Saturday, March 16, 2002

The last two potshots and think that I am somehow blind to the sizable crowd of idiots standing around my side of the ideological camp. I became personally acquainted with many of them during my wonderful and memorable years at UNC. There are substantive and important things wrong with the left, but its basic principles - respect for human rights, liberty and equality remain sound. Not all people on the left hold to these principles - think of the feminists of UNLV for example - but their left isn't my left, and I disown them all. Does this automatically mean the right is morally superior? I don't know. If my roof is leaking and my house is crumbling does it mean my neighbor's house is better? Perhaps. Unless of course my neighbor's house happens to be falling down.

If only I had paid more attention to my high school history teachers, I'd know that FDR was a conservative, and that the right dealt the death blow to Communism. More importantly I'd know what specifically this death blow was. And I'd know that Hitler was a leftist radical, and fascism a far left ideology. I'd certainly not be going around with vague and foggy notions about how FDR was despised by the right, Hitler was a member of the right, fascism was an ideology of the right, and Communism - at least in Eastern Europe and Russia - managed to defeat itself, with the help of WWII and the physical and financial damage it did.

Supporting segregation, the inequality of women, and the discrimination against Jews. No wonder they're morally bankrupt. Oh, wait. That was the right. No wonder one needs the ability to make moral distinctions.

Detained in the US after September 11 had their civil rights violated according to Amnesty International. Among other things, they were deprived of counsel, held without charge or even being told what they were suspected of, kept in isolation, and chained up. Some people probably think that's just fine, but I don't and for two reasons.

1. This is my country and I'm proud of its Constitution and Bill of Rights, and more than that of the fact that these documents are enforced by the courts. In other words, I am proud to live in a nation of laws which first of all posits that all people have rights and secondly makes sure that they keep them. People who think they can toss the Constitution out the window for expediency's sake are an affront and a disgrace, and things like the above more than make me angry; they offend me. A few posts down Lee Ann accused me of being more outraged over America's treatment of the detainees, than I would be about the treatment meted out to an American pilot captured by Iraq. She might be right - though objectively speaking I think I would be equally outraged by the ill treatment of anyone. I would however be slightly more likely to post about the bad things this government does, and that for the simple reason that I don't live in Iraq and am not in any way responsible for its government or its laws - thank God. Given the fact, however, that this is a democracy, I am as a citizen at least partially responsible for what happens here, and the responsibility of criticism of the government is always one which should be taken more seriously than the responsibility of praise. And in this case the government deserves criticism of the harshest sort; for it has evinced its disrespect for the very principles upon which this nation was founded and which have made it great. To me that is an act of desecration far greater than any burning of the flag.

And

2. All hail the idiot test. Who is really ready to trust the government to do things like this? Who really thinks all the people rounded up and deprived of their liberty and their rights had actually done something? Who thinks the government should be able to arrest and detain people with impunity? We are after all talking about the people who just issued Mohammed Atta a student visa to go to flight school, an act of idiocy and incompetency which illustrates why we need Constitutional safeguards in the first place. The government is not infallible, and it does make mistakes; and putting your liberty and your life in its hands in the belief that it doesn't is
the equivalent of standing on a three legged chair with a noose around your neck. Maybe it won't fall, in which case you'll be lucky.

And just as a side note: Remember the nice thing I said about George Bush? Well, I take it back. Israel and foreign aide don't quite make up for this.

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Friday, March 15, 2002

But I'm actually starting to like to George Bush, although "like" might be a bit strong of a word. Let us simply say that I'm starting to slowly accommodate myself to the idea that Mr. Bush is not going to blow up the world, or cause other people to blow it up for him. Taking steps to end poverty is a positive move, both from a humanitarian and a practical standpoint, and for that reason Bush deserves to be commended for his plan to increase foreign aid, as well as for his proposal that half the loans the World Bank now makes be converted into grants.Poverty doesn't make people criminals or terrorists, but it certainly helps them along the way; and while eliminating poverty would not eliminate crime, it would make an exception of the criminal.

Held in US detention centers are being revealed. From the looks of things, Al Queda is a poster organization for the perils of foreign travel. Leave England to go to a wedding in Pakistan, wind up a terrorism suspect in Cuba. Call your travel agent now.

Died yesterday at the age of 102 in Heidelberg. As the faz points out, Gadamer was not only a great and highly orginal philosopher, but also the last representative of a world now, perhaps, irretrievably gone.

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Thursday, March 14, 2002

What ICANN resolved. Or better yet just look at what it said: "The Board is not persuaded that global elections are the only or the best means of achieving meaningful public representation or the informed participation of Internet users in the ICANN process." Letting people choose their own representatives. Hah! How undemocratic is that? Of course, someone might pose the question as to why the Board wants to get rid of the publicly elected representatives. Now, let me see; what could the reason possibly be?

Let me think about that for a moment. Um, no. Do governments want to control the Internet? You bet they do. Are governments and corporations going to try to grab control of it. Well, let me see. A medium which puts a printing press with the power of world wide distribution in the hands of everyone, a medium where people say what they think, because there's no one looking over their shoulder quoting the party line, and where all those nasty little secrets certain people would rather hide can travel instantly around the world, let me think real hard about what the future actions of Big Brother might be. And while I'm trying to puzzle this out, you can read the Washington Post's condescending, snotty little article about the director of ICANN's modest proposal. Ah, if only it were satire.

About the Saudi government, that is. Any government which asserts that Jews use teenagers' blood for purim pastries deserves to fall right now. It should certainly not be propped up by the US, or worse yet described as our "friend." We support these people and then wonder why we have trouble in the Middle East. Maybe we should try supporting people who actually stand for democracy and democratic values, rather than those who simply state their willingness to jump on our bandwagon in return for cash.

