Tuesday, May 31, 2005
What do they want? Part 1
Today's post will be the text from an interview I conducted via AOL’s Instant Messenger with professional cartoonist and blogger Barry Deutsch aka Ampersand. Barry is a liberal Jew and atheist who manages a blog at Amptoons.com and who graduated from Portland State University with a focus on women’s studies and economics. He is the assistant manager of a local historic church site. Barry gave a good interview and was gracious to trust me with this dialogue never having met me before and knowing in advance it would be published before a largely conservative audience. The interview is long, but it is the first in what I hope to become a series. Barry’s views are not necessarily representative of the left.
My goal for this and future interviews is not to demean members of the left, to perform character assassination, or hold them up for public ridicule, but to hear them out. I don’t entertain fools who I often hear from, I prefer to select intelligent and articulate people who can deliver unapologetic liberal ideas. “What would America look like if the left had its way” is the question I seek to answer one person at a time. I don’t care for many of the professional Democrats, it’s the voices of individuals that matter most in this Democratic Republic, which is what make the blogosphere great. I am curious to get people reactions to the ideas presented here in the comments, but warn against using this as an opportunity to humiliate and demean Barry, he is an exceptional man.
###
christian conservative: As of late, the Democrat Party has stood in opposition to many issues ranging from No Child Left Behind, President Bush’s Faith Based Initiatives, Tax cuts, our presence in Iraq and Social Security reform among others. The dangers facing the Democratic Party today have to do with the negative public perception which follows after hearing Democrats detail all the problems but none of the solutions to Republican propositions.
What I am interested in is not a debate, but to get a portrait of what America would look like if the left had its way in American life beginning with you. Simply put, I want to hear how you would answer this question: how does the left make America a better place? I want to work through both foreign and domestic issues and briefly touch on the war on terrorism, the environment, the economy, taxation, judges, abortion, and SSM (Same Sex Marriage) Social Security, censorship and religion. What I hope to present to people who frequent my blog are positive ideas from the left. Since this isn’t radio or TV, we’re not bound to any time constraints, so I can keep the chat open if you prefer to do some light fact-checking, but I offer this caveat: spontaneity begets honesty and it is honesty I am most interested in.
Big picture first. What areas of American life are you most passionate about changing?
a: I'm a passionate feminist, so a lot of my focus is on gender issues. I'd like to see a lot more gender equality in the United States; economic, political and social equality, both in very bread-and-butter areas like wages, and in more abstract areas like freedom from constraining gender roles. I'm also very passionate about queer equality, including same-sex marriage. But that's just the areas I'm personally most passionate about. If you asked me instead what was most important, I might add to that electoral reform, universal health care, and a better safety net.
cc: What do you mean by “a better safety net”?
a: I mean that in a country as rich as the USA, there is no reason for anyone - ANYONE - to ever go to sleep not secure about having shelter and food for themselves and their family the next day. I mean a universal "floor" of poverty below which no one is ever allowed to fall.
cc: How does the left make America a better place?
a: I think where the left has been most successful, lately, is in increasing tolerance in American society. By "tolerance," I don't mean "no one is allowed to express disapproval of anyone or anything, ever." However, I think that - despite problems remaining to be addressed - the US has in some ways become an easier society for sexual minorities, for women and men who don't want to live out traditional gender roles, for racial minorities, and for religious minorities. The social consensus has turned against open bigotry against many disadvantaged groups, and that's largely because of efforts by the left. (Note that I don't mean "the Democratic Party," which has often dragged its feet on these issues.) And of course there are the older achievements of the left - social security, unemployment insurance, food stamps, medicare, medicaid, what unionization still exists, etc. - which do an incredible amount of good for America by reducing poverty and providing people with what they need to live. More recently, the left has acted more denensively - protecting those past gains from attacks from the right - but there have also been recent achievements, like the expansion of the EITC (earned income tax credit) under Clinton.
