Drugs/Drug Culture

In my head, I've been writing this post since at least May 2007. In that month, I wrote a post about "The Social Norms of Intellectual Dissidents". It's one of my favorite posts, but I spent the whole of it tip-toeing around the main issue in my mind. Since it's relevant here, I'll go ahead and quote the relevant parts in full:

I support decriminalization of marijuana, but I don't and cannot allow myself to smoke it (at all, ever) as while the law is unjust, the illegality of the act is something I feel should be officially overturned, rather than quietly disregarded.

It is here that I have my biggest break with drug culture in its aspirations, and I'm well aware that I may be creating an artificial distinction. My stance and my point seem far more valid in the 1960s US than they do in the present one, and perhaps that's because of the point I made later in that post:

This is the stand of the moderate intelligentsia, and it's saving grace is that their ideas are easier to legitimize than what happens at the fringe. It helps to defy stereotypes and bring people around, and it slowly changes attitudes, usually only slightly (at most a generation or two) ahead of the common perception.

My thinking in that post was that drug culture, from hippies to hipsters to the drug culture of punk rock and now to such phenomena as "urban" crack and rural meth use, was forcibly distinct from mainstream society. Rather than making drug use more common and everyday, drug culture instead served to alienate most people and made demonization of drug users easy. A "War on Drugs" in this country was possible and supported in a way that a "War on Booze" seems impossible today. Of course, this nation once had prohibition of alcohol, but that was overturned in a depression (haha) and after a decade of realizing that people would still consume alcohol legal or illegal. It was also ended under the realization that the social cost of outlawing alcohol, especially the rise of powerful gangs and criminal empires, outweighed the social goods of banning it.

There are many today who call for an end to prohibition on similar accounts - after all, isn't it the common knowledge of the collective American psyche that marijuana is really not a harmful thing at all? (Editor's note - that previous sentence is hyperbole and quite possibly untrue) But there are very interesting distinctions made here - I will advocate completely for the decriminilization, and maybe even for the outright legalization, or marijuana, but I will go to great lengths to say that I don't want this for myself, that I don't ever intend to partake of the drug, and that I think the illegality of the drug is wrong more than I think the drug is right. I do this because I don't want to be associated with the societal images of drug culture, and because I really have little fondness for being smeared with the same revolusion that has motivated US politics agaisnt the far left since the sixties.

The problem with living this fine distinction is that the culture of the US has moved faster than the intellectuals defending it. As of 2001, 77% of US teenagers surveyed admitted to having at the least tried marijuana. That's no minority sentiment - that's an overhelming majority of the population. Not an exclusive majority, and the figures for current use are just under half of the population, but that is still an awful lot of people. Enough to not constitute fringe groups or minorities, beyond the fact that they are teenagers. And that, soon enough, becomes a majority of the population - no one who was a teenager at the time of the survey is a teenager now. Given a generation or two, casual (and perhaps infrequent) drug use will be part of what is officially normal in American society. And it's worth adding to that - for the societal change to take effect, this will require drug users to live into thier forties and fifties, and probably even into old age. That can't be done without responsible, sane drug use, and it probably can't be done with the drugs that have high mortality rates. Our population will self-select what is minimally harmful, what one can use and still function in society, and what is and always will be a bad idea.

Ending prohibition of alcohol came with the realization that some societal woes are to be accepted, but that criminalizing an activity found to be generally accepted and practiced is the better way to go. This is no better exemplified than in the "If-by-whiskey" speech (hat tip NoraReed). Given another decade or so, I imagine that marijuana will become decriminalized more generally, if not legal, and that it will be accepted as both a medicine and a drug than can safely be used in moderation. And my guess is that, as this becomes more and more openly mainstream, drug culture itself will fade into the background, and people's immediate reactions to news about a drug will no longer be based on their disapproval of stereotypes about drug users. (Similarly, I also hope the same for people's reactions to Christianity no longer be based on fear of the religious right, but that's another post.)

Rick Warren, Obama, and the Center in American Politics

For more or less every person vaguely in the US political blogosphere, and especially for those people who care about social issues, the big looming discontent this week has focused on Barack Obama's selection of Rick Warren as the minister to give the inaugural invocation. And this is good - in our participatory democracy where personal views matter as much as stated policy aims, we as the public, as the pale apparition of new journalism, and even alongside the white elephant of old journalism (a term of endearment, that) have a right and a duty to examine in as much detail the little signifiers which could become the big signifiers.

