Update: As usual, THC goes more or less where I'm going with this.
The blunt instrument that is anti-discrimination law was only necessary in an environment with cartels of local control between local bigotry in control of laws and businesses/property to the exclusion of any competing views. The "market" solution is to allow competitive entry and exit, but that's closed off by legal and social regimes. Right of exit is one thing when someone may be talking about moving down the road to the next town say, and it's a lot easier now with a global economy, but in the 1960s, moving away meant moving away from friends, families, and social institutions which you had some strong emotional and even economic attachment to (just as it does now, but without the ease of global communication and air travel access). These decisions are not easily made, and they are made harder still when there are few places to go. I question the logic of "well they could just move North or to Mexico, or go back to Africa". These are indeed options, but they are not and were not necessarily good options. They also suffer from some of the same centralising failures of logic that imposing anti-discrimination laws do: they assume motives and interests from afar that may not be appropriate for local decisions. Much less that the amount of resources required for uprooting millions of people was never taken into account or delegated.
To boot, the other glaring problem is that all of these options still excluded private businesses and owners of property from contracting in particular ways with people of other races in the place of strife and contention for mutual economic and personal gains. I cannot see how this should be suffered for us to abide. If the penalty for this is that a vanishingly smaller number of people are compelled against their will to employ people of racial characteristics that they do not share and do not care for, or to serve or sell products to such people as they would prefer not do business with, this may be a small price to pay.
Sadly, and perhaps not unexpectedly, the blunt instrument selected has not quite had this impact. Racially motivated business owners or home owners, etc, have relocated to more racially homogeneous neighbourhoods or residences to escape the petty inconveniences of being visited upon by these feared or abhorred "others". This has often gutted the economic capacities of the places they departed (typically inner-city urban areas) and reduced the ethnic diversity of cuisines, schools, and local culture, to the contrary of well-intended premises that people should not self-segregate over such meaningless trivialities. Likewise private schooling in some locales imposes a de facto state of segregation, imposing a caste system of poverty upon a few who cannot escape. I'm not sure that there is a way to escape this problem through decisive legal action; to compel people to abandon attitudes of suspicion, mistrust, and hatred in all their forms. Racism, and its related nationalism or xenophobia, should be shunned and openly opposed for the costs it imposes on people of all races and cultures. But I'm not willing to go "thought police" to expunge it from society or even to ban the expression of it. I am willing only to combat it from the perspective that it is wrong and to oppose it where it imposes visible and obvious costs and penalties.
The one positive benefit of something blunt like CRA might be that this shunning and opposition became more successful and possible or effective in some places, driving out systematic and legally oppressive regimes encrusting a particularly pernicious social and cultural view of the world. I suspect that this may be in time worth the cost of sacrificing the liberty of a few from withholding voluntarily the capacity to do business with only people they wish to contract with (ie, people of the same race and culture). There are still no mechanisms, legal or otherwise, to compel the free association and companionship, the mingling of couples, parties, and outings involving these disassociated ethnic enclaves. But if at least our economic participation absolves us of this original sin, maybe we're getting somewhere.
20 May 2010
CRA 64
I was reflecting on this and I think the problem here is that economic rights don't always take into account social and cultural norms that underlie those rights. People are supposed to pay their debts. There isn't any law that requires you to do it (in theory you can get out of paying almost anything, for instance just walk away from a mortgage and if you've little equity in it the only loss is the property and moving expenses), you're just supposed to honor your obligations when you take credit lines from somewhere. There are legal and economic penalties. But really, how bad is a black mark and hit on your credit score compared to potentially tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills that you can't pay, or hundreds of thousands on a mortgage you can no longer afford (and which the bank strangely decided you were good for). We don't use debtors prisons anymore to handle this, so the penalties are pretty mild. And yet most people try to pay their debts. That's an important element in a society based on credit and lending for growth.
