This is an open thread. Post what you want, when you want to. Self-linking pleases the powers that be.
- The Joys and Sorrows of Being a Fat Foreign Girl in China | xoJane
- Scott Alexander writes: “Bad Catholic has responded to my post on contraception and abortion rates, defending his position that contraception increases or at least doesn’t decrease abortions. See his Part One and Part Two, with my replies buried in the comments.”
- All Leaks Are Illegal, but Some Leaks Are More Illegal Than Others – Conor Friedersdorf
- Safety Tips For Ladies.
- On Being an Octopus | Boston Review What does it feel like to be an Octopus?
- Study: The Earned Income Tax Credit is a Very Good Investment in Infant Health
- Marriage is Over: Live With It
- Consciousness science and ethics: Abortion, animal rights, and vegetative-state debates.
- A Response to Objections on My Pro-Life Movement Post
- The Assault on Abortion Rights Undermines All Our Liberties
- Skinny White Girls are Exhausting My Eyes | Bitter Gertrude
- Defending the Purely Instrumental Account of Democratic Legitimacy (pdf file)
- Why I Ultimately Have Rejected Modesty Teachings
- Oh, let’s pile on a little more » Pharyngula
- David Brooks: The last Stalinist
- Edward Snowden and the selective targeting of leaks. Somehow, when the administration illegally leaks classified information, that’s not a crime.
- Official Recognition for Australians who identify as neither sex
- Richard O’Brien: ‘I’m 70% man’
- Russian Parliament Passes Bills to Punish Those Who Offend ‘Religious Feelings’ or Promote Homosexuality
- Fundimentalist Christians in Georgia (the country, not the state) attack gay rights marchers
- Cholesterol-lowering drug may reduce exercise benefits for obese adults. Hmmm… maybe I should stop taking statin?
- Maggie Gallagher’s arguments regarding infertile heterosexuals and marriage fail yet again.
- Judging the Case Against Same-Sex Marriage by Andrew Koppelman. Long, but really excellent and thorough.
- Life’s More Complicated than the Non-Aggression Principle | Libertarianism.org
- A Priorism in Libertarianism
- Coming Up Aces A smart autobiographical comic about being asexual. I like the way she draws facial expressions.
- The Ketchup Conundrum by ~Shira-chan on deviantART Brilliant large-format comic about all the possibilities that arise if you squirt ketchup on your friend.
- How Texas Made Ezekiel Gilbert’s Aquittal Possible
- Barely In Time: Confessions of a SIT Extra The head of the “Somewhere In Time” society explains, at length, how she stumbled into being an extra in the 1980 movie, and how it changed her life. Charming and surprisingly entertaining.
- Vintage Safety Posters
- On “Geek” Versus “Nerd” | Slackpropagation
- This Game Of Thrones poster by Richey Beckett is waaaay too expensive for me to ever get a copy, but wow is it gorgeous. (Click on it to see it bigger.)
Leaving a link to my latest short story here:
Hylas
Please enjoy! It may be a little unsafe for some at work, though, since it includes a text description of a thing shaped like a naked lady.
One of the big problems with being an octopus is that you could get thrown on a huge sheet of ice if the Red Wings are in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Oh, is this the thread where we share pictures of camouflaged birds?
Very well.
Have two tawny frogmouths!
I always enjoy mollusk related reading. This was no exception.
On June 9, I was interviewed about the abolition of poverty on the Think Zeitgeist podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/tzmsacdavis/2013/06/09/a-basic-unconditial-income-for-everyone#.UbULZ1gZTZg.facebook
The interview was prompted by an article I wrote for Basic Income News offering 11 different one-minute arguments for a basic income, each tailored toward a different ideology:
http://binews.org/2013/02/opinion-the-one-minute-case-for-a-basic-income/
Decnavda, that’s amazing. Can you recommend a high-quality resource for me that addresses in above-one-minute detail the issue of affordability?
And Myca, that’s amazing.
Those are pretty awesome, Decnavda.
I wrote about skinny girls in cartoons.
Also, I have a comic book for sale. ;)
@ 12:
There’s a number of passages in the introduction that base judgement of what is the best system of government on concepts such as these:
and
It seems to me that there is a fundamental difficulty in such arguments in that there can be deep-seated differences over what constitutes moral superiority. Many consider abortion to be immoral – others consider withholding the right to it immoral. There is also a group that feels that while women should have the right to abortion, it is not moral to take their tax money and pay for it. If we cannot have agreement on what constitutes moral superiority, how can we have agreement on what constitutes the best method of government based on a measure of moral superiority or “better consequences” of the resultant decisions?
This, I think, supports the Founders’ proposition, which is that the best method of government is that which has the consent of the governed. This bases the answer on the inputs, not the outputs.
I remember reading an interview of Gandolfini where he discussed his Sopranos character. He was glad that people appreciated his work in that series, but was somewhat revolted that people seemed to admire the character itself. He said that he wanted to remind people that Tony Soprano was a cold-blooded killer who killed for money and convenience – that he was evil and not to be admired.
Why is that not also an arbitrary moral position?
It is arbitrary, like every single moral position. That does not mean that it is not defensible.
I like it, because it is certainly one Hell of a lot easier to define and measure than “over the long haul it gives rise to results that are morally superior to…” or “produces better consequences for people than any feasible alternative mode of governance”
It is. But it’s less arbitrary because it is more closely related to actual objective facts.
This, for example:
requires you to
-measure consequences (direct, but subject to arbitrary effects of measurement and assignment of values)
-identify alternate forms of government (speculative)
-identify the theoretical consequences from those alternates (very very highly speculative)
-Identify the costs of changing to an alternate (highly speculative) and
-weigh the theoretical consequences against the directly measured ones to decide what is “better” (pretty much arbitrary, at that point.)
this:
requires you to
-define “consent” (arbitrary) and
-give the definition to people and ask if they consent (about as objective as you can get in this kind of thing.)
I’m not sure why on Earth everyone is acting as though these two arguments for democratic government are opposed. Seem to me that they’re complimentary.
That is, a democratic government is more likely to produce morally superior results largely because it rests on the consent of the governed, and thus they have the option of altering their government so as to better fit their moral sensibility.
Ron’s argument about moral disagreements misses the point. Of course there are (and are going to be) moral disagreements. The point isn’t to achieve a form of government which, “meets moral perfection, the people be damned,” the point is to achieve a form of government which aligns closely with the moral sense of the populace.
In cases of strong disagreement (like in the matter of abortion), this will likely mean some sort of compromise or middle position … which, though I think it’s wrong (because it does not grant full autonomy to pregnant women) and Ron thinks it’s wrong (because it does not grant full protection to fetuses), is nonetheless a superior position in terms of the moral satisfaction of a majority of Americans.
Note that I’m not arguing that this works flawlessly. I think that there are plenty of things we do as a nation which run counter to the moral sense of most Americans, and that apathy and ignorance are strong counters to the pragmatism of democratic governance.
Anyway, ‘better outcome’ is a consequentialist argument for democratic governance, and “consent of the governed” is a deontological one. Both can be true without invalidating the other. People support democracy for different reasons. Overlapping consensus, etc.
—Myca
Amp & Robert – Thank you.
Amp – Unfortunately no, but I am looking and I am requesting help. I am not sure that what you are asking for has actually been done by anyone either for or against a basic income. At the risk of giving you a one-minute non-answer, let me quite a FAQ based on a paper by Philippe Van Parijs:
Before the election I published another article in Basic Income News entitled “Paul Ryan explains simple policy that would end poverty, but does not support it”: http://binews.org/2012/11/opinion-paul-ryan-explains-simple-policy-that-would-end-poverty-but-does-not-support-it/
That article was about a campaign speech in Cleveland, Ohio, on October 24, where Paul Ryan stated, “Just last year, total federal and state spending on means-tested programs came in at more than one trillion dollars. How much is that in practical terms? For that amount of money, you could give every poor American a check for $22,000.” Of course, Ryan did not state how he calculated these numbers, and you could be excused for suspecting that he extracted them from his rectum.
What you really deserve are numbers regarding a proposal similar to the following:
Entitle every American citizen (including children) to a Standard Refundable Credit (SRC) of $10,000, roughly equivalent to the annual Federal maximum amounts of SSI and food stamps for one individual combined. Then eliminate SSI, food stamps, TANF, federal unemployment compensation extensions, personal tax exemptions, the standard deduction, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and all child tax credits. Reduce the SRC by one dollar for every dollar of Social Security a person receives, and eliminate the SRC for anyone who chooses to itemize their deductions.
I suspect that even after taking some rather massive administrative savings into account, this proposal would still cost money and require tax increases. I also suspect however that the the tax increases required would not take us back up to the level of taxation the U.S. had in 1965. I admit however these are only suspicions and I do not have numbers to either support or refute these suspicions. I will continue to look, however.
Re: The point isn’t to achieve a form of government which, “meets moral perfection, the people be damned,” the point is to achieve a form of government which aligns closely with the moral sense of the populace.
See, I strongly disagree with that. I don’t see why having the government align with the moral sense of the populace is a good thing. Maybe the moral sense of the populace is wrong. We don’t generally think parents should let their children do whatever they want, rather parenthood involves laying down standards and trying (to the best of your ability) to influence the conscience and moral development of the children. I’d say that the same is true of the relationship between the state and the people.
Many people would agree for example (don’t know about you, specifically) that the democratization of Egypt and Afghanistan has been a terrible idea, that it’s not a good idea for Afghanistan to have a government that reflected the moral sensibilities of Pashtun culture, or for Egypt to have a government that reflecting the moral sensibilities of most Egyptians, because the majority of Egyptians and Pashtuns have moral views that we would find horrible. I basically agree with that, but I think you can go further and make the same argument about most cultures, including Americans.
Re: In cases of strong disagreement (like in the matter of abortion), this will likely mean some sort of compromise or middle position … which, though I think it’s wrong (because it does not grant full autonomy to pregnant women) and Ron thinks it’s wrong (because it does not grant full protection to fetuses), is nonetheless a superior position in terms of the moral satisfaction of a majority of Americans.
