Category: Ranting

I have pessimistic thoughts on protests

Protesting is necessary. There are injustices in the world that won’t fix themselves. It takes commitment and bravery to fight because power, the cause of most injustice, loves compliance.

Protest is also dangerous. Some of that is because power¹ loves compliance. Protest needs to remain focused and controlled. I don’t want to say “non-threatening”, since I don’t mean a willingness to accept whatever sham of rights power is willing to concede. No, not that. But at best it will be unpleasant. People whose rights aren’t violated – or who are content to have their rights violated, especially – will let you know you should like having your rights violated. They are miserable people. It will be necessary to face and ignore that nastiness.

But the danger I’m thinking of is more the danger from unleashing energy into combatting injustice. It’s easy to lose the thread on the principle involved in the fight. It’s inviting for anyone with a message to attach themselves to a protest and hijack it for other purposes. It isn’t easy to control that, either, because it’s seductive to think, “More people are joining us, we’re winning!”. Maybe, but maybe not.

Obviously the last couple days are on my mind. The protests from both Friday and Saturday reflect my point. Friday it was the predictable violence². It isn’t inevitable with a protest with a focused message, but Friday’s protests weren’t focused. “Anti-Trump” is a choose-your-own-adventure opportunity for grievances. But that also means it’s foolish to judge opposition to Trump on this inevitable violence.

Yesterday’s protest resulted in no violence, as far as I’m aware. I think that has much to do with coherence on the message. The danger awaits, though, for what the marches hope to accomplish. I’ve seen many astute voices pointing out that yesterday was the beginning. That’s correct. The work begins now. But I don’t think that work is to keep the momentum. The work is to prevent the message from fracturing. I’m not optimistic.

The stated principle for yesterday’s protest, as I understand it, was that women are human beings deserving equal rights. Great, I’m on board. But it’s clear this movement has the potential for power. That focus on principle will disappear. Here, I’ll pick a random example I encountered. The list has the above principle. It then expands to the LGBTQ community. I’m still on board because I think this is the same principle at its core. Human beings deserve equal rights. Third is resisting racism. Yep, still there.

Then, with numbers four, five, and six, are climate change, income inequality, and universal health care. That’s a fracturing divergence. “… we must immediately address the damage we have done and continue…” I agree that climate change is real, and that humans are a reason. But there’s so much room to disagree on how to address the damage. Maybe we’ll agree on what to do, but there will be disagreement.

For income inequality, “Wages for working people must rise. Wages for working people must rise. A healthy and growing middle class is not a naturally occurring phenomenon. It must be cultivated through sensible economic policy.” I agree that a healthy and growing middle class is not a natural phenomenon. The natural human condition is dirt-scratching poverty. But what is the sensible economic policy that raises wages for working people? Is it by decreeing the minimum wage is $X? That is economic policy, but it is not sensible. Work that can’t justify the minimum wage will be automated. The goal is an economy in which people can support themselves (with the understanding that no perfect economy can exist). I can’t support a push for an economic policy based in feelings that will not work. But attaching “income inequality” to the push for equal rights means fracturing the movement.

And universal health care. Opposition to what other countries do is not a wish for poor and sick people to die already. That every other industrialized nation does this does not mean they do it perfectly, or that they do not get free-rider benefits from the United States because we don’t do it their way. It also does not prove it can be replicated here.

It’s clear a push like this expects the result of yesterday’s march to be the further implementation of a progressive political platform. That just takes a message that “women’s rights are human rights” and makes it explicitly – and incorrectly – political. The coherence of the demand disappears.

Some of this I already know from experience with protesting and agitating for change. I’ve protested in sunshine and rain, in heat and cold. I’ve had people yell at me and I’ve had respectful conversations. It’s a messy process with rewards and perils throughout. Along with, “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” there’s disagreement and the “with us or against us” mentality within the group. I’ve seen people be right for unbelievably wrong reasons. It’s a fringe rather than universal, but the fringe gets the attention. Did you see more of the peaceful protests from Friday or the smashing windows? And when someone encounters a group protesting what they haven’t thought about or don’t agree with, do they remember the person trying to convince them or the lunatics? What’s more effective, “May I talk with you about genital mutilation” or “May I talk with you about genital mutilation and how vaccines cause autism and the one percent”? The former is principled in science and ethics. The latter is “I have a mishmash of agenda items and you need to accept them all.” Putting human equality into a mix of progressive (or conservative) political policies is no different.

Maybe I’m wrong on thinking this is putting human equality into a mix of progressive political policies. It’s possible, and if it’s true, do you want to convince me or condescend to me? Whether I’m right or wrong, that’s your choice.

For example:

I’ve seen so many men today screaming about rights for Islamic women and genital mutilation. I look forward to your march re: those issues!

Or do you guys only bring those issues up to try to de-legitimize someone else’s voice?

And a sample response:

@JulieDiCaro I think we both know the answer to that question.

I’ve marched and written extensively on the rights involved. I get laughed at for it. I get screamed at. I’m told how disrespectful I am when I emphasize the principle³ involved. There’s no curiosity that I maybe know what I’m talking about from research and experience. I don’t hold the right view, so my opinion should be mocked.

The same condescension is in those tweets. Maybe one/some/all of these men know? Or maybe they’re all awful people merely trying to change the subject. It’s probably the latter. Probably.

