Nuclear Taboo?

In today's print Wall Street Journal, Thomas Schelling writes about the so-called nuclear taboo, the strong aversion to the use of nuclear weapons that has built up since Nagasaki. He considers this taboo to be a good thing, and shares it himself, asking: "Can we make it through another half dozen decades [without a nuclear war]?" On the face of it, one must wonder why a nuclear war would be so much worse than, say, a war conducted with machetes as in Rwanda; more on this later.

Schelling makes an odd argument in the last segment of his piece, regarding terrorist groups who might soon possess nukes:

[A nuclear program] will require at least six, probably more, highly qualified scientists and numerous machinists and technologists, working in seclusion… with nothing much to talk about except what the "bomb" might be used for, and by whom. They are likely to feel justified to have some claim in deciding the use of the nuclear device [!!!]…. They will discover, over weeks of arguing that the most effective use of the bomb, from a terrorist perspective, will be for influence…. Threatening to use it against military targets, and keeping it intact if the threat is succcessful, may appeal to [terrorists] more than expending it in a destructive act.

Schelling has a remarkably egalitarian image of terrorist decisionmaking, in which scientists may hold discourse with murderers from a position of influence. Additionally, he wildly misunderstands the mindset of the Islamic terrorist; they want power, not influence. Al-Qa'ida had a great deal of influence in Saudi Arabia, but attempted to overthrow the monarchy anyway. Now, they are being ruthlessly stamped out. Additionally, nothing excites a terrorist more than "destructive acts," as is clearly shown by their penchant for suicide attacks.

We must put Schelling's piece in perspective. The Bush Administration has long been muttering about the use of nuclear weapons against Iran's nuclear program, should it be necessary. Schelling, who is horrified by the thought of nuclear weapons used under any circumstances, is trying to turn aside such an approach, by arguing that it's not really so bad if the mullas get nukes anyway. Schelling specifically referred to Iran earlier in the piece, making essentially the same arguments as above.

What is the nuclear taboo based on? What special horror does nuclear weapons possess, that not even terrorists would use them? As I see it, the capabilities of a nuclear bomb are the following:

They kill many people. This, by itself, would not be special grounds for the visceral hatred many people have for nukes; the United States killed far more people in Japan through conventional means than at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, yet they are nearly a footnote in the eyes of the antinuclear brigade. Furthermore, in my lifetime there have been several genocides that have taken place with near-silence from the great powers, while nuclear tests in India and Pakistan harming no one momentarily turned both countries into pariah-states. At any rate, terrorists want nuclear weapons precisely because they kill people, a point which should be obvious.

They kill many people with a disproportionally small effort. Once you have invested the effort to create nukes in the first place, they can be deployed quite easily. This would, theoretically, make their use more attractive. A variant of the same argument is used against the private possession of firearms; for some reason, killing people with a knife is more acceptable, in a sense, than killing them with a gun. Similarly, killing people with tanks and infantrymen is somehow more acceptable than with nukes. Of course, the idea that one can "earn" the right to kill someone simply by expending more effort in the process is absurd. And again, terrorists want nukes precisely because of their ease of use.

They emit radiation. Again, terrorists would desire such an effect, to inflict lasting consequences on their enemies. And for the rest of us, the development of neutron bombs (called by their creator "The most moral weapon ever invented") makes this factor much less important, since such weapons do not produce persistent radiation. (Admittedly, neutron bombs have a limited shelf-life, and are thus more costly to maintain than more typical nukes that do produce radiation.)

In short, there is no reason outside of expediency why a terror group would refrain from using nuclear weapons. Indeed, having expended the vast effort necessary to create the bombs in the first place, terrorists would be under immense pressure to use them quickly and not risk their falling into the hands of an enemy power such as the United States, which would certainly be watching closely for any nuclear programs.

What about established nations? Why do we vest in nuclear weapons all the terrors of our imagination, when the truth is far more banal? With the exception of radiation effects, and the potential for a nuclear detonation to create a massive diplomatic crisis (unless we detonate against another nuclear power, in which case things could get much worse), nuclear wars are no worse than any other kind of war. Indeed, they save the lives of our own soldiers, as does any advance in technology.

I expect some country or other to employ a nuclear weapon within my lifetime. The benefits are just too great, and the drawbacks are meaningless to a country already on the brink of destruction. When considering the issue, we must not let our vision become clouded by wishful thinking of the type employed by Mr. Schelling.

Courting Disaster

Lately, the nation has witnessed a series of tremendous storms that continue to ravage the country, leveling all other activity before their gale-force winds.

In other news, we've been getting a lot of hurricanes.

Sadly, I was referring above to the present meltdown over the Harriet Miers nomination to the Supreme Court. A lot of people have had a lot of problems with her nomination, but things have gone far past tragedy and are rapidly becoming farce. Yesterday, when the Senate Judicial Committee read through her fifty-page questionnaire on issues of jurisprudence, they found it inadequate (and even "insulting" according to Senator Specter) and demanded that she do it over!

This isn't a college essay, this was a preparatory piece for becoming Supreme Court justice! This isn't supposed to be happening. How President Bush could have had the gall to nominate such a profoundly unqualified candidate to the bench is completely beyond my comprehension.

