Yes

A shorter post. Please read this.

The West at a crossroads

I'm sure everyone has been following the two news stories of America's problems with illegal aliens (and last week's massive demonstrations) and Europe's clashes with radical Islamists over the Danish cartoons, so I won't bother to repeat the details.
What I will do is share with you my concern about what position this is putting "the Western world" in over the following decades if we continue down our current path.
The miracle of America - in my mind, still the greatest experiment in history - is that anyone can come here and, in short order, become an American. Historically, this has happened in two broad ways: the legal pathway to citizenship and the embrace of a shared narrative that emphasizes liberty, representative government, and equality.
Now I am not so naive or ignorant to think we've always done this well. As a matter of fact, we've been downright horrible at certain times at our history. I know that and you know that. But we've had a shared narrative, so when our great leaders and advocates - MLK comes to mind - have called us to account, they've called us to account as Americans: "We're Americans, we should be better than this."
I can not overexaggerate my concern, then, upon seeing illegal aliens in Los Angeles advocating for their rights to enter this country as Mexicans. Some even went so far as to hold up signs implying they were reclaiming Mexican lands taken in 1848. Worse still, all of this was couched in the language of a threat. What effort are they going to make to become Americans, based on these protests? This is especially problematic in the Southwest of the country, where there is a contiguous border with the 'homeland.'
We've seen the results of this in Europe, haven't we? Large and growing ghettos of minorities, excluded from the native society, but in thrall to them for their economic subsistence via transfer payments. In short, an ample ground for extremism to develop, and indeed it has - the leaders of the 9-11 attacks resided in Europe.
To keep these disenfranchised groups 'under control,' the continental powers have been forced to make compromises or reconsider the values free speech and religious expression, as well as nearly bankrupt their countries with entitlements.
This is why I disagree with those who say we should shut down our country to all immigration and re-establish a parochial vision our country. We need to have a routine and legal form of immigration, and the emphasis must be on assimilation. Let this be our immigration reform.

Which hero are you?

In light of the recent find of Ajax's palace (link via Boudicca), I have some more inspired fun for the commenters: which Trojan war hero are you? Why? I'll comment right away to get it started.
Update: Gods and Goddesses allowed, if you so choose.

Idol-atry

Is there any pop musician better than Kelly Clarkson? The answer is no. I can't think of a bad KC song. I just can't. "Walk Away" is a mock-sendup of the Clash. Brilliant. Feel free to agree with me in the comments.

VAT's Enough

Bruce Bartlett at the New York Times has a very interesting article concerning our enormous deficit and how we might combat it. (user/pass=syntaxbad/optimate - The article requires the NY Times lame "Times Select" access, so I am temporarily providing my account info for your use - I will be changing my password again in a few days, for security reasons, so read/save the article while you have the chance) Surprisingly (considering his conservative demeanor) he suggests increased taxes as the solution to our budget woes.
His argument, in brief, is that all of the traditional target areas of spending cuts, viz. the military spending, Medicare, social security, pork, etc are either too small to make a difference, or extremely impractical to cut. As he sees it "every major deficit reduction effort of the last 25 years has relied mainly on higher revenues", be they from a booming economy or actual tax increases. By his reasoning, we need an increase in revenues of 10% of GDP per year over the next generation in order to keep the deficit from getting out of control.
According to the CBO, letting the Bush Tax Cuts expire in 2010 would only get us a little over 1% of GDP worth of increased revenues. We would have to nearly double both the corporate and income tax rates to attain the levels of revenue he claims we require. Clearly this is impossible and so Bartlett suggests the introduction of a Value Added Tax (VAT). VATs (also known as Consumption Taxes) are found in most of the rest of the industrialized world ranging from 5% in Japan to 25% in Sweden, although, to my knowledge, we have never had one here. As Bartlett puts it:
"The V.A.T. is a kind of sales tax embedded in the price of goods. A farmer who grows wheat, for example, pays, say, 10 percent on the sale. The miller buys the wheat (with the tax indicated on the invoice), makes flour, and when that is sold, he also pays 10 percent, but gets a credit for the taxes the farmer paid. The baker who makes bread from the flour also pays 10 percent when he sells to the food store, but gets credit for the taxes paid by the farmer and the miller. Since taxes must be paid in order to claim credits for the taxes embedded in the bread at earlier stages of production, the tax is largely self-enforcing."
Bartlett recokons that a 10% VAT in the US would net us about $500 billion a year, which should be sufficient to deal with the spiraling budget deficit in the coming years. The idea has some appeal to me, but obviously one must buy the argument that reductions in spending are only likely to go so far. What do you all think?

