The Better Of Times

‘O my God,’ I say, ‘do not take me away
   at the mid-point of my life,
you whose years endure   throughout all generations.’ - Psalm 102:24

Today is my 47th birthday.  For the past few weeks, just that thought has put me in a serious funk.  I have no idea why, and that hasn't helped my funk.  For some reason, this particular number has made me sit up over and say to myself, "Crap, I'm getting old."  This past weekend, in a fit of the blah's, I spent quite a bit of time listening to music that was popular back when I was younger.  I watched some old movies, or at least clips from them.  What I saw and heard made me wonder if young folks today had any idea how beautiful their parents were a quarter century ago.  Not just beautiful, but talented and thoughtful.

As I told someone in a comment a few days back, I realized I was having an attack of The John McCains.  Pretty soon, I was going to be out back yelling at the clouds.  That certainly helped snap me out of the funk.

Then, I got thinking.  I realized, with something like happiness, that we in fact live in quite good times.  Oh, I know the economy still sucks, and there's always the possibility that it could all come crashing down around us.  Still, economic conditions rise and fall; I've been through a couple moderate recessions in the past twenty or so years, along with our current sluggish good times, so stuff like this happens.  If I were to measure how I thought about the times in which we live solely that way, sure, I'd probably be even more depressed than I was before.  Thankfully, I don't.

When I was 18, Ronald Reagan was President.  There was a widespread fear that the nuclear standoff between the United States and Soviet Union was far too fragile and any moment the whole thing could be gone in a hail of fire.  I remember Eddie Murphy making jokes about the first black President of the United States having to be in constant motion, dodging the missiles thrown his way.

I graduated college and started my adult life without a President of the United States acknowledging there was a virus that caused the human immune system to break down; I lived through far too many years with far too many people not caring about the millions of their fellow human beings dying horrible deaths, blaming them for their conditions.  Shoot, in the same concert film in which Eddie Murphy pictured the first black President dodging and weaving bullets and fruit, he could wonder aloud about Ralph Cramden and Ed Norton from The Honeymooners being "funny faggots" and get all sorts of laughs.  How times have changed.

Ours is a remarkably more peaceful world.  Our land is more at peace, more safe, more congenial to lived difference, than at any time in living memory.  While hardly a paradise, it would be ridiculous for me to pretend there haven't been amazing strides in the way we Americans treat those who aren't white, straight, and Christian.  While we still have more work to do, today, this day, the day I realize deeper in my gut that I am a middle-aged man, I want to celebrate that we Americans, and people around the world, live in a far more congenial place than any time in living memory.

Nations that spent centuries at one another's throats have laid down their arms.  Countries whose tyranny seemed endless are learning the habits of the democratic heart.  People around the world are standing up and demanding to be treated like human beings and they are no longer silenced or marginalized.  We aren't there yet, like I said, not by a long shot.  But we have started down the path that might well take us all to a world that has decided to be more human.  These are good things.  They need to be celebrated.

The difference at the top, here in this country, couldn't be more stark between the days of my youth and today.  Ronald Reagan versus Barack Obama?  No contest.  The President's re-election demonstrates that we might yet be getting it.  For all I have been critical of some of the things he's done, I cannot deny the many good things as well; nor can I deny that we as a people have shown that we are better than our history, better than the worst among us even now.  I am quite pleased that I cast my vote for him not once but twice.

So, I may be a middle-aged man, but I refuse to sit around and tell my kids stories that begin, "When I was your age . . ." because when I was my kids' age, the world wasn't a safe place to live for millions of people.  Whole populations were held hostage by the threat of nuclear holocaust.  Hundreds of millions lived under nightmarish tyrants and dehumanizing systems of dominance.  No, I celebrate the world in which all of us live now.  I am thrilled I have lived this long, able to see my country, this land I love, begin to live out even more fully its social and cultural creed that we are a free people.  We haven't arrived at the Promised Land.  We do know it's there, though, if we're willing to open our eyes and look around us.

Coming in time for my birthday was the 2CD+DVD set Octane Twisted from Porcupine Tree.  Recorded in Chicago at a show I attended, I am happy to report it is even better the second, third, and fourth times around.  Here's the last song from their song-cycle "The Incident", called "I Drive The Hearse".

Everything

I find it more than a little ironic that our national day of Thanksgiving comes just after a national political campaign in which one of our major party tried to argue that we should not acknowledge the role others play in our accomplishments.  "You didn't build that", Pres. Obama's off-hand rebuke to an imagined interlocutor who insists higher marginal tax rates are a threat to his or her continued success, became a rallying cry among many on the right.  There was enough push-back against the idiocy that, I think, the President's point is clear: we all need one another, working together, for all of us and each of us, to succeed.

Yet, there is a plurality out there that insists this just isn't the case.  Individual success, whether in business or the professions or the arts or the trades or what have you is just that: individual success.  Never mind the millions who came before, creating the standards by which success is measured.  Never mind the teachers and mentors, the friends and associates who gave us the tools and knowledge.  Never mind the larger society, agreeing together to abide by the rule of laws that gives to all and each certain freedoms so that we can succeed.  Never mind the local officials who work tirelessly and very often with little reward and no recognition to make sure roads and sidewalks are usable and accessible; that our children have the best possible schools, that our streets and alleys and byways don't fill with garbage and waste.  Never mind the more far-sighted in our communities who studied and proposed and pushed through building waste-water treatment facilities, recycling programs, and local ordinances regarding property maintenance so diseases and vermin don't congregate, fester, and spread.

Yeah, why should we be thankful for these things?  What do they have to do with whether or not the local grocer or pharmacist or clothier makes a living, right?

So, today, I'm thankful for everything.  Every single thing that surrounds me.  Not just my family, although Lord knows I am thankful each moment for them.  I'm thankful for the air I breathe.  The water I drink (and use to make my morning coffee!).  I'm thankful for the beautiful, homey home in which we live, surrounded by nearly an acre of beautiful land filled with trees and shrubs and berry-plants and gorgeous wildflowers that color it in spring and summer.  I'm thankful for the years I spent studying, taking tests, writing papers so I could have not one, not two, but three diplomas to hang on my wall, testament not to any great work I've done, but to the hard work and faith of the teachers, professors, and mentors who worked hard to provide a place and space where and when I and others could study.  I'm grateful for those who gave their money for scholarships, for the banks who provided student loans, without which none of that education would have been possible.

I have a wall of books I didn't write.  I read them not because I had some magic ability to read, but because first my mother then a few teachers early on were patient and persistent, giving me the best, most wonderful, most subversive gift ever granted human beings: the ability to read.

Not a thing I possess is mine.  Not a person in my life, whether professional, casual, or intimate, is there because of any grace or gift or charm I might possess.  Even my pets, a wonderful St. Bernard who is without doubt the best dog I've ever known and our glorious black cat, Casper, aren't mine; possessing these living creatures, outside the legal sense in which they are, indeed "ours", would be a moral crime.  No, they share our space, are parts of our family, enriching it immeasurably.

Most of all, I acknowledge this Thanksgiving morning that each moment of my life has been, and will continue to be, a gift from a loving, generous, prodigally loving God.  All that surrounds me, whether natural or not, human or animal or inanimate - not a lick of it is mine.  It belongs to God.  Even the skin that sits on my frame, the heart beating in my chest, the blood that keeps my tissues fed - these are all God's.  I am thankful today because all that is, this wonderful gift, had nothing at all to do with me, and I can revel in my irrelevance to everything save the God who created it all.  I own nothing, am no one of any consequence, yet God knows me, loves me, and has called me by name.

For that, I am and will continue to be thankful, as the Psalmist says, all the days of my life.

I Don't Believe In Global Warming

On the day I planned to write the title post in my little series, fate has delivered me the most marvelous gift, courtesy of that hotbed of anti-Americanism, The World Bank (.pdf):

Uncertainties remain in projecting the extent of both climate change and its impacts. We take a risk-based approach in which risk is defined as impact multiplied by probability: an event with low probability can still pose a high risk if it implies serious consequences.  No nation will be immune to the impacts of climate change. However, the distribution of impacts is likely to be inherently unequal and tilted against many of the world’s poorest regions, which have the least economic, institutional, scientific, and technical capacity to cope and adapt.