Again, you’re presupposing there that pleasing the majority of Americans is a good thing, and that your position and Ron’s position are equally deserving of moral consideration. Those are both premises that a liberal democrat would accept, but many other people wouldn’t, so you’re sort of assuming the very thing you’re trying to demonstrate. I *don’t* want a government that treats your position and Ron’s as though they have equal weight.
Re: Anyway, ‘better outcome’ is a consequentialist argument for democratic governance, and “consent of the governed” is a deontological one. Both can be true without invalidating the other. People support democracy for different reasons.
I’m not really particularly fond of democracy, but if you do want the *best* argument for it, it’s that democracy (of a sort) is a decent way to keep the peace, since it allows people who disagree with the government to seek a path to power through elections rather than resorting to assassination or civil war. There’s a reason that the Byzantine governmental system is often referred to jokingly as ‘despotism tempered by assassination’.
I found this article, on the t-shirts that police make for themselves, very disturbing in terms of what it says about the culture of some members of law enforcement.
(Grace, not that I think you should have to speak for all law enforcement personnel but I’d be interested to hear your take.)
I am honestly, no joke, mystified as to whether Hector is a troll, a liberal satire of conservatives, or on the level.
Regardless, I don’t think relitigating The Enlightenment at this point is likely to be productive. Anyone with an incredibly rudimentary grounding in poli-sci knows why counting on a benevolent dictatorship or a philosopher-king is a bad idea.
Hector: Your arguments are awesome and refreshing. While the dumb liberals and clueless conservatives discuss whether it would be better to have beef or chicken for dinner, you make a compelling argument for broiled steel-belted radial. Well done! You should totally pitch your arguments to King Louis XVI. I think that dude has a bright future.
—Myca
I don’t see why having the government align with the moral sense of the populace is a good thing. Maybe the moral sense of the populace is wrong.
Then whose moral sense should it align with? It is going to align with someone’s.
Yes, the people’s moral sense can suck – but at least if the government and the people are in moral alignment, the people are less likely to, I dunno, rise up and kill everyone in the government. That’s fun for a weekend and all, but then on Monday nobody remembers where the maps of the sewer network are and we can’t find the keys to the jail.
Re: Then whose moral sense should it align with? It is going to align with someone’s.
Are you happy with that clown, Mohammed Morsy, in Egypt? Or with the new, improved version of Morsy that Syria is going to have pretty soon? Morsy absolutely does reflect the opinion of most Egyptian Muslims on issues like, for example, whether converts and blasphemers should be judicially executed. (To his credit, he *doesn’t* agree with most Egyptians about stuff like FGM, for which we should be happy). The problem isn’t really with Morsy, it’s with the Egyptian people who elected him.
If you *don’t* like Morsy and his ideological brethren, you’ve already agreed *in principle* that sometimes it’s a good thing for governments to *not* reflect the moral sentiments of the populace.
Re: Yes, the people’s moral sense can suck – but at least if the government and the people are in moral alignment, the people are less likely to, I dunno, rise up and kill everyone in the government
Right, democracy improves social stability. So in essence, you have to decide the point at the moral sense of the people (or, more specifically, the moral sense of the people that you disagree with) sucks so much that it’s worth risking civil war to keep them from running things.
In the modern United States, I think social/political divisions aren’t quite high enough that any of us feels like “we would rather have a civil war than have the people we disagree with in power”. Or maybe we’re all just too comfortable and hypocritical to risk fighting for what we believe in, which is the uncharitable version. There are plenty of other countries where that’s not the case, and those are the conditions under which democracy breaks down (eventually).
I don’t live in Egypt or Syria. If I did, I doubt I’d be happy with very much at all. But I don’t.
You elided my question: if not the values of the people – however bad those are – then whose? Yours? You are way too nicey-nice a guy to kill the millions of people it would take. Mine? Suits me, if there’s no other option, but I’m going to need some conscripts. You seem like a guy with a lot of time on his hands. Suit up, or my secret police will kill you.
See where the problem comes in?
If not the people’s, then whose?
Re: You elided my question: if not the values of the people – however bad those are – then whose?
Well, in a perfect world, I’d like a state that embodied my values. I don’t know what your values are, but I’d assume you want the same. It is interesting, though, that you assume that the alternative to democratic elections is ‘killing millions of people’. Last I checked, Cuba hadn’t killed a lot of people (there were a few thousand executions in the 1960s, almost entirely of people who had, you know, committed actual crimes in the war). What that suggests to me, is that you’ve internalized the idea- that’s popular among a lot of people in America- that there’s something ‘natural’ about the desire for political freedom and to elect one’s leaders.
In reality, I think there’s nothing ‘natural’ about it all. Most societies through history were authoritarian, and I suspect most societies of the future will be as well, and I think people will be more or less happy as long as they have a decent standard of living, a job, food on the table, healthy interpersonal relationships, etc.. To the extent people value democracy, it’s partly because they see it as a means to get those other things, and partly because they live in a culture that tells them they should. I think, in the long run, history will show that liberal democracy was a short-lived phenomenon that worked okay under a specific set of historical conditions- specifically, the period of prosperity that was dependent on cheap energy and natural resources- and will fade away under other conditions. The ‘natural’ form of government for the human species is collectivist, authoritarian, and paternalistic.
Let’s take a more concrete example. Venezuela had an election last year, a few months before Chavez died. The head of the army, and Chavez’ brother, both went on record saying they would resort to armed struggle rather than hand power back to the bourgeoisie. In the event, the opposition won, but had they lost, there would have been a civil war. And I wouldn’t have blamed the government a bit- in their place, I’d have done exactly the same thing. People often choose things that aren’t really good for them, or that won’t be good in the long run, or that are good for some people at the expense of others. If you’re in charge and you have the choice to let them have what they want, or not to let them have it, sometimes the best choice is not to let them have it.
Here’s a really good piece that my co-blogger at Alexandria wrote a couple years ago.
http://www.aleksandreia.com/2011/02/17/getting-real-about-democracy/
Re: I am honestly, no joke, mystified as to whether Hector is a troll, a liberal satire of conservatives, or on the level.
Hi Myca,
I really don’t find it easy to label myself, but I’ve commented on blogs enough that you can probably get a sense of where I’m coming from. I’d put myself in the broadly Counter-Enlightenment tradition, yes, and I take a pretty dim view of capitalism, liberal democracy, etc. But more from the left-wing side than from the right. From my comments about Cuba and Venezuela above you can probably get some sense of that.
During the debate regarding the BSA’s decision process of whether or not to admit openly gay members, the Girl Scouts of the United States of America were held up as an example of a youth organization that had done so and that was successful. It never was a particularly valid comparison given the differences between the programs. But for whatever reason we now find that they are having some serious problems themselves.
Dissension and fiscal woes beset the Girl Scouts
There’s LOTS more in the article regarding changes that the GSUSA has gone through, different policies they have implemented, etc. There’s one thing that they’re both doing – merging local Councils and – at least attempting – to sell off summer camps. The BSA has seen the same issues that the GSUSA is seeing with this (disaffection of volunteers, who are the life blood of the organization, being chief among them), but the BSA has been less aggressive than the GSUSA has and is not seeing the problem to the same degree.
I’m not citing this to gloat – I’ve met many fine female Scouters in the BSA who are GSUSA alumnae. But it does contrast with the picture many people painted of the GSUSA when the whole debate over membership that the BSA had was going on. It also contradicts the concept that the GSUSA’s successes showed that the BSA’s main reason for membership decline was their membership policies. I hope the GSUSA straightens this out, but it’s going to be challenging.
Fisher vs. University of Texas is reversed and remanded back to the 5th Circuit of Appeals, 7-1 (Sotomayor recused herself).
From the introduction to the majority opinion (Kennedy):
Thomas, concurring separately:
Pam’s House Blend is closing on July 1. A very sad loss for the blogosphere.
Re: Unfortunately for the University, the educational benefits flowing from student body diversity—assuming they exist—hardly qualify as a compelling state interest
Yes they do. What a revolting little paragraph. I really hope this was Clarence’s own opinion, and not reflective of the opinion of the court as a whole when it eventually sees fit to decide on affirmative action.
I’m not super optimistic though.
Both Thomas’s and Ginsburg’s dissents are amusing in a fashion because they do a whole lot of “citing” to their own, non-precedential, concurrences/dissents. I was intrigued that Thomas accepts “mismatch” theory.**
Legally speaking, though, it’s a reasonable decision. We do have a very specific constitutional provision which requires equal treatment, and needs strict scrutiny. Strict scrutiny is very difficult to meet and the burden rests on the discriminating party (in this case the university.)
Summary judgment means that even if you accept all of Fisher’s facts as true (in other words, if you resolve every factual dispute in Fisher’s favor), no reasonable jury could find against the school. In the context of a strict-scrutiny burden with a complex fact pattern, that would be really unusual unless the complaint was incredibly frivolous. Say what you will about the merits or perils of AA; whether or not the university wins in the end, this wasn’t an issue which should have been resolved at summary judgment and the court did the right thing in sending it back down.
Personally I remain a fan of proxies for race such as income or location or high school location or whatever, rather than straight race-based AA. Although the proxies are less accurate w/r/t race, they still give a whole lot of help to targeted groups, and entirely avoid the conundrum where we have “a government that bars discriminating by race…. which is discriminating by race.” Process matters.
More to the point, proxies are inherently self-adjusting. For example, if you use “income/assets” as a proxy then as POC’s income/assets climb relative to whites, you’ll automatically start cutting down on racial preferences due to that proxy. And if we reach the point where POCs are no longer disproportionately poor, then you won’t have any preferences at all because “income/assets” will no longer have a disproportionate effect by race. OTOH, if racial income stratification increases and POC become even more disproportionately poor, then you’ll increase benefits to POC without needing to make any adjustments.
***Mismatch theory is one side of a conflicting argument.
Assume that you have a lower-academic-skill POC who is innately intelligent but who had a poor pre-college education. Low SATs, low grades, no AP classes. etc.
Where should that person go to school?
One side thinks that there are huge benefits from being in the best school possible, even if they have lower academics than fellow students. IOW, these folks think that cultural and social and networking benefits, and the available opportunities, are huge and that they generally outweigh any costs of being low-ranked academically w/r/t other incoming freshmen. These people say that it is reasonable and beneficial to use AA and send that person to the best school possible.