There's some real grounds for fear here. In the wake of prop 8, and with the side note that the Obama campaign had both "Obama/Yes on 8" and "Obama/No on 8" voters, it seems like the president is not so beholden to the LGBT community as many had hoped. This perceived abandonment is cemented in the minds of many by Rick Warren. After all, he has likened gay marriage to incest and pedophilia. That's more or less an unforgivable offense, right?

Well, yes and no. Which I guess really means no. For many, any nuanced qualifiers (which, if you know me, you know are coming) are not enough. The far left, the progessive left, the left-left, the bleeding-hear-left, social libertarians, and a good many in the moderate left all view this as completely unacceptable. There are almost certainly political scientists right now formulating Obama's political obituary, examining the breakup of the new new deal coalition. First it was the social issues, they'll say. And indeed, I cannot begrudge those who feel betrayed right now, who feel that Obama himself has crossed a line of no return. This is not the first thing to exhaust serious political capital among the left, but it is one of the biggest. And for many, the mere act of the appointment overrides two very important things Obama is doing.

Firstly, Obama himself has a statement of very, very importantly phrased qualifiers. Secondly, Obama is appointing people with far more accepting views to actual meaningful positions.

Here's what I think are Obama's two key points:

• The President-elect disagrees with Pastor Warren on issues that affect the LGBT community. They disagree on other issues as well. But what's important is that they agree on many issues vital to the pursuit of social justice, including poverty relief and moving toward a sustainable planet; and they share a commitment to renewing America's promise by expanding opportunity at home and restoring our moral leadership abroad.

• As he's said again and again, the President-elect is committed to bringing together all sides of the faith discussion in search of common ground. That's the only way we'll be able to unite this country with the resolve and common purpose necessary to solve the challenges we face.

(emphasis mine). Barack Obama's selection of Rev. Rick Warren is not a blanket endorsement of Warren's views and attitudes. It is not even an endorsement of a majority of Rick Warren's views. It is, instead, an endorsement of a few very specific areas of Rick Warren's ministry - Obama says of Rick Warren that "He's devoted his life to performing good works for the poor and leads the evangelical movement in addressing the global HIV/AIDS crisis" (emphasis, again, mine). This is that evangelical movement which, to an outsider like myself, appears to have repeatedly placed itself in opposition to all the issues of social justice I've cared about. No doubt many are attributing the differences in the success of McCain and Bush's presidential campaigns to the evangelical fervor that swung behind Bush, and was more lacking in support of McCain. This is a group I'd more or less written off as "the opposition". Fortunately for me, the political Left, and the United States on the whole, Obama does not see evangelicals that way.

Rick Warren's presence at the inauguration is not the selling out to the religious right that many fear it is. It is instead an acknowledgment of the religious center, which has been missing from our political discourse. Yes, Rick Warren has views which are antithetical to many progressives. But Rick Warren is not alone in that, and while he did speak in favor of proposition 8, and we can disagree with him on that, he does care about global poverty, and he cares about the fight against AIDS. Obama agrees with Rick Warren on those latter terms, and disagrees on the former. This is not a matter of selling out - this is a matter of acknowledging the diversity of our nation. A messy, sometimes frustrating diversity of opinion, but this is a rather vital one. Obama's inauguration will have another minister, a "giant of the civil rights movement" give the benediction. And Obama has made other, more meaningful actions to show support of LGBT people. That list of meaningful actions includes some hesitancy, and it includes some cautious opinions on his part. It also lacks the neat, doctrinaire uniformity that progressives want from their messiah, and we are foolish for wanting this.

This is a nation of diversity, and any leader who adheres so strongly to just one faction is a leader that betrays the core principles of democracy. It does not meant that our voices aren't valid - they are, now, more than ever. But it does mean that the nation isn't monolithic, that the president has to acknowledge that, and that sometimes a nation has to change underneath it's leader to move him in the right direction.

