Tiberius and Gaius Speaking...

Fucking rout

    The Cubs have lost their last two games by a combined score of 25-2. Zambrano is pitching like he doesn't care, and we have exactly one reliable win on this pitching staff.

    Oh yes, and our best hitter is out for two months.

Political Expediency

    Lally, a former student and unfortunate Green, has an argument saying that expediency in the name of political progress is misguided. Unfortunately, the post is a mess. Most importantly, "justice" and "morality" are left utterly undefined. Further, the example she uses verges on the incoherent:

The Green Party of the United States does not take corporate donations because (I think) they believe in the cleanliness and fairness of political discourse, which includes keeping political decision-making free of private interest. If, in order to institute this goal of massive campaign finance reform the Green Party were to accept large corporate donations to get elected, they could no longer be in the position to adequately institute campaign finance reform. If they attemped to do so, corporate donations would flow to opposition parties, the Green Party could garner no more corporate support, and would never be elected again. This is no more politically expedient than not having accepted donations in the first place."

    Why is this incoherent? Because the reason Lally gives for their lack of expediency is one of expedience. That is, the political goals of the Green Party simply would not be achieved by adopting a more conciliatory stance on campaign contributions. Doesn't this imply that if, as a matter of fact, Green acceptance of corporate campaign contributions would result in campaign finance reform in the long run, then the Greens should do it? So all Lally's argument amounts to is that sometimes it is inexpedient to act in ways that appear prima facie expedient. This is no argument against being expedient, rather it is a demand to think more carefully about what precisely the expedient thing to do is.

    And the claim itself seems quite problematic, even taken at face value. We should never do something that first order morality forbids to achieve other goals? I am a pretty committed Kantian and I think this claim is pretty extreme. It seems unremarkable to me that some first order moral proscriptions (Don't kill people) can be washed out by the rights of others (to prevent a million people from being killed), provided that this can be explained and spelled out in a non ad hoc way.

    Even as an empirical claim, it seems implausible to a) assert that the Greens' electoral irrelevance is due to their lack of corporate financing (Dean didn't have any, and personal contributions amount to millions of dollars each cycle) and b) assert that that Greens' would be unable to enact significant reforms if they started doing campaign financing like the Dems (or something like what Dean did with the Internet). It seems to me that the predominance of the Republican Party and a "first past the goal" system are what block meaningful progress in terms of justice and Green electoral triviality, respectively.  Unfortunately, the biggest influence the Greens have on the American electoral system is that they contribute to the hegemony of the Republican Party. If all you do is aid the enemy, then you might want to rethink your strategy.

Suck it Nagel!

    The day will soon come in which we know what it is like to be a bat.

Political Authenticity

    The obsession with beng a "straight-talker" as somehow being more fundamentally honest has always struck me as a bit daft. One of the more interesting parts of Garry Wills' masterful work Lincoln at Gettysburg is his discussion of "plain-spokeness" and "common-man-ness" as being effects that result from conscious effort. Lincoln has to consciously work at being common and plain-spoken.

Authenticity is never "authentic" in the sense that it simply arises. But Lincoln was plain-spoken for non-trivial reasons. He genuinely believed that it was, rhetorically, the best way to express the complex and profound ideas he had about the nature of American democracy. Why he thought this is an interesting historical question that I don't want to get in to right now.

    But George Allen, Bush, and McCain don't seem to have any kind of commitment like that. Plain-spokeness was a way to convey complex ideas to Lincoln and Bryant(that's what I get for not proof-reading). It was a method of persuasion. Current Republicans don't see it that way. To them, this "authenticity" is an end in and of itself, a way to of creating a public persona that has no content outside the "straight-talker" itself. It is completely irrelevant whether the person actually is honest or has any ideas to convey. It is "authenticity" in lieu of thinking things through, rather than authenticity in its service. 

   

Just how bad is the Democratic Party

        I wrote this reply in a discussion about whether the Democratic Party is really fascist too:

As someone who (barely I suppose) considers himself to be a
member of the Democratic Party, I must disagree somewhat. 

It isn't that I don't think that the Dems have acted pretty
shamefully in the last 5 years, though I think that they have
been surprisingly effective for about the last year beginning
with the Social Security debate. 

