Man Bites Blog

It's not about the money, but it's totally about the money

2011-12-11T21:34:00.001-06:00

Interesting reporting on why Pujols took the offer from the Angels.

Summarizing, it seems that Pujols went with the Angels not because they offered more money, but because they demonstrated a greater commitment. How did they demonstrate this commitment? By offering a bigger contract.

At this point, it's tempting for a spurned Cardinal fan like myself to point to the absurdity of Pujols's position, and that of course he was just after getting as much money as he possibly could. But I get what he means.

For one, I am oversimplifying a bit. Pujols turned down an even bigger offer from the Miami Marlins that did not include no-trade protections.(i.e. "commitment"), so it seems that this was not just about money.

But what I think it is, to borrow from Perfectly Irrational, is that at some point during Pujols's career, his relationship turned from social-based to market-based. By taking a clinical, analytical approach to its negotiations with Pujols, the Cardinals move their relationship with Pujols from the social zone to the market zone.

This was bad news for a couple reasons. For one, once you're in the market zone, the rational thing to do is move if you get a better offer somewhere else. If you're just working for a paycheck, does it matter if that paycheck comes from the Cardinals or the Angels? The Cardinals were not in a position where they could win a bidding war, and in moving their relationship with their best player to the market zone, that's exactly what they set up.

The second reason is that most of us, in our hearts, want to have relationships that are in the social zone instead of the market zone. The market zone is an exhausting place to be -- the assumption is each side is trying to screw over the other side, and we have to do what we can to protect ourselves (an maybe screw over the other side). Most of us would rather be in a relationship, even business relationships, where we can trust the other person and not be on guard.

The Angels seem to have presented Pujols a convincing case that they were such a partner, and this is what Pujols wanted.

Now. It may be that Pujols is kidding himself, and it will be interesting to see how this "commitment" holds up if Pujols gets hurt or his productivity drops.

I'm not sure if there was a point during the last two years where the Cardinals could have demonstrated this commitment with a lower offer than the one Pujols accepted. I'm not sure it's even possible for a team's relationship with a superstar to stay out of the market zone. And I'm not even positive that the Cardinals weren't prudent to do what they did.

But I do think what Pujols is discussing is real. Contributing to Stack Overflow was fun, but became less so when they started charging people to be listed on their job board. I've seen relationships with employers sour when it became apparent to me that the commitment they were asking for from me was not reciprocated.

It's a lesson that any company wishing to retain its star employees ought to absorb -- do everything you can to keep the relationship in the social zone and out of the market zone.

Pujols versus other departures..

2011-12-08T12:10:00.001-06:00

To work through my grief of Albert Pujols leaving the Cardinals for the Angels, I'll put on my analytical hat and compare his departure to when other teams lost their superstars.\

In a way, what's happening with Pujols is unprecedented -- a superstar is leaving a team that he just led to a championship, despite that team's apparent good faith effort to keep him.
Some comparisons:

Michael Jordan's retirements from the Bulls.
Michael Jordan took his baseball sabbatical after three straight championships. The Bulls kept the rest of the nucleus including Coach Phil Jackson, and the team remained competitive.
Jordan came back and led the Bulls to three more championships, then retired. This time, the whole band broke up, which was already in motion, and the bottom fell out.

Wayne Gretzky Traded to LA
After Wayne Gretzky and the Edmonton Oilers won 4 Stanley Cups in 5 years, there was a sense that Wayne had gotten too big for Edmonton, and he was traded to the LA Kings, in a move that was at least somewhat mutually desired. Since they had such a deep reserve of talent, the Oilers remained competitive, even winning another Cup, but were no longer a juggernaut, and slowly declined in relevance.

Shaquille O'Neal Going to LA, then Miami
The Magic hadn't won a championship yet, and Shaq's departure closed their window.

The Lakers had won 3 championships with Shaq, but were coming off a Finals upset loss to the Pistons, and transitioning to the Kobe era.

Kareem going to LA
Noticing a trend here...

The Bucks had won a championship with Kareem, but that was four years before he left, and the team was in decline already.

Rogers Hornsby traded from Cardinals to Giants
Hornsby didn't get along with Branch Rickey; Frankie Frisch didn't get along with John McGraw; so they were traded for each other.

This may be the closest parallel, even discounting that it's the same team. Good news for the Cardinals: Frisch led the Gashouse Gang to more championships. Bad news for the Cardinals: they aren't getting anyone directly in exchange for Pujols.

---

Well, this hasn't been a terribly instructive exercise, at least in helping to figure out how the Cardinals will be without Pujols.

The Cardinals have been able to punch a bit above their small market weight. The popular explanation is that the Cardinals are an institution in St. Louis, home to the best fans in baseball, etc. But I wonder how much of that is a function of having in large part lucked into employing the services of the best player in baseball for the past decade. It wasn't that long ago that Philadelphia was spoken of as a small baseball market, and teams like Toronto and Baltimore were powerhouses.

Is St. Louis intrinsically a great baseball town, or is it only when it has stars like Mark McGwire and Albert Pujols? We may be about to find out.

The case against Pujols taking his talents to South Beach

2011-12-06T12:07:00.001-06:00

As a St. Louis resident and Cardinal fan, I obviously have a vested interest in the results of Albert Pujols free agent negotiations. Still,I think my analysis here I relatively free of bias.

Reports are that the Marlins have offered Pujols a 10 year contract, compared to the Cardinals' 8 year offer.

Here's how I see Pujols's situation around 2020 if he takes the deal:

His skills have degraded to the point where he's now a league average first baseman.
He will probably have had several years of solid performance, but probably not at the same heights as his career so far.
His salary remains among the highest in the league.
He may or may not have led the Marlins to 1 or more world titles. Considering the Fish won the 1997 and 2003 titles, this wouldn't quite make him a local hero.
The team and interest in the team will likely decline along with Pujols's skills. The Marlins have been through a few boom and bust cycles. Yes, they're getting a new stadium, but Pirates and Nationals fans can tell you that's not a guarantee of long term success in the stands or on the field.
Pujols's contract will be identified as a major obstacle to the Marlins competing, and he will face pressure to rework his deal or accept a trade.

If he were to stay with the Cardinals, here's how things look:

The skill will not have changed.
He will have led the Cardinals to at least 2 world champions, perhaps more.
He will be saluted for having chosen to stay here.
He will in general be a local institution.

In short, nobody in 2020 is going to be regretting the Albert Pujols experience, even if he's struggling through an injury-plagued year with the team doing poorly. This is not true in Miami.

Now, there may be other considerations. And I know that I myself recently left a position where I had accumulated some goodwill for a position with more upside.

But it seems that by taking this deal, Pujols would be setting himself up for a bad situation several years hence. I know it's hard to look that far ahead, but it's worth considering.

Ok, maybe we do need a playoff system...

2011-12-03T22:23:00.001-06:00

Few things excite me less than the annual whining about the BCS.
I was glad to see Houston go down today so we avoided another round of lamentations on the plight of mid-major conference schools in the BCS system.

Sill as we march toward a championship rematch of the LSU-Alabama snoozefest / defensive classic that no one a day's drive from the Gulf Coast wants to see, it might be worth considering if there's a better way.

One thought is that the BCS is chained to the grim logic of the 1-2 match up. It's difficult to argue that any team is superior to LSU and Alabama. LSU played a hellacious schedule ans emerged with college football's sole undefeated record. Alabama's only loss was in overtime to LSU. (though it may be worth considering if we'd be in a better place if that game was allowed to end in a tie) The BCS's whole reason for existence is to produce a 1 vs. 2 match up, and that's LSU-Bama.

This begs for the human element. Bama had its shot at LSU and didn't come through. Why should they get a shot and not, say, Oklahoma St., whose sole loss was on the road in the immediate aftermath of a tragedy in their athletic department. The situation begs for the human element, for someone to have the authority to say, "Yes, Alabama objectively seems to be the 2nd best team, but they missed their shot and didn't win their conference. So we're giving another team a shot.

What about the old bowl system? That had the human element -- each bowl tried to put on an entertaining game. Seems like that would get us something better.

Except that while the BCS must serve.its master of objectivity, the old bowl system had to serve its conference commitments. LSU, as SEC champion, would play in the Sugar Bowl. Big 12 champ Oklahoma St. would play in the Orange Bowl, perhaps against Alabama. It's not clear who LSU's opponent would be. Virginia Tech, fresh from being clobbered by Clemson? Stanford, who also couldn't win its conference? This doesn't seem to be an improvement.

Seems like we need a system free from the grim logic of the BCS and the commitments of the old bowl system. Maybe this is possible without a playoff, but I don't see it.

Different ways to win

2011-10-30T18:02:00.002-05:00

Ten years ago, the Arizona Diamondbacks defeated the New York Yankees in the World Series. The elite talent on the team essentially boiled down to two great starting pitchers -- Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling, as well as a slugging left fielder, Luis Gonzales, having a career year. Schilling and Johnson won the World Series almost single-handedly, pitching almost all the innings in the last two games.

In the years since, the conventional wisdom was that having elite starting pitching as close as there was to a sure path to postseason success in baseball. In a short series with off days, when you can have your top two or three pitchers throw a large share of the innings, having those inning thrown by two or three of the top ten pitchers in baseball is a great way to win.

Of course, you did need more. You needed some offense. You needed a closer. Some situational relievers would be nice. But you start with the pitching.

Surely, this is what motivated the Phillies' roster construction. With Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, and Cole Hamels, the Phils had three of NL's top 10 pitchers. Throw in Roy Oswalt, who had been among those just recently, and Vance Worley, who appeared to be joining them, and it looked like they'd mow through the competition.

But it didn't work out that way. The St. Louis Cardinals, with one starter who consistently delivered quality starts, won the World Series.

The Cardinals has their share of starts. Carpenter was consistently solid and occasionally brilliant. David Freese deservedly picked up a load of postseason awards. Allen Craig broke through as a consistent run producer. Albert Pujols and Lance Berkman continued to hit and strike fear into opposing pitchers.

But in my judgement, the star of the Cardinals postseason run was their deep bullpen. They had seven or eight pitchers in the bullpen in each round who were capable of pitching in any situation. And Tony LaRussa did. Often, by the time teams reach the World Series, managers only have a few relief pitchers they have confidence in, and managers overuse them or push their starters to go further than they should.

Ironically, this was a strength for the Cardinals in part because it was such a weakness for them in the early parts of the regular season. Because they were so ineffective, each reliever got a shot in the set-up and closer roles. And even though none of them pitched well enough to seize those roles, they pitched well enough that La Russa would not hesitate to use them.

By the time the playoffs rolled around, the cardinals had eight battle-tested relievers who were relatively fresh. And then Lance Lynn came back from injury and was able to fill in for Kyle McClellan, who was worn out.

I'm not sure this success can be replicated. It took the right circumstances and the right manager to make work. But it's hard to deny it worked this year.

Still, I wouldn't bet against the Phillies riding their starters to next year's title. There's more than one way to win. That's what makes baseball, and sports, interesting. The Miami Heat have two of the five best players. That didn't win them the title last year; it may this year.

Stardom vs. Leadership

2011-10-21T21:52:00.001-05:00

Must stars also be leaders? Does "star treatment" carry with it some responsibility?

These are what I think are the interesting questions in the aftermath of the Cardinals' 2-1 loss to the Rangers, with the winning run resulting from an error by Albert Pujols, and his failure to address the media afterwards, leaving his younger and lower paid teammates to answer for the Cardinals.

On the one hand, I'm not sure why we expect athletic talent (or particular talent in any field) to also correlate with leadership ability. I never thought it was a moral failing that LeBron James defers to Dwyane Wade. We don't fault less talented players for failing to be leaders. Isn't it enough that Pujols puts up huge numbers, and helps put the Cardinals in the World Series, and leave the leadership stuff Tony La Russa, who was hired specifically for that purpose?

On the other hand, groups, particularly groups of men, will tend to follow the lead of the most talented and successful person among them, no matter what the org chart says. When the most talented person and the person ordained the "leader" are two different people, that is not a stable situation. It may sort-of work sometimes, as in the Jeter-ARod situation with the Yankees, but it often leads to confusion for the rest of the team.

Then there is the "star treatment," which I am certain Pujols has consumed his share of over the years. Nobody ever points out that he doesn't run out ground balls. He probably knew his manager and teammates would cover for him when he bolted last night. The media needs access to him, so they back off. And, though he may not be making as much money as he could in the open market, his salary is still several multiples of that of most of his teammates.

I do think that consuming such star treatment does carry with it some responsibility. First, being accountable for the results, and not leaving that to others. If you're allowed to do things your way, and your way doesn't work out, then you've got some explaining to do.

So, I don't fault Pujols for not being a leader, but I do fault him for not fulfilling the responsibilities that come with star treatment.

Occupy the 1990's New Jersey Devils...

2011-10-17T22:31:00.000-05:00

In the mid-1990's the New Jersey Devils adapted a defensive technique known as the "neutral zone trap." I'm sure I'm oversimplifying it, but it boiled down to clogging the middle of the ice so that the opposing team could not move up the ice with any kind of speed. This was possible in part, because the offsides rules limited the amount of ice they had to cover at any given time.

Despite not having any elite offensive players, the Devils were able to leverage this technique to become essentially the default Stanley Cup champions for about a decade, frustrating more star-laden teams like the Philadelphia Flyers and Detroit Red Wings. And the fans hated it, because it was boring, and star players spent the games frustrated.

Coming up with the neutral zone trap required ingenuity on the part of the Devils' coaching staff. And executing it required hard work and discipline on the part of the players -- no other team was able to replicate the Devils' success with the trap. It was perfectly within the rules of hockey, and not at all malevolent -- the Devils didn't set out to injure opposing teams' star players; they just limited their effectiveness.

Nevertheless, the NHL's failure to make the trap a less effective technique is a big reason why the league declined in popularity in the late 90's, and the rule changes it made to confront it are a big reason it's back.

The Devils found a way to increase their own success to the detriment (or at least not to the benefit) of the league. It exploited certain peculiarities of the rules. It was the responsibility of the league to act to make this less rewarding.

The same is true of other sports. If a less talented basketball team really could consistently negate a talent disparity by deploying a well-executed full-court press, then the powers of basketball would need to act to make it a less effective technique. If "Moneyball" meant that the A's could be successful by fielding a team of a bunch of fat guys who drew lots of walks and hit home runs, baseball would need to act. If things like "icing the kicker" really worked, the NFLwould need to act to prevent it. It's the responsibility of the grown-ups in charge to ensure that the team's incentives are aligned with the interests of the league as a whole.

But what if the Devils also controlled the commissioner's office and the competition committee? Do you think they'd act against their own interest? Probably not. In fact, given such a situation, I'd expect rule changes that made the trap even more effective. Resulting in more trapping. And the league's popularity would spiral downwards.

I think this is one way to think about what has happened to the "top 1%" over the past several years. Some people have figured out ways to reliably make money in ways that do not have an apparent benefit to society, or that are actively harmful. These ways may be quite ingenious. They may require hefty amounts of discipline and hard work. That doesn't mean they're benefiting society, or that people have an absolute right to continue to use these same techniques to enrich themselves indefinitely.

Trying to re-balance these incentives needs not be a moral condemnation of those who have enriched themselves, any more than rejiggering the NHL's offsides rules is a moral condemnation of the New Jersey Devils. Nor is it destroying a delicately perfect machine. We're not getting just results now; it's time to take a look at the incentives that are in place. It would mean the Devils would have to figure out another way to win.

This is what healthy systems do. They correct themselves -- not magically or invisibly, but the grown-ups take a look at the situation, and change things that need to be changed.

Where are these grown-ups today?

And, sorry Mr. President, but I don't consider asking all of those who are rich to pay more taxes to be the fundamental change we need. It may or may not be the right thing to do. But the problem isn't so much that people are allowed to great a share of the spoils of victory. It's that these techniques lead to victory in the first place.

My New Stand-Up Career...

2011-07-04T23:04:00.000-05:00

A little over a month ago, after reading a few articles about the health effects of prolonged sitting, I decided to join the ranks of Donald Rumsfeld and Matthew Yglesisas and try out a stand-up workspace.

The Set-Up

My office has an open floor plan. The workspace is partitioned by walls that are about three feet tall, and have three pieces of furniture -- a desk that is flat on one side and curved on the other, that takes up the far side of the workspace as you approach it, a file cabinet/bookshelf that goes on one side, and an oval table that people can put where they wish, some opting for one side of the workspace that does not contain the bookshelf, others behind them to mark off their space.

It so happened that the bookshelf, at about four feet high, was at just about the recommended just under the elbows height for a stand-up set-up for my 6'5" frame. So I rotated the desk to one side of the workspace, slid the bookshelf over to the center of the far end , and put the oval table on the other side. So I stand with a table on each side, with the bookshelf in the middle. I moved my keyboard, mouse, and monitor (which I had to prop up a bit to get to eye height) to the top of the bookshelf, and prop my laptop on the desk to my left so I can use both monitors.

I keep an extra mouse on the desk, so I can transition to a sitting position for a break with just the laptop, which I typically do for an hour or so each afternoon. The key is that that workstation is set up for a default of standing rather than sitting.

There were some other considerations of where things plugged in, but those are probably not generally useful.

The Experience

The first couple days were not easy. At my job I can get by wearing shoes that are essentially brown tennis shoes, and I would not recommend trying this without comfortable shoes. Even with comfortable shoes, my feet continue to hurt a bit a month into the new set-up. My legs were hurting a bit, but I have gained strength and that is no longer a bit.

If you do something like this, you will get a lot of comments. Most people have been generally curious and supportive. But I am now "the guy who stands up at his desk." When you're 6'5", and you're standing up in an open workspace, you're going to get noticed.

The bookshelf is at a good height, but the top of it really isn't big enough to accommodate a monitor, keyboard, and mouse/mousepad comfortably. A trackball might work better. And I don't have the laptop propped up enough that the screen is really effective as a second monitor.

The Results

I think the biggest thing is that I feel more active and literally "agile" at work. I'm more inclined to walk over and talk to somebody if I have a question, since doing so doesn't entail pulling myself out of my chair. I can move around a bit while I'm waiting for a build to finish, etc.

I don't watch my weight closely enough to have a definite answer, but I'm fairly confident I have lost some weight in the month I've been doing this. I also am quite certain I have improved my posture. This has also coincided with me being more faithful to my workout routine, so I'm not sure I can isolate the effect of the stand-up desk.

But then that's part of the point. In the spirit of trying something for 30 days, I now see myself as the type of person who stands up at his job, rather than someone who spends eight hours a day slumped at his desk, and that spills over into other parts of my life, leading me to welcome the next challenge.

Turning Baseball Into Roullette

2011-06-02T08:37:00.002-05:00

Albert Pujols currently leads the league in grounding into double plays. There are a number of factors playing into this:

The Cardinals have gotten a large number of runners on base ahead of him, giving him more opportunities.
Pujols generally hits the ball hard, and hard-hit balls often end up as double plays.
Pujols is right-handed and pulls the ball a lot, and ground balls to the left side of the infield result in double plays more often than ground balls to the right side.
Pujols has been hitting more ground balls than fly balls generally.

Another factor, one that likely plays a bigger part in my mind than in reality, is that Albert Pujols does not run out ground balls. He is a tremendous athlete, as evidenced by his defensive performance at first base, and his work at third base on occasion this year. He can be a daring and fast base runner. But it seems that any ground ball he hits with a runner on first results in a double play, with the play at second being closer than the play at first.

As a Cardinals fan, as defined as someone with an interest in the Cardinals being successful, this makes sense. Albert Pujols, even in this “off year”, is a tremendously valuable player, and losing him for any length of time would have a large negative impact on the Cardinals’ chances of winning a division title this year. It makes no sense for him to risk injury by busting down the line to try to save one out in a game in the spring time.

At the same time, as a baseball fan, it stinks. I want to see the best players in the world competing at the highest level to win. I don’t want to see players half-assing it to preserve themselves for some future game I’m not watching right now. The essence of sport is competition, and jogging down the line after hitting a ground ball is the opposite of competition. I used to tell myself that this impacts the culture of the team and results in other players whose present/future value ration is not so low, not exerting full effort, but I’m not so sure about that anymore.

Yes, it’s true that at a strategic level, teams don’t go all out to win every game. Pitchers are saved for future games, regular players are given days off, and these things lower a team’s chance of winning today’s game for a better chance in some future game(s). This is an accepted part of the game. And I don’t mean plays that look like hustle but are ultimately ineffective, like Skip Schumaker’s unfortunate habit of diving into first base on close plays. Still, on a micro level, you want to believe that each player is executing each individual play with an interest in winning that particular game. When it’s not, it’s something else.

So this is where I am entering into the debate about Buster Posey’s injury, whether a runner barreling into the catcher is a dirty play, and whether it makes sense for a catcher to try to block the plate and set himself up to get clobbered.

On my rational side, I completely get that home plate collisions are not an essential part of the game, and it makes no sense for a player as valuable as Posey to put his career in jeopardy to save one run in May, even the go-ahead run in a one run game.

But on the other hand, I hate it. It may be true that home plate collisions are not a central part of the game, but they are one of the few plays in baseball that is about physical courage and hustle rather than simply random chance. If that throw arrived a half-second earlier, and Posey was able to collect the ball, apply the tag, and get himself in a better position to avoid injury, he would have been a hero. If the Giants subsequently went on a winning streak, people would have looked back at that play, when their best player put his body on the line to win a game, as sparking them.

Maybe it would all be BS. But I’d rather be a baseball fan in that world than in this world:

Bringing me to my beef with ongoing beef with sabermetrics.

To begin with, they have been mostly right about most things, with few exceptions. On base percentage is more valuable than batting average. Most standard statistics are not as valuable, in particular when you fail to adjust for things like park factors and teammates. “Clutch” hitters probably don’t exist, and if they do, they’re not who people think they are. Given a choice between a surly slugger who draws a lot of walks and seems to play with indifference, and a guy who never walks and always has a dirty uniform and signs a lot of autographs, you probably want the surly slugger on your team if you want to win. And yes, it doesn’t make sense for a catcher to put himself in the path of a runner coming in at full speed to save one run.

But still, they’re kind of the “well, actually...” guy at the party. It’s fun to root for players who seem to hustle. It’s fun to talk about which players can handle pressure and which ones can’t. Jerry Seinfeld once said that with all the player movement, rooting for a professional sports team is like rooting for laundry. It seems that in the sabermetric world, it’s more like rooting for a number on a roulette wheel. Which is something only an insane person would do.

So are we in a better place, now? By the measure of truth, it seems that we are. By the measure of it being enjoyable to be a fan, I don’t think so. Something has been lost. And if as we learn more and more about what really matter about the game, we take more and more “hustle” plays out of the game, we make it less appealing.

Defend Life By Treating People As Instruments...

2011-05-13T12:00:00.001-05:00

In Crisis Magazine, Prof. John Zmirak posted an article entitled "Amnesty Equals Abortion."

The argument is as follows:

Hispanics tend to vote Democratic.
Democrats tend to be pro-choice.
Amnesty would result in a large influx of Hispanic voters.

Therefore, anyone in favor of "amnesty" for illegal immigrants is pro-abortion.

Lest you think I am exaggerating the strength of the claim Prof. Zmirak is making, he makes it explicit:

I do not wish to imply that those who know how amnestied illegals are almost certain to vote and whostill favor amnesty are not, in cold fact, pro-life. I would never leave such a statement to mere implication. I wish to say it outright: Those who favor amnesty for illegal immigrants are not, in cold fact, pro-life. That goes for politicians and voters, bishops and priests, men, women, and children, red and yellow, black and white.

Henry Karlson has excerpted some of my response at the Vox Nova Blog, so I figured I may as well flesh it out more over here.

I do not have a definite position on immigration reform or "amnesty." I recognize that the influx of immigrants has caused a hardship for some. I think the reaction to the Arizona law earlier this year was overblown. I also think that "illegal" is an overly reductionist term for people who are coming from situations from great hardship and have made great sacrifices to build a better life for themselves. I lean toward the "amnesty" side of the debate, but I can imagine myself being convinced otherwise.

