Beyond Stereotypes About Liberal Takes On Genetic Differences

“In the past few years, genetic evidence on human differences has become more obvious. The reaction, in the West, is to declare even more strongly that no differences exist, or even could exist.” 

This is something of a straw man argument. The more common and more refined argument is that the genetic differences that exist are not (or more elastically should not be considered) morally or socially or legally significant differences. 

Obviously, no informed person disputes, for example, that genetics cause visible differences in phenotype like eye color, hair color, skin color, height (interacting with environment) and stuff like epicanthic folds, and also that there a specific micro scale differences like sickle cell gene based malaria resistance. 

But, the notion is that those differences are not differences that are significant enough to discriminate against someone or treat them differently and don’t give rise to group differences that are meaningful in terms of policy or validating stereotypes. This also has a notion buried in it that physical differences are less important than differences in who a person is. 

For example, an illustration of this argument is the aphorism that you shouldn’t fault a turtle for not been fast at winning sprinting competitions. Sometimes this gets generalized to neurodiversity as well. 

This isn’t to say that this belief doesn’t have difficulties. At the individual level, there is strong evidence that traits like individual cognitive traits like IQ, personality and temperament have a significant hereditary component. 

Likewise, many Western liberals will acknowledge that small populations (e.g. communities of South Asians who recently immigrated to the U.S. on work related tech industry and medical profession visa available only to the most elite individuals) do exhibit group level average differences on certain work related IQ and spatial aptitude type abilities until diluted with other populations or the passage of time with a reversion to the mean. 

But, those belief holders presume (as an axiom not an empirically driven fact), while conceding this point, that the measured differences in traits like these that we do care about, in large representative samples of continental scale populations (e.g. Africans or South Asians generally) or large random samples of historically old caste or racial minorities, are almost entirely due to environmental effects as evidenced, for example, by the Flynn effect and by the apparent positive impacts of the reducing of lead poisoning rates in the U.S. This presumption is, at a minimum, difficult to test rigorously, and tends to support policy decisions that are hard to resolve empirically that Western liberals tend to think are good policies which promote a just society and emphasize individual merit over group stereotype based decision making. 

The truer description of the mainstream intellectual viewpoint of Western liberals is a close cousin of the idea that while culture differences absolutely exist (and indeed, should be respected) that all cultures are equal. More sophisticated individuals may qualify this position by saying that all cultures are equal in dignity and in a platonic sense, but that particular cultures may be better adapted to one set of circumstances in a given time and place than another, and that we nonetheless have a moral obligation to respect cultures not optimally adapted to current conditions in the present time and place.

This is a reprint with minor reformatting and editing of my comment to a post at Brown Pundits.

This said:

* The vast majority of people of all political stripes (except fiction authors when writing about royal children whose paternity has been denied) overestimate the relative importance of child rearing (within the normal range) relative to genetics in how a child turns out, and attribute more hereditary effects to child rearing and less to genetics than the best evidence supports.

* Most people underestimate the impact of genetic tendencies in how people turn out, more generally, relative to environmental factors, although liberals do so more than conservatives.

* Few liberals, but many conservatives embrace the notion that different continental or subcontinental or national scale populations or races have inherently different genetic traits and capabilities on things that matter where there is a clear good or bad side to them.

* Many more liberals than moderates or conservatives doubt the meaningfulness of IQ as a psychometric measure.

* Liberals tend to be especially skeptical of biological differences in important cognitive things based on sex relative to heredity more generally, and are strongly inclined to attribute gender differences to nurture to an extent not supported by the best evidence. But, there is diversity of thought within liberalism and within feminism on this matter.

* Almost everyone overestimates the extent to which their decisions are shaped by individual personal idiosyncratic choices they make, rather than cultural and genetic and social context and economic influences. Thus, they think that more of their decisions are purely a product of autonomous free will as opposed to more predictable deterministic influences. Put another way, people are more predictable than the vast majority of them believe themselves to be.

* Smart and well informed people of all political stripes have more nuanced views on these topics than less intelligence and less well informed people. Liberals tend to have more nuanced views on these topics than conservatives and conservatives tend to be oblivious to many of the nuances in hte views on these topics commonly held by liberals. 

W. Cleon Skousen, Glenn Beck and the Tea Party

Why does the Tea Party sound like a reincarnation of the John Birch Society?

Because, intellectually, it is.

Law professor Jared Goldstein substantiates these connections and explains the view of the constitution that Skousen espoused, one that borrows heavily from Mormon ideology, not very heavily from the constitution itself or mainstream history, and not at all from the two century gloss placed on the document by courts and political actors interpreting it.

W. Cleon Skousen who rose to prominence in the 1950s and wrote the his books that are most read today in the 1980s, was a friend of the reactionary group, an ardent defender of their founder, and frequently lecturer to them. "Barry Goldwater and like-minded conservatives such as William F. Buckley broke with the Birchers, concluding that they were not fit members of the conservative movement," but Skousen saw them (and figures like President Eisenhower) as corrupted liberals.

According to a book he wrote in 1970:

[T]he international communist movement . . . was actually the product of an even larger conspiracy directed by the “dynastic families of the super-rich.” These families created and manipulated both Communism and fascism to carry out their plan to create a globalized New World Order. The conspirators included a cabal of international bankers, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Rothchilds, Rockefellers, Kennedys, J.P Morgan, Henry Kissinger, John Dewey, and Albert Einstein, among countless others. . . [He] continues to be cited as a leading authority by New World Order, Illuminati, and anti-semitic conspiracy theorists.

His views of slavery were well outside the mainstream of history research:

THE MAKING OF AMERICA [1985] asserts that slaves were “usually a cheerful lot, though the presence of a number of the more vicious type sometimes made it necessary for them all to go in chains.” In Skousen’s history of slavery, brutality toward slaves was almost unheard of, and white schoolchildren envied “the freedom” of the slaves: “If pickaninnies ran naked it was generally from choice, and when the white boys had to put on shoes and go away to school they were likely to envy the freedom of their colored playmates.” Although the slaves were well treated, ate well, and lived happily, southerners lived in constant fear of slave rebellions instigated by abolitionists, making life for whites in the south “a nightmare.” In fact, “the slave owners were the worst victims of the system.”

He also claims in his writings that:

[T]he Anglo-Saxons are the descendants of the biblical Israelites and are therefore God’s chosen people. . . . [a view that] in turn, provided the foundation for the white separatist Christian Identity movement espoused by Randy Weaver, who died in 1992 in a shootout with federal agents, who he believed were agents of a Zionist Occupational Government.

Skousen's writings, particularly THE FIVE THOUSAND YEAR LEAP and THE MAKING OF AMERICA, garnered renewed interest after they were promoted by conservative talk radio host Glenn Beck. With Glenn Beck's help, these books have become best sellers and a leading intellectual source for the Tea Party movement's view of the constitution.

Skousen's revisionist history of the United States and view of the constitution as primarily a device by which the Founders established God's law as the constitution of the United States through the concept of "natural law" turns the Enlightenment document into something quite the opposite.

These notions focus on the need to restore the Founders’ true vision of the Constitution, including the centrality of natural law, understood to mean God’s laws; the necessity for limited government that may not undertake welfare programs, redistribution of wealth, or interference in any way with private property; and the embrace of manifest destiny at home and isolationism in foreign policy.

