From What Are They Saying, an excellent blog by Mary Madigan:

Jak King* has decided that the Australian petition to have the United Nations declare suicide bombings a crime against humanity is badly drafted. But the alternative he offers is also poorly considered. His petition would make a crime of the death of any civilian by any military action.
The death of any civilian? There’s a big difference between accidental deaths and deaths caused by malicious intent. The former is not a crime. The latter is.
When civilians are not targeted in a military action, their deaths are unfortunate and accidental. When civilians are deliberately targeted, it’s a crime. The deaths of the villagers at My Lai was a crime. When a suicide bomber bypasses military targets to blow up the patrons of an ice cream store, that is also a crime.
Military action is inherently risky. If every death that resulted from military action were considered to be a crime, it would effectively make all military action illegal. Since these actions are often used to defend civilians against attacks by terrorists the result of this proposal would be more civilian deaths. This proposal is not only ill considered, it’s potentially dangerous.

I couldn’t say it any better than that…

Here’s a blog – ‘Politics in the Zeros’ – from Bob Morris, an interesting liberal here in L.A. (on the blogroll to the left). He talks about state politics:

Green Party candidate for Calif. governor pulling unusual interest
In what could be a major development, a coalition of nine business groups of people of color are considering backing Green Party candidate Peter Miguel Camejo, for Governor rather than Democrat incumbent Gray Davis. The coalition sent Camejo a letter saying they thought 20-30% of the minority vote could go to a strong Green candidate, as neither major party is effectively addressing issues.

And he talks about the environment, with an emphasis on water (which I think will be one of the major shapers of international politics in the next twenty years):

Water news
Israel. A continuing drought and increased friction with Jordan and Lebanon has caused Israel to put all water matters under direct control of the Prime Minister. And how sad it is to continually read about depleted aquifers not replenishing – something that is happening worldwide.
India / Pakistan. India says it will continue with a disputed water project in Kashmir, regardless of what Pakistan says, and may scrap the treaty entirely if they go to war.

Interesting stuff…

Read this about a partial solar eclipse at sunset on June 10.
We’ll be down the street at the beach, watching.