With those cards on the table, I will now write that I find the argument Prof. Zmirak makes here to be contrary to a Culture of Life.

What Prof. Zmirak is inviting us to do is consider the potential beneficiary of "amnesty" not as human person whom we must carefully consider how to treat, but as a voting tendency that may or may not help our cause. All that matters is whether they will help us or hurt us. If giving them some benefit suits my other needs, then we'll do it. If not, then don't. We don't need to consider what is just.

So, because these immigrants are Hispanic, and Hispanics tend to vote Democratic, and the Democratic Party supports abortion, then the immigrants don't get citizenship with voting rights. Sorry, thanks for playing. Try to be part of a more Republican-leaning demographic next time.

Of course, this is the logic of abortion. The important thing is whether the baby fits into my plan for my life. Whether it is a human person with its own dignity or rights is a question we'd rather not consider. If the baby fits into my plan, it can live; if not, it can die. The baby's worth is dependent on how it serves my needs.

The Culture of Life is not going to be built by selectively including people from groups who agree with us. It is going to be built by treating everyone we encounter as human person with dignity and respect.

And I would be making this same argument if Hispanic voting patterns were reversed, and someone was making the argument that support for "amnesty" is pro-life because it would result in the election of more pro-life candidates, or more vocations, or more money in Church coffers, etc.

--

I also dispute the empirical claim. I suspect that a massive immigration amnesty would provide a short-term bounce to Democratic voters. However, Hispanics also tend to be socially conservative and pro-life, so it is also possible that an influx of Hispanics could result in a more pro-life Democratic Party.

More generally, I trust the movement of the Holy Spirit more than I trust that current voting statistics and positions will remain constant.

In other words, I trust that if we do what’s right in other dimensions, then God will work with us in bringing the culture around on abortion.

UPDATE: Arguments for liberalized immigration along the lines that we should import Christians to stave of the threat of Islam are no less odious.

Leave it to the Pros

2011-04-23T15:40:00.000-05:00

I live in Maryland Heights, Missouri, which, if you've been watching the news you know was in the path of a tornado Friday night. Our neighborhood is fine, but other nearby neighborhoods, such as the one surrounding my daughters' public elementary school, have seen tremendous devastation. The American Red Cross set up a temporary shelter within walking distance of our house.

Naturally, we (or more specifically, my wife), wanted to see what we can do to help. My wife even better bought some cases of water. She went the Red Cross site to see what help they needed, and they just took her name and number down, and didn't even want the water. The answer to "what can we do to help" seems to be to donate money to the American Red Cross.

I certainly understand the reasons for this. If the Red Cross has sufficient trained professionals to do whatever work needs to be done, it's certainly better that the do the work than inexperienced do-gooders like us. They've dealt with situations like this before; we haven't. Opening up those areas would probably draw at least as many gawkers as helpers. Perhaps this is part of the reason why there weren't any fatalities or major injuries as a result of the storm.

Still, I have the feeling that we've lost something of the community coming together to address a problem. And this applies to other domains besides disaster relief, such as education. Our schools aren't run by the communities in which they're situated; they're run by professionals who may or not be otherwise engaged in the community. If the school is failing, we don't come together as a community yo improve the schools; we get mad at the professionals we've hired to run the schools, and maybe even fire them and bring in a new set of professionals.

There is something deeply unsatisfying about addressing problems by sending money to a far away organization or set of professionals. And I can't help but thing it's part of the reason why so many are somewhat disengaged from public life.

Obviously, the primary goal of things like disaster relief is effectiveness rather than ensuring that those wanting to help have a satisfying experience doing so. But I wonder if we've gone a bit too far professionalizing some things that we should all be involved in.

Good Inequality; Bad Inequality

2011-03-27T16:09:00.001-05:00

Mickey Kaus, who wrote a book about how income inequality doesn't matter so much as long as it doesn't lead to social inequality, puts together a list of what Scott Walker should do, that starts with the following:

1) Pointing out the growing disparity between cushy union contracts and the working situation of average American taxpayers. Horror stories are useful here;

The "growing disparity" isn't because things have been getting increasingly cushier for government employees; it's because things have been getting poorer and poorer for workers in the private sector, with Wall Street and C-level executives pocketing the savings. So I'm not convinced that the proper response to this situation is to drag public employees down to the level of private sector employees.

Besides, years of debate about income inequality has taught me that the proper response to growing disparities is not to resent and punish the parties who are benefitting, but to tip our cap to them for their success. This is their just reward for the work they do in keeping the economy humming, and the incentive they need to ensure they keep working so hard for us. When we find out that GE paid no corporate income taxes on their $14.2 billion of profit, we shouldn't be angry, but admiring of their skill.

So to summarize: We shouldn't resent CEO's of established companies who make factor-of-10 multiples of what their predecessors did, and shouldn't resent hedge fund managers who make fortunes doing work whose benefit to society is not terribly apparent. But we should resent our kids' public school teachers if they have a lower co-pay when they go to the doctor than we do.

Look -- I get that there is a difference between 2012 public employee unions and the type of unions that began the labor movement. And I understand the possibility of corruption and self-dealing when the union is negotiating with government officials it helped get elected. And I certainly understand how union work rules and inflexibility can be a barrier to progress.

But they also seem to be one of the only forces pushing against the deterioration of the middle class. And for every "horror story" about government unions, I'm quite sure I can come up with examples of people in entertainment, sports, and business who are being richly compensated for work of dubious benefit. But we seem to think that's OK.

If exorbitant salaries, golden parachutes, etc, are the price we pay for excellence, then I don't think benefits that are marginally more generous than what's offered by the private sector is too high a price to pay for solid services and support for the middle class.

Are we all Wisconsinites now?

2011-02-27T13:16:00.000-06:00

When I first head about the conflict between the Wisconsin GOP and the public employees' unions, I wan't terribly sympathetic to the unions. After all, employees of private companies like me had our benefits whittled away over the past few years, why should government employees be any different? I've read The Great Stagnation; don't these people realize that the gravy train has stopped, and we're all going to have to make do with less? Generous pensions and job security for teachers was great when we were all swimming in money, but things are different now. We just can't afford it.

Thinking about it (and reading about it) some more, the truth occurred to me. People like me and the public unions are fighting over scraps, and demonizing each other in the process. Meanwhile, the real villains are laughing their heads off, secure in their money. We're busy fighting over who get to have a 3% raise, while they're raking money in. And no, I don't believe it's because they're creating such great value for society. (Gives her more incentive to become a lawyer? Stunning ignorance of the real and social capital required to become a lawyer. And who says we need more lawyers?) It may be because they've made a large number of very safe bets that are backed by the rest of us.

Because I look around. I still see luxury cars on the road. I still see people living in huge houses. I still see folks sitting in the front rows of games and concerts. So I'm not positive that we're in such dire straits that it's necessary that we stop providing a decent retirement for public schoolteachers.

What we've done is accepted things going on. We've let Wall Street squeeze how we are treated as workers, so we've figured that's how workers ought to be treated. I don't have a pension; why should they? I live in fear of getting fired; they should, too! I have to fork over a big chunk of my paycheck for health insurance for my family; they ought to as well! Screw them!

But is this really what we want? Do we want a world where workers keep seeing their benefits eroded? And for whom? Who benefits? Do we really believe that if the Wisconsin GOP is successful, that the result will be better services for the poor? I'm skeptical.

This is the last stand in figuring out what kind of society we want to be. Do we want income inequality to continue unabated? Do we want the middle class to vanish? Do we want more and more resources to be funneled toward those who are already rich?

Or is there another way? That maybe "shared sacrifice" ought to include those who've been making out like bandits over the past dozen years while the rest of us have been treading water at best.

During the Tea Party rallies, I lamented that what gets people out on the streets protesting is the possibility of us paying for others' health care. And now, I lament that what gets people upset is a marginal erosion in the benefits for workers who will remain solidly in the middle class. Seems like there's some other injustices that ought to be higher on the list.

It just feels like we're fighting over a shrinking size of the pie, when we should be focussed on where the rest of the pie went.

Not quite hypocrisy

2011-02-05T09:09:00.000-06:00

In a column Thursday about why he prefers the NFL Hall of Fame voting to MLB, Bernie Miklasz writes:

Football voters aren't engaging in Cooperstown-style hypocrisy by imposing tough moral standards on some players — alleged steroids users — after we'd relaxed these supposedly rigid ethics principles to admit amphetamine poppers, racists, potheads and baseball-doctoring cheaters.

First, let me say that I am with Miklasz on the NFL Hall of Fame being better, and the overall experience of being an NFL fan being superior as well, in part because (the current labor troubles and concussion controversies being notable exceptions) it seems like it's possible to just enjoy the games. I can talk about great coaches and grit and heart without being attacked by statheads.

I'm also of the opinion that Mark McGwire and other players currently being kept out of the Hall of Fame due to being tainted by steroids should ultimately get in

But I also think that the BBWA's failure to elect them can be explained by more than hypocrisy.

I'll concentrate on McGwire, since he is probably the most direct case, and I'm most familiar with his career, but the same could apply to others. I'm not meaning to single him out.

The problem I would have with electing McGwire is that there is a direct link between his success and what steroids can do for you and his success. What McGwire brings to the table is that he hit a lot of home runs, and they were huge. Celebrating that, when we suspected and now we know that they were aided by steroids, seems like we are celebrating the use of steroids, and it's understandable that some people may not want to do that. This is different from honoring Ty Cobb, even though he was a racist. Nobody thinks Ty Cobb was a great baseball player because he was a racist (though his fiery personality likely fueled both pursuits). Honoring Ty Cobb is not honoring racism.

Amphetamines are a closer call, but still not the same. I may not like it if, say, Mickey Mantle popped greenies, but does anybody think that they were a significant factor in the Mick's success? I'm not sure Mark McGwire would have broken home run records without steroids, but I'm pretty sure Mickey Mantle would have been a great baseball player without amphetamines.

As for "baseball-doctoring cheaters," I would say there are different types of cheating. Micheal Jordan often got away with extra steps. On his final championship-winning shot, he pushed off Byron Russell, and it wasn't called. Is he therefore a "cheater?" If we punish someone who, say, poisons his opponents the night before a game, must we also punish Jordan in order to escape the charge of hypocrisy?

There are different kind of rules -- rules that govern the competition and rules that are there for player safety. I don't think the NFL would honor an offensive lineman who cheated by gouging his opponents eyes, but they might honor one who knew how to get away with holding. I submit that Gaylord Perry's use of the spitball is closer to the former than the latter. And McGwire's use of steroids is closer to the latter than the former.

In making that judgement, I open myself to the accusation of playing "moral police," but I think it's important that we do think through judgements like that rather than commit ourselves to a foolish consistency.

What the BBWA have effectively done is kick the can down the street. They know that once these players are enshrined, they can't really take them out, but if they pass on them, they can always enshrine them later. This may not be the most courageous stance, but it is understandable. They want to figure out exactly what accomplishments like McGwire's mean in the context in which they were compiled.

A deal I'll take

2011-01-16T20:50:00.000-06:00

Last week Andrew Sullivan posted the following excerpt from a Stephen Budiansky post:

4. For as long as I can remember, I have heard conservatives blaming everything that is wrong in the universe, from violent crime to declining test scores to teen pregnancy to rude children to declining patriotism to probably athlete's foot . . . upon Dr. Spock, Hollywood liberals, the abolition of prayer in school, Bill Clinton, the "liberal 1960s," the teaching of evolution — in other words, upon symbols, rhetoric, cultural norms, and the values expressed by political and media leaders. Yet from the moment when someone gets a gun in their hands, apparently, society ceases to have any influence whatsoever on the outcome and individual responsibility takes hold 100%. Something is driving the tripling of death threats against congressmen (and the concomitant rise in threats against Federal judges and other villains of the right, from Forest Service rangers to climate scientists) and it isn't the sunspot cycle.

Ah yes. It's a pity we live in a culture that is so timid about its actions for fears of how they might be eroding cultural norms and impacting others' behavior. How many couples remain miserably married because they don't want to add to the legitimacy of divorce? Dr. Spock was certainly shut down and put in his corner, wasn't he? And we all know how successful conservatives have been at cleaning the and violence out of Hollywood. I sometimes have to wait until 8 PM before I see someone called a nasty name or openly discuss their sexual conquests on network TV.

Minus the sarcasm -- my point is this is a battle that has largely been lost. The idea that adults should be mindful of the behaviors they normalize for fear of how it may impact the behavior of others is one that's likely to get you laughed out of the rooms where these decisions are made. Conservatives have been lectured for years about how abstinence-based education doesn't work, you can't stop kids from having sex, homosexuality is an immutable inborn trait, that criminalizing abortion would have little or no impact on the number of abortions, and in general that adults have little or no hope of influencing the behavior of young people.. And those arguments have won the day!

Citing these arguments as the precedent for inconsistency "gotcha" argument raises the question of why the converse does not apply to those who have taken the opposite positions. (It also assumes that "conservative" is a monolithic term such that the set of conservative supporting cultural norms is equivalent to those denying a connection between harsh rhetoric and violence). After hearing over and over again how unreasonable it is to expect adults to curb their behavior based on cultural influences, we're supposed to believe that someone would shoot six people because Sarah Palin used gunsights on a map to illustrate that there were targeted districts?

But I'll call your bluff. I'm not sure I speak for conservatives, since I'm not a particular fan of extreme rhetoric myself. But I will gladly acknowledge that there is a connection between extreme rhetoric and violence if we can also agree on the following:

When leaders regard their marital vows as suggestions, it leads others to do the same, and this can lead to devastating consequences for children.
That abortion has been considered a Constitutional right and "perfectly legal" probably is a major driver of the cultural acceptance of abortion and the abortion rate.
When almost every movie and TV show displays premarital sex as normal, and indeed refraining from it before things like high school graduation as abnormal, then this will have an impact on teenager's behavior.

I'm willing to do my part to build a culture that doesn't encourage violence, if you'll help me build a culture that doesn't undermine the values I'm trying to instill in my children.

Acknowledging these things may make it more difficult to deploy arguments like "How does it hurt your marriage if two gay people get married," since it does concede that we are interconnected that our actions have an impact on each other. But I think it's closer to the truth than the lie we've been telling ourselves the last few years so we can pursue our own interests and get a good zinger in against our political opponents

Rhetoric and Complicity

2011-01-10T22:48:00.000-06:00

The reaction to the shooting of Rep. Gifford and others on Saturday reminded me of a discussion I was involved in at Mirror of Justice after Russell Powell wrote that "we" (meaning Catholics) are complicit in the rash of suicides by gay teenagers last fall.

Like Saturday, there was no direct link between any action by the Catholic Church or Catholics in particular and the suicides. So, Prof. Powell relied on the fact that "we do not actively provide moral leadership as individuals and as an institution to protect human life and dignity." Of course, the same could be said for every injustice in the world -- warfare, abortion, capital punishment, poverty, euthanasia, etc. But it did seem to me that Prof. Powell was claiming a more particular level of complicity in these suicides that, for example, abortion. This is similar to how, failing to draw a line from harsh conservative rhetoric to the shooting, commentators instead pointed to a "climate of hate" and other similar terms.

I found myself resisting Prof. Powell's conclusion, as I found myself resisting the conclusion that conservatives who use harsh rhetoric bear responsibility for Saturday's shooting. And I also resist the weaker claim that, even if there is no direct complicity, then these events provide a "teachable moment" for people to reconsider their actions.

Is it because I think both the institutional Church and Catholics are blameless in how they respond to gays and lesbians? Certainly not. Is it because I am happy with the current state of political discourse and would not welcome a move toward arguments over name calling? Again, most certainly not.

It is because I recognize what a powerful force people's feelings are in the wake of events like murders and suicides. And I am loathe to see the energy behind them unleashed on in directions that are only tangentially related to the actual event.

If we want to look for an example of why to be wary of this impulse, we should only look at the last ten years of our history since 9/11. We responded to that by launching two separate wars, bringing back torture, setting aside many of our principles, and countless other things. I would think that those on the political left would recognize the danger of being indiscriminate in directing people's grief toward undeserving targets (if you'll excuse the expression).

We can talk about how the Church might respond to gays and lesbians. And we can talk about how we might bring about a more tame discourse. But it's not right to do so with the charge of complicity with homicide in the air. And I don't think doing so is going to lead to anything good. Don't borrow moral force from the tragedies -- make the case on its own terms.

I am extremely skeptical that a better discourse is going to be built on evidence free accusations on complicity with murder.

Some other scattered thoughts I'm not inclined to pollute my Twitter feed with:

It is an interesting statement about the psyche of the Democrats that one of their first reactions to an attempted assassination of one of their Representatives is to attempt to link it to the failed VP candidate of the last election who currently holds no political office. Has there ever been a politician so successful at getting in the other side's head?
I would say the left's demonization of the right is more common, but less severe, than the right's demonization of the left. The left tends to make charges against the right that suggest they are not fit for inclusion in polite company, whereas right tends to imply some on the left ought to be arrested/killed. Which is why I found Byron York's comparison to the reaction to the Ft. Hood shooting less than persuasive. Is there a danger that there will be vigilante justice against conservatives? I don't think so.
The more we learn about these shooters, the less likely I find the possibility that there exists a person who would have never harmed anybody but for things like Sarah Palin's map of targetted districts.
And even if so, I find the idea of letting our speech be dictated by what some crazy person might react to extremely distasteful.
If liberals are still having trouble understanding why conservatives react so strongly to these charges, imagine how you might react to a pro-lifer like me posting that the shooting is yet another example of the "culture of death" enabled by our pro-choice culture that says that human life is expendable if it is inconvenient. IMO, that's a more direct connection than anything Sarah Palin said, but I and the pro-life movement recognize that it would be imprudent to make such a case.

Offending Marriage

2010-12-19T22:27:00.001-06:00

On Twitter this morning, I ran across a link to a story celebrating the marriage of a couple that met at their kids' school activities, while each was still married to the other parent of said kids. The article takes and odd "Isn't that something?" attitude toward two families being torn apart because the adults saw something they liked better (though it's hard not to notice that the only people who seem happy in the picture are the couple themselves), including passages like:

As Mr. Partilla saw it, their options were either to act on their feelings and break up their marriages or to deny their feelings and live dishonestly. “Pain or more pain,” was how he summarized it.

Given such a choice, I tend to think the better option is to choose the "pain" that also doesn't go along with completely uprooting one's family.

“The part that’s hard for people to believe is we didn’t have an affair,” Ms. Riddell said. “I didn’t want to sneak around and sleep with him on the side. I wanted to get up in the morning and read the paper with him.”

I think some people may have forgotten why there's a societal sanction against extramarital affairs.

“He said, ‘Remind me every day that the kids will be O.K.,’ ” Ms. Riddell recalled. “I would say the kids are going to be great, and we’ll spend the rest of our lives making it so.”

Objection! Leading question on direct examination! But I guess if they think the kids are going to be great as a result of them doing what they want to do, what can we say? And by the way, what about that other person you had promised to love and honor all the days of your life?

They finalized their divorces this year. “I will always feel terribly about the pain I caused my ex-husband,” said Ms. Riddell, 44 and working freelance. “It was not what I ever would have wished on him.” Or on her children.

“My kids are going to look at me and know that I am flawed and not perfect, but also deeply in love,” she said. “We’re going to have a big, noisy, rich life, with more love and more people in it.”

Pity those children who are stuck with thei original parents for their entire childhood, and are thus deprived of the "big, noisy, rich life" of those whose parents follow their hearts.

And can you find in this article one reason to believe this will last other than that the couple are "really in love." What will happen if the T-ball coach or dance teacher is very attractive, and one of the parents feels an irresistible connection? We can't expect them to deny their feelings, can we? Well, not with the precedent they've set.

And spare me the "don't judge" speech. They put their story out there in the New York Times, not me. Part of what they were trying to do by doing so was increase the acceptance of what they did. Note the asides about being "ostracized" by those around them, likely parents who would prefer their children not be constantly worried if one of their parents will bolt the instant they feel an instant "connection" with someone of the opposite sex. If we don't want this type of behavior to become more common, we criticize it when it's put in our face.

This was a deliberate action, and the actors are presenting it for us to evaluate. This is mine.

Of course, this is 2010, so we don't just offer straightforward criticisms of immoral behavior -- there has to be a "hypocrisy" angle. And so, the tweet I read pointing to this story was quickly followed by this one:

On that NYT story: next time some talking head says we need to protect marriage from the gays, remember Carol Anne Riddell & John Partilla.

When I replied that many of those opposed to SSM believe they are pushing back against a culture that enables things like this, I received the reply:

well funny how they take that out on the gays instead of, say, trying to make what this couple did illegal.

First, I will say that a society that applauds this couple has no non-bigoted basis for not allowing same sex couples to marry. And that seems to be where we're headed.

I will also concede that bigotry is probably a reason why there is more energy behind opposing same sex marriage and other efforts to bolster marriage.

However, if I had to bet, I would suspect the writer of that piece supports same sex marriage.

Which vision of marriage would the Riddell-Partilla marriage more comfortable fit into? Something like Conor Friedorsorf offered a couple years ago:

Marriage is the union of people who fall in love with one another, decide that they want to spend the rest of their lives together, and commit to do so monogamously

or the "thick" marriage described by Ross Douthat?

This is the essence of the non-bigoted case against same-sex marriage. It's not that gays are going to ruin marriage. It's that a vision of marriage that would include same sex couples is flimsier than a thinker one in which same sex marriages would make no sense.

The problem is that reality, as evidenced by this story, is pretty far from this ideal, so opposition to same sex marriage looks a lot like bigotry.

But for those who think that "defenders of marriage" should focus on couples like this instead of opposing same sex marriage, I have a question: What law would you join us in supporting that would address situations like this? Ban no-fault divorce? Cooling off period between divorces and second marriages? I'm up for it, but my experience is that those who favor things like this are considered reactionaries out to turn back the clock.

What It Means If You Win the Heisman Trophy

2010-12-11T21:21:00.000-06:00

You are on a team that in playing in the BCS National Championship Game
You are QB or a RB (or a defensive player and special teams star if no QB or RB qualifies).
You are the best player on your team..
You either were hyped from the beginning of the season, or you had a great breakout game.
Your personal narrative is more appealing than the best player on your BCS Championship Game opponent.

Voting and Rationality

2010-11-23T18:07:00.000-06:00

Imagine the following premises for some kind of popular voting for an award:

Every uses a correct objective set of criteria to determine his vote.
There is one candidate who is 1% better than his closes competitor.

Question: What percentage of the vote would you expect the 1% superior candidate to receive?

The answer is 100%. If every voter is objective, one would expect the to independently each reach the same conclusion. Just as if you sent mathematicians a math problem with a correct answer, I would expect them all to respond with the same correct answer, and any incorrect answers (even ones that were close) to be dwarfed by the correct responses.

So, I'm a bit puzzled by Christina Kahrl's disappointment that Joey Votto received 31 of 32 first place votes for the National League MVP over Albert Pujols. If Votto is the deserving winner (which Kahrl does not dispute), then one would expect that voters using the same sound criteria would all reach the same conclusion. Even if the difference between them was narrow.

Kahrl is on more solid ground in criticizing those who placed others like Carlos Gonzales second over Pujols, but I don't really care that much about down-ballot selections, except when they skew the outcome at the top.

Now, I suspect that Votto's margin of victory has more to do with some of the other reasons Karhl sites (Votto's team winning the division, fatigue of voting for Pujols, Pujols being punished for having a great, rather than historically great, year) than a sudden embrace of objectivity on the part of BBWAA. But if they had embraced objectivity, this is what the result would look like.

In any case, if you're worked up over the margin of victory for someone you believe to be the rightful winner of an award, it may be a sign you don't have enough things to worry about.

While I'm on the topic of anger over votes that don't matter, it is obviously ridiculous that Bristol Palin is a finalist in Dancing with the Stars. Even more absurd is the notion that the undeserving daughter of a political figure winning a competition is some kind of political statement. If people didn't care for Sarah Palin before, I don't think they're going to give her a second look because her daughter won a TV dancing competition.