--snip--

A world in which warming reaches 4°C above preindustrial levels (hereafter referred to as a 4°C world), would be one of unprecedented heat waves, severe drought, and major floods in many regions, with serious impacts on human systems, ecosystems, and associated services. Warming of 4°C can still be avoided: numerous studies show that there are technically and economically feasible emissions pathways to hold warming likely below 2°C. Thus the level of impacts that developing countries and the rest of the world experience will be a result of government, private sector, and civil society decisions and choices, including, unfortunately, inaction.

The report itself isn't terribly long, at less than 100 pages of text.

Now, I am quite sure there are some folks out there who wonder why I'm entitling this post and series "I Don't Believe In Global Warming" if I quote a report on global warming.

The answer is simple: That global warming is happening, and happening because of human activity, is not subject to "belief", however that particular word is understood.  I do not "subscribe" to the "belief" that the earth is getting warmer.  It is getting warmer.  I do not "believe" that human action, specifically the burning of billions of tons of fossil fuels, has ejected more and more CO2 to the atmosphere.  I can see for myself:

 Whether it's evolution or climate science or particle physics or heat exchange in chemistry, I neither believe nor disbelieve in any of these things.  Precisely because, however one defines the word "belief", or describe the human activity of "believing", to say one "believes" in any particular scientific theory already demonstrates an ignorance about what science is and how it works.

To those who might insist I've never ever said anything about science before, just check it out for yourself. I have defined, repeated that definition, given examples, talked about what isn't science - many, many times over the six years I've been writing here.  If you missed it, or don't know how easy it is to find out what I've talked about numerous times, at the very least I've provided a handy link here for you to check it out for yourself.

I don't believe in global warming for the same reason I don't believe World War II ended on May 8, 1945.  I don't believe my daughter was born on June 7, 2001.  I don't believe that elementary particles behave both as particles and as wave functions.  I don't believe any of these things because "belief", however one chooses to define that word, just doesn't enter in to it.  At all.  Ever.

I don't believe in global warming because I accept the scientific evidence.  That isn't a matter either of belief or common sense.  It is, rather, a matter of knowing how science works.  Those people who insist otherwise demonstrate by that very insistence they have no idea what they're talking about.

For far too long, time and energy has been wasted trying to tell people who are either too ignorant to know better, or know perfectly well what they're doing and don't care, how wrong they are.  It is far better to continue to discuss these topics without reference to creationists, global warming deniers, and any other person or group who is little more than contemporary alchemists and astrologers.  Call them out for who and what they are, then just carry on, letting them have their hissy fits and tantrums while folks who understand, at the very least, what a strange, complicated world we live in and, for all its flaws, the only way to make sense of that world is scientific understanding.

Yawn: My Response To Creationists

I've been putting off writing about the phony "evolution versus creationism" debate in this little series mostly because wading in to the cesspool of creationism makes me feel stupid.  I suppose I could link to the "Institute for Creation Science" or the Creationism museum in Kentucky, which is supposed to have a display of primitive human beings living cheek by jowl with dinosaurs (who, apparently, didn't get Noah's memo to show up at the ark?).

Instead I decided to link to this guy.  In a post entitled "Science Already Recognizes Intelligent Design" we read:

It has for a long, long time.  As Greg Koukl notes, consider archaeology, forensics and the search for extra terrestrial intelligence. All infer, with good reason, that you can detect whether something happened without being caused by another agent or whether there was an intelligent being behind the creation of something.

The movie “Contact” was a shining example of the self-parody of materialists.  While mocking those who believe in Intelligent Design, their litmus test for extraterrestrial life was whether patterns they viewed had evidence of design.

Forensics is all about looking for evidence of design. And archaeology correctly infers design.

Earlier today, a friend of mine posted a link to a "Surrealist Letter To The Rectors of European Universities".   In comments, someone wrote the following: "How many surrealists does it take to change a lightbulb?  Answer: Fish!"  That makes far more sense than the preceding, while standing as a model of logic compared to what follows.

We agree there is a gap in understanding some things about the universe. The Darwinists plug it with the “naturalism of the gaps.”  They don’t know what caused it, but it definitely wasn’t an intelligent designer. They have no argument other than blind faith.  We don’t have the same gap.  We logically infer from the evidence that some things — such as life and the indescribable complexity and design of the universe — had to have come from a powerful designer.  Even atheists like Richard Dawkins concede that the universe appears to be designed.

There are some folks who take the time to deconstruct nonsense like this.  I refuse, preferring to treat people who write this way much the same way one professor invited to "debate" the issue responded to his interlocutors.

Academic debate on controversial topics is fine, but those topics
need to have a basis in reality. I would not invite a creationist
to a debate on campus for the same reason that I would not invite
an alchemist, a flat-earther, an astrologer, a psychic, or a
Holocaust revisionist. These ideas have no scientific support, and
that is why they have all been discarded by credible scholars.
Creationism is in the same category.

Instead of spending time on public debates, why aren’t members of
your institute publishing their ideas in prominent peer-reviewed
journals such as Science, Nature, or the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences? If you want to be taken seriously by
scientists and scholars, this is where you need to publish.
Academic publishing is an intellectual free market, where ideas
that have credible empirical support are carefully and thoroughly
explored. Nothing could possibly be more exciting and electrifying
to biology than scientific disproof of evolutionary theory or
scientific proof of the existence of a god. That would be Nobel
Prize winning work, and it would be eagerly published by any of the
prominent mainstream journals.

“Conspiracy” is the predictable response by Ben Stein and the
frustrated creationists. But conspiracy theories are a joke,
because science places a high premium on intellectual honesty and
on new empirical studies that overturn previously established
principles. Creationism doesn’t live up to these standards, so its
proponents are relegated to the sidelines, publishing in books,
blogs, websites, and obscure journals that don’t maintain
scientific standards.

Now, the person to whom I linked will probably cry "Foul!" because he writes about Intelligent Design, rather than creationism.  To which I will only copy and paste what Federal District Court Judge John Jones wrote in his opinion tossing out the Dover Area, PA School Board's requirement to teach Intelligent Design alongside evolution:

The overwhelming evidence at trial established that ID is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory. 

You can call it "creationism" or "creation science" or "Intelligent Design", but it all comes down to the same thing: demonstrating not only a magisterial ignorance both of the creation stories in Genesis as well as the traditional Doctrine of Creation alongside an almost comical ignorance about what science is and how it works.  There is no need to "respond" or "rebut" what are not "arguments".  The constant demand from creationists for attention should be met with silence broken only occasionally by the laughter from those who understand that every time a creationist writes something, they again demonstrate exactly why they aren't taken seriously.

I will stipulate, however, that the very notion that scientists "believe" something demonstrates how little allegedly faithful Christians think of their own faith, willing as they seem to be to strip the word belief of any real meaning this way.

Say The Magic Words

I'm quite sure a whole lot of oxygen will be wasted on the Sunday blather hours about Benghazi.

I'm still trying to figure out what, precisely, has John McCain's and Lindsey Graham's panties in such a bunch.  My impressing is they are really really mad that UN Ambassador Susan Rice didn't go on television the Sunday following the attacks and screech, "RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!  AL QAEDA!!!"

That's the scandal.

On Friday, former CIA Director David Petraeus went to Congress and said that the main points Rice hit in her explanation were vetted not just by his agency, but all the intelligence agencies investigating what happened.  While there was a growing consensus that the events of September 11 were more than just a spontaneous demonstration, there wasn't evidence enough to make any conclusive statement one way or another.

The President came out the day after the attacks and called them . . . acts of terror.

The US and Libyan law enforcement were working to find out who carried out the attacks, with an arrest made in Tunisia in October.

As actual events unfolded, and more definitive evidence came to light, it became clear that, whatever else was going on around the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, there was a concerted effort by a cell of terrorists working in that city to wreak havoc.  No one, as far as I know, is saying otherwise.

So, still, I wonder.

