Guns=Evil

This is what passes for nuance. Exhibit A: Today's Boston Globe sports one of the most ridiculous editorials I've ever seen: "A Bulletproof Bottom Line".

Apparently in the minds of the Globe editors, allowing trained citizens to carry concealed weapons onto the "pristine" acres of national parks constitutes not only a transformation of "these peaceful places" into war zones, but also amounts to the NRA "gun[ning] down democracy."

There's not a whit of truth to the argument.

In the first place, the parks aren't "pristine". They have ranger stations and trails running through them, and millions of people routinely visit. If they were really pristine, nobody would know what they looked like.

Second, they're hardly the definition of "peaceful". Not only are they the sites where the struggle of life against death races furiously without timeouts or ceasefires (just what do you think wolves, bears, and coyotes do with the antelope? Play polo?), but they are also favorite places for (*ahem*) "farmers" to carry their weapons around.

Third, the NRA is a legitimate "interest group," which may be likened to any of the Left's favorites--the NAACP or the ACLU--and which uses "collective bargaining" (sound familiar? Labor Unions are all over that one) with the government for policy ends. The NRA, far from the evil anti-American institution it is made to seem, speaks for thousands upon thousands of law-abiding and "peaceful" gun owners throughout the United States. In the give-and-take of policy, then, it constitutes one of the elements of democracy itself.

But get a load of this little gem:

Allowing such weapons in national parks was one of the most thoughtless of President Bush's outgoing midnight rules, which took effect in January. Happily, US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly last week issued a preliminary injunction, saying the rule was conjured up in an "astoundingly flawed process." Responding to a suit by gun-control and park advocates, the judge said the Bush administration made no effort to assess possible environmental impacts of people packing heat in these peaceful places. [emphasis added]

You've got to be kidding me. Environmental impacts of people carrying concealed weapons?!? Okay, this is just plain silly. People carrying concealed weapons have permits that can be revoked if they abuse the privileges afforded by them. An environmental concern would be appropriate if Dubya had ordered that national parks become target ranges (which are known for their large quantities of lead and brass added to the soil content), but he didn't do that. Concealed weapons cause no more environmental damage than the presence of people in parks causes already. In fact, it might have a net-positive effect, making national parks a place where thugs, rapists and murderers will have to be on notice, even out in the middle of a "pristine" wilderness.

I have an idea: why don't we try to make American liberties "pristine". It would be a nice change.

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The Armed Citizen

A Miami, Florida Burger King hosted one of the most recent displays of patriotic commitment to law and order--and good marksmanship.

Police said a man wearing a ski mask walked into the store at Biscayne Boulevard and 54th Street and demanded money from a clerk.

A customer, who has a concealed weapons permit, pulled a gun, said Officer Jeff Giordano, a Miami police spokesman.

The customer and robber exchanged fire.

The robber was shot dead at the scene.

The customer, who had several gunshot wounds, was taken to Ryder Trauma Center in serious but stable condition, said Lt. Ignatius Carroll, a Miami Fire Rescue spokesman.

there are several things to note about this incident: The customer who was packing evidently is a better shot than the robber--that comes with training had on the range (required for concealed-carry permits); the customer was apparently reluctant to pull the trigger and was rewarded for his lenience with a couple non-lethal wounds.

But the thing that really gets my attention is that the man drew a gun to defend a fast-food chain from robbery. Obviously he made some determination of the risk to human life, as well, but the standard procedure for a robbery is to hand over the cash and hope the police catch the robber later.

How many people do you know who would mutter under their breath about how Burger King somehow deserved to be robbed? I know several, and it's a crying shame. The man with the concealed weapon is just the sort of man who saves us from madmen. And with AIG executives walking the plank these days, we could use a few more heroes.

Stop the Madness Already!

President Obama would do well to sit at the feet of that famous British democrat, G.K. Chesterton. I'm thinking now of that little gem he penned in his (very theologically oriented) Orthodoxy:

It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own.

This is easily applied to politics (and I happen to think Chesterton intended it that way) if one remembers that being 'a heretic' means simply being wrong. There are thousands of ways to make mistakes, to err, to blunder, even to lose one's mind (which is the result of habitual error more often than we would like to admit).