I’ve actually gotten a fair number of emails asking me this; they presuppose that the only valid position for a liberal is to be disarmed, and the only valid position for a gun owner is to be a conservative. I’m neither. I own guns, and have spent a fair amount of time, energy and money becoming at least moderately competent with them. And let me state bluntly that while the politic thing for shooters to say in public is “I just shoot [trap and skeet] [a few targets] [to hunt birds].”, that I do all those things, and in addition have trained hard to become competent in defending myself by, if necessary, shooting people.
I’m also a liberal, who believes that the government has the obligation, not just the right, to work to make our society, nation and world a better place. Which better place ought to be one in which fewer people are physically threatened seriously enough to need to resort to shooting people.
The intersection of those two beliefs – which on their face seem to be incompatible, but which I believe are not – defines a lot of what I believe about politics and the nature of good government.
Let’s talk a little bit about the armed side of it. Why be armed in today’s society?
Well, I’ll suggest four reasons:
1) It’s fun. Shooting is a pleasurable sport, things go “bang!!” loudly; well-hit clay pigeons gratifyingly disintegrate into a cloud of dust.
2) It is moral. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that people who eat meat and have never killed anything are morally suspect. Some creature gave its life for the chicken Andouille sausages in the pasta sauce I made tonight. Pork chops and salmon don’t start out wrapped in plastic on the grocery shelf. I have hunted deer, wild pigs, and birds, and I can say with certainty (and I imagine anyone else who hunts can say) that it fundamentally changed the way I look both at my food and at animals in the world. I respect the death that made my dinner possible in a way I never would have had an animal not died at my own hand.
When I have a gun in my possession, I am suddenly both more aware of my environment, and more careful and responsible for my actions in it. People who I know who carry guns daily talk about how well-behaved they are how polite they suddenly become. Heinlein wrote that “an armed society is a polite society”, and while in truth I cannot make a causal connection, when you look at societies where the codes of manners were complex and strong, from medieval Europe or Japan to Edwardian England, there was a wide distribution of weapons.
I know several people who are either highly skilled martial artists or highly skilled firearms trainers, and in both groups there is an interesting correlation between competence (hence dangerousness) and a kind of calm civility – the opposite of the “armed brute” image that some would attempt to use to portray a dangerous man or woman.
3) It is useful. The sad reality is that we live in an imperfect world, one in which some people prey on others. They may do it because it is a kind of crude redistribution (you have a BMW, he would like one); because they are desperate, or because they are deranged. They may have been damaged in some way by their genetic makeup or their upbringing. Or they may just be evil.
Bluntly, at the moment I am under threat, I don’t care why they do it. My response is not very different from my response to my friends who said that “America had it coming” on 9/11. “Maybe. So what?” People who attack me or mine need to be stopped. If the only way I have to effectively stop them is to kill them, so be it. Once I am out of danger, I am happy to consider what it will take to improve education and job opportunities in the central cities, or to talk thoughtfully about helping the Palestinians figure out how to become a nation and a state.
There are bad people out there, folks. Some of them are tormented by what they do, some don’t care, some may revel in it. Someday, you may be confronted by one. What will you do?
4) It is the politically correct thing to do. I say this with all appropriate irony, but I am also a believer that an armed citizenry does two important things to the American polity:
a) it fundamentally changes the nature of the relationship between the individual and the State. I am pretty dubious about the apocalyptic fantasies of those who believe that a cadre of deer hunters could stand up against the armed forces of the U.S. or some invading army. In reality, I think that the arms possessed by the citizens of the U.S. are primarily symbolic in value, much like the daggers carried by Sikhs. But, having lived in Europe, I think that the symbolic value carries a political and social weight;
b) it makes it clear that we as citizens have some measure of responsibility for ourselves. The tension I talk about above is one between self-reliance and mutual reliance. In England today, a subject (I am careful not to say citizen) faces increasing limitations on the right of self-defense; the State is moving toward an absolute monopoly on the use of force. It should not be hard to imagine that the character of both the relationship of the individual to the state and of the individual’s relationship to society is vastly different under those circumstances. By being armed, I am taking responsibility – literally, the responsibility of life and death – on myself. When the state cannot entrust individuals to act with some significant responsibility, except as an adjunct of the state, we will have truly lost something that is a key part of what makes our politics work (note that I think that the same thing is happening in the EU today, with the same effect).
There’s more, which can be put simply that people will sometimes do stupid or evil things with their freedom. But without their freedom, they will seldom do great things. So by protecting society against one, you also deprive it of the other.
Sometime soon: how to be a liberal in a society that values freedom, and why freedom is critical to building an effective and durable liberal society.

I just got this link in email: SFSU cites Jewish émigré for ‘hate speech’ (May 31, 2002), and read the story — it appears that a 50 year old Jewish-lady SFSU student is being charged under a hate crime statute, based on evidence that she told pro-Palestinian counterdemonstrators to “fuck their camels”, and called on the Arabic word for “bitch”.
I’ve Googled this and don’t yet have confirmation, but it meshes with the earlier news reports that had a pro-Israeli student offered to the DA to be possibly charged with hate crimes based on what amounts to ethnic abuse.
I’m not in possession of all the facts (but the media reports are congruent); I’m not a lawyer, and I’m sure some lawyers will pick this up and go into depth with it.
But if the facts are what they appear to be, this is beyond absurd. I’ll go back to my earlier comment, which is that there is a wide gulf between passionate, even heated speech – which I’m pretty sure the comments above are – and threatened and actual violence – which I’m absolutely sure they aren’t. It frightens me a bit that this distinction is somehow not clear to the eminient administrators of the University.
The only reason in the world that I can imagine for the SFSU administration to pick this one women out of what were doubtless dozens of people screaming imprecations is that she is Jewish, and that by referring her to the District Attorney they can maintain exactly the impression of fairness that they find so important.
The facts will come out in the next few days. Message to President Corrigan: I sure hope the task force you have empanelled comes up with something profound this summer. I know I’ll be watching. Why is it that my expectations are so low?
Note (6/8/02): I mistakenly typed “UCSF” for “SFSU” and just got caught. My apologies to the medical students.