Do any of those carrying on about Benghazi actually read news papers or pay attention to what officials are telling the American people?  Because everything I just wrote is and has been out there for anyone to read.  It all came out before the election, so it isn't like it only emerged after so the news wouldn't hurt Pres. Obama.  And, since we're talking about that, how does an event that demonstrates a big intelligence failure as well as a lack of appropriate security for our officials, regardless of the specifics of the event, somehow help the President?  Even if no terrorist group had been involved, perhaps especially so, the killing of four Americans in this manner isn't exactly proof that the Obama Administration had it going on in a very dangerous part of the world.  Which isn't to say that the President, or anyone else, is directly responsible for their deaths, either.  All I'm saying is . . . well, there may be a scandal here, but it's more along the lines of allocation of resources and communication among intelligence agencies, rather than going on TV after the event and telling the world what we know based on evidence.

There has been a whole lot of talk that the President, or someone associated with him or his office, directly intervened to prevent some kind of military response.  Now, I have no idea if this is true, or if it is, why it's important because, honestly, I can imagine all sorts of reasons that might have occurred.  The thing is, there is nothing more than a bunch of unsubstantiated claims made by people who either cannot have any such knowledge or are not providing all the details.  The thing is - there's no real evidence that a military response was even planned.  There's no evidence that the people on the ground in Benghazi called for assistance, and if they did, none was sent.

I seem to be returning to a theme here: no evidence.

There's been a whole lot of speculation and questions usually beginning, "Isn't it possible . . .?"  To repeat myself: Even Santa Claus is possible.  Most such questions, however, are either unanswerable or contrary to available facts.

So, what this boils down to, again, is Ambassador Rice went on TV, saying things she was given by our intelligence agencies.

And that's wrong.  Unlike John McCain screaming that he doesn't have any information while missing a meeting at which he could ask questions of people directly involved so he could get answers.  And getting made at reporters who point this out to him.

As soon as actual evidence emerges that anyone in a position of authority did something wrong, I don't see a scandal or a cover-up.  All I see are morons who lost an election stomping their feet because they didn't get their own way.

Because I'm Busy

So I'm not only doing something I haven't done in a while, it's actually copy-catting the great Tbogg, who's also returned to doing random ten stuff.  It's easy.  Plug in the iPod, hit random, then go.  If you want to play, because I really want to play but it's seven a.m. and I'm going to be busy until after midnight so bite me if you have better things to do.

Sorry.  Not bitter at all.

Ahem.  Ten random things:

Are You Ready, Eddy? - Emerson, Lake, and Palmer
Out of this World - Marillion
Epitaph (Live, 1969) - King Crimson
Down to the River to Pray - Allison Kraus
Riders On The Storm - The Doors
Dr. Funkenstein - Parliament
Annie Enemy - Abigail's Ghost
Some Day - Blackfield
Dark Hollow (Live Acoustic) - Grateful Dead
Love Ain't For Keeping - The Who

And something extra, just because . . .
On the Road- Tom Waits

I think that last one made me feel better.

What's The Matter With Kansas II: Takers, Moochers, & The 2012 Election

In 2004, the book What's The Matter With Kansas made quite a splash when it wondered why voters in one of our most Republican states were, in fact, Republicans when the actual policies the Republican Party pursued, and even how many were framed, were demonstrably counter the interests of the people of Kansas.  There has yet to be a satisfactory answer to that question, but the election just passed and some at least of the fallout from that election is demonstrating that many Republican voters in general seem to be as clueless as folks in Kansas.

One of the more memorable campaign moments was the captured video of Mitt Romney telling donors that 47% of Americans are moochers, paying no taxes and expecting "free stuff" from the government.  After not only losing the Presidency but watching many more liberal Democrats win both Senate and House elections, John Hinderaker admitted that "takers" had become a majority, winning the election over the "makers" or, as loser Joe Walsh called them in a debate with Tammy Duckworth, "the people who matter", "the job creators".  Adding Paul Ryan to the ticket, America received a lesson in the facile "philosophy" of Ayn Rand, who shares with J. R. R. Tolkien two things: their books are usually encountered first in high school; continued fascination with the books of both  writers in to adulthood usually results in people laughing at you.

Since the election, some bozos have started yelling "Secession!", and some have even been chuckling madly at the thought that states like New York and California and Illinois might starve because all those red states have all the farmers and food.

Real evidence - which has proved itself to be irrelevant to many in the Republican Party - indicates that, in fact, it was not the "makers" who lost last Tuesday.  The map below, copied from the linked article at The Economist (a well-known bastion of socialist thought) shows the results of 20 years of tax and fiscal policy on the fifty states.

Please note that the vast bulk of states that voted for the President - the "takers", according to Hinderaker - actually take in more in federal taxes than they receive in services from the federal government.  On the other hand, except for Texas, Nebraska, Arkansas, and Georgia, the states that went for Mitt Romney are welfare queens, receiving far more from the federal government than they pay in taxes.

As for the Blue States starving, well . . . according the the Economic Research Service of the US Department of Agriculture, the top five counties in the United States for agricultural sales in 2007 were all in California.  ERS also has a downloadable Excel spreadsheet (you can find it here) that ranks the states by net farm income.  Of the top five, only Nebraska voted for Mitt Romney.  California and Iowa are the top two; Illinois and Minnesota are four and five.  The spreadsheet also includes a listing of farming efficiency.  Of the top five states whose net farm income per acre are highest, only North Carolina (this time, and only just) went for Mitt Romney.  The top four are California, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut.  So, not only will the Blue States not starve.  Blue States are actually better at doing farming than Red States.

Another map, one that's been circulating on FB that purports to show that more people actually favor the Republicans and Mitt Romney, shows the voting breakdown by counties across the country.

I would suggest that this map is, what's the word I'm looking for?  Is it misleading?  Irrelevant?  Consider one county in New York.  New York County, the city of Manhattan, has a population of just over 1.6 million people.  That's just one county in New York.  The entire state of Wyoming has a population of 568,000.  Median household income in Wyoming in 2010 was $53,802.  New York County - just one county, mind you - had a median household income of $64,971.  So there are more people in New York County than the entire state of Wyoming.  They also make more money (one benefit of this map, beyond making the point that Obama won where there are actual people, is a person can use Census data to find out what the people who live in different places are like).

In other words, it was the moochers who lost.  Poor moochers, no less.

The thing that makes me go, "Hmmm", however, is "Why?"  The states the receive actual benefits from the federal government would prefer to have someone in office who would cut off the money flowing to them?  Folks in these states who are carrying on about secession would be severely hurt, both in terms of fiscal soundness as well as the availability of services, by secession.

I suppose it's simple ignorance: They have no idea how much they receive from the federal government, and how losing that would impact their lives.

Which is why, again, I think the Internet is wonderful.  It's just so easy to find out that millions of Americans are protesting against their own best interests.

Congratulations, Republican Party!  Please, don't change.

Don't Know Nothing 'Bout Nothing At All

I usually am averse to posting things that others far better than I have already covered.  In this case, the illustrious Tbogg covers the main points without ever once losing sight of the fact that the entire story is insane.

I heard about it listening to the Thom Hartmann radio program today.  Hartmann even had Field Searcy on, and Searcy was doing his level best not to sound bug-dung nuts.  He failed miserably.

Searcy said that, since Cobb County, Georgia has adopted a sustainable growth plan that fits in with the United Nations recommendations for sustainable growth, Agenda 21 is no longer just some weird conspiracy theory but actual fact.

Prodded by Hartmann, Searcy made clear that he is not only crazier than an outhouse rat in August, but also dumber than a bag of hair.  Searcy went on and on about zoning laws - ZONING LAWS!!! - that might prevent property owners dispensing their property in any manner they see fit by, say, restricting the number of single-family houses that can be created on a particular parcel of land.

Hartmann was gentle with Searcy.  He said, basically, that was how zoning laws worked.  That sustainable development is something most communities work toward in order to control sprawl, maintain control over traffic patterns, noise and air pollution, control local resource distribution; these are the reasons we have zoning laws, so communities aren't like Topsy in Uncle Tom's Cabin, but grow and develop in ways that are, ahem, sustainable.

Searcy allowed there should be a balance.

Which is what zoning laws do.  They attempt to reach a balance between the preferences of any particular property owner and others in the community who will be impacted by decisions that property owner might make as to how that property is used.

It occurred to me that while Searcy may be a loon, there are many who don't have to subscribe to the whole "Delphic Mind Control" business yet may hear "sustainable development" and freak out.  Because, obviously, the last thing we need are communities that grow in ways that don't undermine their ability to remain viable.