Skousen basically disavows the expansion of the scope of the federal government that took place around the time of the Civil War, again during the New Deal, and yet again during the Civil Rights era, and seeks to create an institution more religious than it or the Founders ever were, and to give lassiez-faire conservative economic policies that the Founders didn't share, the force of constitutional law.

Skousen lays out all of the supposedly unconstitutional things Congress has done:

Skousen asserts, the socialists were acting as agents of certain wealthy bankers and other members of the “dynastic rich,” who sought to gain control of the government and grant themselves monopolies. The capitalist-communist conspirators largely succeeded in duping the American people to abandon many of the ancient principles upon which the nation was founded. As a result, America lost its national identity, producing a “[g]eneration of lost Americans,” and a nation of “un- Americans.”

The United States soon began to adopt one policy after another that conflicted with its foundational principles, and today, almost everything the federal government does is unconstitutional. The primary transgression was the establishment of federal welfare programs like Social Security and Medicare, which violate the fundamental prohibition against redistribution of wealth. The entirety of the monetary system likewise operates contrary to the Founders’ formula because it is based on paper money not backed by gold. The entire administrative state is also unconstitutional because Congress cannot create agencies with regulatory powers, and the President cannot issue executive orders or promulgate regulations. In addition, it was unconstitutional for Congress to establish national parks, national monuments, national forests, and wilderness areas, to enact federal environmental and labor laws, and to provide foreign aid.

Ironically, the Tea Party is a strong supporter of eliminating the estate tax, the policy more important than any other to strengthening the position of the dynastic rich whom Skousen believed had conspired to pervert our constitution and system of government.

Skousen's paranoia is something the Tea Party shares:

To Tea Party supporters, advocates of foreign, anti-American ideas have taken over the federal government, threatening to displace true American values, and the fate of the nation hangs in the balance. Again and again, Tea Party supporters argue that the Obama Administration is “attacking” America, that he is “anti American,” and that he is seeking to undermine basic American values. The vehemence which Tea Party members characterize the Obama Administration’s agenda as “un-American,” “socialist,” or “communist”—or, perhaps even worse, “European”—easily matches Skousen’s own fears of a communist takeover during the Cold War. . . .

Skousen and the Tea Party movement, like religious fundamentalists, see the world in Manichean terms, a world in which believers in the constitutional faith stand on one side and all others are demonized as enemies who seek to undermine American values. Skousen wrote in the 1950s and 1960s that international Communism sought to undermine American values by promoting civil rights for African Americans, by promoting acceptance of homosexuals, and by persuading Congress to adopt welfare programs. Proponents of such measures were not merely wrong on government policies; to Skousen, they were America’s enemies. Tea Party supporters likewise believe that people who disagree with them on health care reform, tax policies, and immigration are not merely political adversaries with whom they disagree on the issues. Tea Party supporters view proponents of health care reform and other such measures to be deeply un-American. Tea Party members believe that, at best, their opponents are ignorant of the fundamental principles upon which the country was founded or, at worst, they seek to undermine these principles.

Indeed, the vehemence with which Tea Party activists demonize their enemies is one of the movement’s most remarkable traits. They characterize their opponents as socialists and communists; compare President Obama to Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam Hussein; and have a large percentage of members who believe that President Obama is a foreigner or a Muslim or at least someone who adheres to foreign views. The Tea Party movement believes that Obama is radically anti-American. The demonization of enemies follows from the fundamentalist nature of the Tea Party movement. Those who act contrary to what Tea Party supporters believe to be the fundamental American are perceived to be undermining or attacking those values; they are not merely Americans who hold differing positions; they are anti-American, and they must be defeated in order to save America.

The article is worth a read. While the view's espoused describe a "fantasy constitution" rather than the real thing, it doesn't hurt to trace the roots of a constitutional ideology that has gained a strong hold in the far right part of the conservative movement and is starting to be accepted, at least publicly, by powerful people with a shot at high political office.

Skousen’s influence has spread beyond Tea Party activists, and several prominent Republican leaders—Texas Governor Rick Perry, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, and Senator Orrin Hatch, among others—have openly endorsed Skousen’s views.

Quite impressive really, for a paranoid racist conspiracy theorist with sense of history profoundly contrary to reality. One fears that Skousen's works might end up become the Mein Kampf of our generation of reactionaries, so they are probably worth being aware of, even if they are nuts.

It is hard to know what to think of the Tea Party's decidedly disreputable and dishonest intellectual foundation. Does it unduly dignify their off the wall ideas to take them seriously? Will they give rise to a terrifying anti-intellectual regime of delusion and hate, or will they fizzle out as normal people recognize just how out of touch their worldview is with reality?

Crazy without power is mildly amusing but a little bit sad. Crazy with power is terrifying. How do you reason with people who think the Enlightenment was basically a bad idea? How do you find common ground with people who want to turn back the clock of progress by two hundred years to a past that never existed?

Goldstein doesn't explore in this brief working paper, the roots of Skousen's ideology, which I suspect has far older roots, probably tracing back to at least the Second Great Awakening that gave rise to the religious fundamentalist ideas that parallel this political vision. But, that isn't inappropriate. Goldstein makes a convincing case that Skousen is the vehicle by which this ideological has been transmitted to the current generation of Tea Party activists and American conservatives, so going back further doesn't do much to inform understanding of the ideologies present in the nation today.

In the same way, one doesn't need to know much about the Mesopotamian roots of the myths in Genesis to understand their impact on Jews and Christians. These myths came into the Judeo-Christian world view the account in the Torah and its predecessors were mostly unknown to them.

Goldstein makes the case that Skousen is the Prophet, who as revealed by his disciple Glenn Beck, gave rise to the legal ideology of the contemporary Tea Party. I've pondered before how we got here, with Tea Party supporters like U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck and Colorado Gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes representing the Republican Party in this election.

Are so many of my fellow citizens really on board with this kind of thinking? Why? It is surreal. I've speculated at length on what is driving this movement before at this blog, and it has profoundly shaken my faith that the participants in the political system are capable of making good decisions. It is still hard to figure out where they are coming from, and how much of this those in power in the movement really believe.

Perhaps most importantly, how does on defuse all of their anger, fear and hate?

Air America Leaves Radio, Goes Bankrupt

Talk radio is a radio genre dominated by urber-conservatives. The most notable exception, by far, was Air America, a liberal slanted talk show. It failed. The company is going bankrupt and the show is being pulled from radio air waves. A non-live podcast site may persist on the web, but the world of commercial talk radio has been ceded back to conservatives.

Honestly, I hate the talk radio format with a passion, and squirm even when forced to listen to extended DQ chatter on commercial radio stations. I hate call in shows, and dislike National Public Radio's call in shows, "Talk of the Nation" and "Car Talk" which are the only other significant non-conservative talk radio programs on the airwaves. Talk forums on television are almost equally baneful to watch.

Conservative talk radio is even worse, because it features hate and whoppers of untruths as part of its genre's very DNA.

I've actually been a recurring talk radio guest for a local financial oriented talk show, and spent longer than that working in a radio news department and as a substitute DJ in college. An old yellowed DJ's license from the FCC still sits in a box somewhere in my basement. I've also taught classes that include question and answer periods or discussion formats, taken far more, and run countless meetings that involve discussion of somewhat similar issues. And, of course, I am an avid participant in the liberal answer to talk radio, which is blogging.

But, I prefer my radio and television to be scripted, and can't stand witnessing the extent to which callers make fools of themselves or spread ignorance. Audience questions belong in classrooms, caucuses, small meetings and private information hotlines, not on the air for everyone to see or hear. Sometimes audience questions are a necessary evil so that everyone present can learn what they need to know. But, that process does not benefit from being opened up to the general public.

