The Washington Post reports on a “controversial” meaure that would:

increase funding for family planning clinics, expand Medicaid and private health insurance coverage of contraceptives, require hospitals to make emergency contraception available to rape victims, and allocate money for comprehensive sex education programs that teach youths about birth control as well as abstinence.

Here’s the money quote.   You might have to read it several times to believe what you’ve read:

“There’s a utopian view that women ought to be able to have sex any time they want to without consequences _ that’s the bottom line of all these bills,” said Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America, a conservative group which opposes the measures.

Now let’s see . . . whose body is it?  

There are many people in power who believe that the government has a right to keep citizens from seeking private consensual pleasure in a way that they choose.   Conservatives often attack Roe v. Wade on the alleged basis that Roe has no basis in the Constitution.  

On this issue of access to birth control I would respond: where in the constitution does it say that consenting adults don’t have a right to seek pleasure, where many of them are adults in their 20’s, 30’s 40’s and up, and especially where many of them are married to each other? 

For more on conservatives and their arrogant attitudes toward controlling the harmless sexual impulses of others, see here and here and here and here. 

For some of the real-life health benefits of having sex often, see this list, based on an article from Forbes Magazine.

Parting thought:  Wouldn’t we be better off as a society if people had babies only when they intentionally had babies?   I can’t believe that we’ve gotten to the point where such a position has become “controversial.” 

We like to think of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day as days when young children give lots of hugs to their loving parents.  We don’t like to consider that these days are also days when thousands of innocent children are beaten by their parents, their anguished cries often not heard outside of their dysfunctional homes.  Saddest of all, these children are condemned to be beaten and screamed at by the people they trust most. 

In 1988, I was waiting for an elevator at the State office building where I worked as an Assistant Attorney General. Many social workers had their offices in the same building, and several of those social workers were also waiting for an elevator.

All of a sudden, a middle-aged man started yelling at a three-year-old boy, who started crying.  The boy weighed about 40 pounds.  The man quickly got angrier and started smacking the boy violently with the palm of his hand-maybe it was his fist.  Whump! Whump! Whump!   The little boy was now breathless and whimpering.  Like the other half-dozen people waiting for an elevator, however, I did nothing but stand there horrified.  The man cocked his arm back to strike the boy yet again when one of the social workers jumped forward and yelled at the man: “Stop hitting that child!”

With that, the man looked confused, then angry, then more confused, then meek.  The social worker further instructed him: “follow me.” The man followed the social worker, presumably to the social worker’s office.  It did not appear that the social worker knew this man.  This social worker, now a hero in my mind, stepped forward because it was the right thing to do.  He intervened because there was a child being mistreated.  It was that simple.

I am not proud of the fact that I stood there doing nothing while the man repeatedly struck the fragile little boy.  There was a window of 15 to 20 seconds during which I could’ve simply stepped up and told the man to stop.  Why not?  What did I have to lose by trying? 

I was not the first person to freeze when I was uncertain of what to do.  As Robert Cialdini writes in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (1984), whenever we are unsure of ourselves, “when the situation is unclear or ambiguous, when uncertainty reigns, we are most likely to look to and accept the actions of others as correct.. . . especially in an ambiguous situation, the tendency for everyone to be looking to see what everyone else is doing can lead to a fascinating phenomenon called “pluralistic ignorance. [This phenomenon of pluralistic ignorance explains] the failure of entire groups of bystanders to aid victims in agonizing need of help.” 

(Page 129)  The classic case of this was the homicide of Catherine Genovese, who died in Queens, New York City, when at least a dozen people failed to pick up their phones to call the police, even though they heard the awful and unmistakable sounds of Ms. Genovese being viciously attacked.  Cialdini explains this phenomenon further:

In times of uncertainty, the natural tendency is to look around at the actions of others for clues.  We can learn, from the way the other witnesses are reacting, whether the event is or is not an emergency.  What is easy to forget, though, is that everyone else observing the event is likely to be looking for social evidence, too.  And because we all prefer to appear poised and unflustered among others, we are likely to search for that evidence placidly, with brief camouflaged glances at those around us.  Therefore everyone is likely to see everyone else looking unruffled and failing to act.  As a result, and by the principle of social proof, the event will be roundly interpreted as a non-emergency . . . the fascinating upshot [of this phenomenon is that] the idea of “safety in numbers” may often be completely wrong.

While Cialdini’s book might explain my inaction, it does not excuse it.  My shame in not acting on that occasion has provoked me to speak up during a subsequent similar situation.  But speaking up does not necessarily solve any child-abuse problems.  Speaking up might only embarrass and frustrate the parent in public.  Who is to say that that an attempt at intervention won’t provoke that parent to simply go home where he or she will secretly beat the holy crap out of their child?

I recalled my own inaction when I recently heard of another child abuse incident through two friends of mine.  They were on public transportation when they heard a mother start screaming at a tiny child and beating him.  Not entirely certain of what to do, my friends turned around and glared at the woman, only to see that she had other small children in her care in addition to the small child she was attacking.  One of my friends looked straight at the woman and told her “you need to go to parenting classes.”  Predictably, this did not provoke goodwill on behalf of the woman.  In fact, it caused her to glare back at my friends.  As she left the train, my friends feared that the mother was going home where she could privately inflict more damage on her children.

Child abusers are cowards.  Through their actions, they claim that they have rights to beat and scream at children simply because they are the parents. Unfortunately, the courts show great deference to violent people just because the little people the adults are punching kicking and demeaning are their own children.  At Court, then, child abusers hide behind tiny human shields. “Judge, you wouldn’t want to break up our family, would you?” (more…)

After reading Erich’s post, I thought I’d put this up.  I wrote it–most of it–some time ago, for a different venue, but I’ve added to it since, and, well, along with Erich’s it might add more flavors to the stew of memory.  So.

I have friends who thought it was a great thing when Reagan became president, who now reject any such accusation, and refuse to believe it when I remind them that they said encouraging things about him when he took office.  One quote, during a ceremony broadcast on television, that I’ll never forget: “He just looks like a real president!”

Time passes, policy comes to the fore, and most of those people no longer recall these initial bouts of near-patriotic enthusiasm.  They have conveniently forgotten.