Obama's inclusion of Rick Warren in his inauguration is a sign that being on the left, or holding even center-left views (like an obligation to fight poverty) does not mean one can't express religion. It's a shame and unfortunate that religion in US politics is presently tied to the Religious Right; Rick Warren himself, while an evangelical, can be found much more awkwardly in the center, where his views do not easily align himself to one party - it's an awkward nation where religiously justified condemnation of poverty and religiously explained condemnation of sexual orientation do not share the same ticket, but it's the nation we have been living in. Obama, by including Rick Warren, seeks to bring religion into the discussion on social justice; it's been isolated in issues of social norms for so long that it's hard to remember the more broader applications of Jesus's teachings, the ones that apply out of the bedroom. By including Rick Warren, Obama does not endorse Warren's views on homosexuality - what Obama does do is endorse evangelicals taking an active role in social justice. This is not a move that could be made in a US where a whole side of the spectrum can hold "unforgivable" views. We, as the left, were excited to see on election day that cries of "socialism" and "spread the wealth around", topics for decades off-limits to US politicians, were not run into the ground. Not to say that we should be accepting of Warren's intolerances, but we should open up a dialog where our sound reason can win the day - excluding one side from every discussion because we don't like where they stand on one of them is tragic, and hurts our nation as a collective whole.

If you've made is this far, you've noticed my tip-toeing around the other big issue that upsets the left with Rick Warren's selection. Rick Warren not only actively campaigned against gay marriage, but he is fairly active against a Women's Right to Choose. I've buried this issue, not because I don't think it's relevant, but because it is harder and harder to see the right-to-life (or, if you prefer, anti-choice) side being an overwhelming national movement. The pro-choice fight is more and more of a quiet one -I'm willing to bet that the silent majority is pretty much entrenched on the side of choice in this one. Perhaps they want more qualifiers, refinement in the right, but this is a right that seems to be guaranteed. Not that we shouldn't fight - we kind of have to. But the fight can be won, and noticeable in this election the pro-choice fight had three significant victories - unsurprising in California, welcome in Colorado, and perhaps most profound in South Dakota. Christine over at iMinister made an important note of this in her post-election sermon. Rick Warren is not on the side of history for this one, and while I'm unwilling to say that progress here is irreversible, it is instead in the enviable position of being well defended when even the movement defending it seems to, at times, be on the margin. It's one of the few times I like how effective the silent majority is, and when the silent majority is winnign the battles in the ballot booth, it means the issue is close to safe. Rick Warren's anti-choice actions and opinions do not undermine this progress

There is one last point I have to make here, on this issue. The picture below these words is one of the most heartening signs that progressives will not be lost in this election. That, right there, is New Mexico's congressional delegation for 2009. On the far right (ha ha) is Senior Senator Jeff Bingaman, who has been protecting the interests of progressives nationally and in New Mexico for twenty five years. The remaining men in the picture (L to R, Ben Ray Lujan, Martin Heinrich, Tom Udall, and Harry Teague) are New Mexico's three congressional representatives, with the exception of Tom Udall, New Mexico's new Junior Senator. For all the symbolic angst that may arise about Rick Warren's stands on social issues, these are five reliable votes against those initiatives. For all the doubts about Obama's sincerity to his supporters on the left, these are five votes that will pull him further to where he should be. And for every move made to combat AIDS, and for every move aimed at fighting poverty, these are five votes that will reliably side with progress.


And that dichotomy mentioned above, where people work together on some but not all issues? That's more or less exactly what the Obama administration is about. It isn't an exclusion of hated opponents, a condemnation of outsiders by those in power, or even a takeover of government by the left. It is one of the ironies of this campaign that the Senate's greatest moderate in recent memory campaigned against a candidate identified with a fringe, only to have the roles reversed on the campaign trail. Obama won the election by a majority of voters not because this nation has become the ideological equivalent of San Fransisco, but because Obama's appeals, which endeared him to the left, are fundamentally centrist.

Leftist doctrine has, for the past century and a half, focused on competing interests within a society. Marxism, Labour, and the general confusion of class and nationality have played out over the past century to constitute a left that, while it has some popular appeal, cannot decide what to do when in power. In France in the 1930s, the Left achieved an electoral victory at the exact smae time all of Europe was afraid of both fascism and Stalin, and the left was too divided to let itself act as a party of rule. These divisions, inherent in notions of "class warfare" and echoed in such modern times by John Edwards' "Two Americas" speech, give the left its fighting words, but they also drive it away from being acceptable as a party of rule. Obama, from his very first appearance in the media spotlight, has focused on "One America". His notion of hope comes across as leftist because it involves reconciliation - such strange events have driven our nation to see diplomacy, talking to people we disagree with, and earnest attempts at working together for the benefit of all as leftist fantasies, left over from the 1960s. This misrepresents the left of the sixties and it misrepresents the left of now - both have widely differing views on what government should or shouldn't do, and I'm pleased to say that, 38 years after that decade ended, the left in the United States is able to position itself as a party of rule.