Well, while admiring my own bad self in pixels in Instapundit, I notice a link to a story about hospital time with a child, and as a parent, can’t help but follow it to a brilliant quote:

There is a particular radiant serenity that is immediately apparent in the countenance and bearing of the parents of critically and chronically ill children. After spending time with others who are in the clutches of what is almost universally acknowledged as the most indescribably horrible human experience, I come away feeling that I have been in the presence of God.

And it’s an amazing coincidence, but something happened that made me think just this today…the Littlest Guy had t-ball today (baseball for kids who are too little to play real baseball yet), and when we got to the field, a Challengers game was underway. Challengers are kids playing Little League baseball who are physically or developmentally disabled. It was quite a motley crew in wheelchairs and braces, the characteristic smile of children with Down’s syndrome…a walking embodiment of many parent’s – at least I’ll admit, my – fears.
Their game was running very late, but none of the t-ball parents had it in them to chase them off the field, so the coaches came up with some extra drills for the kids to do in the outfield, and the rest of us parents stood at the fence watching the game.
No one spoke about what we were watching; I don’t know what the other parents felt. I began by looking at the children struggling, and then remembering the relief I felt each time one of my sons was born and was pronounced fit. Then I felt bad for feeling that way, and started watching the parents.
And I know just what Katie Granju meant. There was an ease and a grace and a kind of joy that I saw in those parents which blocked everything else from my attention, and which I’m still carrying around with me and examining.
It amazes me how much I have to learn from people, and how easy it is when I just am willing to open my eyes and look.

Well, wowie…three weeks into this, and I get a link from the man himself, Instapundit. As egoless as you try to be, it’s hard to explain how good that feels…
He apparently got the link from Gail Davis at MyBlog, so thanks to Gail. I paged over to her, and noticed two things: Her ‘catchphrases’ are great – “Liberal and Proud of It”, and “Armed Women=Polite Men”. And she has some great, sensible commentary.
I didn’t find permalinks, so you’ll have to search or scroll, but she has at least three posts which I thought were excellent:

TUCSON POLICE: DAMNED IF THEY DO AND DAMNED IF THEY DON’T Appears that the Tucson Police Department video taped some individuals during an anti-sales tax demonstration. A policy to video tape demonstrations or gatherings that have a potential for violence came as a result of the Fourth Avenue Riot last April which was so incompetently handled by the Tucson Police. I don’t know that there was any reason to think pro-sales tax and anti-sales tax aficionados were going to come to blows. Perhaps the video ensured that they didn’t. I’m not really offended by the police video tapping specific actions during the event as long as those tapes are not retained once the event is over and no further police involvement in the issue is needed. I much prefer a policeman taking a few videos (if they will be discarded) to permanent video cameras installed around public areas.

Taping can serve at least two purposes—to allow the police to assemble intelligence by identifying people participating in or leading demonstrations (bad in the event the demonstrations are just that, good in the event that they turn into riots); and to serve as evidence in the event that police or demonstrators misbehave. Reynold’s post on my SFSU comment calls for SFSU President Corrigan to release his police tapes; showing the whole world what went on would make a differnce, he thinks. And I agree.

THE CONSERVATIONISTS ARE … Ill advised at best. The following quote is a continuation of Josh Marshall’s weblog entry below.

…I also concluded that many of the most visible hawks really are reckless, ignorant about key issues about the Middle East, and — not that infrequently — indifferent to the truth. They have been underhanded and they have used cheap media ploys.

Reckless and underhanded methods are not limited to those pushing the war or promoting their candidate for public office. Conservationists, who often have good intentions and valid concerns, emulate these methods and end up discrediting themselves. Conservationists have been so narrow minded that they inhibit any rational dialogue. And they do this in the name of “the better good.” Apparently they do not believe
1. That their data can counter those who are underhanded and indifferent to the truth;
2. That given good straightforward information, citizens in this country are able to think for themselves;
3. That we actually have a right to make choices and may not agree with all they propose.
The conservation movement needs to get it’s act together, and stop trying to manipulate us in the same way as do those arch conservative republicans.

