Drug War

Despite my hippie reputation, I'm a pretty straight-laced guy. I don't smoke, drink, or do drugs, and I never have. I also do not buy libertarian arguments that drug laws are per se immoral as a "victimless crime," and agree that in theory, drug distribution is something the government can regulate and/or criminalize.

That being said, the manner in which the drug war has been prosecuted is so destructive, militarized, and excessive as to deprive it of any legitimacy it otherwise would possess. It is discriminatorily targeted at minority communities, it takes away needed resources from other law enforcement priorities, it leads to absurd political competitions amongst elected officials to appear "tough," and it has ushered in a police culture of complete disregard for law, legal restrictions, and basic norms of justice in the pursuit of conviction at any cost.



I got this picture from The Agitator, whose coverage on drug war excesses has been stellar. Tell me, does this picture represent the America you and I think we live in?

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Clap you hands, say vote!

Crossing Poland

A long while back, I wrote a post positing that if Hitler had not invaded Poland, nobody would have cared about his genocide. Obviously, had Hitler not been expansionist, the death toll of the Holocaust would have been greatly reduced, but it still would have been horrific--the number of German Jews alone killed was around 200,000. The "it's not our problem" line of thinking allows us to ignore atrocities that are contained within one country's borders, and thus sanctions the mass killing going there. This dynamic, I argued, was going on in Darfur. And without any sort of regional implications, the Sudanese regime apparently would be allowed to continue killing with impunity.

But the thing about "contained" catastrophes is that it's hard to contain them. Refugee pressure, ethnic allies in neighboring countries, and generic instability can all push an intramural conflict into an interstate conflaguration. And it appears that might be what's happening in Darfur:

The crisis in Darfur has exploded in recent weeks, and now threatens to drag fragile neighboring countries into a regional war.

Both Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR) have become engulfed in fighting that involves a toxic mix of rebel groups, government forces, armed militias, and civilians.

"It's not a steady deterioration," Jan Egeland, the outgoing UN humanitarian chief, told reporters last week. "It's a free fall, and it includes Darfur, eastern Chad, and northern Central African Republic."

In the past month alone, nearly 60,000 Darfurians have been forced from their homes to escape massacre at the hands of Arab militias known as the janjaweed. Aid workers, UN personnel, and independent observers say the janjaweed are backed by Sudan's government, but Khartoum has repeatedly denied this charge.

In eastern Chad, hundreds of aid workers have been evacuated due to increased hostilities between military forces and anti-government rebel groups, while Arab militiamen have ventured deeper into the country to conduct assaults, resulting in the displacement of nearly 100,000 Chadians.

And atrocities committed by a variety of rebel groups and armed bandits over the past few months have forced tens of thousands of people from the CAR to cross the border into Chad.

"The internal conflicts in Darfur, Chad, and the CAR are now linked by the regional presence and movement of armed groups, arms, and civilians across the three borders," said Georgette Gagnon, deputy director of the Africa division of Human Rights Watch. "And of course, the regional governments are using these insurgencies to carry out a proxy war against each other."

It would indeed be ironic if the prospect of an all-out regional war is what finally motivated the international community to get serious about ending the killing (when it's probably too late). But what lesson do we take from this? When we try to ignore internal conflicts as "not our problem", they become "our problem" because they metastasize into major threats to international stability. Had we not been locked into this short-sighted mindset, we could have nipped the Darfur situation before it got out of hand (and saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the process). Now, it may very well be too late. As with when Hitler crossed into Poland, the only way to stop the genocide now, in all likelihood, is to hope the right parties win the war.

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Vote, if you'd like:

God's Work

Jeffrey Goldberg has a fascinating review of Jimmy Carter's new book, Peace Not Apartheid, which has come under withering fire for its anti-Israel slant. This passage made me smile:

Carter, not unlike God, has long been disproportionately interested in the sins of the Chosen People. He is famously a partisan of the Palestinians, and in recent months he has offered a notably benign view of Hamas, the Islamist terrorist organization that took power in the Palestinian territories after winning a January round of parliamentary elections.

There are differences, however, between Carter's understanding of Jewish sin and God's. God, according to the Jewish Bible, tends to forgive the Jews their sins. And God, unlike Carter, does not manufacture sins to hang around the necks of Jews when no sins have actually been committed.

But the more interesting part of the review was about the interplay between the book and evangelical support for Israel. Conservatives have tried to tag Carter's book as a sign that Democrats no long support the Jewish State. The problem is that there is no evidence that Democrats care a whit what Carter has to say on the subject. When questioned on the issue, Nancy Pelosi remarked:

With all due respect to former President Carter, he does not speak for the Democratic Party on Israel. Democrats have been steadfast in their support of Israel from its birth, in part because we recognize that to do so is in the national security interests of the United States. We stand with Israel now and we stand with Israel forever. The Jewish people know what it means to be oppressed, discriminated against, and even condemned to death because of their religion. They have been leaders in the fight for human rights in the United States and throughout the world. It is wrong to suggest that the Jewish people would support a government in Israel or anywhere else that institutionalizes ethnically based oppression, and Democrats reject that allegation vigorously.

That's a pretty strong repudiation.

But Goldberg claims that the primary targets of Carter's book (in terms of who he's trying to persuade) are not liberals but fellow evangelicals, whom he wants to pull away from pro-Israel politics. The right-wing love for Israel always struck me as a rather odd position--it's not like there is a long history of Christian love for Jews, and Jews have steadfastly refused to ally with the evangelical right on pretty much any substantive issue they care about. Carter may think that they might be crackable:

Why is Carter so hard on Israeli settlements and so easy on Arab aggression and Palestinian terror? Because a specific agenda appears to be at work here. Carter seems to mean for this book to convince American evangelicals to reconsider their support for Israel. Evangelical Christians have become bedrock supporters of Israel lately, and Carter marshals many arguments, most of them specious, to scare them out of their position. Hence the Golda Meir story, seemingly meant to show that Israel is not the God-fearing nation that religious Christians believe it to be. And then there are the accusations, unsupported by actual evidence, that Israel persecutes its Christian citizens. On his fateful first visit to Israel, Carter takes a tour of the Galilee and writes, "It was especially interesting to visit with some of the few surviving Samaritans, who complained to us that their holy sites and culture were not being respected by Israeli authorities -- the same complaint heard by Jesus and his disciples almost two thousand years earlier."

There are, of course, no references to "Israeli authorities" in the Christian Bible. Only a man who sees Israel as a lineal descendant of the Pharisees could write such a sentence. But then again, the security fence itself is a crime against Christianity, according to Carter; it "ravages many places along its devious route that are important to Christians." He goes on, "In addition to enclosing Bethlehem in one of its most notable intrusions, an especially heartbreaking division is on the southern slope of the Mount of Olives, a favorite place for Jesus and his disciples." One gets the impression that Carter believes that Israelis -- in their deviousness -- somehow mean to keep Jesus from fulfilling the demands of His ministry.

I'm not sure how much credibiliy Carter has in the evangelical community these days, so I'm not sure how effective his plea will be. Nevertheless, it does perhaps foreshadow a worrisome trend.

At the end of the day, Leon Hadar remarks:

I'm not sure whether Carter doesn't like Israelis or hates Jews but from my perspective, he would go down in history as someone who made a huge contribution to Israel's security through his successful mediation of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.

That should be true. Obviously, Carter did Israel a great service in brokering the peace treaty with Egypt. I am perfectly content to remember him for that, and proceed to forget every thing else he does in the region for the remainder of his life.

Jefferson Morley has a round-up of folks talking.

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If you're happy and you know it vote for me! *Clap* *Clap*

That's New Orleans

Corrupt Congressman William "$90,000 in the freezer" Jefferson won re-election in a run-off against fellow Democrat Karen Carter. Given the controversy, he won surprisingly comfortably--57% to 43%.

Obviously, this is a black-eye to Democrats trying to claim the mantle of fighting corruption. On the other hand, he may not be an embarassment for that much longer. Anyone want to venture an over/under on how long he'll remain in Congress?

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It don't mean a fink, if you don't vote Debate Link (shout out for Ella Fitzgerald!)

Elections. Yay.

The Washington Post reports that Palestinian President Abbas may call for early elections. Palestinian government has been in an state of gridlock--both because the West refuses to recognize it so long as it refuses to recognize Israel, and because there is bitter internal feud by Abbas' Fatah Party and the ruling Hamas.

Might I inquire what this is supposed to accompolish?