But I think there is a difference between being stupid, naive,
poorly organized, incompetent, or cowardly and being
fascistic. The Democrats have certainly been the former, but I
don't think that, generally, (though, Lieberman certainly
seems to fit the bill as an individual) they been the latter,
at least not without stretching the term to such Sontagian
proportions such that it loses all meaning. 

I don't want to bore with specifics, but I do have an example
from German history (well, European history). The SDP was
probably the best organized and largest social democratic
party in Europe, but in 1914 (and in 1915, 1916, 1917, and
1918) the SDP voted overwhelmingly for war funding, as did the
Labour Party in Britain and the Jean Jaures-less Socialists in
France. 

Was that a bad decision? Certainly yes (although I am not
totally convinced that the British were obligated to stand by
and allow the rape of Belgium, but set that aside). Was it a
betrayal of socialist principles? Quite so. But I think,
again, there is a difference between being truly imperialistic
war-mongerers (like Wilhelm II or the War Party in Austria)
and those who made a terrible mistake (that might not have
changed anything anyway) or even a set of terrible mistakes.

And I think this is mostly true of the Democratic Party. If Al Gore had been President, we would not have gone to Iraq or had an egregious PATRIOT Act. There is a difference between being incompetent and cowardly one one hand, and being genuinely fascistic on the other.

Celebrity Sighting

    I just ate Steak and Shake with Roger Ebert and Marni Nixon (the woman to did the song dubbing for Audrey Hepburn and others in a variety of famous musicals. including My Fair Lady).

Why he really is a feminist...

    I ran across this interesting post by Chris Clarke that I recommend that everyone read about a male "feminist ally" who asserts that he is not a feminist because only women can be feminists. With all due respect to a person who has certainly done for progressive causes than I have (sigh, who hasn't?), I really can't get on board with this:

"Feminism is the movement to free women from sexism, to free them from the oppression — whether murder, mutilation, or mere slight statistical lack of employment opportunity — visited on them by men… and by other women. I am a sympathizer. I am a fellow traveler. At my best, I am an ally. But I am a member of the class against which feminism is aimed. I can do my best to be a traitor to that class. More and more men do...
                I read Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua’s This Bridge Called My Back the year it was published, and found it invaluable in understanding a part of American culture I had until then missed. Were I to call myself a Chicana as a result of my poltical support, I would be laughed out of the planning meeting. I have been marching in Pride Parades for a quarter century, and had mainly gay friends in college for a decade before that. Even with broadening definition of the term, calling myself a “Queer activist” would almost certainly raise eyebrows. I cut my political eyeteeth working on the defense of the Attica prison riot defendants. That does not make me a Black Power activist."

    I must admit that I don't understand these claims. If I am an American that parachutes into France to help the French fight the Nazis, am I not a member of the French Resistance? Furthermore, if I am a German who decides to fight alongside the French, do I not get to say that I am part of the Resistance?

    I think the real problem is the line I put in bold. To argue that feminism is targeted against men seems to be wrong-headed. Feminism is targeted against the structures of discrimination against women, not a class of people that involve some members who aren't part or supporters of those structures.   

P.S. I don't think it is at all strange that we might not want to call him Black Power or Chicana, since those seem to imply a certain kind of peer group membership (or club membership) in way that queer activist or feminist do not. I have no problem with calling Chris the latter two but not the former.

The Ten Best Animated Films of all Time

    I just felt like doing a somewhat pointless list (full-length features):

1. The Lion King (that's right, you don't like it? Fuck you)
2. Robin Hood
3. Akira
4. Finding Nemo
5. Dumbo
6. Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit
7. Toy Story 2
8. Transformers: the Movie
9. South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut
10. An American Tail

(Honorable Mentions: Titan AE, Bambi, Charlotte's Web, The Secret of N.I.M.H)

I would also like to note that Who Framed Roger Rabbit? would be at the top of the list (number 2), but I couldn't decide whether to include it on the list.

One thinks it must be self-parody...

   

William Shatner does Rocketman (hat tip to Lally).

P.S. Stewie Griffin's take.

Atheist whackjobs? Melinda, you so crazy!

    This has been making the blogosphere rounds for a couple days now, but I thought I would throw my comments into the mix. Much that needs to be said has already been said by Pharyngula in his evisceration of the post. Melinda Barton lays down a series of "whackjob claims" that "secular extremists" (which are apparently defined as...all secularists who are extremists, good job!) believe.

