Back of the Envelope

I'm opposed to the flag burning amendment for several reasons. First, it strikes me as idolatrous to put that much reverence into a symbol. Calling it desecration gives it religious connotations. Second, I believe that the freedom of speech means putting up with much that we find offensive, whether it be marches by the Ku Klux Klan or anti-war zealots burning our flag. Mark Steyn lists some other good reasons to oppose the flag burning amendment:

For my own part, I believe that, if someone wishes to burn a flag, he should be free to do so. In the same way, if Democrat senators want to make speeches comparing the U.S. military to Nazis and the Khmer Rouge, they should be free to do so. It's always useful to know what people really believe.
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Banning flag desecration flatters the desecrators and suggests that the flag of this great republic is a wee delicate bloom that has to be protected. It's not. It gets burned because it's strong. I'm a Canadian and one day, during the Kosovo war, I switched on the TV and there were some fellows jumping up and down in Belgrade burning the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack. Big deal, seen it a million times. But then to my astonishment, some of those excitable Serbs produced a Maple Leaf from somewhere and started torching that. Don't ask me why -- we had a small contribution to the Kosovo bombing campaign but evidently it was enough to arouse the ire of Slobo's boys. I've never been so proud to be Canadian in years. I turned the sound up to see if they were yelling ''Death to the Little Satan!'' But you can't have everything.

That's the point: A flag has to be worth torching. When a flag gets burned, that's not a sign of its weakness but of its strength. If you can't stand the heat of your burning flag, get out of the superpower business. It's the left that believes the state can regulate everyone into thought-compliance. The right should understand that the battle of ideas is won out in the open.

The bottom line is, if that's how they feel, I want to know about it.

Mickey Kaus at Slate has linked to my Dave Barry Kerry DYKWIA story in order to support his argument that Democrats should be focusing on social equality rather than financial equality. While I certainly think the Democrats can try that, I believe that the idea of social equality is too deeply seated in the American psyche for one party to really take ownership of it. At least, not without a fight. They've certainly tried, and folks such as Howard Dean are not at all shy of painting Republicans as elitist. Kaus may be right that ceasing to equate financial equality with social equality might make the attempt more effective, but I have a hard time imagining them achieving much success as long as the Limousine Liberal is so iconic of the American Left for working class Americans.

In any case, I'm grateful for the link, as it resulted in over 400 visits yesterday and likely over 500 today. I'd like to know how Mickey found the story, given that he linked to my new blog rather than my old one, which would have been the case if he had followed it from the larger blogs who initially linked to it. I'm wondering if I can once again thank Google's inexplicable love for me.

According to most news articles this past week, Terri Schiavo's autopsy has determined that she really was in a persistent vegetative state:

An autopsy on Terri Schiavo backed her husband’s contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state, finding that she had massive and irreversible brain damage and was blind, the medical examiner’s office said Wednesday. It also found no evidence that she was strangled or otherwise abused.

It's taken me a week or so to comment on it, but as it took me weeks to comment on the Terri Schiavo case in the first place, I think the delay is fair. The question being asked is whether those of us who opposed ending Terri's life recant our positions now.

Well, the first question is whether Terri has been proved to be in a vegetative state, and Serge at Imago Dei, who has actually read the autopsy report, says no:

Neuropathic examination alone of the decedant's brain - or any brain, for that matter - cannot disprove or prove a diagnosis of persistent vegetative state or minimally conscious state.

The autopsy has confirmed much of what we know and has brought about some new questions. I am personally glad both that Terri did not suffer from an eating disorder and that there is no evidence that Michael Schiavo... [caused] her injury.

For the moment, however, let's say she was in a persistent vegetative state. I still don't regret opposing the removing of her feeding tube, and I think that the best way to demonstrate why is with an analogy.

Let's say that instead of what we are dealing with, we're dealing with a lynching--a man, possibly innocent, being hung by a mob without a trial. Now, suppose I have three reasons to oppose the lynching: first, because the man might be innocent; second, because it is a miscarriage of justice; and third, because I oppose the death penalty in general and don't believe anyone should be put to death no matter what his crime. Now, several months after the lynching, irrefutable proof comes out that the man was guilty of his crimes. I doubt that my liberal friends would now say that I have no reason to oppose the lynching. I might feel some relief that at least an innocent man wasn't killed, but I still have plenty of reasons to believe that the lynching was wrong, to, in fact, support prosecution of those who carried it out. He wasn't innocent, but he was hung before we discovered that. That is still a miscarriage of justice, the crime of murder for those who did it and accessory to murder for all the others who participated. And if I oppose the death penalty in general, then it wouldn't have mattered whether he'd been given a trial or not, I'd still think it was wrong.