By this point, Miers has the distinction of having bipartisan opposition. It will only get worse once the confirmation hearings begin in earnest. Do us all a favor, Mr. President, and just end the misery. Next time try Judge Janice Rogers Brown.

History Appreciation

Via Instapundit comes this piece by Michael Barone that succinctly highlights many of the issues that have me worried about the fate of modern democracies:

[T]he military maintains old units so that soldiers will be motivated to match the deeds of those who came before and prove worthy to those who come after….Most Americans feel a shiver when they hear "The Star-Spangled Banner" played and reflect on the triumphs and tragedies that those serving under that flag have won and suffered over more than 200 years. You're part of something larger than yourself…

[But] elites on campuses [have begun] taking an adversary posture toward their own country. Later, with globalization, a transnational mind-set grew among corporate and professional elites. Legal elites, too: Some Supreme Court justices have taken to citing foreign law as one basis for interpreting the U.S. Constitution.

Read the whole thing.

[I have been asked to write a post summing up my experiences in Washington. It will come soon, I promise.]

The Essence of Humanity

[I'm presently getting packed for my trip back home for the holidays, where I'll finally go watch Serenity with my friends and family (woo hoo!), and put some new strings onto my violin (double woo hoo!). I never could figure out who decided to put the classical music capital of the world in a city with such vicious humidity and temperature swings; not a stringed-instrument player, that's for sure.

At any rate…]

In the future, what will define humanity? What will make it unique?

Soon, we will have the power to design our own DNA to specifications. If humanity is defined by a particular genetic legacy, when do we stop being human and become something else?

Soon, we will share the world with computer AI that would be increasingly comparable to human intelligence, and which will eventually pass us in terms of brute-force computing power. If we define humanity as meeting certain standards of intelligence, would a computer program that meets those standards be called human?

Soon, we will see tighter and tighter integration of organic and robotic components, entering into the realm of true cybernetics. People will enhance themselves with mechanical devices, perhaps replacing entire systems such as the skeleton with stronger or more efficient materials. Conversely, machines could be built around organic components. Can a human stop being a human and become a robot? Can robots ever become human? Are organic components even necessary to humanness?

Science has no answers, because science does not deal with such questions. These are questions of morality, of our understanding of humanity's place in the world. All the more reason to turn first to the Torah.

The commentators debate at length what made Adam the First different from all the creatures that preceeded him, some of whom were even manlike in form. Some say that Adam could create things; some say that Adam could name things, or communicate in general. The explanation that seems best to me, which I think was that of R' Samson Raphael Hirsch (or possibly derived from his teachings by someone else), was that Adam was the first physical being capable of prophecy. That is, Adam was a unique creation because he could transcend the physical world and reach up into the spiritual realms.

Without getting into complicated questions on the nature of the soul, I'll simply note that the experiences I have had (particularly with Tai Chi and the use of the Amidah prayer as meditation) force me to believe in a spiritual realm with which we interact. So I am willing to accept interaction with the spiritual as the definitive quality of humanness. I doubt machines could be spiritual beings; but more importantly, should a machine demonstrate transcendant spirituality, I would seriously consider whether it were not, in fact, human—or perhaps a distinct type of being on a similar level.

I am open to other suggestions, though the whole debate will remain academic for at least the next decade…

Iran Moves Closer to War Footing

The things I miss over a long Yom Tov:

Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has placed the military firmly in control of his nation's nuclear program, undercutting his government's claim that the program is intended for civilian use, according to a leading opposition group.

Leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the force created specifically to defend the 1979 Islamic revolution, now dominate Iran's Supreme National Security Council, the country's top foreign policy-making body under the constitution.

To translate: military officers have effectively taken over the government. I have seen recurring reports of military officers replacing officials in every level of government over the past few months. Analyses I have read (I don't remember where) suggest that Iran is anticipating a US invasion from the north of Iraq, along with decapitation strikes against the leadership, and is preparing accordingly.

I do not know whether we actually intend a full-scale invasion, though it seems a ham-handed way to go about things given everything else going on. But if Iran believes that we will invade, it dramatically narrows the possibilities for ending the current standoff, and not in a good way. This could be another self-fulfilling prophecy for war in a depressingly long line of them throughout history.

The Failure of Societies

It has seemed to me for a long time that Judaism is in large part a mechanism for passing on moral principles to the next generation. Having a deep understanding of the nature of the world does little good if that understanding dies with you. It is just as well that Judaism focuses so much on educating the young, for it seems that we Jews have tended to neglect such things from the dawn of our history.

Our forefather Yitzhak (Isaac) favored his elder son Eisav over Yaakov, despite the elder son's incredible disregard for spiritual principles and exaggerated preference for the physical, as for example when he sold his birthright for a bowl of "this red, red stuff." Yaakov himself learned little from the experience, playing favorites among his twelve sons and exercising no control over them. Shimon and Levi felt free to exterminate the city of Shechem against their father's wishes; Reuven, though firstborn, apparently was never taught how best to lead and repeatedly used his authority poorly.

