Tuesday, May 31, 2005
What do they want? Part 2
Same Sex Marriage
cc: Who should decide on the same-sex marriage issue?
a: The same people who should decide on the freedom of speech issue. Ideally, freedom of speech is something supported by both the general public and by the legislature. But if the legislature and the public doesn't support freedom of speech, then I want the courts to step in and enforce the Constitution.
cc: If the Courts recognized a right to polygamy would you support that?
a: Well, I'd have to read the decision. But, as a general rule, even if I think the court was wrong - as I certainly think the Court has been wrong many times in the past - I still acknowledge that it's the Court that has the nearly final right, in our system, to judge what is or isn't constitutional. And if I disagree with the Court's decision, the only constitutional avenue I have for overruling the court is trying to amend the Constitution - something which, in the Federal Constitution at least, is designed to be very difficult to accomplish.
Same sex marriage is two issues wrapped in one. The first issue is one of fairness and equality. And the second issue is one of law and how the Constitution should be interpreted.
The Constitutional question, in my view, is "do we think the framers" - in this case, the framers of the 14th amendment - "do we think the framers were writing a law, or a principle?"
On the right, y'all tend to argue that the writers of the 14th amendment were writing a law. They were trying to just say something about how race should be treated, legally, and to read anything more than that into it is unconstitutional judicial activism. On the left, we think that what they were intending to do is write a principle for use in interpreting laws. And the best way to interpret it is to try to apply the principle stated by the 14th amendment as honestly and fully as we can - even if that takes us to places the framers of the 14th would not personally have imagined.
Because even if the framers of the 14th hadn't imagined this specific wrinkle - in this case, equal protection of the law for women and men even when it comes to marriage - they did understand that they were writing a general principle, and that it might have applications they themselves hadn't specifically thought of. They were not stupid or shortsighted people; if they had intended to restrict the amendment's reach to only a few specific issues, they would have said so in writing, in the amendment itself.
Social Security
cc: Do you believe there is a growing problem with the Social Security system?
a: Not with the Social Security system itself. Social Security is well-funded and financially secure for decades to come. Depending on how the economy does, a minor fix may be required; or no fix at all. The real danger to Social Security originates with Bill Clinton, in my view.
Clinton, in order to achieve a short-term goal of fighting back Republican-backed tax cuts, invented this whole idea that Social Security is in desperate danger and needs to be saved. And with the bewildering groupthink that characterizes partisan thinking, that became the common wisdom in the Democratic Party. Which changed the debate from what it's always been - which is the Republicans yelling "SS is doomed! The sky is falling!" and Democrats saying "SS is fine, calm the heck down" - to Republicans yelling "SS is doomed!" and Democrats saying "yes it is! So we can't have tax cuts!" In essence, Clinton sold the Social Security debate down the river in exchange for short-term political gain on a now-forgotten tax fight.
cc: You mentioned a minor fix may be required at some point. What would you suggest?
a: Me? I'd suggest eliminating the cap on payroll taxes. If that doesn't fix things entirely, then raising payroll taxes by about half a percent to make up any remaining shortfall. Those are the most conservative steps that could be taken.
cc: If privatizing a portion of new accounts increases the return for these workers when they retire without penalizing benefits to today’s seniors, would you support it?
a: Yes, if privatizing a portion of new accounts could be guaranteed to increase returns without penalizing those who have already paid into the system, and without increasing the national debt, I'd support it. But I'm very skeptical of plans that claim it's possible to get something for nothing. In the real world, I don't think it's possible to do that.
Religion in government
cc: Can religion be a factor when arguing laws to legislate?
a: Of course it can be. I have freedom of speech, and can argue in favor of laws on any basis whatsoever. However, if it's my goal to be persuasive to my neighbor who doesn't share my religion - and to keep my neighbor from feeling that I'm shoving my religious beliefs down her throat - then it would be wise of me to have secular arguments she can relate to, as well.
cc: Should we remove religious monuments from the public facilities?
a: I think that's a question best left to local community governments to decide. Plus, so much depends on how the monument is set up. I can imagine religious monuments I'd object to; for instance, if a Judge decided to have a... a... what do you call the judge's desk in a courtroom? The big, raised, central piece of furniture the Judge sits behind?
cc: The bench?
a: Thank you!
cc: I'm not following you :-)
a: If a Judge decided to have his Bench replaced with a giant wood carving of Jesus on the cross, that might send an unavoidable message to non-Christian defendants that they're getting unequal treatment. There's an appropriate place and an inappropriate place for all statements, including religious statements. Those places that serve official government functions should be scrupulously neutral regarding faith. But on the other hand....