Obviously, I know the theory behind it: A new election might shake up the status quo enough so their can be some movement on the peace process. The problems, though, are

1) There is no guarantee that pro-peace elements will win a new election. Indeed, I'm not exactly sure what party a Palestinian would vote for if they are pro-peace, as neither Fatah nor Hamas really have expressed much of an interest in stopping terrorism. The lack of viable peace party in Palestine does not signal that a majority of Palestinians don't want peace, merely that a majority of Palestinians in organized gun-bearing groups don't want peace, and are willing to intimidate others to insure it doesn't happen.

2) There is no guarantee that any major shift in electoral power will take place peacefully. Hamas and Fatah are already on the verge of a civil war. Any internal instability could easily spill into Israel, prompting their own intervention.

3) It is supremely unlikely that a new government would be stable enough to meet the key demands of the West--recognition of Israel. Groups willing to entertain the notion simply don't have enough power vis-a-vis rejectionist groups (who certainly won't lay down arms just because they come up on the wrong side of a vote).

I'm a big fan of democracy generally, but democractic action in Palestine right now is not necessarily going to lead to peace. Let's not get too excited.

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As a certain rapper would say...VOTE OR DIE

An Anti-Heteronormative Reading of Leviticus 18:22

Thou shalt not lie with a man as with a woman, for it is an abomination. Lev. 18:22

It is not good for man to be alone. -- Gen. 2:18

I just got back from services today, where I had the pleasure of listening to Marilyn Wind, a congregant and lay member of the Committee on Jewish Laws and Standards (CJLS), discuss the committees recent debate and Teshuvot on the issues of gay rights. I also got the opportunity to read the (still unreleased) opinion by Rabbi Tucker, and it was (as expected), phenomenal. I had to give Ms. Wind the opinion back, but she promised to make and send me a copy--as soon as I receive it, I'll be able to go into more depth as to Rabbi Tucker's interpretative schema.

But as I was reading his opinion, I was struck with an interesting paradox in how we read the biblical prohibition against homosexuality. The relevant line is, as quoted above, thou shalt not lie with a man as with a woman, for it is an abomination. This passage is considered to be the largest barrier against religious reconceptualization of gay rights. We interpret it as an absolute bar against homosexual (or at least gay male) activity. "As with a women" supposedly refers to sexual activity. This is a heteronormative interpretation--only for heterosexual males (and homosexual females) are one's lyings with a women sexual. Cross-applying the rule to homosexuals means taking the heteronormative viewpoint and transplanting the rule (as opposed to the text) to homosexual persons.

But is that necessarily the proper interpretation? The prohibition is not phrased directly--it does not say "men should not have sex with men." The first thing we must observe is that the mandate of the text depends very heavily on who it is speaking to. Even if we accept that the prohibition is on having sex with men, it is facile to suggest that a female Jew is prohibited from having sex with men. In its normative frame, the verse makes no sense applied directly to women. This does not in itself prove anything--one could extrapolate an inverted rule prohibiting lesbian activity for women (though such extra-textualism strikes me as a dangerous maneuver for a traditionalist). It does establish, however, that the standpoint of the reader matters as to the meaning of the phrase. At its most conservative, 18:22 means two entirely opposite things for men and for women: men should not have sex with men, and women should not have sex with women.

A law can only have force against those it is meant to speak to. A prohibition that only refers to Kohenim should not be expanded all Jews. If we understand the prohibition of 18:22 to be against male-male sex, then it can only apply to men, it does not "speak to" female activity in any sense, either (obviously) prohibiting them from having sex with men, or prohibiting them from having sex with women.

It is possible to make the law apply to women, however. From a (heterosexual) female perspective, "not lying with a man as one lies with a women" does not mean "don't have sex with men," because heterosexual women do not have sex with women when they lie with them. For straight women, the analogy "as one lies with a women" does not and cannot refer to sexual activity. Indeed, it means the opposite--presumably, heterosexual women would lie with other women completely platonically. So the law as applied to heterosexual women is that they should not (artificially) be barred from having sex with men they wish to "lie with", for that would imply they must lie with men as they lie with women (non-sexually or platonically). Now, even though I think that for women it is better to interpret 18:22 in a "does not speak to" manner, hold that thought.

As noted above, the law can only have affect against those to whom it speaks. If 18:22 does not speak to homosexual men, then it has nothing to say to them, and its prohibition is inapplicable to them. And it is rather clear that the traditional reading of 18:22 is heteronormative--it is not just speaking to men, but heterosexual men. This is true for the same reason applying the law to females is troublesome--"as with a women" does not mean the same thing for a homosexual male as it does for a heterosexual male. How does a homosexual male lie with a women? Platonically, not sexually. If the law is speaking to homosexuals, not lying with a man as with a women is telling them they should not lie platonically with men. Phrased more sensibly, it says that gay men should not be forced to be in platonic relationships with other gay men, for that forces their relationships to be as they would be with women. (Of course, just as the metaphor "as with a woman" in the normative case does not mean that heterosexual men sleep with every women and cannot have a platonic relationship, neither does its use in this case imply that homosexual men must have sex with every man they encounter.).

The upshot of this is astounding: 18:22 is read as an affirmation that every person should refrain from attempting to engage in sexual relations--not with those of the same sex--but with those whom they are not attracted to. It is a prohibition against bearing false witness against oneself. Interpreting the passage in this manner allows for its universalizability and, more importantly, it is the only way the passage can be made intelligible to someone with a same-sex sexual orientation. It also seems to be more thematically consistent with the human dignity and companionship norms that undergird Jewish ethical thought: it reinforces the notion that forcing gay men and women to live a life alone is not just inadvisable, but wrong--just like it was not good for Adam to be alone, so it is not good for gay men to be trapped in the closet, forced to deny themselves and unable to reach complete fulfillment as human beings.

The orthodox reading of 18:22 falters because it takes a heteronormative viewpoint it expands it to all men, homo- or heterosexual. It presumes that for all men, sex is how one lies with a women, draws a rule from that inference, then applies the rule against those for whom the original supposition does not apply. This likely stems from the belief that homosexuality was a aberration from the heterosexual norm--that for all men (including the supposedly gay) the natural inclination was a sexual preference towards women, and gay men were voluntarily choosing to deviate from that norm. Now that we know that this is not true, and that for many men sexual attraction to women is not their default state, we can no longer read "as with a women" as necessarily referring to sex for all men. That is not a tenable interpretation in the modern era. And given what we now know about sexuality, a liberal, humane alternative emerges that celebrates sexual equality and rejects false heteronormative bindings that consign gay Jews to a life of oppression and degradation.

Again, the preceding analysis doesn't mean you have to read 18:22 expansively (as prohibiting gay men from having sex with women). Such a reading is only required if one believes the passage speaks to (can be read against) gay men. If one does not care about that, a narrow reading would just say that the passage does not speak to gay men at all, and the prohibition is only against heterosexual male-male sex, perhaps meant as a bar against certain cultic rituals (as Rabbi Brad Artson has forwarded). Either way 18:22 poses no bar to homosexual males being granted equal standing in the community and full recognition of their sexual orientation. The claim that 18:22 does not speak to homosexuals would mean that the Bible is agnostic toward homosexual activity among homosexuals. That's radical enough. What makes my alternative reading so incredible is that it would suggest that not only is homosexuality okay, but attempting to suppress it--making gay men lie with women as they would lie with men--is qualitatively wrong. 18:22 is thus rendered precisely opposite its orthodox stance: a ringing endorsement of gay equality and a condemnation of the closet.

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Synagogue Services

I'm attending Synagogue Services tomorrow. Since I go to a Conservative (capital "C") congregation, the focus will be on the recent Teshuvot our movement issued on gay rights (blogged here and here). There's no real drama on which policy we'll follow (it's a very liberal congregation), but the discussion should be interesting. I'll let you know if there are any particularly trenchant insights to be had.

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And don't forget to vote!

Firefly's Back!

As an online RPG! I've never actually played a MMORPG before, but I may have to make an exception, for Firefly is a truly special series that deserves all the support it can get.

Via Instapundit, who says: "Shiny"!

Guess Who?

What Republican said this in 1994?

There's something to be said for having a Republican who supports civil rights in this broader context, including sexual orientation. When Ted Kennedy speaks on gay rights, he's seen as an extremist. When [I] speak[] on gay rights [I'm] seen as a centrist and a moderate. It's a little like if Eugene McCarthy was arguing in favor of recognizing China, people would have called him a nut. But when Richard Nixon does it, it becomes reasonable. When Ted says it, it's extreme; when I say it, it's mainstream. I think the gay community needs more support from the Republican Party and I would be a voice in the Republican Party to foster anti-discrimination efforts.