So back to my point: Obama needs to stop the madness--Congress is careening at the head of a mob, and it needs to be checked. And as the Wall Street Journal notes today, there's something in it for the President too: mobs are notoriously finicky, picking their victims seemingly at random, devouring even their friends.

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"I'm Serious"

That's what Joe Biden assures us now:

You think I’m kidding? This is the only part the president was right about: Don’t mess with Joe, because I mean it. I’m serious, guys. I’m serious. I’m absolutely serious.

Sure you are.

You know, my niece has a habit of looking up at whoever she's trying to convince that her latest whim must be satisfied immediately and saying, "I'm serious! I'm really, REALLY serious!" And you know what always happens to me when she says that? I get a fit of the giggles which I invariably try (unsuccessfully) to suppress.

Dear Mr. Vice President: if you come to a point where you have to say that you're being serious, then you've already lost the battle. Nobody is taking you seriously, and there's not a thing you can do about it. The joke's on you.

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In Praise of Humor

The expansive deserts of seriousness make the occasional oasis of humor blessed. But humor has more than just refreshing qualities. My favorite benefit is its capacity to take the edge off hubris.

After all, what can be more ridiculous than a politician who always takes himself seriously? Chesterton said that the greatest merit of the English aristocracy was that nobody could take it seriously.

And I say that the greatest merit of Obama's teleprompter is that it has its own blog.

Let the good times begin.

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A Quotation for the Ages

Every now and then, someone will say something profound without really trying. Take Don Hancock, for instance:

"People are capable of creating problems we don't know how to solve."

Now Hancock was talking about nuclear waste, which is famously tricky to store safely for the tens of thousands of years required to render the hot stuff harmless to living organisms. (For more on that note, check out this article from Wired.) But he's right. He also condenses into a short and memorable line one of the points I was trying to make in the last post.

We're accustomed to seeing only good in our interesting discoveries and scientific breakthroughs--and there is a good deal of good in them, to be sure. But we should remember that our thirst for knowledge and the power it brings with it has always brought us trouble.

The medieval Scholastics (mis)understood the Fall of man to be a consequence of mere curiosity; that distorted view has fortunately been replaced by a much more reasonable recognition that pride was at the root of the dawn of evil.

It is tempting to see Science as mere curiosity, but the tendency to see Science as the be-all end-all force for good, never to be questioned or gainsaid recapitulates the edenic delusion that we can handle everything that is knowable and that all knowledge is good.

But that has never really been true.

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The Bomb and Stem Cells

Science is the greatest force for good in the world. In fact, it only ever produces good things. If we want to make the world a better place, we will free Science from its fetters and watch our problems melt away.

Alright, I don't believe that. But it seems that a lot of people do. Well, maybe that's not right. If you asked them if they believed it, they'd probably tell you "No, of course not," but the way people talk about Stem Cell research gives me pause.

Science primarily produces knowledge, and knowledge isn't the sort of thing you can really destroy once it has been created. This is an inconvenient reality in the military world, which is why we're so keen to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons, though we have been remarkably unsuccessful on that score. The nuclear "club" now includes an increasingly unstable Pakistan and a frighteningly nutty North Korea Its newest aspiring member is a malicious Iran. American and European efforts have been unavailing, and Russia has done nothing but encourage the nuclearization of the Islamic state. Acquiring the Bomb seems inevitable--that is, if Israel doesn't do something drastic soon.

The peace-seeking Left of American politics has been forced to face the reality that the nuclear cat is out of the bag; we just can't turn the clock back to a time when nobody had nukes.

Do we want to find ourselves in a similar position on the stem-cell issue? Will we wind up in a similar situation? I don't know. But I'm convinced that some doors should be closed to science. Deciding precisely which doors to close is of course the role of ethics. And ethics is precisely the sort of thing that science can say absolutely nothing about. Science can tell us a good bit about what is, but it can't say a word about what ought to be. That's why I find the following statement from Time so troubling:

But Monday's Executive Order is less about pitting the promise of one type of stem cell against another's and more about re-establishing the authority of science, of ensuring that any and every potentially useful avenue of research will be pursued to its end. [emphasis added]

What authority? Science can tell us merely whether embryonic stem-cell technologies will perform the functions we hope they will perform. It cannot say with authority whether such technologies will provide benefits that outweight the costs (moral and otherwise) of developing them.