'08 Watch!

I know, I know. It keeps getting earlier... Well, anyway-

As the Optimates spread decently well across the ideological spectrum, inquiring minds want to know: Who would you most like to see win the race in '08? Who among the likely primary candidates? If the party opposing your own were to win, who would you hope to be the victor, and why?

Help Burma!

As you probably know by now, I often listen to talk radio on my afternoon commute. Usually I hear nothing very enlightening, just some rants about this or that.
This afternoon was quite the exception. I turned to a Christian broadcast station (90.5 FM "The Light," if you're in the greater North Country) and heard the most horrifying thing: Burmese Christians - persecuted by their nation's foul tyranny for decades - are being preventing from entering the U.S. because the Patriot Act would classify them as terrorists (to read more commentary on the details of this classification, click here).
In short, anyone who opposes the Burmese (Myanmarian? Eh?) dictatorship in any serious way risks being classified as a terrorist by the United States. Let me repeat that: anyone in-country who opposes a dictatorship that the U.S. itself distrusts may be classified as a terrorist by the U.S. and not allowed to enter our country!
I did some research for this blog post, and discovered that it's not just Christians who are being persecuted. Hardly a surprise, of course; tyrannies may begin by persecuting the weakest, but that's merely a means to power.
In the spirit of Prometheus's calls for action on Darfur, I urge you to take a look at the Free Burma Coalition for ways you can help. To help get the word out to the blogosphere, I'd ask everyone to e-mail links to this post and the links herein to everyone and every blog they know. Let's get this out in the mainstream media and let's get this ridiculous provision changed!

Update:As I said in comments below, here's a petition to allow refugee status to the Burmese nationals in question.

Update Update: Let me clarify my remarks about changing the Patriot Act. My intent is not to repeal the law, much of which has served us effectively in fighting terrorism, but rather to amend the definition of "material support"so that the U.S. isn't placed in the regrettable position of having to reject refugees because they stood against a repressive regime. Naturally this will take some hair-splitting work in defining "material support" and perhaps even "terrorist," but I just think it's a better alternative than lumping all anti-regime forces together and refusing them entry into the country. That's all.

Hypocrite alert

I was listening to Sean Hannity's radio show (I know, I know...) last Friday as he interviewed stand-up comic Larry the Cable Guy. Apparently LtCG loves America! As such a big America-lover, Hannity tip-toed around the crassness inherent in so much of LtCG's act. You should have heard Hannity giggle about how he would have to cover his son's ears and eyes during "the bad parts" of LtCG's movie. Tee-hee!
I know this shouldn't bother me, but consider me bothered. Funny is funny and crass is crass (and sometimes funny, too). It's not the case that when a "liberal" comic says something, it's immediately Vulgarity To Be Defeated, but when a "conservative" comic says the same thing, it's All-American Fun Times.

Martyrdom?

I've thus far refrained from posting or commenting on the matter of Abdur Rahman because his own status - insane or defiant - is unclear.
Assuming it is the latter, and Rahman is a genuine convert to Christianity, what can we make of this? A nation freed from Talibanic tyranny accepts shari'a punishments democratically is not the easiest thing to take.
The most interesting possibility for me is that Rahman knows exactly what he's doing and what's to become of him. That is, he has chosen to become a Christian martyr.

Get Better!

Our best wishes go out to fellow-blogger (and fiancee!) Boudicca, who's been under the weather this past week. I think everyone will agree with me that her posts are always thought-provoking! Get better!

Morality (?), Legislated

Well, the Holy War has begun.

My international profile is pretty low, and nobody seemed to care about Rumsfeld yanking Iceland's National Defense out from under them with next-to-no warning, so I'm back to domestic issues that I have a little more knowledge of - specifically the conservative war against sex and sexual rights.

Now, I have some history with this method of dealing with sexual issues - particularly with teens. When I was in High School (Bartlesville High School, in Bartlesville, OK) our principal, Dr. Boyles, made a forceful editorial choice on the school newspaper, The Fourth Estate, in order to block an article by one of my good friends, about a girl in the school with HIV, who was warning that the problem could affect even those in as seemingly an insular town as Bartlesville. To make myself clear, the girl in the article was anonymous (I was one of the reporters closest friends and I still have no clue as to who it was) and the article was an interview with her at the subjects insistence, as oposed to a paranoid expose meant to expose the poor young woman.