Now, I think of the Terri Schiavo case in similar, although not identical, terms. I did not think it had been sufficiently demonstrated that she was in a Persistent Vegetative State, and if it's now been established, that doesn't change the fact that it wasn't demonstrated before she was killed. Which brings me to the second reason, the miscarriage of justice. This is, admittedly, the weakest point of the analogy, as according to the courts, the law was followed to the letter. The problem is that I don't entirely trust the courts. They first overturned and then sidestepped the laws passed by the state and then the federal legislatures. I am one of those who think that the courts in this country are operating outside of their authority, and the fact that they're the ones who define their authority is hardly reassuring. Perhaps the lynch mob analogy isn't precise, but sometimes it feels right. Judges and police often stood aside to let lynch mobs do what they wanted, sometimes they even participated--that didn't make it right or legal. Finally, while I don't oppose the death penalty in principle, I do believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt, and I am very reluctant to say that it's okay to end someone's life unless they are a clear and present danger to others. Terri Schiavo was severely brain damaged, but she was not brain dead, and letting her live hurt no one. I don't know whether she would have preferred to live or die as she was, whether she was able to take some limited joy out of the life that she had, or if she couldn't, whether that was sufficient reason to end her life. In a case like this, I prefer to err on the side of life. Her death cannot be undone.

Lileks has a new blog, apparently for the purpose of holding all that screedy political stuff that otherwise clutters up his Bleats. As I read him mainly for his screedy political stuff, this means it will no longer be cluttered up with all that personal life stuff. Here's an example of Lileks's sarcasm at it's best:

The true horror of American Torture has been revealed. Let me make light of it. Says Time:
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The techniques Rumsfeld balked at included “use of a wet towel or dripping water to induce the misperception of suffocation.” “Our Armed Forces are trained,” a Pentagon memo on the changes read, “to a standard of interrogation that reflects a tradition of restraint.” Nevertheless, the log shows that interrogators poured bottles of water on al-Qahtani’s head when he refused to drink. Interrogators called this game “Drink Water or Wear It.”

This is how articles are written, conventional wisdom chopped pressed and formed: the techniques Rumsfeld “balked at” – meaning, I assume, did not permit – did not include actual suffocation, but the use of a wet towel that would induce the misperception of an emanation of a penumbra of suffocation. NEVERTHELESS. Key word, that. Lines crossed not in fact but in spirit. He balked at fake suffocation, aye; NEVERTHELESS the climate of pain and retribution did not forbid men from freely dumping bottles of Dasani on the heads of the detainees. Why, it was a game to the interrogators. “Drink Water or Wear it.” Spiritually, it’s a first cousin to Saddam’s game, “Use Tongue Then Lose It.”

After the new measures are approved, the mood in al-Qahtani’s interrogation booth changes dramatically. The interrogation sessions lengthen. The quizzing now starts at midnight, and when Detainee 063 dozes off, interrogators rouse him by dripping water on his head or playing Christina Aguilera music.

Djinni in a bottle, no doubt.

I've added Lileks's new blog to the blog roll.

Dean Esmay has some good thoughts on sex offender registries:

I know a guy who 25 years ago, when he was 18, intended to force someone to have sex with him, got scared and ran away, and immediately confessed to what he had intended to do when the cops caught him. It's been twenty-five years, his record has been spotless since then, and he's still a registered sex offender.

It's hard to argue against these registries, and to be honest, I'm not going to. Forgiveness is one of the hardest things Christians are called to do, and it's even harder because we are not called to excuse or ignore. Christians often make the mistake of substituting these for forgiveness, thinking if we can consider somebody's crimes not so bad, or if we simply don't think about them, that's good enough. Forgiveness is hard, since it involves a realistic and clear-eyed acknowledgement of the sin that is being forgiven. So what does Christian forgiveness have to say about sex offender registries? I'm not entirely sure--as I said, ignorance of sin is not what forgiveness is about. On the other hand, dredging a long-past sin into light and humiliating the sinner is decidedly not Christian. The warnings against gossip are, I believe, largely for this reason. Still, there is a legitimate public safety concern, and while I think the lists as they exist (anyone who's ever been convicted of any sexual crime, but not other violent offenders) are not useful or fair, I'm going to have to think about this some more before I reach a conclusion. I agree with Dean entirely on the voting rights of ex-felons who have served their terms:

While there is a certain irony to the notion that Democrats seem anxious to boost the convict vote because they know it will help them, I have to say I find Republican attempts to ban anyone who was ever convicted of anything to be, uhm, what's the word? Oh yeah: draconian.

What on Earth ever happened to the mentality in this country that once you'd worked off your sentence and paid your debt to society, you were a free man (or woman) and no longer persecuted?

Of course, I might have an easier time accepting Dean's arguments if I had greater faith in the criminal justice system's ability to reform convicts.

Thomas Sowell has some useful thoughts on condescension towards "menial" jobs:

Sometimes it seems as if liberals have a genius for producing an unending stream of ideas that are counterproductive for the poor, whom they claim to be helping. Few of these notions are more counterproductive than the idea of "menial work" or "dead-end jobs."

Think about it: Why do employers pay people to do "menial" work? Because the work has to be done. What useful purpose is served by stigmatizing work that someone is going to have to do anyway?

