I heard one of the members of the US House of Representatives claim the other day that Americans "can't support the troops without supporting the mission." He (his name and district escape me, I am sorry to say) made this remark as part of his argument against Congress passing even a non-binding resolution against Dubya's so-called troop surge in Iraq.
Say what? He has confused the fact that the troops, by and large, obey orders with the notion that they therefore agree with those orders. WRONG! Most US soldiers know that they have an obligation to disobey illegal orders . . . but they also know that they must obey legal, even if inadvisable, ones.
For heaven's sake, even Ollie North is saying that troops he's recently interviewed in Iraq are not sanguine about the "surge" being successful. This doesn't mean that those troops won't do everything they can to complete their mission. It does mean that they won't be overjoyed at having to try., since they know the deck is stacked against them.
Pouring more and more young Americans into the meat grinder that has become Iraq makes no sense to me, either. Especially when it's not an overwhelming number of troops who will come in all at once. A strategy like that might have a chance of succeeding. Measures implemented in dribbles and drabs, however, will not. They do not differ from letting a leaky faucet continue to drip. Each drop may not seem like a great loss, but when you get the multi-hundred dollar water bill, you'll wonder why the heck you didn't fix it sooner. Worse, the longer you let it go on, the worse the damage gets. We are destroying our own future at the behest of men (Dubya, Dick Cheney, etc.) who did everything they could to avoid real service when it would have been their time to go. What's wrong with that picture? If you don't know, you need to refresh your knowledge of American history.
What's worse, those in Congress who support Dubya seem to think that if we have debate and disagreement, we are hurting the morale of the troops already there. There's no logic in that assertion, either. It cannot hurt the morale of those we pay to protect our freedoms when we exercise those very freedoms. That's what they are there for. They know that.
What's going to hurt the morale of the troops is to find out that Dubya's proposed budget for the next fiscal year cuts programs and benefits to the Veteran's Administration and to the armed forces . . . and raises the co-pays our retired veterans and active duty members of the armed forces will have to pay for medical treatment and prescriptions. Not to mention not providing the troops fighting the war with proper equipment in the first place. [Yes, I am still shaking my head in disbelief at Donald Rumsfeld's assertion that you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want. I say you don't go to war until you do have the army you want, especially when you are the one starting the war.--Ed]
Not that such fuzzy thinking is confined to members of our national government. I understand that the Bank of America is going to market credit cards in Los Angeles "to people who do not have Social Security numbers." Read that "to illegal immigrants." The Bank of America representatives who announced this program claim that BA will be serving an underserved market, that it will make BA lots of money because there's no competition for that market, and that they are doing nothing wrong. Since when did aiding and abetting illegal activity, like living in the US illegally,become "nothing wrong"?
Oh, well. It's not exactly as if fuzzy thinking is a brand new problem in American history. During the Salem witch trials, those who confessed to being witches were not harmed. Those who refused to confess were killed. Kind of reminds me of the statement of the US soldier in Vietnam who said, "We had to destroy the village in order to save it." It also reminds me of the Rehnquist Supreme Court--a majority of so-called "strict constructionists" comprised the most judicially active Supreme Court in US history. It's just that their rulings favored conservative causes. I've noted before that people seem to think judicial behavior is the dreaded "activism" only if those people disagree with the consequences of the ruling.
Brrr . . .
I'm so cold from the exposure to all this fuzzy thinking that I am shivering.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
When Is A Conundrum Not A Conundrum?
The Founding Fathers were wise enough to know they couldn't anticipate every possible future sequence of events. That's one of the biggest reasons they made the US Constitution rather broad in language and vague in scope--and gave us the US Supreme Court to interpret it. Things change over time, so-called "strict constructionists" to the contrary.
The latest apparent conflict is between the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech and the common law (i.e., traditional) right of parents to decide what to teach their children. This conflict tends to arise in divorce cases, as an aspect of child custody. The most recent example with which I have some acquaintance is a case in California, wherein the judge told the non-custodial father that, as part of his visitation rights, he could NOT teach his children that jihad was an acceptable course of behavior.
