Submitted to a Candid World

The rhetorical trick known as the slippery slope argument - by which one person argues against another’s idea by theorizing that it leads inexorably to the end of the world - is the darling of creationists and conservative jurists alike. Like its rhetorical brother, the empty appeal to tradition, it’s a way of saying something when there’s nothing left to say: if you don’t have anything concrete left to say about the evils of gay marriage, you can always argue that it inexorably leads to marrying toasters.

Along those lines, we’ve most recently we’ve heard from none other than the Discovery Institute (friend of John McCain!) that evolution, working together with the animal rights movement, calls into question the brightline definition of “humanity,” causing us to devalue humanity, inexorably causing genocide, abortion, and euthanasia. Wrong. On multiple levels.

Not human, but pretty damn cute.

First, the argument assumes that when the definition of “human” becomes open to debate, that the legal protections afforded humans must equalize down to the level of animals, protecting less and less life. But, if evolution & animal rights work together to blur the line between species, they do not necessarily cause a race to the bottom. In fact, it can lead to a race to the top, and a recognition of the profound value of life in increasingly more and more organisms. We can always respond to the similarities between man and animal by raising animal rights up, perhaps not on par with our own, but at least partially, in recognition of our partial similarities.

The Discovery Institutes’ argument assumes that granting rights to animals - or, partially equalizing up - is simply not an option. That assumption betrays a shocking lack of respect and perspective. If we’re the only thing that matters - if the Discovery Institute won’t even entertain the idea that there’s any value beyond human life - we’re not only ignoring the Biblical injunction that mankind protect wildlife (let’s play on their court!), but we might as well also repeal anti-animal cruelty legislation. While there are huge problems with some animal rights regimes, to answer those problems by ignoring animals is simply evil.

Second, like all slippery slope arguments, the Discovery Institutes’ argument relies upon an assumption of a failure of will. The argument proceeds along these lines: if man and animal are legally and scientifically blurred, there is literally nothing stopping us from concluding that man is worthless. The slippery slope posits that no-one will stop, think, and reason out a principled way to avoid that philosophical conclusion. It poses a line-drawing question - where do we draw the line on what rights animals get? - and then refuses to answer the question. Like so much of creationist spin, indeed like intelligent design itself, the slippery slope argument poses a problem and then simply gives up on finding a solution.

We are in charge of our own legal, philosophical, and moral destinies. If a legal or philosophical position potentially leads us down a slippery slope of reasoning towards a dismal outcome, we have vested in ourselves the reason and the capacity to draw the line, and solve the problem. While “ideas have consequences,” no idea has bad consequences unless we let it, and at that point, our personal failures become complicit in, and superseding causes to, the evil inherent in the idea. Ideas don’t kill people; jerks who don’t think straight kill people.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, but I haven’t heard the name “Jeremiah Wright” in a while. Nor have I heard much about anyone being “bitter.” Although the enduring truth of this assessment will have to wait until November, it may prove true that Hillary Clinton, by trotting out some of the major foibles of the Obama campaign early in the primary season, deprived the McCain campaign of the opportunity to use them to discredit Obama when it actually mattered… as in, now. The American electorate, being a composition of single individuals, has an attention span and capacity for memory of current events akin to that of any individual. So, the effectiveness of a smear campaign varies on the strategic nature of its deployment.

The Time Value of Dirty Politicking

A well-timed public relations disclosure, regardless of its veracity, can spell disaster (Swiftboat Veterans for Defamation Truth), while truthful information that comes too late (Bush’s DUI conviction, disclosed on the eve of the 2000 Election) can be irrelevant. I think we’re about to see a new case: if a talking point is put into action too early, it loses its effect faster than an overplayed Top-40 Britney hit.

Of course, counterexamples abound. The issues of Kerry’s elitism and incomprehensibility to the common man (”I voted for it before I voted against it”), broached in the spring of 2004, both survived as potent themes and venues of attack until the fall election. But that’s due in no small part to Kerry’s incompetence. He continued to play into the role the Bush team had crafted for him. If you’re trying to dodge the “elitist” label, you don’t go windsurfing, and if you do, you can expect old smears and old missteps to be reincorporated into the next spin cycle. Making the same mistakes over and over again just gives the opposition an invitation to dredge up the old ones.

There’s every reason to think Obama’s case will be distinguishable from Kerry’s; his image related mistakes per week have dropped drastically since spring, and it’s come to be viewed as tactless and puerile to repeatedly harp on Obama’s “difference” from white America. “Look, he’s wearing a turban!” Oooooh, I’m scared. Hopefully, we’ve moved on.

What, Too Soon?