Later on we had King David, a warrior-poet and prophet. Yet for all of his prowess in battle and rulership he was remarkably lenient with his own sons, and suffered for it. Several of his sons rose up in rebellion against him; his son Amnon raped his own half-sister. Regarding Adoniyahu, who tried to usurp the throne from his brother Shlomo (Solomon) as David lay dying, the narrative says, "His father had never in all his days saddened him, saying 'Why have you done this?' " And Adoniyahu was born after the rebel Avshalom, so it seems that David had not taken the lesson to heart.

When it came time for him to decide the succession, he promised the kingship to the son of Bathsheva, before he was actually born! That Shlomo turned out to be a good ruler was due more to Divine intervention than anything else; yet even so, he was far too wise for his own good. And again, though Shlomo had 300 wives and presumably many sons, he chose as his successor Rechavam, who was so monumentally stupid as to say to his new subjects, "My father beat you with whips; I shall beat you with scorpions!" During his rule, the Northern Kingdom split off and became a perpetual breeding-ground of idolatry.

This chronic inability to pass on wisdom and security from one generation to the next was mirrored by the greater society. The Jews passed through seemingly endless cycles of descent into idolatry and the fertility cults; and God would threaten them with destruction at the hands of their enemies, at which point there would usually be a return to the Torah. Yet there came a point when this was no longer good enough, when the rot had set in too deeply. That point came during the rule of Menashe, descendent of Hizqiyahu (Hezekiah).

Hizqiyahu is widely praised by the rabbinic tradition, who hold that he merited to be the Messiah had the time been right. He oversaw a religious revival, fighting against the encroaching religion of Assyria. Yet he retained the Assyrian methods of organization and strong central government, which were useful for a monarch; and the upper class all spoke Assyrian more often than Hebrew. Hizqiyahu's son Menashe apparently learned the wrong lesson, for when he took power he began a 55-year campaign to eradicate Judaism and set up the Assyrian cults in its place.

Here, the prophets warned that something had changed. God had decreed that Judah would be destroyed and sent into exile, and could only be swayed to mercy by a total, all-encompassing return to Judaism such as had never happened in our history. Even the reign of Yoshiyahu (Josiah), renowned for his righteousness, only delayed the inevitable for the period of his lifetime. After he died, the Babylonians invaded.

Here it gets interesting. For though Jeremiah the prophet warned against resisting the Babylonians, most of the Jews were adamant in their opposition, continuing to fight even while suffering defeat after defeat. Jeremiah knew that the society as a whole was too diseased to merit rescue, and that the fervent nationalism of the people sprung more from reflex than any real moral and ethical vitality. He was proved right after the diplomat Gedaliah was placed as administrator over Judah for the Babylonians. Nationalists in the army assassinated Gedaliah and all of those with him, and then murdered a passing caravan of pilgrims for good measure, dropping the bodies into the city well and totally filling it up.

At this, the Babylonians razed almost all of Judah and exiled most of its inhabitants. The nationalists were allowed to escape into Egypt, where they became mercenaries and sunk into the worst sorts of heresies. Such was the character of their fervor.

*********

Unless a society can consistently propogate its beliefs and principles to future generations, it will inevitably decay. There may well be an appearance of vigor, and often a prideful nationalism, yet it is ultimately built on sand. For the defenders of such a society are defending nothing deeper or more profound than the status quo, once they have lost contact with the principles around which their nation was formed in the first place.

This, perhaps, is the fatal flaw of democracy. Democracy holds no special reverence for tradition and history; such things quickly become irrelevant. Indeed, this ahistoricism is the source for much of democracy's appeal, given the sheer number of evil traditions in the world. Regardless, what must inevitably result is a society dedicated to nothing more than the needs of the moment, rather than any historical legacy or morality. Consider the overwhelming importance of the national economy in American politics, compared to the deafening silence greeting the rise in illegitimacy.

Can democracies endure? Probably. Can they endure as moral societies? I wonder.

Sobering Reading

Go read this Wall Street Journal op-ed by Charles Murray. In it, he examines the growth of what he calls the underclass, i.e. the part of the population that habitually commits crime. One key passage:

The crime rate has been dropping for 13 years. But the proportion of young men who grow up unsocialized and who, given the opportunity, commit crimes, has not.

A rough operational measure of criminality is the percentage of the population under correctional supervision. This is less sensitive to changes in correctional fashion than imprisonment rates, since people convicted of a crime get some sort of correctional supervision regardless of the political climate. When Ronald Reagan took office, 0.9% of the population was under correctional supervision. That figure has continued to rise. When crime began to fall in 1992, it stood at 1.9%. In 2003 it was 2.4%. Crime has dropped, but criminality has continued to rise.

The difference is that now, we lock up our criminals for far longer periods, preventing them from preying on the rest of us until they get out. Today there are more than 2 million prison inmates.

What does Murray mean by "unsocialized"? Later on, he draws a clear connection between the level of criminality and the rate of illegitimate birth, currently over 35% in America and 68% in the black population. He asserts that the problem is with childrn growing up without fathers, but brings little support to back up his assertion. This is too bad, because there is a lot of research out there he could have pointed to. (You can find a sampling of them cited here.)