I composed a reply on Twitter but deleted it because 140 characters wouldn’t convey the message. Ms. DiCaro is saying “Don’t hijack the moment.” I agree with that sentiment but not the delivery. For example, I don’t jump into discussions purely about female genital mutilation to say “what about men?” unless the discussion includes crackpot opinions presented as fact or shoddy wishing masquerading as a principled defense of why girls deserve protection and boys should be happy about circumcision. But if you really want equality, “my body, my choice” applies to boys, or it can mean “my child, my choice” applies to girls. If you don’t stand for principle, don’t be shocked if it leads where you don’t want to go.

Anyway, my point is that protests lose focus. They work against uniting a coalition on shared principle, preferring to enforce ideological rigidity. Yes
terday’s march and what follows can be principled. It won’t be. There were speakers yesterday advocating for equal rights who also support male genital mutilation. Some rights are more equal than others, somehow, which will probably become generalized into the platform, so do not be surprised when this movement collapses into an incoherent, powerless mess without the necessary vigilance to adhere to “women are human beings deserving equal rights”. Prove me wrong, please.

Post Script: Damnit, I realized I didn’t talk about nazis yet. I’ve rambled enough, so I’m not going to work this into the above. Fucking nazis are evil scum. Don’t sucker-punch evil fucking nazi scum. Because it’s dumb and counter-productive and escalates into more violence. Yes, Hitler. But a street corner in Washington, DC on January 20, 2017 is not Omaha Beach. Maybe it will be if we don’t challenge President Trump’s administration every second until 1/20/21, 1/20/25, or his impeachment. But we’re not there today. Not sucker-punching evil fucking nazis is not appeasement. Sucker-punching nazis is closer to the definition of conceding principles in favor of political expediency. That isn’t righteous. That’s a different form of authoritarianism. And if you want to require this fight continue until 1/20/25, sucker-punching nazis is a great way to create the lawlessness excuse Trump wants in order to make that a reality.

¹ Power expects compliance from everyone, not just women. This is why emphasis on “patriarchy” is so weird to me. I’ve yet to encounter an instance of someone saying “patriarchy” in which saying “power” wouldn’t be more precise. I’m open to explanations and/or scenarios for why that isn’t true.

² Destruction of property is violence. Someone has to clean it up. Someone has to pay for its repair or replacement. That requires work, so destroying someone’s property necessarily involves forcing someone to do something they wouldn’t otherwise need to do. It is force.

³ Non-therapeutic genital cutting on a non-consenting individual is unethical. All human beings are equal, with the same rights. I’m a feminist, including on that principle. But some feminists don’t believe this right is equal. So sure, I’m a feminist, but the label isn’t enough for me to know that we agree on human rights.

“Now prosecutor, why you think he done it?”

Ronald Bailey has an interesting essay, Watched Cops Are Polite Cops.

Who will watch the watchers? What if all watchers were required to wear a video camera that would record their every interaction with citizens? In her ruling in a recent civil suit challenging the New York City police department’s notorious stop-and-frisk rousting of residents, Judge Shira A. Scheindlin of the Federal District Court in Manhattan imposed an experiment in which the police in the city’s precincts with the highest reported rates of stop-and-frisk activity would be required to wear video cameras for one year.

This is a really good idea. Earlier this year, a 12-month study by Cambridge University researchers revealed that when the city of Rialto, California, required its cops to wear cameras, the number of complaints filed against officers fell by 88 percent and the use of force by officers dropped by almost 60 percent. Watched cops are polite cops.

I agree with the premise (and the need for strict rules to protect the privacy of individual citizens, as discussed later in the piece).

However, I have no expectation that this would improve much if implemented. We already recognize how many people accept the government’s assertions in criminal cases. Charged is too often synonymous with guilty. More on point, we know how such video evidence will be treated.

Consider this case of a man arrested in Florida in 2010:

An 18-year-old man faces a number of charges today after West Melbourne police found him jogging naked wearing only swimming goggles next to a busy roadway.

“He was jogging butt-naked and didn’t even have on shoes. We suspect he was under the influence … he was a little incoherent,” said Cmdr. Steve Wilkinson, spokesman for the West Melbourne Police Department.

Okay, fine, we can’t have that. But is the bolded part here true?

The unidentified man, who officers had to subdue with a Taser, was seen sprinting at about 7 a.m. today near the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Eber Road, officials reported.

And:

Cmdr. Steve Wilkinson said King could not have been caught without the Taser, adding that King was speaking incoherently but was also apologetic for inconveniencing police.

In this case, the officer’s Taser had a camera attached to film the incident. His dashboard cam captured the rest of the interaction. The video evidence does not support the bolded statements.

The video isn’t embedding correctly. It starts at 25:20.

In the video from World’s Wildest Police Videos, the script has John Bunnell focus on making sure we agree that the police officer doesn’t want to, and shouldn’t have to, deal with a naked man. Because, ick, right?

Law enforcement officials are taught how to handle all kinds of different criminals. But let’s face it. Some, they’d rather not handle at all.
…

This isn’t exactly the kind of perp the cop wants to get into a wrestling match with.

The video also received the Top 20 Most Shocking Moments treatment. The facts titillate and remind us that police video is entertainment for the masses, even when it involves the use of excessive, potentially-lethal force. The camera footage is used to mock the accused and to further entrench the idea that a police officer may use a taser if arresting a suspect would involve physical effort or put him in an uncomfortable situation. Even with video, we don’t reject the use of the taser here. It repeats the now-accepted belief that the taser is a substitute for police work rather than a substitute for the officer’s firearm.

Video can be helpful and should be used. Without a commitment to changing how we use them now, I’m skeptical that video will be used in a way that compensates for existing problems in our thinking or teaches us to respect rights more. Too often we adhere to:

  1. Cops are heroic
  2. The cop tasered a criminal
  3. Tasering a criminal is heroic

The video lets us continue that nonsense.