Anyway, when my friend protested, Dr. Boyles threatened her that she wouldn't be allowed to graduate if she pursued the story any further by way of making the editorial decision a known incident. Well, my friend has long since graduated, and Dr. Boyles, who served as Principal for the school administration of Bartlesville High Scool during the 1998-1999 school year, justified her reasoning as being that she didn't want people to be alarmed about the idea that AIDS might be infecting the teens. That it might send the wrong message about the schools and the town. I mention her name and resume material as often as I have because I hoipe that anyone researching her background will know that she faught to put children's lives at stake in order to preserve her own image. Moving on.

In South Dakota, I'll say what I've said before. Not only is this a rights issue, but putting girls under the age of consent in a legal obligation to protect the compensurary "sex receipt" of their legal victimization is screwed up enough, but then expanding the issue to assault-style rape cases is ridiculous. Strangely enough, part of me still has faith that the Supremem Court will uphold Roe. After all, they said they would, but who can give a reason to trust them? It's not like they have accountability for their decisions anymore.

In Missouri, we have a clear case of legislating morality, but it's more sinister than that. I know this region of the country very well, and there's probably more promiscuity going on there than there is in most colleges. Is that an issue to be addressed? Surely. Should abstinence be part of the program? Absolutely. But the current system there is trying to find a way to take away the rights of the sexually active (i.e. 98% of all legally-aged citizens) while knowing that they can't legislate against sex itself, and doing it in a way so as to paint any who would go against them as disease-ridden whores. (Admitting my own bias, this is a large part of the reason that I find the conservative movement, and really the whole republican party, to be such a classy outfit, but I haven't even gotten to the best part yet!)

The federal GOP is blocking the availability of a "100%" efficient HPV vaccine, because of the worry that it's availability would lead to promiscuity. Again, as I've said before, this is like banning airbags because they might lead to reckless driving. 4000 women die every year due to HPV-related cervical cancer. That's 1000 more people than died in the September 11th attacks. Per year. Because the conservative movement believes so strongly that sex is the ultimate of all evils that it refuses to allow it's citizens any safeguards against it's negative effects.

I'm sorry that this has come out as the polemic that it ended up as, but I'm past the point of polite, pretend-objectivity on this matter. Ever since Bush came into power, the conservatives have taken the effort to destroy every liberty they could get their hands on, and I'm not going to pretend to politely stand for it anymore.

However, I'm requesting that anyone with a differing opinion, because I respect everyone who regulalry comments here, to convince me otherwise. As far as I can tell, the republican-controlled gowernment has officially become fascist. Convince me I'm wrong.

Update: The situation in Missouri is much worse than I thought.

Some Housekeeping

We have changed the default for the post title bar from green to white. This way, my posts won't be the only ones to show up bolded on the 'recent comments' sidebar!

My bearded brethren!

Behold the fashionable return of the beard (Via Sullivan)! Few are happier than me. Bearded Optimates, let me hear from you!

We're famous!

Well, howdy!
It seems that our persistence has begun to pay off, my friends. What am I talking about? Let me just direct you to this link and let you figure it out!

Virtue

Regular readers of this blog know that we here at Optimates have healthy and frequent debates about sin and morality (Don't believe me? What about this, this, this, or this?!?).
Well, because it's springtime, let's put that gloom-and-doom talk behind us - for at least a few hours, I mean - and talk about virtue.
A thought exercise, then. What do you think is the greatest of the virtues and why? Furthermore, which of the virtues do you think you possess? Hit me!

Update: Let me make it clear that by 'virtue' I am referring to a kind of human excellence (arete for you Greek lovers!) and not to unique personal abilities.

Icebergs in Argentina

Man, will those crafty liberals stop at nothing to try to convince us global warming is "real?" Honestly, sending giant 250m icebergs to the coast of Argentina and attempting to flood its mostly agriculture-based society, plunging it into economic doom ... what will they think of next? No one's fooled by your cheap parlor tricks!
What Global Warming?

And now...

Al Gore!

Three years in

So here we are, three years into our adventure in Iraq. Our friends at Slate offer us dueling perspectives on the war here and here.
I'd like to throw an open Iraq thread to commenters: is the war in Iraq winnable? How do we win? Are we winning now? Losing?

