Friday, October 15, 2004

A Matter Of Context?

Why is it that liberals, so utterly hostile to the concept of objectively definable, objectively measurable intelligence, will nevertheless invoke it as a shield for a vicious multiple murderer?

No, the story doesn’t say that any of the principals or litigators is a political liberal. I’m thinking of the larger anti-death-penalty crowd, who will surely rally ‘round Derrick Lee to prevent his enforced departure from this mortal coil. There won’t be a conservative among them. Count on it.

There’s Nothing About Mary

Apparently, John Kerry’s use of the sexual orientation of Mary Cheney to score points during his final “debate” with President Bush is drawing fire—and that is exactly as it should be.

Every word spoken during one of those pseudo-debates is calculated for political advantage. Senator Kerry, one of the most calculating wire-walkers in politics, who wouldn’t admit that the sun rose in the East without a focus group study, did not cite Dick Cheney’s daughter simply because he needed to name a homosexual to make his point. In fact, he had no such need. He did it, quite obviously, to allude to the tensions in the Republican Party over the current “gay rights” contretemps: homosexual marriage.

No one is ever overjoyed to learn that his child is homosexual. We know instinctively that, social attitudes notwithstanding, homosexuality involves serious life limitations and exclusion from a number of the satisfactions available to the normal majority. We also know that homosexuality is either an organic handicap or a mental disorder. Neither of these is something to be celebrated; rather, we must endure them as best we can.

Therefore, Kerry’s citation of Mary Cheney’s lesbianism constitutes an attempt to exploit a family tragedy among his opponents in his quest for political power.

Odious.

If we elect this man to be our chief of state, we will get something worse than a second Clinton presidency. We will get a man to whom even the most painful private matters are grist for his mill—a man to whom privacy is solely a privilege of the elite who can hire bodyguards to intimidate reporters and keep the paparazzi at bay.

Just don’t mention his equivocations about Operation Iraqi Freedom, his supra-national loyalty to France, his reams of lies about his Vietnam service, or his slanders against his fighting brethren after he returned from the war. That would be “questioning his patriotism,” you see, and persons of good breeding simply don’t countenance such things.

Thursday, October 14, 2004

Gutter Politics

From the beauteous Ith of Absinthe & Cookies:

When I first saw this yesterday, I thought it had to be a hoax. I mean, come on! But it’s actually real.

Feel the love, people. If you’re a Republican, you’re not only evil and a Nazi, you’re retarded too! Though, I think they’re mixing their metaphors, because Nazis murdered the mentally disabled, didn’t they? Yeah, John Kerry being elected is really going to heal the divisions in this country. If he wins [wards off evil eye] I get to have a President who thinks I’m a retarded Nazi! Cool!

Why is my mind’s eye filled with an image of Muslim savages crying “Peace! Peace! Don’t hurt us! We are for peace!” while they machine-gun a crowd of helpless Jews?

There is simply no decency left on the Left. The most important lesson the Right can absorb from their example is not to be like them in any way.

Maintain your standards, my friends.

Visions

The great Thomas Sowell has a particularly piercing column at TownHall.com today, mandatory reading for anyone interested in the psychodynamics of the statist political vision: the “wise and the virtuous” generously taking charge of the affairs of all us ordinary dolts. As an extension of a horror story about untrue child-molestation charges that have railroaded many innocent men and destroyed many lives and families, Sowell reminds us that those who advocate extended, intensified government power over our lives, families, and enterprises aren’t usually thinking about submitting to such power, but about wielding it.

It calls to mind a story told by the late Isaac Asimov, about a social function he’d attended where the hostess, in a moment of privacy, spoke wistfully of “the days when you could get good servants.” Asimov’s reflexive reply was, “Good heavens, no.”

“What?” the hostess said. “Why not?”

To which Asimov replied, “We’d be the servants.”

Verbum sat sapienti.

Gotta Be One Or The Other, Guv

Via Bill Quick at Daily Pundit, we learn of an unfortunate comment from former governor of Maryland William D. Schaefer:

Fellow Democrats are livid with William Donald Schaefer, the irascible former Maryland governor who this week decided to broadcast his opinion that people with AIDS are “a danger” and that those suffering from the disease “brought it on themselves.”