Today’s Duh: Anthony Weiner is not a libertarian

In the true spirit of Kip’s truth that all politicians are moral defectives, we have Anthony Weiner. When asked about the New York City health department’s (weak) effort to regulate metzitzah b’peh, a ritual that has led to herpes infections that have killed at least two infant males and left at least two more with brain damage, Weiner said:

“You know, I’ve been criticized a lot of places for my position on metzitzah b’peh, on the ritual bris,” he said last night. “My instinct as a liberal is the libertarian sense of that word, is that we have to be very, very careful when we in government decide to step in, even if we’re 100 percent sure. Remember, government always is about the rule of the majority. … You have to be extra careful to protect the rights of people that are in the smallest of minorities.”

Anthony Weiner doesn’t understand his instinct. He is not a libertarian. His position is not libertarian. Even the health department’s inch-high speed bump (i.e. a “consent” form) is not liberatarian on this issue. That is not because it has the government stepping in, but because it does almost nothing. As practiced today, metzitzah b’peh – and child circumcision, more generally – violates basic human rights. There are dead and brain-damaged children already. The same risk exists in every instance in which it’s performed, just as objective harm results from every circumcision.

Libertarianism recognizes the primary purpose of any legitimate government to protect the rights of its individual citizens. This includes the individual’s right to bodily integrity and autonomy. Hence, valid laws against all other forms of non-therapeutic, unwanted physical violence exist without contention. Since children are also people, an obvious fact that too many self-proclaimed libertarians miss, government may enact and enforce laws to protect their rights, too. This includes protecting children from objective physical harm inflicted for reasons unconnected to objective need. Without need, the individual must consent. Proxy consent forms for objective harm do not protect children. They are not an acceptable standard. The libertarian position on non-therapeutic child circumcision is prohibition, as any other form of unwanted, unnecessary objective harm is prohibited.

Weiner manages to provide some insight in his words. The smallest minority is the individual, and the most vulnerable smallest minority is a child who can’t defend himself. We have to be extra careful to protect them. That includes not being too cowardly to acknowledge something we’re 100 percent sure about. Oral suction of an open wound is unsanitary and should only be done with the individual’s consent. Ritual or “medical” circumcision of a healthy child removes normal, functioning tissue and should only be done with the individual’s consent. There is no parental right to this rite.

Link via Janet Heimlich.

The NHL Is Dumb. The Lockout Is Dumb.

As I wrote earlier in the week, I love hockey and the NHL. I want to watch games every minute of every day. I watch old games on NHL Network during the summer, even when I know the outcome. It’s a fantastic sport. I wish more people watched.

The NHL is currently working to guarantee fewer people watch. It’s engaged in a lockout of its players, its second lockout in eight years and third in eighteen. It was the second major professional sports league to cancel its championship, the first to do so as a result of its own actions¹. It’s the only professional sports league to cancel an entire season (i.e. 2004-2005), which didn’t even happen during World War II. This shameful fact is an indictment on the league’s negotiating skills and tactics. We’re again learning how putrid the league is at both. The former is probably defensible. The latter is not.

As we’d already lost the first two weeks of the 2012-2013 season, the NHL made a surprise proposal to the NHL Players Association on Tuesday. It offered an attempt to save the full 82 game schedule for all teams and what seemed to be an excellent start to resolve the core economic differences between the two sides. A few days have now passed. The league now says its offer was not its starting point, but its finish line. Its tactic is to require capitulation. Whether that happens now or in August 2013, the league provides no reason to believe it cares when. It appears quite ready to destroy another season if that means “winning”. Past evidence suggests that wouldn’t be fatal, or even significantly damaging. The past’s applicability to the future is open for debate here. The league appears indifferent to fatigued diehards and the growing-but-fragile fan support it’s gained in the last few years from a resurgence of big-market teams.

Reports indicate that the league recently received pressure from its major sponsors and television partners in Canada and the United States. This, to me, is the most interesting aspect of the continuation of the lockout. Obviously everyone wants a healthy business going forward. And the league’s sponsors want to be associated with a sport that is stable, exciting, and growing. They had a chance to continue getting that from the league until its proposal shifted from an opening offer to its final offer without announcement. The league is so determined to get its deal that it will accept an unnecessarily damaged, smaller revenue stream from its victory. This is idiotic. Its sponsors will attach their brands to a league that embraces upheaval, ruthlessness, and repeated disregard for its customers. We’ll find out how willing and committed they are to supporting that combination in the post-lockout NHL, whenever that arrives.

I doubt sponsors will feel the same level of enthusiasm they’ve shown in recent years if a deal can’t be reached by Thursday. That failure would likely mean a large chunk of the season being axed next Friday. (Missing the Thursday deadline would also mean the season will likely die.) The league is about to find out how much of its projections is hubris. As I wrote before, the diehards will be back whenever the league returns. That includes lifelong fans and more recent converts like me. The league is correct on that. I wonder how much revenue it expects from me if that happens. It will get my $170 or whatever it will charge for the Center Ice television package because I am out-of-market for the Blackhawks and I like watching other teams. But I bet the league thinks I will also still want t-shirts and jerseys and other branded merchandise. I will want them. I will not buy them. The League’s revenue will not be zero. But its revenue will not be what it was before. It will get the smaller revenue base it deserves. I am foolish. I am not a complete fool without any respect for myself.

