proxy after applying the child’s individual rights. So, while I certainly adhere to a libertarian deference to parents and a suspicion of extraneous laws, legislatively prohibiting medically unnecessary genital surgery on minors is well within a libertarian framework of appropriate and necessary state use of power.

It would be nice if we didn’t have to do this. Maybe we can even justify not having a specific law prior to the beginning of child circumcision, if we lived in an alternate world without the historical tradition preceding the United States. (Assault laws would still be applicable, I think.) But approximately 3,000 male minors have their healthy genitals surgically altered every day in America. Rights are being violated. Not only may the state intervene, the state must intervene.

Caveat: I am not claiming that religious circumcision of minors proves the religion is harmful. I am claiming that religious circumcision of minors is a blind spot against individual rights that can’t be overcome through claims of parental “rights”. This must be prohibited in civil law. Civil law applied to the individual must trump any and all concerns of religion, particularly since the to-be-circumcised individual retains his own freedom of – and from – religion. He alone must decide if he wishes to express his faith in this manner.

Can protection be harm?

Via A Stitch in Haste, ABC News ran a social experiment in two cities, Verona, N.J. and Birmingham, Ala.

Two years ago, ABC News hired two actors, a man and a woman, to publicly display their affection for each other by kissing in public at a restaurant. Reactions from other restaurant-goers varied; some onlookers enjoyed the sight of young love, while others lost their appetite.

This year, we once again decided to explore how the public responds to public displays of affection — but this time, our couples were gay.

911 “hilarity” ensued in Birmingham, as Kip highlighted. Shameful, but not my point here. Instead, this:

… A topic that did come up repeatedly was children. “I don’t really find it inappropriate, especially during the day when schoolchildren aren’t running around. They might get confused and want an answer for what’s going on,” bystander Mary-Kate told us. The majority of the people who spoke about children seemed to echo Mary-Kate’s feelings. They are indifferent to gay PDA but did not want to, or know how to, address homosexuality with children.

People wilt under the pressure of addressing “tough” issues with children. (Some to a greater extent than others.) But when children get confused and want an answer for what’s going on in the world, the proper response is to treat them like human beings who deserve respect. Adults must apply tests to decide what information is appropriate to censor or finesse, but shielding children from information solely because the question makes the adult uncomfortable is not a rational response to reality.

Obviously I’m drawing a comparison to circumcision, so I’m not going to dance around the topic. When I’ve protested on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol against infant male circumcision¹, children approach to discuss the topic. I discriminate based on age. Without a good qualifier, it’s best to let the child ask. This generally leads to self-selection among the children who are capable of understanding and discussing. The youngest child I’ve spoken to is probably 10 or 11. And I still limit the discussion away from the anatomical function of the foreskin during intercourse and masturbation. However, those children are capable of understanding the core of the issue. They know when they’re being lied to. I’ve witnessed parents offering excuses to children while shielding them from any consideration. The children rejected these excuses by asking further questions.

I’m dismayed at how many people, even when not rejecting that same-sex relationships exist, fear that children can’t understand love if it’s not packaged in a specific, safe manner. Safe, of course, refers to the perceptions of the adult, not the child.

¹ Here’s a writing tip for you. The first edit of the footnoted sentence read:

When I’ve protested against infant male circumcision on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol …

There are no circumcisions occurring on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol, to my knowledge. Clarity demands that the writer group “on the lawn” with what occurred on the lawn.

The U.S. owes the world. The world owes nothing to individuals.

Here’s an interview (part 2 of 3) with Stephen Lewis¹, a former diplomat now involved in HIV/AIDS issues. Here are a few curious excerpts (italics added):

What do you think should be done [to fix PEPFAR]?

People should demand more – much more. No one denies that when you pump several billion dollars into a response it will mean something. Of course it will; millions of people will be treated. That’s terribly important.