I didn’t like Reagan’s policies.  I’m sure I would have liked him.  Everybody who met him seems to say the same thing.  When Donna Brazille can say she thought he was a decent man, despite the complete polarization of their politics, you have to admit something was going on with Reagan which is all too often more telling about politics and history than the facts attached to a particular era.

Reagan was presidential.  He had Presence.

I listen now to the talk about putting his face on the ten dollar bill with some amusement.  Reagan already has at least one airport, a couple of highways, no doubt many streets, parks, a library named in his honor.  He may be the most honored president of recent history, although I feel safe predicting that he would never have received a Nobel Peace Prize.  He’s dead now, so legally we can mint currency in his honor.  Let’s not forget that a serious movement was underway to revise the prohibition against a third presidential term on his behalf.  For Reagan personally, the two-term limit was doubtless a good thing–we can’t be sure when his Alzheimers began, but a third term in office would have made his moments of memorative slippage even more apparent.

In my opinion, one of the primary differences between Republicans and Democrats lies in who they count as Citizens.  Basically (and our current president exemplifies this more than any other I can think of since Hoover), Republicans believe people with property are the only legitimate citizens; Democrats think anyone who legally lives here is a citizen.  It’s a profound difference in action.  (One may quibble about Bush’s attempts at getting a guest worker program through Congress for all the illegal immigrants and suggest perhaps this mitigates the Republican stance on property being the determinant of citizenry, but I think not.  These people, in a very real sense, are property, and he’s just serving his constituency by trying to keep them here legally.)

And I’m not saying that the Republican Party is the Party of Money.  They are that, but not in the way most people generally deploy the accusation.  When I say they hold that only those with property are citizens, I mean that they have decided that those who have a material stake in America–those citizens with Something To Lose–are those who shoulder the most responsibility in the political health of our country.  The others they see as transient, disconnected, too easily swayed by outré  ideologies to be depended upon for sound judgement.  It is that sound judgement Republicans treasure most, and traditionally they feel that people with property represent that potential best.  (It doesn’t matter that the soundness of that judgment of late has been lacking–I believe the Republicans as a party are going through a horrible bout of fanaticism unlike any they’ve experienced before, but which the Democrats have had ample experience.  Besides, one person’s sound judgment is another’s folly.)   Because generally, those people have the better education, the broader scope, greater opportunity to be cosmopolitan, the burden of ethical necessity, and in the case of business owners, the added responsibility of community support–they know what it means to take care of others.  There is a quality of noblesse oblige in such an assessment, like the perfect picture of the feudal lord who must care for those who live on his lands and work for his estate.

In theory, anyway,  Like all generalizations, it is fatally flawed.

But we have to remember that historically, that’s where this country got its first leaders and its initial ideas about citizenship.  Jefferson wanted to see a nation of landowners–the yeoman farmer–who, by his estimation, had an investment in the country.  (His theory of land ownership is quite complex and critical of slavery because, he believed, the plantation system which slavery enabled was ultimately destructive to this form of citizenship AND environmentally.  That part certainly bore out–the trail of ecological destruction in the South that followed the migration of the plantations proved Jefferson correct, and a study of it informs every argument about slavery and the subsequent poverty and civil liberties issues of the South and, subsequently, the country as a whole.  Slavery and the economic practices it engendered left a legacy of disparity with which we are still struggling today and which makes such debates about who is a citizen all the more trenchant.)

Not a bad notion in its simplest form, property owners as citizens, since combined with that idea was the notion that property ownership was, theoretically, for Everyone.

Pity it didn’t work out that way.

But then how could it?  Wealth as a concept is based on inequity.  (more…)

This long awaited report had been authorized by Congress in 1997, according to the Washington Post.  Here are the results:

A long-awaited national study has concluded that abstinence-only sex education, a cornerstone of the Bush administration’s social agenda, does not keep teenagers from having sex. Neither does it increase or decrease the likelihood that if they do have sex, they will use a condom.

The federal government spends $176 million a year on abstinence-only education, and millions more are spent every year in state and local matching grants.

The Post quoted a sex-ed expert,

“Comprehensive education means teaching about abstinence and a myriad of other topics,” said spokeswoman Martha Kempner. Among them, she said: “contraception, critical thinking, one’s own values and the values of your family and your religious community.

“Abstinence-only was an experiment and it failed.”

Nancy Keenan of Naral also weighed in on the results of the study:

“Independent studies continue to demonstrate that Bush’s abstinence-only approach is a failure.  Not only are they ineffective, the programs mislead our teens and censor teachers from giving students the truth about contraception.   Congress and this administration should support honest, age-appropriate, and medically accurate sex education that promotes abstinence and provides young people with the information they need to protect themselves.  Honest sex education is the only approach that works.”

This is mind-blowing.   To think that I used to have some respect for John McCain.  

The question recently put to McCain, on his Straight-Talk Express campaign tour, was straight-forward.  Here’s the transcript of what unfolded:

Q: “What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush’s policy, which is just abstinence?”
Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “Ahhh. I think I support the president’s policy.”
Q: “So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”
Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”
Q: “I mean, I think you’d probably agree it probably does help stop it?”
Mr. McCain: (Laughs) “Are we on the Straight Talk express? I’m not informed enough on it. Let me find out . . .

All I can figure is that McCain’s lust for power has shorted out some important neurons in his head.  Or he’s convinced that a person who is ignorant on important issues can be elected president–where would he get that idea?

In case John McCain is reading this blog, here is the answer from Wikipedia:

The best evidence to date indicates that typical condom use reduces the risk of heterosexual HIV transmission by approximately 80% over the long-term, though the benefit is likely to be higher if condoms are used correctly on every occasion. The effective use of condoms and screening of blood transfusion in North America, Western and Central Europe is credited with contributing to the low rates of AIDS in these regions.

How should you take care of them?  According to one book I’m reading, you need to give them lots of exercise and they need to eat good food.  You need to buy a good leash and collar.  No, I’m not referring to a childcare book–I’m talking about a book on dog care: The Complete Dog Care Manual, by Bruce Fogel, president of ASPCA.

