I've moved.

Part of what's kept me busy is moving the blog to a new site, one that doesn't suck. That is, not blogger. Check it out, update your subscriptions and bookmarks.

New site: http://exercisesanity.com/blog/

I'm busy.

Posting will probably resume this weekend.

Desecration of the Jefferson Memorial

Back from the road trip, and I find this story. A group of libertarians were celebrating Thomas Jefferson's birthday at the Jefferson Memorial by dancing and generally being happy. No, that's not the desecration. The desecration is that they were ejected from the Memorial by the police, and one celebrant was arrested for asking what law they were violating.

What. The. Fuck.

Watch the videos.

As one of the celebrants says on the video, this is not the America Jefferson wanted, and he would be ashamed. I know I am.

Road Trip!

I'm flying to Seattle this afternoon, and driving back to Austin with a friend. Back on Thursday.

Children in a Libertarian Utopia

Several related topics have come up in just the last couple days that I'd like to clarify my position on. People still seem to labor under the impression that libertarians, in general, should be opposed to government interference in just about anything. My last post about Orson Scott Card contained this quote from me:

"In Texas, where I live, the religious right successfully blocked legislation requiring that all girls get the HPV vaccine. That is uncivilized."

To which Robert O asked:

"Wouldn't that be a good thing, considering your otherwise libertarian leanings? Or perhaps I'm misunderstanding your point."

Children don't have rights the same way as adults do. (We'll leave aside the debate about how you decide if someone is an adult). They don't have the capacity to make good decisions about their well-being and future. A parent does not have the right to abuse a child, or even endanger their well-being. Negligence is a crime. It is a common misconception that a libertarian should believe that the government has no right to interfere with how people raise their children. This is not a libertarian position, but an anti-federalist position.

In the case of vaccination, parents that refuse to protect their children's health to the best of their ability are not competent as parents. We have a duty, as a society, to guarantee children's welfare, because they aren't adults. It's the only sane way to operate a society that wants to ensure its long-term survival.

Then, the raid on the "polygamist" compound in El Dorado, TX, and, of course, the anti-federalists are throwing a fit about this "government interference". Bullshit. I sincerely believe that if a man wants to have 5 wives, he has that right. But I don't see how that belief should also obligate me to support his dangerous and sick practice of marrying 13 year-old girls. Attention religious nutjobs: Your religion does not give you the right to abuse children, deprive them of an education, or endanger their long term mental or physical health. Jason Kuznicki and Tim Sandefur have more from a true libertarian perspective.

OSC

So, one of my favorite authors is Orson Scott Card. And I'm not just talking about Ender's Game; I really do like almost all of his books. That's all well and good, but OSC happens to have a significant internet presence, and oddly enough for the S.F. community, he's an extremely conservative, extremely religious Mormon, and I find his politics quite revolting. This generates an internal conflict for me: how can he be such a good writer and yet display such extremely poor logical thinking skills?

I've been meaning to dissect one of his political essays for a long time, just for the fun of it. So, I'll start with this old one from last October. The overall point of the essay is that Islam is not a "civilized" religion, and therefore should not be afforded the same status as other religions in the U.S. While I agree with his characterization of Islam, the problem is that he tries to cast the problem as an Islam-only problem instead of one that is applicable to almost all religions. Secondly, I find his solution abhorrent: he essentially wants to limit the free expression of religion. It's typical; for all the screaming the religious right does about the "War on Christmas" and how the evil atheist conspiracy is oppressing them, it's almost always the religious right themselves that are trying to restrict religion... or at least the ones they disagree with.

Card starts by trying to separate his religion from barbarism (otherwise his "solution" might accidentally apply to him). In doing so, he completely glosses over any historical facts that might get in the way. Let's start with this gem:

"There are those who would like to tell you that no religion is civilized, but these tend to be people whose ignorance of history is so profound as to appear deliberate."

I believe there are religious people who are civilized, but in general most religions still promote bad things. Card's ignorance of history is on display here, no one elses. I'm a huge fan of John Shelby Spong, and there are many other religious people I admire, but even their religions have been historically bad. Even today, the Catholic Church prohibits condom usage in countries where HIV is rampant. The Church would rather see people suffer than prevent the spread of this disease. In Texas, where I live, the religious right successfully blocked legislation requiring that all girls get the HPV vaccine. That is uncivilized.

His defense of Christianity as a civilizing influence is even more preposterous.