I remember reading about one study, which unfortunately I can't find references to on Google. If memory serves, the study was looking at the reactions of young girls (about 6 years old or thereabouts). Each girl would sit opposite from a middle-aged man (part of the staff), and each would be given a bowl of ice cream—but only the girl would be given a spoon. As the girl starts eating, the man would say, "I can't eat my ice cream without a spoon." Now, either the girl could continue eating as if he had not spoken, or else she could lend him her spoon so that he can eat first (presumably demonstrating greater empathy and decency).

The researchers found that girls with active fathers overwhelmingly offered the man their spoons, while girls without active fathers overwhelmingly ignored him.

What will our staggering illegitimacy rate mean for us in ten years, or twenty? Part of what makes a democracy work is that citizens agree to a certain set of norms; otherwise, people simply try to abuse the system and the whole edifice breaks down. Is that what we have in store for us?

Educational Feudalism

I apologize for the sparse posting of late, as I do have to do school research every once in a while. (Shocking, but true…) Most recently I have been researching the general issue of school choice, focusing in on vouchers, charter schools, and school districting. One point in particular has me absolutely horrified.

Not having gone to public school, I had naively assumed that students could attend any public school within their school district. In fact, the districts themselves are carved up into geographical blocs for each school. Students are assigned to one particular school based on where they live; it is possible to request admission to another school, but there must be special circumstances and the status quo is very much against the student asking to transfer.

According the the numbers I have seen, only 25% of students go to "schools of choice," i.e. schools to which they were not assigned. This includes the 11% of students who attend private school; so only about 15% of public school students have chosen their school (often via magnet schools, charter schools, etc). The other 85% attend the school to which they have been geographically assigned.

Is it any surprise that people speak of "escaping" poor schools? If a school provides a poor education, most students have no choice but to suck it up and accept the destruction of their dreams for the future. This is a classic government-mandated monopoly, where the fate of our children is written in the very earth on which they live, much like that of the feudal serfs of old. To escape the educational liegelord is admittedly easier now than was escaping the real nobles of old, but not much.

This guarantees that wealthier families will be forced to move away from poorer neighborhoods in search of decent educations for their children. The emergence of gentrification on the one hand, and poverty-stricken ghettos on the other, is due in large part to this indefensible partitioning of our cities into those areas assured of decent schools, and those denied them.

To allow students to attend any public school in their district should be an obvious move. It forces the schools to compete against each other, while not reducing the resources of the district as a whole. It also makes no statement on educational or political philosophy as do voucher programs and the like, aside from an antipathy to the emergence of petty fiefdoms who lord it over our children. (If we are to have fiefdoms, they should at least be BIG fiefdoms; it's the American way…) Moreover, it reduces the desperate need for families to move out of certain neighborhoods because of the abysmal schools there.

Can anyone think of a reason why any thinking person, of any political party, would oppose ending this geographic segregation?

Transhumanism

Our ability to manipulate DNA is growing at a nearly-exponential rate. We are getting better at sequencing genomes, or mapping out new strands of DNA. One year ago, it cost about $10 million to sequence a human genome. Today it costs about $2 million. The hope is to reduce the cost to about $1000, making it feasible to sequence the genome of every hospital patient and make tailormade treatments possible. This is projected to happen within a decade at most.

At the same time, we are getting better at altering DNA. The most promising technique, using retroviruses, would ideally let doctors modify the DNA of every cell in your body with a single injection. We are years away from that stage, but moving closer all the time. Soon, we will need to decide what genetic modifications are ethical, and what modifications are monstrous.

Most people would agree that genetically-inherited conditions should be eliminated once we get the chance. Doing so would alleviate much misery in the world. But why stop there? The human body is not perfect, after all. Why not make a few tweaks that could make the world a much better place, even if we are messing with our basic makeup?

That's the basic idea behind Transhumanism, a movement built around the idea of using advancing technology to design a new and better human. This means not only genetics but nanotechnology and cybernetics as well; but genetic modification hits closer to home, being a fundamental alteration in the very stuff of our bodies. But the benefits of doing so could be tremendous.

One prominent work arising from Transhumanism is Edward Smith's Catalogue of Correctable Omnipresent Human Flaws. The first several entries all address the endless growth and replacement of human skin, nails, and hair. This wastes energy and organic material, produces dust and dead cells that are fertile soil for bacteria and microbes, and is the major cause of our need to constantly clean ourselves and our clothing. Smith proposes that these processes should be rewired so that they are controlled consciously by the frontal lobe, and can be turned on and off as needed. Doing so would save vast amounts of water now used for washing, ease the strain on our bodies, and make diseases much less common (as well as nearly eliminating problems of body odor).

What's not to like?

