Archive for November 7, 2008

Carnival of the Liberals – Lay Science Edition

LayScience.net is back! What’s Lay Science, you ask? Well, it’s actually called The Lay Scientist, and it’s one of the more intelligent science-geared blogs on the internet. Go to Pharyngula for your fire-and-brimstone atheist-geared science; go to TLS for in-depth, intelligent discussion. Anyways, TLS has the first post-election Carnival of the Liberals, including the host’s meditation on the election. Don’t miss it.

Worry About RFK

PalMD of Denialism Blog is one of the most respected science bloggers on the internet, and a friend of mine. So when he raises the alarm about the potential of putting Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (a vaccine denialist) on the Obama Cabinet, I join his concern. The Daily Kos has decided to remain agnostic to the issue – for now – but this is improper. We need to take a stand. The Bush administration decimated science in America. Putting a vaccine denialist on the cabinet would halt the rebuilding effort. President-Elect Obama – please, for the good of American science, take a pass on RFK.

Apples and Oranges: Polygamy and Gay Marriage

Yesterday, Ames’ post on passage of California’s Prop. 8 generated discussion of polygamy as an equivalent to gay marriage when considering alternative unions. It isn’t. In the secular sense, marriage is a contractual agreement, recognized by the state, between two (consenting) adults wherein the parties agree to satisfy specific legal obligations to one another that are implicit until divorce or death makes them explicit. Those legal obligations are based on ideals of equity and, in many instances, equality. Arguably, there is no clear way (and maybe no way at all) to adjudicate equitable or equal distribution of property or obligation in any polygamous union.

Speaking to equality, in a case of polygyny (one husband, multiple wives), the husband has a 50% stake in the arrangement he makes with each wife, but each wife cannot have the same stake in her husband. As the number of wives increases, each woman’s stake diminishes proportionally. A wife’s interests in a polygynous union simply cannot be equal to that of her husband. This is true, too, if we consider next-of-kin responsibilities: There has to be a pecking order among wives as only one can be named the agent in living wills or advanced-health-care directives. Necessarily, one wife’s power outweighs that of the others.

Similar difficulties in assigning equity also exist. How is the state to insure each wife’s standard of living in the event of divorce? Islam allows a man to take four wives, but the message is clear: If that man cannot afford four wives, he does not need four wives. If one wife were to leave a polygynous union, how — under a system of equitable distribution — is she to adequately protect her interest? How is the state supposed to assign value to her contribution to the union, and how is the husband’s contribution to the entire arrangement supposed to support both the exiting wife and those who remain? (I’m not even going to touch the issue of child custody and support.)

These issues do not arise in the instance of gay marriage. The only difficulty in gay marriage remains American society’s distaste for homosexuality.

I won’t deny that polygamous unions have been very important to the development of civilization and continue to be in remaining agrarian societies. Polygamous (again, usually polygynous) unions through time promoted cohesion among extended families (i.e., when brothers absorbed widowed sisters-in-law and their children). Polygyny was an instrument to measure power and wealth, thereby acting to maintain social hierarchies among men. Economic development, though, necessarily reduces the benefits and affordability of polygynous unions. Further, in industrialized and, certainly, post-industrial societies, the acknowledgment of the individual and property rights of women makes polygyny impossible to adjudicate in the same way as monogamous unions.

Finally, while I am sure in the U.S. there are plenty of instances — that fly under the radar — where men and women live peacefully and lovingly in polygamous (both polyandrous and polygynous) arrangements, there are very dramatic and disturbing modern examples of polygyny in the U.S. wherein incest, statutory rape, coercion, forced marriage, and other abuses run rampant. The propensity for criminal behavior and abuse should give pause to any effort to equate polygamy with gay marriage as just another alternative union.

Eliot Spitzer Gets a Pass

Eliot Spitzer won’t face federal charges stemming from his proclivity for dalliances with prostitutes. The investigation looked into whether he improperly used public or campaign funds to pay for his play. The IRS and FBI are still investigating the larger issues of tax evasion and, well … prostitution. Spitzer, as governor of the second-largest blue state could have been a big boil on the butt of the Democratic Party in this election year. The fact that he quickly got the hell outta Dodge mitigates any cynicism I might have over his avoiding trial or jail time through this whole thing. Good riddance Emperor Spitzer.