The mismatch theory says that students tend to do better when they are not in the lower segments of class. The theory is that even less prestigious schools will still offer many great opportunities for their good students: the benefits of being smart relative to other students exceed the benefits of being at a prestigious school as a low ranked person. As examples, mismatch advocates point to evidence showing that mismatch increases eventual dropout rates, and that people who are mismatched tend to end up moving out of high-payoff prestige majors like STEM–while similar students who attend “worse” colleges have better GPAs and STEM graduation rates. There hasn’t been sufficient evidence to show a long term effect, AFAIK; nobody has figured out how to determine “where will you be in 15 years?” when comparing Stanford to UC Irvine.
Good. Being less accurate with regards to race isn’t a bug – it’s a feature. If the government is to provide educational aid to people who have a hard time affording school otherwise – which I think is a good thing overall – then it should target that aid to the people who need it the most. Basing it on income or location isn’t a proxy for race – basing it on race is a proxy for basing it on income and location. To quote an oft-used example, why should President Obama’s daughters get preference in admission to college and provision of government aid based on their race?
What would be interesting would be to have a look at a breakdown by test scores, school grades, race, income, high school quality, etc. of the success of matriculating students at schools of varying prestige, ranking and other such criteria in a) graduating and b) getting a job that uses their degree. This might shed some light on the validity of the mismatch theory.
It also might show the prevalance of the scenario wherein some students borrow less money to go to a less prestigious school, graduate, get jobs and pay their loans back whereas other students borrow more money, go to a more prestigious school, flunk out, owe a bunch of money but have no degree and either no job or a poorly-paying one that renders them unable to pay the loan back.
Well, in a perfect world, I’d like a state that embodied my values.
That’s nice, but irrelevant. What makes you think that a dictator is more likely to lead to a state that embodies your values than a democracy? You mentioned disliking compromise on abortion–but you talk as if the alternative is getting your way. What if it means you lose, with abortions for anyone who wants them? What if it’s worse than that–what if it means forced abortions? China is pretty damn authoritarian, and it’s a lot further from your values in that regard than contemporary America.
If you *don’t* like Morsy and his ideological brethren, you’ve already agreed *in principle* that sometimes it’s a good thing for governments to *not* reflect the moral sentiments of the populace.
“I don’t like him” isn’t the same as “he has no right to lead Egypt”. “Democracies sometimes lead to bad results” is not the same as “Democracies are bad”. “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others” is not “Democracies are perfect”. I don’t like Nero, Caligula, Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad, Stalin, Ceaușescu, Louis XIV… I could go on. In fact, most of them are worse than Morsi. They’re as much the face of authoritarianism as whoever you’re thinking of.
The choice isn’t between “a dictator that Hector gets to choose” and “democracy”. It’s between the average emperor/king/dictator and democracy. Kings are still people (unless you’re a believer that royal persons are gods–which wouldn’t be unprecedented). I don’t see why you think they will be less selfish than people in general.
Actually, it’s interesting that you picked Morsi–although the Muslim Brotherhood says that they’re pro-democracy, they’re only pro-democracy as far as it’s consistent with Sharia law, which they wish to implement. If ever there was an example of, “The People don’t always know what’s good for them; they need a higher Authority”…
We don’t generally think parents should let their children do whatever they want… I’d say that the same is true of the relationship between the state and the people.
The thing is, parents are generally wiser than their children, and they generally have their children’s best interests at heart. I don’t think the same thing is true about kings/dictators and their people.
Actually, I do agree with you on one point: I don’t think democracy is necessarily “natural” or inevitable. But I also don’t believe that “The ‘natural’ form of government for the human species is collectivist, authoritarian, and paternalistic”. It’s natural for it to arise in some conditions but not others. If I was going to argue for some form of government to be natural, I guess I’d look to hunter-gatherers, who are actually pretty egalitarian and not very authoritarian. (I’ll give you collectivist, though.) However, I’d say that it was “natural” for them to be that way in a situation where the ability to accumulate resources was limited, and it’s “natural” in agrarian societies for kings and the like to rise up.
That’s not it. The argument for a proxy is that
1) We want to give some assistance to POC (just roll with it; I’m not getting into the justifications for AA right now) because they suffer from racism or for restoration reasons;
2) We we can see that POC have higher rates of ______ (insert proxy) compared to the rest of the population, which we attribute to the results of racism;
3) If we give benefits to people who are _____ then we will be giving a higher proportion of those benefits to POC, thus having a selective benefit without needing to specifically consider race.
4) Unlike every other form of AA, proxies produce “automatic exclusions” of high-performing minorities such as Asians, who otherwise serve to make a lot of AA proponents really uncomfortable.
5) If the race-based people can’t point to some combination of ____ to serve as a proxy, then they shouldn’t be claiming that there is a continued effect of racism: an effect with no identifiable consequence does not deserve government interbention.
Well, there are a lot of arguments against proxies.
Proxies work best (or “proxies only work”) if you have a serious distinction in ___ relative to the thing you’re proxying for. Also, proxies work best if the class you want to help is OVER-represented, not UNDER-represented.
As a result, there’s no simple way to make a proxy for middle-class POC. But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t harmed by racism, it just means that we can’t make a workable proxy. (do Obama’s kids have detriments compared to my kids? No, but that’s not the right comparison. Do they have detriments compared to Clinton’s kids, who are also children of a president but aren’t POC? Maybe they do. And it’s a bizarre example anyway.)
Of course, we could do it. But since it’s a negative proxy and not a positive one, the only way would be to say something like “no rich kids can get into college, therefore opening up more spots for classes in which POC are overrepresented.”
Also, proxies are inexact. If you want to help poor POC without passing a share of the buck to rich POC (however much the share is reduced by underrepresentation) then you need to use racial preferences, not proxies.
As a practical matter: Direct AA is the most efficient way of AA. The reasons that people like me prefer proxies are usually one of three things:
1) The moral process argument: We should, in all respects, avoid classification and grants/denials of privileges by race, even if it ends up being more expensive and less efficient. Given a pool of POC who need help I’d rather we spend $150,000 to help them with proxies than $100,000 to help them because they check a “POC” box on a form.
2) The moral hazard argument: Any entitlement often becomes permanent, and since racial classifications are inherently odious, that would be a bad thing. Clearly there has to be some point at which AA should stop. AA proponents are often pretty hard (or impossible) to pin down on that issue; proxies make the issue moot.
3) The “occasional exception” argument. Everyone wants to help Poor Sharecropper’s Son Sam get a leg up over Rich Slaveowner’s Daughter Sally. Folks are a wee bit less comfortable helping a middle class POC get a leg up over Poor Appalachian Farmboy Al. Proxies (even ones that aren’t income based) tend to avoid those things.
Hector:
This. This right here is the problem. This is anathema. The relationship between the State and the people in the United States of America is NOT equivalent or even analogous to that between a parent and his or her child. The people – “We the people” – made the State. The State (unlike a parent) did not make the people. It is not the function of the State to lay down standards and influence the conscience and moral development of the people. It is the people’s function to lay down standards and influence the State. The writers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution would vomit if they read the paragraph you wrote.
Surely there are standards that the State enforces. But these are standards of the people that are engineered to ensure that the State protects, preserves and defends our rights as defined under the Constitution – and no more. How often have we read in defense of such things as gay marriage or abortion that it is not the function of the State to define morality?
But there ARE people who would use the power of the State to determine and enforce morality. Yes, those on the right who oppose gay marriage and abortion. But also those on the left who tell us how much soda we can get in a cup at once and what kind of language we can use to describe racial, ethnic or religious groups and a host of other things. If the State takes the place of our parents and feeds us and clothes us and houses us and tells us what we can and cannot eat and drink and say and determines what we can or cannot own or use or do so that we do no harm to ourselves then we will have a nation of children. And the day when the United States of America can call itself a nation of free people with liberty for all instead of a nation of subjects ruled by a self-appointed elite aristocracy/oligarchy will have passed.
I may be the main user of editing comments.
Last paragraph, last line:
“… self-appointed elite aristocracy/oligarchy who think they know what’s better for us than we do and enforce it will have passed.”
But the arguments for/against AA are my point, GiW. I don’t presume that people were harmed by racism, so I don’t think we should look for proxies for race. I want to give assistance to people based on the actual problems they may have that prevent them from getting the education they need. Whether those problems are caused by their race is worthy of study but immaterial to the fact that they need assistance.
The example I picked of Pres. Obama’s daughters is key to that. Racism will not stop those kids from getting a good education or getting into a college commensurate with their grades and accomplishments. And the same can be said for a great many kids of black or Hispanic heritage whose parents have decent jobs and who live in an area with good schools. Presuming they got the grades and test scores I don’t see any reason why they should have any more problem than Chelsea Clinton did in getting into a prestigious college.
I figure that the effects of racism in and of itself are minimal compared to the effects of poverty, lousy schools, etc. Now, you may be poor because of racism – but so what? You’re poor. If you’re willing to put in the work to get a decent education then I think it’s reasonable public policy to provide you with assistance to do so – and just as much and no more than the white Appalachian kid who is just as poor and has just as lousy a school. Racism may be the reason why your schools are lousy or your parents never had decent jobs – but then income-based aid picks that up. And if a middle-class black kid is in a good school and gets good grades and gets into the same college that his white classmate does, then I don’t see that there’s any effect of racism that means that he needs more assistance than his white classmate whose parents have the same income and got the same grades and got into the same college does.
Re: This. This right here is the problem. This is anathema. The relationship between the State and the people in the United States of America is NOT equivalent or even analogous to that between a parent and his or her child. The people – “We the people” – made the State. The State (unlike a parent) did not make the people. It is not the function of the State to lay down standards and influence the conscience and moral development of the people. It is the people’s function to lay down standards and influence the State. The writers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution would vomit if they read the paragraph you wrote.
RonF,
You make a rather eloquent exposition of the theory of government on which the United States is founded. The real difference between you and me is that you *agree* with the American political system, and I don’t. The political ideal that you are expounding, sees the government as a reflection of the people’s preferences, and sees its goal as maximizing the freedom of individuals to pursue their own private goods. I subscribe to the older, ‘paternalist’ model of government, which was described by (for example) Plato, and a lot of the medieval natural-law theorists.