To use a dog book to raise a child, you’ve got to pick and choose the advice, of course.  You don’t put your children on leashes or toss them bones (except when they misbehave!).  It is interesting, though, that dog-raising books are full of good ideas that also apply to raising children.  And it’s especially interesting to compare the way we are supposed to raise dogs with the way many people actually raise children. 

My family has a dog (“Holly”) and two human children, aged 6 and 8.  I am thus an expert on this topic.

My dog-training book stresses that taking care of a dog requires a lot of work.  We need to invest a lot of time in order to have a healthy animal.  The dog book places a premium on early training?  “Your dog relies on you to train it from an early age to be trusting, even-tempered and sociable…” (page 48).  Compare this advice with the way many people actually raise children, ignoring them for long stretches and often abandoning them to the commercial wasteland of television.

Feeding is critically important, according to my dog book.  Dogs need

[A] nutritious, well-balanced diet [which produces] a strong boned well-muscled healthy coated canine.  Dog owners should avoid giving their dogs excessive treats or feeding them more often than they should eat, even if a bag.   This combination of facts explains why obesity is a rampant among dog owners. 

(Page 51)  Compare this advice to the donuts, sugary cereal, and bags and bags of salty oily over-processed snacks that so many people feed their children.  Just walk down the aisles of a grocery store to see the extent of this harmful practice.  According to the experts, we shouldn’t feed such garbage to dogs, but many of us actually feed such foods to children.

There is a lot of information on training in Fogel’s book.  The author emphasizes that animals need to be trained well when young in order to be sociable as adults.  Otherwise, all kinds of bad behaviors arise.  The same thing goes for children, too, but this advice is far too often ignored. 

If this comparison between dogs and humans appears unseemly, keep in mind that humans are animals.  “Human animals” I call them (instead of “human beings”), whenever I want to have some fun with fundamentalists.  There’s no defense to my characterization, of course, since we human animals eat, poop, breathe and procreate very much like other animals, very much like dogs.

What about exercise?  “If a dog is denied mental and physical activity, its energy may be released in destructive and unacceptable behavior.”  (Page 42).  To get real exercise, does a dog need to be driven across town every weekend to participate in organized sports?  No. Does a dog need to join an expensive health club?  Absolutely not.  To get exercise, all dogs need are brisk walks combined with a few very simple toys.  We excel at breaking these rules for human children, however. (more…)

This is one of those much talked about microscopic stem cell “babies”:  

This photo was published in the Feb 2, 2007 issue of Science.  

What are stem cells? 

Embryonic stem cells are undifferentiated cells that are unlike any specific adult cell. However, they have the ability to form any adult cell. Because undifferentiated embryonic stem cells can proliferate indefinitely in culture, they could potentially provide an unlimited source of specific, clinically important adult cells such as bone, muscle, liver or blood cells.

Therefore, the “baby” in this photo has no specialized cells.  No bone cells, therefore, no bones.  No blood cells, therefore, no blood.  No liver cells, therefore no liver.   No organs at all, becuse organs are made out of specialized cells.

This “baby” also has no nerve cells (neurons) and, consequently, no neural activity–no brain.  It would be physically impossible for this “baby” to have any thought or feeling without nerve cells.  All scientists who study nerve cells know this:  in the absence of nerve cells, there can’t be any nerve function, Without nerve cells, there can’t be sentience.  Without nerve cells, the qualities of awareness, emotion, cognition, hope, dreams, pleasure and pain that we associate with human animals simply cannot be.  

That is why we declare adults dead when their brain cells cease functioning to the point where that person’s body is longer sentient.  A full-grown human without any nerve cells is no more a functioning human being than is a wax museum replica of a human being.   On the other side of the scale, a microscopic clump of living human cells that totally lacks neurons cannot do any of the things that neural networks allow humans to do.  Not until those cells multiply and develop into millions of highly organized neural networks can such that organism have any form of sentience.  

People who disagree with me are those who believe that sentience can happen without brain cells.  Without any evidence, these people believe there can be thinking and feelings in the absence of the biological machinery that enables thinking and feeling.  Presumably, such people would believe that the brain has no significant cognitive function or, at least, that that brain cells have a function that is redundant to the function of an invisible undetectable soul floating around somewhere. 

What do these believers in the soul think when they are reminded that certain types of damage to the brain (due to a car accident or brain tumer, for example) always result in specific and predictable types of mental impairment?  They can’t deny this causal connection because it is too well documented.  It is noted in hospital emergency rooms every day.  But these people refuse to connect all of the dots.  They hold out hope that there is a soul out there that somehow empowers all higher cognition and sentience.  Some sort of invisible Guardian Brain that looks after the real brain.

These people who believe in souls are consequently believers in essentialism.  They seek to endow living tissue with qualities that the tissue doesn’t yet have.  It is the equivalent of endowing Terry Schaivo with “feelings” at the end of her life, even though she had none.  

These believers in souls argue that even though a clump of undifferentiated stem cells cannot be sentient, we must protect that tissue as though it already has human function.  

These people are practicing magic, not science.

Teen pregnancy is down. Is it because of those abstinence pledges?  As indicated in this article from the BBC News,  “88% of those who make the pledge break the pledge, so it must be down to condoms and safe sex education.”

The Guttmacher Institute recently released its own survey showing that most of the decline in U.S. teen pregnancy rates is the result of the teens using birth control, not abstinence:

Eighty-six percent of the recent decline in U.S. teen pregnancy rates is the result of improved contraceptive use, while a small proportion of the decline (14%) can be attributed to teens waiting longer to start having sex, according to “Explaining Recent Declines in Adolescent Pregnancy in the United States: The Contribution of Abstinence and Improved Contraceptive Use” by John Santelli et al., published in the January issue of the American Journal of Public Health. This study raises serious questions about the value of the federal government’s funding of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs that prohibit information about the benefits of condoms and contraception.

There is a wealth of information regarding reproductive health available at the Guttmacher Institute site.   I will visit the site regularly to stay updated.  Here is the Institute’s Mission Statement. 

The Guttmacher Institute advances sexual and reproductive health through an interrelated program of social science research, policy analysis and public education, designed to generate new ideas, encourage enlightened public debate, promote sound policy and program development, and, ultimately, inform individual decision-making.