So when it comes to private businesses and properties establishing their rules, it's not quite enough to say, well the private business can do what they want on their terms because if he does something stupid, say, discriminate against Africans or Mexicans or Koreans, the market will punish him. Actually it might. If there are enough people willing to buck cultural or social norms or his bigoted behavior is an outlier. But if the cultural and social norms are enforced, even to the point of using violence or the mere threat of it to compel them, alongside legal challenges, harassment, and penalties for noncompliance from law enforcement, both against the potential customer and the owner or operator of a business, then those social and cultural norms will go uncorrected. Now in a relative way, these local rules offer penalties and blow back against the local society and culture that imposes them versus cultures that do not. Money and skills offered by discriminated minorities may flee the area for more tolerant climes, or even form their own segregated clans to compete against the intolerant ones. In a world where such exits are easily made, this is probably fine. We don't (and didn't) have a world like that throughout the Jim Crow South. The problem wasn't necessarily that there were no laws forbidding private discrimination. The problem was that there were essentially norms and laws that enforced private discrimination whether people wanted to do it or not; there was no right of exit. That's why there was a law installed, to alter the social and cultural dynamics because the market can not behave in its usual way to offer such competitive norms in an environment that enforced only that set of rules that forbade competition. For example, not only was it more or less the case that a black man could not do business properly alongside whites as an equal consumer, he could not form his own competitive industries to serve in contrast to those to offer non-discriminatory or his own segregated businesses. White on black racism was institutionalised as acceptable, the reverse was not. This is not a tenable manner to operate a market economy consisting of a diverse set of peoples.
In the abstract theoretical world, the problem that Rand Paul lays out isn't really that the private business owner is now enslaved to the government which will tell him who he may conduct business with and on what terms (with his ridiculous guns in bars example as somehow equated to raw and naked bigotry). The problem is that the society as a whole surrounding that business tells the private business owner who he may conduct business with and on what terms. He already does not have private control over his own business. Under those terms it makes the most sense to offer a level and equal playing field, where any consumer or business owner may contract with any of their opposite, without meaningless superficial discriminatory elements factoring in (leaving business related decisions like credit worthiness, established in a somewhat racially neutral way like credit scores).
So when it comes to private businesses and properties establishing their rules, it's not quite enough to say, well the private business can do what they want on their terms because if he does something stupid, say, discriminate against Africans or Mexicans or Koreans, the market will punish him. Actually it might. If there are enough people willing to buck cultural or social norms or his bigoted behavior is an outlier. But if the cultural and social norms are enforced, even to the point of using violence or the mere threat of it to compel them, alongside legal challenges, harassment, and penalties for noncompliance from law enforcement, both against the potential customer and the owner or operator of a business, then those social and cultural norms will go uncorrected. Now in a relative way, these local rules offer penalties and blow back against the local society and culture that imposes them versus cultures that do not. Money and skills offered by discriminated minorities may flee the area for more tolerant climes, or even form their own segregated clans to compete against the intolerant ones. In a world where such exits are easily made, this is probably fine. We don't (and didn't) have a world like that throughout the Jim Crow South. The problem wasn't necessarily that there were no laws forbidding private discrimination. The problem was that there were essentially norms and laws that enforced private discrimination whether people wanted to do it or not; there was no right of exit. That's why there was a law installed, to alter the social and cultural dynamics because the market can not behave in its usual way to offer such competitive norms in an environment that enforced only that set of rules that forbade competition. For example, not only was it more or less the case that a black man could not do business properly alongside whites as an equal consumer, he could not form his own competitive industries to serve in contrast to those to offer non-discriminatory or his own segregated businesses. White on black racism was institutionalised as acceptable, the reverse was not. This is not a tenable manner to operate a market economy consisting of a diverse set of peoples.
In the abstract theoretical world, the problem that Rand Paul lays out isn't really that the private business owner is now enslaved to the government which will tell him who he may conduct business with and on what terms (with his ridiculous guns in bars example as somehow equated to raw and naked bigotry). The problem is that the society as a whole surrounding that business tells the private business owner who he may conduct business with and on what terms. He already does not have private control over his own business. Under those terms it makes the most sense to offer a level and equal playing field, where any consumer or business owner may contract with any of their opposite, without meaningless superficial discriminatory elements factoring in (leaving business related decisions like credit worthiness, established in a somewhat racially neutral way like credit scores).
19 May 2010
Rand Paul
Since I should be politically expected to comment on this, a couple things
1) He hasn't won the Senate seat. All he did was defeat the other GOP candidate in order to run for Senate in a state that is politically, typically, a polar opposite to what might be conceived of as libertarian politics: that is, it is socially conservative and fiscally moderate/liberal. There is a strong anti-establishment trend in Kentucky, as appears to be growing throughout the hills and valleys of this broad nation's lands. But there's also still a weird sense of entitlement to controls over establishing certain cultural norms through legal authoritarianism. I suspect Grayson had a better chance of winning the general election, just as Bob Bennett did (and probably still does) in Utah. Essentially what he won then was: an election within conservatives, a group which has self-segregated itself through some attrition into a strong cohort of ultra conservative views on a number of issues, demanding fealty on all of them. Rand Paul delivered on most of these while de-emphasizing opposition to things like the war on drugs or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as major political issues. In other words, he ran a better campaign. That might mean he has a good shot at a Senate seat next year, which, following this narrative, is supposedly great for "libertarians".