Re: The writers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution would vomit if they read the paragraph you wrote.
I’m sure they would. I just happen to think that they were *wrong*, and don’t exactly have a great deal of respect for their political judgment.
Re: If the State takes the place of our parents and feeds us and clothes us and houses us and tells us what we can and cannot eat and drink and say and determines what we can or cannot own or use or do so that we do no harm to ourselves then we will have a nation of children
Suits me well enough. I’d prefer a state that adequately feeds, clothes and houses its subjects and treats them like children that need to be taken care of, rather than one in which the subjects are ‘free’ to choose their leaders, and equally free to starve, be unemployed, etc.. You disagree, and that’s fine. I suspect that within the next hundred years, when we run out of cheap oil and people actually need to start choosing between bread and the ballot box, we’ll see what people’s natural preferences really are. You can choose the ballot box, if you want.
In point of fact, though, I’d go a little farther, and argue that your ideal of a nation of perfectly free and democratic people is an illusion. Almost all states, above the level of hunter-gatherer bands, are elitist in some sense, whether they’re elitists of the right or elitists of the left (e.g. Cuba). (The only exception I can think of in modern times are the ill fated Spanish anarchists). In practice, modern liberal democracies aren’t run by ‘the people’, they’re run by that sector of the people who has the money, resources, intellectual training, and cultural background to allow them to use the institutions of liberal democracy to perpetuate their own power.
Is there any evidence whatsoever that a less democratic government is better at taking care of its citizens? It seems to me that historically, that the precise opposite has been the case. Also, logically, a government that is less answerable to the people would not seem therefore to be more concerned with their happiness and well-being.
Indeed, nearly always, when you empower unaccountable authorities, they become abusive in some way. The benevolent dictator may be the best form of government, but it has the notable flaw that there is no guarantee of continued benevolence.
—Myca
Gin and Whiskey,
I’m going to take issues with a number of your points. (For background, I’m strongly supportive of affirmative action, and would actually be fine with simple racial quotas, which unfortunately the Supreme Court doesn’t seem to like).
Re: We want to give some assistance to POC (just roll with it; I’m not getting into the justifications for AA right now) because they suffer from racism or for restoration reasons;
1) You can use the term ‘people of color’ if you want, but I *really* loathe the term. I see it largely as an attempt by privileged groups (i.e. East Asians and South Asians) to indicate that they have common interests with economically depressed groups like African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. They don’t: wealthy Indians and Chinese in suburban Connecticut have zero in common with Black people in Bridgeport or Puerto Ricans in Springfield, in terms of economic self interest . It also suggests that affirmative action is a way to redistribute college seats from white people to nonwhite people. In some states (the states with relatively few Asians, Indians or Jews) that’s probably true, but in the northeast and California (certainly), probably in many other states as well, and for the ‘national’ ultra-elite schools like the Ivy League and their imitators, that’s not at all the function of AA. In those environments, AA functions as a means to redistribute college admissions from Asians and Indians to Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, etc.. I don’t really think it has that much of a strong impact on White representation, though I’m open to correction. When the California university system got rid of affirmative action, my understanding is that it actually got less White, and more Asian.
I feel like this is an important point because a lot of people argue against affirmative action on the grounds of white identity politics, and it’s important to make the case that if affirmative action were abolished, in a lot of schools, the beneficiaries would be Asians, not whites.
2) I think the whole debate about ultra-elite colleges (Harvard, Stanford, etc.) papers over the bigger issue that elite private colleges in general probably have a damaging influence on our society. Speaking as someone who went to one (for undergrad) and to a midwestern state school for graduate school, I think the state school model is immeasurably healthier for society. I’d much prefer that we moved towards a system where we didn’t have elite private universities at all, and the best students went to the flagship state schools. That’s not really the point at issue here, I guess, since affirmative action is even more of an issue in state schools than in private ones, but I thought I’d make the point, since people have started talking about Stanford, etc.
Re: We want to give some assistance to POC (just roll with it; I’m not getting into the justifications for AA right now) because they suffer from racism or for restoration reasons;
3) That’s not really *my* argument for affirmative action. I’m more a supporter of the ‘diversity’ rationale. I’d argue for affirmative action based on two grounds: 1) most of our performance on test scores and such isn’t the result of our own effort, it’s the result of factors entirely beyond our control (genetics, epigenetics, prenatal environment, early childhood environment, etc.), so we can’t really be said to ‘deserve’ a place in a good university, at a moral level. 2) Society is better off when all the major racial/ethnic groups feel like they have a share of representation among the professional and elite classes, and can have a share of influence in society. Affirmative action is important for keeping the peace and making sure that Black people, Latinos, etc. feel invested in society. To flip this around: speaking as an (ethnic) Indian, I actively don’t want my group to be overrepresented at the top levels of society, because I know that is going to lead to us becoming a hated elite and the eventual target of social discontent, just like what happened in East Africa.
4) Socioeconomic affirmative action is cool and all, but isn’t going to solve the problem of underrepresented African Americans. Poor white people still have better test scores than upper-middle class African Americans (at least as far as SAT/ACT scores). If you want fair representation on racial grounds, then you need explicit racially based affirmative action.
“Today, despite the significant decline in residential segregation, virtually all high-poverty neighborhoods (neighborhoods where more than 40 percent of the population is poor) are majority-minority, and blacks are over five times more likely than whites to live in high-poverty neighborhoods.4 Poor white households are much more geographically dispersed than poor black or Hispanic households. In fact, the average high-income black person lives in a neighborhood with a higher poverty rate than the average low-income white person.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/revisiting-the-moynihan-report/276936/
The thing is, there are major differences between the neighbourhoods which African Americans and whites of the same class live in. Ta-Nahisi Coats has a series in progress on these issues. I’d suggest reading essentially everything that he has written about this topic. Here’s a quote from a key study which he cites:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/revisiting-the-moynihan-report/276936/
Re: then I don’t see that there’s any effect of racism that means that he needs more assistance than his white classmate whose parents have the same income and got the same grades and got into the same college does
It isn’t about being fair to the individual, necessarily, it’s about fairness to the group. We exist as members of groups, and the African-American community as a whole is better off when it’s represented among politicians, business leaders, doctors, lawyers, professionals, scholars, etc.. Society as a whole is better off, too, since things are more stable when there aren’t large communities that feel like they’re being excluded.
I don’t most people’s educational experience would be richer if they were at a university that was 75% East Asian & Indian and nearly 0% African American.
So according to a witness, Trayvon Martin referred to George Zimmerman as a “creepy-ass cracker”. The witness said that this was not a racist comment. On CNN’s coverage of this one commentator – a white one – contended that this was a racist and offensive term. Another CNN commentator – a black one – said that it was a standard term that a lot of blacks and other Southerners use and that it was not racist, just descriptive.
The clip is at the link, you’ll have to scroll down. I’d be interested if you would listen to it, consider the commentators’ discussion and tell me what you think. Is describing a while man as a “cracker” racist?
We exist as individuals. We are affected by whatever groups we are classified in to a certain extent, but in the end we stand alone as individuals. Giving people financial assistance to get into college on a needs-only basis will not keep a black kid who has no more need of financial assistance than a white kid whose family has equivalent income from becoming whatever that white kid can be. And it will still sweep up the poor black kids and give them a chance regardless of what the cause of their poverty is.
And the black kids who can’t hack it academically but get into college because they were given an advantage because of their race are highly unlikely to become doctors and lawyers and engineers and such, so it was a waste of their time and our money to put them in a situation where they were not going to succeed.
I think MIT has hit upon a reasonable formula. They determine who among their applicants are likely to succeed at the Institute (they’ve got a 90+% graduation rate, so their formula for that is pretty good). Then – and only then – do they look at the race of the student. “Underrepresented minorities”, those whose % of the MIT student body is < their $ in the U.S. population as a whole, are then offered admission. After that, the rest of the students are evaluated for the rest of the open spots, with no reference to race. Here's how that broke down for the class of 2016:
US Citizens & Permanent Residents
Number of US states represented: 46 90%
African-American 8%
Asian-American 28%
Caucasian 37%
Hispanic 15%
Native-American 1%
Other/No Response 1%
International Citizens
Number of countries represented: 54 10%
Would a formula like this used at a public school pass muster with the Supreme Court?
I think Louis CK said it best.
http://youtu.be/TG4f9zR5yzY?t=2m
—Myca
I don’t see how that’s responsive to my question, Myca.
Unless the response you intended was “Yeah, it was racist, but so what?”
It’s the equivalent of “redneck”.
You should contact Zimmerman’s defense team, though. The “Martin was looking to lay the smack down on Whitey” is even better than “he was armed with a sidewalk”.
Good deal, because I don’t see how your question is relevant to the situation.
—Myca
Doesn’t Florida law allow you to kill someone for insulting you? So if “cracker” is an insult…
That’s how it’s relevant, Myca.
I’m black, and I think that people who use the word ‘cracker’ are assholes deserving of the exact same disdain as those who use ‘nigger’, ‘spic’, or ‘chink’. No more, and no less. I am just as much of a man as anyone, and I need no extra protection on the basis of my skin color.
As for ‘redneck’, it’s still an insult, although it is a bit more specific that ‘cracker’. In my experience, ‘redneck’ describes the way you live more than the way you look… which in my book makes using it a bit less reprehensible. I still do not use it. Sure, they are people who do not take offense at it, but I think that most Southerners would see it as an insult, whether or not they identify with the word. Especially coming from me.
By the way, I applied to MIT without specifying my race. MIT allows you to do this, for which I applaud them. On the other hand, I do not think that the way they do admissions is perfect. One thing it guarantees is that the percentage of while males at the Institute would be equal or less than their percentage in the United States.
And while RonF may have been afraid to point the following out, I am not. While MIT has a very high graduation rate, the picture is not as rosy for minorities. Native Americans non-graduation rate is about 4 times the average one for the Institute. Ours does not look as bad, until you split it between African-American and Black NRA, when the former jumps to two-three times the average, while the later falls below the average.