    Here is Claim One:

"Atheism is based on evidence and reason and is philosophically provable or proven. Atheism is a matter of thought not belief. In other words, atheism is true; religion is false."

To which she says,

"Both atheism and theism contain elements of rational thought and reason. When an adherent of either position examines what the existence or nonexistence of a supreme being means for humanity and how we structure our lives and moral/ethical systems, thought is involved. Ultimately, however, the supernatural's existence or nonexistence cannot be supported by evidence or proven by reason. Both are a matter of faith and therefore belief. In the absense of verifiability, neither can claim to be absolute truth. Placing a burden of proof on either "side" in the matter would be futile as neither could rise to the challenge. Tolerance for differences of belief would be far preferable."

I quite frankly don't understand this reply. As Myers points out, the quotation of the atheist only claims that we possess no credible evidence for the theistic hypothesis. That is not an assertion of absolute truth" or provability" whatever those terms might mean.

    But the burden of proof seems like it must lie with the theists. I simply don't understand how it could be otherwise. Theists are asserting the existence of an entity that makes some causal difference in the world (at the very least, they suggest that the world would not exist without Her). They are asserting the truth of some particular statement about how the world is.

    However, even if we left the burden of proof neutral, it seems like the theists still lose out. First, it seems that many conceptions of the "omni" traits are mutually exclusive or internally incoherent. If so, then we can absolutely set them side. They have been "proven" to be false. Second, there appears to be evidential arguments that God doesn't exist. The problem of evil is just one such argument. The hiddeness of God seems to be yet another one.

    So to conclude: theists have the burden of proof and they fail to meet it, but even if they didn't we would still have decisive reason to believe that God did not exist. However, short of demonstrating the incoherency of all possible conceptions of God, this demonstration will be short of an absolute proof. But I can't absolutely prove that there are no invisible unicorns in my pants, but I think it is pretty reasonable for me to believe there aren't any there.

    

Claim Two will be another post. Let's turn to Claim Three: All religion is oppressive. She says:

"This one flies in the face of the evidence. Yes, it's very easy to show many instances of oppression stemming from religion. However, it is also easy to show many instances in which political and social progress were spearheaded by religious individuals based on the teachings of their particular faiths. Study the abolitionist movement or the civil rights movement and you will be hard pressed not to encounter the role of religion in these struggles for liberation."

 

If you look at those same movements, you will generally find that atheists got on the bus first, but never mind. Theists like to move from the claim "Some good people are religious" to "Good religious people are good because of their religion." But why should we accept this move? If there are many bad people who are also religious, why should we accept religion as the variable that makes people truly good or truly bad? And if we do not accept it, and there are good reasons to think that religion is generally oppressive (since most religions demand some kind of submission to the God figure), then how are the examples if MLK or Gandhi evidence against that claim?

Claim Four is just stupid. Besides, her argument against it is that the Torah shows that humanity is irredeemably evil. Whatever...

Claim Five is "All religious people want to force you or convince you or coerce you to believe as they do." Of course, I don't know anyone who has said that all religious people are out get them. And unsurprisingly, good old Barton can't actually provide an example of people saying anything of the kind. That strikes me as check and mate for her position, but meh. I have two additions to Myers comments.

    First, "good" religious people seem singularly unconcerned with protecting the rights of atheists. So, in that sense, they are often complicit in the activity of the evangelicals. Genuinely liberal and progressive secular who are also really religious are fairly rare in my experience. Most true liberals who attend church don't take religion all that seriously.

    Second, I always have to wonder about religious Christians who a) think I am going to hell if I don't believe what they believe and b) are okay with that. I can understand rejecting a) and still being religious, but I have difficulty understanding anyone who believes both a) but doesn't do to save me from an eternity of suffering.

    And she finishes up with this gem:

"While most who believe in the separation of church and state hold that only government support of religion in the public sphere should be forbidden, the atheist extremist may take it one step further to forbid the private display of religious symbols in public places. Remember the laws forbidding the wearing of yarmulkes, crosses, hijabs, and the like in France."

I have never met an atheist who has said that people shouldn't be allowed to wear religious paraphernalia in public. Ever. And further, the French law doesn't forbid anything like that. It does forbid excessive displays of religiosity in public schools. While I don't really agree with the law, I can understand how a sincere belief in maintaining a secular state might lead one to adopt it. It simply isn't the law that she makes it out to be.

This is a pretty embarrassing column through and through.