Pat. Pending

In a fantastic op-ed piece in the NY Times (remember, login/pass = optimate/optimate), Michael Crichton discusses the dangerous trend in the current realities of the US patent system. Over the past decade or two, it appears that the US Patent Office has issued a number of "correlation" patents, which grant the holder the right to charge royalties for the statement or use (or perhaps thinking) of a correlation between two facts. The company in question has patented "the basic biological relationship between homocysteine and vitamin deficiency". This is patently (pun fully intended, for the benefit of Cato and Prometheus) insane.
Crichton sums it up well by saying "We grant patents at a level of abstraction that is unwise" . He also mentions the ongoing trend of biotech companies patenting parts of the human genome and the fact that this allows them to influence the priorities of medical research (by charging royalties for people investigating certain diseases, the genes for which they have a patent). But the problem is not limited to medicine. The entire patent system is in need of an overhaul, both in terms of means (it is under funded and overworked, and what funds it does get, come largely from processing fees, creating a perverse incentive to spend even less time considering each patent) and underlying philosophy. Perhaps it has been forgotten, but patents were originally seen as an embarrassing necessity; a temporary legal monopoly granted in order to reward innovators for their contribution to the public good. What we have done is forgotten A) that such a system is embarrassing (it flys in the face of liberty) and B) that its purpose was to ADD to the public good, not to allow people to hoard ideas from it. Patents and copyrights were given short lifetimes for this very reason. Furthermore, they were granted for novel inventions or ingenious solutions to problems. A method for synthesizing a protein is patentable. But the scientific observations that lead you to develop it should not be.

This issue is obviously analogous to that of copyright in art (music, literature, film). In both cases, the goal is to increase contributions by talented individuals (be they artists or engineers) to the public sphere, with an understanding that such contributions enrich society in general. We must keep this goal in mind at all times when attempting to balance public access with the private benefit of the artist/innovator. If the reward of innovation is too little (ie. no patent or copyright protection), then people who might have made great contributions will be dissuaded from trying for fear of their work going unrewarded. But if we overpower patent and copyright laws (by granting dangerously broad patents, or extending the lifetime of patents and copyrights too far), then we also deprive society of access to the public good of the innovation (and in both art and science, innovation begets innovation, making the true value of broad access thereto hard to understate).

Thus, the patent dilemma is like a mirror image of the Tragedy of the Commons. In an example of the latter, air pollution for instance, the costs of an action are born by everyone (damage to environment) while the benefits (profits from a factory) accrue only to certain individuals. The end result, without legal intervention such as environmental regulation, is destruction of the common asset.

In the case of overly restrictive patent law, we have an inverse, but equally tragic situation. The benefits of innovation accrue to the individual patent (or copyright) holders and the loss of potential benefit is suffered by the whole of society. The solution is inverted as well. While the answer to air pollution is to legally impose some of the cost of the action on the individual benefiting from it (either through fines, or threat of other legal sanction), the answer in the case of stifling patent and copyright law is to simplify and reduce the power of such protection to a point where the public good, or Common is, on balance, enhanced (while the innovator is still rewarded).

This is understandably dangerous ground and reminds me of a discussion concerning Sin (an Optimate favorite!) which I had with Tacitean and then Prometheus the other day. I contended that Sloth was the most fascinated of the "deadlies" because it alone held that it was not enough simply to resist doing bad things that you wanted to do, but that it was also a sin NOT to actively pursue good. I chose to interpret this as a call to develop one's gifts as best you can and to contribute not just to your own well being but to society, but this is and interesting area, since it borders on some of the flawed pictures of human nature that led to such disasters of Communism.

As always Fire Away!©

Odyssey!

This weekend we were judges at the Vermont state 'Odyssey of the Mind' tournament. It was totally fun. Has anyone else out there participated in this program in anyway? What did they think of it? Just curious.

Bjork Shall Make a Fine Subject...

So... anybody wanna get some pitchforks together and take over Iceland?

Seriously, though. I hear it's really quite beautiful.

One Ireland

Yes indeed, it's St. Patrick's Day. In that spirit, I encourage everyone to stop over at Slate and read about Irish re-unification!
While you're at it, listen to some U2, as well. Actually, consider this post an open thread for comments about Irishness! Erin Go Bragh!

Good or bad?

We may actually have some forward motion with Iran. Do we think this is good motion or bad motion? I link, you decide!