The Institute envisions a world in which all women and men have the ability to exercise their rights and responsibilities regarding sexual behavior, reproduction and family formation, freely and with dignity. Essential to this vision are societal respect for and protection of personal decision-making with regard to unwanted pregnancies and births, as well as public and private-sector policies that support individuals and couples in their efforts to become responsible and supportive parents, maintain stable family structures and balance parenting with other roles. Equally vital to the Institute’s vision are the eradication of gender inequality worldwide and the attainment of equal status, rights and responsibilities for women.

The Missouri legislature will soon consider Senate Bill 285 to protect the right of pharmacists who refuse to dispense birth control pills.  Here’s the text of the bill:

This act protects the conscience rights of pharmaceutical professionals. Such pharmaceutical professionals shall not be required to perform, assist, recommend, refer for, or participate in any service involving a particular drug or device that they have a good faith belief is used for abortions. In these instances, the pharmaceutical professional shall be immune from civil or criminal liability and will not have their license suspended or revoked.

As I’ve discussed before, many conservatives argue that birth control pills cause “abortions” because it is possible that they could cause a fertilized egg to fail to implant.  This is the reason that the hundreds of “Pregnancy Resource Centers” that dot the country refuse to tell their clients about the existence of birth control pills (and see here).  Instead, such fake pregnancy clinics recommend only “natural family planning” (formerly known as rhythm), which has a failure rate of 20% per year.  Is that the kind of birth control you want for your wife, girlfriend or daughter?

It’s important to note that anti-abortion sites freely admit that the “vast majority of women” using birth control pills are not causing “abortions,” however defined.

This proposed Missouri law, if passed, would invite the following conversation between an adult woman customer and a pharmacist:

[Woman]:  I’d like you to fill this prescription for birth control pills.  My doctor wrote this prescription for me.

[Pharmacist]: I won’t do that.  I have a good faith belief that you are using those pills to have abortions.  I’m the only pharmacist on duty at this store, so that’s the final answer.

[Woman]:  This is ridiculous.  Tell me where I can find another pharmacy that will fill this perfectly legal prescription.

[Pharmacist]:  I refuse to refer you to such an evil place, as I am entitled to do pursuant to Senate Bill 285.

[Woman]: I need to talk to your boss.

[Pharmacist’s Boss]:  I’d like to fire this guy, but Senate Bill 285 provides that if I fire him, he can sue me for triple damages plus attorneys fees.

To top off this insanity, many women take birth control pills for reasons other than avoiding pregnancy.

The hormones in “the Pill” can be used to treat some medical conditions, such as polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), endometriosis, adenomyosis, anemia related to menstruation, and painful menstruation (dysmenorrhea). In addition, oral contraceptives are often prescribed as medication for mild or moderate acne. 

For Wikipedia’s article on the main mechanism of birth control pills, click here.  

This bill is likely to be heard at the following place and time:

Hearing on Bills Regarding Reproductive Healthcare
Senate Judiciary and Civil and
Criminal Jurisprudence Committee
Capitol Building, Jefferson City, MO
Monday, February 19th, 6:00 pm

President Bush is going to send more than 20,000 more troops into Iraq and spend billions of more dollars to carry on a hideous war.  Why?  To protect Americans from terrorists, he tells us.  Bush convinced Americans to invade Iraq by accusing Iraq of being responsible for the 9/11 attacks that killed 3,000 Americans.  This argument suggests that the deaths of 3,000 people is a horrible thing.

Whenever 3,000 people die, it is a horrible thing.  It might justify hundreds of billions of dollars, though certainly not the diversion of money from programs that save equal numbers of lives. 3,000 deaths justifies the deaths of more than 3,000 soldiers, we are told.  I don’t agree with this. The political party that argues that there are clear moral rules (the Republicans) isn’t convincing me.

Does it make a difference that 3,000 innocent Americans die on the same day rather than over the course of a year?  I wouldn’t think so.  A death is a death, in my opinion.  And 3,000 deaths are 3,000 deaths.

Therefore, shouldn’t the 16,000 murders that occur every year in the US require a response five times bigger than the invasion of Iraq?   That’s 3,000 every ten weeks.  Shouldn’t it require focused efforts to protect these victims?  Shouldn’t it require a revamping of our entire criminal justice system, especially our prison system, which so often trains criminals to be even more vicious, rather than preparing them for ready for release? Where is our war on criminal violence? It is certainly justified by looking at the widespread death caused by murderers.

Or what should we do about a silent killer that kills 1,500 Americans every day.  That’s 3,000 every two days.  Shouldn’t that get our focused and unrelenting national attention?  Lance Armstrong discussed this killer today: cancer.  What are our leaders doing about cancer?  Worse than nothing. Listen to Armstrong, a cancer survivor who has dedicated his energies toward developing cures to cancer:

Cancer will impact one in two men and one in three women in their lifetime. It is devastating and it is pervasive. In fact, every year 1.3 million Americans are diagnosed with cancer.

The medical advances achieved by our nation’s best doctors and researchers have given us reasons to hope.  But in spite of this vast body of knowledge, 1,500 people will die from cancer today and tomorrow and the day after that, often because the care they needed to prevent cancer or survive it was not available to them.

However, our nation’s second-leading killer did not make the list of issues that our candidates used to get people to the polls last November. Anyone with a television or access to a newspaper can list the ballot box issues that occupied our candidates’ attention — they range from bickering to very real concerns and challenges.

The political ads didn’t tell voters that earlier in the year funding for cancer research was cut for the first time in 30 years. Nor did they explain that a lack of funding slows the pace of scientific discovery and the development of treatments. Our candidates did not mention the decrease in funding for programs that provide information and screening to people who need these services. I think this is unwise, but it is what our government has done this past year. I waited patiently for an explanation, some clarification or justification. Ten million cancer survivors deserve an answer. We didn’t get one.

[Emphasis added]. 

(more…)

Dangerous idea, that.

If you were in charge–if you were King–what would do? What would fix? What would you ignore?

The Socratic ideal is the philosopher king, whose first act upon accession to the throne is to abdicate. The idea being that a truly ethical thinker would refuse to accept the responsibility to rule a nation.

Pity the world doesn’t work that way.