There are places which don't serve any grave purpose like that, and whose only public function is to look nice and provide a place for folks to gather. I don't think there's anything wrong with a Christmas tree or Menorah or what have you in those places. As an atheist, I realize that I'm a minority in this culture, and part of tolerence that's expected of me is that I should be a good sport about the strange religious displays you other folks want to set up.
But, again, I think such displays should be reasonably neutral. If Christians want to put up a big Christmas tree in the public square, that's fair enough; but if the local Wiccan group wants to be able to put up a display too, I don't think they can fairly be denied that.
Education
cc: What are the main problems with Public Education?
a: For the most part, public education in the US is excellent - one of the best public education systems in the entire world. The main thing wrong with it is isolated schools in which a combination of underfunding and outside-of-school factors has caused a lot of kids, mostly kids of color, to do very badly.
cc: What can be done regarding the "outside-of-school factors"?
a: I think there's a lot we can do to fix the worst urban and rural schools, but it isn't cheap. And no matter what you do, no school - no matter how great - can completely make up for the effects of a terrible social structure, broken families, the bigotry of low expectations, and poverty. Yes, I'm deliberately quoting George Bush.
cc Should evolution be taught in school as a fact or as a theory? And should Intelligent Design be introduced as a counter theory also
a: Evolution should be taught in schools as a well-established scientific theory - which is, for most purposes, the same as teaching it as fact. Intelligent Design isn't science, so it shouldn't be taught in a science classroom. If people want to teach the I.D. controversy in an appropriate class - for example, a social studies class - I think that's appropriate.
cc: I see a big distinction between a theory and a fact.
a: In scientific terms, as I understand it - and I'm no scientist - a "fact" is something like, "we found this bone buried in the ground and carbon dating shows it to be X years old." That's a fact. A "theory" is something explaining how that fact and other related facts came to be. And no matter how well proven a scientific theory is, it remains a theory; there is always the possibility, however remote, that new facts will come to light forcing the previous theory to be revised or discarded. So no matter how certain a scientific theory seems to be, it is still referred to as a theory.
Creationists and ID'ers tend to use the word "theory" to imply "there is no evidence for this idea, it's unproven." And that's simply not what the word "theory" means, in scientific terms.
cc: I realize the School Board has autonomy over these issues, but do you believe the parents have the final say on controversial subjects such as the ID-Evolution issue?
a: Well, of course parents do. After all, parents have the ultimate right - the right to pull their child out of public schools and send them to private school, or to home school them. I also think that children and teens should be tested on their understanding of the material, not on their agreement or disagreement with the material. So, for example, if a teen was able to pass an exam showing that she understands what the theory of evolution is, it shouldn't harm her grade if she wrote at the bottom "of course this is all nonsense, as the book of Genesis shows."
The problem is that, rather than simply saying "evolution is wrong, and we know so as a matter of faith" - which is an entirely reasonable thing to say - IDers and creationists make very poorly-reasoned attempts to "refute" the theory of evolution. And I'd hate for that stuff to be taught to children, because it could lead to a generation of children having a terrible misunderstanding of things like what the second law of thermodynamics is.
Its Ampersand: What I hated most about the Terri Schiavo controversy was the unwillingness of either side to comprehend that someone can disagree with a position without having bad motives. I tried to have discussions on my blog in which posters were forbidden from criticizing either Michael Schiavo or the Schindlers personally, and it was hopeless - people kept returning to this ridiculous theme day after day.
cc: Besides “update the will” what is the lesson learned from the Terri Schiavo controversy?
a: The conspiracy theories that developed around Michael Schiavo and Judge Greer were genuinely ridiculous. Why is it so difficult to believe that people can disagree without being caricatures of evil?
cc: So what should have been the way to handle the issue? Should it have gone to the courts?
a: Without getting into minutia of Florida law, yes, I do think it should have gone to the courts. In our society, when we have an uresolvable question relating to law, the way we solve them is by going to the court and having both sides advocate their case as best as they're able. Then the court decides (give or take a dozen appeals).
Its Ampersand: Is it a perfect system? No. But I'm hard-pressed to imagine what a better system would be.