But we’re not invulnerable. A wise campaign would still keep a tight leash on Obama’s public image, and play down his vulnerabilities wherever possible. Sadly, some liberal groups and media outlets aren’t playing along. Outside of the “Colbert Report” - and even then, I’m not sure how I like it - it’s too soon to start making fun of the way Obama’s enemies want him portrayed. We risk dredging up and re-activating the very images that we thought were dead. Apparently the New Yorker hasn’t gotten that memo. And, neither has MoveOn.org. As much as I love MoveOn’s platform, they seem singularly incapable of doing anything with grace or tact. According to a recent e-mail sent to supporters, the PAC may soon start selling buttons displaying the “terrorist fist jab.”

Definitely too soon. While it’s good to show that we’re not afraid of difference, let’s not be foolhardy about it. A lot of Americans are afraid, or at least suspicious, of what makes Barack Obama different than previous presidential candidates. Not playing into their fears, and smugly acting like we’re completely invulnerable to a continued assault along those lines, might be a good campaign tactic. Let’s not “bring it on” just yet.

Why do insurance companies cover Viagra, but not birth control, Mr. McCain, and why have you voted to keep it that way?

The obvious answer is because, based on the religious outlook on sex, men should enjoy it, and women shouldn’t be having it.  So there’s literally no conflict in letting men do it through old age, but keeping women away from the fun by forcing them - and them alone - to embrace the consequences.  To politicians like McCain, that’s just the way it is.  Some things ought never change.

Oh, but don’t you believe him.  Do any lingering Pro-Clinton/Anti-Obama partisans still doubt how badly we need to keep this guy away from the Oval Office?

Thanks to Natalie for the video link.

A.K.A., Atheism: You’re Doin’ it Wrong.

PZ Myers has decided to take on Catholicism, by calling for atheists to take communion wafers and either deface them, or send them to him for the same. While I agree abstractly with the sentiment animating this quest - in his own words, “IT’S A FRACKIN CRACKER!” - and applaud the (misspelled) Battlestar Galactica reference, I question the means of getting his message across.

Background: upon consecration by a duly authorized Catholic priest, per the doctrine of transubstantiation, the communion wafer actually becomes the body of Christ. In the eyes of a believing Catholic, PZ Myers is sanctioning nothing less than the abduction and grim mutilation of the body of Christ.

Fun is Fun

I do not doubt the potential for private hilarity here. While I deeply respect the Catholic faith, and its beliefs, I laughed myself silly when hearing about a friend’s Catholic school classmate who for three years palmed his consecrated wafers, turned them into snack food, and then conspicuously sold the “products” in the school cafeteria. “Nacho Jesus” and “Shake ‘n Bake Jesus” were some of the funnier ones. Footnote - the kid was expelled & excommunicated. But, I emphasize the private aspect this type of humor must take.

But Advocacy is Serious Business

PZ wants to encourage the world to laugh at itself, and through laughter, eventually urge theists to question their dearly held beliefs and commit themselves to what he sees as a more rational belief system. Satire is obviously a powerful motivator for social change. But by opting for offense over reasoned debate, and deliberately choosing an off-putting means of advocacy, PZ compromises his own commitment to rationalism, and endangers the entire agnostic/atheist movement. This latest internet offensive betrays a saddening lack of political flair which, like it or not, every intellectual movement must have.

Atheists stand at the outside of society. This should be no surprise. Accordingly, the first goal of any self-respecting atheist group must be, in my girlfriend’s words, to convince the world “that atheists don’t eat babies.” Mutual understanding and respectability is the way. I know that most of PZ Myers’ readers - and some of my own - will think that there’s no reasoning with theists. But that, in fact, is empirically disproven. While some of the true loonies will never be converted (holy dino-riding Jesus, Batman!), there are legitimate and achievable means of promoting an interfaith/nonfaith dialogue. The Secular Students of Rice University, of which I was a member in college, held an “Ask an Atheist Forum” every year, encouraging students to ask atheists about their beliefs, and realize that, hey, atheists aren’t so bad after all - sure, they’ve got beards, but who doesn’t! They held moderate Darwin Day celebrations of science every February 22nd. They hosted weekly meetings, encouraging open debate, and often had more than one theist in attendance, and always maintained a respectful tone. I’m not sure if any minds were won over to the cause, but none left convinced of atheism’s evil, and none were lost from it.

Spreading the Message: You’re Doin’ it Wrong

My point is that an atheist advocate’s goal should not be the creation of bloggable instances of theistic outrage, any more than a Christian apologist’s goal should be to piss off as much of the world as possible. Neither contribute to a meaningful dialogue by which a movement can progress from thesis and antithesis, to new thesis.