The league takes the support of its fans for granted. It thinks we’re stupid. It’s told us for several years that the league is growing and experiencing record revenues. It said so earlier in this now-extended off-season. Yet, now it also demands immediate givebacks from the players because teams can’t survive without them. It wants us to ignore that more than half of the cumulative losses experienced by the weaker teams last season belonged to the Phoenix Coyotes, a team owned by the league itself. On average the teams losing money are losing just under $2 million each. (This is based on reported numbers. Possible accounting tricks are not considered for the validity of this loss.) If team owners can’t absorb a $2 million loss for a few years as the league transitions to a more stable economic structure, they shouldn’t be involved in this high risk, high dollar business. As a fan I want my team and the league to be healthy. I do not want to be treated as though my only involvement is to hand over my money as often as possible.

I’d resolved myself to the reality that this lockout would cost a significant chunk of the season. Then, the league worked to win back support by making an offer. I’m optimistic but I do not appreciate being used in what is now an obvious ruse to win an irrelevant PR war the NHL deserves to lose worse than it was losing it on Monday. I’m not interested in subjective notions of fairness. A 50/50 split is no more fair than a 57/43 or a 43/57 split. Context matters. Fairness here is negotiating honestly and striving to satisfy as many goals as possible. The owners want a 50/50 split. The players want their existing contracts honored. Great, there’s a deal to be made. But the fans are lost in this equation. We are customers, not equal participants in the product. We want hockey. There are many ways for the owners and players to get – or get close to – what they want. Fans have no involvement to get we want. We have only the power of the dollar after the fight is over, whenever that might be. It should be by Thursday. It probably won’t be. The clock is unforgiving against a battle of egos. If/when I lose, most of the dollars I’ve spent in the past will remain in my wallet.

In the end the owners will win this lockout. They have all the power. I don’t much care where they end up. I care a lot how – and when – they get there. They should start asking themselves what they’ll win if there is no deal by Thursday. They should ask this without first using their assumed answer to beg the question. Fifty percent of nothing is no better than fifty-seven percent of nothing. Without a deal that enables a full season, everyone loses.

¹ Major League Baseball lost its World Series in 1994 due to a players strike. Current NHLPA executive director Don Fehr was the players’ union chief at the time.

Liberty, But Only If Your Parents Let You Have It

I have no problem with the label libertarian, even when it’s conflated with the Libertarian Party. I have a problem with being associated with what passes for thinking on the rights of children among too many self-proclaimed libertarians. Somehow the libertarian view for so many shakes down to something equivalent to children as parental property. This is most easily seen when the topic turns to male circumcision. So it is again. In response to charges filed against a rabbi/mohel in Bavaria following the recent court decision in Cologne declaring that non-therapeutic circumcision of a child violates the child’s rights to physical integrity and self-determination, Doug Mataconis writes at Outside the Beltway (links in original):

There’s also been a bizarre movement growing against circumcision itself here in the United States and in Europe. Just last year, for example, a referendum that would’ve banned circumcision in the City of San Francisco was scheduled to appear on the November 2011 ballot before being removed. The motivations for this version of the anti-circumcision movement seems to be something similar to what the Judges in Cologne stated, that it was some kind of assault about a party who is unable to grant consent. …

Surgically removing a normal, healthy, functioning body part from an individual who does not consent should be recognized as battery, yes. That is not bizarre. It’s merely extending the usual rational standard for non-therapeutic surgical intervention on healthy children to male genitals.

… Andrew Sullivan, for example, contends that infant circumcision is an assault on infant boys. Left out of the argument, though, is the fact that parents have been long assumed to be able to competently make medical decisions for their minor children. …

Except there are limits, including a specific limit on the option for parents to make “medical” (i.e. non-therapeutic) surgical decisions for the genitals of their minor children. USC § 116 – Female genital mutilation clearly establishes conditions upon which we ignore this alleged competence. If non-therapeutic genital cutting falls within the realm of making “medical” decisions for a child as a parental right, then 18 USC § 116 infringes on this supposed parental right. If this is about parental rights rather than individual rights, the child, whether male or female, would be irrelevant to the law. It isn’t. It’s about the harm to the child. Section (b) makes it clear that all non-therapeutic genital cutting on female minors is illegal, including any cutting analogous to or less harmful than male circumcision. Section (c) demonstrates that no parental justification will be accepted for this intervention on their daughter(s). The primary consideration becomes whether or not male circumcision is harmful, not this:

… Leaving that argument aside, I would think that any ban on circumcision in the United States would, because of the First Amendment, have to include an exemption for Jews and Muslims who consider the procedure a requirement of their religion.

Because boys don’t have the same basic human rights as everyone else, at least for the physical integrity of their normal, healthy genitals? Eugene Volokh’s parental and religious rights posts during last year’s San Francisco ballot initiative identifies a plausible response to this. Again, the correct question is whether or not male circumcision is harmful, not why parents might choose it for non-therapeutic reasons.

On the question of harm, the evidence is quite clear. Circumcision inflicts harm every time. The individual loses his foreskin. He has nerve endings within his penis severed. He may lose his frenulum. He will have a scar. There is also the risk of complications. Some males will suffer those, and some subset will suffer horrible outcomes. The mortality rate from non-therapeutic child circumcision is very low, thankfully, but it isn’t zero. Treating individuals as statistics is hardly a libertarian position.

Next, he quotes an ad hominem attack by Jonathan Tobin:

Circumcision opponents may claim they are not anti-Semitic, especially since their campaign also targets Muslims. But there is little doubt that the driving force behind this movement is resentment toward Jews and a willingness to go public with sentiments that long simmered beneath the surface in Germany and elsewhere in Europe.