Censorship
cc: Do you believe unrestrained free speech should never be censored as a general rule? What exceptions to this rule would you sanction?
a: Well, there's the old cliche that no one has the right to falsely yell "fire" in a crowded theatre. (I emphasize "falsely" because that word is an essential part of the saying's logic, yet it's part that people often leave out). Interestingly, the case that cliche comes from is one of the worse attacks on free speech in American history, in which the Court approved some poor communist being shoved into jail for passing out an anti-draft pamphlet he had written.
In general, I'm anti-censorship. But I also believe that different kinds of speech deserve different levels of protection. Political and artistic speech deserve the highest levels of protection, and censorship of this sort of speech should almost always be forbidden; the only exceptions I can think of is speech that creates an immediate danger to someone's life or limb.
At a lower level of protection, commercial speech should be protected less. For instance, commercial speech should be held to higher standards of truthfulness; I don't want to see politicians sued for spreading bad statistics, but if a breakfast cereal company says "the average person who eats our cereal loses 20 pounds," then I think they should be held liable.
And I also think that obscene speech that arguably causes harm should merit very little protection. In other words, I favor censoring child porn and rape porn.
cc: That concludes the interview. I want to state for the record that I’m impressed with your intellect and honesty. It was my goal to appear neutral, although I can’t help but stating that although we have different visions for America, I found myself nodding at some of your reactions. I think this country is big enough for the both of us. Is there any thing you want to close with?
a: Thank you. Closing thoughts... the right and left in this country are stuck with each other. Probably forever. Maybe I'm being pie-in-the-sky, but one thing I don't see a lot of, on either side, is intellectual honesty, humility, and kindness. Intellectual honesty should compel all of us to admit that not everyone who disagrees with us is an idiot; in fact, no matter who you are, it's nearly certain that some of the people who disagree with you are smarter and better-informed than you are. We should all realize that even our most treasured beliefs might, as a matter of theory, be wrong; and that the people we disagree with are, on some level, every bit as wonderful and amazing as we ourselves are. The one thing we can be absolutely sure is right is kindness.
I'm sounding preachy, so I should add that I've often failed to live up to my own standards. But I am trying. I wish it could become a norm, in politics, to strive for kindness. But I don't think I'm very in-step with my culture when I say that.
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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.
cc: Who should decide on the same-sex marriage issue?
a: The same people who should decide on the freedom of speech issue. Ideally, freedom of speech is something supported by both the general public and by the legislature. But if the legislature and the public doesn't support freedom of speech, then I want the courts to step in and enforce the Constitution.
cc: If the Courts recognized a right to polygamy would you support that?
a: Well, I'd have to read the decision. But, as a general rule, even if I think the court was wrong - as I certainly think the Court has been wrong many times in the past - I still acknowledge that it's the Court that has the nearly final right, in our system, to judge what is or isn't constitutional. And if I disagree with the Court's decision, the only constitutional avenue I have for overruling the court is trying to amend the Constitution - something which, in the Federal Constitution at least, is designed to be very difficult to accomplish.
Same sex marriage is two issues wrapped in one. The first issue is one of fairness and equality. And the second issue is one of law and how the Constitution should be interpreted.
The Constitutional question, in my view, is "do we think the framers" - in this case, the framers of the 14th amendment - "do we think the framers were writing a law, or a principle?"
On the right, y'all tend to argue that the writers of the 14th amendment were writing a law. They were trying to just say something about how race should be treated, legally, and to read anything more than that into it is unconstitutional judicial activism. On the left, we think that what they were intending to do is write a principle for use in interpreting laws. And the best way to interpret it is to try to apply the principle stated by the 14th amendment as honestly and fully as we can - even if that takes us to places the framers of the 14th would not personally have imagined.
Because even if the framers of the 14th hadn't imagined this specific wrinkle - in this case, equal protection of the law for women and men even when it comes to marriage - they did understand that they were writing a general principle, and that it might have applications they themselves hadn't specifically thought of. They were not stupid or shortsighted people; if they had intended to restrict the amendment's reach to only a few specific issues, they would have said so in writing, in the amendment itself.
Social Security
cc: Do you believe there is a growing problem with the Social Security system?
a: Not with the Social Security system itself. Social Security is well-funded and financially secure for decades to come. Depending on how the economy does, a minor fix may be required; or no fix at all. The real danger to Social Security originates with Bill Clinton, in my view.
