Moral confusion, brought to you by the opponents of Proposition 8

Josh Rosenau, our friend at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), is now seeking help in defining important words in the debate over Proposition 8 in California. There must be something in the water over there at NCSE. These are the same people who can't make a distinction between creationism and Intelligent Design.

But at least we are now seeking clarification of terms. We should probably be thankful for small things.

Rosenau has been defending the folks over at Intolerance Central (that's the Proposition 8 opposition) by trying to claim that gay blacklisting of people who financially supported Prop. 8 is perfectly acceptable since it is the same as a boycott, but that pro-Proposition 8 boycotting of businesses who opposed Prop. 8 is totally unacceptable because it is the same as blackmail.

I know. I thought the same thing. This is what moral confusion looks like.

In a comment on one of my preceding posts, Rosenau asks:

Could you, for the sake of those of us whose dictionaries have the word "miscegenation" but are oddly lacking "miscagenation," distinguish what makes a blacklist different from a list of companies to boycott? And while you're at it, throw in a definition of blackmail.

Gladly.

• A boycott is an economic action directed at a business entity whereby notice is given to the entity that it risks loss of business as a result of certain activities the prospective boycotter finds distasteful. It threatens loss of business and seeks nothing more than the proper behavior of the corporate entity. A boycott is considered perfectly legal and ethical.
• A blacklist is a list of individuals that one or more people are threatening with loss of employment or other economic harm. It seeks the harm of specific, named individuals for the purpose of revenge on the part of the blacklister. Blacklisting is legal in terms of criminal law (although the economic harm is actionable in civil court), but is considered unethical.
• Blackmail is the extortion of money from an individual through the revelation of some damaging information unknown to others for the economic benefit of the blackmailer. Blackmail is considered both illegal and unethical.

A boycott is not blacklisting, blacklisting is not blackmail, blackmail is not a boycott. These are terms on which there is wide agreement as to their meanings and distinctions and which no one even questions except when they are trying to defend actions that are indefensible.

The Tolerance Police in action

Check out this video of Prop. 8 opponents exercising their tolerance and respect for diversity with a supporter of the measure.

Remember who are the bigots now (These things are so hard to keep straight anymore).

Courier-Journal asks questions about Obama's election

I was quoted in the Louisville Courier-Journal's article "True melting pot of voters pushed Obama over top," which appeared on Sunday.

Did McCain's defeat mean anything?

George Will, getting it exactly right:

Although John McCain’s loss was not as numerically stunning as the 1964 defeat of Barry Goldwater, who won 16 fewer states and 122 fewer electoral votes than McCain seems to have won as of this writing, Tuesday’s trouncing was more dispiriting for conservatives. Goldwater’s loss was constructive; it invigorated his party by reorienting it ideologically. McCain’s loss was sterile, containing no seeds of intellectual rebirth.

Thanks to Commentary magazine.

Bureaucratizing Charity: Obama's plan to make all Americans community organizers

According to his website, President-in-Waiting Barack Obama has a plan to conscript American youth into voluntary service:

The Obama Administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation’s challenges. President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year. Obama will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55, while at the same time promoting youth programs such as Youth Build and Head Start.

So, how exactly is this different, in principle, from the draft?

I'm not sure conservatives even understand what is wrong with this. So let me give it a try.

A conservative approach to help people in society would involve offering incentives for people to help others, and encouraging charitable institutions outside of government to do the work that is natural to them.

The liberal approach is to mandate that people help each other. It's chief impulse is to systemize and standardize as much of society as possible. In this respect it is socialism on a much grander scale. Socialism is at least content with organizing and controlling the economy. But plans like this one betray an even larger liberal vision beyond socialism. Programs like mandatory community service are a sign that the government is not content with trying to control the economy, but, having grown fat (and powerful) by gorging itself on the economy, it has now set its hungry sights on the rest of society.

But you can't force people to love their neighbor: all you can do is to keep government from weakening those voluntary associations in society, like churches, who can best persuade them to do so. And, unfortunately, programs that try to mandate charity only serve to undermine the natural charitable acts of private individuals operating through private institutions.