The news commentator whose report revealed this case to me seemed to think that what we have here is an intractible problem. I respectfully disagree.
First, look at the US Supreme Court's consistent decisions in cases denying people the right to handle poisonous snakes as part of their religious observances. People are always free to believe whatever they want to believe, but they are not always free to act on those beliefs. Preventing possible harm to children or other innocent bystanders outweighs the right to take a deadly risk. In other words, protecting the general public matters more than letting anyone--even people who would willingly assume the risks--act out every aspect of their beliefs.
That's fine, as far as it goes, but it still lets people hold what can be called dangerous beliefs. The next step is to point to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes's famous observation that no one can just yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater . . . unless it's true, of course. So there are limits on the freedom to open one's mouth and say whatever comes to mind. Again, the limits apply whenever the public health and safety would otherwise be put to untenable risk.
Finally, consider that children, as the least experienced and most vulnerable among us, are always given extra protection under the law. Obscenity is illegal for everyone--but pornography is allowed, for grown ups. Every court everywhere has obligations at law (whether by statute or custom) to protect children, so that they can grow into adults capable of making their own decisions once they are in fact grown up.
To expose a child to certain ideas is in fact to brainwash him. He hasn't had the years on earth to gain the experience necessary to decide which ideas are good and which are bad. It's easily demonstrated that a child exposed to abuse thinks that abuse is normal, even expected. That child will in turn be much more likely than a child raised in a healthy home to abuse others, even before the abusive child has come of legal age.
So there really is no conundrum or intractible problem here, despite the news commentator's suggestions to the contrary. The non-custodial parent is not being told to change his beliefs. He is not being told not to act on his beliefs, except as doing so would violate criminal law. His child is being protected until his child is old enough to decide for himself what he chooses to believe.
This is as it should be, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the religion promoting the belief in question. Any expression of any religion endorsing violence properly would be so restricted from an impressionable child's view. The fuzzy thinking that claims a conflict between freedom of speech and freedom of religion in these child custody cases deserves nothing but our contempt.
The latest apparent conflict is between the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech and the common law (i.e., traditional) right of parents to decide what to teach their children. This conflict tends to arise in divorce cases, as an aspect of child custody. The most recent example with which I have some acquaintance is a case in California, wherein the judge told the non-custodial father that, as part of his visitation rights, he could NOT teach his children that jihad was an acceptable course of behavior.
The news commentator whose report revealed this case to me seemed to think that what we have here is an intractible problem. I respectfully disagree.
First, look at the US Supreme Court's consistent decisions in cases denying people the right to handle poisonous snakes as part of their religious observances. People are always free to believe whatever they want to believe, but they are not always free to act on those beliefs. Preventing possible harm to children or other innocent bystanders outweighs the right to take a deadly risk. In other words, protecting the general public matters more than letting anyone--even people who would willingly assume the risks--act out every aspect of their beliefs.
That's fine, as far as it goes, but it still lets people hold what can be called dangerous beliefs. The next step is to point to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes's famous observation that no one can just yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater . . . unless it's true, of course. So there are limits on the freedom to open one's mouth and say whatever comes to mind. Again, the limits apply whenever the public health and safety would otherwise be put to untenable risk.
Finally, consider that children, as the least experienced and most vulnerable among us, are always given extra protection under the law. Obscenity is illegal for everyone--but pornography is allowed, for grown ups. Every court everywhere has obligations at law (whether by statute or custom) to protect children, so that they can grow into adults capable of making their own decisions once they are in fact grown up.
To expose a child to certain ideas is in fact to brainwash him. He hasn't had the years on earth to gain the experience necessary to decide which ideas are good and which are bad. It's easily demonstrated that a child exposed to abuse thinks that abuse is normal, even expected. That child will in turn be much more likely than a child raised in a healthy home to abuse others, even before the abusive child has come of legal age.