Just about the only think I dislike more than talk radio is professional wrestling, although it's a closs call. There are plenty of people, a whole demographic really, who like both. And, while I can dimly understand the appeal intellectually, emotionally, I am baffled at what in a person can draw them to this stuff.

Derbyshire: 19th Amendment Was A Bad Idea

DERBYSHIRE: . . . [W]omen voting is bad for conservatism, and as a conservative, of course, I think that’s bad for society.

HARTMANN: So therefore if women were not allowed to vote it would be a better country in your opinion?

DERBYSHIRE: I think as a hypothetical I think that’s arguable, yeah. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

- National Review columnist John Derbyshire, discussing a chapter in his new book entitled “The Case Against Women’s Suffrage.”

The same author also urged us to follow the example of Stalin, the Nazis and Imperial China in our treatment of Chelsea Clinton:

Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past - I'm not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble - recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin's penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an 'enemy of the people.' The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, 'clan liability.' In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished 'to the ninth degree': that is, everyone in the offender's own generation would be killed and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great-great-grandchildren, would also be killed.

- John Derbyshire, National Review, 02-15-01

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

- 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution (ratified August 18, 1920).

Will Social Conservativism Go Quietly?

Republicans Back Away From Social Issues

The top of the front page headline story in the Denver Post in yesterday's Sunday paper proclaimed that the Colorado Republican Party was putting social issues on the back burner to focus on the economy, noting:

• A wider acceptance, or political indifference, to formerly taboo topics such as gay marriage.

• A realization that the GOP must broaden its appeal after drubbings in the past three elections in Colorado.

Social issues were rarely mentioned when nearly 400 Republicans gathered at Keystone last month to hear from candidates for U.S. Senate and governor. . . .

Statistician Nate Silver, who operates the FiveThirtyEight blog, points out that at the national Value Voters' summit last month, abortion ranked first among issues of concern to straw-poll voters, getting 41 percent of the vote.

Protection of religious liberty was second with 18 percent, and opposition to same-sex marriage was third at 7 percent.

Two years ago at the same event, sponsored by the Family Research Council, gay marriage was the top choice of 20 percent of the attendees.

GOP consultant Mike Murphy, in a Time magazine essay in June, said the party needs to be more socially libertarian, especially toward gay rights, to attract young voters.

"With changing demographics come changing attitudes, and aping the grim town elders from (the movie) 'Footloose' is not the path back to a Republican White House," Murphy wrote.

Faith Gets Mushy

I don't usually think much of the Parade supplement in the Sunday paper (I call it the "Stupid Pages" because its analysis is often shallow), but its poll on spirituality described by Christine Wicker in her story "How Spiritual Are We?" was notable for showing the mushiest Christian scene in the United States that I've seen after following these polls for decades.

The poll showed that 69% of Americans believe in God, 7% aren't sure if God exists, 5% don't believe in God, and 19% have some other answer to that question. About 12% don't believe in an afterlife. About 12% say no religion is valid.

About 23% don't pray outside religious services, and about 25% don't believe it's a parent's responsibility to give children a religious upbringing. About 24% see themselves as "spiritual but not religious." About 22% say that religion is not a factor in their lives; another 22% said that religion was "in their lives but not particularly important." About 41% of Americans say that religion has too often led to war and suffering. About 50% say that they attend religious services rarely or never. 59% say that all religions are valid and 58% think that religion and politics should not mix. About 22% would consider converting to another religion, and 82% said that they would consider marrying someone of a different faith.

About 12% of people say only their religion is valid, and only about 11% of people pray because they feel that God expects them to pray. About 15% say religion should be a key factor in political decisions. About 17% of Americans would go to a spiritual leader for guidance with a problem. About 30% of Americans say they attend religious services once a week or more often, although probably only half of them are telling the truth. About 45% see themselves as religious, but one-thirds or more of them don't attend religious services weekly. During the recession, more people are going to religious services less often than are going more often, and only one in six people have changed their religious attendance in the Great Recession.

In sum, historically tiny ranks of hard core non-believers now rivals the number of hard core people of faith. Less than half of Americans are definitely religious (perhaps closer to a third), while almost a quarter of Americans have dropped out of organized Christianity.

The beliefs of the majority of Americans are in line with the doctrines of Free Masonry and the Baha'i: God exists, all religions have validity, and religious toleration is best. This isn't the outright secularism that has become dominant in most of Europe, and is the leading alternative to the dominant faith in both the Islamic world and Israel. Only about a quarter of Americans are secular to that extent, those who are actively non-religious make up only about half of them, with the rest simply being overwhelming apathetic about religious belief systems as coherent as Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

Younger people in areas where hard core Christianity was once dominant are assimilating the more amorphous national culture. Outside those places, middle aged people have already done so.

Churches Are Changing

The nature of the religious institutions that are vital is changing as well. Evangelical Christian denominations are losing ground to post-denominational mega-churches. Most of these mega-churches are conservative Christian in outlook, but their focus is returning to the traditional role of mainline religion in American life, towards inward self-improvement and family harmony, rather than political action. Many people have taken those "Focus On Your Own Damn Family" bumper stickers to heart. Churches are organized around personalities, not creeds.

Even in churches that remain affiliated with religious denominations, worship is changing. The idea of dressing in your "Sunday best" has become an anachronism. The music in many churches affiliated with traditional denominations has leaped from 15th-19th century hymns to electric guitar era Praise bands and spirituals not seen outside black churches and Pentecostal churches a generation ago. But, that change is kinder and gentler than the "charismatic movement" description that early observers of these changes thought that they were seeing a decade ago. "Casual contemporary" (an echo of adult contemporary radio) better describes the trend. For many religious Americans, the church is no longer the repository and defender of tradition. Relevancy has trumped a desire to be connected to history.

Relative freedom from political agendas and tradition allows churches to de-emphasize religious doctrines that no longer work in the contemporary moral climate. A church without a creed or extensive written doctrine is less pressed to confront disconnects between fundamentalist Christian articles of faith and the widespread American value of tolerance.

Migration And Faith

When churches cease to be reservoirs of cultural identity and protectors of traditional values not shared by the national establishment, they don't profit in the same way from responding to the threat that establishment culture will subsume what it protects.

Immigrant churches start to lose their identity when the children and grandchildren of immigrants assimilate (and a pause in immigration fostered by the Great Recession allows assimilation to outpace immigration as a driving force in immigrant communities).

Perhaps, Evangelical churches outside the South are the functional equivalent of immigrant churches, and will likewise lose potency outside their core region as descendants of migrants from the South assimilate. Southern Evangelicals who migrated to places like Southern California, Colorado Springs and North Dakota as part of the military-industrial complex are now either seeing their children and grandchildren assimilate, or being drawn back to economic opportunities in states that used to have stagnant economies.

Meanwhile, a whole generation of economic migrants to the South has put a dent in the hegemony of the Southern Evangelical Christian identity. Simply having mainline Christians, secular people and more Catholics in your community in appreciable numbers encourages a more tolerant outlook, even if it doesn't immediately lead to conversion or shake people's faith. The effect is the same, but more subtle, than the effect of having large numbers of gays and lesbians come out of the closet, making them part of "present company" and no longer mere abstract concepts.