2) Except, for the most part, Rand Paul does not really seem like my kind of libertarian. He's useful for the mild, but by comparison to his father very mild, opposition to the foreign entanglements that have plagued our political debates over the past decade or more. If he wins the general election, I won't necessarily go out and call the guy a lunatic either. But I have some disagreements to raise, more than I do with Ron, some of the same ones. Most of the "end the Fed" stuff is a non-starter for me, or at least, isn't getting me all riled up nearly as much as things that the Fed does that it shouldn't, or, especially things it doesn't do when it should (such as the continuing trend of deflation when we need a policy of depreciation/mild inflation). Coming to a greater appreciation for libertarianism through Freidman (who was a monetarist), tends to mean that fractional reserve currencies don't bother me as much as they seem to bother others. Usually others with much less economic training than the Rothbard, Rand, or other philosopher/writer they've been reading and presumably are heavily influenced by on this and any number of other topics. Besides which, having a "strong" currency is really a meaningless problem to me in a world with global trade where currency values will be relative and the US dollar is still held as a reserve currency (artificially strengthening it).
I really don't see where someone who favors military commissions gets off being called "libertarian", though there's at least an argument (a weaker one from a national security perspective I think because of the absurdity of treating scumbags with high explosives and rifles like they are soldiers, particularly in an environment with a vague, amorphous enemy force with non-specific end points in combat terms) that these are a form of check and balance against government authoritarian systems that would have no form of trial at all to determine indefinite detentions.
And I really don't expect the government to protect me from the "scourges" of gays and abortions and pre-marital sex (bones I pick with both Ron and Rand). Nor from the "scourge" of having to press one for English or low-wage competition in labour markets. None of this is something I would call particularly "libertarian" and hence a reason to celebrate some great and tangible victory for that largely forgotten corner of political philosophy. It does all seem to be red meat for Tea Party people. But I wouldn't call that a cogent movement centered on libertarian principles either. I guess it's better than nothing, but I really don't feel like celebrating as though some great prize was won here. The needle moved a little bit. I suppose opposing a whole raft of government programs and departments would be useful and appreciated. I'm just highly skeptical of people who don't appreciate basic human liberties and rights as being capable of persuading other people of the pragmatic utility of ending such programs of economic distortion and public coercion used to extract economic rents.
And in any case, the likelihood of any serious legislation on most of these points ever coming up is about zero (mostly because on most of these issues the public does not care and there is broad bipartisan support for many of these silly ideas like agricultural tariffs and subsidies). The likelihood of wars of aggression being started for no apparent service to our national interests is a bit higher. If all the actual use I have for Mr Paul(s) is serious conservative wing opposition to foreign policy adventurism, under the theory that America is like the world's greatest superhero, I guess that's a good start. I don't foresee his budget hawkish-ness translating into policies simply because I don't think there are enough budget hawks in existence, both now because of exigent circumstances that Keynesian/Neo-Keynesians think matter, and later, when those circumstances don't exist (employment picks back up, inflation is "normal", etc), because the choices involved have proved to be still politically toxic (witness Paul Ryan's flat reception to an attempt at serious budget reform, Obama probably took it more seriously than did the public or his own party).
Update: The fact he said on NPR that he would have voted against the Civil Rights Act is probably not a great starting point for the general election. Even in Kentucky. (update: and on MSNBC things got tense) It doesn't sound like he would have voted against the entire bill, merely he has strong reservations about one provision in particular (employer/business owner discrimination being illegal). But the history of the Jim Crow South and the legal and cultural institutions surrounding it suggest that the ability of private businesses NOT to discriminate is something that did require some sort of legal action in order to foster and create.
More updates: The fact that Bill Kristol seems to like him suggests that some of the good and pragmatic parts of the libertarian business end are no longer seriously in play (civil liberties, anti-wars, anti-drug war stuff). I'm not sure this is quite true so much as Rand is better at covering these up for his audience while feeding them a line on budget hawkishness (without really explaining how that works in practical "I'm cutting this 200 billion dollars" terms) that apparently sells. But a candidate who runs with the "Obama apology tour" is probably not covering these things up so much as running away from them. And that is not a reason for libertarians to be happier today than yesterday. We're not being endorsed here so much as fleeced.
