The First 10/5/07

I have no idea what a fellow, in order to reach readers, must write these days. There are the "daily blogs", written as a online journals, that chronicle the "dawn-to-dusk" endeavors their writers embark upon, without political context. Such prose often detail their writers' daily lives, from hurriedly spiriting children to school, attending soccer practice, and making dinner in today's fast paced maelstrom of social complexity. Other daily blogs appear to pick and chose news events, offer commentary, and draw conclusions from chosen stories. These are frequently partisan, with objectivity lost to vitriol. Finally, there are those explicitly partisan blogs, designed to highlight the misfortunes of "enemies", while honoring the actions of supposed comrades. Forgive my simplistic account; I understand that I have noted merely three iconic "blog-types", culled from a spectrum of writing that certainly cannot be so simply labeled.

With this blog, however, should my passion, endurance, drive, and broadband account remain consistent, I'd like to discuss issues and ideas pertinent to many of the myriad topics currently nestled in the blogosphere's open arms. As this represents my first foray into the burgeoning milieu, tonight I hope to merely present some ideas that I hope will circumscribe a template for future ramblings.

I am a social liberal, fraught with Alan Sokal-esque annoyance at the dearth of scientific clarity pervading much of the intellectual left. A fervent reader of Steven Pinker, Dan Dennett, Robert Wright, Leonard Schlain, Michael Schermer, and other modern scientists, I've seen many good ideas, replete with good intentions, destroyed simply for their inquiry into supposed "off-limits" topics.

A Natural History of Rape (Thornhill et al. 2000) is a perfect treatise-written to broaden the scope regarding society's understanding of rape-yet lambasted by gender feminists intent on repressing inquiry beyond the "rape is about power" bumper sticker manifesto. I'll leave the calibrated support to Pinker and others, but the book actually wields statistics, and common sense biological foundations to help better understand, and possibly begin to eradicate one of society's poisonous horrors. Therefore, I may often write about scientific contribution to social and political issues, as well as the "intellectual" backlash against it. I believe certain interest groups on the left have suborned inquiry into very pressing social issues merely because the use of scientific methodology, reason, and statistics may prove that many of these interest groups are led by thoughtless demagogues whose lust for power rivals that of our admittedly "closeted" political leaders.

I will also attempt to interject the modern political discourse with a bit of reality. While I may be a political novice (perhaps proudly), I can easily dissect those issues of import, even when placed against the backdrop of caustic, and often ad hominem blustering. Just as the diatribe leveled at Senator John Kerry (D-MA) for his "study hard/ avoid Iraq comment" was moronic, as he clearly fumbled a joke, so to has the recent infatuation with Rush Limbaugh's "phony soldier" tirade been a useless waste of time and energy. Obviously, Mr. Limbaugh referred to soldiers beyond Jesse Macbeth; yet I doubt he seriously believes that any soldier evincing an anti-war ideology is a "phony soldier". I would assume he meant that any soldier inflating his/her own accolades, or lying about conditions in Iraq for political reasons is a "phony soldier". In any case, congressional resolutions promulgated to censure his words, or to applaud them, are as ridiculous as the nation's infatuation with such utterances. Personally, I believe the moveon.org "General Betray-us" ad was unnecessary, precisely because it attempted to attack Petraues' testimony, when frankly, his own testimony spoke volumes. Instead of focusing on his possible fealty to President Bush, or his own misgivings, the ad insulated his testimony from focus, and hurt moveon.org as an entire organization. Unfortunately, Senator Hillary Clinton's (D-NY) justifiably credulous response to his testimony, when juxtaposed with the Times ad, was muted, and her important concerns seen as an inability to free her opinions from those of a progressive website. Meanwhile, Gen. Petraeus' apparent executive branch subservience was lost in the ensuing melee.

On October 3, 2007, President Bush vetoed expanding SCHIP by $35B. This was perhaps his first fiscally conservative response in some time, though the sacrificed include at least 2-4 million uninsured children. Whether their parents, some of whom might earn as much as $83K annually, ought insure them or not, these children do not have insurance, and SCHIP must be expanded. While a $00.61per pack cigarette tax has been "the post-dated" check offered to finance this entitlement, such a tax may never pass, and if it does, pundits including Tucker Carlson and George Will are correct when they note that smokers are largely lower-income earners least able to afford such a tax. As both correctly asserted, society doesn't particularly like smokers, and progressives need not even rally to their cause when in fact, an expanded SCHIP would be financed from their very pockets.

Entitlements must be viewed just as every other substantive policy, or specific legislation might. All involve trade-offs, and the benefits do not always outweigh the costs, nor are the two often even properly determined. When the Warren Court expanded defendant rights in the 1960's, through Miranda and 4th Amendment requirements, they often ruled with police safety and public right to privacy in mind. The greater loss to police safety a public privacy isue might entail, the greater the importance that calculus became. Very rarely were public privacy and police safety non-adversarial, and rulings often disdained as "activist" even today are framed inaccurately. The 14th Amendment was first applied against the states, and even Miranda, controversial as it was, remained law when revisited in Dickerson. Ironically, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Nixon's conservative appointee, dissented alone in the original case, yet voted to uphold Miranda forty years later. Not every issue appears as divisive upon further inspection; Republicans who legitimately question the financing of an expanded SCHIP are not evil, and progressive organizations focused on social justice are not all comprised of college-age idealists or unpatriotic communists. At least some of the former aren't evil, and some of the latter aren't unpatriotic, depending upon how those terms are defined. As for college aged communists, I assume they've found safe haven beyond the confines of moveon or DailyKos.

What does, however, seem beyond even revisionist history's odd meddling, is the unwavering closed door policy of this administration. When former Office of Legal Counsel Jack Goldsmith (the lawyer who determines whether NSA policies are constitutional), a leading conservative constitutional theorist, both criticizes administration policies, and cannot testify with any revealing candor during Congressional hearings, something is amiss. Yes, the implications of terrorism have changed the stakes of the game, but none of the anti-terror policies that may have run roughshod over our civil liberties appear to have been particularly efficacious. Furthermore, no one has any idea exactly what policies have been implemented, beyond the glaringly deficient Patriot Act. Just as hundreds of corporations sued under the 14th Amendment for their "rights", when the Amendment was meant to provide slaves' rights, the Patriot Act has done far more to catch petty drug dealers than Al-Zawahiri, let alone Bin-Laden. The Bush Administration is comprised of yes-men sycophants who'd rather go to jail than offend David Addington, Dick Cheney, or Bush. Bush himself has asserted an aversion to reading daily memos. He prefers to have them simply recounted by those whom he can rely upon to shape their meanings to suit his fancy. This is dangerous.

Finally, I must address the idiotic partisanship that has not only hamstrung Congress of late, but the public as well. Do you really know anyone, apart from Michelle Malkin, who truly believes that every conservative, or Republican issue, is concordant with their own. I don't. And I know of no Democrats, or liberals, for whom their party offers a recipe for what to believe with respect to every issue. I hope to expound upon this divide in later writings.

Finally, this is meant as an introduction to topics of personal interest, and I would also like to write about music, art, literature, and even consumer products, insofar as I am informed. Life is confined to no single sphere of dialogue, ideology, or vision, to my knowledge. I hope to provide as much of the spectrum as time and energy shall allow.