It's taken a long time for this, and it's required that most fundamental of compromises - ideals as a driving impulse, instead of being the straightforward rule of government. This is realism, this is pragmatism, and this is inching towards the Center. The center-left became popularized under Clinton and Tony Blair, but they are not so much leftists as real-mild-rightists. They made being identified with the left acceptable, but for all their strengths they lived scared of being seen as weak, as compromising, and as unfit to rule. Clinton, especially, faced the controversy of moral weakness, and his actions almost certainly added a decade to the lifespan of the religious right in US politics. But he did prove that a democrat, a person on the left, could both have that party and govern from the center.

Obama, as outlined wonderfully by fivethirtyeight, has a progressive agenda, with many items that are near and dear to the left and the far left. "But Kelsey," you thousands of readers clamor, "haven't you been saying Obama is a centrist?" Well, yes, yes I have, and you are all astute observers. So here's the big qualifier - the United States, as is, doesn't have a center. We have two points (or parties), both off center, around which voters tend to congregate. The battle for undecideds is so fierce because there is no party permanently camped out in the center - candidates aiming towards the middle have to moderate their views or open the appeal of their candidate beyond sticking on a certain pole. The battle for the loyal, on the other hand, is about convincing polarized voters that their guy this time is really much closer to the far side of the spectrum than they are to the center. This works, to some extent, for the winner-take-all system that is US politics. In other countries with parliaments and governments of coalitions, however, we see something very different. We see a center party, or center-left and center-right parties, or a center-christian party, and these will almost always be part of the ruling coalitions. Not entirely ideologically pure, but they get the job done, and they have, at their very core, a willingness to incorporate some ideas of others with their broad schemes. McCain, as a Senator, represented a clear example of the "across the aisle" spirit that pervades parties of or around the center.

Obama, alternatively, has made his rhetoric his centrist appeal. And he's done more than that - by inviting Rick Warren to the inauguration, he not only clearly sets himself apart from the left (or at least, those parts of the left that find this unforgivable), he also shows the United States where the center is. It's vague right now, and while it disagrees hugely on some issues (again LGBT and Choice), Obama is trying very clearly to connect the center in US politics to social justice. It's a bold move, and one that Obama has certainly taken flak for, but it has done something almost unthinkable - the evangelicals, the ones that elected W twice, the ones that gave Palin her moment and momentum, have found something to agree on with the President. It's allowed the intersection of religion and politics to not be dominated by the Religious Right, and its made the way possible for more openness in dialog. There are consequences for being in the center - every side gets to take pot-shots, and gets to pick more ideologically pure successors. But the center holds because it is where the voters are, and if Obama can use this almost-unprecedented opportunity for reconciliation (unlike that squandered, post-Civil War attempt), he can create a reliable center in US politics, longer-lived than the New Deal coalition, and he can place that center firmly on the left. It will take skill and careful manuevering. And it will take the inclusion of religious moderates and religious liberals. And it will come dangerously close to betraying that ideological purity we're all so fond of. But its doable, and it is a necessity for this nation.

Godspeed.

Rule of Law

This post is inspired by three separate occurrences, two of them fairly recent. They are: 1, the riots in Greece following the shooting of a 15 year old. 2, the questionable value of a life sentence for Texas inmate Son Tran. 3, the 11th hour move by the Bush Administration to allow doctors and other healthcare service providers the right to refuse health services (meaning birth control and abortion). These all strike me as diverse symptoms of a situation in which the rule of law is seen less as a desirable practice and more as a totalitarian imposition. To clarify for naysayers: I'm not in any way opposed to the rule of law; I take issue with laws that are unjust, and laws that work against the interest of most everyone involved. I think these are all examples of law falling into the later two categories.


1. I'll start with the latter. Bush's action will be debated constantly in the coming week (with bonus Baby-Jesus-themed comments), and will most likely be opposed and somewhat overturned by the incoming Obama administration. The move represents several things: a "thank you" to longstanding Bush supporters, another play in decades-old culture wars, and a decision made by an unaccountable elected official. For all of these reasons, despite public sentiment, it strikes me as a profoundly undemocratic move. My intellectual-sparring-partner JR will side with me on the specific issue of rights concerning access to birth control and abortion services, but he will argue against the constitutionality of Roe v Wade. Ignoring the actual impact of changing that decision as it concerns personal rights, there's a democratic sentiment behind it that is worth examining. The case of Roe v Wade is implicitly about abortion rights, but it is explicitly about privacy, and states rights. If there is no constitutional right to privacy, than abortion is an issue left to the states. States, when making the decision, varied much more widely than a simple "legal or illegal", and the decision was localized to small constituencies. Say what you will about the potential for denial of rights that this entails (and don't get me wrong - there is some serious loss of rights going on), it does allow for a more democratic decision to be made, and such decisions have a legitimacy that feels undermined by judicial fiat. The reaction we'll be seeing in the media, the blogosphere, and political action listservs is a very real sense of powerlessness, of an invalidity of the decision made, and a general disagreement with the new ordering of the law. And that's because this is not a change made with political legitimacy. It's worth noting, however, that the whole of the national abortion debate feels that way to many folk, and has produced an incredible wariness in the American public to accept such top-down detached legal rulings. Esteemed legal scholar Lawrence Lessig, when faced with the passage of similar culture-warsy Prop 8, says this