Of course, later entries in the Catalogue go off into more bizarre territory, such as altering the bone structure of the neck, shoulders, and fingers for greater range of motion. These and other categories represent not minor gains in efficiency but fundamental alterations to the human body. And to be honest, even the more extreme entries on the list are quite tame, compared to what we could do once we can manipulate the genetic code as well. As Smith himself states:

It is important to first focus on corrections rather than enhancements, the reason being that corrections are limited in their scope (there are most likely only 40-50 possible corrections) and mostly benefit an individual by themself, whereas enhancements are virtually unlimited in their scope, are mostly beneficial to an individual in competition with others, and/or are prone to abuse. Pursuing the latter traits may thus touch off a rash of socially mutually-destructive genetic competition if it is not clear that such enhancements must only be made with the most rightful and socially responsible of intentions, as characterized by the geneticly-determined character of the enhanced beings…The further a trait falls toward the enhancement end of the spectrum, particularly in the case of competitive enhancements, the more dangerous it is, and thus the more rightful it's bearer's temperament must be.

As frightening as it is, we are on the verge of entering a world in which we can redesign ourselves from the bottom up—or be redesigned. Yet this is not simply about physical traits; wherever you fall in the nature/nurture debate, it is clear that genetics play some role in the formation of our character. How long can it be before a loving parent decides to reengineer an unruly son to make him more managable? Or before a tyrannical government does the same to its populace?

How can we reap the benefits, while escaping the terrible dangers?

Pork and Broken Windows

Apropos of the effort by N.Z. Bear, Instapundit and many others to have bloggers identify pork legislation in their congressional districts, and then to lobby their congresscritters to give the pork up to help fund hurricane relief, the people at Samizdata are debating what exactly is defined as pork, especially in light of the new NASA program to return to the moon.

In the comments, one person asked whether the focus on pork was worth it, given that it takes attention away from inefficient spending in the "legitimate" government programs that ends up wasting far more money than pork ever can. He cites the rampant mismanagement of our health-care programs as an example, which wastes tens of billions of dollars annually.

Commenter Julian Morrison responds:

Is non-pork waste worse? I'm not so sure. Monetarily, yes. But I propose by analogy to the theory of "broken windows policing", that pork is worse because it's openly corrupt. Therefore, it erodes the moral base of the other sorts of government spending and as a result, makes it infinitely harder to argue a case against other spending.

To put that another way: money spent dependent on a moral and reasoned case, can be stopped by proving the countercase. But when the public is habituated to seeing money spent "just because" and to feed vested interests, no countercase finds traction.

It seems to me, as I read about the kinds of pork programs that are slipped in by congressmen, that most have very little practical value. Bridges to nowhere, John P. Senator Memorial Nature Trails—some of them cannot even be said to advance the interests of particular factions or wealthy donors. (Not many, true.) Rather, I suspect that for many congressman, pork projects are simply a status symbol. First, you get to plaster your name over a permanent feature of the landscape; Robert Byrd is notorious for this, as the West Virginia road system has his name on signs practically everwhere you look.

Second (and this is just my speculation), it is a status symbol among other congressman because it demonstrates your power to interfere with the budgeting process, and divert Federal money to purposeless programs of your devising. Essentially, pork would be the elected official's version of conspicuous consumption, with legislators competing to waste the most money just to show that they can.

Overly cynical? Possibly. But it remains true that pork is seemingly wasteful by design, and disrespectful to the fiduciary duty of our congressmen to the electorate. We have enough problems with cash flow that we don't need to invent more of them.

Global Warming—On Mars?

The JPL probe Global Surveyor has been orbiting Mars for the last nine years, allowing scientists to collect detailed information about changes in the Martian geography. They have been surprised to find that the Martian surface is much more active than previously thought. In particular:

[F]or three Mars summers in a row, deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near Mars' south pole have shrunk from the previous year's size, suggesting a climate change in progress.

Anybody burning fossil fuels on Mars that we don't know about?

In all seriousness, scientists specializing in climate change here on Earth had better find a way to account for the new data, if they can find the time in between ranting about methane emissions and SUV's. I'm all for eliminating harmful emissions, especially if we can do that by transitioning away from petroleum, but we need to keep a sense of perspective. If much of the climate change we are experiencing is not due to human action, nor can it be reversed by human action, then economic development becomes all the more vital. Only advances in technology will give us the tools we need to thrive in a changing climate, and those advances will come more slowly if general economic activity is choked off by Kyotoesque government controls.

While We're Waiting for Serenity…

[Blogging has been light lately while I introduce my roommate to the joys of "Firefly." As long as I'm on that general theme, here's a little something I wrote two summers ago that I rather like.]

Fidelis

I am snug in the chamber,
waiting for the jolt against my back
that will launch me forward. How long will I wait?
A week? A year? Fifty? I was born
for glory, to be sent on wings of fire
to do the work of a lifetime in one
instant.

For what cause will I be used?
I hope that it is just. Perhaps I will strike down
a murderer, or a would-be rapist.
(I hope that such a one does not
use me instead. The indignity of it
would be unspeakable.)

I am a knight of lead and brass,
honored with the noble task
of making all men equal.
That duty is mine, and I gladly wait
for the moment when the hammer strikes
and I fly off into destiny.

Senators, Reconsidered

As the Roberts nomination hearings drag on and people get a chance to see just how stupid and pompous many senators are, on both sides of the aisle, a lot of people have begun thinking about the Seventeenth Amendment, which provided for direct election of senators. Some are now saying that this was a bad thing, and would like it repealed.