Pendulums

A pendulum that swings back and forth from conservative to liberal views is a common and powerful historical metaphor. Indeed, it is particularly powerful if you view the pendulum as the kind of free standing weight on a cord swinging back and forth that precesses around the circle, slightly realigning its extremes of right and left with each new cycle, that you see in the Smithsonian. Without a kicker, however, the pendulum's swing also grows less intense with each cycle, spiraling in towards the center.

We are on a liberal swing in American politics that got Barack Obama elected with a solid Democratic majority in Congress, and we won't remain there forever. Every revolution prompts a counter-revolution. The Reformation spawned the Counter-Reformation. The Classical Music of the Enlightenment gave way to the Romantic Music of the Nineteenth Century. Emancipation was followed by Jim Crow segregation and lynchings. The formality of the Victorians gave way to the gender bending fashion of the flappers. The social unity embraced by the New Deal was followed by division of the Red Scare. The anti-establishment Hippies were followed by the hyper-establishment Preppies.

But, when conservatism comes back in vogue in a few years or a couple of decades, it won't repeat itself precisely as it did in the last cycle. Opposition to gay rights has deflated. Abortion has lost its potency as an issue, despite the fact that many in the conservative social movement still care. The future is too fuzzy to allow us to discern the nature of the next big social issue. Perhaps the social class divisions that bristled intensely after World War I will retake center stage. Perhaps there will be a movement to restore stability to heterosexual marriage. Perhaps there will be a "men's movement."

More likely than not, the defining issues of the next wave of conservatives are barely even on our radar screens right now. How many people had any consciousness of gay rights as an issue a month before Stonewall? How many people would have predicted the Civil Rights movement or the Cold War in 1944? Who would have predicted the imminent creation of a massive social safety net and comprehensive regulation of the financial industry in 1928? In 1853, the United States President was a member of the Whig Party and the Republican party didn't exist; in 1861, the President was a Republican and the Whig party was moribund.

As the 20th century dawned, Christianity was firmly associated with progressive social activism, and remained so through the Civil Rights movement. Who would have predicted that at the dawn of the 21st century, that it would have been seen as a bastion of conservative social activism?

The conservative social agenda is ripe for redefinition. The movement has no towering leaders. The current crop of conservative political and religious leaders have become so inconsequential that people are inclined to see talk radio shock jocks as the movement's leaders. But, they aren't visionaries. Neoconservatives want to get off the bus. Libertarians don't know which ship to buy a ticket on. Religious movements are learning the benefits of decoupling themselves from politics. It is moments like these when order suddenly emerges from chaos. In the meanwhile, however, the old social conservatives may quietly fade away.

Playing Dumb

While I'm all for keeping an open mind, this isn't a license to be stupid.

BIG CREEK, Ky. – A census worker found hanged from a tree with the word "fed" scrawled on his chest met his end in a corner of Appalachia with an abundance of meth labs and marijuana fields. . . . At this point, police cannot say whether Bill Sparkman's death was a homicide, an accident or even a suicide.

Yeah, right. I'm sure Vegas is putting big money on the accidental death possibility.

At Least It's Not Your School District

Conservatives have different ideas than the rest of us about what calls for parental permission.

Ky. school trip included baptisms

By Andrew Wolfson, The (Louisville) Courier Journal

LOUISVILLE — A mother is angry about a trip led by the head football coach at Breckinridge County High School. The coach took about 20 players on a school bus late last month to his church, where nearly half of them — including her son — were baptized.

Michelle Ammons said her 16-year-old son was baptized without her knowledge and consent, and she is upset that a public school bus was used to take players to a church service — and that the school district's superintendent was there and did not object.

"Nobody should push their faith on anybody else," said Ammons, whose son, Robert Coffey, said Coach Scott Mooney told him and other players that the Aug. 26 outing would include only a motivational speaker and a free steak dinner.

Yet, in the same school district:

The students who watched the president's speech today had to get a note signed by their parents that said they could watch it.

Maybe there was an exception to the rule requiring a note for baptised football players.

Quote of the Day

When I was in the Army, I got fantastic government-run health care that was all commie and shit. Of course, Nazi health care is bad, so when will Republicans introduce legislation mandating private health insurance for our troops?

- Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (of Daily Kos fame).

Who is Pro-Hitler?

Pat Buchanan.

(Hat tip to VC).

Why Weren't Democrats Birthers?

In 2008, Barack Obama ran as the Democratic Presidential nominee against John McCain, the Republican Presidential nominee. To be eligible for the post, one must be a "natural born citizen." Several prominent political figures in the United States, who are naturalized citizens of the United States, are not eligible for this post. The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution establishes that anyone born in the United States, regardless of paternity (with the now spent exception of Indians not taxed), is a citizen of the United States.

Obama was born in Hawaii, at at time when it was a U.S. state, to a U.S. citizen mother and a Kenyan father. McCain was born in the Panama Canal Territory, which was not part of any U.S. state. The legal arguments that McCain might not be a natural born citizen of the United States are more weighty.

Yet, in many states, there are still more Republicans who believe that Obama is not a natural born citizen of the United States than there are who don't doubt Obama's citizenship. This was an issue well before the election was over in conservative circles. Partisans can believe odd things. Conservative intellectuals and leaders, who know better, are content to play demagogue, rather than correct the error that is widespread in their base.

But, there is more to it than that. While knowledge of McCain's citizenship issue was widespread, appearing in major newspapers and widely known to the liberal equivalent of the hard core political activists who churned up the "birther" movement among conservatives, the issue never gained traction with liberals. Liberal opinion leaders considered the issue, acknowledged the ambiguity, and determined that it wasn't appropriate to make the case against McCain on these grounds.

Two factors were at play, and both mattered.

First, a campaign smear aimed at showing that John McCain was unAmerican had little voter appeal. The white, senior citizen, long time U.S. Senator, former war hero fit what the conservative and independent voters that he sought felt was an American, regardless of the facts, so the issue had no emotional appeal.

Moreover, conservatives, generally, are uncomfortable with the notion of birthright citizenship, as opposed to paternity based citizenship, something often expressed by their frequent mischaracterization of the U.S. born children of illegal aliens as illegal aliens. Distaste for the 14th Amendment isn't too surprising. Today's birthers are the political descendants of those who favored secession to defend the institution of slavery, and late sought to protect the Southern segregation system from the Civil Rights movement. The 14th Amendment's birthright citizenship provision was enacted for the express purpose of undermining them politically.

In contrast, for conservatives, the fear that Obama (an adult convert to Christianity who had a secular upbringing) was a secret Muslim were real, and they distrusted his black skin, the fact that he had a Kenyan Muslim father, and the fact that Obama is not culturally coming from the same place as most African Americans despite looking the part. The birther claim is baseless, but has emotional resonance for xenophobes who really care about the "natural born citizen" requirement because they want to keep out Presidential candidates who are culturally different from them, without regard to the actual rules for determining who is a natural born citizen.

Second, liberals value rule of law, fairness, civility and honesty in political discourse. Conservatives don't. A birther smear goes against a typical liberal's ethical framework, and so it doesn't sell to liberals. Conservatives, in contrast, don't understand what is wrong with lying about an opposing Presidential candidate's personal life in an effort to prevent him from being elected. They care more about the result than the process.

Liberals think that politicians should behave like cricketers. Conservatives think that politics is war by other means.

Unbossed argues, and I agree, that the media should confront and run stories about prominent people who wantonly distribute misinformation about public issues.

The Fantasy Constitution

Q: Which "fantasy constitution" is that?