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Wednesday, March 13, 2002

Targeting civilians and killing them is wrong, and for that the Palestinians should be condemned; but the things the Israelis have done to the Palestinians are also wrong, and for that the Israelis should be condemned. Apportioning moral superiority does not nothing to stop the violence; it only legitimates one side or the other in using it. I haven't argued that the Israelis are evil, because I don't think they are. I also haven't argued that because I want to see the violence stopped, and two groups each believing the other the incarnation of diabolical evil will go on killing each other forever. Israel's method of defending itself has so far only provoked more attacks. That is something to think about, before asserting the justice or necessity of a military response. Beating into submission is one thing. Revenge is another. And defense is something else; for defense implies a desire for the violence to end, and the best method of defense is therefore the one most likely to end the violence. And for that reason Sharon's method of "defense" sucks.

If I walked up and hit you with a brick and you hit me back with a bat, then I would be at fault and bear full responsibility for both of our injuries, for the simple reason that I initiated the violence. Now there's an interesting philosophical proposition. I would argue, however, that the apportionment of responsibility would rest on three other things which you fail to mention.

1. Whether I acted without reason or provocation
2. Whether hitting me with a bat was the only means of defense you had.
And
3. Whether hitting me with the bat was likely to stop me from hitting you back with the brick.

This assumes, of course, that your wanting to hit me with the bat would be because you wanted to defend yourself and stop the violence. If you wanted revenge, that would be another matter. Of course when the police came to cart us both off, you would most likely claim self-defense, even if you had really only wanted to knock the living daylights out of me, because as you correctly point out, defending yourself is legitimate, whereas seeking revenge is not. It's the difference between freedom and jail. So, if in court you could prove that I just randomly walked up to you and hit you with a brick, that I showed no responsiveness to reason, but only a diabolical need to strike you again, and that you had every reason to believe that a well placed blow to the temple would knock me out and end the violence, you would not be held responsible for the incident.

Now what if on cross examination, the following came out:

You and I had had a property dispute, at which time I attacked you and you took over my home by force. Many of my family members fled, and some of those who did not were forcibly expelled by you. You confiscated the property of these family members, did not compensate them for it, and refused to allow them to return. Those of us who stayed wound up living in the barn until you and I had another fight, which resulted in even more of my family members fleeing or being expelled, and the rest of us being exiled to the garden shed where we lived under your control. Conditions in the garden shed were crowded, and substandard; but parts it had potential, although this was compromised by the fact of the limited availability of beds and linens. Now it so happened that your house was getting overcrowded due to all the people who wanted to come and live with you. You therefore decided to encourage some of these people to settle the shed, where they forced many of my family members out of their beds - without compensating them - and siphoned off the best linens, leaving the dregs for us. When I decided to protest your continuing occupation of the shed by throwing rocks at you, you responded by shooting bullets at me. The situation continued for some time, but finally we decided to negotiate. I agreed to let you have the house and the barn, in return for the right to the shed and for the right of sovereignty over it. For this I acknowledged your right to be in the house, and you recognized my right to be in the shed.

Then almost a decade passed. You and I continued to negotiate, but somehow I never got the promised sovereignty over the shed, and somehow your forces within the shed failed to disappear, and the settlers kept coming, displacing more and more of my family members, and taking more and more linens, and my exiled family members never got to return. And you would do things too. Like use torture, or shoot us when we tried to cross the border between the shed and the house, or round us up, or even lure our children up to the border of certain sections of the shed by using racist taunts and then shoot them when they threw stones. If disputes broke out between us and the bed settlers you would take the settlers' side and assist them in engaging in bloody retaliations against us. You and I went to the negotiating table one more time, and once again you offered less than you had before, and this time I refused to accept. I staged a demonstration and you fired live ammunition into the crowd. Then one of your leaders, who would become your main leader, went to one of our holiest and most disputed sites, which he knew or at least should have known would be seen as an act of insult and provocation. And there you were standing in the doorway, and I saw you, and; I finally just "walked up and hit you with a brick," at which time you hit me with a bat, only your bat was much bigger than my brick, so where I knocked in your nose, you knocked in my skull. This only made me angrier and it made other people angry as well, so we kept hitting you with bricks, and you kept hitting us with bats. And when one of our neighbors, who had been hostile to you in the past, promised to recognize your legitimacy and normalize relations with you, if you would give us back the barn and end the fighting, we said we were willing to stop the violence and negotiate, but you said no. In fact, you said that the situation was all our fault and that we were hitting you with bricks simply because we hated you. You said this while giving lip service to our grievances, which somehow were not enough to give you any responsibility or role in ending the violence. Instead we were simply terrorists, reduced to the level of spoiled or willful children - negotiate with them now, and you'll teach them that acting this way is a way of getting what they want. And never mind that all during those years of negotiations, we didn't attack you, and that the current violence began at a concrete time and for concrete reasons. To you  we're morally repugnant scum, who may have grievances, but whose grievances don't dent your moral own superiority at all, and you hold up your own shining and free life in the manor house and on the estate as proof of your justness, and of our lack of it. And thus you sit back and pontificate about our taking responsibility, but you make no move to take it yourself. You say we could choose not to support terrorists. Well, that is true, but you could also choose not to support the things you support, and you could also acknowledge that our support of terrorists has a direct link to the things you support, and that stopping your support of such things would stop our support of terrorism. You could acknowledge all of that, but instead you paint yourself as "good" and us I suppose as "evil" and affirm your right to do nothing other than slaughter us with "precision" bats, which somehow kill parents, children, and foreign journalists, as well as the people you're supposedly aiming at.

And if I were on the jury, I would decide the following.

Gena is guilty of hitting Lee Ann with a brick, but Lee Ann is also guilty of hitting Gena with a bat. Both Gena and Lee Ann are wrong. Both Gena and Lee Ann could behave differently. Both Gena and Lee have the obligation to behave differently. Both Gena and Lee Ann have the obligation to take steps to stop the violence. And since this is a court of law, rather than an international incident, both Gena and Lee Ann are going to jail.

Left-wing radicals, peaceniks, and communists who agree with me about the Israelis and Palestinians. Oh, wait. It's the Bush Administration.