While makes me think that race has very, very little to do with anything, as far as admission go. Or anything, really, except how well we stand up to the Sun.
Sebastian, “redneck” is the same thing. It’s just the Northern version.
Whether Martin was an asshole is not really relevant; it’s just part of the unofficial two-part test for getting a defendant off a murder rap. That is, did the dead guy need killing, and was the accused the right man for the job?
Oh, I was answering RonF’s question, not discussing whether ‘creepy-ass cracker’ made the killing justified. I don’t think the latter is worth discussing, despite the fact the ruling in the Zimmerman case may end up being decided by similar nonsense.
Sebastian:
What’s this?
Myca:
Well, first, I’m curious to know whether people overall consider “cracker” in the context of a general descriptor of whites to be a racist term on it’s own.
Secondly, in the context of this trial, the jury is going to be asked to determine the truth among various versions of what happened; or at least, whether the version that has Zimmerman as a murderer is true beyond a reasonable doubt. After all, the defense doesn’t have to prove Zimmerman innocent, they just have to show that the prosecution can’t prove he’s guilty. The veracity of the version of events that holds Zimmerman guilty of murder seems to be based in part on the contention that Zimmerman is a racist and “profiled” Martin based on Martin’s race. If so, it seems to me to be relevant to consider whether Martin was a racist and whether or not that affects the veracity of the version of events that holds Martin to have assaulted Zimmerman.
Also: given that the witness seems to think that the term “cracker” is appropriate to apply to white people, it seems legitimate to me that the jury might consider whether or not she is a racist and whether that affects the veracity of her testimony.
Finally, I find the logic that the black CNN commentator applied to the use of the word “cracker” to be fascinating. It seems to me that 20 years ago – or even in Paula Deen’s kitchen as of up to a couple of weeks ago – you could substitute “black” for “white” and “nigger” for “cracker” and heard the exact same argument from white people – an argument that the vast majority of people are rightly rejecting.
I just read Reuters’ coverage of the witness’ testimony in the Sun-Times while I was out at lunch. They said that she said that Martin described him as “creepy” – not that Martin described him as a “creepy-ass cracker”. I wonder why they didn’t use the full term?
It’ll be interesting to see what the jury thinks. It appears to be 5 white women and one that various sources are not clear on but is not white. I wonder what their reaction is to “cracker”?
Hey, which thread was the “feminists think men are automatically guilty” thread? I lost track.
Having been slowly poking along at research, I’m delivering the promised mea culpa : The mainstream feminists don’t take that view. They make exclusion for due process–not necessarily in every sentence (but who does?) but clearly enough that they’ve asserted it.
There are some commenters and very right wing writers who want things like shifting the burden of proof to the accused, or who think women don’t lie, or men always lie, or whatever–but those are not mainstream. They’re the equivalent of the right wing MRA people who think right wing crazyshit; they can be ignored.
However, even in the mainstream (less so among post authors; more so among commenters) there’s a general trend in which a defense of due process is OK in theory but not in practice. A defense of due process in the context of discussing a particular rape accusation is usually reviled, called “rape culture,” disemvoweled, set up as MRA, results in the person themselves being called a rapist, etc etc.. And to make it clear, I’m not talking about gross right-wing “all bitches lie” stuff, I’m talking about stuff like “this is complex; let’s withhold judgment until we hear all of the evidence” or “let’s consider the possibility that the complaining witness’ story may not be entirely accurate” or “there may not actually have been intent to rape; this can be difficult to figure out without examining the defendant” or “what about the defendant’s claim that ____?” and that sort of thing.
It’s like the rape equivalent of some white dude who agrees that racism exists in theory, but who has never ever seen a situation which is actually racist, other than some old KKK pictures from 1950. Online, it’s as if nobody has ever seen an accused rapist who they, personally, would even put in an “unknown” status–much less who they would presume to be innocent.
So in the end I remain… somewhat unconvinced. The fact that someone says that they want to protect due process is relevant: in that respect I am wrong. But the real question for me is what someone does to demonstrate that they are in favor of protecting due process. And that usually means “what process do you want to use, when evaluating people you hate?”
Hypocrisy is widespread across the political scale. But feminists in particular focus on advancing the interests of women (often, though not always, specifically w/r/t men); they focus a lot on rape since it’s a big issue; rape generally means that men are defendants since most men are rapists.
So the universally common tendency to group bias–as applied to “feminists who are talking about rape”–usually seems to mean in practice that due process for rape gets about as much attention as a small, annoying, bug: existence acknowledged, generally despised, wish it weren’t really there. I will also say that Amptoons in particular is sort of an exception to the rule–this particular blog has a relatively ENORMOUS spread of viewpoints, especially in the comments. Which, unsurprisingly, is why I like this blog best :)
Darn. Can a mod fix the italics?
rape generally means that men are defendants since most men are rapists.
I’m hoping you mean most rapists are men.
Oh, ffs, gin-and-whiskey. Your comment boils down to “Okay, I was wrong, but I was a little not wrong, so, evensies!”
Myca, did you see the username on the YouTube user who posted that? How terrible a person would they have to be to pick that?
Oh lord, wow. No, I hadn’t. How vile. Maybe I’ll replace the link. There are a lot of vids of that routine.
Boy Scouts have something new at the Jamboree this year — OTHER than gay scouts, I mean.
The National Boy Scout Jamboree has historically been for Boy Scouts – not for Cub Scouts and not for either the current day Venturers or the previous Explorer Scout and Sea Scout programs (or for the Air Scout or Senior Scout programs that pre-dated them). So the actual procedural change here is to admit Venturers to the Jamboree. That has the concomitant effect of having female Venturers attend, but it’s not the primary object. Male Venturers were also excluded from the Jamboree, unless they were under 18, were also registered in a Boy Scout Troop and then applied to go to the Jamboree as a Boy Scout.
I’ve been looking through some history to see if Explorers were permitted to go to Jambo prior to females being eligible to belong to it (which would have been in the ’70’s, IIRC), but I can’t find it.
Gay Boy Scouts at Jambo will be nothing new. The fact that said Boy Scouts can be openly gay to their leaders and fellow Scouts without fear of losing their registration based on that fact alone will be new, though.
This was the thread.
There are actually three different statements you’re discussing here.
The first is that there is an oft-repeated feminist truism that women never lie about rape. That claim, specifically, is what I was asking you (and some of the other folks who repeated the claim) for evidence supporting, and it’s clear that, as you acknowledge, there is none. Thank you for recognizing that.
The second is that feminists support weakening due process protections for accused rapists. That’s what your argument in your most recent post mostly discusses, but:
1) These are different claims! You acknowledge as much here when you say:
You use the word ‘combine’ because they’re two different things. When my friend Molly comes to me and says, “I was mugged! A dude held me at gunpoint and took my purse,” I can believe her without therefore supporting weakening due process for muggers.
Indeed, if my first reaction was, “Well, Molly might well be lying, about being mugged” I suspect that everyone would (rightly) treat me like a victim-blaming asshole, whether or not I followed it up with, “… but I’m just suggesting that she’s a liar because I support due process so strongly.”
2) You offer no more evidence for your new claim than you offered for your old. Evidence please? Links?
The third is the reference you make above to the, “feminists think men are automatically guilty,” thread.
This is a third claim, which can be true or false independent of the first two claims. It is, of course, false, but the reason I point it out is that it’s part of the same general constellation of anti-feminist bullshit as the other two.
That you are treating these three claims as roughly equivalent is not encouraging.
—Myca
Seriously? Theft is the most common analogy for rape, and one of the worst. You should know better.
If you want a criminal analogy for rape, the best ones are verbal contracts. That’s because they involve analyses which are very similar to acquaintance rape cases:
1) A situation which can sometimes be consensual (people do agree to all sorts of contracts, just as people do agree to have sex with people);
2) A crime which relies on lack of consent, and sometimes on intent (there’s usually no debate about the facts of the sex or the contract; the debate is about how you got from A to B there);
3) No direct evidence of wrongdoing (since the facts of the contract/sex are not disputed);
4) Tons of circumstantial evidence, character evidence, etc.; and
5) An eventual judgment in which the fact finders usually end up thinking “would I do that? Was that reasonable? Who is really to blame here?” as they evaluate a conviction.
Not incidentally, people in those types of suits ARE NOT perceived to always be accurate about the underlying facts, much less the overall legal conclusion.
Joe says Bob stole $100. Joe and Bob are (were) friends.
Well then: Did Joe agree to lend Bob $100? Did Bob steal it? Did Joe help him out of a rough spot by giving him $100 when Joe felt flush? Did Joe give Bob a gift, and then “convert” it to a loan when he found out that Bob insulted him to a friend? Did Bob honestly think it was a gift, even if Joe thought it was a loan? Joe and Bob will have very different stories, I suspect. We almost never know what’s “really” true because Bob and Joe will keep on with their side of the story forever, even after the judgment.
I mean sure, you should believe Molly if she staggers in bloody claiming “I was mugged!” And you should believe Molly if she staggers in bloody, claiming “I was raped!” So what? I fail to understand why people continue to focus on muggers, especially given the fact that “violent stranger rapes” are quite rare.
That is because (1) Molly is your friend; and (2) people are not perceived as getting the gross facts of “a mugging” wrong, especially a mugging from a stranger. See above.
BTW, have you noticed what’s missing from your analogy? The mugger. we’re talking about due process, and due process relates to the defendant.
But in any case: why on earth would “she’s a liar” be the alternative? There’s a big, big, area between “this is true” and “this is a lie” which includes, just to give a few examples,
-it’s generally true, but some crucial details are omitted.
-it’s generally true, but some crucial details have been changed.
-She’s desperately trying to tell the precise truth, but is simply wrong.
-It’s been a little while since the incident, and (like almost all humans) her brain is getting a bit wonky when it tries to distinguish between what actually happened; what she now wishes had happened; what she was afraid would happen; what her friends think happened, etc.
and so on.
Lying has nothing to do with it. That said: if Molly accuses Randall of raping her, and he denies it: do you think Randall is lying?
Well, I’ve written and linked to a lot of stuff on the OCR issues w/ due process and Title 9. As I’ve said before, I believe many of those changes (which were pushed by feminists) are due process violations. I am far from alone in that view–not among the MRA set, but among the “due process” set.