So there really is no conundrum or intractible problem here, despite the news commentator's suggestions to the contrary. The non-custodial parent is not being told to change his beliefs. He is not being told not to act on his beliefs, except as doing so would violate criminal law. His child is being protected until his child is old enough to decide for himself what he chooses to believe.
This is as it should be, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the religion promoting the belief in question. Any expression of any religion endorsing violence properly would be so restricted from an impressionable child's view. The fuzzy thinking that claims a conflict between freedom of speech and freedom of religion in these child custody cases deserves nothing but our contempt.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Praise The Lord! They Aren't Passing The Ammunition!
Sinn Fein, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army, has abandoned its opposition to cooperating with the Northern Ireland (British) police. Gerry Adams, President of Sinn Fein, has thus accomplished something miraculous--moving the IRA toward compromise on the issues facing the putatively British province of Northern Ireland. Lasting peace may be at hand.
I don't doubt that the republicans' abandonment of the idea of making Northern Ireland part of the Irish Republic by force had a lot to do with the increasingly bad press given to any so-called "freedom fighters." After all, one man's freedom fighter is just another man's terrorist. I'm sure the IRA is perfectly happy to let Muslims around the world wear the mantle "terrorists" all alone.
But this is truly an important step forward. Despite the beatings that many IRA members received over the years at the hands of the mostly Protestant Northern Ireland police force, and despite the long prison sentences many of them suffered for their violent opposition to same, the IRA officially embraces peace.
Maybe there is some hope for the world after all. I will hold onto this the next time I begin to believe that the whole world is going to Hell. Hope does spring eternal.
Any bets on whether Gerry Adams gets beatified by the Pope sometime after his death?
I don't doubt that the republicans' abandonment of the idea of making Northern Ireland part of the Irish Republic by force had a lot to do with the increasingly bad press given to any so-called "freedom fighters." After all, one man's freedom fighter is just another man's terrorist. I'm sure the IRA is perfectly happy to let Muslims around the world wear the mantle "terrorists" all alone.
But this is truly an important step forward. Despite the beatings that many IRA members received over the years at the hands of the mostly Protestant Northern Ireland police force, and despite the long prison sentences many of them suffered for their violent opposition to same, the IRA officially embraces peace.
Maybe there is some hope for the world after all. I will hold onto this the next time I begin to believe that the whole world is going to Hell. Hope does spring eternal.
Any bets on whether Gerry Adams gets beatified by the Pope sometime after his death?
More From The "Things That Make You Go 'Hmmm'" Files
I just heard about a cemetery that had to raise the rates it charges for burial plots "due to the cost of living."
Hmmm . . .
Conspiracy theorists typically believe no one connected to their pet conspiracy except for the putative "lone gunman" . . . the one person who has the greatest motive to lie. What's wrong with this picture?
Hmmm . . .
Those who insist that women should be covered from head to toe when they are in public are saying a lot more about their own inability and unwillingness to grow up and have some self-control than they are about the temptations of the world.
Hmmm . . .
Bill Clinton's remarks on Molly Ivins' death were gracious and true. He said she was witty and pointed when he wasn't doing anything wrong--and more so, to devastating effect, when he was.
Dubya's remarks, on the other hand, had to have been written by someone else. Totally polite, and entirely non-committal. Seeing how long she's been calling him "Shrub" (correctly so, I might add), what else could he do without making himself look even worse than he does already?
Hmmm . . .
I watched the first couple of hours of the PBS series about the US Supreme Court last night. It was OK as an introductory historical primer, I suppose, but it could have been a lot better. It was eye-opening in terms of revealing the personal background of Justice John Marshall Harlan, but instead of including his dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson ("the Constitution is color-blind"), the show focused on his dissent in the series of decisions grouped together as The Civil Rights Cases. Maybe the producers and the writers thought the latter dissent was more important because it came earlier in time, but amongst the legal community, Plessy is more important because it crystallized Harlan's thinking in succinctly quotable prose.