Your conservative Americans, ladies and gentlemen.  They don't even know what zoning laws are or how they work.

I do so hope the Republican Party doesn't do too much reforming over the next two years, because we'll lose the entertainment value of watching ignorant people explain things they don't know anything about to people who are suddenly flush with new, wrong, knowledge.

Get Your Mind Out Of The Gutter: Reading Barth's Special Ethics II

As with the previous post, I found a marvelous paragraph just a bit further on that makes clear Barth has little interest either in moralizing or moralizers when it comes to sexual ethics.  On the contrary, after going after his favorite target, Emil Brunner, for overemphasizing the role of sexual ethics within the larger topic of Christian Ethics in general, Barth goes on to say a few things about how we should approach the topic.  Again, a point I've made several times over the years, but has yet to sink in with at least some of those out there who continue to believe there's something especially horrid about human beings having sex (even sex that's approved of).  Also, the "misspellings" of "connection" and "center" appear in the text, translated as they were by British doctoral candidates:

In this connexion, a definite warning must be issued on this particular question of the relationship of male and female, not in opposition to Brunner but in opposition to a widespread opinion.  It is disastrous to suppose, as many,do, that the word morality should be employed almost exclusive, or with an arbitrary and painful over-emphasis, to denote what is considered good and right in the relationship between man and woman, or with even greater restriction in what is called sexual intercourse.  Naturally we have to enquire with the greatest attention what is both generally and specifically commanded and forbidden, obedient  and disobedient, in this sphere.  And the matter has its own dignity and importance.  But we should not act as if God's command began and ceased with what may be included under the seventh commandment in its broader or narrower sense.  If we really wish to do justice to this point we should not treat it as the punctum puncti, being obsessed by it and measuring both itself and all other points primarily and abstractly by it as it were the focus of the whole question of obedience.  The open or secret excitement and agitation with which we usually think and speak of this matter must be quieted.  I do not conceal the fact that I say this with special reference to what is for various reasons a particularly bad habit of man minister and their wives.  The focus of the question of obedience is that of [our] responsibility to the command of God . . . .  From this center there are radii in every direction and therefor in this too.  but none of these radii, let alone of the points on the periphery reached by these radii, can be itself a centre.  This is equally true of the point to which we now refer.  Nor is it only a formal error to concentrate on this question.  A special concern for this matter may well be an evasion of other and much more urgently relevant aspects of the divine command.  This preoccupation may well be only a convenient possibility of justifying oneself to oneself, to others and finally to God in view of a prior or subsequent innocence on this score.  And even worse the preoccupation may well be a radical transgression of this special aspect the commandment.  So much secret dissatisfaction with one'  own conduct in this sphere, so much vexation at defeats which cannot be reversed and seem to cry out for revenge, so much indirect indemnification for virtue unwillingly maintained, so much repressed but in point of fact extremely virulently lust, can find vent in this preoccupation.  Once can be properly concerned about sexual ethics only when one has a clear head and a firm heart.  Given a clear head and firm heart, sex will cease to be isolated and made a false absolute, either in theory or in practice.  It will be understood in its vital connexion with the real centre and with other aspects of the divine command and of the obedience we owe it.  Therefore let it be said as a definite warning that the [person] who in reading or hearing ethics begins to pay attention only at this point incurs the suspicion of being aa doubtful character.  And we can only advise or appeal to [one such] to drop the matter for the time being and to consider how [one] might best come by the clear head and firm heart which will enable [such a one] to give it proper consideration.  A diversion from sexual ethics to the point of departure of all ethics and therefore to God and oneself is perhaps a fundamental requirement for many and even the majority of [human beings] in this matter of sexual ethics.-CD, III, $, pp. 118-119.

Assumptions And Prior Commitments: Reading Barth's Special Ethics I

To those who understand anything about theology, to admit I'm reading III,4 of Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics in a desultory way might seem, at the very least, an odd statement.  After all, would one confess to reading Crime and Punishment in a lackadaisical fashion?  Being offhand in perusing Sense and Sensibility?  The fact is, however, it has never been easy to find snatches of time to do more than read a few pages at a time of any particular book. The benefit in regards reading Barth, however, is it gives me time to consider what I've read.  Neither casual nor concentrated reading render much in the way of genuine reflection on some works.  Plodding can be a help.

This and the next post are little more than quotes, offered to echo points I've made many times, but with Barth's inimitable style and pizzazz.  In this case, at the beginning of Section 54, on the special ethics regarding the relationship between man and woman, and especially as it relates to matters of marriage and human sexuality, Barth begins straightaway making clear there are definite theological presuppositions to what is to follow, presuppositions without which the entire enterprise of theological ethics (in this, as in any area) a hopeless muddle.  He has already made this point many times and places throughout the massive volumes he's already written.  That he finds the need to do so again can only mean, to this reader, that the point cannot be stressed enough: We don't do theology and it's related discipline of Biblical exegesis, like children who have never encountered something new.  As members of the Church, we are already in a variety of relationships - with God, with our fellow Christians, with the life and history of the Church as it has existed and will, we hope and believe, continue to exist - that determine our reading, interpretation, and understanding.  These prior realities shape must shape our reading and understanding, or we're just babbling, making of any particular passage of Scripture or doctrine of the church an idol, rather than doing our work thoughtfully, mindful of the grace we have already received and in which we are doing the work of theology.

I've made the same point many times myself over the years.  You can't read the Bible or talk about theology outside of these realities; yet, many people continue to believe they can point to various verses of the Bible, whether they have to do with human sexuality, or marriage, or social life, or whatever, and repeat them as if their meaning were simple and clear enough outside the larger framework within which they need to be considered.  Not just historical, mind you.  Historical criticism and its variants are only useful if done within the even more concise and mindful and faithful understanding that doing Christian theology means doing Christian theology; that is, doing it as people of faith.

So, anyway, without further ado, here's the Doctor from Basel on doing Christian sexual ethics as a Christian.  I will attempt, by the way, to correct the sometimes confusing tendency Barth has to reduce references to humanity and God using the male pronoun:

That [human beings live] in response to God [the] Creator was the first of these lines, and in veiw of this we have attempted in the previous section to understand the command of of as the command to fulfill this responsibility and therefore to be free before God and for [God].  A second principle with regard to {humanity's] being is now to be distinguished from the first, namely, that [humanity], in and with . . . creation, and therefore as [humanity] may exist as [humanity], is destined to be the covenant-partner of God, and that this determination characterises [humanity's] being as being in encounter with . . . fellow [human beings].  {This] ordination to be in covenant relations with God has its counterpart in the fact this . . . humanity, the special mode of [our] being, is by nature and essence a being in fellow-humanity.  And so we must view the command of God the Creator with special reference to this natural manner of [human] existence.  As God calls [us] to [God], as [God] summons [human beings] to serve [God], [God] also addresses [humanity] concerning [our] vocation to be a covenant-partner with [God], and therefore concerning this natural correspondence, concerning . . . humanity.  And that means in concrete terms that [God] directs [us] to [other people].  [God} wills that [our] being should fulfill itself in the encounter, the relationship, the togetherness of I and Thou.  [God] commands [us], invites [us] and challenges [us] not merely to allow . . . humanity as fellow humanity to be [our] nature, but to affirm and exercise it in [our] own decision, in action and omission.  [God] commands [us] to be what [we are].  But this means that [God] takes [human beings] so seriously in [our] vocation to be in covenant with [God] that [God] calls [us] to freedom in fellowship, i.e., to freedom in fellowship with others.  [God] calls [human beings] to find [ourselves] by affirming the other, to know joy by comforting the other, and self-expression by honouring the other.  We have now to understand the divine command as the call to this freedom - the invitation to humanity.  Humanity, the characteristic and essential mode of [our] being, is in its root fellow-humanity.  Humanity which is not fellow-humanity is inhumanity. For it cannot reflect but only contradict the determination of [humanity] to be God's covenant partner, nor can the God is no Deus solitarius but Deus triunus,  God in relationship, be mirrored in the homo solitarius.  As God offers [us] humanity and therefore freedom in fellowship, God summons [us] to prove and express [ourselves] as the image fo God - for as such [God] has created [us].  This is the deepest and final basis on the form of the divine command which we have not to consider.-CD, III, $, pp.116-117.