This story is why I have a dog exactly the size of a very large cat. Or maybe it's why I don't adopt white supremacist gang members and raise their dogs as my own. Or name the dogs "Bane" and "Hera" for that matter. Or testify in court that I am so very sorry that my dog ate my neighbor. Just random speculation, of course.

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Tuesday, March 12, 2002

In the interest of brevity and time, I'm just going to make a brief undefended statement of my position, and leave the actual argument for the day after tomorrow - after which time this side of the debate shall decamp.

I think what the Palestinians are doing is inexcusable. I also think the Israelis are responding to it with excessive force. And just as a side note. The point of the UN story about the school was that the police headquarters had been bombed into a shell, that there was no one inside it, and that there was no military purpose to be served by bombing it yet again. There was, however, a school right next to it, and there were children attending the school at the time the Israelis struck. According to the Amnesty story 300 Israelis have died, including 200 civilians and 50 children, and 1000 Palestinians have died, including 200 children - to see who those children are, I refer you to the Guardian story I cited earlier. I don't think the Palestinians are the "good guys" in this, but I don't think the Israelis are either, and I don't see what purpose apportioning such labels serves. And just for the record: I have defended the Palestinians and cited Israeli abuses because I was responding to what you said. Your position is that the Israelis are better, and I don't think that's true. In order to show that I have had to cite offenses by the Israelis, but that doesn't mean that I am glossing over the offenses of the Palestinians. If you ask my honest opinion, I think what has happened on both sides is reprehensible, but I also don't think that sitting back on one's heals in the comfort of one's living room and apportioning blame does a whole hell of a lot toward solving or even understanding the problem.

Leaving the violence aside, the Palestinians do have legitimate grievances, which it is the responsibility of the Israelis, as the occupying force, and thus as the holder of the cards, to address. The Israelis have done this, but they have also violated the terms of international treaties and of the agreements they signed with the Palestinians. There is a difference in reacting negatively to someone because you dislike them, and reacting that way because that person is doing concrete and harmful things to you. And that last statement is important, because at the moment the operative factor is that each side is responding to concrete and harmful things that have been done to it. However, as the bodies pile up the pendulum swings and concrete and harmful things get turned into abiding and irrational hatred. The situation then becomes a blood feud, in which each side really does want to destroy the other, and where no one is willing to negotiate. And this is bad, because neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis are going anywhere. And the truth is, that given the size of the population, the arability of the land, the fact that the entire country is the size of New Jersey, and that it is prima facie absurd to think that you can have a functioning state separated from itself by a hostile neighbor, the Israelis and Palestinians are going to have to learn to live together and that in the confines of the same state. In other words, they're stuck with each other, and for that reason who's worse, or who's more guilty is about as important as a flea on a dying dog. What is important is that the two groups find a way of living with each other - fairly, equitably, and non-violently - and that they be willing to do so. The longer the violence continues, the less likely that is to happen.

And that is something which is bad for us; for Israel has the possibility of becoming this century's Balkans - the place where World Wars start. The US is the country with the most influence over Israel and the one most likely to be able to steer it toward peace. It is incumbent upon the US to do that; just as it is incumbent upon the Arab countries to do the same with the Palestinians - in the interest of the Israelis, the Palestinians, and everybody else. And that isn't relativism; it's the hard-nosed acceptance of fact.

Yes, Lee Ann I did fail to address your argument in its entirety, and my post was scattered, for the simple reason I was - as the title implied - addressing the individual claims you made. I didn't take on your argument, or clarify my position because my computer had crashed yet again and by the time I had rewritten everything it was 6 o'clock in the morning, and contrary to popular perception I am not a member of the X-Men, endowed with superhuman powers obviating the need for sleep. However, I am going to take on your argument, though this is made difficult by the fact that I don't really understand it, or more precisely I don't understand the ultimate conclusion you wish to draw. I don't want to strawman you, so I'm going to outline your premises, and give you the option of correcting me, if I am wrong. If you don't correct me, I'll address your argument tomorrow night.

Your central claims:

P1: The Palestinians are terrorists who target civilians.
P2: The Israelis are members of a functioning democracy, who only accidentally kill civilians.
C1: The Israelis are better than the Palestinians.

That this is your position seems relatively clear to me. What is really unclear to me is how you wish to relate this to the larger conflict. Based upon what you have written, the argument would seem to go something like the following:

P1: The Israelis are better than the Palestinians.
P2: The Palestinians have grievances against the Israelis.
C2: The grievances of the Palestinians don't matter.

P1: The grievances of the Palestinians don't matter.
P2: The Israelis have been attacked.
C3: The Israelis bear no responsibility for the fighting.

P1: The Israelis bear no responsibility for the fighting.
P2: The Israelis are defending themselves by using force.
P3: The Palestinians don't want to end the fighting.
P4: The Palestinians want to eliminate Israel.
P5: Israel is fighting for its existence
C3: Israel is entitled to use whatever force it wants.

P1: If some signatories of a treaty are violating it, other signatories may also violate it.
P2: If some people commit human rights abuses, other people are also entitled to commit them.
P3: Some signatories of the Geneva Convention have violated it.
P4: Some Arab states have committed human rights abuses.
C4: The Israelis may also violate the Geneva Convention and commit human rights abuses.

P1: The Israelis are better than the Palestinians.
P2: The grievances of the Palestinians don't matter.
P3: The Israelis bear no responsibility for the fighting.
P4: Israel is entitled to use whatever force it wants.
P5: The Israelis may violate the Geneva Convention and commit human rghts abuses.
Conclusion: ???????????

And it is here that I am absolutely at a loss; for there are several onclusions you could draw from this, including but not limited to the rght of the Israelis to liquidate the Palestinians. I don't think that's what you mean, but it's very unclear to me what exactly you do mean. What is the final conclusion here? What are the Israelis entitled to do? How are the Palestinians supposed to live? And how should the conflict end? Without knowing that, I can't address your argument - at least not fairly. Please repost tomorrow and let me know.