A: I'm talking, of course, about the one that has no effect whatsoever on the way the world actually operates. Claiming that the "true" constitution somehow prohibits actions Congress has been taking for decades, which have been repeatedly upheld by the courts, and which enjoy popular political support, is just silly.

You're not going to find the law simply by studying a copy of the constitution and other 18th century texts.

The "fantasy constitution" is an apt description for the legal world that conservatives often operate in. It is a description of the constitution as they imagine it could be, not as it has actually been interpreted in the real world by courts, or plausibly might be interpreted by courts. It is advocacy, not law. It is like trying to deduce the nature of modern Christianity solely by reading the Bible. It can't be done.

I came across the term in comments to a blog post (quoted above) discussing constitutional concerns about the Obama health care plan raised by the Independence Institute, which like most Independence Institute proposals, had no real merit. The objections raised would invalidate almost all of the federal programs since the New Deal, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, despite the fact that these programs have survived multiple generations without falling to a constitutional challenge.

Harsanyi Out Of Touch On Social Security

David Harsanyi, a libertarian opinion writer at the Denver Post today bemoans the lack of a "private option" for Social Security, and complains about the bite of payroll taxes. Could there be a worse time to make this point?

Wrong On Rates Of Return

Harsanyi decries Social Security as "a failing program and pay into a private one that offers more than a 1 percent return (like a savings account or a tooth fairy, for instance)." Sort of like the stock market.

Returns for the ten-year period ending June 30, 2009 were negative for the S&P 500. Social Security was invented, of course, to serve as a counterbalance to the hardships suffered by retirees in the wake of the stock market crash of 1929, troubles that we experiencing again now.

Stock markets abroad show this two time U.S. experience is not unique. The U.K. stock market "returned just 1.05% a year between 1998 and 2008 in nominal terms, according to Barclays Capital. . . . the decade ending in 1974 saw a weaker return at 1.02% a year. Returns look even worse after inflation: the UK stock market is down 1.4% a year in real terms over the past decade." The Japanese stock market hasn't been a sweet deal either: "In October 2008 the Nikkei 225 stock index reached a 26-year low of 6994.90."

Harsanyi is also simply wrong in the numbers he cites.

He understates the rate of return that the typical person receives from Social Security, which varies considerably depending upon marital status and the number of income earners in a married couple. About 95% of Americans marry, most of them have two incomes, and that about half of those who do not marry are women. Yet, single men make a 1% rate of return from Social Security, in excess of inflation, and single women and married couples do considerably better.

The returns of Social Security are considerably more than the 1% nominal rate of return cited by Harasanyi. The average annualized rates of return on contributions even after inflation, for people retiring in 2030 are as follows:

Single male 1.00%
Single female 1.90%
One-earner couple 3.37%
Two-earner couple 2.29%

No decade since the U.S. permanently departed from the gold standard in 1971 has seen inflation at an annualized rate of less than 2.78%. Thus, a real rate of return of 1.00% earned by a single male translates to a nominal rate of return of at least 3.78%, and the nominal rate of return earned by the median person, who is in a two-earner couple, is more than 5%. (Admittedly, predicting future inflation rates is not an exact science. The margin between the yield on Treasury bonds with fixed nominal rates of return, and Treasury bonds with inflation adjusted rates of return, suggest that the market expects inflation rates about 1.25% and 2%. This would implies returns of 2.25% to 3.00% for single males and 3.54% to 4.29% for two earner couples who are the median beneficiaries.)

The best interest rate available from any bank in Colorado on certificates of deposit, which typically offer the best returns available on bank deposits and are equally risk free, today, is 3.10%.

Moreover, unlike returns from a 401(k), traditional IRA, private defined benefit pension plan, or non-tax preferenced private account, a large share of Social Security benefits are tax free when paid to the beneficiary.

Corporate Aaa rated bonds currently earn about 5.6% nominal returns, which is not significantly better after tax than the median rate of return on Social Security contributions. Thirty year municipal bonds, which are tax free and low risk (but not zero risk), pay a 4.85% nominal rate on 30 year bonds, and considerably less on shorter term bonds.

The return numbers for private accounts are also before the considerable fees and commissions that apply in any form of private account, but are absent from Social Security. The payroll tax generates more dollars of revenue relative to the administrative costs of the tax, than any other tax used by the federal government. The administration of Social Security benefits, likewise, is exceedingly efficient relative to the volume of funds provided and the number of beneficiaries involved. Many private investment companies refuse to work at all with accounts as small as that of many people starting to participate in the Social Security system.

For the average family, the return they receive on their Social Security contributions is not significantly worse than what they could receive on an investment with low risk in a private account invested prudently. Of course, it is also true that not everyone would invest their private accounts prudently, creating a burden on society should their investments be unwise.

Risk in Private Accounts

Social security isn't perfectly in balance. But, it isn't in an immediate crisis, either, despite the fact that its benefits are inflation proof. "Even without any changes, current benefits are expected to be fully payable on a timely basis until 2037."

This level of security is something that is increasingly hard to find in private accounts.

Most Americans don't have access to private defined benefit pension plans at all (the private equivalent of Social Security), which are the real failing program. In a 2004 speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Executive Director of the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, the government version of the FDIC for private defined benefit pension plans explained:

The number of private sector defined benefit plans grew through the 1960s and '70s before reaching a peak of 112,000 in the mid-1980s. At that time, some 40 percent of Americans workers were covered by defined benefit plans.

Since then, there has been steady erosion. Over the past two decades, the number of defined benefit plans has fallen by 75 percent to just over 31,000 plans today. Moreover, just 1 in 5 workers—20 percent of the workforce—now participates in a private sector defined benefit plan.

People who don't have private defined benefit pension plans invest their funds directly in the securities market, which, as noted above, has a record a plummeting at some point during the relevant time period of a person's working career, with catastrophic effects if you are unlucky enough to need the money at the bottom of one of these crashes.

But, even those employees who, in theory, have a promised pension benefit that their employer is required by law to pre-fund at actuarial sound levels can't count of getting their promised benefits when they retire. The downside risk of private pension plans betting their beneficiary's retirement on the stock market has been realized:

In the 12-month period ending October 9, 2008, equities held by private defined benefit plans lost almost a trillion dollars ($.9 trillion).

For funding purposes, the aggregate funded status of defined benefit plans has fallen from 100% at the end of 2007 to 75% . . .

More than 50% of private defined benefit plans are less than 80% funded.

The aggregate contribution that employers will be required to make to such plans for 2009 could almost triple, from just over $50 billion to almost $150 billion.

The underfunding crisis matters because private pension plans, unlikely Social Security, are not fully backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government:

If a company fails while its pension plan is underfunded, the PBGC is obliged to pick up the plan and pay retired workers. But it may not pay the full pensions that workers thought they were going to get; in some cases, such as the steel companies and airlines that filed for bankruptcy in the 1990s and early 2000s, many workers who had retired early with their full promised pension saw their monthly checks cut by more than 25%. A 2008 PBGC study of 125 plans terminated between 1990 and 2005 found 16% of the 525,000 participants suffered an average benefit reduction of 28%. Of the 70,000 retirees of Bethlehem Steel, whose plan the PBGC took over on Apr. 30, 2003, about 11,000 lost benefits, typically $500 of their $2,050 average monthly check.

The PBGC itself is underfunded by $33.5 billion.