The Republican Defeat Narrative: Throwing John McCain Under the Bus

We all knew it was coming. Two days ago America drummed out the Republican Party for being too conservative, too uniformly unilateral, and too divisive, and, while party elites debate their next moves (hint: stay away from Sarah), the lesser of the Republican pundits are already blaming McCain, not for his fractured and divisive campaign style, but for leading the party back to center.

Per the inimitable Ann Coulter:

Republicans lost this presidential election, and I don’t blame the messenger; I blame the message. How could Republicans go after B. Hussein Obama (as he is now known) on planning to bankrupt the coal companies when McCain supports the exact same cap and trade policies and earnestly believes in global warming? [...]

How could we go after Obama for Jeremiah Wright when McCain denounced any Republicans who did so? How could we go after Obama for planning to hike taxes on the “rich,” when McCain was the only Republican to vote against both of Bush’s tax cuts on the grounds that they were tax cuts for the rich? And why should Republican activists slave away working for McCain when he has personally, viciously attacked: John O’Neill and the Swift Boat Veterans, National Right to Life director Doug Johnson, evangelical pastors Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and John Hagee, various conservative talk radio hosts, the Tennessee Republican Party and on and on and on?

And per RedState, the conservatives’ attempt at harnessing the tubes a la Kos:

Y’all can guess what I think of David Frum’s suggestion that the only way for the GOP to remain competitive is to “change” on “abortion” and be “less overtly religious . . . and less polarizing on social issues [translation: staying true to prolife principles].”

Let me make something clear to Frum and his D.C./NYC Rockefeller Republican wine-sipping elitist buddies: The GOP is doomed without social conservatives. We didn’t lose this election because the GOP is too socially conservative. We lost it because, inter alia, we selected a wishy-washy moderate Republican to be our standard bearer.

I look forward to intelligent conservatives weighing in on this topic (you promised, Mike!). And while I plan to withhold a full commentary on the future of the Republican Party until a serious, thoughtful mind sets pen to paper, RS & Coulter deserve this simple reply: the American people are not as conservative as you think, nor are they particularly willing to play the culture war fiddle while democracy burns. As Bush and Rove proved, campaigning on culture war issues alone is enough to get you into office for one term – but then you have the option of enacting the far right agenda’s agenda while sqandering America’s patience with partisanship, but potentially securing re-election, or playing it up the middle and going down in flames in four years. Neither option is tenable. An enduring lesson of the Bush years is – or should be – that selling oneself entirely to social conservatives is the political equivalent of giving in to the Dark Side: it’s a corrupting path to quick power, no enduring relevance, and near-universal disdain. The Founders did not design the Oval Office as a pulpit.

Thus, if the Republican Party wishes to remain a meaningful voice in American politics it should return to first principles and work its way back up: that means re-identifying with small government, in both the balanced-budget and, to a certain extent, the social libertarian sense (gasp). While the Republican Party need not forfeit all of its socially conservative stances – indeed, that would (1) amount to political suicide, and (2) leave a dangerous power vacuum – its platform remains right of America on several key issues.  Stem cell research, a moderate right to choose, and (limited) civil rights for gay Americans are rapidly on their way to becoming valence issues. Despite the principled, respectable nature of her stance on the subject, Sarah Palin’s approach to abortion is no longer politically feasible. Nor is her style of campaigning – at least, it isn’t as long as Americans remember what happened last time. Provided the Democratic leadership attempts to solidify a consensus around these points – as seems likely – America will see a new Hegelian “baseline synthesis” emerge from the Bush years. The Republican Party would do well to get back in the game by recognizing the changed playing field and framing a new thesis, rather than trying to refight the old battles.

John McCain knew this. The Republican Party didn’t. Look how that turned out.

Icons by Thomas Fuchs.

$500 for Palin’s Concession Speech

According to The New York Times, Sarah Palin met John McCain on the night of November 4th with her own concession speech, to deliver before John McCain’s. Fox even announced it! I want that speech, and if there’s anyone out there with access to it, I’ll pay $500 for a copy released exclusivley to me (e-mail republic dot restored at gmail dot com) and sufficient proof of authenticity. Prior general release of the speech by the media functions to automatically revoke this offer. I’ll guarantee anonymity, but I will need confirmation of authenticity. Hey, I can dream!