But, hey, unfair! Writing something like "Oops, the WSJ and a Jewish newspaper. I hope Gena can recover from the bias." is a willful misunderstanding of my argument. I don't give a rat's ass what sort of newspaper the WSJ is. Every single writer on its staff could belong to the Brotherhood of Believers in Descent from Pluto for all I care. The point is that its editorial page is one of the most uniformly and identifiably conservative in the country, which means that it is made up of people who see the world a certain way and want to make damn certain that everyone else sees it that way too. And people who have an overt ideological agenda are not reliable because they tend to decide the facts on the basis of their opinions rather than deciding their opinions based on the facts, and they are furthermore oftentimes not above skewering or eliminating or even inventing facts in order to further their agenda. That is the reason I don't trust them. I don't trust them on the left; I don't trust them on the center; and I sure as hell don't trust them on the right. If I want to read about Oblonsky, I'll bloody well read Tolstoy. And that is also the reason I don't trust a study done by the director of the World Zionist Organization (in Jerusalem for God's sake, which last time I checked is one of the main points of dispute); the same as I wouldn't trust a study of Israeli textbooks done by the director of the Pan Arab Liberation League, especially when I can't read the books and check the facts on my own. C'mon Lee Ann. How likely are you to trust an economic study done by the Secretary of the Communist Party? How about about a study of "the male gaze"  by the Association of Differance Feminists? Or one about Birmingham textbooks done by the Black Separatist Front? Surely you would question whether the study existed as a neutral scientific exploration of the subject or as an overt propaganda tool to sell you an ideological position sweetened by the saccharine of science. And if you didn't? Well, that sort of naiveté isn't cute; it marches people off at tyrants'' heals.

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Monday, March 11, 2002

Paranoia. I used the computers in the UT library today and had no problem bringing Spinsters up. I think Instapundit is probably right: it was a DNS problem or some other system fluke. On the other hand, I do think filtering is something to be angry about, and when it happens at a publicly funded institution, it violates the First Amendment. I would explain why, but the Israelis and Palestinians have fried my brain for the evening (morning), and I'm retiring from the front.

The Israelis Are Here to Stay

I have no doubt they are. Nor do I think they shouldn't be.

There have been instances in the past where the Israelis have committed, funded, or been closely allied with organizations that have committed massacres and atrocities against the Palestinians.

Funny you should mention the Sabra and Shatilla Massacre. "Sharon authorized entry of what were presumed to be members of Gemayel's Lebanese Forces (a Phalangist milita) and Saad Haddad's South Lebanon Army into the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps...For the next 38 hours, aided by Israeli flares at night, the militiamen raped, tortured, mutilated and massacred civilians." Wow. Sharon. Now there's a name which sounds awfully familiar.

Yes, children have been killed on both sides, but the difference is that the Palestinians are aiming at the children and the Israelis are not.

Yes, well not aiming at the children might be the operative term. At 9 am on March 7, 2002 "an Israeli F16 dropped a large bomb on the Palestinian Police Headquarters compound in Gaza City. The bomb exploded within 200 metres of 3,100 refugee children, aged between six and 15 years old, who were attending three schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees...Mr Peter Hansen, UNRWA's Commissioner General said today: 'The police headquarters targeted today has been bombed five times already and is little more than an empty shell. It is difficult to fathom just what military or strategic purpose is being served by bombing it for a sixth time. What is clear is that by bombing a crowded city centre at 9am on a weekday morning the innocent children at our schools have been severely traumatised.'"

The Israelis are trying to end the violence and the Palestinians are devoted to increasing it.

And your source for this is a Wall Street Journal Op ed piece? Aren't you worried that there might not be just a tad bit of ideological bias there? Perhaps this doesn't bother you, but it certainly bothers me. This is why I don't post stuff from the Nation or Dissent or anything else that I think might have an agenda to push. And if the Israelis are trying to end the violence why have they repeatedly blocked and even shot at ambulances, entered refugee camps leaving large numbers of dead and injured persons, indiscriminately fired into civilian populations from helicopter gun ships, and systematically destroyed Palestinian towns and villages? This certainly doesn't seem like particularly peaceful or reconciliatory behavior. Nor does the statement in the Amnesty report you linked that: "The number of Palestinians killed since the beginning of the current intifada in September 2000 has now reached more than 1000. The great majority of those killed, who include more than 200 children, were killed unlawfully when no lives were in danger." Perhaps you and I simply disagree as to what the term "end the violence" actually means. Your WSJ editorialist seems to think it means "ratchet up the damage until the Palestinians are ready for real negotiations." To me this is a strategy for increasing the violence - as Palestinian reprisals and the hardening of views on both sides seem to demonstrate, - unless of course Mr. WSJ means "ratchet up the damage" to the point where the Palestinians cease to exist. This would certainly be a final solution to the problem.

The Palestinians refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

And the proof of this is a study of Palestinian text books which was authored by "the director and chief editor of the World Zionist Organization publishing house in Jerusalem?" Don't you remember Oslo: "On 10 September 1993, Israel and the PLO exchanged letters of mutual recognition. The PLO recognized Israel's right to exist." I don't dispute that some Palestinians refuse to accept facts, but officially the Palestinians have recognized Israel, and they haven't withdrawn that recognition either.

In the same way, the human rights failings of Israel serve to highlight that they are the good guys

I won't even attempt to understand the logic behind that statement. Presumably it is obvious to someone.

we expect better of them than of the PA.

Yes, because Israel is a well organized functioning state which is therefore responsible for its conduct, and for the conduct of its military and intelligence services, and which happens to be a party to the Geneva Conventions.

It has still treated the Palestinians better than the Arab nations have.

Which is wholly irrelevant. Someone else's bad conduct is no excuse for your own.

I used to equate the Palestinians and Israelis too, but that was in high school.