"While the conquistadors busily planted crosses wherever they decided native Americans needed enslaving, there were in fact Catholic priests who labored mightily -- and with much success -- to prevent as much mistreatment of the native people as they could, and to preserve what they could of their culture. "

This is just laughable. There were such Catholic priests as he described (members of the School of Salamanca), but there were many more on the other side. The historical situation is much more complex than he describes. The Valladolid Controversy in Spain in the 16th century was a debate between Dominican priests about whether or not the American Indians were "natural slaves". Whether or not Card believes the conquistadors were "Christian" or doing "the Lord's work", they believed it. At the same time, the Spanish Inquisition was at the height of its power, and autos de fe were regularly held in Spanish America. He continues:

"No one could seriously argue that the conquistadors conquered because of their purported Christian faith. But the fact that in almost every place the Spanish conquered, large populations of Indians survived, can be credited to Christianity. "

No one would seriously argue that Christianity was the sole reason for the conquest of the Americas, but Christianity provided a moral justification for it. The conquerors were able to (and did) do whatever they wanted to further the spread of Christianity. His second sentence is almost trivially true -- in many cases, the natives were only allowed to live if they had converted to Christianity. Is Card next going to argue that the Crusades had no religious motivation or were less barbaric?

Next:

"That's because Christianity, like other civilizing religions, has an ideology that attempts to suppress warlike behavior and personal violence. So even though hypocrites could violate Christian doctrine and claim to be Christians while doing it, there were always Christians to openly contradict them, and the plain language of Jesus was on the side of those who abjured violence. "

No true Scotsman, much? To say that people who have committed atrocities in the name of God or Christianity lacked the true faith is just begging the question. Second, he says the "plain language of Jesus", which conveniently gets him around many of the worst atrocities in the Bible. Is he going to disavow the Old Testament entirely? Fred Phelps has good Biblical justification for his horrendous views. To ignore that is to be willfully ignorant. Third, many religions give much clearer moral precepts than Jesus did; to borrow a point from Sam Harris: Jainism gives a much clearer moral justification, in a single sentence, for not doing harm than Christianity ever has. Yes, Jesus also said "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", but this is mitigated by various other Biblical passages. People of faith pick and choose which things they live by. The contradictory passages in the Bible give people these loopholes. Let's see what else OSC has:

"That is, the plain language of the Quran justifies warfare and killing, and long tradition within Muslim culture takes those tenets literally. There are those who will claim that "Islam is a peaceful religion" and that jihad -- holy war -- is really about "personal struggle." I rejoice that some Muslims choose to take these passages in the Quran figuratively -- but the language is there, and Islamofascist murderers of Al Qaeda, Hamas, the Taliban, Hezbollah, and the theocratic government of Iran take it very literally. "

Hrm... Seems to be the same thing over again. If I took the above paragraph and replaced "Islam" with "Christianity", would anyone bat an eye? For 1800 years, Christians have taken a more literal reading of the Bible and committed equivalent atrocities. Were the Crusades any different than a jihad? They were certainly a holy war. It is only in the last two to three hundred years Christians have become more "civilized". And only 150 years ago in the U.S. were southern Christians using the Bible to justify slavery. I rejoice that some Christians choose to take the slavery-endorsing passages in the Bible less literally nowadays.

Moving on from his comparison of Christianity to Islam, Card now takes up Constitutional interpretation. It's just as wrong.

"The U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, and while that has recently been twisted into an instrument of oppressing and suppressing American Christianity"

Boom, we immediately start out with a strawman. This is a typical canard from the Religious Right. Listen people, preventing you from using the government to further your religion is not oppression. Have your churches been burned? Worshippers forbidden from worshipping? Books prevented from being published? No. All that's happened is that you can't do it with government money and you can't force other people to go along with it. A very recent example of this phenomenon is Sally Kern who went on an anti-gay tirade and was recorded. She now claims that her right of free speech is being infringed upon and that she is being oppressed simply because she is being criticized! No, you moron, freedom of speech is not the same thing as freedom from criticism. By the same token, freedom of religion is not freedom to use the government to further your religion.

"... it is the belief of Muslims throughout the world that it is the duty of good Muslims to kill any Muslim who converts to a different faith."