1) He hasn't won the Senate seat. All he did was defeat the other GOP candidate in order to run for Senate in a state that is politically, typically, a polar opposite to what might be conceived of as libertarian politics: that is, it is socially conservative and fiscally moderate/liberal. There is a strong anti-establishment trend in Kentucky, as appears to be growing throughout the hills and valleys of this broad nation's lands. But there's also still a weird sense of entitlement to controls over establishing certain cultural norms through legal authoritarianism. I suspect Grayson had a better chance of winning the general election, just as Bob Bennett did (and probably still does) in Utah. Essentially what he won then was: an election within conservatives, a group which has self-segregated itself through some attrition into a strong cohort of ultra conservative views on a number of issues, demanding fealty on all of them. Rand Paul delivered on most of these while de-emphasizing opposition to things like the war on drugs or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as major political issues. In other words, he ran a better campaign. That might mean he has a good shot at a Senate seat next year, which, following this narrative, is supposedly great for "libertarians".
2) Except, for the most part, Rand Paul does not really seem like my kind of libertarian. He's useful for the mild, but by comparison to his father very mild, opposition to the foreign entanglements that have plagued our political debates over the past decade or more. If he wins the general election, I won't necessarily go out and call the guy a lunatic either. But I have some disagreements to raise, more than I do with Ron, some of the same ones. Most of the "end the Fed" stuff is a non-starter for me, or at least, isn't getting me all riled up nearly as much as things that the Fed does that it shouldn't, or, especially things it doesn't do when it should (such as the continuing trend of deflation when we need a policy of depreciation/mild inflation). Coming to a greater appreciation for libertarianism through Freidman (who was a monetarist), tends to mean that fractional reserve currencies don't bother me as much as they seem to bother others. Usually others with much less economic training than the Rothbard, Rand, or other philosopher/writer they've been reading and presumably are heavily influenced by on this and any number of other topics. Besides which, having a "strong" currency is really a meaningless problem to me in a world with global trade where currency values will be relative and the US dollar is still held as a reserve currency (artificially strengthening it).
I really don't see where someone who favors military commissions gets off being called "libertarian", though there's at least an argument (a weaker one from a national security perspective I think because of the absurdity of treating scumbags with high explosives and rifles like they are soldiers, particularly in an environment with a vague, amorphous enemy force with non-specific end points in combat terms) that these are a form of check and balance against government authoritarian systems that would have no form of trial at all to determine indefinite detentions.
And I really don't expect the government to protect me from the "scourges" of gays and abortions and pre-marital sex (bones I pick with both Ron and Rand). Nor from the "scourge" of having to press one for English or low-wage competition in labour markets. None of this is something I would call particularly "libertarian" and hence a reason to celebrate some great and tangible victory for that largely forgotten corner of political philosophy. It does all seem to be red meat for Tea Party people. But I wouldn't call that a cogent movement centered on libertarian principles either. I guess it's better than nothing, but I really don't feel like celebrating as though some great prize was won here. The needle moved a little bit. I suppose opposing a whole raft of government programs and departments would be useful and appreciated. I'm just highly skeptical of people who don't appreciate basic human liberties and rights as being capable of persuading other people of the pragmatic utility of ending such programs of economic distortion and public coercion used to extract economic rents.
And in any case, the likelihood of any serious legislation on most of these points ever coming up is about zero (mostly because on most of these issues the public does not care and there is broad bipartisan support for many of these silly ideas like agricultural tariffs and subsidies). The likelihood of wars of aggression being started for no apparent service to our national interests is a bit higher. If all the actual use I have for Mr Paul(s) is serious conservative wing opposition to foreign policy adventurism, under the theory that America is like the world's greatest superhero, I guess that's a good start. I don't foresee his budget hawkish-ness translating into policies simply because I don't think there are enough budget hawks in existence, both now because of exigent circumstances that Keynesian/Neo-Keynesians think matter, and later, when those circumstances don't exist (employment picks back up, inflation is "normal", etc), because the choices involved have proved to be still politically toxic (witness Paul Ryan's flat reception to an attempt at serious budget reform, Obama probably took it more seriously than did the public or his own party).