I don't understand what you mean by "equate." Are you saying the Palestinians have no grievances? You admit that "Israel has got problems up the wazoo." Does saying that both sides bear responsibility for the situation, equate them? And if it is equating them, I fail to see why this is a horrible, awful, radical position.

Lee Ann, since I don't think what you've written on the Palestinian/ Israeli conflict has much to do with what I actually think about it, I'm going to split my response into a discussion of your argument and a clarification and defense of my own evidently poorly expressed position. First up: Individual claims.

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Sunday, March 10, 2002

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Saturday, March 09, 2002

You know all those nice things I said about the University of Tennessee, well I may just have to take them back. I was in the University library today, and a curious thing happened when I tried to bring up Spinsters - nothing. I could load Yahoo, Google, the Washington Post, the NY Times, even 2600, but not Spinsters and not Instapundit, Quasipundit, War Liberal, or any other site with "blogspot" in the URL. Coincidence? Or filtering?For the University's sake, it better be coincidence, because if it's filtering, it's political censorship by a publicly funded institution and therefore a violation of the First Amendment. Something makes me think this isn't limited to UT, which really makes me think that someone should sue - but not UT because it's too poor and basically friendly.

I'm not going to wade in on the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict tonight - too tired. Plus the complexity of the issue demands a trip outside the net and into the library. Yes, the big guns are coming out. Fortify now or forever hold your peace. And while you're heating the hot oil, and digging the trenches, you might want to look at the State Department's Human Rights Report on Israel. Not to mention. Since you cited the Guardian, here's a catalog of children killed in the conflict. Maybe I'm dyslexic, but it sure looks to me like civilians are being killed on both sides.

This is ridiculous and it makes me mad. It is perfectly reasonable for Sharon to demand that the Palestinians make a serious effort to stop the violence, but it is a trifle hypocritical to say that while doing this. Both sides should stop the killing. The Arab states seem to be leaning on the Palestinians to do that and the US should positively sit on the Israelis. Sharon is Andrew Jackson in the Middle East and we need to make it quite clear that now is not the century to be playing Kill the Indians.

As a bibliophile and former Russian major I don't know whether to be sad or angry about this. Probably both. Haven't these people heard of E-Bay? You could auction the books for God's sake. Don't incinerate them. This is what happens when capitalism meets Karl Marx - historically inevitable stupidity.

Lee Ann, I thought your response to my defense of Peter Singer quite good, but I didn't understand your last paragraph at all. Why is "Anglo American philosophy" a "racialist" term? Is it that you object to British and American philosophy being lumped together? Despite their differences, I do think this a standard practice, and I don't understand how it involves race. Granted it defines philosophy along national lines, but I don't think you can say that there is at the moment, at least, one world philosophy, or more precisely one philosophical school which is dominant the world over. And why is it racialist to assert that British/ American philosophy is distinct from say Continental philosophy? Perhaps, you mean that the term "Anglo American philosophy" ignores the presence of Continental philosophy within the American academy and in a filtered down version in American society. This is a valid criticism, but I still don't understand how it involves race. Are the French now a race? The Brits?   Maybe I just don't understand race or how people think about it. In my quest for enlightenment I've been reading Lingua Franca.

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Friday, March 08, 2002

Buy your tickets and reserve your copy now; for we're about to get a book and film on our president's sophisticated and urbane sense of humor.

Given all that's going on in the world at the moment, there are probably more important things to be talking about than Peter Singer. However. Yes, Singer is a utilitarian, and yes, anyone who read my post on women in the military can probably figure out that I am not one. The temptation of utilitarianism is that it looks like an objective way to answer questions which are almost impossible to answer - for instance why should we be good, and how do you define good in the first place? Well, most people would rather be happy than sad, and if you equate happiness with goodness, then you place goodness in the sphere of interest of most people. Thus, being good is not only in the interest of most people, it is the interest of most people, and if not everybody can be happy, then the next best thing is for as many people as possible to be happy; and doing good is essentially giving the people what they want. You see variations of this thinking all over the place. Consider for example the people who criticize the courts and the use that is made of them for being "undemocratic." The argument here is essentially that if the majority wants something, it must by definition right, even if it squashes the minority. This is fine unless you happen to be one of the minority getting squashed. And although there are numerous other objections one could raise to utilitarianism, this is the first and most important place where we part ways; for I'm not so sure that any good no matter how great is worth the expedient sacrifice of any one person, and I certainly object most strenuously to the fang and cloak "utilitarianism" expounded by Alan Dershowitz and others. Any moral system which leaves anyone dashed upon the rocks is suspect, and I certainly think that we can do better than one which when it comes right down to brass tacks is essentially predicated upon interest.

To read philosophy is usually to be horrified, and that for the simple reason that once you really start to examine things, you automatically fall down the rabbit hole. Prove for example that you are not a brain in a vat, or a simulation in a very sophisticated virtual reality machine. To my knowledge no one has been able to absolutely convincingly knock skepticism aside, and if you can't even rationally prove to yourself the existence of a world you literally trip over, how much harder is it to answer questions such as: Is life sacred? If so, why? And  whose life are we talking about anyway? Singer's answer to those questions is more complicated than this, but it is essentially that life is sacred when it is conscious and can form the desire to go on living. By this definition the lives of Lee Ann, Dante, and a senile grandmother would all be sacred, since Lee Ann, Dante, and a senile grandmother all have some awareness of self and all have the desire not to see that self terminated. The good thing about this, in my opinion, is that it does give moral standing to Dante, someone who would almost certainly be excluded by other ethical systems, and it does claim that Dante's existence is important, and should enter into the sphere of our concern. Giving animals equivalent moral standing with humans doesn't sit well with a lot of people, especially those like your National Review columnist who want to believe that humans are something special. To me, however, "special" usually means someone's head being justifiably lopped off, and for that reason, I'm all for kicking "special" out of the vocabulary - white folks are special, Germans are special, gentiles are special, men are special, humans are special, and somebody screams. There is a trap here, of course, and being a philosopher, and an analytic philosopher at that, and thus an avatar of logical consistency, Singer falls into it. If you define moral standing on the basis of consciousness, then it follows that things which are not conscious have no moral standing. Thus, a fetus has no moral standing, and neither does a baby, unless of course you can prove that the baby is conscious. You can modify this to say that moral standing should be extended to things which are or may become conscious, in which case both the baby and the fetus have standing. In other words, you wind up faced with the choice of saying either that abortion is wrong or infanticide is right, neither of which appeals to me, but one of which appeals to Singer more than the other.