Again, we see Card ignoring history. How many Protestants were killed in the Reformation because they tried to change religion? Oh, wait, Catholics aren't true Christians. That was just a corrupted ideology, right? Card needs to realize that most Christians don't consider Mormons to be "true" Christians, and that until 300 years ago, would have faced persecution and oppression, right along with Unitarians. Again, his criticisms of Islam are valid; while there are good Muslims and I know several; they find this behavior abhorrent as well. It's entirely unjust to apply this criticism across the board without levelling the same charge at Christianity.

For Constitutional justification of his solution (which we'll get to), he starts by examining current restrictions of rights. First, he presents a limitation on Christians:

"the Supreme Court decided that it is constitutional to ban kneeling and praying too close to an abortion clinic."

This wasn't done on religious grounds, but because it's harassment. It's Christians using intimidation tactics; plain and simple. It's the same reason there are restrictions on protesting or picketing too close to a business. You can do it across the street, but when employees or customers begin to feel physically threatened, you have to back off. It has nothing to do with religion.

What he's trying to do here is make the point that freedom of religion shouldn't be an absolute freedom. After all, some freedoms, such as speech in the case of libel, have been curtailed. What's his solution to the "Muslim problem"? Why, that Muslims shouldn't be permitted to practice their religion unless they specifically renounce violence and the notion of killing apostates. He then uses the example of the Mormon church being forbidden from practicing polygamy as an example of how religious freedom, like other freedoms, isn't absolute.

Excepting from the fact that I disagree with polygamy being illegal, we do already limit some religious practices -- female circumcision, animal sacrifice, etc. But no religion has been censured on the basis of ideas, no matter how repulsive. That is, it's still okay to believe that animals be sacrificed, as long as you don't actually do it. The KKK still preaches that blacks should be enslaved, as long as they don't do it. Fred Phelps advocates that gays should be stoned to death, and as long as he doesn't do anything about it, his belief is protected. Card's solution is nothing but making thoughts a crime. That is a dangerous, dangerous precedent.

In extreme cases of Muslim antagonistic preaching, we already have laws preventing some of that -- it falls under "incitement to riot". We do not need to introduce thoughtcrime into this. His conclusion?

"Meanwhile, however, it is time for is to stop extending the protection of the Constitution to those who, under the guise of religion, are actively promoting the right to deprive Americans of their civil rights -- including the right to continue breathing."

Now we can see his clear bias. His religion actively promotes depriving many classes of people of their rights -- gays the right to marry, women the right to their own bodies. Give me a break. That stench is rank hypocrisy. He claims that Islam needs to prove itself "worthy of the protections of the Constitution. " That position is positively insane. You don't have to be worthy of rights -- they are universal. Even the most heinous murderer is due the protection of the Constitution -- and can only be deprived of some of those rights after due process! Instead, he wants to summarily dispose of the rights to freedom of conscience to an entire religion. This screed amounts to nothing more than "The Constitution should only apply where I think it should apply." What a joke.

Dr. Miller's Lecture

Well, Kenneth Miller's lecture at UT last night was awesome. Even better was that I got there very early and got to talk to him. He was generous enough to talk to me for about 20 minutes. I didn't think it was possible to like him more than I already did, but he was very cool. I asked him what he thought about PZ getting thrown out of the Expelled movie, and he just laughed. We talked a little bit about the "framing" issue (see here, or just go to ScienceBlogs and search). I also asked him how he got along with Dawkins, and he told me a great story about Dawkins correcting part of Finding Darwin's God (something very minor about physics), and how much Dawkins liked the book in general. Of course, Dawkins disagreed with almost the entire thing. But it's positively great that rational people can disagree about such things (I exclude fundamentalists from the "rational" categorization). The world would be boring otherwise.

The lecture itself was very entertaining. Dr. Miller is very funny, and his presentation was very slick and well-done. I can easily believe that his biology classes would be excellent. You can watch online here. I highly recommend it -- if you aren't familiar with the creation/evolution debate, this is a good primer. I couldn't stay for the Q&A period though, which seemed like it got off to a good start.

The John Adams Project

The ACLU is working hard to provide good legal counsel to the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay: The John Adams Project. At the very least, read the overview, the goals, and the background. If you can, please consider joining or donating to the ACLU. This is an important project.

No doubt many of the anti-ACLU crowd considers this an anti-American project. This position only reveals their ignorance of history and the principles this country was founded on. If you doubt this, read the title again. John Adams made a stand for 8 British soldiers accused of killing civilians. He took the job on the principle that all defendants have the right to a fair trial and to face their accusers. That right has subsequently been denied to hundreds of prisoners under the Bush administration. As a country, we have betrayed what John Adams risked his career, livelihood, and his personal safety to establish in this country's infancy.