Just last week, French scholar Michel Gurfinkiel wrote on his blog that anti-Semitism has increased in France since the Toulouse massacre in March. Since then violence has grown, fed by what he calls a rejection of Jews and Judaism. In France, these sentiments are fed by the Jew hatred openly expressed by the expanding Muslim population. Throughout Europe, the demonization of Israel hasn’t just increased hostility to the Jewish state; it has served as an excuse for anti-Semitism to go mainstream for the first time since World War Two. Just as some claim circumcision critics aren’t intrinsically anti-Semitic, there are those who blame anti-Semitism on Israeli policies. But when you add all these factors together what you get is an undeniable upsurge in Jew-hatred.

There is significant doubt that resentment is the driving force. I won’t speak for Germany, although I think the court’s ruling was not based in religious animosity. The ethical human rights-based case against non-therapeutic circumcision exists on its own. It’s clear, based in the basic rights to physical bodily integrity and self-determination. The ability to find instances of anti-Semitism does not discredit that case or the general movement to restrict non-therapeutic circumcision to those who choose it for themselves. Where anti-Semitism occurs, and it unfortunately does, it discredits the individual purveyor, not the movement as a whole. And such instances should be denounced without ad hominem against anyone who shares only an opposition to non-therapeutic circumcision on non-consenting individuals.

Mataconis’ response to Tobin’s charge:

If that’s true, then it is a quite troublesome development. Even leaving this element out of it, though, there’s something troublesome about this entire affair. Circumcision has been an accepted practice in Western societies for centuries …

That’s interesting but proves nothing. History provides plenty of examples of rights being violated for a long time. The rights are no less violated. Non-therapeutic circumcision constitutes guaranteed physical harm to the child in pursuit of his parents’ preference(s). It’s the objective versus the subjective.

… and, in the case of two religions, it isn’t just an elective medical procedure, it is a requirement of their faith. …

Being a requirement of Judaism and a recommendation in Islam are relevant, but they are not the first question in this context. The circumcision is being imposed on someone. It’s an odd conception of free
dom that says imposing surgery on someone else is an individual right within religious freedom. Under the proposed public policy stance, religion would have to adapt. That expectation is no different from the numerous declarations in religious texts that we do not permit in civil law. Religion deserves no special exemption. The protection required is for individuals to choose circumcision for their own bodies, not for others.

… The arguments of the circumcision opponents strike me as being little more than ridiculous nonsense that, for some, has turned into some kind of weird cult of the foreskin. As far as I’m concerned, parents are perfectly capable of making this decision for their sons and the state really has no business getting involved in at all. When you bring the element of religion into it, state interference becomes even more problematic. One would hope that the government in Berlin will intervene and put an end to the nonsense that the judges in Cologne started.

Non-therapeutic genital cutting on a non-consenting individual violates basic human rights. That isn’t ridiculous nonsense. We apply it completely to females. We don’t apply it to males. Instead, it’s easier to smear with words like cult and fetish. Fine, if that’s the standard, we should start telling activists against female genital cutting/mutilation that they’re spouting ridiculous nonsense that is some kind of weird cult of the clitoris? We wouldn’t because there we recognize the facts. With circumcision we forget to apply the same standard that protects the property interest of the individual. For reasons. That makes no sense.

It’s certainly not within a reasonable understanding of libertarianism. For anarchists, sure, opposition to the state becomes the overriding goal. But if one assumes a state to be legitimate with a specific interest in protecting the rights of its citizens, then it’s legitimate for the state to prohibit this form of possibly unwanted harm. That is the approach that recognizes humans rather than statistics. (To hope that politicians will step in to reverse a judge is a foolish action to endorse.) Parents don’t just circumcise their sons. They effectively circumcise the autonomous adult he will become. Proxy consent based on anything other than clear medical need is insufficient to permit that.

**********

Post Script: In the comments to his post, Mataconis responded with a standard trope:

Fine. Then if you have a son, don’t get him circumcised, that’s your choice.

Treating children as property is not libertarian. The correct formulation is “If you don’t want to be circumcised, don’t have yourself circumcised”. That’s the method to protect individual preferences, not the illegitimate force of individual preferences on another. Shared DNA is not a defense.

That flows into a later comment:

What is the medical benefit the foreskin provides?

To the silly question, it protects the glans and provides sexual sensitivity. But let’s assume neither is true. “It’s mine” is sufficient. The onus is not properly on the person who doesn’t want his property taken to explain why his property shouldn’t be taken. Or, at least, that’s what I thought libertarians believed.

Penn Jillette on Obama’s Marijuana Hypocrisy

Penn Jillette is awesome for many reasons. As such I’m a fan of his new weekly podcast, Penn’s Sunday School. It always delivers, like last week when he went on a rant about President Obama’s continuation of the unwinnable, anti-liberty drug war and his hypocrisy. It’s brilliant and can be fully experienced in the clip below in a way the transcript can’t deliver.

Like Mr. Jillette, I’ve never consumed drugs or alcohol, but I do not care if another wants to do so. My only criterion is what I use for everything: do it voluntarily and without harm to another. Ingest drugs? No harm. Rob someone to get money to buy drugs to ingest? Harm. Drive while under the influence? Harm. It’s not complicated.

Contrast that with President Obama’s comments in his interview with Jimmy Fallon (video via NORML):

Notice the nanny-state mentality where anything that might be an individual problem automatically becomes a matter of “public health”. No one is an individual, just a cog in the machinery of the state to be managed and used.