Copyright Law, by way of France

It looks as if French copyright law will soon take a step forward and two backwards. This article discusses a proposed French law that would legalize the breaking of DRM (Digital Rights Management, the encryption that restricts how you copy most paid-for downloaded music) for the purposes of allowing the music to play on any digital player. While I am happy to see legality granted to people's right to do as they will with data they have paid for, this law also includes provisions against "illegal" sharing of music and the creation of software to enable such sharing. Furthermore, I'm not convinced that having a government intervene here in order to protect people's "right" to have music they buy from one vendor work everywhere.
No one is forcing people to purchase their music online from the iTunes Music Store (iTMS - the main target of this law, with over 80% market share in the music download business), just as no one is forcing them to buy iPods to play their music on. To dirgress for one moment, I would like to clear up an issue which many of my fellow Optimates understand, but which I feel the press, and the people who have their only contact with the subject from the press have routinely misrepresented. Apple's iPod music player will play music in a large number of formats (including the ubiquitous and non-proprietary MP3 format). One does not have to purchase one's music from Apple's iTunes Music Store in order to play it on one's iPod. There is no "lock in" with respect to what can be played on an iPod. This concept arises from the fact that Apple's download service offers its files in a proprietary format (which plays on iPods and with Apple's iTunes music software). Thus, if I purchase my music from the iTMS I will need to convert the format of those files in order to play them on a non Apple player.
I see very little legal problem with this. Personally, I purchase very little music from the iTMS for several reasons, one of which is the DRM attached to files and the need to degrade their already less than perfect sound quality further when using workarounds to circumvent that DRM. But I don't feel my rights are somehow being violated simply because one specific vendor offers music in a format that displeases me. I simply don't buy from them. That is how a market economy works. The role of legal regulation in such an economy is the creation of boundaries to curb excesses and warping of the system. Tailoring laws to try and thwart specific companies or products simply because the company is not offering the product in the way people would like sets an terrible precedent and is incredibly destructive to the system as a whole.
I would love to pin this on France alone, since my dearth of love for their approach to government is well known, but it appears that they are passing this law in an attempt to conform to EU copyright policy. I would like to hear people's opinions concerning copyright in a digital age. How can the concept of copyright, as it was initially concieved, be applied to an era in which technology has rendered the costs of reproducing and distributing information negligable? How can the rights to profit from one's work be balanced against the public good of maximum information availability? Is an ever increasing availability of information necessarily a good thing? If there are limits, what are they?
Fire away!

Domestic Help

Short but sweet: I put up some shelving in the kitchen today while Boudicca was working on exam questions. I had no idea making shelves was this fun!

Secularism -> Fundamentalism?

I draw your attention to a fascinating article in the International Herald Tribune. The general thesis is that modern secular liberalism is actually responsible for the religious fundamentalism that threatens it. By taking religion out of the public sphere (it argues) modern secular liberalism has stripped that sphere of objective moral truth and made religion and morality a personal affair. I predict Tacitean might have a few things to say about this... ;)

Updates: Ports and Israel

First a brief note about linking to New York Times articles. The NY Times online requires (free) registration in order to view articles, which can be a hassle since we often link to articles there. To make things easier, I've created a general Optimates account for their website to spare us the tedium of having to create our own personal accounts if we want to read a linked article. The user name and password are both "optimate". If you tell your browser to remember the login, you shouldn't have to worry about it again. Moving on...

Looks like DP World has caved to US Xenophobia and political grandstanding and offered to transfer control of the US ports it would acquire to a US owned company. I find it incredibly frustrating that one of the few times that Congress manages to work up the spine to oppose Bush in a material fashion, it is on one of the few issues that Bush is being prudent about. I still maintain that the top level owner of the port operations has almost no bearing on our security. If we are concerned with security, then we should be demanding better protocols at the ports by way of the Coast Guard and Homeland Security, the ones actually responsible for security.
In other news, acting prime minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert has announced that he will seek to finalize Israel's borders by 2010 unless the Hamas controlled PA renounces violence and recognizes Israel. Looks like he intends to pull out most of the deep settlements unilaterally, but keep most of the larger ones near Jerusalem, behind the security wall. I am hoping fervently that Hamas begins to prioritize the welfare of its own people over its hate of Israel and takes the opportunity to revise some of its stances. I would not blame Israel for trying to draw borders unilaterally, but at the same time, if they do it with map they intend to, it will lead to a lot of animosity. Israel should admit the odiousness of its past settlement policy and find a way to dismantle ALL settlements in the West Bank. If Hamas is then still unwilling to accept a final map based on 1968 borders, then Israel might have little choice but to separate unilaterally and leave the PA to govern as it can. Better for both parties, however, if the process can be mutual.