Yes, environmentalism has moved from being a discipline aimed at rationally evaluating and preserving the environment to a secular religion…and aren’t we seeing enough religious wars these days?
I believe that there is a strong and reasonable case for conserving (note that I do not say preserving) the environment. I think that Den Beste is off-base in his attack today on energy conservation (as I thought Friedman was for his view that conservation would somehow insulate us against Islamicist terrorism). But the environmental community is painting itself into a corner by crying “wolf” so often, and taking positions so extreme and ill-thought-through that they risk pushing the mainstream away.

ALTRUISTIC MEDICINE? Chris Rangel at RangelMD.com says:
: …most physicians are forced into a system where they have to cram in 40 to 50 patients a day (at about 5-10 mins per patient) just to cover the office overhead. They work 12 hour days trying to balance office visits with hospital admissions and emergencies and then have to sit down and fill out paperwork for an additional 2-3 hours after the office is closed. I’m not a bit surprised to see more and more physicians dump Medicare, go to cash only services, and concierge arrangements. Will this create a class divide in the quality of health care? Most assuredly but don’t go off blaming greedy physicians whom you believe are obligated by society to be more altruistic. You want altruistic medicine? There are plenty of places around the world (Canada, China or any communist country, the former Soviet Union) that you can go for socialized medical care. Funny though. I don’t ever seem to recall a flood of people into these countries for the sole purpose of basking in the light of their superior medical systems.
I have a different view of how we got to this point. I think that the medical profession (mainly physicians) became excessively greedy (as a group).

I know a lot of folks whose parents were physicians in the 50’s and 60’s, and a lot of my peers are doctors now. The big difference is that where their parents expected to do well – to lead an upper-middle-class professional lifestyle, the doctors now seem to all expect to get rich.
I’ll tie this back to the increase in inequality which I keep harping on, which leads to the feeling that just making $150 – $200K/year really may not be enough to live as well as many of us think we ought to.
Maybe we should rethink?

I keep wanting to write about sexy, controversial issues which will provoke wildfires of argument and commentary (after all, why else do this?), and keep getting sidetracked into what I know are relatively arcane issues – which I find to be absolutely critical and fascinating – and which I just can’t help but write about.
Chris Bertram (who I have complimented before) has another great discussion, this time on the flaws in libertarianism.
I have always felt that libertarianism was an interesting thought experiment (gedankenexperiment, as my old physics teachers used to say), on a class with Schroedenger’s cat. To be honest, I’ve also thought that Rawlsean liberalism was the mirror image of it, in terms of being the product of a bunch of smart, well intentioned kids sitting around with too much pilsner and pizza and trying to design a society.
In his terrific post, Bertram points out a key flaw in libertarian theory – which is that the absolute property rights created will need at some point to be adjudicated.
It’s a great point, but I don’t think he went quite far enough, so I want to take it and run a little further.
What, exactly, is property?
The “law for dummies” version is that property is something which you control, can dispose of as you see fit, can transfer the ownership of, and can deny the use of to another.
To which I add: Who says?
Well, in the old days, I did. By the force of arms. (i.e. I would either kill you and take your stuff, or threaten to kill you and you would then give me your stuff).
To condense two entire disciplines (sociology and anthropology) into some bullet points, we began to form increasingly complex kinship and then social groups, in no small part because we needed enough people by our side to keep the group over the hill from coming and taking all our stuff.
In these groups, often, the strongest took command, and could basically decide what stuff he wanted, restrained only by the fact that if he took too much stuff, the weaker members would gang up on him and take all his stuff.
Sometime around the beginning of the Enlightenment, the concept that everyone in society was subject to the rule of law…that it was not just the diktat of the strongest…began to gain currency. And as a part of that the concept of “ownership” came to the fore.
This meant that what you owned – your property – was yours independent of the say-so of the king, or the local powers-that-be. It was not “granted” to you by the Queen.
And, I will also argue (in this kind of cartoon fashion), that creation – of marketable, private property – is what led to capitalism, industrialization, and all the material progress that culminates with a college freshman surfing the web for fart jokes.
But in order to do that, we have to have a concept of ‘property’ which is both absolute, in that we have clear mechanisms to determine and enforce ownership, and flexible, in that we have to adapt the definitions of property to current social conditions.
We are living through an adaptation now as intellectual property in the form of movies and music is suddenly readily transferable (and changeable – the ‘remixed’ Star Wars Episode I.II is out on DVD).
So the reality is that property is a socially defined right; there are significant issues in how it is defined, and I will claim that the ‘best’ definitions require a healthy tension between the utility and fairness of individual control and the utility and fairness of a well-functioning society.
In my mind, this alone puts paid to the libertarian absolutism of property relations as the controlling element in social relations. Reality is, as always, surprisingly complex. And people are even more complex than that…

I’m a liberal, and I think this post by Isntapundit (not Instapundit) is just great.