The other thing I should say is that the gay community and the members of it that are friends of mine that I've talked to don't vote solely on the basis of gay rights issues. They're also very concerned about a $4 trillion national debt, a failing school system, a welfare system that's out of whack and a criminal justice system that isn't working. I believe that while I would further the efforts Ted Kennedy has led, I would also lead the country in new and far more positive ways in taxing and spending, welfare reform, criminal justice and education. That's why I believe many gay and lesbian individuals will support my candidacy and do support my candidacy.

Hint: He's a favorite of the Christian Right today.

Counter-Mobilization: Myth or Reality?

Over at Tapped, Scott Lemieux argues that the experience of Canada disproves the "counter-mobilization" myth with regard to gay rights. The counter-mobilzation theory holds that aggressive gay rights litigation and court decisions lead to a backlash from the populace at large, ultimately harming the movement. Lemieux says that Canada proves no such thing occurs:

Gay rights litigation has been very successful in our neighbor to the north, with major victories at both the federal and provincial levels (including with respect to marriage benefits. According to oft-cited conventional wisdom, this success should have been a disaster for the gay rights movement, mobilizing a huge backlash and setting the cause back for generations as citizens were incensed by decision by "activist" courts. The problem is that this is not, in fact, true. Not only did Parliament end up formally recognizing gay marriage, but gay marriage has continued to become more popular, now commanding the support of almost 60% of the Canadian public.

That may well be, but I'm not sure this totally disproves the counter-mobilization theory. My observation was that pathbreaking gay rights judicial decisions do spark a backlash, but not in the jurisdiction their made in. The response to the Goodridge decision, for example, was far more hostile around the country than it ever was in Massachusetts specifically. The anti-gay impacts were felt most acutely in Ohio or Oregon, not that Bay State. Massachusetts denizens, of course, got to observe the effects of gay marriage first hand and were able to conclude that the sky didn't fall. But voters elsewhere had no such direct experience and thus only saw gay marriage presented by demagogic figures through the prism of a grave, imminent threat to the family.

Hence, I think the counter-mobilization hypothesis still makes sense when outsiders hear of a path-breaking gay rights decision elsewhere. Without the countervailing factor of actually observing gay families, counter-moblization can still occur. This doesn't mean abandoning litigation as a strategy, but it does mean that progressives must push harder for the visibility of gay and lesbian families across the country, not just in the stereotypical "hotspots."

Throwing It In

Tom Friedman on the Imus radio show, via Atrios:

We need to set a date, a clear and defined date, circled on the calendar, for us to leave there.

So, he's finally calling it quits. Tom Friedman, who has supported this war from the beginning, who has stuck through all of Bush's mistakes and catastrophes in the vain hope that we could find the magic bullet, has said we have to withdraw.

I think now would be a great time to revisit one of the most poignant quotes from his interview with me last August:

People come up to me now, because I've written an article basically saying Iraq's not working, and they say "Oh, thank you. Thank you for finally seeing the light." And my attitude is rather hostile to those people. Because I don’t think these people understood the problem from the beginning, and I don't want their thank you now. I feel terrible about Iraq. But I don't feel terrible because I'm going to be seen as someone who was on the wrong side of the war. I feel terrible first of all for all the casualties, and the incredible human devastation--American and Iraqi. But what I really feel terrible about, David, is this project. I thought it was really important. I still think it's important. And I have no apologies to make about thinking it's important. It's still important. I still hope we can salvage something. And so, I don't want anyone to say "Thank you for seeing the light." I haven't seen any light at all. All I've seen is darkness. Because if this project fails, only bad things will come of it for the world that my girls are going to grow up in.

A few days ago, Glenn Greenwald wrote a vicious critique of Mr. Friedman's contribution to Iraq War discourse. While I thought it far harsher than it needed to be, there was one point that I thought legitimate: Supporting the war based on the theoretical "best policy", when this administration has shown no interest in adapting that policy (or even trying to figure out what a "best policy" might look like) is wrong. It is delusional, it is folly, and it is wrong.

It may well be there is the magic combination of policies that can set Iraq right. I have no confidence that the Bush administration will adapt those policies. It is also true that the best reason for both staying in and leaving Iraq is what happens if we do the opposite. Staying in Iraq means being stuck in the middle of a mid-grade civil war that we cannot fix or end, while our global position degrades each day and our military grows more disillusioned and bogged down. Leaving Iraq means plunging it into a brutal bloodbath that could possibly pull the entire region into war--and it would be our fault. There is no good option. But I cannot continue to support a failed policy on the grounds that some administration, somewhere, could still solve the Iraqi dilemma. This one can't. And I can no longer ask American soldiers to die for our leadership's mistakes.

Kassim Ouma

In one of the odder twists of my life, attending to Carleton has made me into a pro boxing fan. Not because Carleton is some hotspot of boxing activity (not even close!). Rather it is for the far more mundane reasons that the old boxing matches on ESPN Classic were often the only thing on late at night, and with my hours I found myself watching. And I became hooked.

This weekend, a fighter by the name of Kassim Ouma (25-2-1, 15 KOs) will fight Super Middleweight Champion Jermain Taylor (25-0-1, 17 KOs) for the world title. Taylor I last saw in a bout against Winky Wright (one of my favorite fighters), where Taylor escaped (in the most literal sense--I thought Wright won the fight) with a draw. Ouma I knew little about other than his recent victory over the highly regarded Sechew Powell.

In boxing, there are a lot of hard stories. But Ouma's stands out as particularly heart-rending. Forced to fight as a child soldier in Uganda's brutal civil war, Ouma was endured atrocities most of us can scarecely imagine:

"The thing is Kassim has to learn to realize that he was a victim then and he's a victim now. He has to learn to let go of the guilt for the decisions he had to make in order to survive. I really believe he has massive issues of post-traumatic stress that he's dealt with as best he could. But the memories are never far from the surface, and almost anything can dredge those memories up" [says manager/translator Tom Moran].

In Ouma's case, those memories are like scars upon his psyche. He was just 6 years old when rebels stormed into his grade school in Busia, Uganda, in 1984 and abducted all the boys. Ouma and his frightened classmates were herded into the back of a garbage truck and driven into the bush, where they were forced to fight with the guerrillas.

Handed an AK-47 that was larger than he was, Ouma suddenly found himself a kadogo in Yoweri Museveni's rebel army.

The first day, Moran relates, the adult soldiers told the children that "there's no more mommies and daddies now" and that "if you cry something's going to happen to you."

Some of the kids cried and, true to their word, they did not live long enough to fathom the high cost of their tears. Ouma was even ordered to shoot one of his friends, or run the risk of suffering the same grisly fate. Simultaneously terrified and repulsed, he complied.

"Can you imagine?" Moran said, aghast that such atrocities can exist and be forced upon the youngest and most vulnerable members of even a violent society. "This is what Kassim has locked up inside him.

"When he finally is ready to agree to it, I hope to get him some professional help so that he can learn to forgive himself. He made a conscious decision as a child to do things, terrible things, which no one should ever have to do. He feels responsibility and guilt for, well, still being alive. That's what torments him and he can't let go of."

Ouma escaped from combat by joining the Ugandan national boxing team, and defected to the United States in 1998, leaving behind his wife and children. His father was beaten to death by the Ugandan army as a result. He was homeless. And this weekend, he's fighting one the best boxers in the sport for the Super Middleweight crown.

I'll be rooting for him.

Teshuvah of Rabbis Nevins, Dorff, and Reisner

I'm still working my way through the 55 page opinion, but if you want to take a look, it's available online. There's is the liberal teshuvah of the three passed, which allows for same-sex commitment ceremonies, rabbinic ordinations, and lifts the prohibition on all homosexual sex but male-male anal sex (oral sex and lesbian sex is still okay).

Rabbi Nevins also released a journal of remarks after the vote which sheds significant light on the other (as yet unreleased) opinions. I was particularly interested in his description of Rabbi Levy's opinion that has been described as recommending reparative therapy for homosexuals:

It has been reported that Rabbi Leonard Levy called for "reparative therapy" for gay and lesbian Jews to function as heterosexuals. This is, as Len likes to say, a "sweeping generalization." In fact, his point was that while most people who experience same-sex attraction may never be able to change that, even if highly motivated, a small percentage nevertheless may, and they should be offered that opportunity. I don't think anyone disagrees that people should be able to understand their sexual orientation with the assitance of open minded counselors. Where we disagree with Len is in his claim that you can maintain an exclusive public policy that bans all homosexual intimacy and the recognition of homosexual families while also creating a welcoming and respectful environment for people who identify as gay or lesbian. I voted against Len's paper, but I don't think it should be distorted.