Update: The fact he said on NPR that he would have voted against the Civil Rights Act is probably not a great starting point for the general election. Even in Kentucky. (update: and on MSNBC things got tense) It doesn't sound like he would have voted against the entire bill, merely he has strong reservations about one provision in particular (employer/business owner discrimination being illegal). But the history of the Jim Crow South and the legal and cultural institutions surrounding it suggest that the ability of private businesses NOT to discriminate is something that did require some sort of legal action in order to foster and create.
More updates: The fact that Bill Kristol seems to like him suggests that some of the good and pragmatic parts of the libertarian business end are no longer seriously in play (civil liberties, anti-wars, anti-drug war stuff). I'm not sure this is quite true so much as Rand is better at covering these up for his audience while feeding them a line on budget hawkishness (without really explaining how that works in practical "I'm cutting this 200 billion dollars" terms) that apparently sells. But a candidate who runs with the "Obama apology tour" is probably not covering these things up so much as running away from them. And that is not a reason for libertarians to be happier today than yesterday. We're not being endorsed here so much as fleeced.
around the world in 30 seconds
Thailand's messy physical situation now is merely a complicated political one. For now. Apart from that whole curfew for your safety thing, and the whole "city is on fire" thing. It will probably take a while to sort this out. The main distinction is the way the situation has been covered. When similar types of protest cropped up in Iran last year, they were heralded. These seem to be greeted at best with lukewarm intensity, if not some version of outrage. The difference between governments being relatively friendly with the world powers and not so much I guess is how your anti-government movements get covered, or even ignored.
Polish crash continues to be murky. Probably just panic. But it also doesn't sound like they picked a great setup for flying around their leaders if they have a mashed together flight crew at the last second sort of plan for getting them to a state trip to Smolensk.
Polish crash continues to be murky. Probably just panic. But it also doesn't sound like they picked a great setup for flying around their leaders if they have a mashed together flight crew at the last second sort of plan for getting them to a state trip to Smolensk.
bleh, a warning
I'm experimenting with the colour schemes out of boredom and because a white screen seems painful to try to read my tomes of exposition on. This may be distracting until I get bored with it in a week or two and settle on something I feel comfortable reading myself on.
Or people start/stop complaining.
Or people start/stop complaining.
Answer my question?
Why get tattoos? Sort of like my inquiries relating to nasal piercings. I look at a tattoo and consider that it is a permanent signal. Perhaps they can signal things about our inner character or perhaps we want to feel a permanent relation to whatever it is that we tattooed on our bodies.
But most tattoos are in visible places (to others) and don't really have these characteristics. They're just artistic things for other people to look at. I'd guess that means they serve some sort of sexual or personal signaling effect and do so with a permanence that say, clothing, which has the disadvantage of being removable or changeable, does not apparently satisfy.
So far as I can tell however, they mostly signal to me things like "warning, stay away, I make dumb and risky choices". Skin is already fairly appealing when it can be viewed. I'm not sure that it needs a painting attached to it. That looks to me more like a branding effort than a statement about one's individuality. If you must be associated with a brand, wearing clothes with the brand advertising on them is probably sufficient, as would be forms of conspicuous consumption (buying expensive jewelry or hybrid/sports cars, etc).
But most tattoos are in visible places (to others) and don't really have these characteristics. They're just artistic things for other people to look at. I'd guess that means they serve some sort of sexual or personal signaling effect and do so with a permanence that say, clothing, which has the disadvantage of being removable or changeable, does not apparently satisfy.
So far as I can tell however, they mostly signal to me things like "warning, stay away, I make dumb and risky choices". Skin is already fairly appealing when it can be viewed. I'm not sure that it needs a painting attached to it. That looks to me more like a branding effort than a statement about one's individuality. If you must be associated with a brand, wearing clothes with the brand advertising on them is probably sufficient, as would be forms of conspicuous consumption (buying expensive jewelry or hybrid/sports cars, etc).
Surprise!
Wait, no, that's not surprising at all really.
I particularly liked this line: "I dislike those who know so well what God wants them to do," she said, "because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."
I particularly liked this line: "I dislike those who know so well what God wants them to do," she said, "because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."
18 May 2010
that unpopular bill of rights thingy
Uh, what? The arguments aren't very good?
How about we have somebody making them, like say, the President who ran on a campaign that opposed such abuses?
Like those of that dreaded previous administration. Same as the new.