But please, let's not try to win this battle by summoning the Supremes. Even if it is right that this Amendment is contrary to the best interpretation of Equal Protection, let us bring the ideals of Equal Protection to life, by getting people to support them.

It's worth noting that a legal scholar, a man whose life has revolved around various interesting and new arenas for legal battles (code and other laws of cyberspace, copyright), is arguing against a straightforward legal solution and is instead pushing for a solution that has democratic legitimacy.

2. Charles Platt's piece on Son Tran is one I'm going to examine in more depth elsewhere (it is part of an in-process post about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). It's a fascinating story (in that weird, bleak way more common in dystopic fiction), and what stands out from all of it is that, no matter the actual crimes committed by the individual (or, indeed, if they were committed), the punishment seems to be something profoundly useless to society. Confounding this situation is the nature of the person who committed the crime - at the time he was sentenced, Son Tran was 17 years old. Thanks to a Supreme Court ruling concerning minors sentenced to death, he was moved from death row to life imprisonment. Depending on where you fall with your perspective of redemption, rehabilitation, and the changeable nature of humans, the 40 years he is now serving will make perfect sense, seem too short, or strike you as a gross waste of a human life, to say nothing of human potential. Charles Platt is upset by both this individual waste, and by the intended value of deterrence that sentences like this are supposed to have. He writes:

Let’s start with the concept of deterrence. I’ll ignore the death penalty, since the Supreme Court has already eliminated it for people under 18. Thus, we are left with incarceration. Has any study ever proved that the prospect of forty years without parole is a better deterrent than, say, thirty years, or even twenty years? It seems utterly implausible to me that the actions of a teenager in an inner-city gang will be affected by such a distinction. In fact I don’t believe that deterrence is either the effect or the purpose of the long, mandatory sentences that have become endemic in the United States during the past two decades.

The facts laid out are very few in the favor of Son Tran: gang member, confessed to murder, received a reprieve because of a supreme court ruling, not new evidence in his trial. But the gross failure and abuse of the criminal justice system (especially in Texas) are enough to make one doubt the whole validity of criminal justice in the United States. Platt's post at this point descends into a fairly typical "Reagan + Fear + Power + Money + Scared White People = Gross Human Rights Abuses that Shame America" argument, and it says something that this argument can have a standard form. It also poses a very real challenge to the acceptance of the rule of law in America, and it hits upon it from an entirely different angle that the Bush decision. The Bush decision is very much another move in decisions removed from democratic consensus - Platt's argument is that Son Tran's imprisonment is no social good (as imprisonment weirdly is supposed to be) but is instead the result of a poorly-framed democratic consensus. People have been pushing for politicians to be tougher on crime for at least 20-30 years now; what people haven't realized is that as a consequence of this:

Among the adult population of the United States, 1 person out of every 100 is now behind bars. Thus the unweighted odds of going to jail are greater than the odds of being a crime victim.

One could write a separate essay on how the people pushing for politicians to be tougher on crime are different than the people who are more likely to be persecuted by vigilant police forces (white & wealthy versus the poor, nonwhite, and disenfranchised) - I'm not going to comment on it anymore here than to say that, for a worryingly large percentage of the US population, law is seen either as "something to protect myself imposed on other people" or "illegitimate decisions made beyond my own personal control that will get me anyway, and so have no bearing on how I act." That's a breakdown in the very purpose of the rule of law, and of a democratic construction of society - laws have to apply equally, and laws have to be understood as threatening not just "those people", but everyone - especially the people who advocate for the law to be passed.