Hopefully you’re not expecting me either to retype those arguments, or to accumulate a slew of links regarding the issue, since you can find ’em on Google. Those changes are largely the result of feminist advocacy. And of course, feminists are responsible for rape shield laws and those are probably the largest reductions in due process for defendants–in fact they are probably one of the largest reductions in due process for any class.* Again: Those are also available on Google. Some feminists want stronger laws in that regard; some want the same; very few want to reduce them.
Do you disagree about those two areas? Go ahead: obviously lots of people think they’re worthwhile tradeoffs, and other people think they’re not worthwhile. There’s no right answer. But if you dispute their existence, please Google them yourself. Or, go look at websites which are run by due process people.
*I’m not complaining about those. I think they’re usually a pretty reasonable balance of interests. But they certainly fall in the “reduce the due process of rape defendants” category.
gin-and-whiskey:
Wow. You seriously want to draw an analogy, and label it as the BEST analogy, where you liken rape, a crime of violence requiring an aggressor and a victim, to contract dispute, a civil proceeding wherein two parties agreed to something and the only question is what?
Are you sure?
Especially considering that in the case of rape, the burden of proof is Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, and in the case of contract law, the burden of proof is Preponderance of the Evidence?
Are you aware that you just made an argument for lowering the burden of proof in rape cases?
Grace
Yes. For some reason people love to talk about rape with analogies. Most of the analogies are crap because rape has some very unusual characteristics w/r/t proof, analysis, etc.
Yes, from an analytical perspective (like I said) and especially w/r/t acquaintance rape (as I said) which is one of the most difficult things to prove.
I listed five specific commonalities. If you think they’re wrong, please explain why. You might find it easier to quote them, than to incorrectly summarize them. It would certainly help the discussion.
I am aware of that; it’s my job.
The problem with non-violent rape trials is that there is usually very little evidence which supports one side over the other. Using analogies where that is also true is a valuable aspect of analysis. Using analogies where people are getting their wallets stolen (or other equally unrelated ones) share only the analogy “crime” and ignore all of the things that make rape, in particular, so very difficult to deal with in a criminal sense. (Not to mention that there are occasionally criminal issues w/r/t fraud, some of which I also occasionally get involved with. So there are certainly some circumstances where this is criminal.)
In any case, I’m confident that intelligent people can distinguish between the two standards of proof. I’m also confident that intelligent people can distinguish between methods of general analysis (“how do we figure out which of these two dude is lying?”) and the eventual conclusions.
Are you aware that you appear not to have actually read the post?
Elusis:
Clearly, I do not speak for all law enforcement personnel, because I find most such shirts distasteful and often very disturbing. As the article admits in the final paragraph, cops and other professions with high exposure to psychologically difficult experiences develop a very dark sense of humor to help cope … and such humor should never be put on public display, because its value, whether as actual humor or as therapeutic venting or as affirmation of shared trauma, is highly dependent on context.
Even such comparatively innocent snippets as, “In God we trust — all others get searched” can be misinterpreted if you do not understand the context. For instance, there are many people who are passionate about the Fourth Amendment (as am I) who have never had the life experience of having the prisoner in the back seat spend an hour talking about how he is going to shoot you between the eyes with his 30-06 and rape your wife and children. Once you’ve had a few experiences like that (yes, that example is actual), and you’ve spent the hour reviewing ways to bail out of the car and deploy weapons in one motion, with your shoulderblades itching, thinking, “Sure hope I didn’t miss anything when I searched him”, and you’ve learned how to transport such people safely, you instinctively recognize that the “all others get searched” dictum relates not to illegal searches contrary to Constitutional protections, but rather, to officer safety searches of people lawfully arrested, or to officer safety searches of people who are getting a voluntary courtesy transport. “All others get searched” supports the mindset that makes it a reflex, when the prisoner says, “Yeah, the last three cops already searched me”, to say to yourself, “Well, this is going to make it four, because anyone can make a mistake.”
Context is everything. Some of those shirts I simply wouldn’t own. A few I’d be willing to hang in a den or other area where the only people who see them will understand them. Almost none of them would I wear. I know of a case where a civilian defended himself against a lethal attack, ethically and lawfully, using lethal force himself. The T-shirt he happened to be wearing that day was a joke shirt, which read, “Killing is my profession and business is good.” You better believe the booking officer made sure that the logo showed in the booking photo. Oops. The joke isn’t worth the impression it makes.
But, on this topic and many others, I’m in that group of cops which many other cops scorn for having … ah … spines reinforced via insertion of sticks.
Grace
gin-and-whiskey:
You said:
You didn’t qualify it.
I can see the merits of some of the arguments you make, with regard to the sort of rape where everyone agrees there was sexual contact and the only question is consent.
For the-matter-of-proof-is-the-consent type of rape, you could analogize to theft and make all the same arguments in that subset of theft accusations where Person A says, “B stole from me!” and Person B says either, “No, I didn’t” and there is no physical evidence, or Person B has the item but says, “No, A gave it to me.”
Using that analogy, you still have a crime and a victim, if you can prove your case, and no crime at all if you can’t, and you still have the same burden of proof, and the same relevance of character and circumstantial evidence. It’s a better analogy (still not perfect), and look at that, it’s theft.
I have investigated such thefts. I’m investigating one such right now. The suspect had access (is a member of the family), and is well-known to be a thief and burglar (past actual convictions, plus many more accusations which could not be proven)… but we don’t have proof beyond a reasonable doubt for this specific case, and probably never will.
Where it fails as an analogy, of course, is that it does not damage the victim nearly as much as rape does, and it does not carry with it the same social censure which comes with being a rape victim. If I Ava says, “I had a diamond ring and I watched Beryl take it!” and Beryl says, “She said it was a gift and it’s mine, now,” almost no one would be asking Ava what on earth she was thinking, letting Beryl hold the ring up to the light.
But that is routine in cases of rape victims. Even, nauseatingly, in cases involving 12-year-old rape victims.
Which is one of the main points such analogies seek to illuminate, and one of the reasons people so frequently attempt the analogic mode in discussing rape, because the contrast in otherwise parallel cases illustrates the differences.
I don’t think they’re wrong. Immediately after decrying theft as
analogies, you used an example of theft to support your argument. Joe says Bob stole from him. That’s theft. You don’t specify what Bob says, but presumably in your mind Bob asserts the existence of a contract, or you wouldn’t have used the example. But you didn’t actually describe a contract dispute. You described an accusation of theft.
Leaving analogy wars aside, your problem is that you want victim advocates to be as impartial as judges. But they can’t be; they are advocates. That’s like asking someone’s legal representative to concede a point contrary to her client’s interest. That’s not her role. Her role is to advocate. It’s the judge’s role to judge.
In these discussions, the people inclined to act as judges aren’t the ones you hear from first, and they aren’t the ones you hear from most, and they aren’t the ones you hear from through earplugs. The people you hear first, most, and loudest are the advocates, because that is the nature of advocacy: you see a problem and you actively seek to demonstrate it to others.
When people are not appointed as judges, I am content to let them advocate, which is what vocal feminists do. You want them to be impartial. Catch most feminists in the right context, catch me in the right context, and they/I will be impartial. But as a general rule, that’s not where the pressure needs to be applied, and so as a general rule, they/I … advocate.
So you DIDN’T argue that the best way to analogize to rape is to look at it as a contract dispute? Because if you did (and you did), and if that argument is true, then the next argument one could make is that, really, we should treat rape like contract disputes. And contract disputes go to the preponderance of the evidence.
That’s NOT how we should treat rape, or any crime. But it wasn’t my analogy.
Grace
Sigh.
It is difficult to imagine how on earth anyone could read my many posts on this subject and honestly, with a straight face, suggest either that: (a) I think that rape should be a preponderance standard; or that (b) I equate all rape to some sort of civil contract; or that, just to head this one off in advance, (c) I think rape is a minor deal. But in case it is somehow unclear none of those things are true.
It’s probably unproductive to continue arguing about what you may or not have said that I said/think, and why you said it, and what I may or may not have said that you said I said, etc. That is boring. So let’s move on, to the actual subject.
Where on earth are you getting the “what I want” ideas? Perhaps you could sort of back off telling me what I want, think, etc? I’m happy to actually tell you if you ask, and it’s a lot more accurate that way.
I work with victim advocates and they are what they say. As they should be. Victim advocates are on the side of the victim, which is generally the same side as the prosecutor. (And which, FWIW, is also the only side on which I get involved in rape cases, by occasionally helping victims file civil suits or get ROs.)
But those are professionals playing a role, just like the defense attorneys (who are not “pro rape” even if they defend rapists) and the judge, and jury. So I don’t really get what you’re trying to say here. How is the role of a victim advocate relevant to the question of due process and feminism?
Again: certain types of very common civil (and, more rarely, criminal) disputes are very good matches in terms of analysis to many of the most common types of rapes. In particular they are excellent matches analytically speaking to acquaintance rapes, and especially to date rape.
I am happy to discuss rape WITHOUT using analogies. But most folks insist on making analogies to rape. And most folks choose a lot of analogies which are really ridiculous w/r/t the thing that they’re trying to analogize to (or the point that they are trying to make.) Presumably they’re trying to choose those analogies to make their argument stronger, but generally they’re such bad analogies that the arguments get worse. That should stop.
For example, people talk about rape arrests or conviction rates, and often compare them to arrests for theft. Or, people talk about having difficulty meeting the conviction standard for a date rape and they discuss how much harder it is for a burglary. Or, people talk about something else.
But as you know, in many cases things like burglary and wallet-stealing and muggings are a horrible analogy in most cases. To be precise, “violent* stranger thefts” and “violent stranger assaults” can be a decent analogy for “violent stranger rapes.” But as we know, only 1/3 of rapes are committed by strangers. Of those, only a subset are violent. Of the violent stranger rapes where they ID the assailant, the conviction rape is much higher. In fact, the linkage between “rape” and “violent stranger rape” is usually discouraged by feminist advocates, because it so obscures the reality of most rapes.