I don’t dispute the value of incidents like this, to have a little fun while preaching to the choir. But to leverage “a little fun” into a PR stunt is bad advocacy. The Cracker Incident was a bad move. I say this as an agnostic - not a full blown atheist - so take my words with a grain of salt. Or, perhaps, with a little red wine.

I’ve always found it amazing that the Republican party, whose platform stipulates a top-down personal morality and consists largely of pushing through tax breaks for the wealthy, has managed to label the Democrats as elitist. I suppose we have the Reagan realignment to blame, whereby lower-class voters were suckered from the Democrats (who promised them a better economic future) to the Republicans (who promised them a chance to talk about religion), but the co-option of the “elitist” label goes even farther. Liberal politicians are viewed as the privileged few, while Yale-educated Republican politicians powered by old Connecticut money waltz into the White House just because they spend a few days a year in Texas. If we were to have an “elitism-off,” and set all the hybrid cars, iPhones, Starbucks double-shot mocha frappucinos (no foam, please), and Barnes & Noble memberships of Democratic politicians against the Martha’s Vineyard vacations of Republican politicians, I believe we Democrats would lose hands down.

Luckily, every now and again, a crack emerges in the spin-coated veneer of the Republican image, and we get a view of what they’re really thinking. Ah, there it is. For worrying about the economy, we’re “a nation of whiners.” Just lovely. If Barack Obama - or one of his staffers - had said that, I’d be able to look out my office window and see it plastered on the sides of buildings already: “OBAMA THINKS YOU’RE A WHINER,” or some such. In fact, Obama has made some comparable slip ups - though they’ve blissfully since faded - and that was pretty close to the reaction. I seriously doubt Phill Gramm’s comment will get the same play on the Fox News ticker. But time will tell.

And, on a side note, I’m surprised to see that people are still looking into the issue of whether McCain is even eligible for the presidency, owing to the peculiarities of his birthplace. He’ll run, regardless of the issue, and it would be a political suicide to try to derail the McCain campaign on a legal technicality. The fact is, sometimes the law just doesn’t matter.

I have a special place in my heart for Dana Hunter at “En Tequila Es Verdad,” and she quite routinely proves why she deserves that spot.  At least I know I’m not the only liberal who thinks the dangers of Obama’s moderate turn are overstated.  Check her post on the subject for that, and a little bit of snark on Rove, too.

Speaking of friends on the series of tubes, thanks to Progressive Conservative for this tribute. I won’t disappoint, and I’ll count on you and others to keep me in line if I start to stray from logic.

Barack Obama is a once in a lifetime candidate.  After eight years of divisiveness, we have a candidate who - quite apart from favoring serious, progressive policies to put America back on track - actually wants to work across the aisle and rebuild a collegial, functioning government.  We’ll have a true President of the United States, rather than a President of the Bible Belt.  There’s truth to Obama’s (considerable) hype - we have a lot to be excited about.

But.  Even for the best of candidates, there are compromises to be made, for the sake of fairness, and for the sake of expedience.  Coalitions and presidencies are never built on unswerving pursuit of an ideological party line, and even when they are, the country’s worse off for it (look where we are now).  When Democrats, like Kos, expect Obama to never deviate from Kos-style liberalism, they expect him to change the way politics works, and not for the better.  Liberalism imports subordination of passion to reason; we ought to bend when we have to, for the larger good.  Politics in a democracy, especially a democracy still suspicious of the word “Liberal,” means that Obama cannot be a model Daily-Kos-style Democrat.  Deal with it.  Certainly there’s an element of betrayal here - Kos democrats made Obama.  But candidate and (soon-) President Obama belongs to the American people, not to the narrow interests that got him to where he is.  Isn’t that independence, after all, what we admired about Obama in the first place?

More importantly - and more cynically - we can’t expect that, because we have an honest candidate, politics will all of a sudden be 100% honest, transparent, and above-the-table.  Politics is not sunshine and blossoms. Sometimes we as Democrats have to read the signals, guess what’s going on, intercept the code, and learn to listen for the spin.

Example: Obama on gay rights.  Yes, thank you, “Confluence,” for pointing out that Obama says he isn’t a fan of gay rights.  But that’s cheap talk.  Obama can oppose gay rights all he wants, but it’s not something he will have control over as president.  His Supreme Court picks, who will be equal-protection-clause-expansion liberals like you and me, will make the call on gay rights issues.  Obama wants his Supreme Court to protect “people who may be vulnerable in the political process.” What do you think that means?  It’s barely-concealed code for “gay rights.”  Do you want to make him say it clearer, and blow the whole game?

I realize it may hurt a few feelings for Obama to stand against a group that’s already been beaten up enough - talk about picking on the Bush administration’s scapegoat! - but his anti-gay rights stance is “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”  He has to say things like this to get elected.  No political campaign is conducted 100% above the table.  Watch the signs; watch the hands.