3. Lastly, we come to the Greek Riots. Others more skilled and/or better paid than I will make their conclusions about such serious anti-police riots in the birthplace of the World's first great democracy. The riots started as anti-police, but as they have continued they have done what all great riots do - become chaotic, divisive attempts to reinvent a status quo. The rioters are unemployed, upset with corruption, and think that the police forces have gotten out of hand - to express this discontent, they have attacked police and alienated their countrymen by destroying the property and threatening the livelihood of many small shopkeepers and business owners. It has all the hints of simmering class war, and rather than doing the democratic thing and siding with small owners as an upset middle class, the rioters are very much in the classical (or is it archaic?) mode of students, working class, and the unemployed so upset with the higher-ups that they willingly endanger and alienate those less outraged than themselves. This is not so much an issue of the nature of the rule of law as an example of a remarkable collapse. And yet, law itself hasn't entirely collapsed - the police exist, are a visible presence in Greece, and the government still stands. But the police are hesitant to act - one of their own is being tried for murder while on duty (the counterclaim is that he was provoked and responded appropriately), and so we have the potential for the rule of law, the semblance of a rule of law, and either a government or a police force unwilling to impose that law on the citizens it exists to protect. As law collapses on the national level, it re-imposes itself interestingly.

The shooting prompted parents all over the country to examine the liberties they have been permitting their children.

“My 12-year-old daughter has been getting text messages inviting her to join demonstrations,” said Constantine Michalos, president of the Greek chamber of commerce. “One of the messages said, ‘Don’t go to school today. We need to show our power on the street.’ I had to lay down the law.”

The riots will not, as many fear, have the effect of the French riots two centuries prior or the Russian riots all of 90 years ago. What they will do, however, is allow for a reforming of society around the rule of law - laws to protect against some of what inspired the riots (police carelessness and political corruption; it's hard to get laws passed against the economy), as well as against the actions taken by the rioters. Chaos like this is curious for it's ability to reforge society - France's Fifth Republic arose as a center-right forced the imposition of the rule of law over both the military and striking students and workers. And violence like this polarizes - while prior to the riots, many were discontent with the status quo in Greece, the value of the rule of law comes to the fore as people gravitate away from the dangers of the chaos and back towards the assurances of stability, becoming increasingly more willing to overlook injustices inherent in that stability as long as it means they have property, livelihood, and are guaranteed some freedom from molotov cocktails. The trick with any society structured around the rule of law, and especially that of democracies, is to balance freedoms with controls.

Stratis Stratigis, former chairman of the Athens Olympics organising committee, suggested he might have an answer. “Our democracy is destroying itself because it misrepresented the right to liberty and equality,” says an e-mail circulating his friends. “It taught the citizens to regard disrespect as a right, lawlessness as liberty, impertinence as equality and anarchy as enjoyment.”

This is a quote from Socrates, the ancient philosopher who ended up being sentenced to death for voicing truths that nobody wanted to hear.

“It’s funny,” said Stratigis. “Those words have a ring about them today.”

Russia, Georgia, and the Stateless

The war on Georgia has turned out to be way more interesting than just "Gah Russia Evil", and even more complex than "Western geopolitical entanglement causes problems". It is, like almost every issue ever, brought about by numerous disparate conditions. Is some of this renewed Russian militarism? Under Putin, certainly. Does the influence of NATO and the West partially explain the precarious position Georgia has placed itself in? Certainly, but lets not forget that the Georgian government had to at least be complicit and was almost certainly deliberate in these plans. But those are factors that exacerbate the situation - they cannot act without a catalyst. In this war, as in so many others, the catalyst is native, and is a desire for self-determination.

Wars for self-determination are among the most complex in existence. In antiquity, the Greek city states fought together to remove an invading foreign force (Persia). As soon as that ended, the Greek city states that had done the most fighting for the independence of others began to form their own empires, becoming the new overlords. More recently, the United States was founded by provinces seeking self-determination enlisting the aid of a foreign ally. Frances motives were not so much about democracy and freedom but about spiting the British, and it is fair to say that Russia is not a big fan of self-determination, but has a major investment in being regional hegemon, and in keeping the West confined to the West.

The province seeking autonomy in this case is Abkahzia. The News Hour had a fascinating segment on the province/nation recently, and I highly recommend it. The people interviewed are well aware that they need Russia to make the split into an independent nation. They've had every other avenue into the international community cut off, and so working with the powerful neighbor to the north is worth it. At this point in time, it looks like the move will pay off, and that they will keep a sovereignty. Russia may even gain an ally. But that situation is only part of what I want to talk about here.