Hm. Wait just a moment. If an AIDS sufferer brought it on himself, then how is he a danger to others? Wouldn’t it therefore be the case that AIDS is a disease one must deliberately court by one’s choices and actions?

A man with AIDS is a danger to others only if he 1) conceals his condition and 2) seduces others into behaviors that would put them at risk of infection by him. There have been some cases of this—Gaetan Dugas comes immediately to mind—but the overwhelming majority of the AIDS-afflicted are just as unwilling to spread their condition as the rest of us are to acquire it.

It does no one any good, and potentially a great deal of harm, to spread AIDS hysteria in this fashion—especially today, when people are generally open-eyed (if a trifle soft-spoken) about the vectors of the disease, therapeutic progress is being made, and drugs that control it are increasing in efficacy.

Consensus And Constitutional Order, Part II

Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.—Albert Einstein

As I mentioned in the previous essay on this topic, I, who was once a doctrinaire natural-rights libertarian, can no longer consider myself one. A natural-rights libertarian must live by certain strictures:

1. That every man possesses certain clearly defined rights as an innate consequence of his humanity;
2. That those rights are his personal property, and that anyone else’s infringement of those rights is a compensable (or punishable) wrong against him;
3. That collective action (e.g., the action of the State) does not free the actors from the obligation to respect individual rights at all times.

It’s a beautiful doctrine. It possesses the sort of grandeur that all dramatic generalizations have: the sense of having covered much ground in a definitive, unambiguous fashion. And it is largely correct. But the natural-rights thesis does not speak to certain matters that all theories of any kind must address: the indeterminacy of its critical terms and the bounds on its domain of applicability.

Nearly everyone, no matter how freedom-minded, has some reservations about individual rights. One of the clearest and most common cases is in the area of risk. An example: at a party held in a public place, attended entirely by Second Amendment absolutists, one of the guests pulls his sidearm and starts waving it around flamboyantly, to punctuate some argument he’s making. No one is perfectly sure that the safety is on. The man’s finger occasionally slips inside the trigger guard. Now and then the muzzle points at one of the other guests. What evaluation can we give to this scenario?

From a natural-rights perspective, no infringement of anyone’s rights is taking place. The man waving the gun hasn’t shot anyone, nor has he threatened to do so in an overt way. None of the others has suffered a harm to his life, his liberty, or his property. Could forcible action to restrain the gun-waver’s actions be justified here?

A doctrinaire natural-rights libertarian would say no. Almost anyone else would say yes, specifically because of the risks involved.

Another case of comparable character involves children’s rights. A child is a human being, and under the most common reading of natural-rights theory, possesses the same rights as any other individual. Yet parents routinely restrict their children’s rights, circumscribing their freedom of movement, their use of their bodies, and what they can acquire as personal property, specifically to reduce the risks those children will face. Is this a violation?

A doctrinaire natural-rights libertarian would say yes. Almost everyone else would say no: the child’s well-being and probability of living to maturity would be too greatly at risk from the full extension of his rights.

Cases like this are many. The theory dictates a particular result, but the great mass of Man rejects the result as too risky to contemplate.

Once again: the theory of natural-rights liberty is largely correct. But it has a border around it, and a gray zone near that border where insistence on natural-rights absolutes puts one at odds with 99% of humanity.

The border is the demarcation line at which individual options end and a requirement for collective action begins:

• When individuals don’t have a way to settle their differences as individuals, but must perforce act as collectivities;
• When individuals do not possess the competence to act as the guardians of their own rights and well-being;
• When individuals’ rights clash in an absolute and irreconcilable way.

(I’ve discussed this border before, in an essay which I find I have not yet ported to Eternity Road. Apologies. It will be here presently, at which point this parenthetical will be replaced by a link to it.) The gray zone is mostly about risk.