The Non-Problem Of Social Security Payroll Taxation

Harsanyi also proclaims:

How about those payroll taxes most of us pay to fund Medicare? Isn't it time that Washington instituted an opt-out clause so that future generations are able to select private options if they wish?

Yet, Americans are less concerned about taxes being too high than they have been at any time since 1956 (when the top marginal tax rate on incomes over $400,000 was 91%; the top marginal tax rate on incomes is now 35% and applies at a little more than $311,000 of income).

The Social Security tax base, in particular, has grown smaller:

[W]hen the maximum limitation was enacted, it caused 92 percent of earnings to be subject to social security tax on the employee. Over time, that percentage fell as real wages increased, and Congress amended the law and provided for cost-of-living increases to the specified maximum dollar amount. Yet, presently only 80 percent of wages are subject to social security taxation on the employee.

Of course, in any situation where there is a positive rate of return on your tax dollar to you personally, it is hard to call that a tax in the ordinary sense at all. Mandatory contributions to private accounts would take money out of your paycheck just as reliably as Social Security does, but without any reliable promise that there would be a positive rate of return.

The Poverty Issue

The other problem with a "private option" for Social Security is that Social Security does more than simply facilitating savings for retirement. It is also the most effective anti-poverty program every invented, which eliminates all sorts of other social problems that take government money to address, which poverty creates.

While people should set aside enough savings for their retirement and secure adequate permanent disability insurance without being required by tax law to do so, the reality is that many do not (and this was true before Social Security was adopted, indeed this was the main reason that Social Security was adopted in the first place):

Social Security provides more than half of the total income for almost 60 percent of beneficiaries. For almost 30 percent, it provides more than 90 percent of income. . . . The poverty rate among the elderly in 2000 was approximately 10 percent, down from a rate of 35.2 percent in 1959. Without Social Security, the poverty rate among the elderly would be 48 percent.

Low income workers do receive higher rates of return on their Social Security contributions, but we all get the payback of that higher rate of return because we don't have to spend money on more expensive to administered means tested programs to provide elderly workers who can't support themselves with the minimum level of support they need to survive.

Footnote On the Public Option

Of course, Harsanyi didn't write his column because the nation is in the midst of seriously considering private accounts in the Social Security system. He did so as an argument against a "public option" in health care reform, although it is not obvious why a libertarian should argue against more choices for consumers.

In that connection, it is worth noting that the population that the American health care system has the best record of providing health care to shown, the elderly, as illustrated for example, in its good outcomes from cancer treatment by international standards, does not just have a public option. For senior citizens, the American health care system is a single payer health care program. This program is essential, together with Social Security, in keeping America's senior citizens out of poverty, it has far lower administrative costs than private health insurance plans do, it is very nearly universal, and it has managed to operate without forcing health care providers to be government run and without significantly discouraging medical treatments for elderly patients.

About 78% of men, and 86% of women die at age sixty-six or later. This means that their health care in their final year of life, which makes up a large percentage of all health care costs, takes place while their primary health care provider is Medicare. A disproportionate share of the rest have Medicare or Medicaid as their primary health care provider, because parts of these programs provide health care to those who are disabled (who have shorter life expectancies than the general population).

The moral issues involved in balancing end of life care decisions against cost in the United States already arise overwhelmingly in the context of people who are in a single payer government health care program.

The British National Health Care system, for all the criticism it has received from American conservatives (often based on inaccurate claims such as the claim that physicist Stephen Hawking, who receives his care from the system, would have died sooner if he was cared for by the British National Health Care system), yesterday received resounding testimonials of support not only from the ruling Labor Party prime minister, but from the leader of the ranking leader of the opposition Conservative Party (sometimes called the Tories).

There is also no reason to believe that a non-profit health care plan would be more stingy about providing health care to those at the end of life than existing for profit health insurance companies, whose tendency to try to deprive sick beneficiaries of care is well documented.

Denver's Indie 101.5 FM Exiled To Internet

I recently noted at this blog in late June, the Denver radio station Indie 101.5 FM had turned itself around and become a great radio station (it also won a Best of Denver award) after a weak start. Alas, this was a good thing that was not destined to last.

The closing statement of the core creative staff argues that radio is old school and that they'll thrive online as a web based radio station free of FCC censorship, but I have my doubts. This sounds like positive spin on a disastrous result to me.

Hello everyone this is Ralphie,

First off, if you are, sad about Indie leaving the FM dial don't be! We don't view this move as a step backwards, rather we will be bringing many new and exciting features to Indie not possible on the FM dial. Whip, Lynn, and myself will all be bringing their shows to Indie303.com, and we will be building this site from the ground up, based on your feedback.

We're just moving our shows off the radio, and all things considered, it's a much easier way to get the music you want. I'm genuinely excited about what's to come - a localized radio station free of FCC regulation and no longer forced to adjust the playlist to get ratings.

The new station at 101.5 FM in Denver is KTNI - The Truth which is a conservative talk radio format, as I discovered today, when I turned to 101.5 FM expecting alternative rock. Like most radio station format changes, it happened without warning.

The indie rock station format died Friday, July 31, 2009 at 10 a.m.

It was replaced by strip joint music the format "101.5 The Pole -- Stripper Radio" with sponsorship from the locally famous and politically conservative Shotgun Willies strip club of Glendale, Colorado, as a publicity stunt.

On July 31, 2009, KTNI dropped the Indie 101.5 format, and moved online as Indie303.com. The station ran a week long stunt running with a "stripper format", and christening themselves as The Pole. The stunt was sponsored by Denver's local strip club Shotgun Willie's. At 4pm on Thursday, August 6, KTNI became a Talk format as 101-5 "The Truth", simulcasting conservative talk along with local AM stations carrying the same programs surrounding the Denver market.

Since stripper music wasn't necessarily out of format for Indie 101.5 FM, and it was prone to weird on air joke pieces anyway, the change was easy to miss. I worked late on Thursday, and was out of Denver radio territory from Friday though Sunday, so it isn't that surprising that I missed the more obviouus move to talk radio until today.

Needless to say, this is not a happy development in Denver radioland.

Sister station HOT 107.1 FM (a 105.9 FM KALC clone) apparently lives on, however.

Zombie Porn Hunters

[I]n 2005 when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales set up an Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, which ultimately focused on prosecuting fetish, bestiality and so-called fringe porn.

Six months into the Obama Administration, the task force is still in business and is still headed by a former U.S. Attorney for Utah under President Ronald Reagan, Brent Ward.

From Politico.

The task force was accused of venue shopping for conservative juries by arranging FBI stings that ordered allegedly obscene materials in conservative rural jurisdictions and then securing adult porn obsenity indictments in those places. A key finding that juries must make in adult porn cases to reach a guilty verdict is the determination that the material is obsene in light of "community standards." (A subject addressed at length in this recent article.)

Adult porn prosecutions had virtually vanished prior to the creation of the task force by the Bush Admininistration in 2005, in the wake of changing community standards and appellate court rulings that provided strong free speech defenses to prosecutions. Adult obsenity cases also took a back seat in prosecution priority because they are victimless crimes involving consenting adults. The federal government even regulates the adult porn industry's record keeping requirements in order to simplify child pornography prosecutions, where there are far fewer legal defenses because child sexual abuse is a serious crime and is considered inherently involuntary. But, in the wake of the task force, which has led programs for state and local prosecutors on prosecuting adult obsenity case, as well as conducting its own prosecutions, the trend has reversed.

Convictions have even been secured for a comic book depicting child porn in a clearly drawn rather than photograph derived way, and for obscene, unillustrated written pornography.