Foreign Policy
cc: Do you believe Islamic totalitarianism poses a threat to national security?
a: No, no, not at all. Like all leftists I'm completely blind to any threat from Islamic fundamentalists. I for one would like to be the first to welcome our new Islamic totalitarian masters. Just kidding. When I worked on Wall Street - I was a secretary - I used to go to the top of the World Trade Center for my lunch break, eating a brown-bag sandwich and looking out over the spectacular view of Manhattan. Post 9/11, it would be incomprehensible to believe that extremist Islamic fundamentalism doesn't present a real threat to Americans.
cc: How do you think we could better prosecute the war against Islamic terrorism?
a: Honestly? I don't know. I know that's not a satisfying answer to you, but it's simply not an area I know enough about.
cc: Honesty is all I care about. As a general statement would you support torture against detainees during interrogation if the information could save American lives?
a: Yes, I would. However, I'd also point out that the question assumes things that could never actually be known in real life, so it's not a useful question to ask, from my perspective.
cc: Fair enough. Do you believe America should never preemptively strike known enemies even if they have the propensity to develop WMD’s and a willingness to use them or sell them to a “third Party”?
a: Define WMDs. I'm asking because the difference in harm caused by, say, someone developing a battery of nuclear warheads with the capacity for long-distance delivery, which could potentially kill millions, and someone developing nerve gas that can kill a thousand at a time, is immense.
cc: Well, why don’t you present an answer according to short or long range delivery. Two contexts two answers.
a: As a matter of abstract theory, I can imagine circumstances in which a pre-emptive strike might be justified, especially in the case of an enemy state on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. Certainly, an action like selective air bombing of essential weapons-development factories seems justifiable to me. However, in the real world, things aren't so simple. As we've recently seen with the US invasion of Iraq, the policy desires of political leaders can cause questionable and dubious intelligence to be accepted as fact, and a marginal and distant problem sold to the public as an immediate and extreme danger. In circumstances like that, acceptance of "preemptive wars" can lead to needless wars. Given how little I trust the American government to be an honest actor in world affairs, I wouldn't want the American government to be making pre-emptive war against anyone except in the most genuinely extreme circumstances.
cc: Such as
a: Genuinely strong intelligence showing that an actor has a nuclear weapon and intends to use it aggressively in the near future.
Immigration
cc: How should America deal with illegal immigrants?
a: There's such a great variety of illegal immigrants, that it's impossible to answer the question simply. For example, some illegal immigrants are women who have been brought to America in conditions of near-slavery, either to work in the sex industry or in domestic service. In that case, a policy of automatic punishment can make it hard or impossible for them to testify against the criminals hurting them, and automatically deporting them may just put them in a position to be exploited again by their traffickers, or even murdered if they testified against their trafficker. That's just one example, but it indicates my general point, which is that America's immigration policy should be sensitive ("sensitive" - there's that word again!) to nuance and differences in situation.
In general, I think we should try to make our borders as open as possible. Immigrants bring an enormous benefit to America, culturally and economically. Many immigrants, illegal or otherwise, will work in the US for ten, twenty or thirty years - and then return to their country of original to retire, meaning that they've contributed to our tax base but we reap the benefits. Immigrants in effect subsidize many of our universities by paying full tuition rates; recent policy changes have made it harder than necessary for students to come study in the US, leading to a tremendous loss of revenue to universities.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't worry about terrorism at all. But it's possible to take anything, including vigilance, to unreasonable extremes. It's reasonable to try and screen immigration for potential terrorists, especially when immigrants are coming from counties that many past anti-American terrorists have come from, such as Saudi Arabia. It's unreasonable to create blanket restrictions that have the effect of turning away thousands of non-terrorists who could bring important benefits to the US economy and universities.
Economy
cc: What is an appropriate tax policy for America? What would you change?
a: Right now, when all federal and state taxes are accounted for, taxes in the USA are more-or-less flat. That is, the family earning $40,000 a year will end up paying approximately the same percent of taxes as the family earning $400,000 a year. I'd like to see a more progressive system, one in which wealthier households paid a greater percentage of their wealth and income in taxes than poorer households. I'd start by restoring the estate tax - or by replacing it with an inheritance tax - with exemptions to protect small businesses and farms. Raise income taxes for the wealthy everywhere, and reduce or eliminate sales taxes everywhere. I'd like to get rid of payroll taxes entirely, making up for the loss with higher income taxes and through closing tax loopholes used by the wealthy and by corporations. If that's not possible, though, I'd still like to eliminate payroll tax caps, so that high earners paid payroll tax on their entire income. More radically, I'd love to see an expansion of the EITC into an actual negative income tax. I have nothing against people being very rich, but I'd like to see the US create a floor of poverty, below which no one would be allowed to fall.