Of course, Obama’s hypocrisy goes further. (As it does for all politicians, who are, by default, moral defectives.) Via the same NORML link, he clarified his remarks in an interview with Rolling Stone (from April):

Let me ask you about the War on Drugs. You vowed in 2008, when you were running for election, that you would not “use Justice Department resources to try and circumvent state laws about medical marijuana.” Yet we just ran a story that shows your administration is launching more raids on medical pot than the Bush administration did. What’s up with that?

Here’s what’s up: What I specifically said was that we were not going to prioritize prosecutions of persons who are using medical marijuana. I never made a commitment that somehow we were going to give carte blanche to large-scale producers and operators of marijuana – and the reason is, because it’s against federal law. I can’t nullify congressional law. I can’t ask the Justice Department to say, “Ignore completely a federal law that’s on the books.” What I can say is, “Use your prosecutorial discretion and properly prioritize your resources to go after things that are really doing folks damage.” As a consequence, there haven’t been prosecutions of users of marijuana for medical purposes.

The only tension that’s come up – and this gets hyped up a lot – is a murky area where you have large-scale, commercial operations that may supply medical marijuana users, but in some cases may also be supplying recreational users. In that situation, we put the Justice Department in a very difficult place if we’re telling them, “This is supposed to be against the law, but we want you to turn the other way.” That’s not something we’re going to do. I do think it’s important and useful to have a broader debate about our drug laws. One of the things we’ve done over the past three years was to make a sensible change when it came to the disparity in sentencing between crack cocaine and powder cocaine. We’ve had a discussion about how to focus on treatment, taking a public-health approach to drugs and lessening the overwhelming emphasis on criminal laws as a tool to deal with this issue. I think that’s an appropriate debate that we should have.

Only to a politician does “not prioritize” mean “vigorously pursue”. And, sure, cutting off supply of marijuana to people who may legally possess and use it within specific states isn’t “prosecution”, but it sure isn’t the same as federalism or a passing nod to his campaign promises. Nor, circling back to Jillette’s destruction of Obama’s hypocrisy, is his implied wrongness of recreational use vindicated by anything he’s said or done. He’s nothing more than a bad parent’s slogan: Do as I command, not as I do.

Government Preparation for Adulthood

This story is almost two weeks old, but it still has value.

A two-page oral sex encounter by an awkward teen at boarding school in the coming-of-age novel Looking for Alaska was deemed too racy by Sumner County schools last week.

The district banned the book from its assigned classroom reading list, becoming at least the second in the state, after Knox County in March, to keep students from reading it together in class.

The teen novel is the first in several years to be stripped from Sumner classrooms. Wilson, Rutherford and Williamson county schools say they haven’t banned the book or any titles in recent years. Metro schools didn’t have information on the book as of Monday.
…

In this case, he said, the value didn’t outweigh the controversy. The book was not pulled from any district library shelves, [Sumner County schools spokesman Jeremy Johnson] said.

I oppose censorship. This is clearly a form of censorship, although not quite as bad as removing the book from the school system entirely. A public school board prohibiting a book from the classroom curriculum is insulting to both teachers and students. It also provides excellent support for a libertarian rant against public provision of education. The argument against home-schooling seems centered around the willingness of some parents to avoid facts. This is no better, since the government engages in the same behavior. It’s also unnecessary. In high school, I had to seek parental permission to read The Catcher in the Rye for an essay because it featured adult language and themes. That’s an imperfect, reasonable solution which leaves discretion to parents and provides a learning opportunity for all students.

The school board’s decision is awful, and especially so because the book is part of a high school curriculum in which students are presumably being taught to think critically. Still, this strikes me as worse:

“Kids at this age are impressionable. Sometimes it’s a monkey see, monkey do,” said parent Kathy Clough, who has a freshman and a senior at White House High School, where the book had been assigned reading. “I’m going to trust that my school board made the right choice. … If they feel like this book is a little too graphic, I’m all for it.”

Or she could read the book and decide for herself. Just an idea.

I don’t understand that kind of parental abdication. Of course her concern is probably quite appropriate, given how willing she seems to turn over the raising of her children (who are nearly adults) to a government body. But this is infuriating because she assumes all parents are as incapable of teaching the idiocy of “monkey see, monkey do” as she implies she is, and therefore, no parents should have the choice for such books to be a part of their teen’s education. If she thinks a “child” 14 or older isn’t aware that oral sex is a thing, she’s mistaken. If a child teen between 14 and 18 hasn’t learned enough to distinguish literature from a directive, the school system is worse than just a censoring band of thugs. It’s an incompetent, censoring band of thugs. All parents should be vehemently opposed to ceding more control to that school system, as Ms. Clough is happy to do.

Here’s the author, John Green, explaining this scenario when it occurred elsewhere in 2008:

Via John Green on Twitter.

Update: Post updated because I found evidence that I had to ask permission to read The Catcher in the Rye.

I Prefer FPS Over MMORPG

I’m not a fan of privilege as a foundational argument. It’s confining and limiting. It’s focused on generalizations without regard for the individuals involved. It establishes a hierarchy for problems with the result, if not purpose, of minimizing any X that is less severe than Y according to the person wielding the argument. It’s claptrap that eventually resolves to “Shut up”.

Such is the case with John Scalzi’s recent post, Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is. From the beginning it sets out the argument’s flaw as a definitive, justifiable rule that allows anyone who agrees with it to “prove” that the person who disagrees commits an error. Usually being dense, or something similar. It’s a way to shut down debate rather than start or continue one.