If you really want to answer the question “how much lower is the rape conviction rate that we think it should be?” or “why is it difficult to get the cops to issue a warrant for the arrest of Jane Doe’s boyfriend even though he raped her last night?” then you need to look at other areas that are similar.
So if you want to talk about rape which isn’t violent stranger rape–for example, if you want to talk about the most common kind of rape that occurs on college campuses, i.e. date rape or acquaintance rape–then you need to choose analogies that are similar in salient ways, which (in the case of non-violent rapes) often means that they are a heck of a lot more like the ones I gave.
Or, that we should classify contract violators as sex offenders.
Or, that we should elect a Russian as our next president.
Or whatever you want.
Look, Grace: I’m trying to engage here. But this type of argumentation is simply dishonest. Can you please stop trying to strawman me?
Actually, that sort of thing happens all the time. Especially in the kinds of cases which I mentioned, and in a lot of other non-rape cases where the victims are routinely blamed for their “stupidity,” or not knowing better about him,” or generally for “getting themselves in that sort of situation.”
Which, again, is why it’s important to choose a salient analogy.
that is the equivalent of a rape case where Ava says “Beryl raped me!” and Beryl says “She consented and we had sex.”
Which is when people start asking a surprisingly similar set of questions, like “how did you know beryl” and “how did you get in that situation?” and “why did you give her the ring/get in a compromising position?” and so on.
Of course, you chose a analogy where the “not guilty fact pattern” is highly implausible, because people don’t usually give other people their own diamond ring. If you want to keep that analogy honest, you’d have to compare it to rapes where the “not guilty fact pattern” is equally implausible.
That is completely and obviously wrong, as I’ve commented on many places and many times before. Hopefully you’re not extending the “you know what I think” concept to suggest otherwise: if so, this conversation is over.
*by which I mean to distinguish acts with some evidence of violence, weaponry, physical threats, etc. All rapes are violent, but there’s a big difference at trial if there’s evidence of violence.
Didn’t we get into this because someone quoted The Fire about the dire effects of campus speech codes? This new article is relevant:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/07/03/2248421/mccain-doj-college-harassment/
This article on why cops often discount rape survivors just circulated among my friends; I’ll be sharing it with my human sexuality grad students next week: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2013/06/why_cops_don_t_believe_rape_victims_and_how_brain_science_can_solve_the.html
Have you read McCain’s letter?
et’s do what Thinkprogress didn’t do, and actually quote the letter (since we all know that summaries aren’t usually accurate.)
This whole argument is possibly only because the OCR’s followup letter (on May 30) wasn’t formal enough.
There’s a pretty big difference between
“Oops, we didn’t mean to say that. Allow us to clarify our earlier statement, as follows:”
and
“We didn’t say that. Of course things are OK.”
Well, this is accurate (if you subscribe to one reading of the OCR letter) or inaccurate (if you subscribe to the other reading.) I’m in the “accurate” camp, as I think is reasonable.
But again: what is the big deal? If OCR actually thinks that McCain and FIRE and all of the other free speech folks are blowing smoke out of our ass, then can put the whole thing to bed with a quick, formal, clarification.
This. Is. True. If thinkprogress suggests it is NOT true, they are poorly reporting.
You can read it in page 4 of the findings letter. You can also see it in significantly more detail in the last paragraph of Page 8.
Was this an error? Sure, perhaps: OCR may not be maliciously trying to change their interpretation of how people should handle things. But it says what it says.
Probably true. Look: free speech is obviously at odds with harassment law because you are literally limiting what the harasser can say. This is true for any law which criminalizes any speech (threats, etc.)
It is pretty damn clear that any expansion of harassment (what you can’t say) is, of course, also shrinking free speech (what you can say.) Which is OK or not depending on your relative priorities of “avoiding harassment” and “avoiding stifling speech.”
Time for McCain’s “unreasonable” questions:
Reasonable. OCR can moot the question by formally clarifying its positions. Otherwise this is a valid question. The decision to call the earlier letter a “blueprint” is what got the OCR into trouble here.
Eminently reasonable. I doubt that the OCR intends it literally, as set forth in some of the more childish examples below. But if not, they need to define it.
eh… not reasonable. OCR isn’t charged with this. I expect them to duck.
Reasonable. And common. Rarely, professors have gotten in trouble for this. It’s obviously a classic first amendment problem.
And the answer is not obvious, either. Should professors be legally obliged to allow offended students to do alternate work, for example, if they’re triggered/offended/disturbed? The answer is pretty complex.
Reasonable. And common. People do get disciplined for this sort of thing, and this is a strong first amendment issue.
Reasonable but dumb. Obviously, any rule which barred a good faith “wanna date?”question won’t pass the laugh test: just because someone says no (“unwelcome”) doesn’t make it harassment. And obviously, asking someone on a date can easily be harassing behavior; there’s no “wanna date?” safe harbor and there shouldn’t be one. So it should be simple for the OCR to clarify this.
Reasonable. And common. People do get disciplined for this sort of thing., and this is a first amendment issue.
Same analysis (and answer) as “wanna date?”
WTF? Eh: stupid question. But requires only a “No.” answer so not a big deal.
Complex, but reasonable.
What in that letter do you see as being unusually conservative?
“WTF? Eh: stupid question.”
After a great many years in various modes of providing tech support I have learned not to be shy in asking stupid questions. My experience has been that sometimes when you ask a stupid question – and especially when you ask it of a government official – you get a stupid answer.
“I can’t see anything on my monitor. I’ve tried [ various_highly_technically_sophisticated_things ] for [ a_long_time ].”
Is it plugged in?
“Of course.”
Check, could you? Silly, I kn0w, but I have procedures I have to follow. [a total lie, BTW]
“Well it’s just a waste of time but … ah … heh … gee, it’s working now. Thanks. Bye.”
Hm. Comment edit not working yet, eh? Anyway, I’ve found that the principle above applies well beyond the sphere of tech support – again, especially when you’re asking the questions of a government official about law and regulations.
So meanwhile, the State of Illinois, forced by the Federal Court system, finally recognizes the civil rights of it’s subjects and passes a concealed carry weapons law. And it’s a “shall-issue” law to boot, and pre-empts municipalities. Get 16 hours training (more than any other State, because Illinois’ subjects are apparently stupider than people in all the other States), have a valid FOID card (which means you pass a background check), don’t be a felon or have a bunch of arrests, pay $150 to the State and another $100 – $150 to take the course and you can apply for the permit. If no law enforcement agency raises an objection within 90 days you get your permit.
What’s going to be interesting is that all the anti-civil rights types have been tossing around phrases like “the streets of Chicago will be like the Wild West” and “more guns on the street will mean more killings” and various other predictions to the tune that this will inevitably result in re-enactments of the O.K. Corral shootout in the streets where permit holders will play vigilante and blow away innocent bystanders while trying to shoot underprivileged youth. Notwithstanding that none of this has happened in the other 49 States. I’m wondering how long it will take them to publicly apologize when none of that actually happens.
That’s an interesting point, Ron.
Of course, you could make the same claim about gun rights advocates – they frequently claim “more guns, less crime,” most prominently with the dubious studies conducted by John “my sock puppets love me” “oops I lost my data but take my word for it” Lott. If a few years from now, crime doesn’t go down in Illinois beyond what current trends indicate, will anyone on your side publicly apologize?
And, will you call for them to?
Some activists on both sides of any issue make wild claims, and you’re mistaken if you don’t think anyone on the pro-gun side ever makes wild claims. There are also people on both sides making more reasonable claims, of course.
16 hours of training is really not that much, particularly to demonstrate competence with a lethal weapon. I would support waiving the requirement for people who have recently had equal or better training, but I think if you can’t devote a couple workdays worth of time to training, you probably don’t take it seriously enough.
“If a few years from now, crime doesn’t go down in Illinois beyond what current trends indicate, will anyone on your side publicly apologize?”
No. The claim that people’s civil rights should be restricted – and the premise for actually having done so for decades – is based on the speculation that gun-related crime, accidental shootings, etc. will increase if concealed carry is permitted. But the claim that people’s civil rights should be respected is not based on the premise that gun-related violent crime will go down. It’s based on the principle that people should be free to exercise their civil rights unless it can be proven that there’s an overwhelming public interest to the contrary.
While some proponents of CCW predict that gun-related violent crime will go down as a result, that is not the justification for removing restrictions from people’s civil rights.
KellyK, once again we need to remember that this law was not written in a vacuum. If all the other States have lesser training requirements and they have not seen shootings ascribable to a lack of training, it seems to me that what we have here is an artificial barrier meant to restrict people from exercising their rights, not something that’s necessary to ensure public safety.
“I think if you can’t devote a couple workdays worth of time to training, you probably don’t take it seriously enough.”
I think that if you can’t take an hour or two off of work to go register to vote you’re not taking your right to vote seriously enough. But that principle didn’t stop “motor voter” laws. The right to exercise your civil rights are not a function of whether or not you take it seriously enough to jump through State-imposed hoops. It’s whether the requirements can be shown to be necessary to maintain public safety. Otherwise what you have is an artificial barrier set up by the State to discourage people from exercising their rights, which I should think should be unconstitutional, as it has been found when applied to other things such as exercising the right to worship, to speak, etc.
Ron, given that gun advocates have effectively prevented most academic research into guns for two decades, it’s more than a little bit hypocritical to complain that the evidence isn’t there to support [fill in name of any law in the world that restricts guns in any way, however slight, here].
So does this mean you oppose artificial barriers to voting?
More information on gun advocates actions to prevent research is in this JAMA article. Note that the article is co-written by the author of the original anti-research legislation.
It doesn’t take government-funded academic research (the only kind that is suppressed by Federal law, George Soros or Michael Bloomberg can fund all the studies they want) to investigate the claim that the streets of Chicago will “turn into the Wild West” if CCW is permitted there. Violent crime statistics are published by the Chicago Police Department, the Illinois State Police and the FBI every year, and they are broken down by (among other things) whether or not a gun was involved. I’ll bet heavily that the breakdown will include whether or not the person firing a gun has a CCW permit or not – the law permits that kind of query.
Sure! Poll taxes, literacy tests, discrimination against people of particular races or ethnic heritage, etc. I oppose them all.