Some history is in order, since almost nobody knows how senators were chosen at first. Originally, the only body of government that was elected by the people was the House of Representatives; the president was elected by specially-chosen delegates to the Electoral College, of course, but senators were sent to Washington by the various state legislatures. Often the Senator would be a powerful former member of the state legislature; just as often he would be a tool of more powerful members of the legislature. But it is significant that the more powerful house of Congress was filled with people intimately connected to and responsible to the state governments.

At present, the state governments have practically no input into the workings of the Federal government, particularly not with respect to the formation of law. It is unsurprising that Congress frequently offers huge Federal grants to the states on the condition that they change their laws to match what their betters in Washington desire. In effect, Congress is now dictating policy to the states on a regular basis. This would not happen so often if the state governments themselves chose their senators.

(Indeed, that was the intention of the original arrangement. The Senate is primarily arranged to protect the rights of individual states, with equal representation for each government instead of for each citizen.)

At any rate, because senators are now subject to the people instead of their legislatures, instead of being an elite of the elites, many have the same general characteristics as most of their compatriots in the House: cheap populism and parochialism. This is something of an unfair libel; yet while once the Senate was known as a seat of skillful oratory, now Senate proceedings are boring and forgettable. I challenge my readers to come up with one quoteworthy speech from the last twenty years on a legislative issue…

For myself, I would much prefer that the 17th Amendment were repealed. It would refocus voters' attention back to the state legislatures, many of which have taken the opportunity granted by their relative unimportance to become backward, corrupt cesspools of political idiocy of the first order. But I would also like the House of Representatives to be abolished entirely and replaced by direct popular voting on legislation, just to make things interesting.

Hmm. I really should upload my paper on that subject.

The Decline of Courtship

Several days ago, a friend of mine was reminiscing about how he had sung Ladino courtship songs to girls of his acquaintance, to great effect. From that we moved on to the topic of courtship songs in general. (By "courtship song" I mean a song used by the man to declare his love for a woman, and convince her of the ardor of his love, when the two were not previously involved.) We agreed that courtship as an idea had more or less disappeared from modern music. Its replacements are: pining away from unrequited love (or attraction at any rate), rhapsodizing over a love already established, or focusing on the physical act of sex directly.

(Oddly enough, the one modern music genre where courtship survives is in country-western; and the subjects are usually already married, and seeking to restore a lost love. This stretches my definition, but given the paucity of competition, I'll take it.)

Meanwhile, I went with some friends down to a dance club in the Village. This was a classy place with a cover charge and lavish facilities; the local rock station was doing a live broadcast of the main DJ. Beers were $7; bottles of water were $5. I say this only to make the point that this was not exactly a lower-class establishment, nor should it be written off as an expression of low culture, as opposed to a "real" culture that "average" people have.

The first thing I noticed is that the music was very, very loud. It seemed expressly designed to make conversation impossible. Even if you are in the next room, you cannot hold a conversation without shouting. If speech is no longer available as a means of communication, what is left is physical interaction. In other words, the dancing itself becomes the only real form of communication between strangers.

A word on the dancing. I use the term with some hesitation; several members of my family are dance teachers, and the "bump-and-grind" style now popular does not easily fit into traditional models of dance. My brother describes it, aptly enough, as "sex with clothes on." Generally, the man stands behind the woman or faces her directly. They then press their hips against each other and, well, bump and grind.

One might wonder how it is that complete strangers will become such intimate dance partners, especially when there can be no speaking beforehand. Generally, the man must make an approach and initiate the dance, usually by physical contact. The woman then evaluates the man by his appearance, apparent skill, and the manner of his approach. This can be neither too aggressive, too direct, or too hesitant; it seemed that a casual style was most successful. If the woman finds the man acceptable, she will dance with him. If not, she will turn away or give some other physical cue to get the point across. The whole process is remarkably quick: a man can make an approach, be shot down, and move on to the next prospect within two seconds.

The sexual nature of the encounter is emphasized by the hip-hop lyrics to which people dance. When Allan Bloom was describing rock music as "having one appeal only, a barbaric appeal, to sexual desire," he hadn't seen nuthin' yet. Modern hip-hop lyrics specifically direct dancers to sleep with each other. I mean this literally.

In summary: whereas before people were governed by rules of courtship, which kept the initial stages in the realm of language, nowadays many people want to skip straight to the physical.

What does this mean? I don't know, but I doubt it means anything good. In a time when people are feeling increasingly alienated and isolated, to take refuge in cheap physicality by excluding communication seems only to exacerbate a fundamental problem.

Quote of the Day

Here's some context: The Defense Department reports that from 1983 to 1996, 18,006 American military personnel died accidentally in the service of their country. That death rate of 1,286 per year exceeds the rate of combat deaths in Iraq by a ratio of nearly 2-to-1.

That's right: All through the years when hardly anyone was paying attention, soldiers, sailors and Marines were dying in accidents, training and otherwise, at nearly twice the rate of combat deaths in Iraq from the start of the war in 2003 to the present.