The link above relates a sting set up by the Task Force where materials were ordered from a New Jersey company in Montana and an indictment was issued last August (under the George W. Bush Administration). This May, the Obama Administration quietly assenting to a judge's ruling change the venue in the case to New Jersey, where a conviction is likely to be much harder to secure due to the differences in the jury pool.

The case also sheds interesting light on another not widely known fact. There are many types of prosecutions that courts have held that the federal government has the power to make (such as prosecutions of cases under federal law for crimes where there have been acquittals in state trials, prosecutions for mere intentional failure to file a tax return without other tax charges, and prosecutions for check fraud under $75,000), that internal Justice Department policies direct its attorneys not to bring. One of those policies involves the kind of case brought by the Task Force in the Montana case:

[A]n internal Department of Justice policy. . . . dating to 1979 or earlier and included in the U.S. Attorney’s Manual, says postal obscenity cases “should not ordinarily” be filed in the district where an undercover agent had materials sent unless the defendant had some other contacts with that district.

Violations of these policies are not directly subject to judicial review, but failures to follow these policies might prompt new statutory or judicial rulings against the practices that could limit Justice Department bargaining power and legal rights in future cases. One reason the Justice Department may have dropped its appeal to the 9th Circuit in the Montana case, in addition to a change in administration policy, may have been to avoid the chance that a binding appellate court precedent limiting Justice Department power would be created.

Some of these Justice Department policies, which in principal can be changed at the whim of the Attorney General, amount to part of the unwritten constitution of the United States (a concept attributed in the English context to Walter Bagehot, which has increasing relevance in U.S. law and politics).

There are other political considerations in these cases as well:

Obscenity cases are politically sensitive for the Obama Justice Department because the deputy attorney general, David Ogden, was criticized by Republicans during his confirmation for his past legal work for Playboy and other purveyors of sexually explicit material. . . . The U.S. Attorney who brought the [Montana obsensity] case last year, William Mercer, had close ties to the Bush administration and in an unusual arrangement served as the No. 3 official at the Justice Department. In addition, complaints from [Obsensity Task Force leader] Ward about alleged resistance to bringing obscenity cases reportedly played a role in the firings of at least two of the U.S. Attorneys whose dismissals by Bush in 2006 sparked controversy and investigations.

Adding a new political dimension to the saga, the case filed against Goldman last week was assigned to Judge Joseph Greenaway Jr. of Newark, a Clinton appointee. In June, Obama nominated Greenaway to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit. The Senate has not yet acted on the nomination.

The reasons that U.S. Attorney appointments should be political, the counterarguments, and the federalism concerns implicated by these prosecutions are explored in another recent piece of legal scholarship.

Bill O'Reilly Still Stupid

[O]f course America has lower life expectancy than Canada — we have 10 times as many people, so we have 10 times as many deaths.

Bill O'Reilly, as paraphrased by Paul Krugman.

Why is he a syndicated TV personality again? Oh yeah, its Fox News.

I'm glad that original source Media Matters keeps on eye on this stuff so that I don't have to; my head would explode.

Scapegoating With Extra Scapegoating

The conservative magazine, Sam Schulman at The Weekly Standard condemns gay marriage, by condemning almost everybody else in the process. Among those scapegoated are:

* Mixed faith married people.
* Mixed nationality married people.
* Married people who have sex for purposes other than child bearing.
* People who have sex before marriage.
* People who have sex without someone other than their spouse during marriage.
* People who don't marry at the beginning of adulthood.
* People whose families would like, rather than loathe, each other in the absence of a marriage.
* Unmarried people who have sex who are a same sex couple.
* Married people who have sex who are a same sex couple.
* Same sex couples who built relationships with extended family.
* Unmarried women who don't feel they need marriage to protect them "from rape, degradation, and concubinage."
* State supreme court justices with degrees from middling law schools.
* Gays who "hold jobs--even as teachers and members of the clergy; . . .become elected officials, secret agents, and adoptive parents; and . . . live together in public, long-term relationships[.]"

We are also advised, by our thrice married male author, that marriage means the horrible suffering involved in surrendering "the dream of gratifying our immediate erotic desires" in favor of a wife, because "the granite underpinnings of marriage" are necessary for "domestic ecstasy." We are told that "without social disapproval of unmarried sex--what kind of madman would seek marriage?"

And what is unimportant about marriage? Well, "living forever with one's soulmate, loyalty, fidelity, warmth, a happy home, shopping, and parenting [or] arranging a happy home in which two hearts may beat as one--in fact marriage is actually pretty indifferent to that particular aim. Nor has marriage historically concerned itself with compelling the particular male and female who have created a child to live together and care for that child."

Who is this idiot and why does he get published? (Not surprisingly, he also hates atheists for questionable reasons and thinks that the Democratic party is the anti-Semitic party.)

A Dangerous And Intelligent Man

Adrian Vermmeule is a dangerous and intelligent man. He is a professor at Harvard Law School. His background is in administrative law, and his most politically notable work has been to argue for judicial deferrence not just to the executive branch generally in many circumstances, but in particular during states of emergency.

For example, in "Emergencies and Democratic Failure" (2006), he argues against the majority view of the judicial role in national emergencies, instead makes a case for greater judicial deference in emergencies arguing that:

Democratic failure is no more likely during emergencies than during normal times, and courts are in a worse position to correct democratic failures during emergencies than during normal times. The related arguments that during emergencies courts should protect aliens, and should be more skeptical of unilateral executive actions than of actions that are authorized by statutes, are also of doubtful validity.

He is a leading academic proponent of the "ticking time bomb" justification for coersive interrogation (read torture), in his article "Should Coercive Interrogation Be Legal?" (March 2005), the abstract of which argues understatedly:

If coercive interrogation is ever justified, and the benefits outweigh the risks of error and unintended consequences, it should be legal, albeit strictly regulated.

In one of his most recent works, Holmes on Emergencies (July 2007), he argues that the common law strategy for dealing with emergencies espoused by renowned jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes includes the notion that: "during emergencies there are no non-derogable rights - government can do anything if circumstances warrant[.]"

He previously taught at the University of Chicago Law School, probably the most conservative prestigious law school in the nation, and his work has frequently been supported by the conservative Olin Foundation. A partial bibliography of his scholarly works can be found at SSRN.

While there are many proponents of strong executive branch powers, and tolerance of authoritarian excess, few have the credentials or intelligence of Vermmeule. And, most of the others have a far larger profile among political elites, so he might evade the kind of allergic reaction that other less thoughtful or better known authoritarians might receive if he was, for example, nominated for a post on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which has an unusually strong role to play in administrative and public law.

Even absent a formal position on a powerful appellate court, solicitor general's office, or White House counsel position, his academic writings, which are very much in touch with the views of Dick Cheney, expressed through the Bush Administration, lend respectability and intellectual backbone to deplorable acts by government.

In short, he is someone worth keeping an eye upon.

The New Monarchists

Dick Cheney is on the record arguing that the Presidency of the United States should have monarchial powers. He isn't alone in the neo-conservative right in believing this, and a post at Daily Kos looks at a major academic support of this reactionary theory of American government.

The Monarchists are on the march again in America. Will it take another American revolution to displace them?

The Liberal Project Of Ending Evil By Understanding It

Conservatives On Evil

Evil is a concept largely reserved for the religious and for conservatives, who as a result don't need to ask "Why does somone do something bad?"