Because of the consensus about risk—that is, the overwhelming assent that some risks are tolerable and others are not—we are forced into a procedure-oriented constitutional order. We are compelled to posit that some sorts of risk would “justify” coercive action, with all that implies. We are also compelled to construct a procedure by which we will decide which risks will evoke that coercive response.

This has some very unfortunate consequences. Most of us don’t feel threatened by certain things that others feel quite keenly. Because of the dynamic of Public Choice, those who organize to get their way about a single, concentrated issue will normally prevail over others who don’t feel strongly about it, despite a gross numerical imbalance against the activists. The result is a tendency for “Liberty to yield and Tyranny to gain ground.” An adequate counter-dynamic has yet to emerge.

Yet it is truly forced upon us. There is simply no way to define the natural, individual rights all men possess strictly enough to command a stable consensus. We can get broad agreement on some things—murder and kidnapping are wrong; rape and assault are wrong; theft and fraud are wrong—and write those violations of men’s rights into our law. But we cannot eliminate the topics where individual rights provide no guide to action, and we cannot eliminate the gray zone near that border.

Fortunately, most people are reasonable, and “will only put up with so much crap.” So there are forces, though they’re not nearly strong enough at this time, which oppose the special-interest dynamic, the desire of the State to extend its area of authority and intensify its grip thereupon, and the censoriousness that lives in every human chest, which moved Dr. Thomas Szasz to define freedom as “That which you demand for yourself, but would deny to others.”

More anon.

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Consensus And Constitutional Order

Much of the acrimony that festoons the American political dialogue arises from moral sources: individuals' beliefs about right and wrong, and the role of the State in discriminating between them. Because moral positions are almost always premises rather than conclusions, two persons whose morals differ on a given subject can seldom argue usefully about that subject. They can hurl barbs and impugn each other's characters, but that's about all.

It is noteworthy that moral premises are given absolutely no place in the Constitution, our fundamental legal document. The Constitution prescribes procedures, forbids various levels of government from doing various things, and defines a method for amending it, should there be an adequate consensus for doing so. Nowhere does it say, "This or that is morally unacceptable, and must not be tolerated." Nowhere does it say, "This or that is morally obligatory, and must be imposed on all men by the force of law." Its provisions for amendment are an admission that, however firm the convictions of its Framers that it was the best legal foundation ever devised, they knew they were but men, that their powers were limited, and that they could be wrong.

The past ten years' reflections on this fact are why I'm no longer a strict, doctrinaire natural-rights libertarian. They're also why I strive not to condemn others whose convictions about public policy differ from mine. I'll condemn for personal failings, but not for divergent beliefs about social causality and social order.

Constitutional order -- the overwhelming, unforced assent to the legitimacy of the existing political system and its works -- cannot be maintained except under the consensus assumption that processes alone determine legitimacy. Since the federal Constitution is the supreme law of the land, it is also the foundation for all acceptable arguments about legitimacy in governance.

Let's consider two test cases of this proposition: Election 2000 and Roe v. Wade.

Election 2000 was a nightmare because the loser's camp, unhappy with the result and hoping that the slenderness of its defeat could be undone, strained to overturn the processes in place for determining the outcome of Florida's balloting. Yet Florida's election law was entirely in accord with Constitutional provisions, and the actions of Secretary of State Katherine Harris to enforce that law were entirely upright and honorable. When the Supreme Court opined in Bush v. Gore that the challenges had traduced the Florida state legislature's Constitutional authority, it was merely reading the plain words of the document to persons who ought to have known better. It was defending the process, not the result. Democrats' condemnation of the decision calls into question whether they might attack the analogous legal process of any state in a subsequent election, or refuse to accept another president-elect under broadly comparable circumstances.

One consequence of the Election 2000 legal struggle has been a large-scale rejection of the legitimacy of the Electoral College scheme. Despite its Constitutionality, its age, and its performance over more than two centuries, many are now calling for it to be undone -- or worse, that its verdict should be ignored in favor of the verdict of the national popular vote in future cases of this type.