It has been pointed out by people such as Thomas Sowell and James Kalb that the modus operandi of the secular liberal elite is to discourage the natural workings of society in favor of large scale rational planning. Here is James Kalb, in his excellent new book, The Tyranny of Liberalism, explaining the underpinnings Obama's community organization plan:

Because liberalism is a principle of government, its triumph arrives with the triumph of the men and institutions favored by the arrangement of power it proposes. It is thus the ideology of the ruling class. The victory of liberalism is the victory of managers, experts, educators, media organizations, and rationally organized bureaucratic and commercial interests. Such people and institutions benefit from large-scale rationalized organization of social life, which demands comprehensive systems of planning, training, indoctrination, and control, and of gathering, analyzing, and disseminating the information large formal institutions need to operate.... [T]he reduction of politics to administration and technique puts power in the hands of those who find it most persuasive and do most to promote it. Liberalism advances their interests and they determine its content.

These kinds of policies are no different, in principle, than the welfare programs of the Great Society and forced busing: they are social engineering programs.

UPDATE: The website has since changed the language from what was quoted above. Wonder why.

Get over it (the election that is)

I have now seen countless posts coming across my feed reader from various conservatives on the web who are expressing wailing and gnashing of teeth over the Obama victory. This is part of what is wrong with modern conservatism: it has invested itself almost exclusively in politics and forgotten about the culture.

We will know that conservatism has righted itself when its adherents don't go into a funk when they lose one election.

In which the Cothranator reminds you of his original election prediction

Although an Obama win is not what I wanted, it is what I predicted. I do not at all hate saying "I told you so," so now I'm going to point out that I did. I told you so.

Here is my post following the very first primary. The date was January 2,008, the day after the Iowa caucuses. The post was titled, "The political ramifications of Iowa." Here are the relevant sections:

1. His success in Iowa propels Obama into the Democratic nomination. For one thing, a third place finish in Iowa takes away Hillary's air of inevitability, and once Obama gets the upper hand, it's over. For one thing, Edwards will have to drop out of the race fairly quickly (because of money), and the majority of his support will go to Obama. Iowa gives Obama, who already has a large base of support (and lots of money), momentum and excitement, and takes it away from Hillary. Also, Obama got the "change" vote--and will continue to get it. Not only that, but Obama has an attractive personality and low negatives--the opposite of Hillary. Oh, and his victory speech was awesome--and Hillary's concession speech was not.

That is, of course, exactly what happened. Then there was this:

4. If Obama wins the Democratic nomination, he wins the general election. Obama has a Kennedyesque air to him: he's young, articulate, and sophisticated. Oh, and America is ready for a Black president.

Got that right too. In fact, I think everything in that post proved out, although my predictions about the Republicans were less specific. I love it when that happens.

I am now accepting offers for political consulting. But my fees just went up.

Why yesterday's election was not a repudiation of cultural conservatism

The victory of Barack Obama in yesterday's election is already being called by some (notably those in whose interest it is for people to think such a thing) a "repudiation" of conservatism. Here are several reasons why that isn't so:

#1: McCain was far from a classical conservative.

#2: McCain did not make the election a referendum on conservatism, in fact, other than supporting the troops, he ran away from traditionally conservative issues.

#3: Although a very high Democratic turnout resulted in narrow losses on ballot initiatives that restricted abortion, same-sex marriage bans passed in states Obama won--Florida and California.

#4: In California, although 95 percent of black voters went for Obama, they supported Proposition 8, the ban on same-sex marriage 70 to 30, indicating that even social conservative voters were willing to go for the "One."

Why the "One" is now the "Chosen One": Five reasons Obama won

Barack Obama won for several reasons:

#1: When people are likable it's hard to believe they're radical.

#2: When you have a likable candidate and a less likable candidate, and there is apparently little that sets them apart on the important issues that are being discussed in the race, the likable candidate wins.

#3: When values issues are ignored by the "conservative" candidate, they can't help him--or hurt his opponent.

#4: When the so-called "conservative" candidate is running in the shadow of a so-called "conservative" incumbent, and the so-called "conservative" incumbent doesn't actually govern as a conservative--and the so-called "conservative" candidate has a flawed record on conservatism himself, then people can be excused for rejecting so-called "conservatism".

#5: The candidate with the consistent message (e.g. "hope") beats the candidate whose message is still a mystery to voters on election day.

#6: When the more liberal candidate runs on tax cuts he looks like the less liberal candidate.

Note: More reasons to be added to this post as I think of them.

Rascists for Obama

Is this like Dave Chappelle's blind black white supremacist?

The chief reason I won't be voting for Obama

The primary reason I won't be voting for Obama this Tuesday:

Is who to vote for a scientific question?

Nature magazine has endorsed Barack Obama. That's Nature magazine, the one that deals with issues of science.