Clinton, in order to achieve a short-term goal of fighting back Republican-backed tax cuts, invented this whole idea that Social Security is in desperate danger and needs to be saved. And with the bewildering groupthink that characterizes partisan thinking, that became the common wisdom in the Democratic Party. Which changed the debate from what it's always been - which is the Republicans yelling "SS is doomed! The sky is falling!" and Democrats saying "SS is fine, calm the heck down" - to Republicans yelling "SS is doomed!" and Democrats saying "yes it is! So we can't have tax cuts!" In essence, Clinton sold the Social Security debate down the river in exchange for short-term political gain on a now-forgotten tax fight.
cc: You mentioned a minor fix may be required at some point. What would you suggest?
a: Me? I'd suggest eliminating the cap on payroll taxes. If that doesn't fix things entirely, then raising payroll taxes by about half a percent to make up any remaining shortfall. Those are the most conservative steps that could be taken.
cc: If privatizing a portion of new accounts increases the return for these workers when they retire without penalizing benefits to today’s seniors, would you support it?
a: Yes, if privatizing a portion of new accounts could be guaranteed to increase returns without penalizing those who have already paid into the system, and without increasing the national debt, I'd support it. But I'm very skeptical of plans that claim it's possible to get something for nothing. In the real world, I don't think it's possible to do that.
Religion in government
cc: Can religion be a factor when arguing laws to legislate?
a: Of course it can be. I have freedom of speech, and can argue in favor of laws on any basis whatsoever. However, if it's my goal to be persuasive to my neighbor who doesn't share my religion - and to keep my neighbor from feeling that I'm shoving my religious beliefs down her throat - then it would be wise of me to have secular arguments she can relate to, as well.
cc: Should we remove religious monuments from the public facilities?
a: I think that's a question best left to local community governments to decide. Plus, so much depends on how the monument is set up. I can imagine religious monuments I'd object to; for instance, if a Judge decided to have a... a... what do you call the judge's desk in a courtroom? The big, raised, central piece of furniture the Judge sits behind?
cc: The bench?
a: Thank you!
cc: I'm not following you :-)
a: If a Judge decided to have his Bench replaced with a giant wood carving of Jesus on the cross, that might send an unavoidable message to non-Christian defendants that they're getting unequal treatment. There's an appropriate place and an inappropriate place for all statements, including religious statements. Those places that serve official government functions should be scrupulously neutral regarding faith. But on the other hand....
There are places which don't serve any grave purpose like that, and whose only public function is to look nice and provide a place for folks to gather. I don't think there's anything wrong with a Christmas tree or Menorah or what have you in those places. As an atheist, I realize that I'm a minority in this culture, and part of tolerence that's expected of me is that I should be a good sport about the strange religious displays you other folks want to set up.
But, again, I think such displays should be reasonably neutral. If Christians want to put up a big Christmas tree in the public square, that's fair enough; but if the local Wiccan group wants to be able to put up a display too, I don't think they can fairly be denied that.
Education
cc: What are the main problems with Public Education?
a: For the most part, public education in the US is excellent - one of the best public education systems in the entire world. The main thing wrong with it is isolated schools in which a combination of underfunding and outside-of-school factors has caused a lot of kids, mostly kids of color, to do very badly.
cc: What can be done regarding the "outside-of-school factors"?
a: I think there's a lot we can do to fix the worst urban and rural schools, but it isn't cheap. And no matter what you do, no school - no matter how great - can completely make up for the effects of a terrible social structure, broken families, the bigotry of low expectations, and poverty. Yes, I'm deliberately quoting George Bush.
cc Should evolution be taught in school as a fact or as a theory? And should Intelligent Design be introduced as a counter theory also
a: Evolution should be taught in schools as a well-established scientific theory - which is, for most purposes, the same as teaching it as fact. Intelligent Design isn't science, so it shouldn't be taught in a science classroom. If people want to teach the I.D. controversy in an appropriate class - for example, a social studies class - I think that's appropriate.
cc: I see a big distinction between a theory and a fact.
a: In scientific terms, as I understand it - and I'm no scientist - a "fact" is something like, "we found this bone buried in the ground and carbon dating shows it to be X years old." That's a fact. A "theory" is something explaining how that fact and other related facts came to be. And no matter how well proven a scientific theory is, it remains a theory; there is always the possibility, however remote, that new facts will come to light forcing the previous theory to be revised or discarded. So no matter how certain a scientific theory seems to be, it is still referred to as a theory.
