Category: Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

While I'm proud of what we've achieved together, I'm far more mindful of my own failings, knowing exactly what Lincoln meant when he said, "I have
been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that I
had no place else to go." – Barack Obama, 2012 Nomination Acceptance
Speech.

If this is true and sincere, I almost (only almost) could forgive his
continuing surrender to the Cheneyesque post-civil-rights security state
and his utter failure to roll back the increasingly imperial
presidency.

The fact is, what most people like to tout as one of his greatest accomplishments – the assassination of Osama Bin Laden – I tend to view as one of the hugest symptoms of Obama's surrender to the logic that permitted the Afghanistan and Iraq wars in the first place. Where was that man's trial? Where was the justice? He was a criminal – why wasn't he accorded the rights accorded criminals under rule-of-law? What about due process? What about the Geneva Conventions? Surely a New York jury would have convicted him. Bin Laden's death was Obama's darkest moment, and I wonder if the above quote might alude to that. I wish I could know that it did – but even so, could he be forgiven? Was Osama's death anywhere close to as "necessary" as the U.S. Civil War (as suggested by the reference to Lincoln). That implies a rather grandiose self-view.

Well, now that I'm back home, I can go back to observing politics, at least part of the time. Given that Paul Ryan is noteworthy at the moment, with Romney's announcement that he was the VP pick, I thought this relevant. Ryan, like most current GOP types these days, seems to hold both Ronald Reagan and Ayn Rand in pretty high regard (but see also: he seems to have renounced Rand recently). But Rand and Reagan were philosophically at odds, and despised each other. Here's Rand on Reagan (as found at dangerousminds):

What do I think of President Reagan? The best answer to give would be: But I don’t think of him—and the more I see, the less I think. I did not vote for him (or for anyone else) and events seem to justify me. The appalling disgrace of his administration is his connection with the so-called “Moral Majority” and sundry other TV religionists, who are struggling—apparently with his approval—to take us back to the Middle Ages, via the unconstitutional union of religion and politics.

Seeing quotes like this reminds me why I was rather Randian myself, once-upon-a-time. I've long since converted to a kind of euro-style liberalism, at least in politics. But my libertarian tendencies still run deep, and she was always at her best when she was defending atheism.

There's a political blog called "Stop Me Before I Vote Again." It's one of those leftish blogs (cf. also the libertarianish IOZ) that rants alot about how the Democrats are too far right and that there's some kind of conspiracy (or accidental synergy) between the two main parties in the US that prevents truly leftist agendas from being pursued – that the Democratic Party's leftism is a sort of subterfuge, essentially. I read the blog, occasionally, but the quality of the writing has decreased – or else I just don't get the point – there's really only one writer there that I even find coherent, to be honest.

But one recent post by Mr Coherent (Michael J. Smith – is this a real name or pseudonym?) made a striking and noticeable point about the stridency of right-leaning talk radio in the U.S. A quote (he's talking about the show called "Focus on the Family"):

Focus on The Family is a radio product; that is, it's a commercial enterprise with a political angle. It's a show; everything on it is contrived and scripted. It's a fishing boat, and the "Fundies" — for lack of a better word — are the fish. Some come into the net, of course, and others do not.

Strelnikov [the person being criticized here] has never swum with the fish in question; he knows nothing at all about their lives and feelings and thought processes. What does a trawler tell you about fish, except that they can be caught and sold?

This is a very important point.

"What does a trawler tell you about fish, except that they can be caught and sold?" I'd like to apply the same essentially marxian logic (I'm thinking of how ideologies are deployed to preserve systems, a la Eagleton) to how we think about behemoths like Fox News – these things are not reflecting views, they're designed to draw people in with the views they express, and maybe, incidentally, they cause the "fish" to swim in certain directions they wouldn't, on their own. Let's never forget that the current "far right looniness" in the U.S. is caused mostly by people who realized they could make money off of it. The rational market is going to eventually self destruct, at this rate, it seems to me.

[Daily log: um, no]

I suppose it's time for me to weigh in on the gay marriage debate. Actually, I've done so [broken link! FIXME] before, but the events in North Carolina and with respect to Obama's recent speech, I felt like bringing it up again, since it's a matter of some concern among many of my friends and acquaintances.

In this matter, my libertarian instincts predominate, and my view has remained essentially unchanged over a period of almost 30 years, from back when I first was confronted with the idea of "gay marriage." I knew people, even when I was in elementary school – friends of my parents – who were essentially committed gay couples, living together. And at that time, what struck me as ridiculous was not that the state or that society should have some say in banning or disallowing or failing to recognize these types of relationships. No… what struck me then – and still strikes me now – as utterly bizarre is that the state should play some role in defining ANYONE's relationship with another person.

The fact is that I don't believe in gay marriage. But not for the typical reason. You see… I don't believe in straight marriage, either. I believe that the state should stay out of EVERYONE's bedroom, equally.

If people want things like survivorship rights, or co-parenting rights, or adoption, or whatever… these are legal constructs or contracts like any other (and not unlike business partnerships, for example), and they should be drafted and viewed as such, and not automatically conferred on people who take the time to go through some ritual or another, be it in a church or in a temple or in front of a judge.

I confess that I, myself, was once married. But Michelle and I agreed at the time that it was something we were doing for the contractual and legal benefits, and we both strongly resented the idea of having to get a state imprimatur on our essentially private relationship.

Rather than advocating for gay marriage, I would rather advocate for the abolition of the state-based recognition of ANY marriage. That's not to say the state would ban marriage, but rather that it should become "blind" to whether two people are in a relationship or not, to the maximum extent legally practicable. When it comes to things like the legal guardianship of children, there are many laws in place that have nothing to do with marriage that ensure parental rights and obligations, for example – were this not the case, the extremely high levels of out-of-wedlock (and what an abhorent term that is!) births in our society wouldn't be functionally possible. If two people want to get married, that's a decision that lies between those two people and their families and their communities. If, on the other hand, they want to file jointly with the IRS, that's something they can work out with the IRS as a sort of legal partnership unconnected to what they do in bed or church, without recourse to a legal concept like "marriage."

The blogger IOZ, as is often the case, makes a brilliant case for such a view as I'm sympathetic to, by pointing out the inherent ridiculousness of public documents and figures (such as North Carolina's constitution or President Obama) staking out important positions on either side of the "gay marriage" issue. He does this quite cleverly, by creating an extreme, satirical example of the same type of thinking:

"I know marriage is supposed to be some, like, basic physical property of the human universe, paired protons and neutrons or quark spin or some shit or whatever, but really, uh, like, what if the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania banned slightly awkward social acquaintances in which you do have each other's cell numbers but you don't really feel comfortable calling even though you need to borrow his pick-up and you're pretty sure he'd be cool with it but maybe you'll just text him instead.  Then the 3rd Circuit overturns the law on twenty-first amendment grounds.  The President of the United States says that although he would probably have sent a private Facebook message, his views on the issue are evolving." – IOZ