Somehow, though, when there was no political hay to be made, there was no great outcry, or gleeful reporting, or erecting of crosses in the president's hometown about this much higher death rate. In fact, one is hard-pressed to find any contemporary expression of concern by reporters, politicians or political activists about the 18,006 American service members who died accidentally in service of their country from 1983 to 1996.

—John Hinderaker, writing for the Orlando Sentinel. As he writes earlier in the piece, we as a body of citizens are now engaged in a great experiment: trying to fight a war while ignoring the strategic picture or larger context, and focusing only on our casualties. As to how it will end, only time will tell.

Are Progressive Taxes a Good Thing?

The standard wisdom of American politics is that the poor, who have so much less income to work with, should therefore pay proportionally less than others of greater means, i.e. the rich and the middle class. This would seem to be an act of benevolence toward the poor, since they are benefiting from government activity largely thanks to the tax payments of others.

More recently, between the policies of Bill Clinton, the 1996 Republican Congress, and the Bush tax cuts (via adjustments to the lowest tax bracket and the Earned Income Tax Credit), well over a third of American families no longer pay Federal income tax of any kind. These are generally from the poorer end of the population; therefore, the poor are clearly being helped by our tax policy.

But are people really helped by being removed from the tax rolls? Or are they actually being set up for a terrible betrayal by government?

Many have argued at length about the pernicious economic effects of high marginal rates, arguing that a broad tax base would be better for everyone. I would like to examine another side of the argument. Let us consider the Federal government as a rational actor.

Now, at some level the government's policies are constrained by the need to increase tax revenue—perhaps even to maximize revenue. Therefore, the government will more readily pursue policies that will generate more taxes than those generating fewer, let alone those policies decreasing tax revenues. (That this theory only works if our congressmen understand basic economics is, of course, its gaping flaw. But regardless.)

In our present fiscal situation, wealthy people and corporations pay high Federal income taxes, and poorer people pay no income taxes at all or very few. Therefore, it makes sense for our rational actor, the Federal Government, to make laws that give preference to the rich and corporations over the poor, since tax revenues respond much more quickly when the rich get richer than when the poor get less poor. Such additional revenues can naturally be used to succor the same poor that the government has just victimized, making the poor indebted to the government and to the particular elected officials of each district.

Example:

Let's say that millionaires pay 50% average taxes. People making $10,000 a year or less pay nothing. Suppose that a given area has one family who owns a fire-extinguisher company with a gross income of $1,000,000, and 100 family making $10,000. As is, total taxes equal half a million dollars ($500,000).

Some politicians then get a brilliant idea. They pass a law mandating that each family must keep one fire extinguisher in their kitchen, garage, and master bedroom. This law is advanced in the name of public safety: "After all, if it saves just one life…" Fire extinguishers are expensive and require continual maintenance, so each family must now pay $1,000 to the fire-extinguisher company. So now the rich family makes a total of $1,100,000 gross per year, while everyone else is left with $9,000. Tax revenues increase to $550,000 yearly. The rich family's after-tax income also increases $50,000.

Now, government has an extra $50,000 to play with. After spending just half of it (if the town is lucky) on pet projects, the politicians notice that many people are running short on money, and use the remailing $25,000 to fund a government entitlement for the absolute worst off. Say that 50 families receive $500 each.

In short, the rich become richer, the poor become poorer, and government wins both because they get more money to fritter away and because 50 families are now dependent on government's generosity. That the government got them into the situation in the first place will be quickly forgotten.

Is this such an unlikely scenario? Who is it, indeed, that benefits from artificially high argicultural prices, and who is it that must pay them? Who is it that benefits from the horrid patchwork of telecom laws, and who is it that must pay high prices because of them? To my regret, I could go on all day.

Now is this due entirely to the Federal government's skewed cost/benefit situation caused by the "progressive" tax code? I doubt it. But I suspect that if the tax base were indeed broadened so that nearly all families pay a share, no matter how small, we may find that the government suddenly cares much more about the welfare of the poor.

Comments Update

Blogger has enabled word-verification anti-spam control on comments, which means that I can give open comments another shot. (And there was much rejoicing...)

Comments Restricted

I hate to do this, but the spammers have pushed me over the edge. Until I figure out if Blogger allows me to delete spam comments, people will need to log into Blogger to comment. I'll be looking into setting up a guest Blogger account for people without their own accounts, but until I do, you're stuck. Sorry.

I'm beginning to think that spammers should be declared "digital outlaws," i.e. any form of hacking or other electronic attack against them would be without legal penalty. This is getting ridiculous. I mean, my blog usually gets less than 20 hits a day! If they're spamming me, they've got to be spamming everyone. The h*** with that!

Poetry Analysis

I had come across an absolutely staggering poem on Belmont Club some months ago and felt a need to do a critical response. I never got around to it until today, when Wretchard linked to it again. This poem by Judyth Hill was apparently hailed by the peace movement as a thing of beauty. Here it is:

Wage peace with your breath.

Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds.

Breathe in terrorists
and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields.

Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.

Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.

Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.

Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.

Make soup.

Play music, memorize the words for thank you in three languages.