Creationists and ID'ers tend to use the word "theory" to imply "there is no evidence for this idea, it's unproven." And that's simply not what the word "theory" means, in scientific terms.
cc: I realize the School Board has autonomy over these issues, but do you believe the parents have the final say on controversial subjects such as the ID-Evolution issue?
a: Well, of course parents do. After all, parents have the ultimate right - the right to pull their child out of public schools and send them to private school, or to home school them. I also think that children and teens should be tested on their understanding of the material, not on their agreement or disagreement with the material. So, for example, if a teen was able to pass an exam showing that she understands what the theory of evolution is, it shouldn't harm her grade if she wrote at the bottom "of course this is all nonsense, as the book of Genesis shows."
The problem is that, rather than simply saying "evolution is wrong, and we know so as a matter of faith" - which is an entirely reasonable thing to say - IDers and creationists make very poorly-reasoned attempts to "refute" the theory of evolution. And I'd hate for that stuff to be taught to children, because it could lead to a generation of children having a terrible misunderstanding of things like what the second law of thermodynamics is.
Its Ampersand: What I hated most about the Terri Schiavo controversy was the unwillingness of either side to comprehend that someone can disagree with a position without having bad motives. I tried to have discussions on my blog in which posters were forbidden from criticizing either Michael Schiavo or the Schindlers personally, and it was hopeless - people kept returning to this ridiculous theme day after day.
cc: Besides “update the will” what is the lesson learned from the Terri Schiavo controversy?
a: The conspiracy theories that developed around Michael Schiavo and Judge Greer were genuinely ridiculous. Why is it so difficult to believe that people can disagree without being caricatures of evil?
cc: So what should have been the way to handle the issue? Should it have gone to the courts?
a: Without getting into minutia of Florida law, yes, I do think it should have gone to the courts. In our society, when we have an uresolvable question relating to law, the way we solve them is by going to the court and having both sides advocate their case as best as they're able. Then the court decides (give or take a dozen appeals).
Its Ampersand: Is it a perfect system? No. But I'm hard-pressed to imagine what a better system would be.
Censorship
cc: Do you believe unrestrained free speech should never be censored as a general rule? What exceptions to this rule would you sanction?
a: Well, there's the old cliche that no one has the right to falsely yell "fire" in a crowded theatre. (I emphasize "falsely" because that word is an essential part of the saying's logic, yet it's part that people often leave out). Interestingly, the case that cliche comes from is one of the worse attacks on free speech in American history, in which the Court approved some poor communist being shoved into jail for passing out an anti-draft pamphlet he had written.
In general, I'm anti-censorship. But I also believe that different kinds of speech deserve different levels of protection. Political and artistic speech deserve the highest levels of protection, and censorship of this sort of speech should almost always be forbidden; the only exceptions I can think of is speech that creates an immediate danger to someone's life or limb.
At a lower level of protection, commercial speech should be protected less. For instance, commercial speech should be held to higher standards of truthfulness; I don't want to see politicians sued for spreading bad statistics, but if a breakfast cereal company says "the average person who eats our cereal loses 20 pounds," then I think they should be held liable.
And I also think that obscene speech that arguably causes harm should merit very little protection. In other words, I favor censoring child porn and rape porn.
cc: That concludes the interview. I want to state for the record that I’m impressed with your intellect and honesty. It was my goal to appear neutral, although I can’t help but stating that although we have different visions for America, I found myself nodding at some of your reactions. I think this country is big enough for the both of us. Is there any thing you want to close with?
a: Thank you. Closing thoughts... the right and left in this country are stuck with each other. Probably forever. Maybe I'm being pie-in-the-sky, but one thing I don't see a lot of, on either side, is intellectual honesty, humility, and kindness. Intellectual honesty should compel all of us to admit that not everyone who disagrees with us is an idiot; in fact, no matter who you are, it's nearly certain that some of the people who disagree with you are smarter and better-informed than you are. We should all realize that even our most treasured beliefs might, as a matter of theory, be wrong; and that the people we disagree with are, on some level, every bit as wonderful and amazing as we ourselves are. The one thing we can be absolutely sure is right is kindness.
I'm sounding preachy, so I should add that I've often failed to live up to my own standards. But I am trying. I wish it could become a norm, in politics, to strive for kindness. But I don't think I'm very in-step with my culture when I say that.
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