cc: What can we do about rising fuel costs?
a: If rising fuel costs are being caused by genuine increasing scarcity, then there's really not much to be done - it's just supply and demand at work. Presumably people will adjust over time; jobs might come over time to be located closer to homes, for example, and smaller, or otherwise more fuel-efficient cars may become more popular. This sort of thing is just the natural way economies work, and I'd be cautious about assuming that anything should be done about it. I do think there's a good argument for trying to subsidize, at a much higher level, long-term development of alternative fuels. Such investments could make America the leader in alternative fuel related industries twenty or thirty years from now, helping to make our children's generation much richer. I also think that raising CAFE standards is a good idea, for environmental reasons, but it would also help make driving more affordable for consumers.
cc: Do you believe all Judicial nominations deserve an up or down vote in the Senate?
a: If you don't mind my asking, do you believe that?
cc: Yes
a: Did you publically object to the dozens of judges denied an up or down vote during the Clinton administration?
cc: No (I didn't pay attention back then however)
a: For both democrats and republicans, I find the situational ethics applied to this question appalling. All either party really believes in is doing whatever they can get away with in order to grab all the power they can, as far as I can tell.
cc: So you believe Judges deserve a fair up or down vote in the Senate?
a: I don't believe that all Judicial nominations "deserve" an up or down vote in the Senate. Judgeships are powerful, lifelong positions, and there's a real advantage in skewing the judges who get confirmed towards moderation. It takes a more moderate judge to be confirmed by 60% of the Senate than it does to be confirmed by 51%. For that reason, I don't see anything wrong with a filibuster. Nor do I see anything wrong with a judge being blocked by a majority vote of a committee. I do think it's objectionable when rules allow only one Senator to block a judge, and I find "secret" blocks, hidden from the voters' eyes, especially objectionable. In short, getting a judge confirmed SHOULD be difficult. It's to the advantage of democracy if a president has to take opposition views into consideration when nominating judges.
cc: Oppositional views are constitutional. Blocking a vote is not.
a: I don't agree that blocking a vote is unconstitutional. The constitution allows the Senate to determine its own rules and procedures. It's a politically convenient interpretation of the constitution that says that "advice and consent" can't include a parliamentary decision not to hold a vote. I doubt you can find me one conservative commentor who publically objected to the "unconstitutional" acts of conservative senators who prevented Clinton's nominees from being given an up-or-down vote. This seems to imply that this isn't a genuine constitutional issue, but also a pretext.
cc: So you are ok with the Senate rule change called the Constitutional option? AKA Nuclear option?
a: By "okay," I'm not sure what you mean. Are you asking me if I think it's a good idea, or if I think it's constitutional?
cc: the latter. Actually - LOL - I think the Constitution is always the best idea :-)
a: I think it's constitutional, in the sense that the Senate has the legal right to change its own procedures (exactly what procedures are use to change procedures, is a question I don't know enough to address). However, in the long term, Republicans may come to regret making such a change. No majority lasts forever.
cc: So to be clear, not all judges deserve an up or down vote.
a: Correct. Not all judges deserve an up or down vote.
cc: What qualities would you like to see in a Supreme Court Judge?
a: I'd like the next Supreme Court Justice to be a socialist radical feminist with a strong commitment to civil liberties and very little respect for corporate rights. However, the odds of my getting that are a wee bit on the long side. :_) Heh. Okay. Given the political realities of who could actually be nominated, I'd like to see another judge in the mold of Sandra Day O'Connor - someone who is thoughtful, who can see middle grounds, who is relatively non-ideological, and who has a tendency to chart a course between extremes...
cc: Stop. I want to know what you want - not what is possible
a: Laurence Tribe. Except without the problematic accusations of plagerism. And preferably not white or male.
cc: Are you serious?
a: Yup.