I think this may be too kind to the reparative therapy position, but I am curious to read Rabbi Levy's opinion in full to get the complete picture. Unlike the other two passed opinions, which both garnered a majority of 13 out of 25 (one Rabbi voted yes for both positions), Rabbi Levy's teshuvah only received 6 votes--the bare minimum necessary to be considered legitimate.

Rabbi Nevins also talks about the two opinions which were labeled "legislation" (thus requiring 20 votes instead of 6 to pass) and thus were not passed. In this category I am particularly interested in the opinion of Rabbi Tucker:

Rabbi Gordon Tucker, submitted a general essay about theories of Jewish law, citing many modern legal theorists, especially the late Robert Cover, to argue that the law must not be immoral, and that the narrative ethical values of Judaism should direct the law in this case, rather than the reverse.

Robert Cover was a brilliant legal and Jewish theorist, and I expect Rabbi Tucker's opinion to be quite intriguing and hopefully lay the groundwork for developments in Jewish law to come.

Obviously, if anyone knows where to find the other opinions, I'd love to read them over.

Will of the People

As some of you may recall, the recent November elections were quite good for the Democratic Party. Which makes this bulletin from the American Conservative Union all the more amusing (all emphasis original):

Republicans in the U.S. Senate could have -- SHOULD HAVE -- confirmed John Bolton! They had the majority in the Senate and a majority of Senators supported John Bolton.

Majority Leader Bill Frist and Senate Republicans could have played hard-ball. They had the power to bring the nomination out of committee and to the Senate floor, where Bolton would have been easily confirmed.

Yet they did NOTHING. They cringed behind their desks, determined to sneak out of Washington this week, tails between their legs!

Last month, the American people went to the polls, turned about two dozen RINOs OUT OF office and DEMANDED conservative government! And unfortunately in the process, the GOP lost its majority and a few good men like Rick Santorum, Jim Talent and George Allen.

But apparently our leaders did not get the message!

A landslide Democratic year shows that Americans DEMANDED conservative government? Coming up in 2008: Pat Buchanan cruises to the Presidency amidst a Democratic tidal wave.

You heard it here first.

Two Jews, Three Opinions

So the old saying goes. Anyway, a Conservative Jewish panel on the issue of same-sex sex, ordination, and commitment ceremonies has approved 3 teshuvot (legal opinions) on the subject--two of which uphold the traditional view, and a third which allows for gay commitment ceremonies and ordinations, but still forbids anal sex.

This strikes me as a bit of an odd compromise--like getting Goodridge without Lawrence, but I'll take what I can get. As I noted in my previous post, Jewish teshuvot do not have to mutually compatible, or apparently even mutually intelligible. So, like with Hillel and Shammai, both "these and these are the words of the living God." The Post's article also says that three members of the 25-person panel resigned in protest of the decision, although they did not say which teshuvot they were protesting.

If anyone has links to the Teshuvot, I'd be quite interested in reading them.

UPDATE: Still no links to the Teshuvot. However, according to one site, one of the traditionalist Teshuvot "upholds the ban on gay sexual relationships in Jewish law and mentions the option for gays to undergo therapy aimed at changing their sexual orientation." If so, that is extraordinarily disappointing. I think that there are solid textualist reasons to maintain the ban on homosexual activity as a (not the, but a) teshuvot, but I think that stepping further than that into reparative therapy has no religious or normative justification, and clashes severely with the predominant scientific literature on the issue. It is a perversion of principles of Halakhah, and Rabbis should not be permitted to press for it.

Jeremy Blumenthal also has more.

Best of Luck

Mary Cheney, Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter, is pregnant.

Mary Cheney, the vice president's openly gay daughter, is pregnant. She and her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, are "ecstatic" about the baby, due in late spring, said a source close to the couple.[...]
Cheney has described her relationship with Poe -- whom she took to last year's White House dinner honoring Prince Charles and Camilla -- as a marriage. The two met in 1988 while playing ice hockey and began dating four years later. They moved from Colorado to Virginia a year ago to be closer to Cheney's family. In an interview with the Post six months ago, when asked if she and Poe wanted children, Cheney said that was a "conversation I think I should have with Heather first."

In November, Virginia voters passed a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and civil unions; state law is unclear on whether Poe could have full legal rights as a parent of Cheney's child. The circumstances of the pregnancy will remain private, said the source close to the couple. This is the first child for both.

Best wishes to both parents and the child. Hopefully, their new baby will be born into a world where her or his parents will possess all the rights and be afforded all the dignity that every other American has under law.

UPDATE: In reference to Virginia's draconian anti-gay legislation, Andrew Sullivan coins the term (?) homorein.

It's The Final Countdown

I am proud to inform my many, many readers that I have been named a finalist for a 2006 weblog award, in the category of best blog from 3500 - 5000 in the TTLB ecosystem. This is the first such nomination this blog has received, and I am pretty excited about it.

I've actually been spending this winter break filling out scholarship and fellowship applications, and I keep trying to work my blog in because it is something I'm very proud of and something that (I hope) showcases my skills as a writer and thinker. But I feel like outside the community, it's very difficult to make blogging sound impressive. After all, anyone can create one--what makes mine so special? So this is very much a validation for me, and regardless of whether I win or lose, hopefully I can point to this to show that my blog is not just an idle flight of ego-fantasy, but something that people do read and respect.

I won't ask you to vote for me. I will ask you to look at all the blogs in the category and, if you find mine to be the best, then vote for me.

Here are all the blogs in the category:

EagleSpeak
Another Rovian Conspiracy
The Debate Link
InsoluBlog
Martin Andrade Blogs
Right From Left
Better Living Thru Blogging
CDR Salamander
Geeky Mom
Blue Gal

Update: I've looked through all the blogs, and there is some stiff competition! For awhile though, it looked like I was the only liberal! It wasn't until the bottom of the list, with Blue Gal and Geeky Mom that there was some fellow liberal love. Meh. I'm just thrilled to be here, and to have an excuse to find some new blogs to read.

Best of luck to everyone!

Brown's Last Stand: The Roundup

On Sunday, I gave my thoughts on the two school desegregation cases before the Supreme Court. Oral argument occurred Monday, and there is a wealth of commentary on the cases lurking out there. Without further ado, let's get to it.

In my comments, I noted the absurdity of Solicitor General Paul Clement's assertion that governments have a compelling interest in ending racial segregation, so long as they don't think about race. The good news is that, according to Court-watcher Lyle Denniston, Justice Kennedy thought it was a bit silly too. The bad news is Denniston thinks that by and large Kennedy was hostile to the Seattle and Louisville plans, and predicts a 5-4 decision against their constitutionality.

BlackProf's Christopher Bracey has a set of potent quotables from the oral arguments.

Scott Lemiuex and Publius both have excellent posts up dealing with the way originalism gets selectively applied in law. There is little to no evidence that the 14th amendment envisioned a "color-blind constitution", so, as Publius states, orignalists have to move to ever greater levels of abstraction to justify the amazing synergy between their policy preferences and "the law." But when abstracting outwards would lead to policies orignalists disfavor, they move back down into the specific and interpret in that manner. It's all very arbitrary and very partisan, which wouldn't be notable except that originalists obsessively trumpet how objective and grounded their interpretation is, which is simply untrue.

Several people asked me to cite the studies showcasing benefits of a diverse education. The brief on behalf of the American Educational Research Association has it. The specific arguments are too long to excerpt, but the summary of their conclusions is roughly as follows:

Research studies have shown that racial diversity in elementary and secondary education leads to important short-term and long-term benefits for students of all racial backgrounds. Among these benefits are improved cross-racial understanding; the reduction of stereotyping and prejudice; gains in student achievement; a strong sense of civic engagement and willingness to live and work in diverse settings; and better preparation for higher education, work, and participation in a diverse society. Not only do diverse schools benefit students as individuals, they also promote social cohesion and reinforce democratic values that this Court has long recognized as foundations for good citizenship. (3-4)

The brief also specifically attacks several other briefs (most notably the brief of Armor et al as presenting incomplete, outdated, or misleading research. I admittedly did not do a close read, but my understanding of Armor's argument is that the relationship between school desegregation and performance is largely inconclusive, while the AERA maintains that these studies are outliers many more recent studies have found the relationship to be viable. It is also worth noting that the Armor brief, which was on behalf of three social scientists, was the only brief for the petitioners (the anti-integration side) I saw that specifically dealt with the issue of the social science research. By contrast, in addition to the AERA brief, several other major briefs supported the respondents' conception of the research, including the American Psychological Organization, the The National Education Association, and an umbrella brief filed by 553 Social Scientists. There were too many briefs to read through in entirity (see the whole list here)--I looked for briefs that appeared to be from either national non-partisan non-ideological organizations (e.g., the APA) or from specific social scientists (e.g., Armor et al). The weight of scholarly opinion seems to be overwhelmingly of the belief that diverse schooling provides important, tangible, and beneficial educational and social impacts. As the AERA puts it:

Unanimity is rare in any body of scientific research, but there is substantial agreement that the best available research evidence, which is composed of studies employing sound and reliable methodologies, solidly supports the Respondent school districts in these cases.