The other part, the big elephant in the room when Russia is supporting self-determination, is Chechnya. Chechnya has wanted to be indepenent and fought for that independence for a surprisingly long time (centuries, or really ever since it wasn't independent). The Olympics have broguht to light another stateless nation, that of "Chinese Taipei", or as they are actually called, Taiwan. China is of course also well-known and well-protested for its domination and control of Tibet. Ever-present in the media and the public consciousness is the fluctuating autonomy of Palestine under Israel. And Iraq has for many brought to light the existence of Kurdistan, which is a state that has parts in Iran, Turkey, and Iraq, and has yet to achieve real independent nationhood.

Adding to this mix, the ever-reliable wikipedia has a list of stateless nations. I didn't count them all, but it looks like it's well over a hundred. There's even an organization of "Unrepresented Nations and Peoples". Unusual for me, I have no real point with this. I just think it is fascinating to know that this world order, this division into color-coded maps and broken sectioned-off territories is so hugely inadequate. It seems nationhood is so enticing that almost any nation has a smaller group inside wanting out, willing to dissolve the collective in favor of the specific.

The Exclusionary Principle

One of the fault lines of "the culture wars" that feed so much into the red/blue right/left state divisions has to do entirely with the fundamental understanding of debates. It's a division on who has a right to speak, on how the debate can happen, and what boundaries separate individual rights/opinions from universal values.

The extreme division goes like this:

• The left believes all points of view should be heard in a debate
• The right believes that acknowledging views they believe to be wrong undermines the very quality of the debate

While this is bleak, it explains the tendency towards repeated mantras and a shouting match. If the people having the debate cannot agree on what positions should be allowed in the debate, progress is impossible.

A few years ago, I would have argued that this is proof of the need for moderation, of a larger center in US politics. The reasonable statement I would have offered would have been a fitting compromise: the left realizes some positions are absurd and is okay excluding the "insane fringe", and the right realizes that some (but not all) positions besides those on the right are worth debating. That's what I would have said.

But I can't say that now. The compromise plan feels hollow. Either side concedes anything, and their whole position is compromised. Both sides agree that a limited set of multiple views are valid, and the debate is limited in ways that are unfriendly to all.

So where do I stand?

I believe in the validity of all points of views, at least so far as they are expressed. That's a personal preference, and there was a time where I would have argued to just be left alone with my views as they affect my person, and let others have their views affect their respective selves. That's the standard position of the left, and if the world had no right it would work out okay. Again, it's a doable enough world view - each to their own is one of the strong American impulses, and its a key part of the self sufficient and independent folk.

But then I heard one of the installments from this series. In the NPR series, we have several pairs of people active in the Boston abortion debate. The pairs are all groupings of people from opposing sides, and the focus is to understand opposing sides as human beings who are decent people, despite the oppositional points of view. It's noble, and it's admirable, and on the whole it works. The pairs do discuss abortion, of course, and that provides the interesting crux of the dialog. With even an "agree to disagree" resolution, both sides would leave with the hope of reconciliation. That doesn't happen, though it is (unsurprisingly) urged by the pro-choice leftists. Instead, one of the women in dialog (I believe Frances Hogan, though I'm not sure) says that (and I'm paraphrasing, as the transcripts aren't free) "I cannot except your view for yourself and my view for myself any more than I could accept you owning slaves while I do not."

It's a hard statement, to have one's notion of liberty approximated to an act that is, at least present-day, synonymous with evil and the very denial of human dignity. And, well, yes, freedom. It's a brilliant statement, the kind that rolls around in ones head for months as an appropriate reply is soused out.

The parallel of "Freedom to abort" and "Freedom to own people" equates the aborted fetus with a born, living human. Slaves are independent entities, while conceived but not born embryos/fetuses/infants are solely dependent on the person in whom they reside for sustenance and exists. Slave/master is a very different dynamic than pregnant woman/child. In the first scenario, we have the rights of two adults in opposition, while in the second we have the rights of one adult and one not-alive-but-potentially-alive being. While I will never stop advocating the rights of youth, I think the most valid legal distinction of personhood can be made between an adult and a fetus.

That's splitting hairs - the idea of that construction is to give one person unfair power over another, and to portray that power as being fundamentally, morally wrong. This is perhaps why so much of the abortion debate lately has spun around defining the legal status of a the conceived but not born - if the law says it's a person when unborn, then the law says abortion is ending a life. No polite way around it, and that's the point of the phrasing (clarification: this is my understanding of how the law would act, and it's something with which I disagree wholeheartedly; the law and moral standards, as can be inferred, often differ wildly). The people who are opposed to this view it as an issue that transcends personal rights, in much the same way that people keeping slaves transcends individual property rights. And here's the trick to dogmatic argument: if you acknowledged the validity of this argument and hold a different view, you admit you are wrong.