Then it occurs to me that the "rightful" winner of a competition involving novice dancers learning how to dance with the help of an experienced professional dancer is a woman most famous for her role in a movie as a novice dancer who learns to dance with the help of an experienced dancer. Stressing out over the integrity of an "amateur" dancing competition that includes a competitor who is world-famous as a dancer seems a bit strange.

Which leads us to wonder what exactly we're consuming when we watch Dancing With the Stars. It's not excellence in performance, since professional ballroom dancing is the stuff of non-pledge time PBS filler. And it's not just seeing celebs embarrass themselves, since the truly awful dancers do seem to get voted out early, and the best dancers usually do win or make it to the finals, and nobody seemed to enjoy watching pseudo-celebs make fools of themselves on Skating with the Stars. And it's not just relatability, since some relative unknowns have won or made it far.

No, it's some odd combination of the above. We like familiar celebrities, but not too famous. We want to see them struggle, but not make fools of themselves. We want them to be good, but not too good. It's a delicate balance. And I'm not sure what it says about us that this is what we seem to want.

The mission of the pro-life movement is not to "reduce the number of abortions"

2010-11-21T08:44:00.001-06:00

Alternative title: If pro-lifers want to stop abortions so much, why don't they cut out all these legislative efforts and "common ground" approaches and go disrupt some abortion clinics?

Will Saletan has posted some lessons pro-lifers should learn from the recent conference with pro-life and pro-choice* activists working to find common ground.

In general, Saletan suggests that pro-lifers embrace initiatives that may lower the abortion rate at the margins, but neither legally or socially sanction abortion. All of his suggestions are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what motivates most who call themselves pro-life. What Saletan, and many commentators who strike similar notes (many of them pro-life themselves) is that the mission of the pro-life movement is not to lower the abortion rate.

I'll write that again: The mission of the pro-life movement is not to lower the abortion rate.

At first, this sounds absurd -- what is the pro-life movement about if not to reduce the number of abortions?

But to me, and many pro-lifers, abortion is a tremendous injustice and national shame. And people who fight against what they consider to be an injustice don't set about to reduce the incidence of that injustice; they seek to eliminate it and establish strong social and legal sanctions against it.

Those (including me) who opposed waterboarding did not seek to lower the frequency with which the US resorted to waterboarding, but to get the government to permanently set it aside. Appeals that we only waterboarded a handful of hardened terrorists did not dissuade me. And a suggestion that if I really wanted to reduce waterboarding, then I should support the war so as to eliminate the need for waterboarding would be a complete non-starter.

The same goes for every cause against injustice. Anti-war activists don't just want to reduce the intensity of the war. Civil rights activists didn't just want to reduce the incidences of segregation. And so on.

I understand that many people (including many who consider themselves to be pro-life) don't deem abortion to be an injustice on this scale, and consider comparisons to grand injustices like slavery and the Holocaust to be counterproductive. And in the public debate, that may be the case. My point here is in trying to explain the motivations. Even if pro-life people were to refrain from these comparisons in making their case, it would not change that this is how they feel about the issue in their hearts.

This is not to say that reducing the number of abortions is not a laudable goal, or that some of the efforts Saletan describes aren't worthy of support, because they are. But I don't think they are the proper primary focus of people claiming to be pro-life, or that those who fail to are revealing that they're not truly pro-life.

One of Saletan's suggestions is that pro-lifers should embrace contraception, even though many pro-lifers are opposed to it, while seeing it as a lesser evil than abortion. The assumption is that, someone who opposes abortion should be willing to compromise on any and all other issues in order to reduce the number of abortions. But if this were the case, perhaps better advice would be that all pro-lifers should focus their energy to disrupting abortion clinics, using all means at their disposal. Ironically, Saletan's common ground moderating advice assumes a pro-life worldview that is closer to Operation Rescue than, say, Harry Reid.

I understand that the perception of many is that there is already too much of a pro-life presence at abortion clinics and harassing women getting abortions and those working at clinics, but those engaged in these activities represent a tiny percentage of those who consider themselves pro-life, even using strict definitions of "pro-life." If everybody who opposed abortion were to focus their efforts on disrupting abortion clinics, that would likely have a greater effect than legislative efforts or any of the items Saletan suggests.

But we don't do that. Why? Because the pro-life movement is about establishing justice, not just preventing marginal abortions. And many see disrupting abortion clinics as counterproductive to that ultimate goal.

A more egregious example is Saletan's suggestion that pro-lifers should abandon efforts to restrict abortions because they push abortions later into pregnancy, which we are supposed to acknowledge is "worse." It would be difficult to craft a paragraph that is more revealing of a fundamental misunderstanding of what motivates a movement. It is not the pro-life movement's job to make push abortions into a zone where they are more superficially palatable.

Those who work to prevent marginal abortions through some of Saletan's suggestions and others like counseling and adoption are indeed doing God's work, and deserve our support. But that is not the same things as saying that these efforts are the proper primary focus of the pro-life movement.

* I understand that both names cover up more than they illuminate. I find it simplest to refer to the groups by their chosen names, rather than get tendentious.

The state of discourse

2010-11-16T23:54:00.000-06:00

If you haven't seem Rachel Maddow's interview od Jon Stewart, I would encourage you to do so.

One important point that Stewart seemed to be struggling to articulate is that, contrary to what is presented by the cable news networks, the real battle isn't between left and right. Stewart offered "corrupt vs. non-corrupt" and "extreme vs. non-extreme" as an alternatives, but I don't think either quite captured what he was trying to say.

I think what Stewart was trying to get across was more like "good vs. evil" or, since that may sound a bit too familiar, "good ideas vs. bad ideas."

I think the section on Bush and waterboarding was particularly powerful, though I'm not sure Stewart managed to drive the point home. To many, the interesting thing about the waterboarding debate is what it says about George W. Bush, rather than what it says about us.

I don't want to pin waterboarding on Bush or the Republicans. I want all parties to reject waterboarding. I don't want to convict President Obama of being "pro-infanticide;" I want him and the Democrats to back off their support for abortion.

To many, it's a good day if they can prove some member of the other party is guilty of some depravity. To me, that's a bad day. It has to be done sometimes, but I hope we usually have better things to do.

Embracing the title...

2010-10-31T14:01:00.003-05:00

First, let me say that this will be my one and only post about the elections. I am finding elections and the conversations surrounding them increasingly depressing, and am not positive that my contributions are an exception.

Catherine Kaveny has a piece in America exploring the question of Catholics voting for candidates who support legalized abortion. Unlike some of her previous piece, this seems to be a good faith effort to reconcile the sides of the issue, rather than to lead cheers for her side, so I mean this to be a constructive engagement with the piece versus a "takedown."

Prof. Kaveny closes the piece by dividing Catholics engaged in politics into two camps -- "prophets" who provide bold witness to where we need to be, and "pilgrims" who are engaged in the world as it is, and calls for a more productive conversation between the two.

She does not endorse either camp, though I don't think there's much doubt which she would put herself in, or would advise others to join. Unfortunately, those who responded to the piece were not so reticent about which camp has, like Mary Magdalene chosen the "better part." And that's not surprising -- would you rather be seen as the haughty prophet boldly proclaiming the sinfulness of those around you, or the humble pilgrim, dirt under your fingernails, dealing with people where they are, sins and all.

I would challenge those eager to accept the title of pilgrim to consider what a pilgrim actually is. The defining characteristic of a pilgrim is not humility or moral flexibility to work with the world as it is. Indeed, the American Pilgrims came here because they believe it was impossible to reconcile their religious beliefs with the Church of England. The defining characteristic of a pilgrim is one who is journeying toward a destination. If one is looking for a word to express willingness to accept and work with the sinfulness of the world as it is, one could scarcely do worse than "pilgrim."

Looking at the conversation around Catholics voting for candidates who support legalized abortion, the image of a pilgrimage is not one that immediately comes to mind. We're still at the "Abp. Burke makes a hard-line statement; liberal Catholics react in horror" stage we were at six years ago.

Some might say that the prophet side has to move some. Indeed, the 2004 emphasis on intrinsic evil, to the point where many were using the word "intrinsic" as if it were an intensifier, does not seem to have been entirely thought through.

But it seems that those accepting the title of "pilgrim" are also accepting the responsibility to move the conversation forward. (And, BTW, with little difference between the parties on the war, torture thankfully gone, and health care reform passed, what exactly is the proportionate reason for supporting pro-choice candidates?) A true pilgrim would not be working to make it more comfortable to support pro-choice candidates, but be working to make the conversation irrelevant. We should be moving forward not standing still.

The use of the word "pilgrim" to describe those willing to support pro-choice candidates may have been a linguistic mistake, but it may point the way forward to a solution.

Well, so much for my theory...

2010-10-10T22:01:00.001-05:00

In one moment, I comment that in looking at the very troubling series of suicides from gay teenagers, if one wants to assess blame to right-wing commenters and religious groups, one also has to look at the media for playing up divisive commentators instead of those with more nuanced views. Most religious, including Catholicism, do not preach anything close to hatred of gays, and that by implying that they do, the media may be leading gay teens to believe they are more hated than they are.

Then, I look at the news, and see that, at this particular moment in history, New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino decided to say this

New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino criticized gays Sunday, saying he didn't want children "to be brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid or successful option," compared to heterosexuality.

"It isn't," Paladino said at a stop in Brooklyn, New York.

A prepared version of his remarks obtained by CNN from New York affiliate NY1 said that "There is nothing to be proud of in being a dysfunctional homosexual," though Paladino did not wind up delivering that line.

"That's not how (God) created us," the prepared remarks continued, though Paladino did not say those words.

Paladino distributed copies of his prepared remarks to reporters at the event, an address to a group of Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood.

The candidate's remarks came a day after New York police announced the arrest of an eighth suspect in a series of brutal, anti-gay hate crimes against four men.

Oy.

Well, so much for my contention that real homophobia is a fringe phenomenon being played up by political opportunists.

And, if that wasn't enough, after being criticized by his opponent, Paladino's campaign responded with this:

Carl Paladino's position on this is exactly equivalent to the Catholic Church," Caputo told CNN. "And if Andrew Cuomo has a problem with the Catholic Church's position on abortion and homosexuality, he needs to take it up with his parish priest."

Great. So now it's Catholicism. My responses:

Paldino's comments and Cuomo's criticism were not about abortion.
It is true that the Church does not regard homosexual orientation to be an equal calling to heterosexual orientation, even referring to the former as "intrinsically disordered." It is not the official teaching of the Church that gays are engaged in a brainwashing campaign.
If Paladino were to take up his remarks with his parish priest, I would hope that he would receive some counseling about pastoral sensitivity

Indeed, while I'm not typically a fan of pressuring bishops to take some action in political capaigns, it may be worthwhile for them to not let the Church be used as a cover for pandering to homophobia.

UPDATE: Dave Weigel suggests that Paladino is a bit of an outlier, and not worth the attention he is likely to receive. I had suspected that if someone running for statewide office in a blue state would be somewhat close to the mainstream, but Weigel would probably know better than I.

The Schumaker Conversion Failed by Succeeding...

2010-09-29T23:21:00.000-05:00

In Spring Training of 2009, the Cardinals took their fourth outfielder, Skip Schumaker, and had him learn second base. The conversion has been considered a success, since Schumaker has been a below average to average second baseman, and, with the exception of a terrible start this year, has maintained his performance at the plate.

Nevertheless, I think the conversion is a major factor in the Cardinals' disappointing year.

Throughout the Tony La Russa era, the Cardinals have employed a series of stopgaps at second base. They won the World Series in 2006 with trading deadline pick-up Ronnie Belliard, who was gone immediately therafter. The 104 game winning National League Champion Cardinals had Tony Womack (and I had to look that up). The next year, they won 100 games with Mark Grudzielanek. Second base has been a position the Cardinals have generally favored flexibility.

The Schumaker conversion changed all that. The organization had invested considerable energy into it. Schumaker himself worked hard to make it work. The Cardinals let Adam Kennedy, an adequate second baseman, go, eating a bunch of his salary. Unless Schumaker turned out to be an embarrassment at second, or stopped hitting, he was going to be out there.

And he wasn't an embarrassment. He was essentially a league-average second baseman. Which was enough for the organization and the fans to consider the conversion a success.

What this also led to is resistance to considering second base an area for improvement. If the Cardinals had simply traded Schumaker the outfielder for a second baseman who performed as Schumaker did, they may have felt differently.

The Cardinals roster is generally not flexible to begin with. Their two best and highest-paid position players occupy the rightmost positions on the defensive spectrum -- first base and left field. Their next best hitter in the first half of this year was in the next slot over, right field. So, the Cardinals couldn't just upgrade their offense by acquiring a "bat" -- it had to be someone who could play a key infield position. Second base is the one position of those where there can be upgrades available, such as the 2006 Belliard acquisition.

But the Cardinals were essentially locked in. Making a change at second base would be tantamount to admitting the conversion didn't work, and there was too much invested in it to do that unless it was blindingly obvious. And so the Cardinals were committed to an average second baseman.

The Roots of Islamophobia

2010-09-12T18:37:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned below, I don't think the current "frenzy of anti-Muslim sentiment" is driven by a belief that all Muslims are responsible for terrorist attacks and 9/11, but more nuanced beliefs.

What are those? Well, here's some of them:

A sense that Muslims are more concerned with telling other Americans not to blame them for terrorist acts than they are with purging their religion of terror.
What seems to be a double standard. When there is an act of Islamic terrorist violence, everyone races first to look for a perpetrator who is not Islamic, second to downplay the Islamic element, and third to explain the motivation. When there is violence that seems to come from the right wing, commentary centers on exploring why there is so much violence in conservatism, and how we can punish them for it.
A sense that the Islam being presented for public consumption is a whitewashed version that bears little resemblance to what is practiced in reality. Yes, "Islam means peace," but there are a number of troublesome aspects of both its current practice and history that it seems people are hoping we won't notice.
A sense that other groups had to earn the trust and goodwill of Americans, whereas Muslims are tattling to the teacher to make us play nice with them.
Expressing any of the above will get you tagged as a bigot.

Incidentally, the list of grievances fueling the "rising nativist sentiment" looks pretty similar to the above.

Not all of these are completely grounded in fact. And even if true, they don't justify a generalized anti-Islamic feeling that we're seeing.

But it's also different, and not as obviously absurd as the notion that all Muslims are responsible for 9/11.

The only socially approved conversation one can have about the above is, "Shut up, you bigot!" So when someone comes along and tells people, "I get what you're feeling. Vote for me," it's going to have a certain appeal.

I have absolutely no sympathy for the politicians who go about stoking these simmering embers of resentment, and if the resulting flame gets out of control, they will bear an enormous amount of responsibility. They should be ashamed of themselves.

But those who know better have left this field open to them by answering these concerns with platitudes about Islam being a peaceful religion and how unfair guilt by association is. If people are interested in stemming this tide, not just feeling superior to it, we're going to have to do better.

Yes, we know not all Muslims are responsible for 9/11.

2010-09-11T19:42:00.000-05:00

There seems to be a lot of commentary these days making the point that not all Muslims were guilty of the 9/11 attacks, so it would be wrong to collectively blame Islam or any individual because he happens to be Muslim.

Fair enough, but I don't know of anyone who holds this view, at least expressed this crudely. Some made statements that are apparently motivated by anti-Muslim sentiments, and it's likely those sentiments were brought about or intensified by 9/11, but I don't know anybody who would say that all Muslims are guilty of 9/11.

As such, it is difficult for me to imagine a reader be persuaded by a statement or argument that it is wrong to hold Muslims collectively guilty for 9/11, because it is difficult for me to imagine a reader who would (even to himself) cop to this view. Again, this is not meant to say that there is no anti-Muslim bigotry in America, or even that it has dwindled to anywhere near an acceptable level. But it is a bit more nuanced than can be effectively engaged in a tweet-size message.

Which isn't to say it's right. But turning it around is going to take more than platitudes about the wrongness of collective guilt.

Let's not be so principled

2010-09-09T10:07:00.000-05:00

Right now, it seems the point of almost all discourse is to plausibly characterize your adversaries argument as one of the following, in rough order of severity:

Bigotry

Sexism
Racism
Homophobia
Religious Intolerance

"Hypocrisy"*
Support of an enemy group.
Failing to support a sympathetic group (soldiers, teachers, "science", etc.)
Violating a Constitutional principle
"Moral equivalence"**

On the other hand, it is considered a sufficient defense of any action to evade charges of any of the above.

On Catholic blogs, the game is to associate your opponent with "formal cooperation with intrinsic evil."

There is not space to debate matters of prudence. Either we don't trust our instincts on these matters, suspecting they are rooted in bigotry, or we just don't want to talk about it. So, if we disagree with what somebody does, we have to try to fit it into one of the boxes above.

This leaves us impoverished when it's time to discuss an issue that doesn't entirely fall neatly into one of those boxes -- as evidenced by the Cordoba House controversy and the Qu'ran burning.

The Mayor Bloomberg-approved conclusion from the Cordoba House debate seemed to be that our country has a grand tradition of free exercise of religion, and any effort to curtail another's exercise of religion is bigotry. Don't we remember the ugliness of how Catholic Irish immigrants were treated years ago? Don't all arguments against it boil down to guilt-by-association bigotry, or accommodation thereof?

And along comes a Florida pastor with his plan to burn the Qu'ran, and we recognize it's a bad idea, but we don't have the language to say so.

On the one hand, it is religious intolerance, but it's also their exercise of religion on their property.

Some have tried to use General Petraeus's statements against it to create a mixture of hypocrisy and failure to support the troops. But most recognize it's not quite a fit. Besides, why would this endanger the troops? Because some might hold them responsible for the church's actions. Well, isn't that guilt-by-association bigotry? And didn't we just decide that we don't accommodate that sort of thing?

We need to develop a culture where we can have robust debates about matters of prudence rather than just continuously asserting rights. And we have to be open to the possibility that even if we have the right to do something, it might not be a great idea to actually do it.

* In public discourse, "hypocrisy" does not mean saying one thing and doing another, it means something like inconsistency; e.g. you're all for "small government" on Issue X, but that seems to disappear on Issue Y.

** Strictly speaking, this would be asserting that the act in question is exactly like one that is universally disparaged. But it is typically deployed when any kind of analogy is offered, even if the speaker explicitly denies claiming moral equivalence.

Inclusive or Exclusive?

2010-09-07T10:46:00.000-05:00

Slate's Friend or Foe advice columnist passes on the following widely typical platitude about Jesus:

I'm not a Christian myself, but I know that Jesus' message was one of inclusion, not exclusion. It's a shame that Emily has forgotten that lesson as she goes about subtly denigrating those who don't worship in exactly the same manner as her.

Oh, how I love it when non-Christians deliver lectures about what Jesus's message was really about. But is this correct?

Well, let's take a look at last Sunday's Gospel:

If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother,

wife and children, brothers and sisters,

and even his own life,

he cannot be my disciple.

Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me

cannot be my disciple.

...

In the same way,

anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions

cannot be my disciple.

I'd say this pretty much excludes everyone, at least among Friend or Foe's readers.

Perhaps Friend or Foe should repeat the lecture to Jesus about how He has forgotten His central lesson of inclusion...

Baseball Thoughts...

2010-09-06T10:16:00.000-05:00

Cardinals and Rasmus

Reading this article, it seems to me that the whole "Rasmus wants out of here" thing is a bit overblown. I suspect if one looked back at most players, they had a bout like this in their history. I think the Cardinals should just ride it out.
Unless, Pujols genuinely can't stand the guy, and Rasmus's continued presence on the team would dissuade Pujols from re-signing.
I think part of being a successful organization is giving young talents like Rasmus room to grow. If the culture of the Cardinals is one that resents hot new talents that come up (and can help the ballclub), they've got bigger problems than just an unhappy centerfielder.

Nyjer Morgan

There was some talk that Nyjer Morgan broke an "unwritten rule" by stealing two bases when his team was down by 11 runs in the fourth inning, and if so, that is a ridiculous rule, since a team shouldn't stop trying to win.

True enough, but Morgan's act wasn't ordered toward helping the Nationals win that ballgame, or any other game for that matter. From a percentage standpoint, trying to steal bases when your team's down eleven runs is a terrible baseball play. It was to deliver an "eff you" to the Marlins, and that point was not lost on the Marlins. And when you do that to people, they tend to react in bad ways, e.g. throwing at you the next time you come up.

The Marlins didn't throw at Morgan because he broke an "unwritten rule," they threw at him because he hurt their teammate the night before, and was acting like a jerk, and they thought he needed a butt-kicking. And I can't say I disagree.

There isn't a "rule," written or unwritten, against stealing bases when your team's behind. There is a rule against being a jerk. The need to fit everything into some hard-and-fast rule and withhold judgement is one of the weaknesses we have these days.

It's About The Experience

2010-09-05T22:58:00.000-05:00

Just finished Chuck Klosterman's Eating the Dinosaur, an interesting romp through music, television, sports, and other fun stuff.

Klosterman devotes one chapter to the stupidity of the laugh track. His take is interesting, but doesn't really break new ground -- why should I need to be cued to know something is funny? Doesn't this show how insecure we are?

I think the main point that Klosterman misses is that the purpose of the laugh track is not to enhance our appreciate of the show, but to enhance our experience of watching the show. I know those sound like pretty much the same thing, so let me explain.

Klosterman uses Friends in an extended example. I submit that what NBC sold before and syndicators sell now when they sell Friends is not the episodes or the entire opus as an artistic achievement, but the experience of watching Friends (or, rather they are selling advertisers the set of people who opt for the experience of watching Friends). The laugh track isn't a trick to manipulate people into thinking they're watching a funnier show than they are; it is part of the package they are delivering.

There is something fundamentally enjoyable about laughing with other people. It is a different experience that laughing by yourself (and the same goes for cheering, crying, singing and other things). Is it really that funny that Monica's a control freak or that Joey's oversexed? Not really, but it's fun to commiserate about these things, even if our fellow commiserators are distant or (as Klosterman suggests) dead.

After the 9/11, Friends had a spike in its ratings. Did the writing or acting get better? I suspect not, and that an alien would not be able to choose which Friends episodes came during this spike and which came from more lackluster times. What was reported was that Friends was comfort entertainment -- we were opting for simpler pleasures, like laughing along at Ross's social awkwardness.

I suspect some people would watch a channel that was all laugh track with no visual. They would never admit it, but they would tune in. The show itself can be a pretext to enjoy this (such as baseball games are a pretext for sitting out in the sun drinking beer with your buddies, or football games are pretext for hanging out in a parking lot grilling meat). Now, it has to be a credible pretext, which is why some shows fail and others succeed, but once the ball is rolling, the content is almost irrelevant.

I think part of the success of American Idol is how it plays on both sides of this tension. We enjoy watching a half-decent singer deliver a karaoke version of a familiar song, but we kind of hate ourselves for it. So we enjoy the performance, and then we enjoy Simon Cowell's evisceration of the same performance we just enjoyed. It's win-win.

The popular story is that the success of laugh-track free comedies like The Office, 30 Rock, and Arrested Devleopment demonstrate that both the craft and the audiences have evolved beyond these simple pleasures, but I'm not so sure. For these shows, the Internet is the laugh track. The (mostly affluent) people who enjoy these shows can share their appreciation with each other all over the world. It may not be immediate or obvious as a laugh track, but it's there, and I'm not sure these shows would be successful without it.

This was driven home to me six months ago when I got to attend a taping of the Late Show with David Letterman. I was there the night Bill Murray dove into a water-filled dumpster..

The studio audience is managed by pages who are apparently recruited from the same pool of candidates from which the Jungle Cruise guides at Disney World are pulled. We were instructed to laugh at everything Dave says, assume everything is hilarious, and suspend any critical analysis.

Now, there is some dissonance between these instructions and the persona of David Letterman, who recognizes that half of what he says on the show is crap, and knows that you know it, too. It would be difficult to imagine Letterman himself respecting these instructions.