In contrast, Roe v. Wade was, in the words of dissenting Justice Byron White, "an exercise in raw judicial power." No clause of the Constitution gives the federal government, or the United States Supreme Court, jurisdiction over the subject matter of Roe v. Wade. It was, and ought to have remained, entirely a matter for state law. But the Supreme Court chose to venture beyond its Constitutionally defined authority in a manner no one could have foreseen, and Congress and the president chose not to rein it in by the exercise of their own legitimate powers. All three branches of the federal government betrayed their sworn duty to defend the Constitutional process.

In consequence, the Supreme Court has been tacitly deeded the final word about virtually everything, regardless of the Constitutional constraints on its jurisdiction. Some would say that this is only a culmination of a trend that reaches back to Marbury v. Madison, and their argument is not to be lightly dismissed. However, Roe v. Wade appears to be the first case where the Court asserted unbounded powers of review over an issue of national importance where there was no conceivable Constitutional foundation upon which it could build.

Consensus about moral convictions can never be unanimous. It's in the nature of men to disagree, to challenge one another's premises, and to defend their own convictions even in the face of substantial evidence against them. Depending upon time, place, and circumstance, even an outright murder will occasionally be condoned -- or celebrated as a public service.

Amendable processes, on the other hand, can command consensus. If they're neutral among contestants, like the rules of a game, all the parties affected by them can agree to them even if they would have preferred different ones. There were many in the days of the Founding who dissented from one or another of the Constitution's provisions. Yet they eventually endorsed the document, and its claim to be the Supreme Law Of The Land. They saw the foundations of an enduring social order in it, and hoped that, given time, its flaws would be corrected by a consensus that had not yet emerged.

We will never know enough to be absolutely doctrinaire about social policy or the proper relations between political power and the moral law. While frame our contentions within the neutral processes prescribed by our Constitution, we have a good chance to maintain social cohesion and public order. When we depart from it, we risk the dissolution of all order and the loss of legitimacy itself. Those who vilify their political opponents for their policy preferences, rather than arguing against them as gentlemen would and allowing consensus to decide, should give that a moment's thought.

Those interested in following the development of this subject will also enjoy -- or revile -- the other essays in this series:

• Consensus And Constitutional Order Part II
• Consensus And Constitutional Order Part Three: Our Foreign Correspondents
• Consensus And Constitutional Order Part Four: Failures Of Consensus
• Consensus And Constitutional Order Part Five: Unintended Consequences
• Consensus And Constitutional Order Part Six: Look To Your Margins!
• Consensus And Constitutional Order Part Seven: Density Effects
• Consensus And Constitutional Order Part Eight: Conceptual And Nomenclatural Needs
• Consensus And Constitutional Order: The One-Vote Effect

Memory Holes, Anyone?

The Sinclair Broadcasting Group has caused quite a stir by announcing that it will shortly air “Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal,” a movie about John Kerry’s anti-Vietnam War activism, including his slanders against American soldiers in Vietnam. Since SBG’s members include affiliates of all the major broadcast networks, and the film will be broadcast throughout the country scant days before November 2, the Kerry for President campaign is most unhappily agog.

And there’s not a single thing they can do about it.

“Stolen Honor,” despite its obvious condemnation of Kerry’s words and deeds after returning from Vietnam, is apparently a completely factual documentary, in contrast to such patchworks of insinuation as “Fahrenheit 9/11.” It keeps faith with the public record, and depicts only events that can be cross-verified from unimpeachable public sources. Thus, it cannot be called a slander or a libel: its claims are true beyond all question.

But what of its implications? Indeed, what are its implications?

If you regard the Vietnam War and the related behavior of John Kerry and his VVAW colleagues as irrelevant to today’s presidential contest, you’ll shrug it off. Given those priorities, it’s an interesting historical document, no more. But if you regard John Kerry’s words and deeds in those times, and his unwillingness to recant or apologize for them today, as evidence that the man’s character is unsuited to the exercise of power, you’ll take it as confirmation that he ought not to be elected president.

If you’re currently undecided? Who knows?

What cannot be disputed is that the events it depicts are confirmed facts. A fact cannot be a smear, no matter how badly the Kerry for President campaign would like to cast it as one.