The problem is not that civil liberties freaks like me have "weak arguments" within the public sphere. The problem is that the natural party for endorsing them and most likely to have raised a great furor during the last decade is...in power. And not complaining about the powers they get to abuse now. As Greenwald notes, civil liberties are the last thing we should leave up to public opinions. Constitutional constraints on government power are essential not merely so that reviled groups like criminals or terrorists "get away" or escape with milder punishments (say: not tortured as a start...), but mostly so that majorities of the public are not subject to abuses of power for either petty reasons or because they are perceived as part of a reviled group themselves. Once it becomes clear that a power exists for a government, it will use it. It will not limit itself to our well-intended targets. All will suffer.
The proper question for people who support these expansive views of authoritarian states to prosecute terrorism is not to ask things like "what do I have to hide", with the assumption being "nothing" but instead to ask what they would do should they become targeted and accused, wrongly, by the state of a crime they submit should be condemned and treated with the strongest and harshest possible methods, with chains of evidence and due process abandoned as their normal recourse for justice. In other words, imagine they are part of the accused and reviled minority, but completely and obviously innocent. What escape routes would they want for themselves in that circumstance? Because granting a government such broad powers all but guarantees that some of its targets will be innocents such as themselves. Governments are composed of human beings. They are capable of errors, of petty jealousies and personal agendas that they will carry with them to perform public duties. These errors must be, if at all possible, correctable. These biases should be, wherever possible, removed. At the moment, we have methods to do neither in the prosecution of this war. Ultimately that means the main casualty is most likely our own freedoms.
The next most essential question to ask people is what, precisely, has changed in our approach on this problem of international terrorism. We don't torture people anymore. Okay, well that more or less stopped in 2006. We can still rendition people if we want. But we don't, we end up killing them in drone strikes or military actions or letting these other countries that we might send someone off to (Pakistan for example) capture people instead. We still try to try suspected or captured terrorists in civilian courts (a premise that Bush-Cheney backers are quick to forget and try to paper over at every opportunity). We still have a prison system with a concept of indefinite detentions with very minimal legal avenues for challenging such things (something now codified by SCOTUS for sexual offenders, if you want to leave them to rot in jail, sentence them for life without parole, don't puss out and let them out in 10 years and then tell us "but he's still too dangerous to let out", we need to leave him in). We still put thousands of people on watch lists for travel and activity, again, with an obtuse and labyrinthine escape route for people who might be wrongly accused or associated with terrorism (and one assumes that if there really are hundreds of thousands of potential terrorists plotting and scheming, we might see more activity than a few fizzling bombs).
But set against that we are somehow told that the arguments for these civil liberties are too hard to make, or are flawed. They don't need to be flawed. They're the fucking laws that the government is required to obey, regardless of public opinions to the contrary. When it flaunts these requirements, someone should be accountable for doing so. We might forgive such judgments when they have demonstratively positive ends (say, stopping a terrorist attack that saves thousands of lives). But we should still have to assure that this is indeed what we achieved by doing so. We don't do this now. Many of our security methods are still justified not under an assessment of what they do in the real world, and what methods we already had available, but by "public opinion" or by an appeal to their supposed necessity and absence with the fond recourse of justification being "tough on terror" as a political cover for asserting a need for more powers than are necessary.
Quite simply it is impossible for people to appeal to public opinions and attempt to prevail upon them the error of their ways if there are not leaders and public figures who recognize the need for doing so and the disturbing lack of accountable and transparent changes and clean breaks from previous policy, with all its according dangers that went recognized with great frequency and vigorous intensity. A President who runs on reversing such policies, who then does not, and who is supported by a constituency that may naturally oppose some of these intrusive measures (in favor of others, but I digress), is likely to suppress such dissension when it stirs from his own ranks rather than where it serves his political interests by attacking his opponent. Indeed, GOP attacks and claims of weakness and naive prosecution of the global war on terror as some sort of meager criminal problem (something I dearly wish were so in many ways), feed such political goals as well, presenting a difference where there is none, and continuing to dampen the likelihood of reliable criticism. When instead such criticism is hit back with the presumption that "well the public likes this hard-line, police state approach and thinks it works", we who hold such liberties dear should not sit down and surrender the fight as though our arguments hold no water against such weight.
The problem isn't that the weapons of reason in our arguments are somehow newly and horribly flawed by the election and sea change therein. The problem is that there are fewer people willing to recognize the necessity of their deployment. I suppose the primary explanation for why that is, is that most people perceive that a sea change has occurred and silenced themselves. No great shift has occurred on this front. The lines of entrenchment are preserved, only with fewer now flocking toward and willing to man the trenches on one side of the engagement with the thought that the lack of activity means the war here is over.