Nonetheless, the thing that struck me the most about the Harlan segment was just how much John Marshall Harlan looked like the late, great Peter Boyle playing the monster in Young Frankenstein.
I just love the soaps. They have no compunction at all about misstating legal and medical procedures, collapsing time in impossible ways, or otherwise messing up reality when it suits their dramatic purposes. Even when doing it without misstating everything would be plenty dramatic.
Ferinstance, during court proceedings, testimony routinely consists of emotional assertions of someone's beliefs about another character, with no factual content at all to support the assertions . . . yet no attorney objects nor does the judge quash said remarks as irrelevant. But judges on soaps routinely issue orders and edicts that are totally unsupported by whatever has transpired in court during the trial as aired on the soap.
Feranotherinstance, some character who is a medical professional has good reason to take the HIV test. The results come back inconclusive. Does that character start on the triple cocktail? No. Despite the fact that the triple cocktail is routinely prescribed as a prophylactic measure to medical professionals in real life in such circumstances while another HIV test is run.
Feryetanotherinstance, one year, a toddler and an infant are kidnapped together. The next year, the toddler is out of the script and the infant is in grade school. The year after that, the toddler comes back as a 16-year-old, the putative infant is still in grade school, and the parents haven't aged a bit.
Hmmm . . .
There is a common thread to all these observations. They all make my brain hurt!
Hmmm . . .
Conspiracy theorists typically believe no one connected to their pet conspiracy except for the putative "lone gunman" . . . the one person who has the greatest motive to lie. What's wrong with this picture?
Hmmm . . .
Those who insist that women should be covered from head to toe when they are in public are saying a lot more about their own inability and unwillingness to grow up and have some self-control than they are about the temptations of the world.
Hmmm . . .
Bill Clinton's remarks on Molly Ivins' death were gracious and true. He said she was witty and pointed when he wasn't doing anything wrong--and more so, to devastating effect, when he was.
Dubya's remarks, on the other hand, had to have been written by someone else. Totally polite, and entirely non-committal. Seeing how long she's been calling him "Shrub" (correctly so, I might add), what else could he do without making himself look even worse than he does already?
Hmmm . . .
I watched the first couple of hours of the PBS series about the US Supreme Court last night. It was OK as an introductory historical primer, I suppose, but it could have been a lot better. It was eye-opening in terms of revealing the personal background of Justice John Marshall Harlan, but instead of including his dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson ("the Constitution is color-blind"), the show focused on his dissent in the series of decisions grouped together as The Civil Rights Cases. Maybe the producers and the writers thought the latter dissent was more important because it came earlier in time, but amongst the legal community, Plessy is more important because it crystallized Harlan's thinking in succinctly quotable prose.
Nonetheless, the thing that struck me the most about the Harlan segment was just how much John Marshall Harlan looked like the late, great Peter Boyle playing the monster in Young Frankenstein.
Hmmm . . .
I just love the soaps. They have no compunction at all about misstating legal and medical procedures, collapsing time in impossible ways, or otherwise messing up reality when it suits their dramatic purposes. Even when doing it without misstating everything would be plenty dramatic.
Ferinstance, during court proceedings, testimony routinely consists of emotional assertions of someone's beliefs about another character, with no factual content at all to support the assertions . . . yet no attorney objects nor does the judge quash said remarks as irrelevant. But judges on soaps routinely issue orders and edicts that are totally unsupported by whatever has transpired in court during the trial as aired on the soap.
Feranotherinstance, some character who is a medical professional has good reason to take the HIV test. The results come back inconclusive. Does that character start on the triple cocktail? No. Despite the fact that the triple cocktail is routinely prescribed as a prophylactic measure to medical professionals in real life in such circumstances while another HIV test is run.
Feryetanotherinstance, one year, a toddler and an infant are kidnapped together. The next year, the toddler is out of the script and the infant is in grade school. The year after that, the toddler comes back as a 16-year-old, the putative infant is still in grade school, and the parents haven't aged a bit.
Hmmm . . .
There is a common thread to all these observations. They all make my brain hurt!
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