The answer is obvious, indeed, almost tautological: "People do bad things because they are evil."

Implicitly, however, this view also sees evil people as rational actors who responds only to externally imposed brute force. A more nuanced recognize that some people are more evil than others, but retains the concept.

This worldview also justifies punishment and retribution. If someone is evil, and it is by definition good and right to punish them for their evil acts. And, if someone is completely evil, it is good and right to end their existence, even when one is acting in cold blood in the court system, rather than in the hot blood of a situation where one must use violence to stop violence.

The trouble is that approaches to crime control which are rooted in this world view don't work.

Liberal On Evil

Liberals are more skeptical of the concept of evil and so they are more prone to asking "why do people do bad things?", with an intent to get some sort of meaningful answer not implicit in the question itself.

Social Context

Progress Now today highlights a recent book, "The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil" by Philip Zimbardo, that focuses on one class of bad actors, sociopaths and their less extreme cousins, normal people who behave badly as a consequence of their socially assigned roles.

A sociopath isn't mentally ill. Instead, a sociopath is someone who as a result of their social situation (the classic example is gang members) develops a value system that tolerates and even glorifies anti-social actions.

Philip Zimbardo, along with Stanley Milgram, are famous for their experiments that show that it is actually exceedingly easy to turn ordinary nice people into people who violently abuse their power, even in a quite artificial settings on a college campus. This isn't a phenomena limits to those who spend a lifetime in a horrible situation. Zimbardo's book talks about how how context can turn people into monsters.

The book is hauntingly current in the wake of the Abu Grahib scandal in which American prison guards abused Iraqi detainees in weird sexual and sadistic ways.

In the same vein, we increasingly are learning that many suicide bombers are more well educated, middle class, patriotic people who are willing to sacrifice for a believed benefit to their peers, rather than what most people historically have believed, which is that most sucide bombers are deranged or stupid, a lot of terrorism starts looking like it falls into the realm of acts of war driven by one's social and political perspectives (similar to lawful use of violence by soldiers and law enforcement, but influenced by different, but mainstream values about the propriety of targetting civilians) rather than like crime.

Recent statistics showing large numbers of Colorado prison inmates are gang members, and events like yesterday's major bust of a crips affliated gang in metro Denver, suggest that this is one important part of criminal activity.

Mental Health

Another cause of bad behavior is psychopathy. While not an official psychiatric diagnosis at this time, researchers in the field have identified a mental illness which is firmly entrenched at a young age which comes close to the folk definition of evil. Psychopathy doesn't necessarily lead to evil behavior, but is found in a large share of serial killers and con men. Psychopathy doesn't inherently imply that someone will be violent, does usually does imply that their conscience will not restain them from acting on their impulses, that they will go to great lengths to fight boredom, and that punishment is often ineffective in causing someone suffering from it to change their behavior.

Less frightening cousins of psychopathy, so far as I can tell, as they also involve impulse control issues and difficulty dealing with boredom are a genetically linked personality trait known as novelty-seeking (a trait associated with luring sufferers into criminal activity), and attention deficit disorder, which is also believed to have a biological basis, and is like the other two associated with insufficient response to dopamine and impulse control, but generally far less powerfully, although it is also believed to be corollated in a causal fashion with delinquency.

I suspect (but lack the expertise to state definitively) that at some point psychopathy, a novelty-seeking personality and ADD will be grouped together as related conditions, much as various autism spectrum disorders are today.

One of the big picture parts of both the mental health and physical health research agendas is to reach a point where more diseases can be categorized by cause, e.g. autoimmune disorders or dopamine processing disorders, which suggest treatments, rather than in the traditional symptomatic method. My guess may be wrong, but the larger project is real and valuable and regularly making surprising connections. Who knew, for example, that many forms of diabetes have a central nervous system auto-immune component, just as M.S. does?

Mental health conditions associated with impulse control and boredom, of course, are not the only mental conditions associated with crime and bad acts. Historically, many cases involving the insanity defense in criminal law (and many of the inquiries into testamentary and contractual capacity) have focused on mental health conditions that give rise to delusions that make it impossible for the actor to know what he is doing or to understand the rightness or wrongness of what he is doing. A recent appeal of a Colorado criminal case drew the line, however, at allowing bona fide hallucinations induced by voluntary drug use to provide mitigation or justification for an individual's acts, an LSD trip and a schitzophrenic delusion weren't morally equivalent in the eyes of the court.

The kind of mental health condition that gives rise to incidents like the Virginia Tech massacre, and these incidents do seem to follow a certain profile, is different again. The perpetrators don't seem to fit the profile of the cold, consciousless individuals who go onto become serial killers. They do seem to be loners, with life long struggles with mental illness of some kind. But, I'm not enough of a psychiatrist to tell you precisely what to call the one or several types of mental health issues are associated with this kind of incident.

While some psychiatrists believe that aggressiveness is another trait which is both linked to crime and may have some biological as well as social components, aggressiveness itself, while linked to bad acts, is not very closely linked to the kind of bad acts we customarily think of as evil. Spur of the moment bar fights, for example, can kill, but are rarely considered as culpable as a pre-meditated murder.

There are probably others I've missed -- the apparently obessive-compulsive personality disorder, for example, that gives rise to the cleptomaniac. Another major root cause, that lies somewhere between being a biologically based mental health issue and a psychological problem that is not immutably part of a person, is substance abuse and addiction.

Crime Committed By Rational Actors

But, it is also worth noting that bad, or at least, illegal behavior, doesn't need to imply either a mental health issue, or a deeply warped set of values. Sometimes, people do bad things, or commit crimes, simply because they are "rational actors" or people who more or less accidentally slip over a line from accepted to impermissible behavior. The line between a lot of business fraud, and the ordinary and accepted commercial practice of puffing in business negotiations, for example, can be a thin one. The classic example of the rational actor criminal is the man who steals bread because he is hungry. Someone might intentionally omit income from their tax return because they don't think that they will get caught, feel that no one will be hurt if they do, and feel that they need the money to provide for their family. Less dramatically, almost everybody intentionally drives over the speed limit.

Implications

Not all bad acts are evil acts, utterly devoid of justification or excuse. And, the fact that we know what motivates a bad act doesn't necessarily, or even often, mean that we should refrain from punishing it. Similarly, mental illness does not itself make commission of a crime inevitable (or even likely, even if crime is more likely for one person than for the average person), it simply makes it more challenging for some people than for others to resist committing one. There is considerable academic literature on how and to what extent mental health can predict violent recidivism.

But, to effectively prevent crime, you have to understand its root causes, and you must further understand the relative importance of those root causes. It is plausible to believe that a lot of people who commit economically motivated crimes driven by poverty and an inability to earn money by legitimate means. Prostitutes, thieves, smugglers and drug dealers, for example, may be basically rational actors who would are in hard straights. A lot of civil rights and human rights violations, fraternity hazing incidents, and gang related violence, may be more easily chalked up to sociopathic causes. Many of the most gruesome, headline making offenses, and similarly, many of the most odd, almost benign, motiveless crimes, may be attributable to mental illness.

Measures designed to stop the next Virginia Tech may be worthless, or even counterproductive, at controlling drug dealing. But, until a better model of why crimes and bad (even evil) acts are committed becomes more widespread, the prospects for progress in reducing the incidence of these acts seems dim.

Why Do They Drive Us Nuts?

Julie O. aptly explains why conservatives drive us nuts. In short, they have a gross inability to admit reality, even when the facts are overwhelming.