But let's dispense with the lie Time repeats: President Bush's executive order did not ban stem cell research, embryonic or otherwise. It prevented the use of federal money to create human embryos for stem-cell research purposes. That's all. It didn't "ban" any research, it didn't stop research on existing embryonic stem cell lines, even. Here, read Executive Order 13435 and see what it is that Obama reversed two days ago.

The business of ethics and responsibility is to decide which lines of research should be pursued. This is precisely what George W. Bush did in his executive order, but he restricted his order to those things over which he had control--namely the discretionary expenditure of federal funds (that's what executives are responsible for doing).

Why do I carp about this, now that there's nothing I can do about it, really? Because ignorance would appear to be the reigning problem in America on the subject. Yuval Levin notes that polling on the subject is really tricky because people don't really know what they're being asked. As evidence, he argues:

Consider these two questions from our poll, asked of the very same people just moments apart:

The social, economic and personal costs of the diseases that embryonic stem cells have the potential to treat are greater than the costs associated with the destruction of embryos.

54% TOTAL AGREE
39% TOTAL DISAGREE

And

An embryo is a developing human life, therefore it should not be destroyed for scientific or research purposes.

62% TOTAL AGREE
33% TOTAL DISAGREE

I'd say there's a significant problem here, and it has to do with the knowledge of the respondents. In the end, it isn't just the president's job to be responsible and ethical when it comes to science. It's the job of scientists, scientific foundations, science ethicists, and indeed the rest of us who stand to benefit from ethical science.

President Obama has done an irresponsible and popular thing. (Note that it's always easier to be irresponsible when that happens also to be popular.) But this issue--the ethical question of benefitting from the destruction of human embryos created specifically for the purpose of harvesting their pluripotent stem-cells--is not just on the president's desk. It's on everyone's desk. We should educate and teach and preach and argue morality and responsibility with respect to human life.

That's the purpose of this posting, and it's why I hope the public discussion of bioethics and embryonic stem-cells continues in the wake of the order Obama has issued. The struggle for human life will never be finally won; it is a struggle that every generation must take up.

UPDATE: Kathleen Parker has a piece up about what works and what doesn't. It's worth a read.

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...and they ate each other up...

There's been a furor over Rush Limbaugh lately, and I've tried to avoid pouring gasoline on the fire here. Now that it's gone from furious to astoundingly stupid, I figure I might as well engage in a little head-shaking. The whole thing strikes me as remarkably similar to the situation in Wanda Gag's children's story Millions of Cats.

Fraternal debates are one thing, but attempts to claw out the eyes of someone on your own team is suicidal. The people who love conservatives for going after Limbaugh don't have conservative ends in mind--they're just spoiling for an opportunity to bury conservative thinking as a viable political force. Goldberg warns conservatives like David Frum who've decided that now is the time to foam at the mouth and bite Rush in the back: "If you squint real hard and look over your shoulder, you can see the shark swirling in the water behind you." Make no mistake, there's more than one shark in that wake.

Recall that the denoument of Cats has the smallest, quietest, humblest, most compliant and cutest little kitten was the lone survivor of the dispute over which kitty is the prettiest--and the colossal carnage (which Gag mercifully leaves to the imagination) that follows shortly thereafter. The point I'm making is that conservatives don't need a small, quiet, humble, compliant, cute conservative to be the winner of their fraternal debates, because they're not angling to be anybody's household pet. We need all of the conservatives we can get, and we need them to argue (yes, even among themselves) both principle and policy for the good of America as a whole.

So take a deep breath and think constructively, people.

UPDATE:
Rush has spent part of the second hour of his show already quoting from the Federalist Papers on the subject of checks and balances. His argument (from Federalist 63, concerning the Senate) is that there are sometimes demagogues or popular political figures who are able to stir popular passion toward bad policy ends. It's the Senate's job (in part) to be skeptical and indeed to stop such a politician, indeed, to make sure he fails. Here's one portion that he quoted (find the rest of the text here):

As the cool and deliberate sense of the community ought, in all governments, and actually will, in all free governments, ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers; so there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn. In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career, and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind? What bitter anguish would not the people of Athens have often escaped if their government had contained so provident a safeguard against the tyranny of their own passions? Popular liberty might then have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens the hemlock on one day and statues on the next. [emphasis added]

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Imagine a World...