Singer does have some freaky, freaky ideas - bestiality being one, infanticide, and euthanasia being two others - although I do question whether Singer supports "involuntary" euthanasia as you claim, but here I must plead ignorance, not having read his writings on the subject. On the other hand, Singer has some very good ideas as well - extending moral standing to animals, for instance, or enlarging our ethical obligation to include distant people and the poor. If nothing else, Singer is important for having turned Anglo American moral philosophy away from the analysis of "moral language" and to the realm of actual ethical dilemmas and moral choices. And finally given the choice of living in a world consistent with the principles of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Nietzsche, Marx, or Singer, I would hands down choose Singer; for although there would be beasts and monsters in it too, there would be substantially fewer than in choices A-E, and they would be substantially less likely to bite me.

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Thursday, March 07, 2002

I read Peter Singer's Animal Liberation when I was in seventh grade, and for that reason it is still hard for me to believe that the author of that book is one of the most famous and controversial philosophers in the world. One of Singer's most famous examples is that of the person who walks past a drowning child. Singer argues that how far away the child is should have no bearing on the moral accountability of the person who walks past it, as long as it is still within the person's power to save it. This seems so obvious to Singer that he doesn't spend much time arguing the point, the example being meant to serve another purpose in the article. And yet, the farther things are from us the more abstract they become, and our culpability seems less, although our actions and their consequences remain the same. Distance is one of the reasons for our tolerance of evil in the world, and our cultivation of it begins at the dinner table. We don't see the deaths of the animals who appear on our plates, we who could never kill them ourselves. We make use of them for our own ends, without ever questioning those ends or looking at the lives they have destroyed. I am guilty of this too, of living every day of my life in a shining emporium of gleaming products and forgotten death. And for that reason I have always felt an admiration for people who try to shock us out of our happy stupor and into seeing the real relations which form the contentment of our lives. In that sense I think PETA does good work, and although it may not provide direct asylum to abused animals, it certainly does seek to force us to recognize the thinking and actions which lead to their abuse. I question whether the ALF is in fact a "terrorist" organization, but would have to know more about its activities before I could argue the point - although it does seem strange to me that the members of this dangerous organization don't seem to be under arrest or indictment. Be that as it may, accusing PETA of funneling money to it, is not enough. One must have conclusive proof, and until one has such proof, PETA should be judged on its own merits, merits which I think support its claim to being a charity.

You know, I'm pretty tolerant of other people's ideas, but there are limits. I've often asked myself where exactly those limits lie, where an idea stops being an abstract subject for debate, and becomes a personal repudiation of the character of the person uttering it. Alan Dershowitz has just come to my rescue. For months now I've being seeing random quotes floating around the internet and other places expressing Mr. Dershowitz's support for torture, and for months I've been looking for the article in which Dershowitz says this. Thanks to Robert Musil - hey, look, intertextuality - I've finally found it, and on the basis of the article I've developed my own unacceptable idea test. Ideas make the people who have them morally reprehensible when they:
1. Advocate the bodily harm or extreme degradation of others.
2. Militate for their direct implementation in the physical world.
3. Are argued by a person influential enough to spread them to other people.
4. Are argued by someone in a position to cause their implementation.
Mr. Dershowitz advocates driving sterile needles under people's finger nails. He advocates making this a matter of legal practice. He is an influential scholar, and his ideas have been quoted and/ or published by major magazines and newspapers, such as the Atlantic Monthly and the San Francisco Chronicle. Mr. Dershowitz is a practicing and influential member of the legal profession, someone whose advocacy and skill might well provide the impetus and justification for the adoption of his ideas by the legal system. In other words, Mr. Dershowitz violates all four parts of what I shall henceforth call the Alan Dershowitz Reprehensible Idea test. Were Alan Dershowitz my father, I would never speak to him again.

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Wednesday, March 06, 2002

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Tuesday, March 05, 2002

1. Shumaker supports limiting enrollments and raising tuition in order to conserve resources, and purports not to understand the reasoning behind the university's relatively open admissions. One of the things which makes the university community so interesting, however, is its intellectual, social, and economic diversity. UT students are rich, poor, and middle class, some are high school valedictorians, and some are losers with 2.0 GPAs. And sometimes the best students at the university are those self-same high school losers, bright people who discover a community and an interest, and therefore a desire to utilize their gifts and to excel. There is a humanity in that, in the recognition that the past is no determinate of the future, and that people may grow and change, that given the right environment they may become more than what they were before. And there is a generosity in extending to everyone the opportunity to learn, in letting them succeed or fail, not because they have been preselected to do so, but because they have been given the chance.

More importantly, however, the policy of open admissions gives the university a moral authority that other universities lack, namely the authority of being foremost and truly about learning, not about the creation or perpetuation of a social class or elite. Students who graduate from UT may enjoy more opportunities than those who do not go to college. Superior students may have more options than inferior ones. And yet, the educational opportunities these students have enjoyed are those available to all people of the state, and that is important; for failing at something on your own merits is different from having been denied the chance, and earning your place in society is different from having it artificially conferred upon you. What you make of the educational opportunities given to you is a matter of personal responsibility, but once a university starts selecting who may receive those opportunities and who may not, it becomes about something other than chemistry and Kant.