As usual with Barth, he buries the lede.  Which is why that entire paragraph had to be transcribed to demonstrate the point. 

Tawdry

When I heard the news on Friday, I was surprised, like everyone else.  My immediate reaction, knowing no more than most of the rest of the world, was to chastise Petraeus for not keeping his zipper locked.  Not because I care one way or another about the private lives of public people; I'm more tired of sex scandals than I am of the election just passed.  Knowing we'll have to endure several weeks of ridiculous nonsense, moral posturing, and all sorts of questions that are dumber than an entire book by Jonah Goldberg bodes ill for the holiday season.

After a few days, as details about what happened, how the investigation began, it has become clear that, far from some conspiracy to dethrone an American hero who was stopped in his tracks saving American lives by our Kenyan overlord in the White House, it seems the other folks involved in this business were more than a bit unhinged.

Whether or not Petraeus should have resigned is a question that might seem entertaining.  After all, as Echidne points out people from Bill Clinton to David Vitter have survived sex scandals just fine.  All the same, he did resign, and it's probably a good thing.  The emerging facts of the case - an FBI agent who disses the chain of command because he thinks there's some kind of cover-up; emails from one woman to another that probably are quite nasty (I haven't seen any of them yet, but I can imagine); two extra-marital affairs that created bitter feelings all around - seem to demonstrate that, at least in this case, a personal peccadillo created a professional exploding volcano.  Getting Petraeus out of any official capacity forces him to deal with the mess he created, instead of making the President lose political capital defending a man whose actions and associations are more than an embarrassment.

One more thing.  Attacking Petraeus's lady-friend in all this has already begun, and I know that's considered good sport to go after the hussy who brought down a "great man", but you won't read any of that crap here. She and he are both adults, both married, and both aware of what they were getting themselves into.  Her behavior, at least as far as any of us in the public know, may demonstrate some obsessive elements, but that does not mean she is more morally culpable than he is.

So far from some weird, Brobdignagian conspiracy to cover the President's butt as House Republicans demand answers that have already been given about the events in Benghazi a month ago, the unfolding facts seem to demonstrate it is exactly as it first appeared: Petraeus stepped down because he had an affair that impeded his ability to do his job effectively.  Of course, that's not really it, either.  Getting caught impedes his ability to do his job.

As a side note, I'm looking forward to the book from the FBI agent whose "worldview" convinced him there was a cover-up.  To be published, no doubt, by Regenry Press.  The right will soon enough have a new hero.

Reality? I Can Take It Or Leave It

As I've said many times, a guiding light of mine is the simple proposition that words mean things.  Tossing verbiage around without thought or care, then taking that same word-tossing to the next level and insisting that, Humpty Dumpty like, we can just make words mean whatever we wish, well, that's enough to make me wonder about sanity.

For several years now, reading various places around the Internet, the phrase "reality-based community" has been bandied about, not only as a counter to Karl Rove's "We're an Empire, we create our own reality," nonsense.  The meaning of the phrase has expanded to include the claim that science deals with "reality" and religion, well, to quote a commenter at the science blog Pharyngula, "begins with bullshit."

"Reality" is a word I detest.  Like "morality", and "truth", and "belief", and "nature", the word has become unhinged from any reference point.  Does it mean our common, everyday experience of the flow of space-time?  Does it refer to the mathematical equations that demonstrate how matter and energy are, at a basic level, interchangeable?  Does it refer to the flow of human events that we, being human, privilege over many other events?  One could go on asking questions of this sort, and I confess they all sound a bit pedantic, but the point, I hope, is clear.  That which we call "reality", at least in our mundane sense, is by and large a facade, a construct of our human sense organs coping with a variety of inputs and attempting to make sense of those inputs in a way that maximizes our survival advantage.  Were to have, say, the olfactory abilities of some dogs or carrion-eaters, say, the world would be "real" in a fundamentally different way than it currently is to us.  If we had the ability some snakes do, to "see" heat emissions, our "reality" would be a very different thing indeed.

With the help of several different branches of science, we have come to learn over the past century or so that what we call "reality" or "the physical universe" is not at all what or how it appears.  Indeed, "physical" is hardly what I'd call any particular object that has mass, considering even the most dense elements and objects are still, by and large, empty space.  In the early decades of the 20th century, physicist Niels Bohr (who counts Olivia Newton-John among his grandchildren) developed a model of the atom, what was once considered the most basic unit of physical matter, that looked quite a bit like a solar system.  Around the central nucleus, which consists of neutrons and protons (positively charged particles) there swirl various layers of electrons (negatively charged particles; and please note, "positive" and "negative" are conventional designations rather than describing anything inherent in the particles themselves).

The problem with the model was, no one had ever seen an electron.  By the time the First World War was over, there had been enough experiments working on the mass of atomic nuclei and their constituent parts to get a rough approximation of the masses of both protons and neutron.  In theory, the neutron was a particle with no charge that was, in fact, a proton and an electron fused together.  Except, the difference in mass between the proton and neutron was almost statistically negligible.

Furthermore, while it was easy enough to follow the effects of what were supposed to be electrons, it became increasingly apparent the particles themselves were probably beyond anyone's capability of "discovering" in a conventional sense.

In the 1920's, Werner Heisenberg went a bit further.  Studying elementary particles - the stuff that was discovered to make up protons and neutrons and electrons - Heisenberg made the claim that, for all intents and purposes, such things didn't actually exist.  The equations made clear they should exist.  The experiments constructed to demonstrate the correctness of the equations were then and continue to be consistent within striking orders of magnitude.  Yet, no one has ever, nor probably will ever, see a boson or a meson or, God help us all, a graviton.  First of all, one of the consequences of General Relativity is that energized particles behave both as objects containing mass and also as energy waves.  There are packets of light energy called photons, yet light also behaves much the same way waves do - with amplitude and frequency.  Heisenberg stipulated, further, that while it was well enough to give the equations their due, since they were confirmed by experiments, it was probably better to let the paradox rest and act as, for the sake of any particular experimental procedure, these particles exist.  It is a position that is known as "operationalism": we cannot know whether or not there "really" are "things" out there we call elementary particles, since the only confirmation we have of their existence are particular scientific tests that in themselves only demonstrate that certain events happen, rather than there are any such "things" in and for themselves.

Erwin Schrodinger, in a famous complaint aimed at Heisenberg, said that operationalism, combined with Heisenberg's more well-known position that we cannot know both the position and momentum of an elementary particle, led to the paradox of the cat in the box.  The cat was both alive and dead, Schrodinger said, under Heisenberg's working theories.  To which Heisenberg replied, "True enough.  Until we open the box to find out whether or not the cat is dead."  Without observation, the propositions, "The cat in the box is dead," and, "The cat in the box is alive," have an equal chance of being accurate.

Another part of quantum mechanics that makes a mockery of "reality" is the idea that a quantum event somewhere here on earth has a direct and measurable effect upon a quantum event in a star in the Horsehead Nebula.  Known as quantum entanglement, it is the proposition that, against any classical ideas of what was known as "local reality", action-at-a-distance (which Einstein, whose theories led to this and a host of other issues he didn't like, called "spooky") was a basic part of the physical make-up of the Universe.  For years, the position set out by Einstein and some colleagues that this unacceptable state of affairs showed that quantum mechanics was incomplete held sway.  In 1964, John Stewart Bell proposed that, in fact, what was known as the Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky paradox was in error, and, in fact, over the course of a series of trials, there was an increasing probability of determining how two seemingly unrelated quantum events were, in fact, related.

Now, many physicists chuckle when the positions taken here - that there is an inherent nothingness to reality; that there is an inherent unpredictability to reality; that an event at point (a), without either any time lag or physical contact, can influence an event at point (b) - are expanded in various fictional settings.  Most even the most well-versed scientists would insist these phenomena are highly localized and specialized.  Just because we cannot know both the position and momentum of an elementary particle does not mean Schrodinger's cat is both alive and dead until we open the box to investigate, they say.  Schrodinger, it seems, made a category mistake (no pun intended).

To an extent, this is a perfectly sound argument to make.  After all, I wouldn't think of trying to shove my head through a wall, even though I know both the wall and my head are mostly empty space.