One of the movies we’re watching a lot at our house is ‘Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back’ (can you tell that we have a teenager, and that my own maturity is probably questionable?). There’s a scene in the movie where our heroes (?) are hitching cross-country and get a ride from a van full of attractive young women (and one unattractive guy) on their way to liberate a bunch of animals.
Stick with me for a moment, there’s actually a point.
The scene in the van is incredibly funny as we watch the explicitly mindless “save the bunnies” discussion (and neato song, as well). Ultimately, we discover an ulterior motive as well as cool latex outfits, and it all makes plot sense. But the satirical take on the thoughtless “hey, Mr. Science Guy, don’t spray that aerosol in my eye” politics was pretty damn funny.
Sadly, that mindless attitude is a lot less funny when you se it on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times. Thomas Friedman’s ‘A Failure to Imagine’ is a column that can really only hit the right tone when it is read by attractive actresses playing at being truly inane. Now, I thought ‘From Beirut to Jerusalem’ was really good, and some of his NYT columns have been sensible, but this one is just absurd.
I know I’m a little late on this, and it’s not one of the things I’ve talked about writing about, but my reaction has been sitting in the back of my mind and it’s just won’t shut up until I write this.

No, I don’t blame President Bush at all for his failure to imagine evil. I blame him for something much worse: his failure to imagine good.
I blame him for squandering all the positive feeling in America after 9/11, particularly among young Americans who wanted to be drafted for a great project that would strengthen America in some lasting way — a Manhattan project for energy independence. Such a project could have enlisted young people in a national movement for greater conservation and enlisted science and industry in a crash effort to produce enough renewable energy, efficiencies and domestic production to wean us gradually off oil imports.
Such a project would not only have made us safer by making us independent of countries who share none of our values. It would also have made us safer by giving the world a much stronger reason to support our war on terrorism. There is no way we can be successful in this war without partners, and there is no way America will have lasting partners, especially in Europe, unless it is perceived as being the best global citizen it can be. And the best way to start conveying that would be by reducing our energy gluttony and ratifying the Kyoto treaty to reduce global warming.

This is a political position that ought to be staked out in a Kevin Smith film, not in a national journal.
Look, if we buy another car soon, we will probably buy a hybrid. I think that Jerry Brown was prescient in his emphasis on conservation (of energy and water, among other things) as an economically and environmentally smart set of policies.
But I don’t support Kyoto, because I believe the issue there really isn’t restraining fossil fuel consumption or greenhouse gasses, but in ultimately transferring wealth from the First World to the Third.
But to suggest that by ending our dependence on Middle Eastern oil, we would somehow defang Islamicism or reduce our exposure to terrorism is too stupid to even be believed by Missy, Sissy, or Chrissy (in vapid Students Against Animal Cruelty mode, not in kick-ass bad-girl mode).
We need to both defeat terrorism militarily, and having done so, defeat it politically. We need to be completely focused on this, and secondarily on the various other things we need to do (energy and water conservation are high on that list).
There is a well-known political and bureaucratic impulse, in times of crisis, to pull out one’s pet issue and explain why it is that your policy is critical to solving the crisis. Terrorist attack? This flood control program we’ve been touting for ten years is the answer, of course. By hitching your program to the meme of the moment, you hope to gain some political traction.
I do believe that resource misallocation and mismanagement, combined with insane population pressures are going to create more political instability in the Third World. I think that substituting brainpower for fossil fuel is almost always a good thing.
But, as noted by the Zen master quoted below, when you brush your teeth and piss at the same time, you usually do a bad job of both.