I’ve been thinking of a way to explain to straight white males how life works for them, without invoking the dreaded word “privilege,” to which they react like vampires being fed a garlic tart at high noon. It’s not that the word “privilege” is incorrect, it’s that it’s not their word. When confronted with “privilege,” they fiddle with the word itself, and haul out the dictionaries and find every possible way to talk about the word but not any of the things the word signifies.

It starts with condescension. Straight white men need to be educated, and if you challenge the argument, you’re proving your need to be educated. It’s stupid. It signals that there are default rules, either implicitly or explicitly assumed, that no one may disagree with. The only real question it allows is who’s next in needing to be educated about their privilege with respect to someone else under a simplified set of rules: straight minority males or non-straight white males.

Mr. Scalzi’s argument on privilege is easy enough to understand:

Dudes. Imagine life here in the US — or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world — is a massive role playing game, like World of Warcraft except appallingly mundane, where most quests involve the acquisition of money, cell phones and donuts, although not always at the same time. Let’s call it The Real World. You have installed The Real World on your computer and are about to start playing, but first you go to the settings tab to bind your keys, fiddle with your defaults, and choose the difficulty setting for the game. Got it?

Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.

As a generalization with no context, sure. But that’s shallow thinking. It’s meaningless. We don’t live our lives as generalizations. Our interactions are more complicated and messy than simple identifying characteristics. Mr. Scalzi’s argument rests on the basis that sexual orientation, skin color, and gender are the three supreme defining characteristics and life should be judged accordingly. All else being equal, would I encounter an easier, harder, or indistinguishable challenge in working with Mr. Scalzi as a Straight White Male than a Gay Minority Female would? I bet on indistinguishable.

He acknowledges other characteristics within the metaphor but makes them subordinate to these three:

Likewise, it’s certainly possible someone playing at a higher difficulty setting is progressing more quickly than you are, because they had more points initially given to them by the computer and/or their highest stats are wealth, intelligence and constitution and/or simply because they play the game better than you do. It doesn’t change the fact you are still playing on the lowest difficulty setting.

I disagree that these three are the complete, highest characteristics. Is a straight white female born with genius-level intelligence, a trust fund, and a respectable family name playing on a more difficult level than a poor, stupid straight white male? What’s the scenario, fixing a flat tire on the side of the road? Being treated respectfully at the Mini Mart?

A later argument demonstrates the largest hole (emphasis in original):

And maybe at this point you say, hey, I like a challenge, I want to change my difficulty setting! Well, here’s the thing: In The Real World, you don’t unlock any rewards or receive any benefit for playing on higher difficulty settings. The game is just harder, and potentially a lot less fun. And you say, okay, but what if I want to replay the game later on a higher difficulty setting, just to see what it’s like? Well, here’s the other thing about The Real World: You only get to play it once. So why make it more difficult than it has to be? Your goal is to win the game, not make it difficult.

My goal is to “win” the game? According to whom? Judged by what criterion/criteria? By whose criterion/criteria? In which game? The argument fails because it neglects the reality that straight white male, gay minority female, and everyone in-between are people with unique, complex mixes of characteristics playing – or not playing – the game to which Straight White Man is the lowest difficulty setting. There are many games. There are different players. And there are different game masters. Context matters. Generalizations bludgeon.

Congressman Brad Sherman Is Wrong On Circumcision

This is why I don’t like the political process for ending non-therapeutic circumcision of male minors.

Congressman Brad Sherman announced today that he will be introducing the Religious and Parental Rights Defense Act of 2011, a bill to prevent San Francisco and other municipalities from banning the circumcision of males under the age of 18.

Sherman’s new bill is in reaction to a measure that has qualified for the November 2011 ballot in San Francisco that would make the performance of circumcisions on males under 18 a misdemeanor—with a possible $1,000 fine and one-year prison term.

He’s framing the problem incorrectly, which allows him to protect a “right” that doesn’t exist and ignore a right that does. The proposed bill in San Francisco would prohibit non-therapeutic circumcisions on males under 18. Healthy children do not need surgery, even if the parents’ god says so. California law already restricts the rights of parents to cut the healthy genitals of their daughters for any reason, including religious claims. Is that an infringement? Of course not. Likewise, there is no First Amendment right to inflict permanent harm on one’s children sons (only).

Sherman expressed concern over the motivation of the provision. “To infringe the religious rights of so many Americans, San Francisco should have some compelling medical reason; however, the medical literature actually shows clear benefits of male circumcision.”

The provision, shown by its generally-applicable wording, would protect the right of all healthy males to keep their normal body intact and free from the objective harm of non-therapeutic surgery to which they do not consent. It’s the same right U.S. and California law protects for their sisters. That right is being violated. It must stop. This is a way to achieve that, even if it may not be the best way.

But if we incorrectly assume this infringes a legitimate religious right, San Francisco (and every other locality) has a compelling medical reason to prohibit non-therapeutic male child circumcision: it’s non-therapeutic genital cutting imposed on a non-consenting individual. The healthy child does not need circumcision any more than he needs an appendectomy. If he has an appendectomy, he will never get appendicitis. That is a potential benefit. Should we therefore allow parents to have a surgeon cut their healthy children sons (only) to remove his potentially harm-producing appendix? In the name of parental rights? No, because that would be stupid. The ability to chase some possible benefit can’t be an ethical justification to perform an invasive, unnecessary surgical intervention on a healthy child.

Congressman Sherman added:

“Congress has a legitimate interest in making sure that a practice that appears to reduce disease and health care costs remains available to parents,” Sherman said. “And, nothing in my bill prohibits statewide law ensuring that male circumcision occurs in a hygienic manner.”