The only two briefs the AERA cites for the opposing position are the Armor brief and a brief that I could not find from Drs. Murphy, Rossell, and Walberg, whose arguments they address in their own brief.

Less "hot" than the issue of social science research, but still interesting, was that the Anti-Defamation League intervened for the first time in 60 years on the side of a race-conscious program (that is, in favor of the respondents). Also worthy of note is this brief, also in favor of the respondents, by several former high-ranking military and defense department officials.

Apparently a rather interesting lawyer argued the case for the petitioners out of Louisville. Even still, Will Baude thinks that he did fine at Oral, and that at least he didn't hurt his side too much.

WaPo coverage, and WaPo editorial.

I was pleased to see that many local students--high school and college--came out to protest and show their support for integrated schooling. Alas, in the through-the-looking-glass world we now live in, support for integration now makes one a racist. Dr. King would be appalled, indeed.

Existential Threats

After 9/11, a political cartoon was published that featured a rat which had plucked a single feather from an eagle. The rat was celebrating deliriously, blissfully unaware of the now-aroused eagle glaring down on him from above. The lesson, of course, was that 9/11 was, in the grand scheme, not a crushing blow to the United States or a mortal wound. Our ability to fight against terrorism was not in any way weakened. All that happened was they awakened a sleeping giant. And now they'd pay the price.

I bring up this cartoon for two reasons. First, because we need to resist all the comparisons that make the War on Terror akin to World War II or the Civil War or other existential threats to American security. It isn't. That isn't to say we shouldn't fight it. But in terms of what powers we grant our government, what information we give to the press, etc., there is a qualitative difference between those past wars and the current conflict. We didn't grant the government special powers because the Confederacy or Nazis were evil (although they were). We gave them because the very existence of the country was threatened. Terrorism can pose such a threat (in Iraq or Israel, perhaps), but it simply does not here and now. The al-Qaeda navy will not be blockading Charleston harbor. Islamist troops are not marching on Minneapolis. There is a limit to the military damage al-Qaeda can do to us, and it's not very high. So everyone who compares the NYT's disclosure of Bush's wiretapping program to code-disclosure in WWII, stop it. You're embarrassing yourselves.

The second point is that while al-Qaeda cannot truly hurt us directly, there are lots of ways it can hurt us indirectly. For example, as Tom Friedman noted, they can destroy the networks of trust and freedom that keep our country great. And that's the other thing: it seems some people's strategy for fighting terror is for America to systematically pluck out our own feathers and use them to suffocate the rat. It could work, but it's win-win in all the wrong ways: We succeed in defeating al-Qaeda, and they succeed in obliterating the rights and values that make our nation great. Frankly, I'd rather just stomp on the rat, or work with other eagles to kill the rat, or isolate and starve the rat to death, since none of those options involve metaphorical self-mutilation. Does not being able to torture detainees make our nation less safe from terrorism? Maybe yes, maybe no, but even if it does it's only in the same sense that not locking up every American male makes us less safe from crime. I know that we can win this conflict without giving up our soul, so I see very little point in sacrificing it simply to show how tough and manly we are.

Again, this isn't to say we should not fight the war on terror vigorously and with a will to win. It's merely saying that we should not give up our precious rights and privileges under false notions that we're in a do-or-die scenario. Somebody has to say it: al-Qaeda isn't worth these sacrifices, and too many people are far too eager to demolish the foundations of the nation for no reason at all.

These and These

Thru Ezra Klein, the interesting story about the forthcoming decision by the Conservative Judaism movement (my denomination) on same-sex sex, marriage and rabbinic ordination.

Rabbi Avis D. Miller of Washington's Congregation Adas Israel said the "rabbinical scuttlebutt" is that the panel -- the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards -- will approve two conflicting answers, one upholding the status quo and one calling for change.

That is possible because it takes the votes of just six of the panel's 25 members to declare an answer to be valid -- meaning that it is a well-founded interpretation of Jewish law, not that it is the only legitimate interpretation. It would be possible to approve all the answers, or none of them.

If two or more contradictory answers are accepted, "that will be the strongest statement for America, because everything in America spiritually and religiously seems to have become political, and the way you know it's political is that it's either 'yes' or 'no,' " said Irwin Kula, a Conservative rabbi who heads the New York-based National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.

A long-standing Jewish practice (dating back to Hillel and Shammei) known as the "these and these" principle allows for more than one interpretation (including mutually exclusive interpretations) to be considering equally valid and legitimate in the Jewish community. I agree with Rabbi Kula: there is beauty in this type of humility and refusal to declare only one interpretation to be ultimate or dogmatic. Klein notes how this stance--so rare in modern religious thought--seems to be in closer alignment with the view of imperfect and fallible humanity:

Organized religion's attempts to profess certainty about the will of the divine based on majority votes conducted by mortal arbiters has always been a discomfiting element: A belief system based on human fallibility and transcendent Truth allowing fallible humans to decide, deterministically, what that Truth is, or at least how it manifests? Yikes. This method seems much more aligned with the view of humanity put forth by the religion itself: That people are error-prone and unsure, that they can do their best to interpret the source documents and relevations they have, but claims to spiritual certainty or infallible guidance face avery, very high burden of proof.

The willignness of Judaism to entertain a variety of differing positions, rather than immediately asserting the primacy of orthodoxy, is one of the reasons I'm proud to be a Jew. And by sanctioning the equal dignity of gay and lesbians as a legitimate point of Jewish law, they will make a great stride toward establishing their equal dignity as a point of American morals.

Brown is Dead! Long Live Brown!

On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear two school integration cases that may well be the most important decision they release on the topic since Brown v. Board of Education. The Court will consider two voluntary plans adopted by Seattle (Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District) and Louisville (Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education)to try and diversify their school district by spreading the White and non-White students across the various local elementary, middle, and high schools. Louisville is a particularly interesting case, as it has just emerged from being under court-supervised desegregation, and could be put in the peculiar position of being ordered to stop voluntary desegregation just a few years past when was still under order to desegregate. So we're on the verge of coming a full circle--from the courts refusing to interfere with local government segregation in Plessy, to the courts refusing to allow local governments to interfere with segregation in Meredith.

How we've gotten to this point is a strange odyssey that is a rather telling indictment of the fetishization of color-blindness. Consider the argument made by Solicitor-General Paul Clement, arguing on behalf of the Bush administration against (did you have any doubt?) the desegregation plans:

School districts have an unquestioned interest in reducing minority isolation through race-neutral means," Solicitor General Paul D. Clement said in his brief to the court. "But the solution to addressing racial imbalance in communities or student bodies is not to adopt race-conscious measures."

This is an evasive and roundabout way of saying that school districts can and should work to reduce racial segregation ("isolation"), so long as they don't use race. How one simultaneously notices race to identify a problem and ignores it when crafting a remedy (or at least a remedy that would be remotely effective) completely escapes me. To be clear, the practical upshot of Clement's formulation would be that any plan to desegregate the races, by virtue of the fact that it noticed race, is unconstitutional. Or put another way: desegregation is unconstitutional.

I'm a general advocate for using a complex vocabulary when talking about race and racism, but here is a case where the various rhetoric is mudding the waters. This case has alternatively been tagged as about affirmative action, race-consciousness, race preferences, diversity, integration, and desegregation. It is, to be clear, about the last. Sixty-two years after Brown v. Board required that schools desegregate, Meredith and Community Schools would--quite literally--forbid them from doing it.