...where the Government does everything.

I mean, wouldn't that be great? Ice cream for everybody whenever they want! Nobody has to mow the lawn any more! And don't even get me started about healthcare. What's the word I want? Oh, yeah: Paradise! (Throw in a couple of virgins and we might even get some Islamic terrorists on board our little gravy train...)

But wait. What is that nagging doubt in the back of my mind? Hmm. Seems Connecticut would like to impose its fiscal-responsibility prudery on the Catholic Church. (Here's a link to the text of the bill.) Now I don't condone embezzling funds (the cloud under which this bill is being considered), but it seems the government never saw a problem it wouldn't like to take a crack at solving with coercive means. But since when was government so wonderfully good at making sure funds don't get misappropriated? I'd say it's ironic at the least.

But wait, there's more. Our Dear Leader--ahem, President--just signed an executive order reversing Bush's ban on stem-cell research. (Here's the text.) No, that's not right. Let me try again: President Obama signed an executive order reversing Bush's ban on embryonic stem-cell research. Nope, still not right. Once more: the President signed an executive order reversing Bush's ban on the use of Federal tax dollars to fund embryonic stem-cell research. I especially like this statement:

"We view what happened with stem cell research in the last administration as one manifestation of failure to think carefully about how federal support of science and the use of scientific advice occurs," Varmus said. "This is consistent with the president's determination to use sound scientific practice, responsible practice of science and evidence, instead of dogma in developing federal policy."

But 'thinking carefully' about supporting science is precisely what the last administration did (deciding in a cautious way not to support a particular kind of research because of ethical concerns), and what the new one is determined not to do (by blindly supporting any and all research that someone thinks is "promising").

And now what passes for "responsible" governance with President Obama is a statement about cloning:

"We cannot ever tolerate misuse or abuse. And we will ensure that our government never opens the door to the use of cloning for human reproduction," Obama said. "It is dangerous, profoundly wrong, and has no place in our society, or any society."

What, I wonder, would Obama see cloning as being useful for? Is this a verbal slip, or does he really mean to prevent it only in cases of human reproduction and not in, say, cases of growing organs for transplant? Hmm?

Of course there are several stories here, not least is the clear ascendancy of government "pragmatism" over against "dogma" and in place of independent institutions' self-governance, which is infuriating on its own. But add to that the implication in both stories that unless the government is doing something (managing church governance or funding an up-and-coming research field), it doesn't count, it isn't being done. But there are so many other ways to do things--the government isn't the only agent capable of action in the world! So much for the quintessentially American "I can do it myself" attitude!

Can't we stand on our own two feet? Can't we blow our noses without government assistance? The last time I heard, the government still needed us to go to work every day so it would have money to spend for us. Sometimes that makes sense, but at a certain point, it gets downright insulting. Am I not free?

So just keep imagining that paradise where the government does everything for you. A generation ago we knew it by the name of Communism. So just keep imagining a world where the government does everything for you...but just remember that you'll be in fetters of iron.

UPDATE:
At least one Connecticut state senator is speaking boldly about bill 1098. Senator McLachlan's view is that "The real purpose of this bill is payback to the bishops and pastors of the Roman Catholic Church in Connecticut for opposing gay marriage." Now that's a mouthful.

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More Dumb Diplomacy

Well, I can't say the Obama Administration is really setting about the business of making everybody like us again. I mean, doesn't this anonymous official's answer regarding the "special relationship" between the US and Britain sound just *ahem* a tad arrogant?

"There's nothing special about Britain. You're just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment."

No, it can't be. This isn't the Bush White House any more. Or so we've heard about a thousand times already.

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Dumb Diplomacy

Disappointments abound. Instead of a reset, we send an 'overcharged' button to the Russians.

As for those DVDs Obama gave to Prime Minister Brown: I'd be insulted if he gave them to me.

Lackluster doesn't even begin to describe this administration's performance so far.

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See, I Told You Sos as far as the eye can see...

Rush Limbaugh was prominent in the chorus of right-wing-nutjobs who said that Barack Obama was a partisan and a hard-left Liberal during the campaign.