To the extent that Congress has a legitimate interest¹ here, it’s in protecting the individual rights of every citizen, including male children. It already protected female children with the Anti-Female Genital Mutilation Act of 1996. That prohibits non-therapeutic genital cutting on non-consenting female minors for any reason, including religious claims by the parents. Does that infringe on parental religious rights? Are we illegitimately denying religious rights by not permitting other acts by parents sanctioned by various religious texts? Are the healthy genitals of male minors beneath the equal protection of the Fourteenth Amendment?

“Congress has historically legislated to protect the free exercise of religious rights from state and local intrusions,” Sherman said. “In 2000, Congress passed the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, designed to protect religious institutions from unduly burdensome local zoning laws.”

The logic of the law Congressman Sherman cites favorably requires the conclusion that his proposed bill is flawed. The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act establishes that the government may not impose a burden

…unless the government demonstrates that imposition of the burden on that person, assembly, or institution–
(A) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and
(B) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.

(A) Protecting children from unnecessary, objective harm is a compelling governmental interest. Circumcision, as surgery, inflicts objective harm in every instance. When there is no offsetting medical need, the harm is the only guaranteed result. Preventing that is the premise behind prohibiting all female genital cutting on healthy female minors, even genital cutting that is less severe, damaging, or permanent than a typical male circumcision. The government recognizes that girls are individuals with rights that deserve to be protected. Infringing on a non-existent parental right to cut the healthy genitals of their daughters children is a legitimate state action.

(B) The least restrictive means would be for parents to understand that non-therapeutic genital cutting on healthy children is ethically and medically wrong and, thus, refrain from imposing it on their sons. Yet, religious and non-religious parents alike cut the healthy genitals of their sons. How else is the state supposed to stop it without exercising its legitimate police power?

Congressman Sherman should withdraw the Religious and Parental Rights Defense Act of 2011 immediately. He should also introduce a bill to remove the gender bias from the Anti-Female Genital Mutilation Act of 1996 to create the Anti-Genital Mutilation Act of 2011, if he’s serious about using the powers of Congress correctly to protect the rights of all American citizens.

Update: More from Congressman Sherman:

Sherman said he did not consult the text of the Federal Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation Act of 1995 in composing the bill he will put forth in Congress.

“I think people who make that analogy are so wrong that their thinking does not color my thinking,” Sherman said.

Since he’s working with a closed mind, I’ll simplify: non-therapeutic genital cutting on a non-consenting person is wrong. The extent of the damage is irrelevant. The reason cited is irrelevant. The gender of the victim is irrelevant. Non-therapeutic genital cutting on a non-consenting individual is wrong.

¹ I want to be proved wrong on this, but Sherman’s statement is further evidence of my prediction that ceding power to the government on health care would lead to arguments that child circumcision provided fiscal benefits to the nation. It wouldn’t change the ethical violation involved, but Congressman Sherman doesn’t provide a cost-benefit analysis for his claim. Only in Congress can spending money always mean saving money.

Teaching Compliance, One Traveler At A Time

On Thursday I experienced the new TSA screening procedures for the first time. The security line I went through had both a metal detector and a backscatter X-ray scanner. (Two lines fed to these machines.) A TSA employee “randomly” directed citizens to one of the machines. My informal count suggested that approximately two-thirds of the lines were directed to the backscatter X-ray scanner. The randomness seemed to be more about time. Observationally, as the line for the backscatter filled, overflow was directed to the metal detector.

I got the backscatter X-ray machine. I opted out. After confirming that I wished to opt out, the TSA employee directed me to the individual screening area. As I stood on the mat, I told him that I wanted to let him know upfront that I would cooperate with his search but did not consent to having my genitals touched, and that if he touched my genitals, I would file a complaint. He stared at me dumbly for a moment before going to get his supervisor.

I repeated to the supervisor what I’d told the first agent. I told him I’ve had skin cancer and do not wish to be exposed to more radiation than necessary. That’s true, though incomplete. I’d rant about the 4th Amendment, but that wouldn’t be any more productive than the implication of my statements already.

He seemed mildly surprised but remained focused. He asked me to clarify, telling me what they would be doing. After I repeated my position, he asked if I was refusing to be screened. I told him that, as I said before, I would cooperate but do not consent to having my genitals touched and would file a complaint if anyone did so. I also stated that I understood he did not set the policy.

The supervisor opted to perform the pat-down. He asked if I’d like to have the screening performed in private. I declined because I wanted everyone to see my objection. Once underway, he informed me of each step he was going to take before he proceeded. He ran his hands over my clothing but did not press into my body. When he finished the pat-down, he asked if I wished to file a complaint. I declined because, as I told him, he behaved reasonably within an unreasonable policy. He showed a level of professionalism that I have not encountered in any other encounter with TSA (c.f. August 2008).

I will engage future TSA experiences the same way, even in the inevitable likelihood that someone will be unreasonable and deny me access to my flight. I would have filed a complaint if he’d touched my genitals, regardless of his professionalism. He did not touch my genitals. I did not believe a complaint would be a useful means of protest in the context. I want more people to object, as I explained to the woman receiving a pat-down next to me. But dumping on the TSA employee wouldn’t convince him I’m right that he’s wrong to continue violating other’s rights by following unreasonable policy. Our representatives are the ones we should be blatantly and repeatedly antagonizing.

The kicker is what demonstrates the stupidity of this: to get to the individual screening area, I had to walk through the metal detector. It didn’t buzz.