But that’s what we deserve to expect from the United States. You don’t kneel down before a country because it’s doing… something that the world has a right to receive. The American administration is so discredited, George Bush is such a lamentable president, that when anything of a positive kind happens people are prostrate at the unlikelihood of it and they shouldn’t be.

It gets worse from there, but it’s most important to focus on the key assumption. The world has a right to receive American funding for its problems. I’d like to know the socialist theory Lewis is using to arrive at the conclusion. Presumably we’re only allowed to call our giving “charity” if we need to feed our American egos. The world will acquiesce with that concession, but the dollars must continue to roll in to satisfy the world’s right to receive.

I don’t have anything else nice to say about that, so I’ll move on to the next interesting bit. (Again, italics added.)

How about the response of the United Nations to HIV/Aids in Africa?

There is just so much more to be done. Frankly, one of the things that is inadequate is the United Nations agencies. Some of it is bewildering.

For example, you get the Minister of Health in South Africa (Dr. Manto Tshababala-Msimang [sic]) attacking and dismissing circumcision as a preventive technology. Here you have three determinative studies, definitive studies, we have UNAIDS and WHO encouraging male circumcision as a way of reducing transmission and you get an attack on it by the minister of health in South Africa. Where is the United Nations’ voice? Why haven’t they taken on the minister? Why haven’t they said what should be said, which is that she’s effectively dooming people to death and it need not be done? You have to have a much stronger voice of advocacy from the United Nations in dealing with disease and related matters.

Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is nuts is HIV, yes, but Lewis’ rant against the United Nations is bizarre. Whether it’s pushing circumcision through UNAIDS with breathless calls-to-action, issuing press releases touting the latest hype on the original story from WHO, or endorsing gender-based human rights violations through its remaining organizational reach, I’m not sure it’s possible to do more for the organization to insert its reach any further into this debate on the wrong side of human rights. But that’s defensible. Instead, let’s complain that they never criticized Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang for being stupid and dangerous.

Except, they did.

The United Nations special envoy for Aids in Africa has closed a major conference on the disease with a sharp critique of South Africa’s government.

Speaking at the end of the week-long gathering in Toronto, Canada, Stephen Lewis said South Africa promoted a “lunatic fringe” attitude to HIV/Aids.

Mr Lewis described the government as “obtuse, dilatory and negligent about rolling out treatment”.

Hey, wait a minute. Stephen Lewis? Stephen Lewis, working as special envoy for AIDS in Africa, attacked Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang’s comments in August 2006. Denouncing idiotic statements is necessary, but move on. Leave the grudge match to the WWE. Instead, every microphone is dead horse meets Stephen Lewis’ stick.

I did thoroughly enjoy this, in an “I’m disgusted” way:

“It really is distressing when the coercive apparatus of the state is brought against the most principled members of society,” he said.

Clearly Lewis is exhibiting a textbook case of Kip’s Law. I would challenge Lewis’ assertion that he is principled, since the UN’s Declaration of the Rights of the Child clearly forbids medically unnecessary genital cutting, without exceptions for gender or potential disease prevention. Nor am I particularly moved by his claim of oppression. Are infants subjected a coercive apparatus when they are circumcised, in part based on the rantings of individuals like Stephen Lewis?

¹ The following biography accompanies the article:

Formerly the special envoy for HIV/Aids in Africa for United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, [Stephen Lewis] is now chairman of the board of the Canada-based Stephen Lewis Foundation, which endeavors to ease the pain of HIV/Aids in Africa by funding grassroots projects. Lewis is also co-director of Aids-Free World, a new international Aids advocacy organization based in the United States.

This will be important later in the entry.

With advocacy like this, who needs enemies?

Advocates for Youth is

… dedicated to creating programs and advocating for policies that help young people make informed and responsible decisions about their reproductive and sexual health. Advocates provides information, training, and strategic assistance to youth-serving organizations, policy makers, youth activists, and the media in the United States and the developing world.