People who engage in this color-blind fetishization try and invoke the specter of Brown by saying that Brown was about schools using race as a principle for sorting students. That's funny, because I thought the problem in Brown was that schools were segregated. If schools remain segregated, it doesn't really matter from the student's perspective why they are or how they are, just that they are. A student in a segregated school is harmed regardless of what circumstances place him there--a law saying "Blacks must attend this school," or a social reality in which all the Whites have moved to the other side of town. Rewriting Brown's history in this manner demeans the reality of segregation and its inherent ugliness regardless of whether it is imposed de facto or de jure. People can prioritize the color-blindness principle so far as to sanction the re-segregation of our schools, but it's a perversion to do that and claim the noble mantle of our nation's greatest case.

Some are wondering if these two cases might become known as Brown III. I don't know if that will come into being, and I don't know how the Court will rule. Tragically, defenders of racial justice are on the defense here--a victory will do little to move school integration along (after all, cities must voluntarily adapt these plans and it does nothing about interdistrict segregation), but a defeat would cripple the integrationist agenda. What I do know is that both sides, in their opinions, will insert the requisite paeans to Brown. We will never hear the fateful words uttered: "Brown v. Board of Education, overruled." But if the Seattle and Louisville plans are struck down, then the Court will be left to praise Brown in the very act of killing it.

Nostalgia

Looking through a collection on old New Yorker comics, Quaker of Crescat Sententia concludes that the 50s weren't all that fabulous:

I was amazed at how many of the cartoons were about marital discord and loveless marriages, etc (generally based around the trope of shrewish wife and henpecked husband, natch). If advocates of eliminating no-fault divorce and so on to return us to the halcyon days of traditional marriage, I find myself wondering if they've really thought the whole thing through.

I had an argument once with a conservative friend once, in which she contended that rates of sexual assault would have been lower before feminism (implicitly the 1950s), because back then men were taught to properly respect, cherish, and protect women. After seeing the number of cartoons in which women were explicitly treated as sex objects -- never mind the cartoon about the humor inherent in workplace sexual harassment -- I continue to be unconvinced.

Sexual harassment! Oh God, my sides are splitting.

Seriously, it's high past time we recognize that the belief that the pre-feminist era was some halycon time of respect and chivalry between the sexes is nothing but a nostalgic illusion. It never happened. As Justice William J. Brennan once wrote in Frontiero v. Richardson:

There can be no doubt that our Nation has had a long and unfortunate history of sex discrimination. Traditionally, such discrimination was rationalized by an attitude of "romantic paternalism" which, in practical effect, put women, not on a pedestal, but in a cage.

That was 1973. I sincerely doubt that he was talking about the era between 1964 and 1972.

Wahoo!

Say a congrats to my little brother, who just was admitted (early decision) to the engineering school at the University of Virginia!

It's no Carleton (people have heard of UVA), but I'm proud of him anyway :-P. And certainly ACC sports can beat up on the MIAC.

Legal History into the Blogosphere

I've been meaning to welcome Southern California Law Professor Mary Dudziak to the blogosphere, as she has started the new Legal History blog. You might recall my mentioning Professor Dudziak in reference to Derrick Bell's work on interest-convergence theory.

Welcome, Professor!

The Passion

A Time Magazine article argues that the backlash against Barack Obama appearing at an AIDS conference hosted by mega-church pastor Rick Warren will hurt the conservative right more than it helps, by exposing them as extremists who have no interest in dialogue with the broader community. Here's hoping--and kudos to Pastor Warren for resisting would must be enormous pressure to withdraw his invitation, by the way.

All For One...

BlackProf's Spencer Overton excerpts and asks for comments on the followig passage from Barack Obama's new book, "The Audacity of Hope":

Rightly or wrongly, white guilt has largely exhausted itself in America; even the most fair-minded of whites . . . tend to push back against suggestions of racial victimization--or race-specific claims based on the history of race discrimination in this country. . . . Most white Americans figure that they haven't engaged in discrimination themselves and have plenty of their own problems to worry about. . . . .

As a result, proposals that solely benefit minorities and dissect Americans into "us" and "them" may generate a few short-term concessions when the costs to whites aren't too high, but they can't serve as the basis for the kinds of sustained, broad-based political coalitions needed to transform America. On the other hand, universal appeals around strategies that help all Americans (schools that teach, jobs that pay, health care for everyone who needs it, a government that helps out after a flood), along with measures that ensure our laws apply equally to everyone and hence uphold broadly held American ideals (like better enforcement of exiting civil rights laws), can serve as the basis for such coalitions--even if such strategies disproportionately help minorities.

Good strategy, or no?

I think there is a lot to say for this sort of approach. But I consider it to be more of a rhetorical approach and less of a substantive one. Professor Overton phrases the issue as whether Black leaders should abandon the press for race-specific policies (e.g., Affirmative Action). I think that much of that positive agenda can be preserved within Obama's framework, so long as we talk about it in a different way.

"[P]roposals that solely benefit minorities and dissect Americans into "us" and "them" may generate a few short-term concessions when the costs to whites aren't too high, but they can't serve as the basis for the kinds of sustained, broad-based political coalitions needed to transform America." That sentence, which has interesting echoes of Derrick Bell, is the crucial one for me. Policies like Affirmative Action have been relentless cast in this "us" versus "them" framework, with Black Americans seen as getting a special advantage over Whites. Some people might argue they deserve such an advantage due to the effects of discrimination, but few have challenged the popular norm that affirmative action is a racially zero-sum game.

Yet there is no objective reason Affirmative Action needs to be framed this way. Increased Black representation in the halls of business and academia do not just benefit Black people. There is ample proof that it helps society as a whole as well as White people specifically. I, a White student, proactively benefit because Carleton hosts a diverse array of students who do not all hail from one city, or study one major, or share one belief. Diversity is a fearure, not a bug. Calls for affirmative action should be phrased less as "you owe us" and more as "let us make this company/college/country a better place." In other words, the press for racial justice should be tied specifically into how it benefits the group as a whole. Which, coincidentally enough, it does.

This sort of rhetorical shift, advocated by Obama as well as academics such as Kenji Yoshino, offers a way out of combative racial discourse in which Whites feel they are under attack and hunker down. Forget about policies in which "the costs to whites aren't too high"--there are many policies which are and should be presented as paying veritable dividends to the White population, to the Black population, and to the American population.

Snapback

I am pleased to see that two prominent conservative voices, Eugene Volokh and Stephen Bainbridge, have spoken out against Dennis Prager's uncommonly stupid (even for him) column arguing that newly elected Muslim congressman Keith Ellison should not be allowed to swear his oath of office on a Koran. Not "because of any American hostility to the Koran," he argues, "but because the act undermines American civilization" (amazing how someone might view the latter as being indicative of the former).

Obviously, several liberal commentators (such as Steve Benen) were quick to pounce on Mr. Prager's appalling ignorance of the US constitution. But it's still nice to hear conservative voices being added to the choir--especially Bainbridge's timely reminder that Prager's proposal echoes eerily of anti-Catholic bigotry at the time of the founding.

The true danger in Prager's argument is not so much that it's wrong (that is quite easy to show). It's that--under the guise of defending "American civilization"--it proposes a political norm that would obliterate American democracy as we know it. As I've written before, America cannot be both a Christian nation and a democratic nation at the same time. Nor can it be "Judeo-Christian" or Muslim or Hindi or what have you, but Christianity ("Judeo-Chrisianity" is but Christianity's twin brother in drag) is the only religion that is actually trying to press itself as supreme inside our domestic political arena, so that's the one we must focus on. People who try and enforce Christian supremacy aren't just making a bad policy decision, they are, perhaps unwittingly, warring with the very fundamental ideals of American freedom and democracy.

Since I do believe the stakes are that high, it is quite heartening to see that some of the intellectual heavyweights of the right are pushing back. Of course, there are less sane voices that still aren't onboard with the idea that America does not just grudgingly tolerate but in fact celebrates its religious and cultural diversity. But thankfully, in this case at least, the big names appear to be onboard.

Oh, and can you imagine the uproar if anyone compared the Christian Bible to toliet paper or (as did Prager) Mein Kampf?

Three Views of the Torrent

Heidi Kitrosser points to three editorials which have deal with the Michael Richards controversy in a particularly intriguing or erudite fashion. From the Baltimore Sun, Leonard Pitts Jr.; from The Washington Post, Eugene Robinson; and from Blackprof, Spencer Overton. Mr. Pitts, in particular, raises a good point when he questions why people are so quick to assume the best case scenario in Mr. Richards' outburst?

If so many of my white countrymen refuse to recognize racism when it is this blatant and unmistakable, what expectation can we have that they will do so when it is subtle and covert? In other words, when it is what it usually is.