Which position, of course, begs many questions, not the least of them being: What is reality?  It might well mean our everyday reality we encounter.  Yet, again and again, it was precisely scientific investigation of that everyday reality that revealed the paradoxes discussed above.  Which leaves me asking, again, what is reality?  Would it be possible to operate as if quantum mechanics governed our macro-world?  Of course, in some ways, it does.  If you're reading this on a computer, you can thank quantum mechanics for that.

Back in the early 1990's, philosopher Jonathan Searle wrote a longish book entitled The Philosophy of Mind. Over and over in that book, Searle repeated that reality is and I quote, "elementary particles in fields of force."  While this might well be a good working definition in some circumstances, the fiction that the word "particle" creates - that there are these "things" out there we call elementary particles, rather than energy traces from collisions that fit with mathematical predictions concerning the behavior of small masses of light elements colliding at near the speed of light - renders this "definition" of "reality" untenable (there are a host of other issues with Searle's book, but this one always nagged at me).  In fact, while we may be able to express, with a certain degree of confidence, through certain mathematical equations, the statistical regularity of certain events (without ever being able to approach precision on all such events; more precision one way leads to less precision the other), this hardly means we understand what the word "reality" means, or to what it refers.

When I read people talking about how they're so scientific and are part of the reality-based community, I figure they flunked Physics 101.  Because if they're relying on science for their understanding of reality, then they have some problems.

Science As A Remarkable Tool With Limits

I've decided to make clear, kind of once and for all, what science is, how it works, why it works so well, and most of all, why people who don't understand science attack it for things it doesn't say or do.  I consider this a public service.  I also think, once and for all time, I can point people HERE and say, "Look, I answered your question!"

When I was in seminary, I took a seminar on science and theology.  The professor, the late great Roy Morrison, and I had a conversation after one class session in which he made the point that many scientists repeat information gained from radioactive dating without considering it is rooted in assumptions that are not falsifiable.  He also said that doesn't mean using radiometric dating isn't wrong-headed.

He was right.

I thought I'd begin this series of posts by talking about the way science operates, including the way it incorporates non-falsifiable assumptions as its starting-points.  Science is a wonderful tool that, over the past several centuries has evolved in to a remarkable way of answering questions about the world in which we live.  While less developed, the social sciences like psychology, sociology, political science, and anthropology, do offer students the opportunity for keener understanding of human life.

Science works so well because, at its best, it begins with the assumption that everything we know, including all our scientific understanding, is wrong.  It may serve us well so far, or as far as it goes; if some new piece of information arises, however, that isn't accounted for by our prevailing understandings, those understandings themselves have to change to accommodate the newly discovered facts.  In the process, how we understand all sorts of other things also changes.

The way we understand things in science is referred to as "theories".  Scientific theories are provisional statements about how disparate yet related phenomena work themselves out.  Scientific theories, among the many ways human beings have used to understand their world, make two related claims.  First, like many ways of understanding, whether alchemy or magic or even theology, science claims to make predictions about future events based upon the way various theories describe how particular phenomena occur.  Second, and unlike those mentioned and others, science (at its best, anyway) says that if its predictions are not accurate, it will change the theory.  In practice, there are a number of ways theories are not altered or tossed away in the face of contrary evidence.  It usually takes the accumulated weight of contrary evidence to convince most scientists, over a longish period of time, to stop using theories that have been consistently falsified.  Still, the number of scientific theories that have been discarded over the centuries precisely because they were falsified is quite large.  The twentieth century alone has seen several basic theoretical shifts in physics, shifts that have implications for chemistry, biology, and other branches of science as well.

Theories are no less rooted in unfalsifiable assumptions than anything else we humans do.  To return to the example at the beginning of this post, consider the discovery of radioactive decay.  After the discovery of radiation at the end of the 19th century, many prominent physicists worked hard to discover radioactive materials.  In the process of their studies, recognizing that "radiation" means that a given element is releasing elementary particles, it was soon discovered that, for a given mass of a radioactive element, the release of particles that creates the various types of radiation occur at a statistically regular rate.  From this, it became a matter of somewhat complicated mathematics to use the measured radioactive level of a particular mass of a radioactive element and determine not only when it was created, but when it would, at some point, reach then end of its radioactive decay, becoming both inert and transmuted to another element.

We now use this understanding in all sorts of ways.  Because there are traces of radioactive carbon in all carbon-based life, we can use our knowledge of the half-life of radioactive carbon to date everything from fossils to petrified wood.  Radioisotopic labeling is now a pretty common method for studying all sorts of things, both in living and dead organic matter.  The results we receive from all sorts of uses of our understanding of radioactive decay are, and have been, consistent across the board, and are just one reason the guess about the age of the earth - around four and a half billion years, within a range of a few hundred million years one way or another - is not just a guess, but a pretty confident assertion .

There's only one problem with this whole theory.  We have no way of knowing if the rate of radioactive decay, which we humans observe as a statistically regular event, has always been as constant and regular.  There is no way to show, definitively, that it even occurred prior to its discovery.  There may well have been a change in the rate of radioactive decay over the multiple billions of years of the history of the universe.  The problem with these perfectly reasonable alternatives is simple: There is no way to investigate them.  We cannot go back in time, say, to the formation of planet Earth to check the decay rates of the various radioactive elements and see if they differ from current rates.  It may well be the case this happened.  We cannot find out, however, if this is true.

So, scientists make the assumption that decay rates of radioactive elements have been a constant since the beginning of the Universe.  Setting aside protests and working under the assumption that decay rates have been constant has shown the theory to be remarkably fruitful of all sorts of things, many of which couldn't have been imagined when radioactive decay was first discovered and codified.

This somewhat mundane, and I hope easily understood, example of the way untestable assumptions work in science makes clear that science, for all the things it does remarkably well, actually works within its human limits.  Whether it's the study of radioactive decay, or weather phenomena, or the activity of human societies in different times and places, science offers us the remarkable ability to understand all sorts of things; yet it does so always with the understanding that it is doing so with certain things - call them givens, perhaps, or axioms - that are assumed to be true only because they cannot be disproved otherwise.

As we move forward through this series, I hope to demonstrate what a remarkable tool the scientific method has shown itself to be, despite its many limitations.

An Honest Question Deserves An Honest Counter-Question

Who can blame me for not reading this?  Still, I was surprised to see two questions at the end that left me more than a bit flummoxed.

1.  Where a scientific point is discussed, what makes their argument correct and mine not?

2.  What demonstrates a closed mind and how could that possibly be mine and not theirs (and specifically, Geoffrey's)?

In regards the latter, I have no idea what a closed or open mind are.  According to a search of my own rather, er, extensive writings,  I have never used it in regards scientific matters (where I can't imagine the phrase meaning much of anything).  I have used it to describe my own agnostic attitude toward things that go bump in the night.  Since I don't consider myself particularly "open" or "closed" minded because I tend to understand having "an open mind" referring to a willingness to be convinced one way or another about something about which one either knows little or about which there exists no (as yet) testable, falsifiable formulation, I guess I'm just at a loss.  Does Art have a "closed mind" where mine is "open"?  I honestly have no idea.  Have I ever described him as such, in a detrimental way?  I can't imagine why I would because calling someone "closed minded" is about as meaningful as calling someone a hypocrite.  Aren't all of us closed minded about some things?

As to the first, a simple question: I've talked science quite a bit.  Since I was studying philosophy of science, back when Bill Clinton ruled the land and Newt was still looking for his third trophy wife, I would like to think I know a little bit about it.  So, I guess I'll ask Art a counter-question.  I have no idea if he'll answer it, but he should know it's as sincere as everything else I've ever written.  How do you, Art, understand science, what it does, how it works, and how it serves those who use it?

You answer that question, and then, maybe, we can start moving toward an answer.

Weeping For The Lost Soul Of America

Yesterday, I said that the election was, by and large, a status quo election.  I did note the expansion of marriage equality in three more states (and should mention that Minnesota voted down measures to deny marriage equality and create barriers for voting).  Weed use has been decriminalized in two more states.  Several prominent politicians elected on Tuesday will be significantly further to the left than the average.  So, while our overall status quo remains, there are now signs that status is not quite what it was.

Which, well - isn't that what elections are for?  Even status quo elections?

Anyway, I was hoping to find some evidence of folks on the right whose worlds were crumbling beneath them.  I found some.  Eric Dondero subtitles his post "Time to tell any Democrats you know to fuck off and die."