But, at the same time, he (or the people running the show) recognize what his job is, and that's to deliver an entertaining hour of entertainment. And part of that is an audience that the people can laugh along with. It's not the merit of the jokes -- is anyone really blown away by jokes about the hookers in Time Square, or Dick Cheney shooting his hunting buddy? -- but a fun experience for those who tune in. Perhaps one reason Jay Leno has been more successful than Letterman, at least in terms of audience size, is the degree to which he is willing to surrender himself to that goal. Leno just wants to entertain the maximum number of people; Letterman wants to retain his dignity. Perhaps Letterman's approach is superior on a human level, but one can understand why NBC keeps choosing Leno over comedians who enjoy greater success.

Getting back to the original point, the laugh track isn't something bolted on to the show to trick people into liking it, like sugar-coated cereal; it is part of the actual product. TV's continued embrace of it does not reflect stupidity, but rather a keen insight into what people enjoy.

The Courage To Tell me What I Want to Hear

2010-09-04T11:20:00.001-05:00

Jacob Weisberg criticizes Obama for not exercising leadership on immigration, same sex marriage, and the "Ground Zero" mosque. (Apparently, the irony of publishing a "call to courage" at the beginning of a holiday weekend is lost on Weisberg).

Like most people who call for "leadership" (Catholics wanting "leadership" from their bishops being chief among them), Weisberg doesn't want to actually be led. He just wants a presidential seal of approval for his own positions, which he trusts Obama secretly shares.

For someone like President Obama, which requires greater courage?

Angering Fox News
Angering Weisberg and his cohorts like Rachel Maddow, Paul Krugman, etc.

I submit that the latter requires more courage. President Obama has given no indication of caring what Fox News says about him. He is probably convinced they will criticize him no matter what he does.

Perhaps Weisberg should consider the possibility that Obama is exercising courageous leadership, but the object is not Those People Over There, but people like Weisberg who adopt a Manichean black/white view on these issues and stop listening to the other side. Maybe he should reconsider his attitude toward those who disagree with him on these issues.

That would take courage.

A project for Commonweal Catholics

2010-08-26T11:47:00.002-05:00

This week, Commonweal, published an editorial in support of the Cordoba House project, and criticizing Abp. Dolan for not being more supportive of it, and I'm sure they're quite proud of themselves for it. Though I kind of see it, as Mark Shea would say, of "bravely facing the applause".

My distaste for the opposition for the House still stands; nevertheless, I had a few problems with the editorial. It begins:

In the past nine years, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have been invoked, distorted, and exploited to serve a variety of political and ideological agendas. But no such effort has been quite as shameful as the current campaign against the so-called Ground Zero Mosque.

Emphasis mine.

:et's catalog some of the agendas that the 9/11 attacks have been invoked to support:

The war in Afghanistan, which continues without a clear path to victory, or even an idea of what "victory" might mean.
The war in Iraq, which we are just now getting out of, and required us to defy the United Nations and sully world opinion.
The adoption of torture, or "enhanced interrogation techniques."
Various civil liberties erosions
Rendition

How I wish the most shameful effort that 9/11 is used to prop up is an effort to move an Islamic Center a little further away from Ground Zero!

It's possible that it represents the clearest departure from our country's founding principles, but I find torture and preemptive war more shameful than property decisions.

The editorial goes into familiar territory (with which I concur, absent the eagerness to brand opponents as bigots), and concludes with a desire for Archbishop Dolan to be more active in support of the project.

Now, this is the same publication that will issue editorials expressing grave concerns everytime a bishop so much as wrinkles an eyebrow at a pro-choice publication. My understanding of Abp. Dolan's position is that he affirms the rights of the Center to be built, and would like to help mediate a resolution that is satisfactory to all parties. Which seems quite similar to Commonweal's preferred disposition for bishops on abortion. But that's just the legally licensed killing of innocent babies, not something as fundamental as the most prudent use of lower Manhattan real estate. On the Cordoba House, unity!

Anyway, maybe I shouldn't begrudge them their home run trot slamming this fat pitch into the seats. And there are those who have opposed the project who deserve to be called out for it.

But it seems that Jon Stewart is doing a decent job of that, so it may be time to move on to a more challenging mission.

Dana Goldstein wrote a piece linking the Tea Party movement to socially conservative positions. She promoted it with the tweet, "The tea party movement is more and more embracing an extreme agenda on abortion, other social issues " From the article, the "extreme" positions include:

Support of an Alaska ballot initiative requiring parental notification requiring parental consent for abortions procured by unmarried minors.
Pro-life activism
Support of the Mexico City Policy of not allowing foreign aid to be used to fund abortions.
A suggestion that rape victims should avoid abortion

I think that Catholics who are involved in the political left are uniquely positioned to help shape the culture such that the positions articulated above are not considered extreme. Commentators like Goldstein are comfortable labeling them as such, in part because they probably don't know anybody who holds those positions. Catholics on the political left can change that, and not let commentators get away with that.

This will require some sacrifice, because labeling the opposition as "extreme" is helpful for Democratic candidates, and raising the cost of using this tactic may result in more Republicans being elected. But I submit that any victories won on the back of the social marginalization of the pro-life perspective are hollow indeed.

Doing this probably won't be as fun as calling those opposed to the Cordoba House bigots, but needs to be done.

Thoughts on the "Ground Zero" Mosque..

2010-08-24T09:20:00.000-05:00

First, a few things to get out of the way...

It is clear the Park51 developers have the right to build the mosque.
I am ashamed that some have tried to use various levers of government to prevent it.
The manner in which politicians have ginned up outrage over this is shameful, and evidence of their general backruptcy of productive ideas.
I have found the appeals to how welcoming countries like Saudi Arabia are to Christian churches particularly unfortunate. The standard for the United States in embracing religious freedom is not Saudi Arabia, and I weep for the day when it is, and anyone who loves this country should seriously consider the implications of using Islamic theocracies as a measuring stick for our actions.
My preferred option would for the mosque to be built with little more attention paid to it. But I'm not sure that's possible.

Having said that...

The consensus of elite opinions seems to be that all arguments against the mosque ultimately come down to bigotry. The challenge is put down for those opposed, or those with any sympathy to those opposed, to articulate and argument against it that is not dependent on bigotry or collective guilt. If not, then they have exposed the whole enterprise as bigoted and unworthy of consideration. Some may be offended, but root of that offense is bigotry, which need not be respected.

Bill McClellan (with whom I agree on his distaste for the Carnahan and Blunt dynasties here in Missouri) captured the gist of this thinking in Sunday's column:

Frankly, I have little sympathy for the politicians who say they understand that the Muslims have a constitutional right to build a center — or even a mosque — but don't think they should. Or the president, who acknowledges that Muslims have the right to build a center — or even a mosque — but won't say whether he supports the building of such.

If they have the right, they have the right. Period. Otherwise, what good is a right?

It's as if you were to tell gun owners that you acknowledge their right to own guns, but you think they should voluntarily disarm.

First, I think this neatly captures the attitude most gun control types have toward gun owners, though I'm not sure I'd vouch for the part where they acknowledge their right to own guns. They most certainly do not approve of gun ownership, do not welcome guns in a variety of settings, don't wast to see non gun owners acquire guns, and wish those who do own guns would get rid of them. There are places where bearing arms is not just socially proscribed, but also legally banned. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

Last year, a pro-life person murdered Dr. George Tiller, who was notorious for performing late term abortions, outside his church in Wichita. This was the act of a single actor, and the first example of lethal pro-life violence in a number of years, though some claim that the rhetoric of the mainstream pro-life movement equating abortion with murder inspires such violence.

In my opinion, and I suspect in the opinion of most, it would be wise for the pro-life movement to tone down its activities in the Wichita area. It would not be a good idea to, for example, construct a monument to the victims of violence, both born and unborn, right across from his gravesite or outside the church where he was murdered. Were the pro-life movement to publicly contemplate such a project, I would expect it to be subject to withering criticism, both from within and from the outside.

I can't articulate a reason for this that doesn't rest on heaping the guilt for this act of a single person on an entire movement that is by and large peaceful. But, as before, I'm OK with that. There should be some incentive for large movements to police its more extreme elements. I don't want a pro-life movement that goes around unnecessarily provoking people. Heck, we weren't sure if we should allow a pro-life ad to air during the Super Bowl.

It is here where some will quibble with whether my analogy presents a precise analogy with the Cordoba Project controversy. The mosque is two blocks away, in an old Burlington Coat Factory, almost ten years after 9/11. And so on. That misses the point. The assertion is that if one cannot articulate a non-bigoted argument against an exercise of religious freedom, then that indicates that the opposition is based on bigotry. It is my opinion that opposition to a monument to the unborn next to Dr. Tiller's gravesite would be proper, and I suspect most would agree. Given that, we have accepted that in some cases, a group faces some social restrictions on its behavior as a result of the actions of a violent faction. Now we're just haggling over the price.

It may be the case that the "price" in this case is one we should be willing to pay for the Cordoba Project, and not one we should be willing to pay for the pro-life memorial. But making such and argument would involve actually engaging those opposed, and it's a lot more fun to just dismiss them as bigots.

The Plight of the Liberal Catholic

2010-08-07T23:38:00.001-05:00

The rant by Anne Rice announcing she is leaving Catholicism has inspired a couple commentaries on the difficulties political liberals face in reconciling their commitments with being Catholic.

Rick Garnett has an interesting response.

I suppose I would be more moved by these expressions of anguish (which are no doubt real) if they were coupled with an equal number of expressions of anguish about how inhospitable their political home is for Catholic values.

At least all of these folks claim to be pro-life. They also fully support the Democratic Party. The same party whose 2008 party platform expressed unequivocal support for Roe vs. Wade. The same party that almost lost the opportunity to pass health care reform because it couldn't countenance including explicit bans on funding abortion.

But you will search in vain for anguished posts discerning whether a liberal pro-life Catholic should or should not remain in the Democratic Party. You will not see someone begging Nancy Pelosi to excommunicate her from the Democratic Party. Instead, if you look at Vox Nova, dotCommonweal, or In All Things, you will generally find the following posts:

Boy, those Republicans are awful, aren't they. Do you believe this?
Quote from a saint
I mean really, they sure are terrible.
The pro-life objection to this Democratic initiative is a bunch of hot air.
Plus, they had no objection to the same thing when Republicans did it.
Yes, they really are awful.

If you do find anything challenging the Democratic Party's support for abortion, you will have to dig past ten posts about the evilness and hypocrisy of Republicans to get there. This with the Democrats in control of the White House and both houses of Congress.

These people seem convinced that, in spite of advocating for the continued legalization of the killing of innocents, the Democratic Party is a great vehicle for pursuing justice and worthy of their support.

But if the Catholic Church doesn't ordain women, or doesn't support same sex marriage? Then maybe they're not so sure about it.

---

What I think we're seeing here is that the Catholic Church, and religion in general, no longer has a the first claim on people's loyalties. (and if you think this is exclusively a "liberal" problem, talk to a "conservative "Catholics about waterboarding, health care, or immigration). If the values of my political allegiance conflict with the values of my Church, then it's the Church's, or my allegiance to the Church's, that needs to change. Yes, I might look for some loophole so I'm within the letter of the law (it's not an "intrinsic" evil; it's a "prudential judgement", etc.) but our hearts are with our political alliance.

Some might say it's because of the sexual abuse scandals, but I think the scandals are a reaction to this new environment rather than a cause. We're not willing to look the other way when Church leaders misbehave anymore. As such, this may not be an altogether bad thing.

Concern trolling on Proposition 8...

2010-08-04T22:32:00.001-05:00

Several years ago a Florida judge ruled that Micheal Schiavo could removed the feeding tube that was keeping his (ex?) wife Terri alive, over the objections of her family of origin.

President Bush and the Republican Congress moved to prevent this and managed to delay the removal by a couple days. Ultimately the tube was removed, government agents were posted to prevent Terri's family from feeding her, and she died.

The Republicans controlled all aspects of both the federal and Florida government, and were only successful in postponing the removal of a couple days. Nevertheless, this was seen as a massive overreach by the federal government, and was blamed for the Republicans' losses in the 2006 midterm elections. How dare they overrule the decision of the duly appointed judge?

In said midterm election, Amendment 2 passed in Missouri after a massive celebrity-filled advertising campaign funded mostly by a single family. This declared that there could not be any restrictions on embryo-denying research. I don't recall if there was a lawsuit challenging it, but I had no expectation that we could sue to undo a constitutional amendment that was approved via a public referendum.

Fast forward to 2010.

Arizona passes an immigration law approved by its populace. The Administration sues and succeeds in blocking it from being implemented.

California's Supreme Court establishes same sex marriage. The voters approve Proposition 8, restoring marriage to its previous definition. The federal court overturns it.

Now. I'm not a fan of Arizona's immigration bill. And I'm growing inclined to believe that given the trajectory of heterosexual marriage, that it may not be just to excluded homosexual couples. Dahlia Lithwick, whom I cited above thinking Bush's actions in the Schiavo case violated every constitutional principle, seems to think this is just great.

Still. If you are a somewhat conservative voter in Arizona or California or anywhere else, wouldn't you get the feeling that if the eggheads in Washington don't like something you did, no matter how duly you followed the correct process to do it, they will find a way to undo it.

This provides ample ammunition to anti-intellectual movements and appeals like the Tea Party and Sarah Palin. These elites think they're better than you and smarter than you. They think you're a bunch of bigots who have "no rational basis" for your policy preferences, and they can just decide to overrule it. I don't think that would be a good thing.

I hate to rain on the parade of same sex marriage advocates, but I see little to celebrate in the further division in our society. Might makes right. You don't need to persuade those who disagree with you; you just have to grab the reins of power, determine that your opponents have "no rational basis" for their policies, and impose your will.

Guess I should start working on my lawsuit to overturn Amendment 2. Who cares if Missouri voters approved it? I think it declares a class of persons to be outside the protection of the law. That's got to be unconstitutional, right? I've just got to find the right judge.

More LeBron James thoughts...

2010-07-28T22:51:00.000-05:00

For some reason, I find the LeBron James decision very interesting, so I've got few more scattered thoughts about it. I'll put them under the fold.

The Rules Are Different For Superstars
A couple years ago, Shawn Marion forced a trade from Phoenix, where he was a complementary player on a great team, to Miami, where he was a star player on a mediocre team.

This launched a series of criticism from Bill Simmons -- how could he leave a team with Steve Nash? Why wouldn't he want the best chance at a championship? (Google search didn't come up with smoking guns -- may have been more in the podcasts. Bu the results will give you a flavor of the tenor of his comments).

Now, LeBron James has left a mediocre set of teammates for Miami so he can play with Dwyane Wade and have the best shot at a championship.

This is almost precisely orthogonal to Marion's move. Yet, now Simmons is trying to come up with fun chants to jeer James with over this decision.

My point isn't to label Simmons a hypocrite. More is that the rules are different for superstars than everyone else. Usually, that works in the stars' favor, but not in this case. Marion is a fringe All Star, a second or third best player for a championship team. A team with Shawn Marion as its best player is not going to win a championship. The best thing for Marion to do is find a situation with good players that complement him and contribute to a championship team. And if he's lucky enough to find himself in such a situation, for heaven's sake don't screw it up.

Not so for LeBron James. He is a superstar. He should be the foundation of a championship team, not a complementary part.

And yet...

If another player on the Cavs had developed to a stature similar to Wade, and LeBron forced the Cavs to trade him so he could be the undisputed alpha dog, wouldn't we think he was a jerk? Or if the Cavs traded for Wade and James pouted about it?

Being a superstar has its high point, but it's not easy...

The Irony

One interesting aspect of this is that this move, where players come together and decide what kind of teams they will be on, is possible because of the salary cap.

If there was a truly open market and bidding for their services, would Wade and James end up on the same team? I don't think so.

But with the cap in place, James and Wade's salary were both essentially locked in to the same value as people like Joe Johnson. Thus, salary is no longer a meaningful way of keeping score among athletes. So why not team up and go for championships?

The salary cap, which not too long ago baseball owners were claiming was the only path to competitive balance, has not led to perhaps the most imbalanced of outcomes.

The Essence

I think Simmons came closes to capturing the problem with the Heat with this passage:

In pickup basketball, there's an unwritten rule to keep teams relatively equal to maximize the competitiveness of the games. That's the law. If two players are noticeably better than everyone else, they don't play together, nor would they want to play together. If the two guys have any pride at all -- especially if they play similar positions -- then getting the better of each other trumps any other scenario. They want that test. Joining forces and destroying everyone else would ruin the whole point of having the game. It's like a dad kicking his young son's ass in a driveway one-on-one game. What's the point? When LeBron and Wade effectively said, "Instead of trying to whup each other, let's just crush everyone else" and "If these teams end up being uneven, we're not switching up," everyone who ever played basketball had the same reaction: "I hate guys like that."
So when my wife asked in all sincerity, "What's the big deal if they play together?" I couldn't really explain it to her other than to say, "It's a basketball thing. You just don't do it." Your goal as an alpha dog is to assemble the best team you can and beat the other alpha dogs.

It's difficult to articulate what's wrong with it because it's just the essence of basketball, of sports in general, of any competition.

Sports are fundamentally a forum for displaying your talents and determining who is the best. We talk about things like "being a team player" and "sacrificing for the team" and good sportsmanship because the assumption is that we need to check athlete's natural inclination to make it about them. And we use team sports as a proxy for other (non-competitive) endeavors where effective teamwork is more important than individual brilliance.

But now I wonder if we've pushed so hard that we may need to back up a bit. Yeah, we still have wide receivers reacting to five yard catches in the second quarter of regular season games as if they just won the Super Bowl. Still, it seems that we have been so relentless in drilling in the team concept that players like LeBron James have absorbed it to the point where its eaten away at their competitiveness.

Championships Are a Broken Metric

Another theme I keep thinking back to is that our hyper-focus on championships, on "rings," as the almost sole measure of an athlete's worth is broken.

It is pretty much settled now that in spite of his mind-blowing statistics, Wilt Chamberlain was not as good a basketball player as Bill Russell, because Russell won two hands' worth of championships and Chamberlain only won two.

This goes to the cultural messages I referred to above. We want young athletes to emulate Russell's unselfishness, willingness to do the "little things" to help the team win, and commitment to winning. We don't want them to emulate Chamberlain's obsession with statistics and occasional selfishness. So we celebrate Russell and downplay Chamberlain.

Michael Jordan's career arc is probably the best illustration of this. Jordan came up as a shoot-first guard who led the league in scoring, had phenomenal dunks, but whose teams fizzled in the playoffs. Then, at least the narrative goes, he "learned to trust his teammates," improved his defense and rebounding, picked his spots more in scoring, and won six championships. The Kobe Bryant narrative is similar.

A phrase defenders of Chamberlain and others like him use is that Russell has "superior taste in teammates." Which may or may not be true. But I wonder if LeBron surveyed the landscape, wondered if he'd share Chamberlain's legacy, saw the opportunity to choose his own teammates, and did so in a way to maximize his chance of winning championships.

The focus on championships has led to intense postseasons, but, in my opinion, the following bad effects:

Basketball teams tanking for high draft picks
The constant whining about the BCS, hyperfocus on "national championship" teams.
NFL teams laying down the last few weeks of the season.

In a league with thirty teams, it is likely there will be some wonderful players who will have long careers without a championship. Do we need to regard them as tragic figures?

What sports are about is day-to-day competition, not manipulating the environment to maximize one's chance of winning a championship. I think we need a cultural adjustment to reward everyday competition that stops short of winning championships.

Dan Marino, Charles Barkley, Ryne Sandberg, recent Hall of Fame inductee Andre Dawson, and others can hold their heads high.

What We Want From Athletes

2010-07-13T22:01:00.000-05:00

We want athletes who are willing to sacrifice individual glory, statistics, and money in order to win a championship, right?

If the reaction to LeBron James's decision to join Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade with the Miami heat is any indication, maybe not.

On the surface, it seems like James (and Bosh and Wade) are doing what we always say we want star athletes to do. Go for the rings. Value your teammates. Make winning your first priority.

Isn't that what we would do with our careers? What would we do -- bang our head against the wall trying to drag a group of incompetents to success, or join some friends who also happen to be outstanding in their fields and kick some butt?

Still, something doesn't seem quite right. The superstar leading his team to victory, "learning how to win," etc. is a great story. A group of stars getting together and stacking the deck in their favor is not.

But sports is ultimately about competition. I'l enjoy having the All-Star Game on tonight, but I'll be on the edge of my seat for a tight postseason series. What we want when we watch sports isn't just moments of brilliance and great plays, but intense competition between teams at the top of their game going all-out to beat each other. I don't recall any jaw-dropping plays from Game 7 of the NBA Finals, but I watched the whole thing. I can't remember the last NBA All-Star Game I watched.

This sentiment is captured by Bill Simmons: "Michael Jordan would have wanted to kick Dwyane Wade's butt every spring, not play with him."

Perhaps. In terms of judging LeBron James as a human being, I'm not sure this is such a bad thing, judging by things like Jordan's Hall of Fame Speech.

But as an athlete and entertainer, it puts him behind Jordan. LeBron can never be David; he will always be Goliath. He will never put a team on his shoulders and carry it to a title, and neither will Wade. Both players appear to have the potential to do that, and if everything goes according to plan, they never will.

What this feels most like is A-Rod joining the Yankees, A-Rod swung from one extreme to the other. He joined a team that had to invest all its resources in him and couldn't afford anyone else, then moved to a team that was already dominated by other personalities.

LeBron is doing the same thing. Even if the Heat win five titles, we will never know if LeBron could have led a a team to a title. He's set the difficulty down a few levels.

I'm not a fan of the Orlando Magic and the way they play, but I'm hoping they or another team from the East hand it to the Heat on a regular basis. And I hope Kevin Durant leads the Oklahoma City Thunder to greatness. Maybe Kobe can lead the Lakers on a couple more runs.

Because I don't want to see this work, and have every generation of stars get together on the same team and dominate the league. It's just that not fun to watch. The Dream Team was one summer. This is five years. I want sports to be about competition, not the best players getting together and stacking the deck in their favor.

Nature vs. Nurture on NBA Supporting Casts...

2010-07-07T13:30:00.000-05:00

The LeBron James decision is fascinating, and promises to get even more so.

Never before has someone who is such a significant portion of a championship team had an opportunity to choose his next destination. One player has more impact in basketball than in any other sport, and no player with the stature of LeBron James has ever been a free agent.

Of course, a superstar gets you part of the way to a championship, but not the whole way. So, if we assume that James should make his choice to optimize his probability and frequency of championships (an assumption I don't completely buy), then the question is what kind of team he should surround himself with.

The Lakers and Cavaliers both played the Lakers in last year's playoffs. The Lakers won; the Cavaliers lost. The main difference, as far as I could tell is that when LeBron had a terrible shooting game, the Cavs went in the tank, whereas when Kobe Bryant went 6-24 from the field in Game 7, the team kept him in the game.

So, the fundamental question is whether this is due to the quality of their teammates, or the culture of the teams, as defined by the coach and, yes, the star player.

For sure, anyone would trade the Cavaliers' 2-12 players for the Lakers'. The Cavs had nobody comparable to Pau Gasol, no veteran leader like Derek Fisher, or anyone with the versatility of Lamar Odom. In a choose-up game, six Lakers would probably go before the second Cav.

At the same time, it's also true that some of these guys weren't great players before hooking up with the Lakers. Five years ago, would anyone have thought that Ron Artest and Lamar Odom would be critical parts of an NBA championship team?

NBA history is full of role players who have been parts of many different winning teams -- Robert Horry, Steve Kerr, Fisher. But it's also true that the list of championship coaches is a short one. And that these coaches have turned problem players like Dennis Rodman, Stephen Jackson, Artest, and Odom into productive members of championship teams.

Of course, the guys we recognize today as winners are at the tail end of their careers, and probably aren't going to be part of another championship anyway, so it would be silly for LeBron to try to target a team with these guys in place, or with plans to acquire them.