Abortion
cc: When do you believe life begins?
a: Long before conception. Strictly speaking, both sperm and eggs are alive before they join. If you're asking when an individual, biologically human life begins, I'd say when egg and sperm join. If you're asking when pregnancy begins, I'd say it's when a fertilized egg attaches to the lining of the uterus. If you're asking when the potential for personhood begins, I'd say it's approximately around week 25, when the cerebral cortex begins functioning and having connections to the rest of the brain.
cc: Do we have rights to life after week 25?
a: I believe that the right to life exists in a very weak form beginning around week 25, and continues existing and growing throughout the pregnancy. However, I don't think that the right to life is absolute; it has to be balanced against the mother's right to bodily autonomy.
cc: Forgive me, but you cant have a 50% right to life. Where would you draw the line?
a: Are you saying you don't believe there's such a thing as rights in conflict?
cc: Sure we can have rights in conflict
a: But to answer your question - and this will sound awful when it's taken out-of-context - I'd draw the line at birth. That isn't saying that I think it's legitimate, or moral, to abort a healthy preborn ten minutes before birth would have happened (and I doubt such a case has ever occurred in real life). I am saying that before birth, that's a decision which is best made privately between a woman, her loved ones, and her doctor, rather than a decision best made by the Government.
cc: So the Government should not legislate morality in this instance.
a: Correct.
cc: But 10 minutes after natural birth it becomes murder and the government should legislate morality within that context
a: Yes. You're making what I call the "woman, what woman?" argument. That is, you're implying that it's unreasonable to consider whether or not a woman's body contains the fetus, and whether or not a woman is affected, as a morally relevant issue when deciding where to draw boundaries.
cc: I'm working hard not to make any argument, just trying to hear yours
a: When the preborn is inside a woman's body, her rights to have bodily autonomy are in conflict with the preborn's right to life. However, once the preborn goes through birth, that conflict no longer exists, which completely changes the moral equation. To claim that this is an entirely arbitrary distinction is to say "woman, what woman?" - to act as if the presence or absence of a question of the mother's right to bodily autonomy is too irrelevant to merit any consideration. I also think there's a big difference between "legislating morality" that reflects a genuine, very nearly universal consensus - such as the laws against murder - and "legislating morality" when it's a matter of forcing many, many individuals to accept laws that there is no actual consensus on, such as laws banning abortion. However, I think it's important to remember as well that the "ten minutes before birth" issue is one that never happens in real life. At that point, to do an abortion would be dangerous to the woman and fatal for the child; I doubt any woman would request it, and I doubt any doctor would accede to the request. The vast, vast majority of abortions happen before the 25th week, and virtually none happen after the 30th week.
cc: So the government should legislate morality only when there is a majority consensus?
a: Not necessarily. For example, if the majority opposes a constitutional right, I'd say the constitutional right should be respected, not the will of the majority. I think the government has the right to "legislate morality," which you seem to use to mean "legislate anything at all," when they can constitutionally do so. I think a system of elected representatives working under a system of checks and balances with guaranteed constitutional rights, for all its flaws, is the best system available. However, in practice it's much harder to legislate morality when there's not a consensus than when there is; which is why it's easy to outlaw murder, and difficult to ban abortion. That's how our system works, and I think it's a good thing, on the whole.
[Just now] we discussed abortion in the fairly standard way - how do we define when life starts, etc? But I actually like to try and talk about this in a different way, which is: What is the best-proven method of reducing abortion?
Even if we accept the pro-life premise that there is no means of making a moral distinction between a ten-day-old embryo and a 18-month infant, that doesn't automatically lead to the conclusion that the best thing to do is to ban abortion.
Is the primary purpose of pro-life activism to save preborn lives, or is it to punish the guilty?
Worldwide, the countries with the lowest abortion rates are ALL countries in which there is legal abortion, combined with a generous social support system for single parents, comprehensive sex education and a big push to encourage the use of birth control. Look at Belgium, for example - the lowest abortion rate in the world, combined with abortion that in practice is much more easily available than it is in the USA (where abortion is legal, but in many areas not actually available, and never paid for by the government).
There is not a single example, anywhere in the world, of a country that has used abortion bans to get abortion rates nearly as low as Belgium's, or even as low as double Belgium's.
Here's what I don't understand: Why is this fact about which policies, in the real world, are and are not associated with low abortion rates, not of interest to pro-lifers? Logically, if we want to prevent as many abortions as possible, we should be interested in evidence of what works. But I see no sign of any interest in that among pro-lifers; pro-lifers want a ban, period, and aren't interested in trying to imitate non-ban approaches that have produced better results than bans ever had.