The problem with such systems–and there are many, including those proposed by certain self-proclaimed Libertarians–is that human nature refuses to cooperate. There’s a kind of Malthusian coefficient involved–population growth always outstrips the potential for ideal behavior. All such utopian systems are based on one fallacy that keeps gumming up all the works of any system anyone cares to name.

The fallacy is that We’re All Alike.

It’s a widely touted formula–the things that we have in common outnumber those that divide us; underneath we’re all the same; people are people. The Libertarians believe as an article of faith that if government got out of everybody’s way, we’d all be fine because people basically know what’s best for themselves and their immediate circle of intimates. Socialists believe (mostly) that without class structures, everyone would get along quite nicely. Communists like to assume avarice is an aberration that can somehow be bred out of the species.

If only.

It’s not so much that we’re so very different–but that we’re alike in such individualized ways.

The fact is, we come in all shapes, sizes, talents, capacities, points of view, prejudices, and predilections. We’re not the same in precisely those areas that make such blue sky hopes for the self-responsible, self-actualized, self-controlling individual a reality. Government ends up becoming a default necessity to keep us from each others’ throats as much as keeping the whole thing working in something resembling order.

Do governments go too far? Sure, often. Government is an imprecise tool, a blunt instrument. It’s reactive more than proactive. It makes huge blunders, overlooks details, stumbles along an ill-perceived path. In frustration–or under the same illusion that people are all basically the same (or should be)–many governments become autocratic, despotic, fascistic, tyrannical, brutal. They squeeze tighter on the reins in the futile attempt to force a population to conform to certain standards. Combined with a fervent belief that only They know what’s best for their country, you have all the ingredients for classic botched jobs.

Then there are those times and places where someone–a Hussein, a Khaddafy, a Stalin, a Hitler–does end up In Charge and sets about actually remaking the country according to their ideas. From the outside, occasionally, things look like they’re working quite well. There is Order.

Misery doesn’t have to be loud to be real.

But the hypothetical I put as the title applies to us all to some degree, because it is true that rulers rule by the consent of the ruled. Ultimately, when people–the euphemistic, legendary, all -but-mythical The People–have had enough, a ruler or ruling class just can’t keep them on the farm no more. France boasted one of the most autocratic, absolute despotism in modern history and look what happened to poor Louis XVI. Bad haircut day, one where the barber missed by several inches.

So. If I were in charge, what would I do differently?

First off, being an American, I would declare one day a year in which all classified documents would be declassified. (more…)

Michael Moore recently published this pledge in the Los Angeles Times.  I applaud each of these twelve points:

1) We will always respect you. We will never, ever, call you “unpatriotic” simply because you disagree with us. In fact, we encourage you to dissent and disagree with us.

2) We will let you marry whomever you want (even though some among us consider your Republican behavior to be “different” or “immoral”). Who you marry is none of our business. Love, and be in love — it’s a wonderful gift.

3) We will not spend your grandchildren’s money on our personal whims or to enrich our friends. It’s your checkbook too, and we will balance it for you.

4) When we soon bring our sons and daughters home from Iraq, we will bring your sons and daughters home too. We promise never to send your kids off to war based on some amateur Power Point presentation cooked up by men who have never been to war.

5) When we make America the last Western democracy to have universal health coverage, and all Americans are able to get help when they fall ill, we promise that you too will be able to see a doctor, regardless of your ability to pay. And when stem cell research delivers treatments and cures for diseases that afflict you and your loved ones, we’ll make sure those advances are available to you and your family too.

6) When we clean up our air and water, you too will be able to breathe the cleaner air and drink the purer water. When we put an end to global warming, you will no longer have to think about buying oceanfront property in Yuma.

7) Should a mass murderer ever kill 3,000 people on our soil, we will devote every single resource to tracking him down and bringing him to justice. Immediately. We will protect you.

We will never stick our nose in your bedroom or your womb. What you do there as consenting adults is your business. We will continue to count your age from the moment you were born, not the moment you were conceived.

9) We will not take away your hunting guns. If you need an automatic weapon or a handgun to kill a bird or a deer, then you really aren’t much of a hunter and you should, perhaps, take up another sport. In the meantime, we will arm the deer to make it a fairer fight.

10) When we raise the minimum wage, we will raise it for your employees too. They will use that money to buy more things, which means you will get the money back! And when women are finally paid what men make, we will pay conservative women that wage too.

11) We will respect your religious beliefs, even when you don’t practice those beliefs. In fact, we will actively seek to promote your most radical religious beliefs (”Blessed are the peacemakers,” “Love your enemies,” “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” and “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me”). We will let people in other countries know that God doesn’t just bless America, he blesses everyone. We will discourage religious intolerance and fanaticism — starting here at home.

12) We will not tolerate politicians who are corrupt and break the law. And we promise you we will go after the corrupt politicians on our side first. If we fail to do this, we need you to call us on it. Simply because we are in power does not give us the right to turn our heads the other way when our party goes astray. Please perform this important duty as the loyal opposition.

I know, a catchy title.  A little unfair maybe, since there’s nothing particularly titillating in what follows.  Or maybe there is, depending on what–what’s the saying?–”pumps yer nads!”   But in view of Erich’s post about our newly appointed head of Family Planning, I thought this might be the time to indulge more than a little in a topic rather close to my heart (depending on where one locates said metaphorical organ).

Did you know that the last week of October is national Protection From Pornography Week?  Yes, indeed, signed into law by our illustrious president, Mr. Bush back in 2003.  I for one had no idea I needed to be protected from it.  How reassuring to know that we are being defended from dangers both real and imagined by the ever watchful gaze of our very own homegrown clerics.

We’ve spent tax dollars on this.  Here is the link to the official White House proclamation.

Seems innocuous enough, even homey.  All that stuff about the destructive effects of porn on children, who can argue?

Has it occurred to anyone throughout the last two decades (beginning, in my opinion, with Ed Meese–anyone remember him?) of the war on pornography that–like alcohol and tobacco–pornography is simply not for children?  It seems a ludicrously simple idea to me–it was never intended for them.  We manage to have reasonable laws about things not intended for children.  We don’t let them drive cars (except at amusement parks, in specially constructed rides), we don’t let them drink booze, we don’t allow the sale of tobacco to minors.  They can’t vote, either, because we presume to decide on their level of intelligence and ability to make political statements.  That one may be arguable, but…    

We don’t allow children to sign contracts.  We don’t let them in to see “R” rated movies without a parent or guardian.  Technically, children aren’t allowed to have credit cards, but sometimes that one slips through the cracks.