Learn to knit, and make a hat.

Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief
as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish.

Swim for the other side.

Wage peace.

Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious:

Have a cup of tea and rejoice.

Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Celebrate today.

In short, the prescription for dealing with war and destruction is to ignore it, to visualize yourself in some homespun fairyland where good, cleansing breaths can change the world. How precious.

Aside from that, it's such mind-numbingly bad poetry I don't even know where to begin. But Ms. Hill has suffered for her art, and now it is my turn.

Breathe in… breathe out

I am a big believer in proper breathing to promote tranquility, but this is ridiculous. Even being generous and assuming that Ms. Hill is using this phrase metaphorically, still the proper response to bloodshed is not to imagine that it never happened. Continuing with the specific pairings used, we see the understandible pair of rubble and buildings, but every other pairing is unexpected and verges on the bizarre. I do not know what firemen have to do with red-winged blackbirds, nor confusion with maple trees. This whole section seems like a giant non sequitor.

Wage peace…

This phrase, once startling in its unexpectedness, is now tired and stale. Besides, one does not "wage peace." Peace is defined an absence of conflict, and thus would not be "waged" at all. Of course, this is the major flaw of the peacenik camp. They assume that if we simply struggle for peace hard enough, it can happen. There is no such thing as a necessary war, or even (gasp) an inevitable war, because love and soothing folk music will conquer all.

Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.

Riiiight. "If all you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail." (And isn't "clean rivers" a goal, rather than a tool?) None of these "tools" are fit to do any of the hard work that the world actually needs. At the very least they could have been cucumber seeds… Reasonable people seek out the tools needed for the job at hand. They do not begin with a tool and work outward.

"…memorize the words for thank you in three languages."

I know the words for "thank you" in six languages that I can think of. It does not make me a better person.

Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief
as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish.

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. The only time I have ever seen fish make a gesture, or anything remotely close, is when they are eating food or else attacking other fish. I suspect that Ms. Hill's metaphors are getting away from her.

Act as if armistice has already arrived.

No. That is the best way I know to ensure that the armistice will never arrive in truth. The way to end wars is either to win, lose or draw; in any event the choice must be made. As Berthold Brecht said, "What if they held a war and nobody came? Why, then the war would come to you."

The good thing about having ideological opponents who also tend towards the fine arts is that every so often, one of them will produce such a monumental piece of self-parody as this.

The Reciprocating Effect of Political Extremism

One of the more common activities within the political blogosphere, on both sides of the political divide, is to gloat/agonize over a statement by someone on the other side that demonstrates inhuman callousness or simple evil, the better to demonize the associated political faction. Examples: Air America host Randi Rhodes says that President Bush "takes a lot of joy" from seeing dead Democrats, while the Reverend Bill Shanks says that New Orleans had it coming for being morally corrupt. There are countless other examples of such things, and the reactions from the other side, from every single event of political consequence in the last several years; it is a pattern that we in the blogosphere have grown used to.

One thing I have noticed for a while is that very often, a heinous bit of drivel will often inspire similarly heinous responses. Consider this (depressingly familiar) hypothetical: a conservative/liberal site will quote a liberal/conservative pundit saying that all Republicans/Democrats are evil. Commenters go in a frenzy, soon slipping into blanket condemnations of all liberals/conservatives for being evil. Thus, what begins as a way of castigating the other side for violating standards of simple decency in political discussion will end by infecting your own side with the same sort of extreme us-vs.-them Manichaean dogma.

This is not an argument for moral relativism. When two sides are in conflict, one must necessarily be superior to the other. But people should be careful not to let this sort of ideological backwash contaminate their own thinking, or influence their decisions. The fact is that the majority of both parties is made up of decent people. On the other hand, it is to the shame of the Democratic Party that instead of marginalizing this sort of extremism (as the Republicans did to Pat Buchanan, David Duke, or even Trent Lott for a much less serious offense), the Democrats have instead embraced it. Consider the implausibiliy of RNC chairman Ken Mehlman ever saying, "I hate Democrats and all that they stand for," and then consider that DNC chairman Howard Dean said precisely that about Republicans!

I think, though, this has much to do with being the party out of power. During the Clinton years, Republicans were rather nasty in their own right. Indeed, much of what made me a supporter of the Democrats back then was the vitriol coming from the Right (along with a simplistic acceptance of NPR's reporting…), just as I tend to oppose the Democrats now because of the blatant derangement of their national leadership, to say nothing of the hard-core grassroots.

But what I see now is an incredibly dangerous effect of the instant communication that the Internet allows. Because everyone can now see the worst that a given faction has to offer in real time, it becomes very easy to judge that entire faction on the basis of its most vile members. This inspires a hardening of one's own positions in response. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. Is it any surprise that many speak of an emerging ideological civil war in America, a rending of the social fabric?

Now, members of the other side must be opposed by any means necessary regardless of the costs, simply because the other side is Darkness Incarnate. Worse, by allowing our thoughts to be shaped by such hatred, we become a little bit more like what we despise. This of course makes the problem all the more acute.

What can be done? Are we past the point where simple decency can win the day?