The sad thing is, a compromise is possible. Leftists and feminists could agree that we should make it a public policy goal to bring the abortion rate as low as possible. Conservatives could agree that they can give up on the idea of banning abortion in exchange for following policies that would actually prevent more abortions than a ban would. I don't see any good reason this compromise isn't possible. But it's not even something that anyone, on either side, is seriously considering.
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I devote the work of this Web Log to the true living LORD God, and to His Son, Jesus Christ.
May the blessing of God's hand be upon it that it might be a light in a dark place.
My goal for this and future interviews is not to demean members of the left, to perform character assassination, or hold them up for public ridicule, but to hear them out. I don’t entertain fools who I often hear from, I prefer to select intelligent and articulate people who can deliver unapologetic liberal ideas. “What would America look like if the left had its way” is the question I seek to answer one person at a time. I don’t care for many of the professional Democrats, it’s the voices of individuals that matter most in this Democratic Republic, which is what make the blogosphere great. I am curious to get people reactions to the ideas presented here in the comments, but warn against using this as an opportunity to humiliate and demean Barry, he is an exceptional man.
###
christian conservative: As of late, the Democrat Party has stood in opposition to many issues ranging from No Child Left Behind, President Bush’s Faith Based Initiatives, Tax cuts, our presence in Iraq and Social Security reform among others. The dangers facing the Democratic Party today have to do with the negative public perception which follows after hearing Democrats detail all the problems but none of the solutions to Republican propositions.
What I am interested in is not a debate, but to get a portrait of what America would look like if the left had its way in American life beginning with you. Simply put, I want to hear how you would answer this question: how does the left make America a better place? I want to work through both foreign and domestic issues and briefly touch on the war on terrorism, the environment, the economy, taxation, judges, abortion, and SSM (Same Sex Marriage) Social Security, censorship and religion. What I hope to present to people who frequent my blog are positive ideas from the left. Since this isn’t radio or TV, we’re not bound to any time constraints, so I can keep the chat open if you prefer to do some light fact-checking, but I offer this caveat: spontaneity begets honesty and it is honesty I am most interested in.
Big picture first. What areas of American life are you most passionate about changing?
a: I'm a passionate feminist, so a lot of my focus is on gender issues. I'd like to see a lot more gender equality in the United States; economic, political and social equality, both in very bread-and-butter areas like wages, and in more abstract areas like freedom from constraining gender roles. I'm also very passionate about queer equality, including same-sex marriage. But that's just the areas I'm personally most passionate about. If you asked me instead what was most important, I might add to that electoral reform, universal health care, and a better safety net.
cc: What do you mean by “a better safety net”?
a: I mean that in a country as rich as the USA, there is no reason for anyone - ANYONE - to ever go to sleep not secure about having shelter and food for themselves and their family the next day. I mean a universal "floor" of poverty below which no one is ever allowed to fall.
cc: How does the left make America a better place?
a: I think where the left has been most successful, lately, is in increasing tolerance in American society. By "tolerance," I don't mean "no one is allowed to express disapproval of anyone or anything, ever." However, I think that - despite problems remaining to be addressed - the US has in some ways become an easier society for sexual minorities, for women and men who don't want to live out traditional gender roles, for racial minorities, and for religious minorities. The social consensus has turned against open bigotry against many disadvantaged groups, and that's largely because of efforts by the left. (Note that I don't mean "the Democratic Party," which has often dragged its feet on these issues.) And of course there are the older achievements of the left - social security, unemployment insurance, food stamps, medicare, medicaid, what unionization still exists, etc. - which do an incredible amount of good for America by reducing poverty and providing people with what they need to live. More recently, the left has acted more denensively - protecting those past gains from attacks from the right - but there have also been recent achievements, like the expansion of the EITC (earned income tax credit) under Clinton.