Let's move on to this clip. Here we have a Mormon woman who lived with a gay couple (who are parents), and after a month of living with them, her views about homosexuality are unchanged - she can acknowledge them as decent people, but she has to exclude a part of their life from that analysis. It is, in her eyes, a crime against God. The couple asks her to let them be, an "agree to disagree/each to their own" argument, and she finds it unacceptable. She has a belief that overrides the value she places on individual freedom. And then it hits me, as I see people make the reasonable argument and have it fall flat.

Some values are impossible to reconcile.

Not that reconciliation isn't an admirable goal. And not that it's impossible to have intelligent and reasonable dialog with people who are actively opposed to the views one holds dear; the NPR piece is an incredible example of that. But in order to have the debate we want, in order to understand why we're stuck at a shouting match, we have to re-examine the values that go into the debate. "Universal Values" is a particularly tricky term - one definition is for values held by everybody, and one definition is for the actions and values an individual believes should be applied universally. Individual rights are a particular universal value that leads to a lot of controversy, because the left asserts individuals should be free to act as individuals, that many choices (like the right to choose) or personal traits (sexual orientation) are so linked to other accepted values (freedom of religion, rights on consent and marriage) that no sane person can oppose them.

It is wrong-headed to assume insanity on the part of those we disagree with.

Leftists, especially leftist intellectuals *cough*, assume that their values are the correct ones. When you value reason, and you then thoroughly examine beliefs and reason yourself to a conclusion, the inclination is to assume that the position settled upon is right, and anyone else making a reasonable deduction will arrive at that position. This glosses over personal values
that go into the decision, and it fools us into thinking that we're unbiased. People are generally reasonable beings: we differ not because of inferior reason, but because of different emphasis placed on different values. This needs to be understood, because debate cannot exist in a world where we don't know why people are arguing what they are. The repeated fall-backs to scripture or scientific study are moves that say "Look at what I find meaningful. How can you not find it meaningful also?", and moves that are met with "I place little to no value on what you are showing me; therefore, what you say must be invalid."

So where am I going with this? The militant in me wants to adopt the rightist stand that some views are invalid, and that the left will lose the culture wars until it agrees this is the case. But that is, of course, unreasonable. That stance further cements division, hurts understanding, and just leads to better armed camps.

I want to do away with armed camps.

The divisions will remain. It's the nature of assuming someone is inherently wrong - nothing they can do will make them right. But the inherent nature of that wrong should be understood, and the values motivating their action, moreso than anything else, need to be understood. "Agree to Disagree" is a flawed statement, not because of the good intentions behind it, but because of how lightly it treats the division. We can assume people are wrong on an issue and talk about other things, but that doesn't put us in right relationship with that person. It means we are refusing to acknowledge part of their being, and they are doing the same to us, and that is no way to live. Instead, we need to understand our differences, realize that this are reasonable people we are dealing with. Reasonable people with different, sometimes threatening and sometimes terrifying, values, and that those values have worth for the people themselves. To do any less, to gloss over such a key part of a person, is to do a disservice to them, the debate, and any good-faith efforts at reconciliation.

We can have separate camps, but let's not keep them armed.

Two Quick Things

The first is an excerpt from Cory Doctorow's article on the risk of rare events:

The rare – and the lurid – loom large in our imagination, and it's to our great detriment when it comes to our safety and security. As a new father, I'm understandably worried about the idea of my child falling victim to some nefarious predator Out There, waiting to break in and take my child away. There's a part of me who understands the panicked parent who rings 999 when he sees some street photographer aiming a lens at a kids' playground.

But the fact is that attacks by strangers are so rare as to be practically nonexistent. If your child is assaulted, the perpetrator is almost certainly a relative (most likely a parent). If not a relative, then a close family friend. If not a close family friend, then a trusted authority figure.

And yet we continue to focus our attention on the meteor-strike-rare paedophile attack instead of protecting our children from the real, everyday dangers they face from the familiar. This has the twin effects of making our children less safe, and of making adults less free, because we are all subjected to scrutiny on the grounds that we may be hunting children.

The second thing is Budget Hero, which is an awesome game that's been keeping me from more regular summer blogging. It's awesome, no really.