History has shown he will need at least one other solid contributor. But in terms of role players, I'm not sure you can tell the Mo Williamses from the Derek Fishers before the time comes.

So if I were LeBron James, and I wanted to maximize my ability to win a championship, the single most important factor for me would be the head coach. Specifically, it would whether I believe the head coach would be an effective partner for me in building a winning culture.

The second requirement would be a solid second banana, but that seems to be achievable for all the contenders.

And right now, I'd take Pat Riley over Byron Scott, Mike D'Antoni, or the void elsewhere.

Soccer, Laws, Rules, and morals.

2010-07-03T22:04:00.000-05:00

One of the most fundamental rules of soccer is that except for the goalkeeper, you can't use your hands on the ball. Even most Americans know that

In the final minute of extra time in Friday's quarterfinal game against Ghana, Uruguayan forward Luis Suarez found himself standing in front of the goal with the ball heading toward him head high. He swatted the ball with his hand, took the red card penalty. Ghana missed the penalty kick, and Uruguay ultimately won the game to advance. Suarez will be suspended for Uraguay's next game.

While some might disagree, most would say that Suarez did the right thing. The important thing was to win the game. If Suarez had not swatted at the ball, Uraguay would have almost definitely lost. His action gave them a chance to win. You play to win, not to follow the rules. Suarez did what he had to do to help his team win. If he had refused to break the rules to help his team win the game, he would be criticized for it.

While perhaps not this stark, in most sports there are times where it is more in a team's interest to accept the penalty for breaking the rules than not. A defensive back should take a pass interference penalty rather than give up a touchdown. A basketball player should give up a foul rather than a lay up, and foul on purpose in the final minutes to extend the game.

But this is not universal. Suarez's action, while against perhaps the most fundamental rule of soccer, was harmless. If the only way for Suarez to prevent the goal was to cause physical harm to one of Ghana's players, and he did so, I doubt we'd feel the same way. If he kidnapped the opposing team's players' children to distract them during the game, nobody would be cheering.

It seems to me that a lot of the controversies in the Church boil down the whether the teaching of the Church is analogous to the rule against using your hands in soccer or more significant. In particular, I am thinking of the case in Phoenix of the abortion given to the woman with the heart condition, and the torture debate.

For sure, some rules should be ignored under some circumstances. It is a rule that we shouldn't eat meat on Lenten Fridays, but given a choice between wasting prepared food and eating meat, we should probably eat the meat. Attending Mass on Sundays is a commandment, but if on the way to Church we see someone desperately needing help, we should be willing to miss Mass to help them.

But, in my view, the Church's teachings on the dignity of human life are more fundamental than that. We don't eschew torture and abortion and unjust war just so that we can have a clean report card. We do it because it is who we are, who God has called us to be, and breaking those rules takes us away from that.

The Cider House Rules invited us to regard pro-life sentiments as, at best guidelines for order that can be disregarded when deemed necessary, and at worse a tool of oppression. My view is that living the Gospel, living our true selves, is the true path to freedom.

It ultimately comes down to how we answer the question Jesus posed to Peter in the Gospel two weeks ago -- "Who do you say that I am" Do we regard Christ and His Church as makers of arbitrary rules that prevent us from getting things done, or as the Lord of our lives who has shown us the true path of life?

On the basketball free agency...

2010-06-30T23:24:00.000-05:00

First of all, I have to say that I find basketball the most interesting thing to talk about. Unlike baseball, you're allowed to talk about things like team chemistry, character, clutch shooting, and coaching decisions without immediately being shouted down by a bunch of guys with spreadsheets telling you that none of that matters. Football's a little too technical and complicated. Basketball seems most analagous to problems in other organizations. Who's the best lead player? What kind of players should you surround him with? How should the teammates relate to each other and to the coach?

This past postseason was a very interesting study in what kind of teams are successful. LeBron James who seems to get along with his teammates and had rolled with them to a 60 win season got knocked out in the second round. Kobe Bryant, who occasionally seems to regard his teammates with thinly veiled contempt, won the title. The difference seemed to be that when Kobe Bryant went 6 for 24 in Game 7, his teammates were able to pull them through. When James had a bad game, his teammates shrunk.

There's been a lot of talk about where James and the others should go if they want to win a championship. But I'm not sure James or anyone else can know that for sure. Do we know how any set of teammates will react in a playoff game when James doesn't have it going? Who will be the next Derek Fisher?

The critical thing will be the culture of the team, defined mostly by the head coach and James himself. That could happen anywhere or it could happen nowhere. We don't know yet if James can lead a team to a championship. It seems likely but we don't know.

Whatever James chooses, it will be interesting to see if it will work.

One more note -- an undercurrent of recent commentary has been the wonders of Pat Riley. Now Riley is one of three coaches to win multiple championships in the past 25 years. But his team has been lousy the last three years. I'm not so sure about the magical tough.

Cardinal Rant

2010-06-27T21:01:00.000-05:00

It seems like poor form to "rant" about a team that's only a half game out of first place, but I think a 10-3 loss to Bruce Chen and the Royals is sufficient cause.

My problems with this team:

Poor situational hitting
Boring offense
Lack of competitive spirit
Old players whose ceiling is well-known and not that high.

This team is playing with all the urgency of a team that knows it's in the NL Central and can win its division with 85 or so wins.

I think part of the problem is that management screwed up the culture of the team by bringing in released veterans like Randy Winn, Aaron Miles, and yes, Jeff Suppan, and shipping down young players. Suppan is forgivable because the team was desperate for starting pitching and he's delivered some quality innings. But Opening Day invitees Alan Craig and Joe Mather are long gone. Remaining young player like Brendan Ryan and Skip Schumaker are playing scared.

If this wasn't bad enough, La Russa like to find ways to get these veterans in the lineup, at the expense of guys like Colby Rasmus and Ryan Ludwick, the one guy who has been hitting as well as expected.

Another problem is that the two longest tenured Cardinals, Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina, play with an occasional and marked lack of hustle. Both are among the league leaders in double play percentage, and usually seem to be jogging halfway down the line when the DP is completed.

I don't want Albert Pujols blowing his hamstring busting down the line on a third inning ground ball, either, but I think it sets a bad tone for the team.

Of course, the team this year's version most reminds me of is the 2006 Cardinals, a team I also couldn't stand, and we know how that ended. So what do I know?

Modest proposal for the NCAA

2010-06-13T20:45:00.000-05:00

Meta-note: We're back here for now as the host for MBB is having issues. May turn out to be permanent. RSS feeds should be OK. If you have any reason I should prefer Tumblr, let me know.

Two news items from last week in college football:

Colorado joined the Pac-10; Nebraska joined the Big 10, remaining Big 12 South teams may bolt to Pac 10.
USC given sanctions for recruiting of Reggie Bush.

Look, I'm way past moral outrage about recruiting violations in big time college football. Let's face it, there will always be some athletes who will come out of high school looking to cash in. And some college programs willing to facilitate that. (e.g. wherever John Calipari is coaching).

Meanwhile, you've got Division III tennis players afraid to eat a slice of pizza for fear of running against some NCAA rule. To maintain the illusion that the two big-time college sports are amateur, we've made everybody's lives miserable.

So here's what I propose -- the losers in the Great Conference Shuffle secede from the NCAA and play by their own rules, including reasonable compensation for the athletes, and compete with it.

I suppose there would be some loss of prestige. But, in football especially, it seems we're moving toward a world where a few big teams dominate. Why should the test of the teams just do their bidding?

Anyway, this has zero chance of happening, but it would be interesting...

Test2

2010-06-13T07:29:00.001-05:00

Testing from blogger.

I've moved....

2007-08-13T08:52:00.000-05:00

You can check out the same John McG commentary over at manbitesblog.quiblit.com.

Continuing the Conversation

2007-08-10T12:21:00.000-05:00

Did you drink coffee this morning?

Yeah

Well then, you're guilty of using a performance enhancing drug! All your accomplishments are now suspect!

Cute.

Let me know how many people go to an early grave from caffeine usage.

Well, it's probably also true that a lot of the pitchers Bonds faced were using PED's, so it all washes out.

Ah, the two wrongs make a right argument.

I don't like it that pitchers are using either. But I haven't been ordered to stand and applaud for any pitchers for whom there is a similar chain of evidence as there is for Bonds. Any pitchers hit their peak after 35? Any pitchers transform from all-around good pitchers to strikeout specialists in late career? Any pitchers the subject of grand jury testimony?

Two names remotely qualify that I can think of -- Curt Schilling and Roger Clemens. Schilling peaked late, and Clemens has had unprecedented longevity. I suspect most of the pitchers who were using fall into the category of guys barely hanging on. My impression is that most effective pitchers walk a very fine line, and wouldn't want to mess it up.

In any instance, if we stipulate that Bonds used, we have two scenarios:

Almost everyone, including pitchers used
Bonds is one of the few players that used.

In the first case, baseball becomes a sport I don't care as much about in general, and am this less inclined to celebrate Bonds's achievement. In the second case, that would be a reason to discount his record.

To summarize, either Bonds was successful in a game that I find much less appealing, or he had an unfair advantage.

I still think you're a racist for celebrating McGwire and Sosa but not Bonds

Tough.

Or let me put it another way -- are you saying we were wrong to celebrate McGwire and Sosa or wrong the not celebrate Bonds?

If the former, well then maybe we're a little bit smarter now. A lot more news about PED's has come out in the last nine years that we didn't have in 1998.

Should we pretend we don't know that in order to remain "consistent?"

And this type of argument is especially annoying coming from places like Baseball Prospectus. They would be the first to castigate others for ignoring evidence in order to hold on to some sentimental position -- be it the existence of clutch hitting, the myth of The Closer, the importance of hustle, etc. But for Bonds, only smoking-gun proof will do. To fail to avoid the obvious conclusion is to rush to judgment motivated by racism. No, it's using the brain God gave me.

I am quite sure that if Ken Griffey and Barry Bonds's fates were reversed -- if Bonds has suffered through numerous injuries that last five years while Griffey closed in on the record, we would be celebrating Griffey right now. The rejection of Bonds is about Bonds, not about race.

----

Which brings me to what I think PED did for Barry -- basically it was a fountain of youth for him. What happened to Griffey is what happens to most players as they get older -- their bodies start to break down, and they can't be as effective.

They say that youth is wasted on the young. Bonds changed that equation. As his career progressed, he became smarter and smarter about hitting and the strike zone. Couple that with a body that was not deteriorating, perhaps even getting stronger, and you've got a pretty powerful force. In essence Bonds got the benefit of increased wisdom but still has a 27-year old body to execute his new knowledge.

I never said that Bonds owes all his success to pharmaceuticals. What he has done requires a great deal of dedication to his craft and hard work.

I wish we could have seen what he would have done without the help.

Conversations with a strawman -- Barry Bonds

2007-08-09T09:58:00.001-05:00

First of an occasional series in which I'll engage in a "dialogue" with someone taking the opposite position. Since I'm writing this, I will ultimately win the debate.

The title is a bit of a joke, since I will try to have my strawman present arguments that are being advanced in the debate, rather than things nobody believes.

So I notice you didn't make a big deal about Barry Bonds breaking sports' best known record.
That's right.

Is it because of the steroids thing?
Yeah, partly.

But there's no proof that Barry Bonds ever used steroids! And even if they were, MLB didn't have a policy in place! This is so unfair!

I'm not looking to throw Bonds in jail; I'm just choosing not to go nuts celebrating this accomplishment. Evidence and my own common sense leads me to believe that Bonds's late career surge was chemically assisted. Conviction may require proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but my own approval does not. Nor is my approval coniditioned on what Major League rules or enforcement policies. I am less impressed with Bonds's accomplishments than I would be if he were not assisted.

What do you care what Barry Bonds does to his own body?

I don't. But I care about the players at the margins, those who are, to paraphrase Crash Davis, an extra hit a week away from Yankee Stadium.

If we say that chemically assisted performance is just as valid as non-assisted performance, that will remove a reason for players at every level to resist the temptation to juice themselves to the next level. And those players won't have access to the resources someone like Bonds does, and could end up hurting himself.

But they're adults who make their own decisions. Are you going to nanny everybody?

Youth sports are increasingly competitive. It does not seem unreasonable that high school or even little league athletes would reach for an edge, even if it comes from a bottle.

More ominously, coaches eager to make a name for themselves could explicitly or implicitly encourage young athletes to improve themselves this way.

Well, that's their problem. Why should Bonds suffer because some other people might do stupid or unethical things? It's not like he's forcing anybody to take drugs.

Bonds is not bigger than the game. The only reason enyone cares about Barry Bonds is that people care about baseball. If Bonds's actions damage the sport and cause people to care less about baseball, he should take a hit for that. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

And I challenge the notion that my withholding my adulation from Bonds is making him "suffer."

But didn't you celebrate Mark McGwire's home run exploits? Doesn't that make you a racist hypocrite?

I did enjoy McGwire's 1998 season, thought I wasn't falling all over myself. Despite living in St. Louis, I missed both home run #61 and #62.

We probably should have looked at their accomplishments more critically, but the evidence against McGwire and Sosa at the time was not nearly as overwhelming as the evidence against Bonds is now. For one, McGwire's improvement was incremental, rather than a quantum leap. McGwire always was a power hitter; he became a better power hitter. Bonds was a great all around player with good power; he became the greatest power hitter of all time.

McGwire is paying for his suspicions now, as wintnessed by being passed over for the Hall of Fame.

The way McGwire carried himself during his home run drive made him easier to cheer for than Bonds. Sorry, but it's simply true.

So are you going to wipe Bonds's name out of the record book? What about all the spitballers? What about the sign stealers? What about guys who used corked bats or too much pine tar? Do they get asterisks, too?

I'm not looking to wipe anyone's name out of the record book. I'm just not going to jump up and down celebrating this accomplishment.

Nevertheless, I think it's worth pointing out that these methods of cheating have no consequences outside of the field of play, whereas steroids use does. Pushing the boundaries of the rules is a part of every game, and nobody's gone to an early grave from using a corked bat.

If a football offensive line cheats by jumping the snap count, that's one thing. If they "cheat" by doing blocking schemes that have been banned because they are dangerous, that's quite different. I can chuckle about how the first group was clever in working around the rules. But I would have a hard time cheering for the second group.

Sin steroids use only directly hurts the user, it probably falls somewhere between the two.

But Barry Bonds isn't the first baseball star who was a jerk. Ty Cobb was a vicous racist. Babe Ruth was a womanizing glutton. Ted Williams...

Yes, but their flaws were not directly connected to the on field performance that makes them great.

But steroids don't let Barry Bonds hit a baseball.

I will acknowledge that Barry Bonds is the greatest player of his generation. He was before his late career power surge, and his home run power requires skills that can't be found in any bottle. He'd be on every Hall Of Fame ballot of mine for which he's eligible.

But that wasn't enough for him. He wanted to be the greatest ever, and cheated to do it. I'm not doing him a great injustice by refusing to consider him that.

Say what you want, but Bonds does have the highest home run total, and you owe it to him to respect that.

Here's the bottom line -- I don't owe Barry Bonds shit. And I'm quite sure he'd be the first to say that he doesn't owe me shit.

I follow sports for my own enjoyment, not in order to dispense athletes respect and adulation that they or the experts think they're due.

I don't really enjoy watching Barry Bonds rewrite the home run record book with apparent chamical assistance. Telling me to eat my spinach and give him his due isn't going to change that.

Anna "Macho Man" Quindlen

2007-08-01T21:55:00.000-05:00

There's an old heel wrestling trick, that I best remember being practiced by Randy "Macho Man" Savage. When the babyface, say Ricky Steamboat, started gaining momentum, and is about to stat puttin' a hurtin' on the Macho Man, savage would grab his beautiful valet, Miss Elizabeth, and put her between himself and his charging attacker as if to say, "you wouldn't hurt a girl, would you?" to buy himself some time.

Anna Quindlen is playing a similar game with her "How much jail time?" Newsweek column challenging pro-lifers to name an appropriate criminal penalty for a woman who procures an abortion.

To its credit, National Review Onlline posted a symposium of good responses to Quindlen's challenge.

I'd like to focus on something else -- this is yet another illustration of how anti-woman the pro-choice movement is.

They recognize their on the ropes. Scientific advances are making it increasingly difficult to maintain that the object of abortion is not a human life. The Democratic party is taking steps to not be perceived as stridently in favor of unrestricted abortion. The balance of power in the Supreme Court has shifted.

So how does the abortion lobby respond? By challenging us to throw women in jail instead of abortionists, hoping that'll put the pro-lifers on the defensive long enough for them to think of another strategy.

The abortion lobby will go to great lengths to defend the right of physicians to make money by removing unwanted fetuses. And don't call them "abortion doctors," either.

But women? They're bargaining tools. In spite of the fact that none of the abortion laws that Roe v. Wade invalidated mandated a punishment for a woman who procured abortion, and pro-life people have literally not even considered punishing them, the abortion lobby wants to start a conversation about how much jail time they should do if they continue to lose ground. Isn't that sweet?

But Quindlen and her friends take it a step further: if they lose, the other side must punish women who procure abortions. If they're going to lose, they're taking American women down with them. With friends like these...

When you watched the Mach Man, you always wondered why Miss Elizabeth stayed with a man who treated her so crappily. Perhaps American women should ask the same question of themselves and the abortion lobby.

----

Throughout the piece, Quindlen says that to illegalize abortion but not punish women would be to accept an infantilized vision of women as helpless victims without a concept of responsibility or morality.

If this is the case, then the abortion lobby has done more to create this vision than anyone else. The narrative of the poor helpless woman who "finds herself pregnant." That it's unreasonable to expect them to make a link between sex and pregnancy. That anyone who says that people need to take care of the children they conceive are Puritanical brutes.

----

In any case, I don't think that raising this question will have the results Quindlen thinks it will. Sure, she may have fun seeing dumbfounded looks on pro-lifers' faces, but it also undermines the narrative they want to create about pro-lifers -- that we're out to punish women. That we haven't considered that criminal punishment reveals that -- surprise! -- we're more about protecting unborn life than we are about punishing women.

So go ahead -- keep asking that question, and keep smugly chuckling as pro-lifers struggle with the question. But don't think you're making your cause look more appealing to women, or the pro-life position less appealing.

This is the Culture of Death

2007-07-31T22:22:00.000-05:00

In a post musing about his wedding vows, Andrew Sullivan links to a Virgina Postrel passage that neatly encapsulates the Culture of Death:

Contrary to what you may have heard, the only sort of character suffering builds is the ability to suffer--a useful ability in a world where suffering is the routine nature of life but not a virtue that makes the world a better place.

There is an awful lot of mischief wrapped up in that statement.

First, it's patently ridiculous for a Christian, whose Savior liberated the world with an act of extreme suffering. Which in pertinent to Sullivan's vow writing, as there is no other way God could have communicated the depth of His love for us. But in a world where suffering is not only avoided but eliminated, we will not know that love.

And if the cultural expectation is that one acts to eliminate, rather than endure, suffering, what does it mean to love somebody "in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health." Whaddya mean? There should be no "bad" -- there should be no "sickness." All good, all health, all the time! And if you're not, then make it so, or you're a genetic defective who never should have been born.

Second, "the ability to suffer" will always be pertinent so long as we aim to do difficult things. We have been living an illusion that we can have our cake without having to bake it, so we do things like think we can invade a country, overthrow their government, but not have to work to maintain it. We bring in illegal immigrants to do work we don't want to pay living wages for, and then are surprised when that starts to have some other bad effects. We think we can solve the global warming by maintaining our current habits but sending some folks a few bucks to plant some trees.

Anything worth doing is going to entail sacrifice. But we are allergic to sacrifice; we expect someone to magically make it go away. I tend to think the world would be a better place if we were either willing to endure the suffering necessary to stabilize Iraq, or realized it would be difficult and didn't invade in the first place. But we're Americans. Suffering is for other people. We can kick some dictator ass and not have to deal with a mess. It'll be taken care of.

Third, eliminating the things we call suffering now will not eliminate suffering, it will just have us define down what we mean by suffering. As Sullivan notes, "And suffering because you have an ugly face and want plastic surgery applies." It's our relative rather than absolute position that defines our happiness. The American standard of living has risen dramatically over the years, but folks sure don't seem much happier. Because I only have a 27" TV without cable, and most of my neighbors have plasma TVs with digital.

Ross Douthat points out that Ezra Klein referred to Down's Syndrome as "medically disastrous." As we eliminate more and more conditions, what is considered unbearable suffering will expand.

---

I am not morally judging people who have cosmetic surgery, nor am I advocating that those enduring trials forego treatment that would improve their lives for the sake of building up their suffering muscles.

But Postrel's passage, and Sullivan's application of it, go further than that -- we are creating a world where suffering can be eliminated; therefore, suffering is without value. We are imminentizing the secular eschaton.

This is a wicked path; it is the path that has led us to 1 million abortions a year, the war in Iraq, the near genetic cleansing of Down's Syndrome. It has led to an American public allergic to sacrifice, that cannot be marshalled to solve real problems like a broken health care system for poor people, or looming environmental armageddon. Nah, somebody else will take care of that stuff. But man, my fingers are tired from all this typing. I better go take something.

I hasten to add that the impulse behind this notion is not evil, and is in fact good. Alleviating suffering is what the Corporal Works of Mercy are all about, and what Jesuse spent a good amount of His time doing. But like almost anything else, when taken too far, it can become a false god.

Sports roundup

2007-07-30T22:08:00.000-05:00

The Cardinals had to go and win three straight from the Brewers to create the illusion that they can contend, so they probably won't be sellers at tomorrow's trade deadline.

With Jason Insringhousen having said he would excercise is veto right over any trade, I'm not sure the Cards had any valuable parts anyway, but it could have been useful.
The games themselves were very exciting, with the Cards overcoming two five run deficits.

I'd say the Brewers may be in trouble, and I'm predicting the Cubs take the Central.
The Braves had nab Mark Teixeira. I can't recall the Braves making deadline deals during their run of dominance. I guess Fred McGriff counts. We'll see what this does.
The Celtics apparently going to try to win the title with Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett, and nothing else. In the East it could work. Unless one of them gets hurt, which seems likely.
RIP Bill Walsh.

As The Blind Side laid out, Walsh essentially ushered in modern football, and was the first of the "genius" coaches, with the 49ers being the first true "system" team. Other coaches like Lombardi, Landry, and Noll were more motivators and organizers, getting the players to perform at a high level. For Walsh, it was about the system. Even though they're very different, Bill Belichek is his logical successor.
Traning camp has started. Man, I miss football... And both the Rams and Eagles have reason for optimism.

The Personal is Personal

2007-07-28T22:46:00.000-05:00

It's been a while now, but John Dickerson posted an article making the case that a recent ad by John Edwards pointed to some of the Edwards family's tragedies, but that this was OK, since, "he has endured his son's death and his wife's illness, and that not only makes him a tough guy but gives him a sense of perspective about the value of life."

Elizabeth Edwards responded to the first claim; I'd like to discuss the second.

To take Dickerson's adjectives one at a time -- one doesn't because one has had bad experiences. Almost everyone has endured bad things, perhaps not as bad as the Edwardses, but I know of few people whose lives have not been touched somehow by untimely death or chronic disease. Are we thus all qualified to be president?

As for perspective, that depends. Perhaps having experienced the death of a son. Edwards would be determined as president to never make a decision that would lead to another family enduring the same pain. That sounds laudable, but could be irresponsible, since part of a president's job is to order young men and women into harm's way.

All enduring personal tragedies means is that you have endured personal tragedies. Some people emerge from them better people; some emerge bitter and with a victim mentality. Some are the same. What matters is how you handle it.

Which is why it's unfair to use it in a campaign. I have no reason to believe that the Edwards family has endured their tragedies with the utmost class and dignity, but what if they hadn't? If they wanted us to give them credit for their personal tragedies, would it be in bounds for the Obama or Clinton campaigns to question how the Edwards family dealt with them? Most of us would say no. The end result would be a game of one-upmanship game of who's had the most trying personal tragedies. Unless one subscribes to Scott Adams's theory of presidential luck, that's not what the presidential race should be about.