Please, support this project. Pass the word.

“One of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country.” -- John Adams on his defense of the British soldiers

Stupid CNN Editors

The CNN frontpage had this headline on the right: "1 in 3 kids abused first week of life, study finds". My first reaction was "What the hell???" So, of course, I clicked the link.

What the study (and the article) really says is this: "About 1 in 50 U.S. infants are victims of nonfatal child abuse or neglect in a year... and found nearly a third were one week old or younger when the abuse or neglect occurred." So, one-third of 1 in 50 were abused in their first week. Stupid editor, or intentional panic mongering to get you to click the link?

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Update: They fixed it.

Dobson and McCain

James Dobson, founder of "Focus on the Family", apparently doesn't like John McCain, saying he has "not reached out to 'pro-family leaders' or changed his views on positions that 'trouble' social conservatives, pointing to the candidate's support for embryonic stem cell research and stance to allow states to set their own definitions of marriage". Dobson also said he disagreed with McCain on calling for "more collaboration with allies, closure of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and a new global warming treaty."

Wait, what? I thought those were the good things about John McCain. Dobson's point is that McCain has "failed to unite the GOP", and thus we can again see why the two-party system is just broken. There are more than two possible points of view, and when so many people have to be pigeon-holed into only two parties, the mentality becomes 'if you aren't with us, you're against us'. It's ridiculous. On that note, I'm reading Chuck Hagel's new book, America: Our Next Chapter, and I hope to have a review up this weekend.

Vaccines and Autism

Ah, I love people who don't understand science or statistics. This CNN article is about how some parents believe that vaccines have caused their children's autism. For example:

Dr. Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, says the connection between vaccines and autism is nothing more than a sad coincidence... "The studies compared autism rates among populations of children who did and did not receive the MMR vaccines, and among those who did and did not receive vaccines containing thimerosal. It's been asked and answered: Vaccines don't cause autism," Offit says. Michelle Cedillo's parents disagree. "I think there is a link," says Theresa Cedillo, Michelle's mother.

Wow. She disagrees. Personally, I go through the day disagreeing with facts all the time. No, wait, that would be the definition of insanity.

Kenneth Miller at UT

Dr. Miller will be at UT this Friday, April 4th at 7:00pm in Welch Hall. Full details here.

While I don't agree with Dr. Miller on religion, I respect his work and his writing a lot, so I'm looking forward to hearing him talk. And getting my book signed.

Let's Protect Marriage

An article on CNN details how heterosexual marriages are being protected. Ha, ha, just kidding. The article's really about how some people in this country are still deprived of rights and benefits so many of us take for granted. The background is this: Ralph Martinelli works for Konica Minolta and is married to Robert Ryan. They previously lived in New Jersey, which does acknowledge gay marriage, and the company extended health benefits to Ryan. Now they've moved to Idaho, which doesn't acknowledge gay marriage. The company has since seen fit to retract Ryan's benefits because they can.

Now, there are several things wrong with this story. First, these two should have done their research and figured out what might happen when they moved. I hope that they moved to serve as a testcase, though. If so, kudos -- not enough people in this country are willing to do things like that to challenge unjust laws. But I find their surprise at this situation very odd.

Second, Konica Minolta didn't need to retract Ryan's benefits -- it's up to them, but since the state (Idaho) doesn't require them to like New Jersey did, they've retracted this. The company is well within its rights to offer whatever benefits they want to employees, but this is still surprising that a company could be so oblivious to an employee relations trap. I'll reiterate: Konica is within their rights as a private entity to do whatever they want in terms of employee benefits, but why is Martinelli still loyal to a company that hasn't shown him any loyalty?

As the spokeswoman for the Idaho Dept. of Insurance said: "[Domestic partner benefits are] legal in the state, but we don't keep track of which companies offer [them]." I would think that maintaining equivalent benefit level would be a part of any company moving package.

Then we get to protecting "normal" marriages. Idaho has a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. The Idaho Values Alliance, who helped draft this amendment said: "The amendment was meant to protect the institution of marriage". I've always been trying to figure out how laws such as these protect marriage. Are heterosexual people going to get a divorce if they see a gay couple on the street? Seems like these laws are really just designed to punish gays. Which they probably are.