After all, modern bigotry usually isn't some nitwit screaming the N-word. It is jobs you don't get and loans you don't get and apartments you don't get and health care you don't get and justice you don't get - for reasons you get all too clearly, though no one ever quite speaks them. It is smiles in your face and knives in your back. And it is, yes, a sitcom - like Seinfeld - that presents New York City, of all places, as a black-free zone.

These are complaints blacks have sought for years to drive home to their fellow Americans, only to be met largely by indifference, the defensive apathy of those who are free to ignore or diminish any claim on conscience that makes them uncomfortable. At the risk of metaphor abuse, the response to this debacle makes clear that you can't explain Advanced Racism to those who haven't passed Racism 101.

And, with all due respect to my correspondent, that need to make excuses gets old. The man spent 2 1/2 minutes screaming racial insults. You say that's not racism?

Then, pray tell, what is?

In most cases today, racism appears in cases of ambivalency rather than in easily demarcated explicit violations. It comes pre-equipped with plausible deniability. Often it is operating unconsciously. Richards is the anomaly here, in that it presents an "easy" case. And while Pitts is right that too many of us are failing even this elementary exam, even those who are not still have only reached stage one. Stopping here, only seeing (and condemning) racism in the "easy cases" means most racism slip through the cracks. So with all due respect to Richard Cohen, it's still just a bit too early to celebrate.

The Richards Effect

Black leaders including Jesse Jackson and Maxine Waters are seizing the opportunity posed by the Michael Richards scandal to try and press for a general ban on using the n-word in comedy routines. I presume that the ban would not be a legal prohibition but rather a general agreement amongst comedians. For example, the club that hosted Richards announced a policy of fining any acts which used the term on a per use basis, taking it out of their paycheck (apparently to some people with a weak concept of contracts this is extortion).

I won't say I'm not for this press (and I think this might be the only time this sort of momentum might be available), but I think that this issue remains more complex than people give it credit for. For example, I think the view that Black versus White uses of the word are equally harmful is simplistic and naive. Certainly, the spectacular work Jody Armour has done elucidating the distinction in the African-American psyche between Black people and "niggas" is not the equivalent of a Klan rally, and it's deeply wrong to treat it as such. However, I'm not convinced that Black usage is sufficiently divorced from the negative impacts to make it worth preserving (although I think there is a general carve-out for academic work in these sorts of things anyway). Paul Mooney, a prominent Black comedian and a former user of the word in his routines, has sworn off it in response to Richards. So even though Black persons who try and reclaim the term are not the moral equals of a Richards or a Klansman (and it's foolish to treat them as such), but their efforts may be doing more harm than they intend.

Even still, it is clearly obvious that Richards case--an over the top tirade designed to show some Black patrons "what happens when you interrupt a white man"--is more hurtful, more dangerous, and more worthy of a response than reclamations--however misguided--within the Black community. After all, while such an explicit portrayal may not hit the public eye very often anymore, the underlying sentiments have more potency than we'd like to admit (witness this classically racist rant that argues why "maybe [Richards] was more accurate than everyone thought"). And I think that the comedy club's private decision to make that rule is far, far better than anything else that could be done--the idea that racism will no longer be tolerated socially will get us further than any number of abstract legal or moral maxims preaching color-blindness.

This is a bit murky, and I apologize for it. I guess the upshot is that a) obviously, I hope that this makes inroads against similar racist tirades by White persons in and out of public; b) I hope this also reduces the usage of the n-word in Black communities as well; but c) anyone who thinks that the latter is a higher priority than the former does not understand the mechanics or the harms of racism in modern society.

Monday Reviews

Featuring Stranger than Fiction and my first impressions of Final Fantasy XII.

First, Stranger than Fiction, the story of a man who finds his life being narrated by a voice inside his head. I'll admit I was skeptical of Will Ferrell being able to play this role, and that was without realizing how indie the movie really was. Yet he pulled it off in an impressive fashion, and I enjoyed the movie immensely. Obviously, the post-modernist in me loved the blurring of story and reality, and the romantic in me loved the idea that even dull, boring guys such as myself can catch beautiful Harvard Law-attending bakers who will make us delicious cookies. The author in the movie reminded me just enough (in terms of appearance) of one of my professors at Carleton to be unnerving, but she might have been my favorite character in the whole show. My mother complained it was too long (perhaps, but I didn't notice), and my father couldn't take the story at face value. I say that you have to suspend your imagination or accept it as a literary metaphor. But it's not like I have room to talk: I figured out a great way to resolve the great climatic conflict in a pain-free manner (write the happy ending page, then tear it up!). The only other complaint I have is that said climatic ending really was obnoxious in its way, both because I just didn't buy the idea that he "had to die" for the sake of literature, and because the proposed ending would not have constituted great literature at all, but a cliche. Please. But all in all, a stellar movie that hit the same bundle of happy nerves as, say, I <3 Huckabees (if you liked that sort of thing).

Final Fantasy XII. First, my background on this is having played parts of VI, VII, IX, and X. I have never actually finished any of the games: VII I came the closest, getting about half-way into the final dungeon, IX quitting right before I traveled to that dungeon, and VI and X not even coming close. That notwithstanding, I am a big fan of the series and XII does not disappoint. In terms of structure and artistic stylings, it reminds me a lot of IX (which I think is one of the more underrated games in the series). The voice acting is quite good (the Scottish accents can be a bit jarring, though), and the characters are solid (though there is not any one that stands out from the pack). The plot starts a little slow but picks up nicely, and at this point in the game (around 12 hours in--for those of you who have played, I just got the first Esper after beating Gigas) I am thoroughly hooked. As always, Final Fantasy is the type of game that anyone with even the remotest interest in RPG style games can enjoy.

XII's big innovation that has folks talking is the "gambit" system, which allows a significant part of combat to proceed automatically. I'm ambivalently positive towards it. To make that statement clear, I should comment on another major shift from previous games in the series: the lack of random encounter battles. Now, you can see all the monsters on the main map as you wander around, choosing to engage (or not) as you will. That I think is a major innovation, and the gambit system works really well with it. On the one hand, I think that the non-lead characters don't react as quickly given their gambits as I would expect them to. That's a minor quibble, though, and I think overall it's a successful and reasonably intuitive system.

Beautiful Day

Computer is fixed!

The computer guy came today with bad news: he was "not optimistic" about getting the data off my hard drive. Things looked grim. But then, a ray of hope! As it happens, rather than my hard drive simply having melted down, it had merely been knocked ajar from its connection to the motherboard during my travels from Northfield to Bethesda. It turns out that, much like myself, the hard drive had a few screws loose on the bracket that kept it steady. It must have taken a bit of a whack on the flight home, and thus was knocked off. The guy reattached it, and all is well.

As a result of this ordeal, I just backed up all my files to an external hard drive. This was the best of all possible worlds then: A problem large enough to give me a bona fide scare (and thus motivate me to do a long overdue backup), but one that did not do any actual permanent damage.

Life is good.

Isn't There A Commandment About This?

Over in New Jersey, a high school student accused his social studies teacher of preaching in class. The teacher denied it, and the department and principal were prepared to take his word for it. Except the boy had it all on tape.

Junior Matthew LaClair, 16, said history teacher David Paszkiewicz, who is also a Baptist preacher in town, spent the first week of class lecturing students more about heaven and hell than the colonies and the Constitution.

LaClair said Paszkiewicz told students that if they didn't accept Jesus, "you belong in hell." He also dismissed as unscientific the theories of evolution and the "Big Bang."

LaClair, who described his own religious views as "non-Christian," said he wanted to complain about Paszkiewicz to school administrators, but feared his teacher would deny the charges and that no one would take a student's word against a teacher's. So, he said, he started taping Paszkiewicz.

Nice. There are those who say that localities should control whether and to what degree religion should be inserted into the schools. It isn't coercive, they argue, and in any event schools should be taught in accordance to prevailing local norms (which in many cases are Christian). The problem is that in the places where such sentiment is likely to be most intense and thus acted upon (i.e., those places where teachers disregard the current law which says education and religious instruction should not mix), the evidence shows much the reverse: minority religious opinions are marginalized and dissenters are singled out. Consider how LaClair's fellow students reacted to his exposure of the teacher:

As LaClair spoke outside the Devon Street school, some students yelled taunts at him while others glared.

"Mr. Paszkiewicz is an outstanding man," said 16-year-old Stephanie Formoso, a member of the crew team coached by Paszkiewicz and one of his history students.

"Matt set him up," Formoso added. "Mr. Paszkiewicz would always say (when he spoke about religion) 'In my opinion.' He never pushed his beliefs on anyone."