I've soured on electoral politics given what happened last night. I believe now the best course of action is outright revolt. What do I mean by that?

Well, to each his own. Some may choose to push secession in their state legislatures. Others may choose to leave the U.S. for good (Costa Rica, Switzerland, Italy, Argentina, Hong Kong, Israel). Still others may want to personally separate themselves from the United States here in North America while still living under communist rule' the Glenn Beck, grab your guns, food storage, build bunkers, survivalist route. I heartily endorse all these efforts.

Some folks don't take political loss well at all.

 Starting early this morning, I am going to un-friend every single individual on Facebook who voted for Obama, or I even suspect may have Democrat leanings. I will do the same in person. All family and friends, even close family and friends, who I know to be Democrats are hereby dead to me. I vow never to speak to them again for the rest of my life, or have any communications with them. They are in short, the enemies of liberty. They deserve nothing less than hatred and utter contempt

I strongly urge all other libertarians to do the same. Are you married to someone who voted for Obama, have a girlfriend who voted 'O'. Divorce them. Break up with them without haste. Vow not to attend family functions, Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas for example, if there will be any family members in attendance who are Democrats.Do you work for someone who voted for Obama? Quit your job. Co-workers who voted for Obama. Simply don't talk to them in the workplace, unless your boss instructs you too for work-related only purposes. Have clients who voted Democrat? Call them up this morning and tell them to take their business elsewhere's.Have a neighbor who votes for Obama? You could take a crap on their lawn. Then again, probably not a good idea since it would be technically illegal to do this. But you could have your dog take care of business. Not your fault if he just happens to choose that particular spot.And start your boycott of your Democrat friends and family today. Like this morning. First thing you can do, very easy, is to un-friend all Democrats from your Facebook account.

Had Romney won, I'm trying to imagine any left-wing bloggers advising people to become anti-social out of spite.

John Hinderaker bemoans the reality that is America.

But there is a much more important proposition that, I think, was proved false last night: that America is a center-right country. This belief is one that we conservatives have cherished for a long time, but as of today, I think we have to admit that it is false. America is a deeply divided country with a center-left plurality.

Actually, that's an astute observation.  Then, alas, Hinderaker goes off the rails on the crazy train.

 Put bluntly, the takers outnumber the makers. The polls in this election cycle diverged in a number of ways, but in one respect they were remarkably consistent: every poll I saw, including those that forecast an Obama victory, found that most people believed Mitt Romney would do a better job than Barack Obama on the economy. So with the economy the dominant issue in the campaign, why did that consensus not assure a Romney victory? Because a great many people live outside the real, competitive economy. Over 100 million receive means tested benefits from the federal government, many more from the states. And, of course, a great many more are public employees. To many millions of Americans, the economy is mostly an abstraction.

Then there is the fact that relatively few Americans actually pay for the government they consume. To a greater extent than any other developed nation, we rely on upper-income people to finance our federal government. When that is combined with the fact that around 40% of our federal spending isn’t paid for at all–it is borrowed–it is small wonder that many self-interested voters are happy to vote themselves more government. Mitt Romney proclaimed that Barack Obama was the candidate of “free stuff,” and voters took him at his word

"The takers outnumber the makers". . . .  From a guy for whom a significant income is what is generously referred to as "wingnut welfare" - folks on the right paying other folks on the right to say stuff folks on the right want to hear; stuff that is, by and large as fanciful as American Psycho without Bret Easton Ellis's sense of whimsy.

One final example, this time from The American Spectator, to American journalism what Gigli was to American cinema, and writer Robert Stacy McCain.

[I]t's been a long time since any intelligent person believed anything a Democrat said. The cretins and dimwits have become an effective governing majority, and the question for conservatives at this point is perhaps not, "What does it mean?" but rather, "Why should we bother ourselves resisting it any longer?"

Alas, as always, the duty of the Right is to manfully endure, to survive the defeat and stubbornly oppose the vaunting foe, and so this brutal shock, this electoral catastrophe, must be absorbed and digested. At some point next week or next month or next year, then, we shall recover our morale and plot some new stratagem for the future. In the immediate aftermath of Tuesday's debacle, however, it is difficult to see any glimmer of light amid the encroaching gloom. Surely, there are many Americans who now sympathize with that New York infantryman who, in the bleak winter of 1862, when the Union's Army of the Potomac was under the incompetent command of Gen. Ambrose Burnside, wrote home in forlorn complaint: "Mother, do not wonder that my loyalty is growing weak.… I am sick and tired of the disaster and the fools that bring disaster upon us."

I don't think Eric Sevareid's reputation is in danger.

What is left to hope for? That the American people will soon regret their choice? That another four years of economic stagnation and escalating debt will cure them of their insane appetite for charismatic liberals? If four years of endless failure have not rid them of this madness, the disease may well be terminal. Perhaps others will still see some cause for hope, and in another few weeks my friends may persuade me to see it, too. But today I will hear no such talk, and I doubt I'll be in a better mood tomorrow. At the moment, I am convinced America is doomed beyond all hope of redemption, and any talk of the future fills me with dread and horror. 

Wow.  Dude, pot's legal out west now.  Go enjoy some.  Lighten up a bit.

Let me confess something.  The morning after the 2004 election, Lisa and I were chatting on the cell phone (I was an OTR driver at the time, somewhere, I think, in Minnesota).  She asked me what I thought.  I remember, very distinctly, saying, "Well, maybe things have to get worse before people realize their mistakes."  Two years later, W's poll numbers sunk to less than 40% approval, where they sat for two years; later that same year of 2006, the Democrats cleaned the Republican's clocks.  While I do not have documentary evidence to prove the conversation accurate, I rest easy in the reality that I was correct.  Because "worse" things did indeed get, and those candidates who most remind most voters just how bad "worse" can be lost.

Does 2012 mean we are "no longer" a conservative nation?  I don't think we've been either very conservative or very liberal for a very long time.  Culturally and socially we trend schizophrenic.  The gentle spread of marriage equality does warm my heart, but it hardly means much more than folks recognize discrimination and wish to end it.  The election of more progressives, and more prominent progressives, to positions of power should gently nudge the Democratic Party in the direction of being, yet again, almost as liberal as it was when Lyndon Johnson ran the show, and folks like Frank Church and George McGovern stalked the US Senate.

I'd feel bad for these folks, and others like them but, honestly, I find their ennui in the face of electoral defeat hilarious.  My 15 year old doesn't do drama this well.

Not Magic Or Miracles (Strong Language Alert)

Fucking magnets, how do they work? And I don't want to talk to a scientist, ya'll motherfuckers lying and getting me pissed. - "Miracles", Insane Clown Posse 

I got thinking of this ridiculous bit from rap group Insane Clown Posse when I read Jonah Goldberg's foot-stomping tantrum that Nate Silver's math was right.

Now, I have no idea whether Silver’s model is the psephological Rosetta Stone some hope — or fear — it to be. And no one else does either.

The truth is that any statistician can build a model. They do it all the time. They make assumptions about the electorate, assign weights to polls and economic indicators, etc., and then they wait for the sausage to come out. No doubt some models are better than others, and some models are simply better for a while and then regress to the mean. But ultimately, the numbers are dependent on the values you place in them. As the computer programmers like to say, garbage in, garbage out.

I’m not saying Silver’s just lucky or shoveling garbage. He’s a serious numbers guy. But so are the folks at the University of Colorado’s political-science department, whose own model is based on economic indicators. Its October 4 findings predicted Romney would win, as did many other models.

They couldn’t all be right.

What interests me is the way people talk about math as if it were divinely prophetic. They seem to subscribe to a religion that simply apes the terminology of science. To listen to many of Silver’s defenders, questioning his methodology is akin to rejecting evolution or the laws of thermodynamics, as if only his model is sanctified by the god Reason.

The combination of stupidity and ignorance just in this snippet is breathtaking.  That Goldberg tries - and fails miserably - to sound insightful and intelligent only makes the whole thing worse.

Ironically, I got in to a bit of a kerfuffle in some comments elsewhere yesterday.  And it concerned exactly these issues.  It is one thing to recognize the usefulness of the scientific method, when applied properly and offered publicly for critique and testing.  It is another thing altogether, however, to act as if we who understand what science is and how it works are somehow more in tune with "reality" than others.