How about we have somebody making them, like say, the President who ran on a campaign that opposed such abuses?
Like those of that dreaded previous administration. Same as the new.
The problem is not that civil liberties freaks like me have "weak arguments" within the public sphere. The problem is that the natural party for endorsing them and most likely to have raised a great furor during the last decade is...in power. And not complaining about the powers they get to abuse now. As Greenwald notes, civil liberties are the last thing we should leave up to public opinions. Constitutional constraints on government power are essential not merely so that reviled groups like criminals or terrorists "get away" or escape with milder punishments (say: not tortured as a start...), but mostly so that majorities of the public are not subject to abuses of power for either petty reasons or because they are perceived as part of a reviled group themselves. Once it becomes clear that a power exists for a government, it will use it. It will not limit itself to our well-intended targets. All will suffer.
The proper question for people who support these expansive views of authoritarian states to prosecute terrorism is not to ask things like "what do I have to hide", with the assumption being "nothing" but instead to ask what they would do should they become targeted and accused, wrongly, by the state of a crime they submit should be condemned and treated with the strongest and harshest possible methods, with chains of evidence and due process abandoned as their normal recourse for justice. In other words, imagine they are part of the accused and reviled minority, but completely and obviously innocent. What escape routes would they want for themselves in that circumstance? Because granting a government such broad powers all but guarantees that some of its targets will be innocents such as themselves. Governments are composed of human beings. They are capable of errors, of petty jealousies and personal agendas that they will carry with them to perform public duties. These errors must be, if at all possible, correctable. These biases should be, wherever possible, removed. At the moment, we have methods to do neither in the prosecution of this war. Ultimately that means the main casualty is most likely our own freedoms.
The next most essential question to ask people is what, precisely, has changed in our approach on this problem of international terrorism. We don't torture people anymore. Okay, well that more or less stopped in 2006. We can still rendition people if we want. But we don't, we end up killing them in drone strikes or military actions or letting these other countries that we might send someone off to (Pakistan for example) capture people instead. We still try to try suspected or captured terrorists in civilian courts (a premise that Bush-Cheney backers are quick to forget and try to paper over at every opportunity). We still have a prison system with a concept of indefinite detentions with very minimal legal avenues for challenging such things (something now codified by SCOTUS for sexual offenders, if you want to leave them to rot in jail, sentence them for life without parole, don't puss out and let them out in 10 years and then tell us "but he's still too dangerous to let out", we need to leave him in). We still put thousands of people on watch lists for travel and activity, again, with an obtuse and labyrinthine escape route for people who might be wrongly accused or associated with terrorism (and one assumes that if there really are hundreds of thousands of potential terrorists plotting and scheming, we might see more activity than a few fizzling bombs).
But set against that we are somehow told that the arguments for these civil liberties are too hard to make, or are flawed. They don't need to be flawed. They're the fucking laws that the government is required to obey, regardless of public opinions to the contrary. When it flaunts these requirements, someone should be accountable for doing so. We might forgive such judgments when they have demonstratively positive ends (say, stopping a terrorist attack that saves thousands of lives). But we should still have to assure that this is indeed what we achieved by doing so. We don't do this now. Many of our security methods are still justified not under an assessment of what they do in the real world, and what methods we already had available, but by "public opinion" or by an appeal to their supposed necessity and absence with the fond recourse of justification being "tough on terror" as a political cover for asserting a need for more powers than are necessary.
Quite simply it is impossible for people to appeal to public opinions and attempt to prevail upon them the error of their ways if there are not leaders and public figures who recognize the need for doing so and the disturbing lack of accountable and transparent changes and clean breaks from previous policy, with all its according dangers that went recognized with great frequency and vigorous intensity. A President who runs on reversing such policies, who then does not, and who is supported by a constituency that may naturally oppose some of these intrusive measures (in favor of others, but I digress), is likely to suppress such dissension when it stirs from his own ranks rather than where it serves his political interests by attacking his opponent. Indeed, GOP attacks and claims of weakness and naive prosecution of the global war on terror as some sort of meager criminal problem (something I dearly wish were so in many ways), feed such political goals as well, presenting a difference where there is none, and continuing to dampen the likelihood of reliable criticism. When instead such criticism is hit back with the presumption that "well the public likes this hard-line, police state approach and thinks it works", we who hold such liberties dear should not sit down and surrender the fight as though our arguments hold no water against such weight.