And now, not even two months into the presidency of the man who promised an end to partisan bickering and a seismic shift in the way policy gets done in Washington, we find that it's really true. The president is a hard-left Liberal.

Not that I'm surprised, of course. I voted for the other guy...because voting for a hard-left Liberal is against my principles. I just remembered! Rush has said a thing or two about principles recently. I largely agree, though I wouldn't count on policy choices flowing more or less naturally from principles--it's hard work bringing principle to bear on policy, and it's easy to get sidetracked.

But that's beside the point. The point I'm making is that Rush got Obama right during the campaign. Heck, I got him right too, but I don't have a nationally syndicated radio talkshow! He was accused of cynicism and blind partisanship, along with all the rest of us because he (and we) didn't believe Obama's centrist talk. Those who had the audacity to open their minds and hope that he was really a different kind of politician included prominent conservative intellectuals who should have known better.

Christopher Buckley was delighted that our next President would be a talented writer (like him), and David Brooks crowed that what Obama said about pulling together to solve the country's problems was essentially what he'd been hoping for years.

But reality has a way of clubbing even the most hopeful over the head. Buckley indicates surprise and consternation at the spending proclivities of Obama, presented in the budget. Brooks is astonished and disappointed that Obama seems intent on pitting the different classes of Americans against each other. Centrists all over the place are beginning to squirm ever so slightly, though. It seems they really don't want to see a hard-left Liberal agenda go into the national policy machine.

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright (you remember him, right? He wishes God's damnation upon the country of his citizenship and believes, among other things, that America created the AIDS virus to kill Africans) is even expressing disappointment. "He's like any other president. He's a politician and he's got to do what politicians do."

That's funny. I thought we were cynics for refusing to hope that he was so much more than a politician. I'm not laughing; being right is not much of a triumph at this point, and "I told you so," just doesn't have its usual savor, somehow.

There's another story in here, and we'd do well to reflect on it a bit. Intellectuals are human, and they have all of the same afflictions of the rest of us mere mortals. They sometimes believe things that aren't true, they sometimes honestly want things that are bad--but they also have real talents. The point is that smart people can be blinded by ideology as well as anybody else. Being smart tends to make admitting error difficult, though, as a reading of Buckley or Brooks shows very clearly. Both stop well short of announcing "I was wrong!" because, I suspect, neither really believes that he is (yet). Here is Buckley:

He tells us that all this [the $3.6 trillion budget] is going to work because the economy is going to be growing by 3.2 percent a year from now. Do you believe that? Would you take out a loan based on that? And in the three years following, he predicts that our economy will grow by 4 percent a year.
This is nothing if not audacious hope. If he’s right, then looking back, March 2009 will be the dawn of the Age of Stimulation, or whatever elegant phrase Niall Ferguson comes up with. If he turns out to be wrong, then it will look very different, the entrance ramp to the Road to Serfdom, perhaps, and he will reap the whirlwind that follows, along with the rest of us.

Brooks is a little more up-front about it, admitting that Obama is not who he thought he was. But still, there's this:

Moderates now find themselves betwixt and between. On the left, there is a president who appears to be, as Crook says, “a conviction politician, a bold progressive liberal.” On the right, there are the Rush Limbaugh brigades. The only thing more scary than Obama’s experiment is the thought that it might fail and the political power will swing over to a Republican Party that is currently unfit to wield it.

Brooks adds a "fair" representation of the Administration's response to his scathing centrists's critique yesterday, and finishes in this way:
...the White House made a case that was sophisticated and fact-based. These people know how to lead a discussion and set a tone of friendly cooperation. I’m more optimistic that if Senate moderates can get their act together and come up with their own proactive plan, they can help shape a budget that allays their anxieties while meeting the president’s goals.

Pardon me if I'm not impressed by the gyrations Brooks is going through. Sometimes it's better to have a full-blown confession instead of create an ever-expanding system to account for all the little things that don't match up. It didn't work for Ptolemy's model of the Solar System, and it won't work now.

Is it too much to ask that the smart guys apply Occam's famous "Razor"? Or just some plain old principles?

UPDATE: You can add a bunch of energy executives to the list of disappointed and/or disillusioned folks. It seems Cap-and-Trade is going to hurt, after all.

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