Point being, we manage these other prohibitions quite handily.  Occasionally something goes wrong, but we have a system for dealing with it that doesn’t require a national week signed into effect by the president.  I mean, we don’t have a National Protection From Contracts Week detailing how contracts have debilitating effects on families and children (especially children, oh, those poor innocents who cannot defend themselves from the deprivations of over-zealous loan officers and contract litigators!).

The other side of this is, however, perhaps a little more contentious.  We don’t allow children to participate in all this stuff, but we make an assumption that adults may, can, and that there is, for the most part, nothing wrong with it! 

So why do we need this Protection From Porn Week? 

Well, it’s not aimed at children.  With all that child sexual exploitation is an evil thing and no sensible adult would allow that it’s not, the target here is not to protect children.  It’s not even to protect.  The target is Sex.

Since the Sixties there has been a war going on in this country about the public function of Sex in our society.  I won’t here detail that war–we sell products with it, but we can’t actually sell the thing itself (except in certain places under strict licensing etc.); we all like to be sexy, even when we don’t admit it, but we don’t necessarily want to follow through on the implications, i.e. have sex commensurate with the degree of sexiness we like to pretend to; sex is one of the most wanted things we have, yet there is a perverse urge to deny it to others when we deem it inappropriate (or even when it is appropriate, just public).  The war has taken on all the canny subterfuge and annoying intangibility of the worst aspects of the Cold War, which I think is an ironic if apt comparison.  After all, the Cold War was as much about ideas as about actions.

Attorney General John Ashcroft spent $80,000 on a curtain to hide the tits of Justice so television viewers wouldn’t be offended.

Who really was?  We’ve been looking at public nudity like that for two centuries.  Except for a few extreme crackpots, I don’t know of anyone who ever seriously complained–because we have all made the distinction between nudity and sexuality in these instances.  I mean, no one seriously gets turned on by the nakedness of Justice.  Do they? (more…)

You didn’t think it could get any loonier at the White House, did you?  According to this article by the Washington Post, Bush’s new appointee in charge of family planning is opposed to all effective forms of family planning:

The Bush administration has appointed a new chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services who worked at a Christian pregnancy-counseling organization that regards the distribution of contraceptives as “demeaning to women.”

Eric Keroack, medical director for A Woman’s Concern, a nonprofit group based in Dorchester, Mass., will become deputy assistant secretary for population affairs in the next two weeks, department spokeswoman Christina Pearson said yesterday.

Keroack, an obstetrician-gynecologist, will advise Secretary Mike Leavitt on matters such as reproductive health and adolescent pregnancy. He will oversee $283 million in annual family-planning grants that, according to HHS, are “designed to provide access to contraceptive supplies and information to all who want and need them with priority given to low-income persons.”

AWC (full name “A Woman’s Concern - Pregnancy Health Services”) is a pregnancy counseling service that forbids employees from referring patients to birth control providers.  Here’s their brochure.  Here’s a quote from the AWC brochure:  “AWC staff and volunteers will not distribute brochures, books or other materials that advocate and promote the use of contraception.”  Check out the website of AWC. As you can see, they refuse to even acknowledge the existence of birth control. The reason they don’t mention birth control is because they’re totally against it. 

If organizatins like this had their way, new laws would be passed prohibiting the sale of the pill, condoms, the diaphragm and every other effective means women have to control pregnancy.  Some conservatives out there are really advocating for these horribly intrusive and counter-productive laws.  To make things even worse, these fake clinics are getting lots of government money through the mechanism of tax credits.

I’ve previously investigated some of these so-called “pregnancy crises centers” or “pregnancy resource centers.”  They should all be shut down for the fraud they perpetrate on their unsuspecting customers and for their terrible medical advice that has the effect creating lots of repeat customers (lots of future unwanted pregnancies). See here and here. 

In Slate.com, William Saletan writes that the Democrats should blast the Republicans for the irresponsible policies they push in the area of family planning. 

The solution is simple: Democrats are for reducing abortion without banning it. The most effective way, short of abstinence, is through birth control. Birth control isn’t about doing what feels good. It’s about taking responsibility.

This is no gimmick. It’s a model for a new, more responsible definition of responsibility. Conservatives have often joked, astutely, that for many liberals, social irresponsibility is a euphemism for personal irresponsibility. But the reverse is also true: For many conservatives, personal responsibility is a euphemism for social irresponsibility. The solution is to require responsibility on all sides. Birth control is a perfect example. Its effectiveness depends on technology, access, and use. Better technology is industry’s responsibility. Better access is society’s responsibility. Better use is the individual’s responsibility. If everybody does his or her job, the abortion rate goes down. Way down.

In the meantime, the new head advisor of the $238,000,000 budget to provide for family planning grants believes that effective family planning is immoral and demeaning.  Maybe we can’t yet reverse this appointment.  But let’s at least we should be honest about what is going on.  Let’s start calling Keroack’s organization the U.S. Department of Accidental Pregnancies.

In Missouri, Republican legislators charged with getting to the bottom of a problem, have produced a fine example of spurious causal linkage that ought to go down in history with the assertion made by certain agents of the pope to Michelangelo that, since one of his marbles had taken seven years to complete, the new one for which he had requisitioned four helpers, would therefore take 28 years to complete–four times seven, you see, equals twenty-eight. It never occurred to them to divide, only multiply.

Which seems to be a problem Republicans have with regards to certain problems.

Their conclusion in this instance is that the rise in illegal immigration over that last three decades can be attributed to abortion. Specifically, because some forty-five million abortions have been performed since Roe v. Wade, those millions of potential Americans represent the short-fall in our labor pool which illegal immigrants are filling.

I haven’t laughed so painfully in a long time. Not over this sort of absurdity.

The Democrats on the same committee have refused to sign off on the report, but the report is now public, and all the Republicans signed it, hence alleviating any doubt (had there ever been any) where they stand on the issue of illegal immigration. Obviously, we should go on an accelerated program of creating a second baby boom to stem the tide of all those undocumented workers stealing American jobs. It will, of course, take about 18 years for the program to produce any tangible results–unless, of course, the Republicans intend sponsoring legislation to overturn child labor laws.