Let's talk about sex

I know we've discussed the 'culture wars' on this blog, but in each thread it seems more and more that we're really discussing the 'sex wars:' abortion, homosexuality, polygamous marriage... you name it.
So let's cut out the middleman. I want to talk about sex today.
One premise of socially conservative thought is that relaxing attitudes toward sex has led to more of "the bad kind" of sex, the kind that leads to illegitimacy, abortions, divorces, and the like (for an interesting example of "mixed orientation" marriage, click here [hat tip: Boudicca]).
I want to know if people think this has any truth to it. Do we think that socially modest behavior is related to sexual morality?
Let me use an easier example. Dress 'codes' for both genders are no longer as stringent as they used to be. As a result, it has become much more commonplace to see revealing clothing than, say, 50 years ago.
At the same time, pornography has gone from an obscure cult scene to a multi-billion dollar industry.
So has the scale on which modesty is measured simply shifted? Are we now so used to porn actors and actresses as mainstream icons, and revealing clothing in our every day experience, to boot, that we don't even consider it strange, and our personal mores have remained unaffected?
Or has the slow shift away from modesty led to totally different attitudes about sex, too?
Let's stay with the pornography example. Are these actors and actresses liberated from an imposed modesty, free to explore their sexuality - and get paid! - or are they just as much prisoners of a new code that only prizes physical perfection? What does either answer say about society?
I don't know the answer to any of these questions (and the 50,000 related ones that I'm sure will come up in the comments), but I thought I would throw them out there and get a discussion started. I have to give most of the credit for raising this topic to Boudicca; in fact, the majority of what I've posted here is from listening to her talk about these and other issues!
I'm throwing it open to comments now, and I trust everyone will exercise high levels of maturity when commenting on such a sensitive and (perhaps) highly personal subject. Thank you.

Oscars

Hi there! I'm just putting this up as a general comments thread for the Oscars. Likes, dislikes, complaints, praise... go to it.

Iran, again

I've posted before (most recently here) on the dangers of the Iranian nuclear program and the difficulty of a unified Western response.
Right on cue we have reached another impasse with the Islamic Republic, as detailed here.
Most hawkish Iran-watchers raise the very sensible concern that a nuclear Iran will be more likely to engage in military adventures, protected from attack by nuclear deterrent. In fact, Kaplan notes that Saddam Hussein regretted not obtaining a nuclear weapon prior to the invasion of Kuwait.
While I think this is a good point, I think our real concern should be that a nuclear Iran will pursue its ideological aims more aggressively.
As Nazi Germany's armed forces began to eclipse those of the western powers (c.1938), it began to assail them with calls for "self-determination." This, if you recall, was the vile logic that brought Austria and Sudeten Czechoslovakia into the Nazi orbit without a shot being fired.
The western powers feared the German military and the prospect of war, and so they negotiated away their defenses and accepted the faulty logic of self-determination for German minorities in other nations.
Why would we expect anything different from an ascendent, nuclear Iran? Would we be surprised if the Islamic Republic sought 'self-determination' of Iraqi Shi'a as the price of continued good behavior?
This, of course, will strike many in the West as reasonable, especially if it means the end to our own muddled adventures in Iraq. But I doubt it would end there. Carrying the banner of the Islamic world - in a way that nuclear Pakistan cannot, I believe - what would stop Iran from pushing for more stringent 'hate crimes' laws of the like that would stop the Danish cartoons? What would stop Iran from championing religious self-determination for European Muslims in the form of Sharia enclaves throughout their adopted homelands?
I am not optimistic that a nuclear Iran can be avoided at this point, but I still think the effort must be made. But are China and Russia willing to make it? I can't say.
Update: Hmmm.

Style and Profile

As per Gaufridus's wishes, I have updated my profile. In case there's any doubt about the photo, I'm on the left and Boudicca is on the right!

Claudia's back

Yes, I noticed: Claudia Black is back on SG-1. Once it's revealed that the Ori are led by this guy, I'll be truly content.

New friends

Let me also say that I am very pleased to see our roster of regular commenters is expanding! Welcome to Optimates, we hope you enjoy your stay. Tell your friends!