So, Democrats, I realize some of you may feel neglected, or “thrown under the bus.”  But realize that compromises have to be made, and learn to separate talk from spin, and read the signs correctly.  And then, fall the hell into line.  Even if you don’t think Obama needs your help, he does.  To turn Ben Franklin’s quote around, if we don’t hang together on this one, we won’t be hanging alone come November: under four more years of Republican rule, America will be hanging with us.  Join together.  Save the state.  Fall into line.

Even when you’re right, you just don’t question the experience of a war hero.  The distinction between attacking the honor of an individual’s wartime service as a footsoldier, and questioning the bearing that honorable service has on one’s executive qualifications, is a fine distinction likely to be lost when one’s words are strategically reduced for the 24-hour news cycle.

One of the sacrifices modern democracy has forced us to make, in return for cheap and quick information, is that we can no longer discuss any political issue that can’t be reduced to a sound byte three seconds or less.  This gives rise to what I call Rove’s Law.  Like Brannigan’s Law, this one is hard and fast: “if you can’t express a complex political issue without using a string of words that, reduced to a three-second byte, sounds unpatriotic or otherwise inapt, don’t express it at all.”  Questioning the relationship between McCain’s service record and McCain’s ability to be a good commanding officer was as clear a violation of Rove’s law as I’ve ever seen - right up there with the awful, but accurate, “I voted for it before I voted against it.”

In case you’re one of the three people on Earth that haven’t heard of General Clark’s error, he said, “I don’t think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president.”  Ugh.  Video below:

As I’ve said, General Wesley Clark’s point was spot on.  Though McCain is a war hero - and one of America’s greatest war heroes, to boot - that fact merely symbolically suggests, and does not logically prove, that McCain possesses the judgment, knowledge, or intelligence to command the nation’s army, much less the nation.  Not so long ago, back when the polity’s main job was to kill invaders and subdue tributary territories, a citizen would be a fool not to vote for a war hero.  That man (inevitably a man) would be the one to lead the state into battle.  But we’re long beyond that.  Ideally, America need not entangle herself in any more wars, and may indeed be on the brink of extracting herself from this last one.  A war hero may not only be unnecessary, but downright a bad choice.

Of course, as a politician, you should never say that.  At most, you should suggest it through intermediaries… and only then if you’re a Republican.

At least that’s what I gather from this latest, last-ditch sermon to the choir.  Thanks, Karl, for reminding us that Democrats are pro-choice.  Also, water is wet.  Frankly, I’m disappointed in the New York Times for covering something like this.  It’s not a shock that Karl Rove wants to push divisive issues upon us, but why let him?  He doesn’t have a bully pulpit anymore.  In fact, he never did… rather, his hand-puppet doesn’t have a bully pulpit anymore.  It’s our choice whether or not we want to give him enough press coverage to make him relevant, and I think it’d be better for all if we chose in the negative (and the Opinion page at least agrees).

Update: apparently Rove called Obama, “the most pro-abortion candidate the Democrats have put forward.”  Is this guy a one-trick pony or what?  How come the guy that runs on the other ticket is always the most anti-[insert Republican issue here] candidate ever?  Please.  I sincerely hope Americans aren’t dumb enough to fall for that every time.

And happy Fourth, again, to all.  We’re very lucky.

Web cartoons are great. In the genius of XKCD - for instance - an entire generation of nerds have found a (stick-figure, Firefly-quoting) voice. I’m pretty sure everyone reading this site, and everyone who’s ever posted something on the internet ever, identifies with the panel to the right.

But would you imagine that the comics of the interwebs have a dark side? Yes, they do, in the Rush Limbaugh-pantomiming “Day-by-Day.” This artist, Chris Muir, has developed a distinctive style for himself, characterized by repetition of Fox News talking points, a focus on guns, a healthy dose of paleoconservatism, and an overabundance of curviness in all female characters. In case we were ever entertaining doubts on this issue, DbD has proven once and for all that a major current in modern internet conservatism defines itself around sex, guns, and repetition of the party line (other examples come to mind which prove my point equally well - the ads on WorldNetDaily, for one, but let’s stay on topic).

Let it never be said that I don’t appreciate the McCain mocking…

…but even this is so canned, that I have to wonder if Limbaugh and Hannity just found an artist to transcribe their shows.  Maybe if the guy spent less time drawing his female characters’ breasts, there’d be time for a little originalism, but hey, we all have priorities.

Which isn’t to say I don’t enjoy the comic.  When your opposition research consists partially of reading the funnies, obviously life isn’t so bad.