Now, Goldberg is most definitely wrong when he says that Silver's method is some abstruse thing that no one but he understands.  I've seen what Silver does, and his model makes an immense amount of sense.  Goldberg's claim that "they can't all be right" is true enough; that's why they're tested.  So, the model from the University of Colorado cited by Goldberg predicting a Romney victory?

That would be wrong.

How that little bit of reality embedded within the effluvium of his column escaped Jonah's gaze is beyond me.

Silver isn't doing alchemy.  He isn't even doing advanced statistical modeling; trust me, there are statistical models that are extremely complex.  Silver's just isn't one of them.  His model seems to be sound because . . . it continues to work well in the way it is supposed to work.

And that, friends and neighbors, is all science does.

Goldberg's soliloquy on the human spirit, through which he stumbles for an exit, is what most people would call a non sequitur.

But I like to think that people are different, more open to reason, and that the soul — particularly when multiplied into the complexity of a society — is not so easily number-crunched. Obviously this is a romantic view out of step with the times. Edmund Burke, the founder of modern conservatism, lamented long ago that the “age of chivalry is gone,” replaced by “that of sophisters, economists and calculators.”

Still, isn’t it possible that the passionate defense Silver arouses from some people on the left has just a bit more to do with the comfort he dispenses than with the sophistication of his analysis? And isn’t it also possible that some of the conservatives screaming bloody murder about how his model has to be rigged are paying homage to the same cult of the numbers?

To be honest, I'm not even sure how this is related to Silver's statistical model.  Or anything else in the world, for that matter.  I would like to believe that people could fly; as one scientist I know said, "Anything is possible, even Santa Claus."  Being possible, of course, doesn't mean either that it is actual or that it is open to scientific investigation.  All Nate Silver did was take a whole lot of polls, carefully weigh them so that internal bias wouldn't multiply, and make predictions.  Which is what scientists do.  That this seems beyond Jonah Goldberg's ability to accept, well, doesn't that tell us something about the man? 

Did Something Happen Yesterday?

It's early here on the prairie.  I know Joe Walsh will be returning to Illinois sadder but certainly not wiser.  Tammy Duckworth will roll onto the House floor in January and the rest of us should walk a little straighter, perhaps.  Down in Florida, Allen West gets yet another less than honorable discharge.  Up in Wisconsin, our badgerly friends did us all proud, electing Tammy Baldwin to the United States Senate.  Out in Massachusetts, Sen. Scott Brown might have a gig doing NBA sportscasting offered because, well, he needs a job now.  Elizabeth Warren managed to snap some folks out of their McDreamy; I don't think it helped that Brown's Cosmo photo shoot had him using only one hand to cover up his privates.

Pot is legal in Washington and Colorado.  Not medical marijuana; Cannabis sativa, in one of its useful forms is being decriminalized from west coast to east.  I do so hope the Department of Justice finds better things to do than go after people who are doing what their state laws allow.

Gay marriage was a big winner.  It won in Maryland.  The President who came out in support of it won.  We have our first openly gay United States Senator (Larry Craig wasn't very open, just wide-stanced).

For all that, the government we elected doesn't look a whole lot different from the government we've had the past two years.  Which means not a whole lot will get done; House Republicans will continue to refuse to do anything with President Obama then turn around and blame him for being obstructionist.  If Harry Reid is smart, he'll do away with supermajorities to get legislation up for a vote.  He should probably do away with the use of Senatorial holds, too, so that people nominated by the President can be confirmed or not.

For all the talk about "throwing the bums out" - and when have we ever really done that? - we managed to stay remarkably the same, overall.  This was, in many ways, a status quo election.  I don't expect great things from a second Obama term, but I do expect fewer bad things than would have emerged from a Romney Administration.  As I was told over and over again, that's called realism.

Yet, President Obama did so some really good stuff.  Signing the Lilly Ledbetter Act.  Repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell.  He stopped defending DOMA in the courts.  The Affordable Care Act has already provided health insurance for millions of Americans who didn't have it, or even have access to it.  These are things most folks should be able to concede are worthy of celebrating.  And, obviously, worthy of a second term.

So, some important, incremental changes while the larger picture looks the same as it has for the previous four years.  I do think Charlie Pierce's encomium rings true on several levels, even while I think that, while another battle is won, the longer war in which we make America look like the place we want it to be goes on.  That, I suppose, is to be expected.  It is also a good thing.  We shouldn't get so comfortable in our national skin we forget that being America is, as Pres. Obama reminds us, hard work, a project that is on-going.

At the end of  a very long day, and even longer, more tiring election season, it's nice to see that we continue to believe it's better to work together and argue together and disagree together than it is to turn our backs on our common life and struggle for the main chance.  There's enough of that already.  That we re-elected our first African-American as President, that's no small achievement in a land where our collective demon, racism, still keeps its claws deep.  It is something we should celebrate about ourselves, regardless of ideology or party.

A New Prediction

Back on October 24, I said that Pres. Obama would carry every state he carried in 2008 except North Carolina.  I would like to change that.  He will carry every state he carried in 2008 except North Carolina and Indiana.  And the one Electoral Vote Obama won from the Nebraska Congressional District he carried?  Nope, that's gone, too.  Which puts Obama's Electoral College Vote total at . . .

338.

I still think the popular vote spread will be no more than 4%, although no less than 2%.

Some Rhapsodic Waxing

Soundtrack for this post.  The opening isn't as punchy as I'd like, but maybe the Brits don't like punchy common folk.

I know the poo-flinging won't stop after the votes are counted tomorrow.  All things considered, the Republicans have managed to cover all their bases: A Romney win, and there's dancing in the Board Rooms.  An Obama win, and the election was stolen by Hurricane Sandy and that RINO (a fitting name, BTW) Chris Christie.  In Florida, the Republican Administration seems hellbent on making sure no one votes.  They had some help over the weekend with a plucky volunteer creating a bomb scare.  The Ohio Secretary of State is stamping his foot and holding his breath until he turns blue because some people want to vote even after he told them they couldn't.  That there's a partisan lawsuit that is trying to put him in time-out demonstrates one of the differences between the two parties.  One wants as many people as possible to get to the polls, to exercise their RIGHT TO VOTE.  The other just wants their supporters.  I gotta wonder about the confidence they have in their candidates; if high voter turn out is bad for them, why do they support their candidates?

For now, though, I want to spend a moment thinking about how marvelous it is to vote.  Whether you live in Caribou, ME, or Hattiesburg, MS, or Orland Park, IL, or The People's Republic of San Francisco, CA - these national elections remind us that we are all American.  For all our differences, great and small, geographic, biographic, whatever.  It's pretty awesome, really.

Does the outcome please everyone?  Obviously not.  It never does and it never will.  It wasn't designed to do that.  There will be people having a sad on Wednesday.  There will be joy in Mudville at last.  Some folks who had a job will be looking for a new place to live.  Others, who get hired, will be scrambling to find a place to stay in state capitals and the District of Columbia.  Here in IL, we even elect judges (what a stupid idea) and  our county sheriffs and county coroners.  Now, tell me: Does it really make a difference if the person who determines whether a death was natural, accidental, suicide, or homicide is a Republican or Democrat?  The good folks who designed our system seem to think so.  Me, I'm voting for the Green Candidate for Kane County Coroner, because I'd be interested to know how such would operate in that office.

The next two days are a celebration of We The People, continuing to work on that whole More Perfect Union thingy.  That's a big deal.  A really big deal.  Tomorrow morning, when I walk in the voting booth, a not insubstantial part of me will be glowing with a kind of patriotic fervor.  Little old me gets the chance to have my say, to make my wishes known, to have a voice in who makes the decisions and laws in Kane County, across Illinois, and even in Washington.  Heady stuff, that.

No matter who wins the various races, Wednesday morning I'll feel good (not everyone will; trust me, an Obama re-election will create a poo-flinging extravaganza unlike anything we've seen before) because, even with the flaws in the system, and the more than occasional crazy person faking a bomb scare and state officials getting in the way of people exercising their RIGHT TO VOTE, the outcome will be the result of us common folk being as murky or clear as we can be.

That, friends and neighbors, is a huge thing.