Dickerson points to McCain's use of his experience as a POW as precedent, but qualifies it with, "though without the obvious element that McCain's suffering was in service to his country." I think that's an understatement. McCain's story is powerful in part because he could have made things easier on himself bu acting less honorably, but didn't. He took the hard course, and behaved with obvious valor and courage. Dickerson wants us to give Edwards credit for just having had bad things happen to him. As John Kerry found out, even valor in military service can be called into question in a political campaign. But how can one question how one deals with the death of a son?

If Edwards has the toughness and perspective Dickerson claims for him, then he won't use his personal tragedies as a shortcut to demonstrate these qualities. And if he does, I hope we don't fall for it.

Why can't we have a nice, civil conversation about what a jerk you are?

2007-07-27T15:18:00.000-05:00

Imagine I write a post about my experience with my car, which is breaking down, and how this illustrates how this make of car is unreliable.

In the course of my description I let out that I'm not particular about what gas I put in it, don't change the oil, don't keep up with maintenance, drive it hard, ride the brakes, ignore warning lights, etc.

To my shock and dismay, the comments revolve around my poor treatment of the car rather than the unreliability of that particular brand.

Undeterred, I note that most of these comments seem to be coming from "car guys," and try to turn the conversation to how difficult it is for people who don't know about cars to deal with "car guys."

-----

This seems to be going on in reference to the SAHD post I posted about earlier.

Not suprisingly, the male reaction to that post was mostly negative. One reader launched a series of posts on the matter, and seemed surprised that the episode didn't launch some interesting discussions, blamed it on the fact that it was men who were commenting, whom she discounted has not being able to deal with assertive women, and then was again dismayed that this did not bring about a fruitful discussion.

Here's some tips:

When something bad happens to you due to some actions under your control, and you blame a larger problem, people are going to be more interested in pointing out what you could have done differently than discussing the larger problem.
Discounting someone viewpoint because of their gender or other intrinsic quality is rareley a precursor to productive discussion.

Not this time...

2007-07-26T10:34:00.000-05:00

Rob Vischer posts to MOJ a discussion of the proportional reasons for a pro-loife Catholic to support Fred Thompson:

Third, being wholeheartedly against the War in Iraq is not a proportionate reason for being pro-choice. As Archbishop Myers reminded us in the run up to the 2004 election, the Pope did not bind the conscience of Catholics to oppose the War in Iraq - he merely expressed his own prudential judgement on the question. Moreover, as the Archbishop points out, we must remember what we are balancing here - the lives of 1.3 million unborn children in America every year. Virtually no other modern policy issue - not taxes, welfare benefits, minimum wage, farm subsidies, the war - compares on that scale.

No sale this time.

6 years ago there were 1.3 million abortions a year. Twice we elected George W. Bush president and because of this issue, and now... there are 1.3 million abortions a year.

Changing this will require actual leadership, not just checking the right boxes. Thompson's past, and his squirrelly statements about it, calls into question his commitment on this issue. Will he lead the country into a pro-life direction? I don't see him being inclined to. It seems, like most politicians, he'd like to avoid the issue as much as possible. For me, that's not enough.

And the president's impact through his war and torture policies has been profound, and much greater than his impact on the abortion issue.

The Holy Father has not bound our consciences on the war in Iraq simply because he does not do so. But out moral judgement need not be limited to what the Holy Father binds our concsciences to. The Holy Father has also did not bind us to vote for Bush over Kerry in the last election.

The president's impact on war and torture policy has been much greater than his impact on both abortion policy and its prevalence. Given that, it seems clear to me that the former represent a proportional reason to support a pro-choice candidate.

The Case For Federalism...

2007-07-25T15:53:00.000-05:00

Matt Yglesias asks what's so bad about nationalizing divisive cultural issues like abortion, gun control, and abortion.

Two terms of George W. Bush; that's what.

Progressives may think they benefit by nationalizing these issues, because national opinion polls show they would win on these issues.

The problem is that when an issue like this is nationalized, social conservatives are very motivated to vote in national elections, because it is the only legal outlet to make their vote count.

In the current legal environment, for someone like me whose first priority is meaningfully changing abortion policy, the only election that matters is the presidential election. Because abortion policy cannot change if Roe v Wade is not overturned, and Roe v. Wade will not be overturned if John Kerry is nominating the next two or three Supreme Court Justices.

Thus, the argument that for presidential elections at least, social conservatives should base their vote entirely on abortion is plausible. And some of us did. And we have seen the results.

By nationalizing these issues, progressives have helped create a political environment where their candidates for national office start with 40% of the vote highly motivated against them. This leaves them virtually no margin for error.

If they could convince themselves it's not such a big deal if some rectangular states ban partial birth abortion, they might be able to do some things that matter to people.

-----

While I'm here I must take issue with MY's caricature of the social conservative position on same sex marriage. I don't think anyone believes or believed that all families would break up the day after the first same sex couple got married.

Our position, which has not been refuted by experience, is that same sex marriage is another step in eroding what marriage means. These steps have included cultural acceptance of contraception, no-fault divorce, and many other things. That we got our back up about this particular step may reveal that opposition may be motivated partly by antipathy for gays, but does not invalidate the premise.

Bonds and Bud

2007-07-25T15:08:00.000-05:00

Two of the more annoying tics of the sabermetric community are a reflexive dislike for Commissioner Bud Selig and a reflexive defensiveness of Barry Bonds.

Yes, I know it's a bit of a conflict of interest to have a former owner or a member of an owner's family in the commissioner's chair. And I don't care for interleague play, either.

But it is impossible to deny that major league baseball has boomed under his stewardship, and some of his innovations, like the wild card, have been great successes.

As for Barry Bonds, he undeniably has Hall of Fame talent, but to believe that he has not used performance enhancing drugs requires suspension of disbelief that would challenge the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge. As statheads could tell you, Barry Bonds's late-career power surge is unprecedented. His career precious to that had shown him as a rare, though not singular, talent.

In any case, both tics are in full display in this piece by Joe Sheehan (the entire article is behind their pay-wall, but you can get the flavor from the opening except).

In a manner that can only be described as “grudging,” Bud Selig did what he should have done three months ago, ending discussion of whether he would attend Barry Bonds’ pursuit of the all-time home run mark with a press release and a flight to San Francisco. As is his wont, Selig put his personal feelings ahead of the game’s best interest, choosing to issue a release that neither honored Bonds nor the moment, and put the controversy that surrounds Bonds—his alleged use of performance-enhancing substances—front and center.

Hmm, would it be better for Selig to bury his head and pretend there's not a problem? That worked really well back in 1998. And what is in the "game's best interest" about a commissioner being there in person when a record is broken anyway? The fixation on this issue, like it matters a damn of some businessman is there when sports' most hallowed record is broken, makes me think there's some preemptive defensiveness going on.

Think about your memories of other records being broken -- Call Ripken passing Lou Gehrig, Pete Rose passing Ty Cobb, Rickey Henderson passing Brock. Do any of those memories remotely involve the commissioner?

The truth is, Bonds's supporters know that there's a problem. Which is why they are so desperate for Selig's imprimatur.

I consider this to be a shame. While it’s an unpopular viewpoint, I stand by my argument that Barry Bonds has not failed a test for PEDs in the four years that MLB has had a program. His testimony before a grand jury—subsequently leaked illegally, and to his detriment—was that he did take substances that were identified later as steroids, but he was told at the time that they were not. His testimony has been interpreted as parsing by some, perjury by others, although statements before the same grand jury by others have been granted full faith and credit. That grand jury inspired two reporters to write a book about Bonds, sourced largely by the illegally-obtained testimony, as well as the accounts of people around Bonds, at least one of whom, ex-mistress Kimberly Bell, can comfortably be described as “scorned.”

The witnesses against Bonds would certainly have more credibility if they were model citizens. But guess what? This was a criminal conspiracy; therefore, the people who would have known about it and are therefore able to testify about it are.... criminals!

If a mob boss is brought down by an informer form his own organization, it doesn't make him any less a mob boss to point out his accuser's unsavory past.

Also, were the other statments that were granted "full faith and credit" as incredible as Bonds's? Sheehan writes "the same grand jury" as if that is the key factor in whether we should believe these statements or not.

Baseball now has a small underclass of players—real players, not anonymous minor leaguers or fringe guys—who have tested positive for performance-enhancing substances, been suspended for that use, and returned to play. In virtually every case, those players go about their business without anyone caring. They’re cheered at home for their good deeds, and ignored on the road. The Indians benefit from the bullpen work of Rafael Betancourt, by far their best reliever this season, and a big reason for their contending status. He’s not reviled in Detroit or Minnesota as a steroid user, not booed and forced to endure the taunts of “Cheater!” or worse. No one cares. The same can be said for Juan Rincon, who is essentially the Twins’ version of Betancourt.

Need more evidence that the game is more than willing to forgive and forget? Ryan Franklin tested positive in 2005, serving a 10-game suspension for his guilt. Last month, the Cardinals signed him to a two-year contract worth $5 million. Last winter, the Mets Guillermo Mota was suspended for the first 50 games of 2007 off a positive test; a month later, the Mets signed him to a two-year contract for, again, $5 million.

Hmmm -- none of these players is challenging any of baseball's most sacred records. Nobody is calling on the commissioner to fly out and give his stamp of approval to these players' accomplishments.

These players also fit the profile of having received actual sanctions for their abuse. They also do not have a mountain of accomplishments that are now suspect that we are being asked to honor.

And let's also not forget that Mark McGwire, hitter of 580 home runs, was passed over in his first bid for Hall of Fame induction. In modern times, it is unprecedented that someone with his accomplishments would be passed over. Sammy Sosa continues to climb the home run charts with hardly any attention.

Barry Bonds is probably the greatest baseball player of his generation, with or without the help. Bud Selig has his faults, but has been an able steward of baseball for the past dozen years.

-----

In the last edition of the Baseball Abstract, Bill James laid out what seemed to me to be a somewhat convincing case for reasonable doubt over whether Pete Rose bet on baseball.

A year or so later, ESPN televised a "trial" of Pete Rose, with Alan Dershowitz as the prosecutor. The defense, led by the late Johnnue Cochran called James as a witness, and then Deshowitz carved him up in cross-examination.

I suspect that if Sheehan were subject to similar cross-examination of his defense of Bonds, the results would be similar.

UPDATE: For a look at Bonds without blinders, check out this interview with Jeff Pearlman, who wrote a book on Bonds.

On the "there's no evidence that Barry ever used" line, Pearlman says:

I read writers like Bill Rhoden and Dave Zirin--guys I respect--and I just don't understand what the hell they're doing. They maintain there's no proof that Bonds used, so how can we condemn him? If we used that mode of thinking in day-to-day life, there'd be no need for juries. You either catch a person in the act of committing a crime or he's innocent. Factually--and I mean, 100% factually--Bonds used, and the evidence is overwhelming. Game of Shadows, my book, his ties to Greg Anderson and Victor Conte, the expansion (impossible, unless he used HGH or suffers from Acromegaly) of his skull, a former teammlate like Jay Canizaro telling me how Anderson said he can design a steroid cocktail for him that would be just like Barry's, so on and so on. Every time someone writes that there's no "proof," he/she is gifting the designers of masking agents. If we reward and praise the cheaters in sports, what are we saying to the kids who follow the games? What are we saying about decency and integrity?

Celebreate Barry if you want to, but let's be clear about what you're celebrating.

How Things Must Look

2007-07-25T07:52:00.000-05:00

Headline for an article I saw today on Google News:

Iran still meddling in Iraq, U.S. says

Imagine what it would be like to be an Arab in the Middle East and see a headline like that. The United States is on the other side of the world, overthrew the Iraqi government via a military invasion, unleashing mass chaos such that it has recently "surged" thousands of troops to try to contain.

Iran is their closest neighbor and is attmepting to influence who winse this struggle for power.

And the US has the gall to say Iran is "meddling?"

Imagine how we might react to this headline:

US still meddling in Mexico; Iran says

Sullivanism Watch...

2007-07-23T21:55:00.000-05:00

Christainism Watch

"I had one letter from a vicar in England -- this is the difference -- saying would I please not put Christmas trees at Hogwarts as it was clearly a pagan society. Meanwhile, I'm having death threats when I'm on tour in America," - J.K. Rowling on the reception given the Harry Potter books.

Er, is this a new dangerous fusion of faith and politics, or just Christians doing things that Sullivan doesn't like?

Brazen Careerist and the Myth of Gender Equality...

2007-07-23T14:37:00.000-05:00

Penelope Trunk, writer of the Brazen Careerist blog, is having trouble in her marriage. How do I know this? Because she has blogged about it.

But that's not the most interesting part. The intersting part is the comments. They seem to consist of:

People telling her it might not be in the best interests of the marriage she calims she wants to save to do things like blog the contents of her mediation sessions.

Trunk responded that this is perfectly OK because her husband had no problem with her writing about their sex life for her Master's thesis 15 years ago, without saying that he has specifically approved these revelations.
Accusations that she is only writing about this to drive up her hit counts.
A lot of "Wow, thank you so much for your bravery and honesty in opening yourself up like that..."

It's this last one that I find a bit hard to swallow.

Imagine a man running a blog called something like "Brazen Careerist," whose SAHM wife wants to divorce him. He blogs about it, including:

Divulging details about mediation sessions without making it clear that he had his wife’s permission to do so.
Having no idea that his wife wanted a divorce.
Not knowing the reasons why his wife wanted said divorce.
Dropping another mention of how great his career is going, and that he mentioned this to the mediator.
Refer to how her career “sort of stalled.”
Mention how much better she is at details than he is, and that she’s good at making lunch boxes, whereas the kid rejects his.

OK — I’ll tell you how this one would play out — the husband would be accused of passive aggressively screwing up the lunches on purpose so that it would be his wife’s responsibility, like everyhing else…
Refers to himself as the “career expert in the household” and how he thinks this makes him “ten steps ahead” of his wife.
Mentions that he “delegated” finding a therapist to her because he is too busy blogging

I can think of a few words women would use to describe such a man, and "brave" and "honest" aren't among them.

The interesting thing is that it looks like Ms. Strunk is having to learn the same lessons an entire generation of men have had to learn -- if your spouse is devoting their life to household work, they need you to honor and respect the work that they are doing.

Vacationing for health

2007-07-22T13:18:00.000-05:00

Continuing the conversation about vacation policy, Tim Lee writes:

No seriously. Recruiting talented employees is difficult, and getting them to be productive is harder. So employers collectively have billions of dollars riding on finding the optimal vacation policy for their firms. The armchair CEOs of the blogosphere, in contrast, just think it would be neat if people got more vacations. Who do you think is more likely to be right?

<snip>

If it were really true that giving employees more vacation days would make them produce more over the course of the year, that would be a double bonus: it would make it easier to recruit employees and it would cause them to produce more stuff. Employers would be stupid not to do it.

First, are we so sure that the market is really such a well-oiled machine that we are confident that vacation policies it has come up with are optimal? Or, like everthing else, is it subject to inertia, an attitude of, "I only had 2 weeks of vacation when I made my way through the ranks, and I worked 80 hour weeks, and doggone it these young whippersnappers can get by with just 2 weeks of vacation as well." Might there be other factors contributing to these policies besides what is strictly optimal? If so, might it take a little nudge from the government to move them along?

Second, obviously it would be ridiculous to assert that a worker's absolute productivity would increase with more time off, which is why only Reed and Yglesias's strawmen made such an argument. Fortunately, that's not necessary for this to be a good policy.

The assertion is that the marginal productivity of the last week or two of a worker's time is less than her absolute productivity divided by a week or two.

If that is the case, then in order for employers to gain by offering increased vacation, they would need to lower salaries, but they would not need to lower them by the same percentage as the additional vacation days represent. They would just need to lower them enough to cover the marginal productivity, which is less.

Except for one thing -- in order to maintain the same level of productivity, employers would have to hire additional workers. And there are transactional costs to that. In essence, increasing vacation makes sense if

marginal productivity of vacation time <
reduction in salary worker will accept for additional vacation

+ transactional cost to add marginal productivity.

Which is yet another negative impact of linking health care to employment. From an employer's perspective, it is cheaper to have fewer employees working more hours than to have more employees working fewer hours, because they have to pay for the health care benefits for each additional employee.

Again, the current health care regime proves to be a drag on the economy.

How Blogging is like IT work

2007-07-22T06:00:00.000-05:00

Andrew Sullivan writes about the tension between blogging and more permanent writing:

The kind of brain activity that permits one to post two dozen items a day, keep track of countless more, and surf endless online reports and ideas and spats, is not conducive to also producing a long or reflective or deep work of philosophy or fiction or history or poetry. Even if you find the time, your mind cannot adjust that quickly.

A typical IT worker has two activities that compete for his time and attention:

Troubleshooting/Firefighting
Design, development of longer term solutions

If you're familiar with Stephen Covey's work, you know that the second set is "quadrant 2" activities, whereas the first bullet point is in quadrant 1 or 3. This presents a few problems.

The problem is that a lot of the things we tell ourselves are in quadrant 1 are really in quadrant 3. The IT and business culture rewards those who lead the troubleshooting/firefighting efforts. Those who continue their design and development while others are firefighting are considered poor team players. The rewards for firefighting are real and immediate. The rewards for development work are not.

On a slightly darker note, a culture where everyone jumps in to help out on the latest fire is a culture where nobody is accountable for their design or development deliverables, because there's always the excuse of some fire coming up that required their attention, so they "didn't quite get" to completing the design, and schedules slip.

The other problem is that although these activities require different types of "brain activity," it is typically the same people who are good at one that are good at the other. In part this is because nobody knows a system like the person who designed it, but it is also because the same skills -- analytical ability, focus, and determination -- are transferable to both problem areas.

The final problem is that a lot of the effort of deign and development is loading to contextual information in your mind. Once there, you can be "in the zone" and make leaps of progress without what seems to be a large effort. But this requires long blocks of time.

But office life isn't always geared toward that. Your coworker will ask for help. The department secretary will ask for the serial number from your PC for the third time in a month. Your spouse will call for help in resolving some child care issue. You'll be reminded to fill out your timesheet. A vendor will call. etc.

Eventually, you get discouraged, and even when there seems to be a block of time, you don't work on the Quadrant 2 stuff, since you know you'll only get interrupted. Hello, Quadrant 4!

What to do about it?

Well for one, those who are good at context switching will be very valuable. Those who can jump back and forth between development work and troubleshooting without getting discouraged or dropping the ball are and will continue to be very valuable. I'm not sure if this is a skill that can be developed or a natural talent.

Second, we need to defend the quadrant 2 activities, and sell other stakeholders on the idea that allowing us some time to focus on them is in their best interests. It's hard for people to understand how disruptive their one little question can be. They don't realize that they're one of ten people with one little question.

This can be a hard pill to swallow. Closing yourself in your office while everyone's running around chasing a problem doesn't initially seem very "customer-focused." But it can be the best way to serve them, and prevent future fires.

Finally, it usually takes a little bit of analysis to triage between Quadrant 1 and Quadrant 3 requests. By the time that's done, the damage for the interruption has already been met, and you may as well go ahead and respond to the request regardless of its importance. Which is why value-added gatekeepers are necessary.

Procedural predictability

2007-07-19T14:45:00.000-05:00

Just once, on a show like CSI or Law & Order, I think it would be fun if the first guy the cops picked up was the actual perpetrator, and he was convicted in a straghtforward trial, and the whole thing wrapped up in about 20 minutes, so they had to put on another story in the second half hour.

As it is now, you know the first suspect won't end up being guilty, you know that there will be some problem with the key evidence/witness required to convict, Jack McCoy will get indignant that the judge would throw it up and have to huddle with his team.

By the way, here's your cast for every procedural cop show ever, with thanks to John:

The married or widowed white guy with the complicated back-story: Usually the leader of the group. Each crime story is especially poignant because it calls back to his family or his painful past. Criminals who know this and try to exploit it, but after a misstep or two, he always pulls himself together. (Eliot Stabler on L&O SVU, Horatio Cane on CSI:Miami, Hodge on Criminal Minds, Gary Sinise on CSI:NY, Jack on Without A Trace)
The tough as nails white chick. She might not have a great personal life, but that isn't going to stop her from kicking ass. In fact, she usually works a ton of hours to avoid her personal life, to the point where against her better judgement she gets into a relationship with a coworker. (Perhaps to support the above white guy when a case hits too close to home). Criminals think they can scare or intimidate her, and quickly discover they cannot. (Emily Proctor on CSI:Miami, Catherine on CSI, Olivia on L&O:SVU, the woman with the long curly hair on CSI:NY, Poppy Montgomery on Without A Trace)
The Latino or black guy from the 'hood: This guy used to run with the wrong crowd, but now he's seen the error of his ways and has joined the Good Guys. He uses his connections to find unconventional ways to solve crimes. Occasionally, he'll get a little too friendly with his old friends and get himself into trouble. (Ice-T on L&O:SVU, the black guy on Criminal Minds, Warrick on CSI)
Master of the obvious chief: When the cops describe the mountain of evidence against a perp, he'll say, "OK -- go pick him up." Occasionally, he'll try to pull the white guy off a case he's too involved with, tell the tough as nails chick to take some time off, or advise the guy from the 'hood to stay away from his friends, to no avail. (every L&O police chief, Fred Thompson)
Token/cipher: This character fills in whichever demographic niche isn't taken by the guy from the 'hood. Usually assigned to the "B" storyline, she'll just straightforwardly follow the evidence.
The pain in the ass assistant DA: She can't keep the perp in custody, flubs the important evidence, and rakes the cops over the coals for little procedural errors. Once a season, she's allowed to be the hero by discovering some legal loophole to get the confession/warrant the cops need.
The nerd/quiet guy(Optional):When everyone else is running around, this character calmly provides the key piece of information. (Grissom on CSI, Reed on Criminal Minds, psychologist on L&O SVU)
Wisecracking coroner

Why just women?

2007-07-18T13:58:00.000-05:00

Ross Douthat highlights Dana Goldstein's comments on Obama's remarks to Planned Parenthood.

One interesting note -- Goldstein seems to think it's a bad thing that Obama stresses family friendly policies that enable choice over red-meat issues like abortion.

But what women actually want, the polls suggest, is a more family-friendly system, which makes it easier for them to work part-time or not at all while their children are young. If Republicans were smart, they would find a package of reforms tailored to precisely that desire: For instance, they could advance a significant Ponnuru-style (or Cesar Conda-style) tax credit for families with children; a health care plan that severs health insurance from employment, so women don't feel bound to jobs they dislike; and maybe even a package of tuition credits for women (or men!) looking to re-train and re-enter the workforce after staying at home for a few years.

Bold emphasis added.

I submit that it not just women who are unsatisfied by the choice between complete withdrawal from the workforce and full time work.

Generalizing from my own experience, I would be much happier in an arrangement where my wife and I each worked 25-30 hours, and equitably shared in the child-raising. I suspect she would be much happier as well.

But that is not an option for us, especially with one child having a chronic disease. That mandates health insurance, which effectively mandates that one of us work full time. Since the market for my skills is more attractive than the market for my wife skills, that means I work a 40 hour a week job.

The easy way to exploit this is to choose sides in the Mommy Wars or Culture Wars, etc. Families with stay at home parents are unhappy because dual income families lead a lifestyle it is impossible to keep up with on one income. Families with two incomes are unhappy because those with stay at home parents set unrealistic standard for parenting.

But that isn't getting us anywhere.

If a candidate like Obama can help create true freedom for families to find solutions to the problems parenting creates, he'll win my vote, and I think a lot of other votes, too.

Off topic

2007-07-18T08:51:00.000-05:00

Getting a few quick items off my chest, and testing out some stuff I'm doing with the forum links and RSS feeds...

Well, I did my part. Didn't notice the bus or trains any more crowded than usual, though.

While I'm here -- I notice that pretty much every Metro bus has wood paneling. Exactly who is this designed to fool? Does anybody think that actual wood is being used to put up little walls in a city bus?