Is emptying bed pans in a hospital menial work? What would happen if bed pans didn't get emptied? Let people stop emptying bed pans for a month and there would be bigger problems than if sociologists stopped working for a year.
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Many low-level jobs are called "dead-end jobs" by liberal intellectuals because these jobs have no promotions ladder. But it is superficial beyond words to say that this means that people in such jobs have no prospect of rising economically.
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You don't get promoted from such jobs. You use the experience, initiative, and discipline that you develop in such work to move on to something else that may be wholly different. People who start out flipping hamburgers at McDonald's seldom stay there for a full year, much less for life.

My first job was as a grocery store bagger when I was in high school. Yes, a bagger, not even a clerk or a stocker, much less a manager. I had that job for about six months. I won't say that I really loved the job, but it was a useful experience, and it gave me some extra cash. I quit the job when I started my senior year in high school, since I wanted to focus on my school work that year. My point, of course, is that this "dead-end job" wasn't really a dead-end for me, and I'm glad my parents convinced me that, no, I really didn't have too much dignity for such a job.

Incidentally, this job gave me a new appreciation for Blue Laws. Blue Laws are laws that restrict businesses from operating on Sunday, sometimes requiring limited hours or preventing them from selling alcohol. I know people always complain about being protected from shopping on Sunday, but Blue Laws are not for the protection of the customers, they're to protect the employees. No matter how often I requested Sunday off, I never got it, and I went without church more often during that time period than any other time in my life. I had similar problems trying to avoid working closings on school nights, and I found myself not getting home until after midnight at least twice a week. I have no idea how I got my homework done during that time.

This article by Jeff Jacoby contains one of the more insightful things I've seen someone say about slavery reparations (via Right Wing News):

America long ago paid the price for slavery: a horrific Civil War that killed 620,000 soldiers, more than half of them from the North. It is as vile to insist that white Americans today owe a debt for slavery as it would be to insist that black Americans owe a debt for freedom. What the reparations extremists are demanding would make a mockery of historical truth and inflame racial strife. Their cynicism is toxic, and corporate America had better find the courage to say so.

I've talked about slavery before on this blog, generally in the context of Christianity, but I think one point which I like to emphasize is this one by Thomas Sowell:

To me the most staggering thing about the long history of slavery — which encompassed the entire world and every race in it — is that nowhere before the 18th century was there any serious question raised about whether slavery was right or wrong. In the late 18th century, that question arose in Western civilization, but nowhere else.

Now Sowell isn't completely correct here, as slavery had been challenged before, but it was generally the same religious motivation at work then as in the 18th century.

Tom Harrison has a great post on making sure that math tests can't indicate achievement:

I occasionally teach math, and I’ve noticed a problem. It sometimes happens that one or two students will do conspicuously better than their peers, and two or three will do far worse. This is a bad thing, because it makes some students feel bad. It’s also bad because the better-performing students might feel superior to the others. What we want is for all the students to feel good, but not too good. It’s not good enough to work for less badness and more goodness. We want uniformity. It’s only through uniformity that we can achieve meaningful diversity. Then both the best and worst students will be threads in the rich tapestry of diversity that enriches us all.
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Perhaps the easiest approach is to include a few random-number multiple choice questions, like “What number am I thinking of?” Tell them to show their work, and include plenty of scratch paper. Be careful not to include any numbers in the question though, because this can lead to ‘anchoring.’ The naive instructor might be tempted to over-specify, asking, “What number was I thinking of at 2:17 this afternoon?” This will just lead students to choose any answer with a perceived relation to the numbers 2 or 17, or their sum, difference, or product.

Even the most differently-gifted student will notice the oddity in a question like “What number am I thinking of?” A better choice would be:

Define authoritative numbers as positive integers that are products of cognition on a stochastic basis. Which of the following is authoritative?
A) 2
B) The sum of two and three
C) 71
D) nineteen

You can also throw in a few questions where any answer is correct, but be sure to make some provision for the people who don’t answer at all, or who mark two answers. Include something in the instructions like, “A student who leaves a question blank will be assumed to have meant ‘B, Al Gore.’ A student who marks more than one answer correct will be assumed to have meant ‘B, Al Gore.’ A student whose intent is unclear will be assumed to have meant ‘B, Al Gore.’” An old standby:

A number X is multiplied by the sum of two and three; The result is divided by five. What is X?
A) 2
B) 360
C) 71
D) nineteen

I would definitely fail this sort of math test. My mind simply cannot accept questions like this. I would write a full essay, explaining in great detail why the question was wrong, rather than go through with the farce of selecting an answer. And trust me, while there may be no wrong answer to this sort of question, ticking off the teacher is a great way of assuring that your answer is marked wrong. For a related article, check out my exam-taking tips.

The blogosphere is abuzz with the revelation that Kerry's undergrad grades were worse than Bush's. So apparently, he's not any smarter than Bush, is he? You'd hope that would give the "Bush is a moron!" crowd something to think about, but it probably won't. They didn't show any interest in the earlier indications of this, after all. And as I said at the time, this doesn't really matter. While you don't want the president to be an idiot, raw IQ is hardly the main criteria you look for in World Leaders.