If Nature was endorsing candidates on the basis of where they stood on issues that affected scientific progress or on how they would affect the amount of dollars for scientific research, it would be easy to see its motivations. These would of course put the magazine in the role of a special interest, but at least it would make some sense.

But Nature says that this is not why it is endorsing a candidate:

There is no open-and-shut case for preferring one man or the other on the basis of their views on these matters. This is as it should be: for science to be a narrow sectional interest bundled up in a single party would be a terrible thing. Both sides recognize science's inspirational value and ability to help achieve national and global goals. That is common ground to be prized, and a scientific journal's discussion of these matters might be expected to stop right there.

So why does Nature magazine endorse Obama? Because he more closely reflects the "values of scientific enquiry." That's right, science apparently encompasses values:

... science is bound by, and committed to, a set of normative values — values that have application to political questions. Placing a disinterested view of the world as it is ahead of our views of how it should be; recognizing that ideas should be tested in as systematic a way as possible; appreciating that there are experts whose views and criticisms need to be taken seriously: these are all attributes of good science that can be usefully applied when making decisions about the world of which science is but a part.

In what way is science "bound by, and committed to, a set of normative values"? Science is bound by values? How? According to what definition of science can you say that it involves values in any way? Scientists can be bound by and commited to values, but science itself? A scientist can adhere to a set of values, but not insofar as he is a scientist. He can adhere to them insofar as he is a man, or as he is a philosopher, or as he is a citizen, but not a scientist.

Any values that "science" possesses are derived from something other than science, since science itself stays exclusively on the fact side of the fact/value distinction. The Nature editorial suggests this, but, in the very same paragraph contradicts it. It says one of the "values" of science is placing a "disinterested view of the world as it is ahead of our views of how it should be..." This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. "Values" involve precisely how things "should be." That's what values are.

And what is a political endorsement anyway except a statement saying who people should vote for?

The Nature editorial even talks about science's "core values":

Writ larger, the core values of science are those of open debate within a free society that have come down to us from the Enlightenment in many forms, not the least of which is the constitution of the United States.

The values of open debate have nothing to do with science. They are entirely ethical or political concerns.

Why do scientists say such stupid things? The biggest reason is this: As soon as science starts talking about itself, it is outside its area of expertise. If science is the empirical study of natural things and processes, then, since science is not a natural thing or process, a scientist can't say anything about it--at least not as a scientist. If science is not an object of science (which, according to the definition of science, it can't be), then whatever a scientist says about it he says as something other than a scientist.

You can't talk scientifically about science. You can talk philosophically about science, or ethically about science, or emotionally about science, but the one thing you can't do is talk scientifically about it. And one of the most common mistakes scientists make is to forget this.

The Nature editorial endorsing Obama betrays a complete lack of understanding of science's inherant limitations and a completely confused set of notions about what science is. That's what happens when people try to pretend they're not being political partisan when, in fact, they are.

The editors at Nature should stop hiding behind their laboratory smocks and just come right out and say that they are pushing their own personal political agendas--political agendas that lie outside the scientific enterprise. Anything less just undermines their own credibility.

Sarah Palin and the fruit fly controversy

When you start hearing criticism of Sarah Palin for her position on fruit flies, you know it's time for the election to be over--just so the liberals can have some time to chill and get some oxygen to their brains.

Abortion: a disqualifying issue

A number of years ago, William F. Buckley, Jr. was discussing the abortion issue with a guest on his program, "Firing Line." The guest challenged Buckley's assertion that a conservative should not vote for a candidate who supported abortion. The guest charged that this was "single issue" voting.

Not at all, said Buckley. "Abortion is not a single issue," he explained: "It is a disqualifying issue."

If you had, say, a candidate with whom you agreed about everything, but he was in favor of bringing back slavery, Buckley asked, would you vote for him? No. Because slavery is a disqualifying issue.

Abortion operates in the same way (or should) for a voter who believes that life begins at conception. As Buckley explained, a prolife voter should no more vote for a pro-abortion candidate than he would for a person who favored infanticide--because that's exactly what abortion is.

If Obama failed with $10 million in education dollars, can he be trusted with billions?

The CATO Institute on the Obama's failed education initiative in Chicago and what it means for the country if he's elected.

What McCain's health credit plan would do

Another great chart from Harvard economist Greg Mankiw:

Question: Should voters use abortion as a litmus test?

Answer: Yes.