Anything to strike a blow at a woman’s right to choose.

Now, lest we not be clear about where I come down on this issue–both issues–let me state a couple of things up front.

I am a man. I therefore do not believe I have a “natural” right to say anything at all about what a woman does concerning reproduction. I have some contempt for males who bleat about their rights being trampled by abortion (after all, it’s MY fetus, too, she used MY sperm). In specific instances where a couple planned in advance to make a baby and the woman backed out after pregnancy occurred, I have a modicum of sympathy–broken promises are hard to take–but I don’t see any way short of legal instrument (a contract between them, notarized, etc) of ever proving the case. (more…)

Who does more damage, A) mean-spirited people or B) “normal” people acting thoughtlessly?  According to Hannah Arendt, the answer is clearly B.  I would agree.  Why?  Because we serve as our own gate-keeper as to what what aspects of the world are relevant but our “gate-keeper” is a sycophantic enabler of our deepest darkest instincts.

How is it that “normal” people so often behave (and vote) as moral monsters?   In Eichmann in Jerusalem (discussed below), Arendt has written about the “banality of evil,” that the failure to think leads to monstrous deeds–the road to hell is mostly paved with no intentions or serious thoughts.  I largely concur with Arendt, but I would explain the source of most evil in terms of the psychological concept of attention: human animals have limited attentional capacities and ghastly things happen when this scarce human resource is diverted (often self-diverted).  Moral monsters self-train themselves to pre-filter their sensory perceptions so that they don’t have to attend to anything that challenges their preferred viewpoints. 

The trick to becoming a banally evil person is to allow yourself to dwell on limited viewpoints and experience.  To grow your evilness, stop being self-critical, stop being skeptical and stop exposing yourself to viewpoints other than your own. When you do these things for awhile, you’ll become a God in your own eyes and you’ll become comfortable trying to burn your narrow intellect onto everything and everyone you encounter. 

It takes courage to expose one’s self to information that challenges one’s pre-existing beliefs. Humans are often self-manipulative.  Many (most?) of us sub-consciously (or semi-consciously) expose ourselves mainly to the types of information that will substantiate our preconceived notions and motives.  We’ve all seen this with the many dysfunctional people who use the Internet selectively. They seek out only web sites that are compatible with their pre-existing bigoted, consumerist or shallow life-styles.

If you put on blinders that allow you to see only a limited slice of the world around you, you can spare yourself the need of emotionally reacting to desperate needs of humans around you. Most of us constantly blind ourselves to the plight of starving children in Africa.  Out of sight, out of mind.  It’s merely a matter of diverting our attention to something else, something not disturbing.

Many of the horrible things people do are not done with their full range of attention on the ramifications of their actions.  Soldiers couldn’t effectively kill if they took the time to consider that the guy whose image is in the rifle scope is often a father of small children with much the same dreams and hopes as the soldier.  Soldiers are trained to see those they are fighting in dehumanized ways as “the enemy” and “insurgents” or in racially or ethnically derogatory ways.  This is another example of diverted attention.  When we stop thinking about bothersome things, they cease to bother us!

What makes us who we are is not “the world,” as much as the habits we employ to filter the world.  We filter the world by pointing the spotlight of attention.  We often choose to look away from things that annoy or outrage us.  Then, we often choose to not think about the fact that we trained ourselves to look away.  We cease to think about our option to think about certain things.

We are able to do many of the horrible things we do because we choose to not look, not listen, not consider, not to empathize.  Humans are marvelously able to not attend to inconvenient aspects of their world.  This skilled use of blinders enables many of us to blithely announce how “life is so incredibly good” when thousands of people all around us are desperately ill, hungry, trapped in horrible schools and financially-desperate.

Here’s an example currently in the news.  In my opinion, many of the people who vehemently oppose stem-cell research refuse to empathize with desperately ill people who might someday be helped by treatments developed using stem cell research.  Most opponents of stem cell research act like it’s not a legitimate issue to discuss the plight of people fighting horrible illness:  that they are in great pain, scared, feeling hopeless and desperately wanting to live normal lives.  How can anyone possibly refuse to let research proceed to help such desperate people?  By refusing look them in the eyes and see them fully as human beings.  By treating them the same way that the soldier treats the guy he sees through the rifle scope.   By attending exclusively to the notion that un-implanted clumps of 150-stem cells containing no nerve cells are the moral equivalents of “babies.” 

Our capacity to manipulate the spotlight of attention can turn dying people into pre-dead people and it can turn clumps of un-implanted stem cells into cooing “babies.”  After all, we are a superbly symbolic species.  By tweaking attention, we can turn anything into anything.  Our symbolic capacity is humankind’s ultimate two-edged sword.
 
If misused, the capacity to manipulate the “spotlight” of human attention thus constitutes a dangerous weapon.  It is so dangerous, that studying the limitations of human attention should be a required topic in any discussion of morality.  This brings to mind the challenge of Eleanor Rosch that “with the exception of a few largely academic discussions cognitive science has had virtually nothing to say about what it means to be human in everyday, lived situations.” Her challenge continues (p. xx): “The issues at hand, though scientific and technical, are inseparable from deeply ethical concerns, ones that require an equally deep re-understanding of the dignity of human life.”  [See The Embodied Mind, F. Varela, E. Thompson and E. Rosch, p. xv (1992).]

Back to the capacity of human attention, though. That it is severely limited is supported by a massive scientific literature.  Here’s one place to start.   Huge bottlenecks thus exist at the point where we perceive the world.  We miss a LOT.  The world is laughingly beyond our capacity to absorb without drastic simplification, and we are certainly good at simplifying it. David van Essen, (Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Washington University) has presented the dramatic loss of information from perception to long-term memory as an inverted pyramid:

• We start with the World of information, which is unlimited.
• 10¹⁰ bits/second of information = capacity of retina
• 10⁷ bits/second of information = capacity of optic nerve
• 10⁴ bits/second of information = capacity of attention
• 10 bits/second of information = capacity of long term memory

["Translating the neural code: neurons as detectives, not detectors," Intentionality and the Natural Mind Workshop, March 19, 1999.] 