Ah, the Marian Barry defense. This is sadly typical of these sorts of cases. When a member of minority religion comes forward and says that a certain action makes him or her feel like an outsider, a) the claim is mocked and dismissed and b) the marginalization is stepped up a notch. Taunts and glares are actually quite mundane here--threats and acts of violence are quite common in similar cases I've read about.

PZ Myers says that Paszkiewicz is about to become a "right-wing martyr" who will be invited by church groups all over the place to come and lecture about the evils of our secular school system. I suppose this is a test then: how many supposedly Christian groups will be tempted to do that? How many will bend over backwards to defend a man who openly lied about using his teaching position to degrade and marginalize members of religious minorities?

Originally via Steve Benen.

Take Your Mouth Off That Whistle

As anyone who has read my discussion on certain 4th Circuit precedents knows, retaliation cases are a major pet peeve of mine. While I've focused primarily on reprisals in cases of racial discrimination complaints, the principle against it holds true generally. Retaliation against parties who complain about something that would be, if substantiated, a bona fide wrong (e.g., racial discrimination, corruption, graft) is almost never justified. Retaliation chills workers from pursuing necessary reforms or correcting wrongs against them, virtually insures that bad policies will continue, and deprives the public of important information about practices by the government or corporation that they might not tolerate were they made public.

That's why I was so upset to read (thru Steve Benen) this article on the growing number of whistleblower and whistleblower retaliation claims being filed in our intelligence agencies--and how they're being dealt with. Whistleblowing complaints have risen by 43% since 9/11, and reprisal complaints have grown along with, jumping 21%. Whistleblowers often face harassment at best and career destruction at worst, and the law seems unable to help them. The Whistleblower Protection Act does not apply to intelligence officers (why?), and even if an internal investigation substantiates a retaliation charge, the investigators don't have the power to enforce any remedy (why?). Perhaps most amazingly, the federal circuit court that hears retaliation cases has ruled against intelligence whistleblowers 98.425% of the time (125/127).

It goes without saying that an agency whose members are afraid to call out mistakes is an ineffective agency, and when that agency is America's intelligence services (whose street cred at the moment is already a bit off), that makes our nation less safe. Giving these brave public servants the protections they deserve should immediately move to the top of the Democratic Party agenda. It's not just Congress that needs reform, and helping our intelligence agencies clean up house would be one of the fastest ways to make our nation stronger and safer at the same time.

Copycats Part II

Continuing the saga of the Georgetown students who tried to claim their house was a religious organization to evade zoning laws, the local zoning board has rejected their claim. Good for them. I suspect it's right as a matter of law, and I want to preserve Carleton's niche position in terms of college-founded religious bodies anyway.

Mmm...Turkey

Flying out to Rhode Island tommorrow, flying back to Maryland Friday, getting my computer fixed Saturday (hopefully!). Also bought Final Fantasy XII. So I'm going to be a busy beaver over the next few days. I doubt I'll have computer access while in Rhode Island, so if I don't post over the next few days, I wish every one a happy Turkey day, and an excellent weekend seeing college football, college basketball, and maybe the odd college student who in your family during the commercial break.

The Obama File

Obama apologizes to lovelorn reporter for "messing up your game." Read this, and then listen here (MP3). And yes, "messing up your game" is a direct quote.

Meanwhile, Rahm Emmanuel will "hide under [a] desk" if both Obama and Hillary Clinton run for President. Rahm-bo has close ties to both camps and does not relish choosing between them in a primary fight.

Finally, the conservative attack machine is started to take shots at Obama. They're not very good at it yet, but give them time. My friend Paul Mirengoff tries to downplay Obama's "first in his class" pedigree (what the rest of us would call "drop dead brilliant") by trying to argue that it is merely mimicry of experts (heaven forbid we start listening to them!). After all, who could possibly comprehend the following prescription for Iraq?

[Obama] envisioned a flexible timetable for withdrawal linked to conditions on the ground in Iraq and based on the advice of U.S. commanders. He also called for intensified efforts to train Iraqi security forces, U.S. aid packages tied to Iraqi progress in reducing sectarian violence and new diplomacy with Syria and Iran.

Mirengoff promises an "A" to anyone who can figure out what it would mean practically on the ground. I refuse to do work for a grade over Winter Break, but it strikes me as a fine IR final exam question...for Northfield Community College (or perhaps the academically advanced St. Olaf's student). Any Dartmouth graduate who can't parse that, however, should report back to Hanover and turn his diploma back in.

Kevin McCullough wonders why "Obama's evil" is on Rick Warren's pulpit, with the laundry list of conservative complaints: Obama is pro-choice. Obama is pro-gay equality. Obama wants to punish hate crimes as hate crimes. It was such a well-constructed rant that it was effectively plagerized by Marshall Will Kane (a word to the wise--when undertaking hatchet jobs, creativity is more important than repetition. How do you know what mud will stick when you're all flinging the same stuff?)!

Ben Shapiro says that he's a "radical masquerading as a moderate", but his examples of Obama's radicalism merely show how difficult it will be to make the tag stick. This is "hatred" of President Reagan:

[I was] disturbed ... by Ronald Reagan's election in 1980 ... unconvinced ... by his John Wayne, 'Father Knows Best' pose, his policy by anecdote, and his gratuitous assaults on the poor.

Here's "sliming" Rush Limbaugh:

[I]f Rush Limbaugh's listeners enjoy hearing him call me 'Osama Obama,' my attitude is, let them have their fun.

Listen to him "insult" evangelicals:

Their fervor has gone mainstream. There are various explanations for this success, from the skill of evangelicals in marketing religion to the charisma of their leaders.

Zing! Or how about some classic "Marxist trash"?

I simply believe that those of us who have benefited most from this new economy can best afford to shoulder the obligation of ensuring every American child has a chance for that same success.

I can see him losing the middle already.

Keep trying, ladies and gentlemen.

Why Not North Korea?

Ann Applebaum has a column up asking why the existence of mass concentration camps in North Korea does not evoke the same outrage in the West as does the genocide in Darfur. Isaac Chotiner distills her argument down to this position:

Applebaum is right to argue that American and European activists are probably much more willing, because of their politics, to be moved by cases of genocide where putting an end to such violence does not directly benefit American security or economic interests.

I don't think that's right at all, and I think it displays a sort of paranoia about the American left that is more befitting of the far right than Applebaum and TNR.

First, obviously, there is the fact that what is going on Darfur is qualitatively worse than the activities in North Korea. This isn't to minimize them, only to say that while brutal concentration camps are bad, a systematic policy of ethnic extermination is worse. However, I think the big issue is one of perceived capabilities. When I was asked by some of my more liberal cohorts why I supported a war in Iraq but not North Korea (that's right, it was far more likely to be my liberal friends than my conservative ones who brought it up), I would invariably respond that "ought implies can," and while an intervention in Iraq (and Darfur) was very much plausible from a military perspective, an intervention in North Korea would be a full-scale war of the type we haven't fought since Vietnam. Now, it may well be that I underestimated the degree of "can" available in Iraq. But insofar as Darfur versus North Korea goes, I think the point still applies: liberal activists see a solution to Darfur that would not commit ourselves to the type of activity that the Iraq catastrophe has discredited, whereas in North Korea there seems to be precious little we can do to stop the concentration camps that would not imply unacceptable loss of life and treasure on our end.

Moreover, I think the descriptive argument about how Sudan is not a country we have "interests" in and is not tagged with any of the buzzwords (communism, radical Islam) that provoke controversy in the modern political sphere is wrong as well. We do have interests in Sudan, both in terms of oil wealth and because we have an interest in checking China's influence in the region. The existence of these interests may not be as widely known as comparable ones in Iran or North Korea, but it is just wrong to say that a Darfur intervention would not objectively aid the US or step on the toes of another great power. Furthermore, it is unclear why these issues would not be presented more frequently in the public eye as Darfur rose in prominence. A similar claim can be made as to the "buzzwords" argument: Sudan, after all, is a Muslim state, and has tried very hard to link Western or international intervention in Darfur with charges of anti-Islamic bias and neo-colonialism. Why haven't these allegations had more of an impact, given the left's continued ambivalence towards charges of imperialism and anti-Islamic sentiment?

I think, then, that the focus on Darfur is not a manifestation of relief that it does nothing for the West, but is rather rooted in an honest and genuine recognition of how uniquely appalling the activities there are, and a firm belief that the US and the world could be doing much more to stop them. Now, history will judge us based on whether we act on those beliefs, or simply lay them aside as we have so many times before.