Back in the saddle

So good to be back among you!
No need to worry, friends, I haven't disappeared. But as many of you know, it's coming up on Town Meeting Day in New Hampshire, and for that reason things have been a lot mere hectic at work this last week. So here I am after some delay.
I return in time for the beginning of the Lenten season (I wish a prayerful season to those who celebrate it!), which is appropriate considering my topic: Mere Christianity.
I've finally completed C.S. Lewis's defense of Christianity, and since I've already offered two posts on the book, what's another between friends?
All in all, I think it's a solid, if unspectacular, grounding in the rudiments of the faith without getting too bogged down in particular sectarian details.
Much has been made of my supposed "theocratic" leanings, and so I thought I would share with you a very relevant passage:

"When you find yourself wanting to turn your children, or pupils, or even your neighbours, into people exactly like yourself, remember that God probably never meant them to be that. You and they are different organs, intended to do different things. On the other hand, when you are tempted not to bother about someone else's troubles because they are 'no business of yours,' remember that though he is different from you he is part of the same organism as you. If you forget that he belongs to the same organism as yourself you will become an Individualist. If you forget that he is a different ogram from, if you to suppress all differences and make people all alike, you will become a Totalitarian. But a Christian must not be either a Totalitarian or an Individualist."

Easier said than done, of course.It's no surprise that I think my natural leaning is to the 'Totalitarian' side. At work today I caught myself ranting about the evils of illicit substances and realized what a delightful tyrant I must sound!
I think Lewis hits it right on the head here. Just as I am in the wrong - and there's no doubt of it, friends - in waxing poetic about, say, absolute temperance, so I think the person prone to the 'Individualist' side errs in thinking that the sins of our fellow humans are mere personal indulgences and not worth our concern or involvement.
I don't understand why more liberals do not favor this basic approach, because it provides the underpinnings for a 'liberal society,' properly conceived. What do I mean by that?
I mean it's clear from Lewis's Christian perspective that the government should not regulate a certain morality (a central tenet of the liberal state), because some people are more prone to some vices than others. I, for one, am a tea-totaler with no desire to gamble. Given carte blanche to regulate morality, wouldn't I be prone to banning alcohol and gambling with all good intent? By the same token, wouldn't a prudish sort (I believe they are called 'Santorums') be prone to banning all non-procreative sex? The problem with these bans - aside from being impractical - is that they only apply the part of morality the regulator likes. What could be more hypocritical, prideful, and in the end sinful?
The genius of the liberal society, on the other hand, is that we avoid all this hypocrisy. I don't try to regulate you, you don't try to regulate me. But I think, following Lewis, we can't just walk away from our neighbors at that point. In fact, we still should be just as concerned. But we must meet as equals, aware of our own sins first, and seek virtue voluntarily and with the help of others. This, after all, is the purpose of free will and our liberal society.
This is why I cannot agree with the concept of society that is not based on the ideal of virtuous outcomes. Are we really going to retain mature, reasonable, and prudent self-government if we take no interest in creating mature, reasonable, and prudent people? If as a people we don't care what sort of self-centered pricks we and our neighbors are becoming?
If we don't care, aren't we admitting that the purpose of liberal society is our own indulgence and nothing else? How tenable would that society be?

Closing your eyes doesn't make it go away...

Whoo hoo! Hello first post! I’ve been following the abortion ban bill in South Dakota the past few days with trepidation. If this passes, wait for a Supreme Court case about a year down the line that could roll back women’s rights in this country. Now, we’ve had somewhat of an abortion debate on this blog, so I generally know where most of you stand on this. Here’s my question: South Dakotans, and anti-abortionists everywhere, seem to firmly believe that if they outlaw abortion, this will stop it from happening, which will inevitably lead to a religious utopia where everyone has babies in wedlock and raise them with the right values. I’d like to think most of you realize that simply banning a procedure will not make it go away, nor will it do much to address the underlying societal issues that often lead to abortion. I feel this could also apply to a lot of things that have been outlawed within this country, most notably our sad War on Drugs that spends more time and money criminalizing certain drugs and the people who take them, rather than cutting off the demand where it starts, with helping the addicted person.

Anyway, here’s my question: Is there a vice or immoral act that it is more effective to combat by either banning it or criminalizing it, versus treating as a societal or economic problem? I'm sure there are, but I can't think of any outside of maybe kiddie porn. The two best examples I can think of for a 'no' argument are drug addiction and prostitution, but I’m sure there are others. Thoughts?