“Stolen Honor’s” presentation of those facts might affect the election, or it might not. Under existing law, including the First Amendment to the Constitution, “Stolen Honor” cannot be suppressed by law. No agency of the federal government can prevent it from being shown, nor penalize any station that decides to show it.

Yet a prominent member of the Kerry campaign has been heard to say, in public, “They [the SBG stations] better hope we don’t win.”

So should you, gentle reader. Men who would use the force of the State to suppress the presentation of inconvenient facts are men who would rewrite history to suit their agendas, given the chance. They’d prosecute anyone who protested, or who possessed evidence that things were other than the “official record” says they were. “Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.”

Facts are the enemy of those to whom power is all.

Electoral College Daze

Colorado is currently entertaining a change to its elector-assignment protocols, which would become effective for the November 2 election. Basically, the initiative would assign Colorado’s electors proportionally to its vote totals of the presidential candidates.

This is a very bad idea, for reasons too numerous to explore fully here. However, by my reading of the Constitution, there is no sound Constitutional objection to it.

The Framers wanted to insulate the president and his exercise of the executive power from popular passions. Originally, the selection of electors was entirely a function of the state legislatures. More, all electors were “free”; that is, they could vote their consciences, unbound by any form of allegiance to any person or group.

Things have changed. Oh my, how they have changed. Political parties, pressure groups, lobbying firms, reams upon reams of unConstitutional federal legislation and action, presidential involvement in the legislative process, the direct election of Senators, national broadcast news and opinion networks, an unelected and unaccountable regulatory bureaucracy with undefined and essentially unlimited powers, nationwide programs of vote fraud, et cetera ad nauseam infinitam.

Yet the most important facet of the original logic remains compelling. The president ought to be able to exercise his powers unburdened by electoral considerations. He should be unaffected by the passions of the moment, no matter how strong they are, if his judgment and character are to be of import.

Therefore...

Let’s repeal the Twenty-Second Amendment and in its place put an Amendment that limits the president to a single six-year or eight-year term, and that forbids a sitting vice-president from standing for election to the presidency.

Unthinkable? Perhaps not. Look at the advantages:

• Campaign promises would become entirely a matter of character. They could be entirely ignored if the president decided it was in the country’s best interests.
• Presidents would not have to divert a substantial part of their fourth year to campaigning for re-election.
• The administration in power would be better able to stand apart from the quadrennial campaigns, since its two highest-ranking officers would have no personal stake in the contest.
• The impeachment and removal of the president would be less of a political football.
• Voters would be impelled to take their selections more seriously, since the winner would be guaranteed a longer term of office.

I favor term limits for all offices. Strangely, the presidency is the only federal office that has them. Let’s make them really strict, and see what happens.

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

The Second Debate

I wish I had seen it. Unfortunately, as described below, I was on the road.

I understand that the high—low?—point of the debate was the “not necessarily” response by Senator Kerry when President Bush stated that, had Kerry been president these past four years, Saddam Hussein would still rule Iraq. Truly, this Democrat should be kept locked in a closet until after Election Day, for the sake of his campaign. He appears to open his mouth only to change feet.

Time was, debates were exchanges of arguments about particular propositions. That’s not the case with the presidential campaign debates, nor has it been since the age of ubiquitous television. Today, the importance of these affairs is the opportunity to look more-presidential-than-thou before a national audience.

If the reports are accurate, Kerry blew yet another hole in his chances with his equivocations Friday night. Presidents cannot afford to look or sound ambivalent—about anything. When the “anything” is America’s response to terrorism and our plans for dealing with the rogue nations that support it, a “nuanced” approach is pure poison to a candidate’s prospects.

Remember Michael Dukakis and his campaign slogan “Competence Over Ideology”—? Remember how Governor Dukakis squirmed to avoid the liberal label? The son of the man who bested Dukakis has fenced his opponent in just as neatly as his father did, and with much the same set of issues for a fence. Before the end of this campaign, Senator Kerry’s slogan will be “Nuance Over Character.”