Foreign Policy
cc: Do you believe Islamic totalitarianism poses a threat to national security?
a: No, no, not at all. Like all leftists I'm completely blind to any threat from Islamic fundamentalists. I for one would like to be the first to welcome our new Islamic totalitarian masters. Just kidding. When I worked on Wall Street - I was a secretary - I used to go to the top of the World Trade Center for my lunch break, eating a brown-bag sandwich and looking out over the spectacular view of Manhattan. Post 9/11, it would be incomprehensible to believe that extremist Islamic fundamentalism doesn't present a real threat to Americans.
cc: How do you think we could better prosecute the war against Islamic terrorism?
a: Honestly? I don't know. I know that's not a satisfying answer to you, but it's simply not an area I know enough about.
cc: Honesty is all I care about. As a general statement would you support torture against detainees during interrogation if the information could save American lives?
a: Yes, I would. However, I'd also point out that the question assumes things that could never actually be known in real life, so it's not a useful question to ask, from my perspective.
cc: Fair enough. Do you believe America should never preemptively strike known enemies even if they have the propensity to develop WMD’s and a willingness to use them or sell them to a “third Party”?
a: Define WMDs. I'm asking because the difference in harm caused by, say, someone developing a battery of nuclear warheads with the capacity for long-distance delivery, which could potentially kill millions, and someone developing nerve gas that can kill a thousand at a time, is immense.
cc: Well, why don’t you present an answer according to short or long range delivery. Two contexts two answers.
a: As a matter of abstract theory, I can imagine circumstances in which a pre-emptive strike might be justified, especially in the case of an enemy state on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. Certainly, an action like selective air bombing of essential weapons-development factories seems justifiable to me. However, in the real world, things aren't so simple. As we've recently seen with the US invasion of Iraq, the policy desires of political leaders can cause questionable and dubious intelligence to be accepted as fact, and a marginal and distant problem sold to the public as an immediate and extreme danger. In circumstances like that, acceptance of "preemptive wars" can lead to needless wars. Given how little I trust the American government to be an honest actor in world affairs, I wouldn't want the American government to be making pre-emptive war against anyone except in the most genuinely extreme circumstances.
cc: Such as
a: Genuinely strong intelligence showing that an actor has a nuclear weapon and intends to use it aggressively in the near future.
Immigration
cc: How should America deal with illegal immigrants?
a: There's such a great variety of illegal immigrants, that it's impossible to answer the question simply. For example, some illegal immigrants are women who have been brought to America in conditions of near-slavery, either to work in the sex industry or in domestic service. In that case, a policy of automatic punishment can make it hard or impossible for them to testify against the criminals hurting them, and automatically deporting them may just put them in a position to be exploited again by their traffickers, or even murdered if they testified against their trafficker. That's just one example, but it indicates my general point, which is that America's immigration policy should be sensitive ("sensitive" - there's that word again!) to nuance and differences in situation.
In general, I think we should try to make our borders as open as possible. Immigrants bring an enormous benefit to America, culturally and economically. Many immigrants, illegal or otherwise, will work in the US for ten, twenty or thirty years - and then return to their country of original to retire, meaning that they've contributed to our tax base but we reap the benefits. Immigrants in effect subsidize many of our universities by paying full tuition rates; recent policy changes have made it harder than necessary for students to come study in the US, leading to a tremendous loss of revenue to universities.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't worry about terrorism at all. But it's possible to take anything, including vigilance, to unreasonable extremes. It's reasonable to try and screen immigration for potential terrorists, especially when immigrants are coming from counties that many past anti-American terrorists have come from, such as Saudi Arabia. It's unreasonable to create blanket restrictions that have the effect of turning away thousands of non-terrorists who could bring important benefits to the US economy and universities.
Economy
cc: What is an appropriate tax policy for America? What would you change?
a: Right now, when all federal and state taxes are accounted for, taxes in the USA are more-or-less flat. That is, the family earning $40,000 a year will end up paying approximately the same percent of taxes as the family earning $400,000 a year. I'd like to see a more progressive system, one in which wealthier households paid a greater percentage of their wealth and income in taxes than poorer households. I'd start by restoring the estate tax - or by replacing it with an inheritance tax - with exemptions to protect small businesses and farms. Raise income taxes for the wealthy everywhere, and reduce or eliminate sales taxes everywhere. I'd like to get rid of payroll taxes entirely, making up for the loss with higher income taxes and through closing tax loopholes used by the wealthy and by corporations. If that's not possible, though, I'd still like to eliminate payroll tax caps, so that high earners paid payroll tax on their entire income. More radically, I'd love to see an expansion of the EITC into an actual negative income tax. I have nothing against people being very rich, but I'd like to see the US create a floor of poverty, below which no one would be allowed to fall.
cc: What can we do about rising fuel costs?