Oops -- just realized I was supposed to ride a motorcycle or scooter, not take public transit. Never mind, then.
This is the type of thing that drives people nuts about Apple. They can't say that MS's use of the Maximize button is a different but valid interpretation of what that button should do. No -- Microsoft is objectively wrong! How could anyone not think the Maximize button should just size to content! It's absurd.
Rick Garnett says some things that need to be said about the coverage of the sex abuse settlement. Of course, it's hard to say these things without sounding like you're making excuses for abusive priests or the diocesan officials that covered for them. But it does seem that a lot of the coverage (and the lawsuits) are not purely motivated by compassion for the victims.

Introducing a new term...

2007-07-17T12:04:00.001-05:00

Sullivanism.

If pressed, I will define Sullivanism as pretending that a position based on personal taste or distaste is based on principles. But really, I'll just apply this label to anything Andrew Sullivan writes that I disagree with.

If you'll remember, Sullivan defined Christianist as follows:

You will notice no mention of terrorism or violence. My use of the term Christianist similarly and simply describes those who believe that the source of any political system should be Christian revelation, rather than the secular principles of the Enlightenment and the American constitution..

Right, it's not a smear; it's not meant to linke Christians with terrorism; it's a description of a modern notion about the fusion of faith and politics. Right.

But then, Sullivan relates the story of a Christian who kiled a gay man because he believed homosexuality was evil under the title of "Christianist terror?

Hmm -- did the perpetrator beat his victim with a rolled up copy of First Things? Has he offered any opinions on the proper role of religion in politics?

Not that I could see. But he's a Christian. And he did something Sullivan (and most people, including myself) don't like. So he gets the label.

Can we therefore please stop pretending that "Christianism" is a neologism designed to describe a novel development in religious political life, and admit that it's nothing more than a smear?

To drive home the smear, Sullivan ends the post with the query, "And this is different from Islamist barbarism how, exactly?"

I offered an answer, as did a reader.

In response, Sullivan admits that the Christianist threat is "nowhere near" the threat of Islamism. Gee, that might explain why "the conservative media" failed to highlight it to Sullivan's satisfaction.

I wrote this post on a vacation day...

2007-07-16T22:21:00.000-05:00

Interesting ongoing discussion on whether the US should adopt European-style vacation policies.

Tim Lee and Matt Yglesias have come out against it, while Ezra Klein has argued for it.

Lee writes:

It seems to me that basic economic suggests that in the long run, at least, if people work 5 percent fewer hours they’ll produce 5 percent less stuff. And if a worker is producing 5 percent less stuff, he’s going to receive (again, on average and in the long) 5 percent lower wages. Which means that regardless of what the law says, if you mandate that an employer provide 12 extra vacation days, that’s going to mean that in the long run, employees’ wages will be 5 percent lower than they otherwise would have been.

Lee goes on to list "several plausible answers to this argument," but one that he doesn't is that it is doubtful that the marginal value of the last 5% of a knowledge worker's time spent working is equal to 5% of her total value. In other words, that workers would not respond to increased vacation by compressing more productivity into their working days, and that the current vacation schedule is optimal.

Companies offer vacation as a benefit to lure workers, yes, but also in recognition that people need breaks in order to be maximally productive. Is the current two or three week norm the magic number? Europe seems to have arrived at a different conclusion. My suspicion is it varies. For some professions and individuals, the European model yields the maximum productivity. For other, the optimal amount of vacation may be zero.

Lee cites the example of the lawyer working 80 hour weeks. But the associate working 80 hour weeks isn't doing so just to be more productive; she is doing so to demonstrate dedication to the company.

The real problem is the cultural association of productivity with hours worked. And it's going to take more than mandated vacation to change that.

Mised opportunities...

2007-07-13T23:39:00.000-05:00

In the latest Kaus-Wright diavlog on Bloggingheads, I think each participant let his adversary get the better of an exchange, when there were better arguments that could have been made.

First, Kaus lets Wright frame the issue of profiling Muslims as "Won't this increase Muslim resentment and lead to more terror attacks?"

This argument almost refutes itself. If there's a group of people who are so touchy that they would blow stuff up if they get a little extra attention, then it seems that it would be prudent to keep an eye on them.

The expected response is that this is a universal reaction to being singled out by race, not something particular to Muslims.

My experience in being part of targeted groups is somewhat limited, but I notice that this argument is not deployed in opposing profiling any other group. If anti-abortion or ecoterrorists were subjected to similar scrutiny, anyone opposing it on the basis that it could anger them more and produce more attacks would be laughed out of the room. Would anybody question the Plame investigation by saying that investigating the Bush Administration will only make them mad and apt to do more destructive things? But in this case, Wright seems to think it's an argument-ender.

This does seem to smack of some cultural superiority. The other groups are assumed to have some moral agency, but not Muslims. They are mindless reactors to American policies.

This has long been a problem I've had with Wright's work. Recent events may have vindicated him that bombs are not the way to solve Islamic terrorism, but I don't think cowering in fear is, either.

I am open to arguments that profiling is ineffective. I am open to arguments that it goes against our principles. But this argument that we shouldn't do this because it will only enrage the other side is an invitation to define our relationship with Muslims in terms of fear. One which we do not accept in any other context.

---

Later, Wright lets Kaus frame the torture debate in terms of the tired "ticking time bomb" scenario. He claims to oppose torture just like Wright and John McCain do, but seems quite eager to move the discussion to this. And that if we could countenance the use of torture in the ticking time bomb scenario but want to ban torture are "hypocrites."

Well, first of all, I'm not convinced that torture is the correct course of action even in the ticking time bomb scenario. I don't know that John McCain or Bob Wright think it is either, but recognize that "no" is not a politically viable answer to the question of whether to torture in that case.

Secondly, As I've said before, if the possibility of criminal sanctions enter at all into whether to torture someone, then you're not really in a "ticking time bomb" scenario. McCain's caveat isn't an admission that torture is the way to go so much as a statement that a law against torture would not prevent torture if people really thought it was the only way to save the world. A speeding law isn't going to prevent me from rushing a dying family member to the hospital.

Thirdly, immediately turning the discussion to the "ticking time bomb" scenario, which has not happened, when there have apparently been many cases of torture for more mundane reasons betrays some sympathy for torture. Similar to immediately turning discussions of abortion to saving the life of the mother. Yes, there may be hard cases. We can handle them as they come up.

Speaking of degree of difficulty....

2007-07-13T21:55:00.000-05:00

This ought to be Kip Wells's last start, unless LaRussa is trying to win a division while carrying a 20 game loser.

I'm Tony La Russa, and you're not

2007-07-11T12:08:00.000-05:00

Via Jeff Gordon, Rob Neyer nicely captures why, even with last year's World Series win, Tony La Russa will never be a beloved figure in St. Louis.

As I’ve said many times, I like Tony La Russa. If there’s a Tony La Russa fan club, tell me where to sign up. When he’s elected to the Hall of Fame, I’ll be leading the cheers. But sometimes he’ll drive you absolutely nuts, because sometimes he apparently feels compelled to prove . . . well, to prove that he’s not only smart, but smarter than every manager who’s come before him

There is no doubt in my mind that Tony La Russa wanted nothing more than to win last night's game, and is as disappointed as anyone that the NL lost.

But still, it seems like he often wants to add a degree of difficulty to things. If he sees two paths to victory, one which is through the brute force superior talent of his players, and the other is some clever managerial trick, La Russa will go for the latter.

I imagine his dream scenario for the end game went something like this:

The NL ties the game in the 9th inning.
The NL (using three different pitchers) shuts out the AL in the top of the 10th.
The AL brings in a lefty for the bottom of the 10th.
LaRussa pinch hits Pujols for a left handed NL player to lead off the 10th. He hits a double, and the NL loads the bases, but don't score.
Pujols goes in to play some odd position, like right field.
Pujols makes a tough play in right field that someone like Dimitri Young would not be able to make.
Pujols hits a home in the 11th to win the game for the NL, and is named MVP.
Everyone lauds La Russa for saving Pujols for the extra innings

Albert Pujols isn't an All Star because of his defensive versatility. He's an All Star because he's been the best hitter in the National League for the last five years. He may be able to play a number of positions, but his best one is the batter's box.

There were other ways to take advantage of Pujols's versatility without keeping him on the bench. He could have pinch hit and gone in to play first base. Then, if someone like Dimitri Young needed to play defense, Pujols could move to the other position.

But that would be too orthodox. And where's the glory in that?

Can we just enjoy the All Star game?

2007-07-10T21:16:00.000-05:00

or why I want to punch the statheads in the nose sometimes.

When I was growing up, the statheads loved to criticize the fans for electing guys like Mike Schmidt, Ozzie Smith, Ryne Sandberg, and Carloton Fisk to the All-Star Game, even though they might be past their prime and not have put up the best numbers at their position that particular year. They would sneer at this year's elections of Ken Griffey and Barry Bonds. But, the fans did elect Prince Fielder over more established first basemen like Albert Pujold and Derrick Lee, so maybe we've learned.

No, that's not good enough, because now we get arcticles like this lecturing us that half a season is really too small a sample size th evaluate players.

Ok -- I'll make a deal with the statheads -- you stop lecturing us about how we've got it all wrong with our selections, and we won't use All Star selections as the basis for Hall of Fame arguments. Ok? Then can we elect the players we like, and enjoy the game? That is what the All Star game is for, right? To be an exhibition game the fans enjoy watching?

Yes, yes, I know that half a season isn't long enough to evaluate a ballplayer, and that there have been some players for whom their All Star selection represented the lone highlight of their careers. I don't care. That's part of the charm. (As I type this, Carl Crawford just took one into the RF stands). Quit trying to ruin everyone else's fun.

Dept. of Low Expectations...

2007-07-10T12:31:00.000-05:00

John Podoretz on Fred Thompson's pro-life record, in repsonse to Ramesh Ponnuru

Are you expecting Thompson to be more pro-life than Bush -- politically, I mean, not philosophically?

Yes, how could we pro-lifers possibly expect more than what George W. Bush has done for the pro-life cause in the last 8 years? I mean, there's the partial birth abortion ban, and his not-complete cave-in on embryo-destructive research, and.. and..

George W. Bush has been president for 8 years. There are still 40 million abortions a year. Cultural accpetance of abortion continues apace. So, yeah, I don't consider George W. Bush to be the gold standard for pro-life presidential candidates.

My questions

2007-07-10T09:16:00.000-05:00

Andrew Sullivan passes on the following two questions from David Boaz for "Republican Christianists"

1. Would you support a presidential candidate who is divorced, has estranged relations with his children, never sees his grandchildren, rarely attends church, strongly opposes a law to ban gays from teaching school, and as governor signed the nation’s most liberal abortion law?

2. Would you support him if you knew his name was Ronald Reagan?

According to the apparent script, we're supposed to answer "No" to the first question, "Yes" to the second question, and then Boaz and Sullivan can shout "Gotcha!" because they've proven.... well, I'm not sure what they think they proved.

That "Christianists" are willing to look past personal sins to achieve their policy goals? Sure. I'm not sure why that's a sin. That "Christianists" are willing to forgive past sins and policy disagreements if they feel the candidate has had a change of heart? Again, I'm not sure that's such a terrible thing.

If we were in the middle of the Clinton impeachment, when people were saying that Clinton's private sins should disqualify him from the presidency, Sullivan and Boaz might have a point.

But we're not. We're a year out from the conventions, and we're looking for a candidate. A candidate like Reagan, circa 1979, might not be our first choice. But if he were the nominee, he would enjoy tremendous support. But right now, the idea is to nominate a candidate who we beleive will support our causes as much as possible. That desire is not incompatible with general election support for a candidate like the 1980 Ronald Reagan, and I don't think Reagan did anything in office to demonstrate that supporting him was a mistake.

---

Of course, Sullivan isn't interested in having a debate; he's interested in gotcha games. If "Christianists" support a candidate like Fred Thompson in spite of his womanizing past, that just demonstrates how unprincipled we are. If we don't, then we're prudes. If we reject Romney for being a Mormon, then we're imposing religious tests and are bigoted. If we don't, then we're again unprincipled, and willing to accept a non-Christian for crass policy gains.

Go ahead and have your fun; we'll be busy actually trying to get stuff done.

---

Incidentally, I should note that I could also be described as one who "strongly opposes a law to ban gays from teaching school" So this would be far from a disqualifying trait for me.

Turning the timetables...

2007-07-10T08:50:00.000-05:00

It seems like the Administration's answer to all calls to change Iraq policy is that there will be no shift until Genreal Petraeus's report in September.

Hmm -- that kind of sounds to me like a "specific timeline." And I seem to remember in 2004, that those were Very Bad Things, since they would broadcast our intentions to our enemies, to the point where even Democratic candidates avoided mentioning timelines for fear of being exposed as igonorant in military matters.

But apparently now, it's OK to broadcast to the world that we're going to continue our current course until Septemeber, and not a day sooner.

Urbanism, Transit, and Control.

2007-07-05T21:50:00.000-05:00

Matt Yglesias writes:

The urbanist proposal isn't "hey, jerks, why don't you all move to dense downtowns." Rather, the proposal is something like "why don't we impose carbon taxes so that things like driving long distances and heating or cooling large detached structures are priced in accordance with their social cost? Why don't we stop having the federal government heavily subsidize driving cars as the preferred mode of transportation? Why don't we have more areas that allow for high-density zoning, thus reducing the cost of urban housing?" It's not that we urbanists are unaware that many people live in low density areas because its cheaper, it's precisely that we are aware of this fact that makes us believe that the "traditional unipolar downtown" could make a comeback.

Except...

I have been without a car for the past 6 months, and have been using public transit for commuting. I get discounted monthly transit passes through my employer, for $40 a month. If I commute 20 times a month, that works out to a little more than a dollar a ride. But St. Louis Metro is subsidized at $2.46 per rider, and are bragging about how low this is! So I'm paying less than a third of the total cost of my transportation. And we think drivers are getting a bad deal?

It's not about cost anyway; it's about control. Metro could offer universal free service, and gas could be $4.00 a gallon, and the buses would still be empty and the highways would be jammed. As my post about airlines vs. interstate driving mentioned, that's a big difference maker. If I'm driving and I run 5 minutes late getting out the door, I get to work 5 minutes later. If I'm taking the bus, I get to work half an hour later.

In the six months I have been commuting the following have ocurred:

I have been in a quite frightening accident caused by a driver falling asleep.
On separate occasions, I lost a wallet of 40 CDs and an MP3 player.
A bus took an incorrect route; I missed it and had to wait for the next one a half hour later.
That same week, the bus apparently never came, again pushing me back half an hour.
I had started doing this when there was an express bus service serving my office every 10 minutes on three differnt routes. One, then another of these routes was re-routed, so not it is only a 30 minute service.

I'm not trying to point fingers at Metro, and some of these things are my own damn fault. But it's a consequence of surrending control of part of my life to an organization that has other priorities ahead of my personal convenience. I leave my lunch in the car, and I have to walk out and go get it. I leave it on a bus or train, and I either go hungry or have to shell out for a meal.

So if Yglesias and others think they're going to get people to abandon their cars and move to the cities by making them pay carbon taxes, they're dreaming.

And that's just one aspect -- in city living there are a lot more spheres of life that are impacted by others than in the suburbs. If my suburban neighbor throws a party, I might need to weave around some extra parked cars on my way home. If an urban neighbor throws a party, I might not sleep that night. Et cetera.

There's got to be a carrot to go with the stick. There's reasons people moved to the suburbs, and not all of them are bad. Shaming and taxing us into moving back to the cities, rather than addressing those reasons, isn't going to get the job done.

The Consistency Thing...

2007-07-05T21:44:00.001-05:00

Again, I don't know how I feel about the commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence , but I have one more thought.

A lot of commentators are saying that if one supported Bill Clinton being impeached for perjury about his sex life, then he is bound to be outraged at the commutation of Scooter Libby for perjury on a matter of national security.

I'm not convinced.

My support for the Clinton impeachment (such as it was) wasn't so much about wanting to punish Bill Clinton as it was not wanting someone to continue as president after committing such an act. I had no desire for Bill Clinton to go to jail for it.

But Scooter Libby is gone, had to go through a trial, and was convicted. His career in public service is over. That's enough for me.

Could anyone "pass"

2007-07-03T15:05:00.000-05:00

It's amusing to me that every campaign (or not-yet-campaigns like Fred Thompons's) feel the need to issue press releases with their position on the Libby commutation. Predictably, this has fallen on party lines -- the Democrats have said it's wrong, the Republicans have said it right.

It would be impressive if one candidate had the humility and courage to admit he didn't know enough about the case to say one way or the other whether it was the right thing to do.

As it is, the event is kind of like a Rorschach test -- the reactions tell more about the people reacting than the event itself.

Would not have predicted this...

2007-07-01T14:39:00.000-05:00

Mingle² - Online Dating

Apparently, I talk about abortion and torture too much.

Only a C in 8th grade science...

2007-06-30T20:50:00.000-05:00

Free Online Dating

And for a while, I was concerned I wouldn't do that well...

Andrew Sullivan 180 watch....

2007-06-28T13:39:00.001-05:00

Here, Sullivan celebrates GOP voters' tolerance for people's private sex lives, and says this is good news for Fred Thompson, who has had a colorful sexual past. Apparently, this "tolerance" is supposed to be a virtue.

In his very next post, Sullivan calls our attention to an interview with one of Mitt Romney's sons, in which he describes how the family would get together and turn the lights off. Title of the piece? "More Romney Weirdness."

So, apparently, ignoring that a candidate slept with many women, risking disease and pregnancy and mocking traditional concepts of marriages is a virtue. But it's OK to talk to another candidate's son about their private familiy customs that involved nobody else for signs of weirdness.

Look, Romney kind of creeps me out, too. I just wish Sullivan had some standards for privacy and tolerance that went beyond whom he personally like and dislikes.

Ripe For A Revolution?

2007-06-27T16:38:00.000-05:00

Horror stories like this and this seem to be increasingly common. I suspect I myself have never experienced a truly horrific airline incident. My luggage has never been lost. I fly maybe once or twice a year. I remember sitting on the tarmac for a couple hours once during a sandstorm in Phoenix, which was unpleasant given that I am 6'5", but nothing horrific.

But what I think is interesting is that the experience of flying has steadily deteriorated over my lifetime, without a corresponding drop in prices. Services have been taken away. Security intrusions are greater. Restrictions are more onerous. And everyone is more crabby.

By contrast, I just completed a round trip from St. Louis to New Jersey by car with a two year old and a three year old, and I have to say that that experience is much better than it was when I was a child. The roads are better, the car is more comfortable, the services available off the highways are better, there is better entertainment for the children. And in spite of the recent spike in gas prices, the cost has not gone up.

Obviously on a car trip, we are in much greater control of our experience than we are as airline passengers. We pick what food we will eat, not airlines. We decide when we will start for the day and stop for breaks, not the airlines. Nobody tells us not to use our cell phones, or what position our seatback needs to be in. That goes a long way.

Another thing is that when I look at what factors influence the experience, there is:

The governmnet (buidling and improving the highways).
Car manufacturers
Oil companies, private store owners (finding a clean bathroom is no longer an adventure).
Restaurant chains
Hotel chains
Consumer electronics (Keeping kids entertained on 16 hour ride is much easier with a DVD player).

For airline travel, the lsit is:

airlines
the federal government

Where's my flying car, again?

In any case, the situation seems ripe for a break-up. Obviously, there are neccesarily large barriers to entry for airline travel. But there seems to be a huge market opening for a more pleasant method of long-range travel.

I have no idea what it will look like, but my prediction (hope?) is that things will look much different in 10 years, and we will look back at what we used to have to go through to travel with horror.

Shmillishuster...

2007-06-26T06:33:00.000-05:00

I remember there being a specific name for a minority in the Senate blocking legislation or a nomination by voting against cloture of debate.

But in all the discussion about the cloture vote that is The Most Important Vote Ever in Kausfiles and the Corner, I see not one mention of this term.

Maybe it's because when the shoe was on the other foot, the Corner was busy calling fillibusters undemocratic tools of sore loser obstructionists.

But now, anyone who opposes the immigration bill has a positive duty to vote against cloture, and shouldn't be allowed to fool us by voting for cloture and against the bill.

Making Bill Donohue look reasonable

2007-06-25T16:28:00.000-05:00

Bill Donohue can be a blowhard.

He can come off as trying to establish Catholics as an aggrieved party, flopping on the floor at the latest perceived sleight. There are many times that I, as a Catholic, wish he would shut up, such as here.

But I will say this -- at least when Donohue opens his big mouth, the piece in question is what brought Catholocism into the picture. Donohue went after Robin Williams for making fun of Catholics, nto for failing to properly honor it.

Not so for the liberal scolds who criticize Knocked Up, who are aghast that the female protagonist did not seriously consider abortion before having her unplanned baby.

This is the equivalent of Donohue going berserk that a character didn't attend Mass even though the story clearly spans a Sunday. Or that an action hero didn't stop to pray before avenging his wife's murder.

Earth to cultural liberals -- not everyone in America shares your views. Many women's first reaction when becoming pregnant, planned or unplanned, is not to praise thier sisters who came before them so that the decision whether to terminate the pregnancy is hers and hers alone. Some see abortion as killing, and would never consider it. Not all of them are dismissible religious nuts, and might be sympathetic characters. Part of an artist's job is to reflect reality, and so, some of these people might be represented in the popular culture.

I'm sorry your worldview is so fragile that it is threatened by a character in a comedy who doesn't share it. But get the hell over it.

You're making Bill Donohue look like a calm voice of reason.

Kaus's "Special Focus"

2007-06-25T09:19:00.001-05:00

Maybe it’s a result of reading a week’s worth of posts in one sitting rather than simply one at a time, but there is something creepy about Mickey Kaus’s ,er, special focus on defeating the immigration bill.

A couple of highlights…

Is the cloture vote the “real” vote?

Part of this focus has included counting votes for and against cloture on debate of the bill, on the assumption that if cloture passes, then the bill will pass. Even if some senators ultimately vote against the bill, it doesn’t matter because their votes for cloture have the effect of moving the bill toward forward. Voting for cloture and against the bill is a form of “kabuki” so that senators can advance the bill, but still be on the record as having opposed it. Thus, Kaus is calling us to consider a vote for cloture a vote for the bill, and hold Senators accountable accordingly.

In another context, Kaus appeals to the wisdom of the Framers in making it difficult to pass legislation.

I’m no Robert Byrd, but I’m not convinced that these high-stakes “call your Senator” procedural votes are what the Framers intended, either. It seems that they intended for there to be some space for the yes/no position – that might oppose a piece of legislation, but that it should got to an up/down vote. If this were not the case, it would have been simpler to just require a 60% majority to pass any legislation (or confirm any judges).

I understand that in this particular context, a vote for cloture does have this effect. It just seems to be that this focus on procedural votes is not what was intended. If the current Senate rules in today’s environment have this effect, then maybe they need some tinkering (preferably with a better name than “the nuclear option”.)

A Press-Proof Rally

Kaus laughably writes…

how about some street demonstrations? It worked in the '60s. The trick would be including Democrats, and keeping the protests so free of fringe elements, violence, and anything that could be characterized as anti-Latino prejudice that they couldn't be tarred by the media (which would be looking to pitch opponents as angry bigots).

Hey, while you’re at it, why don’t you organize a pro-life march that the press won’t spin as a handful of religious zealots with links to terrorists like Eric Rudolph?

Or better yet, put together a pro-immigration rally that those opposed won’t spin a gathering storm of Mexican nationalism?

It’s a little late in the day to be whining about how the press portrays the movement.

New low?

2007-06-14T11:50:00.000-05:00

If you look at Andrew Sullivan's "Christianism Watch" entries, which he wants to portray as signs of the coming theocratic takeover, it's hard to find a place in American history where the events he describes would have been out of place.

Take today's example, which he protrays as a "new low" -- some bloggers questioning Fred Thompson's Church attendance.