We thus perceive only a small slice of the available world and we remember only a tiny portion of the world that we successfully perceive.  Yet perception seems so very full and complete.  For a demonstration of our perceptual limitations, try watching a short (about 30 seconds) video – your job is to very carefully count the number of times that any student passes a ball to any other student. You saw it all, right?  Then watch the short video again without counting the passes.  Here’s the video.   This demo “works” on about 50% of the people who watch it, in my experience.   If it “works,” you’ll be amazed.

Working memory is another attentional bottleneck.  As George Miller pointed out long ago, “[T]he span of absolute judgment and the span of immediate memory impose severe limitations on the amount of information that we are able to receive, process and remember.” [George A. Miller, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two:  Some Limits on our Capacity for Processing Information,” The Psychological Review, Vol. 63, No. 2 (March, 1956)].  

To summarize:  We are not capable of perceiving much of what goes on around us.  We are incapable of considering many things we do perceive, because working memory is so incredibly limited.  Yet we don’t feel limited.  Our cognitive capacity smoothes over most of our perceptual and cognitive gaps.  We are impatient and we often get fatigued.  Thus we are quite willing to confidently forge ahead based on less than a complete record.  Those of us who do rein in our impatience with skeptical inquiry and the scientific method tend to oversimplify our world in a way that justifies anything at all.

The resulting illusion of omniscience combines with ubiquitous fatigue, enticing humans to make wild cognitive leaps in order to just get on to the next thing.  We are thus fearless in our ignorance.  Humans are experts at feeling confident even when they make decisions based on woefully insufficient information. 

Add one more thing to the mix: “toxic thoughts.”  Humans are highly skilled at suppressing inconvenient or dangerous thoughts.  Many believers simply can’t consider whether it’s possible that God doesn’t exist.   Many humans choose to expose themselves only to information that will reinforce pre-existing beliefs.  That a 150-cell clump of cells lacking any nerve cells doesn’t think is a “toxic thought” to opponents of stem cell research.  That humans are animals is a toxic thought to many people who oppose evolution.

Really, truly, the failure to be aware of the limited character of human attention can be dangerous.  Here’s how dangerous it can be. (more…)

An evangelical acquaintance recently wrote me a letter arguing that the pro-stem cell research proposal (Missouri Amendment 2) A) is geared to financially enrich its sponsors, B) that it will invite reproductive cloning and C) that poor women will result in poor women selling their eggs.  She urged me to oppose the Amendment and oppose various promising forms of stem cell research. 

For information on the proposed amendment, see here. 

Even before receiving this letter, I knew that my acquaintance believed that a one-minute old fertilized human egg in a Petri dish is a baby that deserved full legal protection and priority over the children with horrible illnesses who occupy hospital beds. My acquaintance indicated that she was part of an organized effort to defeat Missouri Amendment 2. 

I am not thrilled with my response (see below), but I couldn’t think of anything better.  If anyone has any ideas as to a more effective way to deal with those who oppose stem cell research on religious grounds, I’m all ears.

—

Dear [Acquaintance]

I realize that you feel hurt and attacked by my previous email.  In this e-mail, I will attempt to put our recent exchange of e-mail in perspective.

The technology for making insulin is currently based on recombinant DNA techniques; the human gene which codes for the insulin protein is cloned and then inserted in bacteria.  I want you to assume for a moment, though, that my religion holds that both the cloning of genes and recombinant DNA techniques are morally and spiritually repugnant.

Let’s assume further that one of your daughters has diabetes and she needs insulin in order to live (assume that insulin obtained through older methods—derived from pigs and cows–causes a dangerous reaction in your daughter and is the thus un-usable). 

Assume further that one fine day I proudly send you an e-mail announcing that I am sponsoring legislation across the entire state, legislation that will make artificial insulin illegal.  The legislation I am pushing will put your daughter’s health at great risk, but I have nonetheless inserted myself into your family’s most personal medical decision-making process. The legislation I am pushing will deny you medical treatment that has been saving your daughter’s life.  I forge ahead, though, because I am certain that God has sent me on this mission.  In other words, I am doing the equivalent of forcing my way into your house, raiding your medicine cabinet and throwing away your daughter’s insulin.  How would you feel if I did that under those circumstances?

Assume some additional background.  Assume that I have long claimed to be absolutely certain that I am correct regarding numerous aspects of morality based on my reading of my version of the Bible, which I repeatedly declare to be inerrant (that is, absolutely literally true), despite the fact that my Bible contains hundreds of statements that conflict with common sense and reality (for instance, the Bible claims that the mustard seed is the smallest seed when it is actually not the smallest seed).  Assume further that you know from talking with me that I refuse to question the highly-questionable origins of the Bible.  Further assume that I refuse to consider overwhelming evidence that several key stories in my English translation Bible conflict with the earliest known reliable manuscripts. (more…)

Check out these identical twins:

They are really identical twins.  This photo is from the November 2006 issue of Discover Magazine.  See the related article: “DNA Is Not Destiny The new science of epigenetics rewrites the rules of disease, heredity, and identity.”

Though these two men are genetically identical, they were separated at birth.  The man on the left was malnourished for years.   Bone structure changes brought about by environmental factors is thus one of many ways (physical and behavioral) in which the environment can dramatically affect the way in which the genes express themselves

As the Discover article points out, the 25,000 genes of our human DNA are widely considered to be an instruction book for our bodies.  However, “genes themselves need instructions for what to do, and where and when to do it.”  These additional instructions are not in DNA, but

on it, in an array of chemical markers and switches, known collectively as the epigenome, that lie along the length of the double helix.  These epigenetic switches and markers in turn help switch on or off the expression of particular genes.

It has long been known that epigenetic switches are critical to the healthy development of organisms.  These can be dramatically tweaked by exposure to a vitamin, a toxin or even mothering, altering “the software of our genes in ways that affect an individual’s body and brain for life.”  Green tea, for example, has been shown to prevent the growth of cancers. 

New research has even suggested that epigenetic signals “can be passed on from one generation to the next, sometimes for several generations, without changing a single gene sequence.”  How can this be?  (more…)