a: If rising fuel costs are being caused by genuine increasing scarcity, then there's really not much to be done - it's just supply and demand at work. Presumably people will adjust over time; jobs might come over time to be located closer to homes, for example, and smaller, or otherwise more fuel-efficient cars may become more popular. This sort of thing is just the natural way economies work, and I'd be cautious about assuming that anything should be done about it. I do think there's a good argument for trying to subsidize, at a much higher level, long-term development of alternative fuels. Such investments could make America the leader in alternative fuel related industries twenty or thirty years from now, helping to make our children's generation much richer. I also think that raising CAFE standards is a good idea, for environmental reasons, but it would also help make driving more affordable for consumers.
cc: Do you believe all Judicial nominations deserve an up or down vote in the Senate?
a: If you don't mind my asking, do you believe that?
cc: Yes
a: Did you publically object to the dozens of judges denied an up or down vote during the Clinton administration?
cc: No (I didn't pay attention back then however)
a: For both democrats and republicans, I find the situational ethics applied to this question appalling. All either party really believes in is doing whatever they can get away with in order to grab all the power they can, as far as I can tell.
cc: So you believe Judges deserve a fair up or down vote in the Senate?
a: I don't believe that all Judicial nominations "deserve" an up or down vote in the Senate. Judgeships are powerful, lifelong positions, and there's a real advantage in skewing the judges who get confirmed towards moderation. It takes a more moderate judge to be confirmed by 60% of the Senate than it does to be confirmed by 51%. For that reason, I don't see anything wrong with a filibuster. Nor do I see anything wrong with a judge being blocked by a majority vote of a committee. I do think it's objectionable when rules allow only one Senator to block a judge, and I find "secret" blocks, hidden from the voters' eyes, especially objectionable. In short, getting a judge confirmed SHOULD be difficult. It's to the advantage of democracy if a president has to take opposition views into consideration when nominating judges.
cc: Oppositional views are constitutional. Blocking a vote is not.
a: I don't agree that blocking a vote is unconstitutional. The constitution allows the Senate to determine its own rules and procedures. It's a politically convenient interpretation of the constitution that says that "advice and consent" can't include a parliamentary decision not to hold a vote. I doubt you can find me one conservative commentor who publically objected to the "unconstitutional" acts of conservative senators who prevented Clinton's nominees from being given an up-or-down vote. This seems to imply that this isn't a genuine constitutional issue, but also a pretext.
cc: So you are ok with the Senate rule change called the Constitutional option? AKA Nuclear option?
a: By "okay," I'm not sure what you mean. Are you asking me if I think it's a good idea, or if I think it's constitutional?
cc: the latter. Actually - LOL - I think the Constitution is always the best idea :-)
a: I think it's constitutional, in the sense that the Senate has the legal right to change its own procedures (exactly what procedures are use to change procedures, is a question I don't know enough to address). However, in the long term, Republicans may come to regret making such a change. No majority lasts forever.
cc: So to be clear, not all judges deserve an up or down vote.
a: Correct. Not all judges deserve an up or down vote.
cc: What qualities would you like to see in a Supreme Court Judge?
a: I'd like the next Supreme Court Justice to be a socialist radical feminist with a strong commitment to civil liberties and very little respect for corporate rights. However, the odds of my getting that are a wee bit on the long side. :_) Heh. Okay. Given the political realities of who could actually be nominated, I'd like to see another judge in the mold of Sandra Day O'Connor - someone who is thoughtful, who can see middle grounds, who is relatively non-ideological, and who has a tendency to chart a course between extremes...
cc: Stop. I want to know what you want - not what is possible
a: Laurence Tribe. Except without the problematic accusations of plagerism. And preferably not white or male.
cc: Are you serious?
a: Yup.
Abortion
cc: When do you believe life begins?
a: Long before conception. Strictly speaking, both sperm and eggs are alive before they join. If you're asking when an individual, biologically human life begins, I'd say when egg and sperm join. If you're asking when pregnancy begins, I'd say it's when a fertilized egg attaches to the lining of the uterus. If you're asking when the potential for personhood begins, I'd say it's approximately around week 25, when the cerebral cortex begins functioning and having connections to the rest of the brain.
cc: Do we have rights to life after week 25?
a: I believe that the right to life exists in a very weak form beginning around week 25, and continues existing and growing throughout the pregnancy. However, I don't think that the right to life is absolute; it has to be balanced against the mother's right to bodily autonomy.