Helping young people make informed and responsible decisions about their reproductive and sexual health is a noble goal. This is not that:

  • Human rights—Planners must take an approach to offering male circumcision that acknowledges the human rights of the client:
    • Every adult male who is considering circumcision for himself should be able to give informed consent.[1]
    • Where a minor is the prospective client, counselors must take extra time to ensure that the minor and his parents understand the procedure and that the young male consents to it.[1]
    • When an infant is to undergo the procedure, his parents must be fully informed.

If he is an adult, the male must consent. If he is young, the male must consent. If he is an infant, no human rights principles apply to him. That is a pathetic view of human rights. Anyone who accepts that view is not an advocate. At best, he is a propagandist who does not believe in principles, only principals who may act on another according to an undefined criterion.

What is the delimiter indicating when a male ages out of “pre-young” and into young, conferring a human rights requirement for consent before his healthy genitals may be surgically altered? I reject the answer in advance for reasons I’ve explained in detail. Still, I want to know because I do not understand the magical powers wrapped around the penis that reduces mankind’s ability to think when applying principles to its anatomical sanctity. So, advocates of the “pre-young” qualifier within human rights, when do “pre-young” males get the (ahem) equal right to consent – or refuse consent – to the surgical alteration of their healthy genitals that young and adult males possess?

Post Script: The footnote attached to the young and adult requirements points to an excuse from the usual suspects in infant male genital cutting advocacy. I will not provide a link to that report here.

Post Post Script: I addressed a similar, gender-based ethical lapse in a previous entry challenging nonsense from UNAIDS.

It’s like legislating that puppies are cute.

Congress, protecting you from the world they built:

Lawmakers have agreed to make it illegal for employers and insurance companies to deny applicants jobs and health care coverage because DNA tests show they are genetically disposed to a disease.
…

It also makes clear that, while individuals are protected from discrimination based on genetic predisposition, insurance companies still have the right to base coverage and pricing on the actual presence of a disease.

Here’s an idea: eliminate the favorable incentive that irrationally ties health insurance in America to employment. If employers are no longer in the insurance business, they’ll have no opportunity to discriminate on the basis of future health care expense. Instead, Congress leaves the underlying problem that permits possible discrimination and codifies “discrimination is bad, mmmkay.” Never mind that politicians discriminate against the unemployed, under-employed, and self-employed.

Naturally Congress misses the point that discrimination is not inherently evil. It is often used for reasons we don’t like, so we’ve attached an exclusively pejorative interpretation to it. But I discriminate against meat when I choose vegetables instead. I discriminate against Ford when I drive a MINI. The Phillies discriminated against a local player when they traded him for a player they value more. Politicians discriminate against one expenditure when they vote for another. Sometimes, discrimination is just about making choices in a world with limitations.

I’m playing semantics right now. Conceded. But semantics matter, as this shows:

[Senator Olympia] Snowe noted that nearly 32 percent of women offered a genetic test for breast cancer risk by the National Institutes of Health declined because of concerns about health insurance discrimination.

I’m not advocating mandatory screening against a person’s wishes. But I’m also against prohibiting insurance companies from pricing risk more precisely by requiring genetic information through the voluntary application process. (Is that the inevitable future from this legislation?) Yet, just as an insurance provider may require the test, no applicant is forced to accept that condition. Competition breeds options where it is permitted. To a significant extent, it is not permitted while insurance is tied to employment, so we get further legislation.

Although it’s not explicit, I think the sponsors of this legislation are more content with the collective outcome of this. Insurance providers are good at knowing their business. They understand risk and how to price it based on statistics. Congress seems to be saying that pricing it better – to the individual, based on the individual – is discriminatory. Perhaps. But the risk will be priced. The only question for discussion is who pays. Is it shared across the insurance pool or paid by each according to his risk?

Legislation like this, as opposed to the more logical solution that removes the faulty incentive, clarifies the political mandate: genetic luck, just like financial “luck”, increases one’s responsibility to the unlucky.