Now, poking around a candidate's religious practices might not be a great idea, particularly with the "no religious tests" portion of our Constitution, but it is hardly unprecedented in American history. And is odd coming from someone who just last week was criticizing Mitt Romney, for making statements contrary to Mormon doctrine, and has has had fun wondering if Romney wears Mormon underwear.

And this is one of my major problems with Sullivan's crusade. He claims to be conservatively standing up against a rising tide of a new fusion of faith and politics, but from here, it looks like he is advocating a fairly radical disintegration of the same, one that would have choked off several noble movements, such as the abolitionist movement here and in the UK, and the civil rights movement.

I have not read Sullivan's book, but I have not seen him confront this last point -- was the abolitionist movement "poisoned" by William Wilberforce's linking it with Christian calls to equality? Is the civil rights movement ruined because Martin Luther King was a Reverend?

My Hillaryphobia...

2007-06-14T10:34:00.000-05:00

Ross Douthat with a perceptive take on "Hillaryphobia" on the right. This seems to be the club that Giuliani will use to try to win the votes of social conservatives -- I may not be in lock-step with you on abortion, but I can beat Hillary, and you surre don't want her.

Douthat is correct that from a social conservtive perspective, it's unlikely a President Clinton would be much worse than a President Obama or President Edwards.

The thing is, that's exactly why I'm against her. It seems unlikely that Senator Clinton would bring about any truly radical change in any US policy. And if I'm going to support a pro-choice candidate, it better be for a damn good reason.

But then, in a Giuliani-Clinton election, Giuliani would represent a radical departure, in that it would establish the electoral viability of a pro-choice Republican candidate. So for that reason from a social conservative point of view, we might be better off with Senator Clinton. Add in my distaste fro Giuiliani's authoritarian streak and foreign policy instincts, and I could certainly see myself voting for Clinton in a Clinton-Giuliani election, though I wouldn't actively "support" her.

Planned Parenthood is an apolitical organization...

2007-06-13T16:24:00.000-05:00

Right...

I know this is a tiresome game, but can you imagine the cries of Theocracy! Christianism! if a Catholic bishop "helped" a congressman draft legislation declaring a city "pro-life."

Unbalanced Pursuit of "Balance"

2007-06-13T12:14:00.001-05:00

I've been subscribing to the On Balance parenting weblog at WaPo.

It has occasionally interesting thoughts on parenting, but I can't escape the conclusion that the basic premise is flawed -- that the most important thing about family life is achieving "balance" between parenting and other activities. Steiner actually touched on this last week. Parenting isn't just one activity to be "balanced" with other things. It is the most important, and ultimately most rewarding, thing we will ever do.

I'm not saying that people don't need a break, and that everything has to be about the kids, but this notion that happiness comes as a result of achieving the proper "balance" is hogwash. If you're kid's in the hospital, there isn't going to be any balance, and that's the way it has to be.

This cystallized for me with Steiner's pro-abortion (and don't dare tell me it's really just pro-"choice") column from today. Ramesh Ponnuru nicely and pithily summarized it as, "'Juggling Work and Family' is a lot easier if you get rid of inconvenient children."

Like Dana Stevens, Steiner claims to be quite secure in her belief in the necessity of abortion, but gets quite excercised that procuring or at least seriously considering terminating an unwanted pregnancy isn't a regular feature of popular entertainment.

An unwanted pregnancy is perhaps the most powerful factor in unbalancing a woman's work and family life. Most working women (at least the sexually active ones) need birth control, including abortion, to plan their careers -- sometimes, you need to say "no" to motherhood in order to build your reputation, get more training or an advanced degree, accept a promotion, or simply to work very hard for a certain period of time. Childless women often stay happily childless thanks specifically to birth control. Non-working moms also need the choices offered by all forms of birth control to space their children wisely, and sometimes to put off pregnancy in favor of a current family member's special needs (including their own).

"Balance" is the new God. If an unplanned pregnancy goes against "balance," then we "need" every tool possible to confront it, up to and including abortion. Question the morality of some of these tools, and you are opposed to balance.

Seems like we were just down this road with "security." The homeland must be secured, and the government needs access to every tool, including indefinite detention and "enhanced interrogation techniques" and preemptive war to do it. Question the morality of these things, and you hate America.

There's the somwhat tired old saying that nobody wishes on their deathbed that they spent more time at the office. I submit that even fewer people will say they wished their lives were more "balanced," particularly those who chose to welcome an unplanned addition to their family at the expense of balance.

Not a heretic, A+ in 8th grade math...

2007-06-12T09:28:00.000-05:00

My resume grows more and more impressive...

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 9/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

Test Message...

2007-06-11T14:55:00.000-05:00

Testing to see how things look with comments turned off.

While I'm here, I do reommend Tom Goodman's review of Big Love.

May lead to a future post about what we find funny, and who we sympathize with.

Pro-choice abortion

2007-06-09T23:08:00.000-05:00

In Slate, Dana Stevens concludes her odd piece about abortion politics and Knocked Up with this nugget...

That same Atlantic blog post concludes with the opinion that the movie is "almost naively pro-life"—that Alison decides to keep her baby because "killing it" would be "obviously and terribly wrong," and Alison, bless her heart, is not a "bad person" who would do such a thing. The 77 percent of Americans who support abortion rights—and the 40 percent or more of American women who have exercised that right—can be excused for wondering where that supposedly obvious moral consensus is coming from. Roe v. Wade may be in perpetual danger of erosion, but look on the bright side: We still have more choices than most pregnant women in the movies.

Stevens doesn't source her 77 percent number, but that is the highest number I have ever seen for either side of that issue, and she says it is those who "support abortion rights," so I would tend to believe it was those opposed to an outright ban.

Remember -- the topic here wasn't Roe v. Wade, or any effort by the government to restrict abortion. It was about a movie not presenting abortion as a legitimate option for its female protagonist experiencing an unplanned pregnancy.

Now, as a veteran of abortion debates, I thought the consensus was that conflating support for abortion rights with enthusiasm for the procedure itself was a dirty trick by the pro-life side designed to portray the pro-choice side as amoral monsters. I thought the party line included phrases like, "nobody likes abortion," and "safe, legal, and rare."

Indeed, the entire pro-choice argument rests on the principle that there should be some space between what is considered immoral and what is criminal. Keep you rosaries off my ovaries, etc. People can feel how they want about abortion, so long as they don't try to translate it into criminal santions. This is the argument Catholic pro-choice politicians, including the current Speaker of the House, use to explain how they can reconcile their faith, which unambiguously condemns abortion, with their pro-choice positions.

But I guess that 77 percent number was too big for Stevens to resist.

So, should we take Stevens at her word? Does opposing banning of abortion imply moral approval? Should people's position on Roe v. Wade be based on anything more than moral appoval or disapproval of abortion in general (or things like parial-birth abortion in specific, since each Democratic presidential candidate lamented the Supreme Court not finding it to be protected)?

I don't think affirmative answers to those questions would lead to conclusions Stevens would be very happy with. Which is why NARAL took the word "abortion" out of its name, pro-choice politicians say things like "reproductive self determination" and "a woman's right to choose" rather than mention abortion explicitly, and pro-lifers are condemned for graphic depictions of abortion. From the pro-choice movement, "shmashmortion" would qualify as rare candor.

But if Stevens want to rip the facade off, that's fine with me. You just don't get to eat your cake and have it to. You don't get to claim 77 percent of the public has no moral problem with abortion, and then blanche when we link a permissive abortion legal environment with cultural approval of abortion.

More:

Ross Douthat responds, since the article was in large part in response to his comments.

Ezra Klein has something closer to what a a pro-choice reaction is, if pro-choice really isn't just a euphemism for "pro-abortion."

Why Giuliani (and Romney) won't do for pro-lifers

2007-06-04T13:34:00.000-05:00

George Will writes about the appeal of Rudy Giuliani to social conservatives, in spite of his positions that go against them. He writes:

So, last year, perhaps a million women and their doctors committed murder. However much a person deplores abortion and embraces that legal logic, nobody believes that either the legislation or the constitutional amendment that Republican platforms have praised will be passed. Hence the sterility of today's abortion debate. And hence the inclination of some social conservatives to focus on limiting abortion by changing the culture, and their willingness to evaluate candidates by criteria unrelated to abortion.

This social conservative gets off the bus at the last comma there. I am committed to ending abortion, and that this will include government action, but I am coming to the realization that doing so means more than just electing candidates who check the "pro-life" box on the form. That's where this "changing the culture" stuff comes in.

Part of "changing the culture" is choosing leaders. And for me, at least, choosing a leader who embraces war, capital punishment, and torture of detainees moves the culture in the wrong direction.

Which is why it is my opinion, that in spite of being "pro-life," and having a record completely consistent with pro-life values, George W. Bush has done more to hurt the pro-life position than help it. He has given evidence to all those inclined to believe that pro-lifers only care about people until their born. He claims to be pro-life, but has exercised zero leadership on this score, focusing instead on things like the war in Iraq and privatizing social security, which calls our seriousness into question. And his polarizing style, which some conservatives are now getting a taste of in the immigration debate, turns people away who might have grown sympathetic to pro-life arguments.

Given that, why would we want to elect a president who seems to share all these negative qualities, but doesn't even pretend to be pro-life? If we're now concerned mostly about culture, what would electing such a leader from what used to be the pro-life party do to the culture?

Some say that as long as Giuliani is functionally pro-life, i.e. appointing "strict constructionist" judges, which we're supposed to trust is secret code word for "inclined to overturn Roe v. Wade, it doesn't matter. The same argument is made for those who are concerned that Mitt Romney's recent change of heart on this issue has more to do with electoral calculation than person conviction.

But, as this president has shown, the presidency is more than just checking the right box when confronted with a problem. The president sets the agenda, and chooses which battles to fight. I have no reason to believe that either Giuliani or Romney would actively work for the unborn. They may make the right calls when given no choice, but my suspicion is that they would avoid the issue as much as possible.

The message this sends to those inclined to dislike the pro-choice movement is that we're not that serious about the issue. Yeah, we'd like to elect a president who's pro-life, but that candidate need not make it a priority. The important thing is sticking it to the pro-choicers.

Looking at the field, the candidate most likely to bring about the cultural transformation needed is Obama. Yes, I know, his position is indistinguishable from the other candidates, including his recent criticism of the Supreme Court for not finding a right to partial birth abortion in the Constitution. But it is my opinion that we've ridden this current political structure as far as it can take us, and it's not far enough. Even if a President Giuliani or President Romney nominates and confirms a Supreme Court justice who becomes part of a majority to overturn Roe v. Wade, it would be a hollow victory indeed, and be greeted with an enormous backlash.

Ending abortion will require a cultural and political transformation. Such a transformation will require a leader unsatisfied with the current politics, and courageous enough to change it.

Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney seem to be fine with today's politics (it got them where they are), even if it means that evils like abortion and torture continue. So long as they get to be president.

That won't do.

It's like defying your bishop's call to charity; it must be right!

2007-06-03T13:04:00.000-05:00

I still don't know what the correct immigration policy should be, but the arguments from those who want to stress enforcement continue to have the opposite of their intended effect, espicially from a Christian perspective.

I pointed out one such argument last week, now Maximos at What's Wrong With the World compares the immigration debate that had rented its facilities to another congregation, and then was told by its bishop that it could not break from the agreement even when the other congregation became belligerent because it was compelled to welcome the wayward Chirstians in charity. You should probably read the original, as my paraphrase is likely not doing justice to the original.

When confronted with an argument like this, the first temptation is to challenge how close a parallel the analogy is to the real-world situation, and then the discussion centers on the accuracy of the analogy, with suggestions that might make the analogy more appropriate, and not much gets learned about the original problem.

But the problem here is more fundamental than that.

Maximos makes the case that accommodating the other congregation would entail some hardship. He also makes the case that those in charge have acted arrogantly and with a lack of pastoral skill.

If Maximos were merely attempting to have others gain understanding of how this issue looks in the trenches, then fine. But it won't do as the perspective through which we ought to consider this issue, because that this is our Savior:

We are called to perhaps great sacrifices for charity and obedience. The woman who becomes pregnant after being raped is called to carry the baby of that rapist to term. The person with same sex attraction is called to live an entirely abstinent life. And so on.

Whether either the analogy or the immigration crisis is a legitimate case for charity is not in my competence to judge, but was not the point of the analogy anyway.

The call to obedience to our bishop, however, does apply. The Fourth Commandment calls us to obedience.

It's probably not a good sign that Maximos believes that his readers would find defiance of a bishop more palatable than defiance of the president and the federal government, but I guess that's where we are.

I should not that the analogy centers on a "Catholic or Orthodox" parish. I am unsure whether Maximos comes from an orthodox or Catholic background, and if the Orthodox tradition has the same stress on obedience that the Catholic tradition does, as one commenter pointed out.

Citizen reporting...

2007-05-25T11:12:00.000-05:00

I was on this bus this morning, and I'm fine. From what I can tell the other passenger's injuries were not life-threatening, though it was obviously kind of a scary scene.

I was sitting about 3/4 of the way toward the back of the bus, playing a hand-held game, not looking where we were going. In noticed us heading toward the shoulder, and I figured we were swerving to avoid something, but we never straightened up and kept plowing off the highway, through the fence, across the smaller road, through a row of trees and into the parking lot. According to the news stories, the driver apparently blacked out, so I'm not sure how we stopped -- if he came to and hit the breaks, or what.

Pathetic blogger-reporter that I am, in spite of having a camera-phone and laptop with me, the attached picture is the recording I have from the incident.

Reflections -- I have been without a car for the past 8 months, and this is the second somewhat serious accident I have been in while being driven by someone in a professional capacity, after never being in a serious accident in 14 years driving myself (or being driven by my parents or wife). My sense is relief -- I kind of feel like I've gotten in my share of accidents, and been OK, so I should be in the clear for a while. Of course, there's no rational basis for the notion that just because I've been in one accident I won't be in another, just like one coin flip being heads doesn't impact the next coin flip.

Another note is that I just barely made the bus, and was going to sit in one of the front seats that faces the middle, but then changed my mind and sat further in the back in one of the seats facing the front. If I were in the front, I'm quite sure I would be in much worse shape. As it was, when the bus started veering off, I grabbed the handle on the seat in front of me, and stayed in the seat.

Other media reports:

It's like Christmas; it must be bad!

2007-05-21T21:56:00.000-05:00

On balance, I think the immigration bill seems like a reasonable compromise, but I'm open to being convinced otherwise.

One way not to do that, at least for this Christian who kind of likes Christmas, is to compare it to Christmas, and act as if that was self-evident proof of the imprudence of the measure.

I get the point -- these people broke the law; why should they get goodies? Fine.

But the goodness of Christmas is that grace is unearned. The comparison gives me pause.

----

I also have to say I am beyond tired of the GOP tactic of labelling legislation they don't like with an extreme pejorative term. The immigration compromise is an "amnesty" bill. I timeline to leave Iraq is a "surrender" bill. Etc. I don't know whom they think they're fooling with these labels, but I'm not one of them.

Successful walk...

2007-05-21T08:48:00.001-05:00

The walk was very successful -- it was a warm, sunny day,and we had a good turn-out. Thanks for your support! If you'd still like to donate, you can follow the links below.

Great Strides 2007 -- Two more days!

2007-05-17T16:05:00.000-05:00

Hello, friends,

It is again time for the Great Strides Walk to benefit research for Cystic Fibrosis, which effects my daughter Meagan.

Meagan is doing wonderfully. She just turned two, as she loves to tell people, and loves playing with her big sister Katherine, reading stories, and cuddling her "Care-uh Bears." It's my great hope that the research will continue to bear fruit, and enable Meagan and others like her to live long and normal lives.

I hope you'll consider supporting us again by either joining us on May 19 in Fenton park, or visting http://www.cff.org/Great_Strides/JohnMcGuinness to make a donation. Donations are eligible for matching funds, if your employer has them.

Below is some more general information about Great Strides and CF.

Peace,

John McG.

Cystic fibrosis is a devastating genetic disease that affects children and young adults. Advances continue to be made in finding a cure, but your help is needed now - more than ever - to help keep up the momentum of this life-saving research. Too many young lives depend on this vital research to let it go unfunded!

GREAT STRIDES is the Cystic Fibrosis (CF) Foundation's largest and most successful national fund-raising event. This year, I'm walking in the GREAT STRIDES event at the Festus Park site on May 19. Please help me meet my fund-raising goal of $1000 by sponsoring me. You'll feel confident in knowing that your generous gift is used efficiently and effectively: nearly 90 cents out of every dollar you contribute goes directly toward supporting research and specialized care that improves the quality of life for those with CF. And, it's tax-deductible.

Making a donation is easy and secure! Just click on the link below to make a donation to my fund-raising page where your donation will be credited to my team. Any amount you can donate is greatly appreciated!

Donating to GREAT STRIDES is such a simple and effective way for you to show your support for this important cause. Together, we can make a difference in the lives of those with CF! Once again, thank you for supporting the mission of the CF Foundation!

Earth to Rich Lowry's e-mailer...

2007-05-11T15:41:00.000-05:00

Rich Lowry posts an e-mail from an apparent Giuliani supporter.

My response -- maybe Giuliani's "strategy" will help win the nomination, but it won't help him win the election. Because we voters who are so fixated on abortion have been the GOP's most reliable voters, providing Bush's margin of victory in both elections. And to be honest, we have mixed feelings about it. We're not crazy about the war. We don't like torture. We may not even be convinced that lower taxes are the solution to every economic problem. But we abjhor the slaughter of 45 million unbron children that has taken place over the last 30 years, and have been willing to vote for anyone who gives the inclination that he might do something to stop it. Wihtout that, we have no reason to vote for you.

And if think you can get us to vote for you by calling your opponents soft on terrorism, think again.

This isn't a matter of tactics or strategy. This is right and wrong. The front-loaded primary schedule doesn't make killing the unborn all of a sudden right. It doesn't turn Roe vs. Wade into a sound decision.

Stop that meme...

2007-05-10T11:49:00.000-05:00

Giuliani is coming out explicitly in favor of abortion rights. So let there be no doubt -- a vote for Giuliani is a vote for a candidate who facors unrestricted abortion.

Hopefully, this will be enough to derail his campaign. In anticipation of that, a meme is developing that it's not Giuliani's position on abortion that is costing him, but the clumsy way in which he has handled the issue.

This meme must be stopped. The Republican Party is interested in this, because they want to portray themselves as the "Big Tent" that includes people like Schwarzanegger, and that pro-choice views should not stop someone from winning the GOP nomination.

The problem with Giuliani's position isn't that he's been incosistent, evasive, and squirrely about it. The problem is it's wrong. Simple as that.

That the GOP can't bring itself to say this clearly, and hide behind these technical excuses doesn't give me much confidence in their ability to advocate for the unborn.

Give up on Rudy...

2007-05-08T09:10:00.000-05:00

Ok, fellow pro-lifers, it's time to stop kidding ourselves. Rudy Giuliani is pro-choice. He seems to have always been pro-choice, and he will always be pro-choice. On this issue, he is indistinguishable from John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary , Arnold Schwarzanegger, Claire McCaskill, and any other number of Catholic candidates who are unacceptable to us.

If he changes his mind, he will let us know. And he will do so in a blod way. We will not need to carefully parse his statements to see that they are not overtly hostile to the pro-life cause. We should not have to guess and parse.

Andrew Sullivan points to a quote that captues his attitude well.

In 2001, appearing at a NARAL/Pro-Choice America luncheon, he voiced the conservative case for abortion rights, arguing that it "might be more consistent with the philosophy of the Republican Party.

"Because the Republican Party stands for the idea that you have to restore more freedom of choice, more opportunity, more opportunity for people to make their own choices rather than the government dictating those choices," said Giuliani.

Pro-lifers are used to this type of attitude from pro-choice Catholic Democrats -- I'm a Democrat; Democrats are pro-choice; you can't expect me to go against my party, do you? Party loyalty and principles are rock hard; religious beliefs should be flexible and yield to them.

But in a way, Rudy's right. The Republican Party has always been a but of an uncomfortable home for the pro-life movement. It can be hard to reconcile support for torture, pre-emptive war, and capital punishment with arguments against abortion based on the fundamental dignity of human life.

Of course, I care much more about defending the unborn than I care about being a good conservative or good Republican, and I hope that others will too.

The Christianism Takeover

2007-05-01T08:32:00.000-05:00

Andrew Sullivan spends a lot of time worrying about how the GOP is being taken over by "Christianists" who want to turn to government into a tool of fundamentalist Christianity.

That being the case, one would expect the front-runners for the GOP nomination for president to reflect Christian values. But as he notes that's not the case. Taking a spin through the candidates, we have:

Rudy Giuliani -- On his third marriage, recently repeated his support for government funding of abortion, supports same sex marriage.
Mitt Romney -- Elected governor of Massuchusetts as a pro-choice candidate (though he has since changed his mind), governor of first state to enact same sex marriage, member of a religion many Christians do not consider Christian.
John McCain -- Solid pro-life voting record, but never made social conservatism a theme of his, and gives the impression it would me among the least of his issues.

Unsatisfield with this group, we have...

Fred Thompson -- Chuckles over his woman-chasing past.

Meanwhile, candidates with personal stories and priorities more amenable to Chirstians, like Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee, have not been able to gain traction, and are essentially punch lines.

Yep, it sure looks like the GOP is being taken over by Christianists. Be very afraid. Maybe one day they will succeed in nominating a candidate who is not overltly hostile to their viewpoints.

Some clarifications on the Abp. Burke -- Sheryl Crow brouhaha

2007-04-26T22:38:00.000-05:00

What does Abp. Burke mean that this charity event to benefit children with cancer is a "scandal?"
Abp. Burke didn't say that the event itself is a scandal. He said he would be giving scandal if he were to remain a chair of the event with Crow performing. This has a very specific meaning for Catholics -- he would be giving the appearance that Ms. Crow's support for embryonic research is not a big deal (see below for why it is).

If you think that giving scandal by being associated with those advocating policies one considers evil isn't a problem, you probably haven't seen this picture or this one or this one or this one.

But those are evil people. Sheryl Crow is just a singer who holds political views which are very much in the American mainstream.
Sheryl Crow appeared in an ad urging Missouri voters to vote for an Amendment that stripped the state of any ability to regulate research on embryos. The orthodox Catholic belief is that these are human persons, so from our perspective, what Ms. Crow supported is the moral equivalent of supporting something like slavery. Abp. Burke feels he cannot go along with it.

But that's Abp. Burke's personal religious belief. He has no right to impose that on others.
First, it is the belief of the Catholic Church, with which Cdl. Glennon is associated. Second, he's not imposing anything. He's just saying he can't personally go along with it.

But the organizers say they don't impose any political litmus tests.
The hell they don't. I stongly suspect that if Don Imus had been scheduled to appear, he would have been nudged aside. I don't think they would have put on the Dixie Chicks at the height of their controversy. They wouldn't put up a white supremacist, homophobe, or sexist.

This is to help kids with cancer. Can't we put aside our political differences and come together on this?
Abp. Burke likely believes that Cd. Glennon Hospital is able to help the children with cancer in part because of its Catholic identity, which includes seeing human life in all stages as a gift from God. To move away from that would be to disconnect from the driving force of its mission.

Unfortunately, the relationship between Abp. Burke and the local media has never been good, and they seem to relish every opportunity to portray him as an ultraconservative jerk who's primarily interested in promoting Republicans. Would this were not so.

Good news -- I'm not a heretic...

2007-04-22T22:51:00.000-05:00

You scored as Chalcedon compliant. You are Chalcedon compliant. Congratulations, you're not a heretic. You believe that Jesus is truly God and truly man and like us in every respect, apart from sin. Officially approved in 451.

Chalcedon compliant

100%

Monophysitism

67%

Pelagianism

58%

Adoptionist

33%

Nestorianism

33%

Modalism

33%

Arianism

Apollanarian

Socinianism

Docetism

Donatism

Monarchianism

Gnosticism

Albigensianism

Are you a heretic?
created with QuizFarm.com

So I got that goin' for me, which is nice...

Now to apply it, which can be a tad trickier...