Now, I’ll anticipate that you hold that voter ID laws, where you have to prove citizenship to register and/or prove your identity to vote, are artificial barriers. I don’t. It seems odd that having to prove that you are eligible to vote in a particular location (i.e., prove your residency by various means) is viewed as legitimate, and having to prove that you are eligible to vote at all by providing proof of age is legitimate, but having to prove you are eligible to vote at all by providing proof of citizenship is viewed as an artificial barrier.
Compromise: since both voting and firearms ownership are civil rights, make the ID requirements for buying a gun or casting a vote identical.
After a quick revisit, I need to clarify. I said:
That is an understatement.
The issue arises because
1) The original Montana OCR letter was a formal OCR notice;
2) Which claimed that it should be a “blueprint” for other schools.
That had the effect of making people think (with good reason!) that the OCR intended it to be a blueprint for other schools.
Unfortunately, the Montana letter had that issue of expanding the definition of harassment, without any language suggesting that the expanded definition was only “for reporting purposes” which OCR now says it meant. Then:
3) OCR issued an informal email trying to explain that it was only trying to address reporting. But the email had three basic flaws. First of all, it appeared to misstate what was actually said in the letter (don’t believe me? read ’em both.) Second, it isn’t clear that the email procedure itself is legal (more on that later.) Third and finally, it’s an informal email, as opposed to a formal OCR restatement.
4) So, free speech folks started trying (and are still trying) to get OCR to put their money where their mouth is. Surely, if OCR can issue a letter that they think was wrong, they can issue an equally formal letter which retracts it. Right?
5) Free speech folks are also noting–correctly–that even OCR’s email stance is a problem. How on earth can the government insist on monitoring/reporting of things which ARE NOT illegal? Why are those in favor of OCR’s stance ignoring the free speech issues here? (I think this was really the intent of McCain’s safe harbor question, as I re-read it.)
To address the folks like ThinkProgress’s intern and others (Elusis, perhaps?) who think this not that big a deal, I’ll make specific arguments. I’m interested in your responses: do you agree with each of them? If not, why not?
1) The government can’t require a school to monitor all “anti government behavior” and to require that the school “encourage reporting” of such behavior. It certainly can’t require a school to take steps to reduce anti-government behavior–for example, requiring those who are accused to show up and defend themselves, even when the accuser and/or judge is well aware that the behavior isn’t believed to cross the line of illegality. The fact that some anti-government behavior may be illegal is not a justification for early intervention, because the early intervention is designed to stifle behavior which isn’t illegal. And even though any reports are merely subject to review and a hearing, the oversight does not cure the problem: Even if the school didn’t actually take action in response to a report of anti-government behavior, the reporting alone would be a chilling act: it’s an increased defense burden, it obviously increases the chances of a wrongful conviction, and it chills legal behavior.
2) GENERALLY speaking, the government can’t require a school to monitor all “_____” and to require that the school “encourage reporting” of such behavior. It certainly can’t require a school to take steps to reduce “_____”–for example, requiring those who are accused to show up and defend themselves, even when the accuser and/or judge is well aware that the behavior isn’t believed to cross the line of illegality. The fact that some “______” may be illegal is not a justification for early intervention, because the early intervention is designed to stifle behavior which isn’t illegal. And even though any reports are merely subject to review and a hearing, the oversight does not cure the problem: Even if the school didn’t actually take action in response to a report of “______”, the reporting alone would be a chilling act: it’s an increased defense burden, it obviously increases the chances of a wrongful conviction, and it chills legal behavior.
3) The very, VERY, few exceptions to the general rule are things which are major, immediate, and obvious risks to public safety AND WHICH also have an incredibly high ratio of illegal to legal behavior. Thus, the government can require reports of people building bombs (even if they turn out to be legally doing stump removal) or–perhaps–walking around in face masks and body armor with an AR-15 (even if turns out they’re just walking onto a movie set with fake weaponry.) But it can’t require reports of people carrying guns on their hip (even though guns are often used to harm others;) or people who “look like they’re in the wrong place;” or people who speak out in favor of 9/11; or people who shout “kill all the cops!” and so on.
4) The OCR standard is designed at the least to require or encourage reporting of “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature.”
5) The OCR standard is designed to require schools to proactively address “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature” BEFORE the behavior meets the standard of illegality. By that, I mean that the OCR is expecting schools to “take steps to prevent” the behavior from BECOMING illegal.
6) In other words, the OCR is expecting schools to report, address, and attempt to exercise control over at least some behavior which is known to be perfectly legal.
7) The government can only demand this type of proactive behavior suppression in very rare circumstances, of the type described in #3.
8) Wherever you think the bounds of #3 may be, “”unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature” doesn’t even come close to an exception to the general “no suppressing legal behavior!” rule. We don’t need to clarify #3 perfectly in order to know that the OCR has overstepped.
That’s a great idea, Robert. I’ll go along with that.
Back in the day getting domain names and IP address space allocated was a lot simpler than it is now. To get a Class B block of IP addresses allocated you had to fill out a form justifying your request in an e-mail and send it off to the IANA. You also had to attach a scan of a government-issued ID. The IANA said that you should expect to wait 6 to 8 weeks for a reply.
I speculate that 99.9% of people scanned their drivers’ license. I scanned my Illinois Firearms Owners Identification Card. I got the reply with the block I was allocated 3 days later.
Hm. On second thought, Robert, after reading through the Constitution and the various amendments it seems to me that a State government might a lot more free to restrict your right to vote in Federal elections than it is to restrict your right to own and carry a gun, if in the former case they’re willing to see a reduction in their representation in Congress. I’d have to do some more studying to have a definitive position on that, though.
So are you saying that there should be no requirements for training before gun ownership? Or are you saying that only those trained to shoot guns should be allowed to vote?
There aren’t any training requirements now for gun ownership, at least in the State of Illinois. I don’t see any reason for that to change.
Shades of Starship Troopers, in a way. If you’re not responsible enough to be ready to defend the State you are not responsible enough to have a vote in how it’s run? Interesting idea….
I can arrange ideas in linear fashion, Amp, but they don’t come to me that way. What will it take to get comment edit fixed?
It seems to me that Robert is talking about ID, not permits – that you should have to present the same kind of ID to exercise the right to vote as you do to exercise the right to buy a gun (which does not require proof of training, generally).
But if you want to extend the metaphor in the direction you’re going, it would make more sense that if you need to get training in the use of a gun to buy a gun, you should need to get training in the use of the vote to cast a vote. That’s going to possibly take you in the direction of education or literacy tests, though.
Hm. An educational test prior to exercising the right to vote has been struck down. Could an educational test prior to exercising the right to buy a gun be struck down on the same basis?
Yes, I was talking about identification, not training – not sure where that came in.
But that said, there are no and should be no training requirements for buying a gun. (For concealed carry permits, such training requirements (or at least proficiency-demonstration requirements) are reasonable.)
That said, if it weren’t for the history of such tests, and the vast potential for abuse of such tests, I would be all in favor of a civics test as a barrier to vote – but the modest upside of such a test is swamped by the massive possible downsides. Same is true of some kind of test for gun ownership; it would just turn into a method for anti-gun localities to impose their preference against the nationally-based civil right.
Oh, I don’t know. The concept of “you have to be trained to exercise a civil right” is growing in various fields. Sen. Durbin (IL-D) wants to pass a media shield law to protect people exercising their right to free speech – but only journalists would have the benefit of the law. Apparently he thinks that the First Amendment protects a class of professionals (he doesn’t know if bloggers and tweeters are or should be protected by the law) who generally enter the profession via journalism or media school, not the function of speech itself. I wouldn’t be surprised if before you know it he’ll figure out that you need to have government certification of a particular level of training before you can be considered a journalist and get the protection of the law.
Well, I am getting my blogger news site back fairly soon, it looks like, so I’ll push hard to be a test case, Ron. (Anybody want to pre-fund my legal defense team? I’m pretty sure I’ll need one this time around. I don’t have small children at home any more; the gloves are off.)
This ignores the point that other rights don’t have quite the same level of risk to others that concealed carry (not just gun ownership) does. If I worship “poorly” (whatever that means) because I blew off Sunday school, there’s pretty much no chance that anyone will be killed. And speech that can get people killed (“Fire!” in a crowded theater, for example) isn’t constitutionally protected. Compare that to someone with a concealed-carry permit who can’t hit the broad side of a barn trying to play hero and shooting an innocent bystander.
That doesn’t mean I think you’re wrong that the level of training required is intended as an artificial barrier. It probably is. Personally, I would rather see something based on competency than something based on hours of training. However, I also don’t think some level of training to ensure public safety is unwarranted. It takes a *hell* of a lot more than 16 hours practice to be allowed to operate a motor vehicle, and travel is also a constitutional right. (Driving isn’t, technically, but if you’re going to go on that level of technicality, “the right to keep and bear arms” says nothing about being allowed to conceal said arms.)
“This ignores the point that other rights don’t have quite the same level of risk to others that concealed carry (not just gun ownership) does.”
Goldwater for President!
“If I worship “poorly” (whatever that means) because I blew off Sunday school, there’s pretty much no chance that anyone will be killed.”
Welcome to the Finsbury Park Mosque!
“And speech that can get people killed (“Fire!” in a crowded theater, for example) isn’t constitutionally protected.”
Completely wrong.
And, I was wrong about travel. It’s in legal precedent, but not spelled out in the Constitution.
I’d love to – if I could find an instances of that happening. People keep waving around the hypothetical case of someone carrying a gun who looks to shoot a miscreant and instead hits a innocent bystander as a reason to add restrictions to civil rights. But as we all learned from our science courses in high school, facts trump hypotheses. And the facts are that regardless of what levels of training various States do or do not impose, this doesn’t happen. Because believe it or not, people who buy guns legally are responsible people who understand their limitations and who in any case are highly unlikely to actually encounter such a situation.
It never fails to amaze me that people with a liberal/leftist viewpoint will roundly condemn stereotypes applied to women, homosexuals, poor people and racial and ethnic minorities, but will presume that people who choose to keep and bear arms are “gun nuts” who are irresponsible self-appointed vigilantes and will risk shooting down innocent people.
Cool. Then restricting the right to openly carry arms is unconstitutional?