2. Shumaker expressed a willingness to cut programs, although what he said about "core academic values" and the inclusion of faculty and students in the selection process did allay some people's fears. On the other hand, one wonders exactly what that means. I'm not a particularly big fan of engineering, for instance. I think it's mechanistic, rigid, boring, and I don't understand it. So if someone told me that no one wanted to take nuclear engineering, that other universities in the state had better programs, better faculty and better students, I'd probably think it was just fine to give the nuclear engineering program the ax. And I'd probably overlook the fact that the faculty and students of the program were screaming bloody murder. Value, quality, and relevance are relative terms; judgments based upon them engage the subjective values and interests of the people making them, and being explained the reasons for your execution doesn't change the fact that your head is about to be cut off.

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Monday, March 04, 2002

"Circumcision makes women clean, promotes virginity and chastity and guards young girls from sexual frustration by deadening their sexual appetite."
Mrs Njeri, a defender of female genital mutilation in Kenya

"I understand Muslim women’s sensitivity regarding the recent fatwas (allowing Muslim women to stop wearing the veil) or the question on Oprah’s show. They feel this is who they are and they are not about to quit when the going gets tough. They perhaps even feel somewhat betrayed by such fatwas, since wearing the Hijab (veil) has not always been easy anyway in a society which has equated it with gender oppression and fanaticism."
Afra Jalabi

Women never oppress themselves or consent to their oppression. This explains why so many Muslim women veil themselves without the benefit of the religious police and why the genital mutilation of female children is both carried out and defended by their female relatives. And of course it demolishes my entire thesis as to why people consent to their own oppression, since - as the above quotes make clear - this never happens

I should clarify one thing. The quote by Afra Jalabi is part of a very interesting article on Muslim women and the role of the veil after Sept. 11, and is something that should be read, along with the rest of the site. My use of the quote is simply meant to show that a seemingly large number of Muslim women wear the veil voluntarily, and moreover that these same women reacted negatively when the Imams published fatwas in "Al Majalah magazine a couple of weeks ago-- allowing women to remove their scarves in the wake of recent events."

I do wonder though if  you wouldn't get yourself into a great deal of trouble trying to believe all at once that the veil is an example of Muslim women's oppression, that Muslim women continue to wear the veil even when they have the option of not doing so, and  that "Muslim women are oppressed because they have no other option." Of course, this may simply be a product of all the things rattling about in my head.

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Sunday, March 03, 2002

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Saturday, March 02, 2002

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Friday, March 01, 2002

In regard Flanagan's article:

I don't dispute that Flanagan is writing about clutter, books about clutter, and the "anti-clutter movement" - yes, even two years of  Kuzniar, Downing, and crew couldn't destroy my reading ability to that extent and I would even concede that Flanagan is against the materialism this clutter implies. On the other hand, I don't think as far as Flanagan's thesis goes "because there is too much materialism" comes after "there is too much clutter." Materialism is for Flanagan rather like a bullet hole in a dead body - a nasty effect of an undesirable cause. And the undesirable cause in this case is feminism.

As to which social class Flanagan is writing about, a fast perusal of the article reveals the following: "The "Eastern art" of feng shui is practiced in thousands of upscale, with-it households," the whole miserable mess that is American family life as it is lived at a certain economic level," "De-cluttering a household is a task that appeals strongly to today's professional-class woman," "current upper-middle-class practice," "so many affluent American households," "Many Americans of substantial means." Nowhere does Flanagan mention the middle class - if you can find where she does, I'll send George Bush a love letter. "Rich," "affluent," "professional-class," "up-scale," and "upper-middle class," may mean different things to different people, but one thing they do mean to everyone is: large amount of disposable income.

Flanagan does not talk specifically about servants. That I grant you. On the other hand she does say: "The current upper-middle class practice of outsourcing even the most intimate tasks may free up valuable time for an important deposition, but it by no means raises the caliber of one's home life." We may disagree about what exactly a servant is. To me a person hired to delouse your children, clean your toilet bowl, or organize your closet is a servant. Whether this is true or not, such a person is certainly performing tasks people living at a "certain economic level" have always "outsourced" to others, others who were once commonly known as servants. Flanagan's contention at least seems to be not only that this practice "by no means raises the caliber of one's home life," but that it is a new phenomenon. And she has to say it's a new phenomenon, since if it weren't a new phenomenon she couldn't chalk it up along with the trash heap of discarded cappuccino makers to the evils of feminism. And the reason she couldn't chalk it up to the evils of feminism is the obvious one: people "outsourced" domestic duties long before feminism was ever an intimation. It is also I would imagine one reason she fails to mention the middle class. Flanagan's rant about "outsourcing" domestic duties might seem irrelevant to an article about clutter. For Flanagan however outsourcing and clutter are linked, for they both indicate a general abdication of domestic responsibilities. Yet, bringing the middle class into it would de-link them fast, since most middle class people - depending on how you define middle class of course - either don't have the income or aren't willing to spend it on hiring someone to do their housework, and as you said "people with servants don’t buy housekeeping manuals."

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Thursday, February 28, 2002

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Wednesday, February 27, 2002

Way back when in the good old days, according to Flanagan, before feminism sent everything to hell in a hand basket "affluent" women did all the housework themselves and scrubbing the toilet bowl was not "a bit of  nastiness that" could "be fobbed off on poor and luckless enough to qualify for no better employment." To anyone who has ever seen a movie, this must come as a shock; for it is a commonly held belief, one played out by Hollywood, that rich people have always had servants. In fact, both my mother's parents grew up in homes where dinner was the province of the cook, and cleaning that of the maid. My mom was raised without the advantage of a cook, but there was still a maid. By the time I came along, there was neither a cook nor a maid, and the explanation for that is the obvious one - we weren't rich anymore.