The problem isn't that the weapons of reason in our arguments are somehow newly and horribly flawed by the election and sea change therein. The problem is that there are fewer people willing to recognize the necessity of their deployment. I suppose the primary explanation for why that is, is that most people perceive that a sea change has occurred and silenced themselves. No great shift has occurred on this front. The lines of entrenchment are preserved, only with fewer now flocking toward and willing to man the trenches on one side of the engagement with the thought that the lack of activity means the war here is over.
an interesting approach to immigration reform
Sell it.
This actually makes some sense. Perhaps it's not ideal, but it makes a lot more sense than having the government determine how many of Microsoft's workers and Harvard's graduate students can be from some other country. Under the present scenario, the government presumes to determine the quality or status of prospective legal "front door" immigrants. Realistically the only useful participation for government is to screen people for confirmed terrorist or criminal associations. Otherwise, I don't see a role for governments on immigration. So instead of having government determine the quality of workers who get into the country, let the market. Set this up like a cap and trade system. Cap the limit at something much higher than at present (say one million, scaling upward when the price of visas inflates too fast) and then auction off the visas (and allow them to be traded privately once sold).
The idea would be that not as many people would buy visas for people to pick strawberries or roof houses, but an engineering firm or school would almost certainly grab as many of these as they could. We know this because they're already trying to do so every year and the visa applications run out obscenely fast. Immigration in principle has excellent economic and social benefits. But importing hundreds of thousands of low wage, unskilled labourers, and according them with few if any legal rights is probably not the best way to do this. Importing hundreds of thousands of high skilled workers makes a bit more sense. I'm not so sure I care one way or the other. I'd have a very high cap on the number of visas per year in other words.
But this at least sounds like a sensible "conservative" approach because it resembles more of a market response than the usual trope of fortifications at the borders and police state inequalities once one passes those barriers (and risks economic slavery from coyotes or possible employers). It also means that immigration enforcement agents are tasked with a much simpler task: screening people for potentially hazardous associations or habits rather than chasing down lots of illegal immigrants or their employers (you could send the IRS after employers who violate the agreements or don't get the visas), and rather than messing with a bunch of useless forms that boil down to something like "why do you need a foreigner to do this or that job instead of an American?" Why is that properly considered any of the government's business who we might want to hire?
Update: in a more plausible look at the futility of normal conservative approaches, see the rise of Sheriff Joe.
Kind of funny how a policy and new law which is in part directed from a public outrage at an increase in crime (which actually didn't exist in the first place), is likely to result in...an increase of crime.
This actually makes some sense. Perhaps it's not ideal, but it makes a lot more sense than having the government determine how many of Microsoft's workers and Harvard's graduate students can be from some other country. Under the present scenario, the government presumes to determine the quality or status of prospective legal "front door" immigrants. Realistically the only useful participation for government is to screen people for confirmed terrorist or criminal associations. Otherwise, I don't see a role for governments on immigration. So instead of having government determine the quality of workers who get into the country, let the market. Set this up like a cap and trade system. Cap the limit at something much higher than at present (say one million, scaling upward when the price of visas inflates too fast) and then auction off the visas (and allow them to be traded privately once sold).
The idea would be that not as many people would buy visas for people to pick strawberries or roof houses, but an engineering firm or school would almost certainly grab as many of these as they could. We know this because they're already trying to do so every year and the visa applications run out obscenely fast. Immigration in principle has excellent economic and social benefits. But importing hundreds of thousands of low wage, unskilled labourers, and according them with few if any legal rights is probably not the best way to do this. Importing hundreds of thousands of high skilled workers makes a bit more sense. I'm not so sure I care one way or the other. I'd have a very high cap on the number of visas per year in other words.
But this at least sounds like a sensible "conservative" approach because it resembles more of a market response than the usual trope of fortifications at the borders and police state inequalities once one passes those barriers (and risks economic slavery from coyotes or possible employers). It also means that immigration enforcement agents are tasked with a much simpler task: screening people for potentially hazardous associations or habits rather than chasing down lots of illegal immigrants or their employers (you could send the IRS after employers who violate the agreements or don't get the visas), and rather than messing with a bunch of useless forms that boil down to something like "why do you need a foreigner to do this or that job instead of an American?" Why is that properly considered any of the government's business who we might want to hire?
Update: in a more plausible look at the futility of normal conservative approaches, see the rise of Sheriff Joe.
Kind of funny how a policy and new law which is in part directed from a public outrage at an increase in crime (which actually didn't exist in the first place), is likely to result in...an increase of crime.
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