cc: Forgive me, but you cant have a 50% right to life. Where would you draw the line?
a: Are you saying you don't believe there's such a thing as rights in conflict?
cc: Sure we can have rights in conflict
a: But to answer your question - and this will sound awful when it's taken out-of-context - I'd draw the line at birth. That isn't saying that I think it's legitimate, or moral, to abort a healthy preborn ten minutes before birth would have happened (and I doubt such a case has ever occurred in real life). I am saying that before birth, that's a decision which is best made privately between a woman, her loved ones, and her doctor, rather than a decision best made by the Government.
cc: So the Government should not legislate morality in this instance.
a: Correct.
cc: But 10 minutes after natural birth it becomes murder and the government should legislate morality within that context
a: Yes. You're making what I call the "woman, what woman?" argument. That is, you're implying that it's unreasonable to consider whether or not a woman's body contains the fetus, and whether or not a woman is affected, as a morally relevant issue when deciding where to draw boundaries.
cc: I'm working hard not to make any argument, just trying to hear yours
a: When the preborn is inside a woman's body, her rights to have bodily autonomy are in conflict with the preborn's right to life. However, once the preborn goes through birth, that conflict no longer exists, which completely changes the moral equation. To claim that this is an entirely arbitrary distinction is to say "woman, what woman?" - to act as if the presence or absence of a question of the mother's right to bodily autonomy is too irrelevant to merit any consideration. I also think there's a big difference between "legislating morality" that reflects a genuine, very nearly universal consensus - such as the laws against murder - and "legislating morality" when it's a matter of forcing many, many individuals to accept laws that there is no actual consensus on, such as laws banning abortion. However, I think it's important to remember as well that the "ten minutes before birth" issue is one that never happens in real life. At that point, to do an abortion would be dangerous to the woman and fatal for the child; I doubt any woman would request it, and I doubt any doctor would accede to the request. The vast, vast majority of abortions happen before the 25th week, and virtually none happen after the 30th week.
cc: So the government should legislate morality only when there is a majority consensus?
a: Not necessarily. For example, if the majority opposes a constitutional right, I'd say the constitutional right should be respected, not the will of the majority. I think the government has the right to "legislate morality," which you seem to use to mean "legislate anything at all," when they can constitutionally do so. I think a system of elected representatives working under a system of checks and balances with guaranteed constitutional rights, for all its flaws, is the best system available. However, in practice it's much harder to legislate morality when there's not a consensus than when there is; which is why it's easy to outlaw murder, and difficult to ban abortion. That's how our system works, and I think it's a good thing, on the whole.
[Just now] we discussed abortion in the fairly standard way - how do we define when life starts, etc? But I actually like to try and talk about this in a different way, which is: What is the best-proven method of reducing abortion?
Even if we accept the pro-life premise that there is no means of making a moral distinction between a ten-day-old embryo and a 18-month infant, that doesn't automatically lead to the conclusion that the best thing to do is to ban abortion.
Is the primary purpose of pro-life activism to save preborn lives, or is it to punish the guilty?
Worldwide, the countries with the lowest abortion rates are ALL countries in which there is legal abortion, combined with a generous social support system for single parents, comprehensive sex education and a big push to encourage the use of birth control. Look at Belgium, for example - the lowest abortion rate in the world, combined with abortion that in practice is much more easily available than it is in the USA (where abortion is legal, but in many areas not actually available, and never paid for by the government).
There is not a single example, anywhere in the world, of a country that has used abortion bans to get abortion rates nearly as low as Belgium's, or even as low as double Belgium's.
Here's what I don't understand: Why is this fact about which policies, in the real world, are and are not associated with low abortion rates, not of interest to pro-lifers? Logically, if we want to prevent as many abortions as possible, we should be interested in evidence of what works. But I see no sign of any interest in that among pro-lifers; pro-lifers want a ban, period, and aren't interested in trying to imitate non-ban approaches that have produced better results than bans ever had.
The sad thing is, a compromise is possible. Leftists and feminists could agree that we should make it a public policy goal to bring the abortion rate as low as possible. Conservatives could agree that they can give up on the idea of banning abortion in exchange for following policies that would actually prevent more abortions than a ban would. I don't see any good reason this compromise isn't possible. But it's not even something that anyone, on either side, is seriously considering.
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