Can this really come as a surprise to Flanagan? Can she really believe rich people farming out housework is a new phenomenon or a result of feminism? Or has she created a fictitious past and set of social relations in order to stack the deck in her favor and in the hope that people will be too stupid to see through her. Disingenuous or simply dumb, Flanagan is in any case someone whose writing skates along an incline. She says that housework is something women "are more willing to do," and that despite feminists' belief "that liberated, right-on men will gladly share equally in domestic concerns," the "legions of eligible men who enjoy nothing more than an industrious morning spent tidying the living room and laundering the dust ruffle have yet to materialize." In other words, for a woman to do housework, she must be "willing" to do it. Not so with men. A man must "gladly share in domestic concerns." In fact, he must "enjoy" housework. Housework for men is characterized not as a necessity or an obligation, or even as a matter of choice. For a man, housework is a preference; it is something he does gladly, something he actively enjoys. A man who does not enjoy housework is a man who cannot be expected to do housework. Since most men do not enjoy housework, most men cannot be expected to do housework; and thus the likely candidate for the job becomes the woman, the question of whose pleasure is irrelevant. She must only be willing.

Reading Flanagan's article, I thought of my car, of the books, papers, and old coats strewn across the back seat, of the unemptied drinks crammed into the cup holder, of the half eaten ham sandwich moldering on the floor atop the containers of takeout pasta from Fazoli's, beside my horse's carrots, my muddy shoes, and Dante's fluorescent pink leash. I'm a woman; I'm a pig; and in direct contravention of Flanagan's thesis I am not willing to clean.

What would induce me to change my mind? The suggestion that the man I love should be "someone who cares deeply and principally about that home and the people who live in it" would do it. Indeed, nothing would make me lunge for the broom closet faster than that. Why? Because our thoughts and our mental lives are to a large extent taken up with the things we are engaged in. A man whose days revolved around cleaning, laundering, cooking, changing diapers, and playing chauffeur would find not only his time, but also his thoughts occupied by those things. The question of how to get the pot roast on in time for dinner when the kids had to be at the soccer game at 8 would take precedence over Kant, and the home and the logistics of family life would gradually become not only the focus of his life, and the thing about which he knew most, but the thing he principally cared about. I would think of the man I once knew; an active, passionate, and engaged person, someone who cared about literature, music, ideas, and the world; someone with a sense of humor, of mischief, and of fun. I would miss that person. More than that I would feel a profound sense of guilt for having destroyed something so beautiful; for having reduced a person so fine to the barest version of himself. To avoid that I would gladly submit to a bit of clutter or even full-scale domestic disorder, and I would certainly pick up a broom and help. So much contemporary "feminism" makes me angry because it forgets or makes trivial something which is not: that individuals should be free to determine their lives, and that forcing people into categories and pre-ordained roles is an act of violence against the individual in that it restricts how s/he may think, act, and live. And it forgets that the greatest love and the greatest gift is the invitation to share someone else's life, to inhabit the complexity and the beauty that is someone else's world. We forget that at our own peril and at the peril of those we love. It is an argument which needs to be made.

All of which is to say: Bite me Caitlin Flanagan and the Atlantic Monthly. You suck!

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Tuesday, February 26, 2002

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Monday, February 25, 2002

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Sunday, February 24, 2002

Your best outraged limerick on any subject which reduces you to bug-eyed incoherent rage and inevitably leads to an attack of verse

Or

Your best hyperbolic haiku about the great Administration/ Congress document heist

Entries should be received by Thursday of next week, and should be sent as text - no attachments, please - to:
brodskii@hotmail.com . Winners will be published in Saturday's Spinsters.

"Along the way, betas may evolve into the third type of girl, a girl who rules based not on what she appears to be but on what she does. This girl isn't easily labeled because her role is changing as women's roles change. We'll call her a gamma...

Gammas start coming into their own in high school, and one of the first things they learn is that it's not easy to cultivate leadership and stay agreeable."

The Land of Neither Here Nor There is never hard to find. You can recognize it by the polish of the inhabitants and the confusion of the poor, benighted, country bumpkins who somehow end up there through a wrong click of the mouse and stand staring like startled owls at the rows of adolescent girls - their tee-shirts pulled tight over their corsets and tucked into the poodle skirts they wear over their jeans - neatly arrayed throughout haze.

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Saturday, February 23, 2002

"As a dog, I am shocked and horrified by the story of the Florida woman who after a fight with her boyfriend kidnapped his 12 year old German Shepherd, whom she then proceeded to have euthanized. I don't claim to be a St. Bernard; I'm far too small for that; however, I do hold firmly to the belief that the infliction of equal or superior damage upon those who harm you is ethically unjustifiable, and more than that that it leads far too often to the death or destruction of innocents - in this case the dog. And the willingness to sacrifice someone else's life in the service of your own agenda is something I find quite frankly appalling. A professor once insisted to Gena that the solution to the problems of the world would be for women to run it - since women, all women, were innately peaceful, loving, and good. I'd say, however, that the solution to the problems of the world would be for it to be run by people, men and women, who saw themselves and those around them as individuals with their own intrinsic and irreplaceable value, and who did not see others as pieces on a chessboard to be advanced or eliminated in the service of the advancement of their side of the game." -- Dante
(Lewis, not the other one)

I'd only add that Ms.Terrilynn Ellsworth-Wooten is an evil little slime who deserved much more than probation and community service. That court should have kicked her ass.

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Friday, February 22, 2002

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Thursday, February 21, 2002

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Wednesday, February 20, 2002

"When a romantic or sexual relationship exists, both parties involved may be subject to disciplinary action. Both parties are equally responsible for reporting the existence of the relationship to the appropriate supervisor at the beginning of the relationship... Once the university administration learns of a romantic or sexual relationship, whether through self-reporting or otherwise, it will take immediate steps to eliminate the power or authority of the one individual over the other."

Ok, so the supposedly powerless student in the presumably exploitative relationship is subject to disciplinary action for being involved in the relationship outlawed for her protection. This makes a whole lot of sense to me. Guess I'm just not theoretically sophisticated enough to appreciate the nuances of this fine example of my empowerment. How sad that all those years of grad school didn't learn me a thing. Damn.

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Tuesday, February 19, 2002

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Monday, February 18, 2002

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Sunday, February 17, 2002

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